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>>2834672
Yesterday you've arrived into the village which is said to harbor a newly emerged cult. You don't know anything yet and Haven has just woken up after the exhausting travel so you can finally start dealing with investigation. First let's look at the village itself.

The village of Istrio is a mining settlement with most of its population involved either in mining or providing for the miners. Village lacks specialized foundries and thus you suspect that ore is regularly shipped off towards a larger city for processing. Village itself is self sufficient in food and basic production allowing it to slowly grow even if not provided for by the country at large. There is a river flowing through the village center which powers a small water wheel for a local smithy and several spots for sifting. Apparently water carries small quantities of golden dust. River seems to sprout from somewhere deep in the untamed territory to the north east of Farsalos. You note it as a possible spot for resources to investigate at a later date.

After some investigation you learn that there are several deposits of natural resources around the place. Some are abandoned for one reason or another but many are still working. Miners extract rich lead-zinc galena deposits which also contain small quantities of silver. They also have a large iron ore deposit far to the south west of the village and miners have to spend two days to reach it on foot creating its own miniature settlement there. There are also several deposits of tin and a few deposits of copper ores, but copper ore is "difficult to process" which means it is of a different type than the one extracted near to Farsalos.

Haven suggests to ask the village chief about the cult. Cults rarely grow "up" that fast so the risk of him being a cultist is minimal. She is, however, open for other suggestions.

>Ask village chief. He should have some idea of what's going on
>Ask around the village, maybe they have some superstitions about cultists which you can investigate
>Change into less armor and try to listen in to conversations
>Any other ideas?

>>2834687
>Ask village chief. He should have some idea of what's going on
Use super hearing while at chiefs door incase of any funny reactions

>>2834687
>>Ask village chief. He should have some idea of what's going on

wooho, it's elven ear massage time!...ops...no...that's for later

>>2834687
>Ask village chief. He should have some idea of what's going on

Hmm, interesting. Maybe we can carry some of that Iron back to Fasolos when we are finished

>>2834771
We have a minor deposit of magnetite(iron ore). We don't have refining capacity at the moment. We now, however, know that there is a river leading from an unexplored area which potentially has deposits we don't know of, so another exploration marker in other words. I would try to get some lead and zinc however as we don't currently know a deposit with these metals and both have major industrial use in metallurgy(zinc-iron alloys), electronics(batteries) and chemistry(lead tanks for acids and optical glass production). But then again there could be other things we could spend the money for like livestock or fabrics or seeds.

>>2834712
>>2834752
>>2834771
Writing

>>2834830
You agree with Haven's reasoning and you manage to catch an appointment with the village chief. The chief is an elderly man in his early 70s and it seems that the stress of village running is taking a toll on him. He will probably not be around in less than a decade if he's lucky. The man was somewhat scared when you mentioned the cultists thinking that you popped up from capital to judge the village or something thanks to your golden- looking armor. Luckily you've managed to calm him down by telling him that you are just monster hunters wanting to investigate the cult for possible dangerous creatures.

Unfortunately he doesn't know much about the cultists. They appeared suddenly less than two weeks ago and immediately took several dozen people into their ranks. They worship something called "sleeping god" somewhere towards the north of the village. There are several mines and limestone quarries in that region, most of which are abandoned. What is curious, first wave of cultists were the entire team of miners in one of the few active mines. He has no idea which one since they recruited the rest of the miners in that region within the first days.

Cultists mainly recruited from their families and show up for supplies while still bringing up ore from the mines like nothing happened. Some of the cultists have stopped showing up in the village entirely and there are some cases of missing minor farm animals such as sheep and goats. You are given a list of well known cultists and it seems that they still worship Cenophilan pantheon, just adding whatever this is into it in their belief system.

First of all, hurray for limestone, more flux is better and you are sick of electrolyzing and oxidizing gypsum. Second of all, here is the clue. There are no maps of that area but you at least have a direction towards the suspected mines. Now that you have a clue how would you like to narrow it down?

>Scout the area for people in secret. You can be really hard to detect if you leave your armor in the village
>Just explore each mine in sequence and you'll eventually find something
>Try to catch up and follow one of the cultist resupply operations
>Mix into locals and express your wishes to join the cult to one of the known cultists when they show up
>Catch a cultist and try to interrogate them
>Other?

>>2834944
>Mix into locals and express your wishes to join the cult to one of the known cultists when they show up

>>2834944
>>Mix into locals and express your wishes to join the cult to one of the known cultists when they show up

yeah, I think we can understand this better from the inside

>>2834944
>Scout the area for people in secret. You can be really hard to detect if you leave your armor in the village

>>2835036
>>2835035
>>2835010
Writing

>>2835120
You decide that it would be easier to get to whatever their deity is by infiltrating the cult. The fact that cultists were converted so fast could be related to some form of mind control and you have some natural immunity to that. Thus Haven would have to sneak around and follow you outside. Or just in case all of them are taken over by parasites. You are still paranoid after that encounter.

In any case, you had enough foresight to get your villager outfit along and thus you change into the dress and leave all your other equipment in Haven's inn room taking only a bronze hunting knife. It would be awkward if they found things like a bow that none of them can draw or 30 kilos of full bronze heavy arrows. Same applies to your survival knife and most of your equipment. You will be limited in tools but you still have your physical strength, insane durability and telekinesis if things go south. Your armor is mainly so that arrows ricocheting off your face don't look weird to the locals after all.

Haven thinks that this plan is risky but she will trail you and hang around the entrance to get out a word if the "deity" is dangerous. So in other words the place will get nuked if you die, nice. You tell her not to run immediately after the fighting starts because there is a pretty large chance that you can handle it yourself. Well, time to go deep undercover.

During the night you manage to discretely contact one of the cultists and ask them about recruitment. The man seems really excited that you want to join on your own. Everyone else they recruited was some kind of a family member of an existing cultists and they are running out of potential newcomers. You have to bring some useful skill to the table though. You claim that you can...

>Sew, that is a common profession for girls, right?
>Cook, you can cook pretty well so it won't be a problem
>Carpentry, you can buy an axe and process wood since they are in the middle of a forest anyway
>Hunting, you can't use a bow but you can claim to know how to trap animals
>Other?

>>2835196
>Cook, you can cook pretty well so it won't be a problem
Nice and snug role to infiltrate and overhear in.

>>2835196
>>Cook, you can cook pretty well so it won't be a problem
to overhear and
>Hunting, you can't use a bow but you can claim to know how to trap animals

to be able to move around, this way if we are caught sneaking at night we just checked a trap because we thought we heard something

>>2835227
>>2835202
Writing

>>2835337
Cultist seems excited that you can both cook and hunt. Apparently they were eating pretty bad since they only had access to the stuff that doesn't perish fast like heavily salted meat and hardtack. That salted meat is more like salted leather than modern beef jerky and hardtack was incredibly dense and often infected with lice. Holy shit these people need your cooking more than their god right now.

After over three hours of walk you finally reach the mine. People have set up a few tents already but many live inside of the mineshaft in the clearings sleeping on goddamn rough wooden planks and rock like savages. You get introduced to the head priest guys who usually commute with their deity. The other members of the cult can commute with it only if they work really hard and are deemed worthy by these priests.

Apparently they claim that the god is sleeping and they can share the sleep with it telling you about how it shows them the future things their deity has planned. Something about large homes which touch the skies for everyone with magical lights and personal baths and mechanical carriages which need no horses. Yea... definitely a pod person. Bingo.

What is bad, however, is that they claim that they need to feed their deity and sacrifice cattle to it. Sometimes their god would pick up one of their ranks and "add them into their dream" which they believe to be an alternative to Cenophilan pantheon's vision of afterlife. That one is a weird amalgamation partially ripped off from Dante's trilogy but smoothed out so that everyone who manages to repent for their crimes can get to the not!heaven after serving their sentence in not!hell. That is disconcerting.

Anyway, you set off to "set up traps" into the forest where you meet up with Haven and tell her your thoughts on the whole situation. She promises to visit you once every two days or so for updates during the "trap checks". Now that this is done you set off to actually catch something...

>roll me a 5d20 please

>>2835448
Also my bad, hardtack was infected with weevils, not lice

Rolled 6, 10, 10, 2, 20 = 48 (5d20)

>>2835448

Rolled 10, 2, 6, 18, 19 = 55 (5d20)

>>2835448

>>2835499
>>2835473
Writing

>>2835624
The hunt went surprisingly well. You managed to catch a bunch of rabbits and a whole adult elk. It is a bit awkward as you had to make some traps as if they already sprung and add wounds to your prey but in the end you should be able to cook a lot of meat for the cultists. Hopefully that should massively accelerate your introduction to their deity.

As you were hunting you note that the area towards the north from the mine is some kind of basin. You were interested enough to drill into the earth with telekinesis. The whole thing appears to be limestone. You are not sure how big this basin is but exploring the area would allow access to new deposits within several days away from your village which is incredibly nice. Refining iron without much in the way of fluxes would have been an enormous pain in the ass. You take a mental note to explore this place.

To transport the entire elk you had to construct a sled with nothing but your bronze knife, branches and a whole lot of harsh words. Animal's body is supposed to be too heavy for a woman like you to just carry on your back. luckily you didn't have to pull it the entire distance to the camp since you levitated it just to the point where you could shout some cultists over for help.

As you arrived the people were really surprised. The head priest proclaimed that you must be chosen by Nike', Cenophilan goddess of hunt(as well as war and a lot of other stuff, they seemingly mixed some Ares and Artemis for her position). Following your question about why would they still worship the pantheon they explained that Elspeth is sometimes mentioned in the dreams of their deity. So maybe that's one of the people that mad woman froze for two thousand years along with her and couldn't find.

Or maybe didn't even try. Investigators have found thousands of self sustainable running pods without a way to know anything beyond a timer set up for anywhere between 300 and 500 years and vital readouts with no way to open them without endangering a person inside. Wait, where do you know this from? Oh, right the mind augment. It is weird how sometimes you just remember this information right as you need it.

>>2835785
In any case, cultists help you process the carcasses and prepare the food. You end up being more of the chief cook than a normal cook like you've expected but these people had no idea how to cook tasty. They just threw in whatever into the pot and cooked it until it was done or just wanted to cook strips of meat in a campfire with no salt or spices. You ended up channeling a bit of Ramsay on them which somehow proved successful and everyone listened to you. This is a strangely nice sensation, you could get used to this...

So the food was now complete and you had to lie about being a daughter of a military cook from a remote village to explain away your skill. You are not sure how much they really enjoyed the food and how much they just wanted to praise you which is another warm feeling you strangely enjoyed. After the meal everyone retires into the mine and you are given a spot in the first miner's chamber from the entrance. You don't need to sleep and you don't want to sleep in these conditions. What should you do...

>Pretend to sleep. The floor is rough and there are like ten more people snoring nearby, urgh.
>Get up and hang around the entrance, you can't handle this shit and you want some fresh air. You can claim to snooze on a bench outside or something
>Try to sneak around a little. The amount of sleeping people doesn't help though
>Get out and process the remnants of the animals. Maybe you can craft a bow that these people won't question? Or try to prepare the hides for tanning?
>Other?

>>2835793
>Get up and hang around the entrance, you can't handle this shit and you want some fresh air. You can claim to snooze on a bench outside or something

>>2835793
>>Get up and hang around the entrance, you can't handle this shit and you want some fresh air. You can claim to snooze on a bench outside or something


we wonder how that pod person will react, and if we can salvage the pod, maybe the person is still inside and just influencing those around

>>2835793
>Get up and hang around the entrance, you can't handle this shit and you want some fresh air. You can claim to snooze on a bench outside or something

>>2835845
>>2835834
>>2835813
Writing

>>2835928
You don't want to sleep on the rock hard floor so you don't even try. You just wish everyone good night and hang out outside lying on a rough bench and thinking. You wonder how the pod person would react. They know Elspeth, right? Would they follow you? Or would they instantly book it to Elspeth and sell you out? Or are they even awake? Maybe they have some kind of psychic power and it is escaping the pod while they sleep. In any case you'll know only when you see it.

In the meantime you look up into the sky. No light pollution and there are no clouds right now. If you only had a telescope... oh wait. Your eyes can produce a "zoom" effect. You wonder how biologists even handled that. Probably with two lenses suspended by muscle tissue or something. So as you got bored you start looking at the sky. Your eyes are not James Webb telescopes so you can't look at the galaxies but it is nice to have a look at Jupiter. Familiar brown gas giant still has its red spot and Galilean moons.

Then suddenly something passes between you and Jupiter. Your eyes readjust and track the object as it flies across the sky. It was a chunk of matter about 2400 kilometers in the sky which is slowly shedding itself into an expanding dust cloud. You can somewhat see minor flashes as it gets peppered by orbital debris. As you know what to look for you find several other similar objects cruising in the medium prograde orbit. Some having greyish white hulls while others being large boulders of black rock the size of Madagascar shedding pebbles all across their respective orbit. You count hundreds of thousands of these things.

From the color of the impacts it seems that they are mainly made out of the same components as silicate magma. In other words, they are a form of basalt. Chunks of crust flung into space by some violent event in the past. You are somewhat impressed that you can perform spectroscopy with you naked eyes. Once every half an hour orbits closer to equator get showered by a huge dust cloud in retrograde orbit. Maybe a remnant from some weaponized Kessler generator.

File: Oh shit Kessler.jpg (138 KB, 1200x960)

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>>2836048
Judging by the amount of light the debris blocks you have to conclude that anything above 2000 km is experiencing a severe case of Kessler syndrome. WAY worse than any scientist could have predicted in your time. Objects in the area will continue crushing into each other until they turn into hypervelocity sand blocking all potential for interplanetary travel beyond low orbit for tens of thousands of years. Anything not armored like a goddamn ww2 battleship made out of pure osmium would be reduced into Swiss cheese by these particles. An object flying at 3 km/s carries an equivalent of its entire mass made out of dynamite in kinetic energy and up there the stuff flies more than ten times that.

What is more curious is that you can observe the lunar surface closely and you can see things slowly moving across it. They are grey and really hard to see but they are enormous. Some hang around the area near to the impact craters while others scour the grey and barren regolith. Are those mining drones? Back in your time Martian colony was just being established. Or are those strange species of artificial life created by some pod person who fled to the moon?

You take a look towards Mars. Unfortunately you don't see any lights of cities like you've momentarily hoped. Instead you see a dust cloud and a lot of new craters. They have already cooled off but the effect is clearly seen in the form of massive dust storms and volcanic winter. Phobos is scattered into a debris disk which is slowly raining around the equator of the planet. Nearby space is not as littered as Earth orbit but it is also experiencing a pretty bad case of Kessler syndrome. Was it blasted away by the deities? Or did it suffer from some other catastrophe? You might never know...

You hoped that all of this stargazing would make you excited about the natural world but it just brings you sadness. At like three am one of the head priests comes up and proclaims that you are allowed to see the divine. They have decided that you(and probably your food) are too important to lose over minor mistrust of several members and they will show you their deity to cement your loyalty.

>Nice, let's do it
>Postpone it for a day to contact Haven with an update
>Other?

>>2836060
>Nice, let's do it

>>2836060
>Nice, let's do it

>>2836152
>>2836090
Writing

>>2836173
Time to meet their god. You are excited and just a little bit scared as you descend through the mining tunnels down and down past all the sleeping people. In the end you feel a strange psychic interference. You are capable of completely phasing it out but it seems to be some kind of psychic transmission. You are not sure what it is as you are not attuned to it, with a little bit of effort you should be able to get into a state which would allow you to read it however.

After a few more steps you are greeted with an opening. This is a cave with glassy rock formations around it. It reminds you of those underground nuclear tests during the Cold War. In the very middle of the room is a strange collection of blobs of variously colored geometric shapes which change shape and move in a way which defies understanding. Parts shrink out of existence, appear from nowhere and pass through each other. If it was still it would remind you of bismuth crystals as the anomalies maintains somewhat cubic and rectangular shapes as it shifts as well as being of a whole rainbow of metallic colors. It is beautiful and mesmerizing.

Embedded in one of the walls is a pitch black "egg" of a capsule which is the source of psionic interference. A strange design, outdated in comparison to your pod. The external pitch black hull is cracked and collapsed on one of the sides revealing some internal machinery.

The priest patiently looks at your reaction as you mimic awe...
>Inspect the pod closer
>Inspect the anomalous shapes
>Attempt to tune into the psychic waves
>Wait, what is that thing...
>Other?

>>2836251
>A strange design, outdated in comparison to your pod.
Someone put in before us? Given they know Elspeth they must've been put into the pod during the period she was still not in a pod herself but it could be the case that this person was a test subject rather than an intended god figure given their capsule has remained sealed.


Anyhow, my vote is for:
>Wait, what is that thing...

>>2836251
>Wait, what is that thing...

Mystery box please

>>2836251
>>Wait, what is that thing...

>>2836376
>>2836346
>>2836331
Writing

>>2836346
>>2836331
+1

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>>2836433
Something catches your eye as it materializes from thin air. A strange organic looking blob. And then another one, and then another bunch of them start popping up. They change shape wildly and don't seem to be a part of the initial anomaly. Something seems wrong about them. Your subconsciousness screams "DANGER" about these things.

They seem to be appearing near to one of the sleeping priests who wakes up and is excited. He screams something about joining up with the divine as more and more of these organic balls appear in the air around him until suddenly his body deforms and disappears from view and the balls seem to fade out of existence. The priests seem to think that their friend has ascended to be near to their sleeping deity but you have a nagging feeling it is something else. It is somehow connected to the anomaly but at the same time it is separate...

>Observe the anomaly, try to understand what causes it
>Observe the pod, you can see some machinery in the exposed hull
>Attempt to convince the priests that the creature is not a part of the divine
>Other?

>>2836463
>>Observe the anomaly, try to understand what causes it

>>2836463
>Observe the anomaly, try to understand what causes it
>Observe the pod, you can see some machinery in the exposed hull

>>2836463
>Observe the pod, you can see some machinery in the exposed hull

>>2836482
>Update
>>2836490
>>2836497
Writing

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>>2836577
You decide to investigate the pod closer. The outer hull is made out of pitch black artificial diamond instead of nanomaterials and it looks like it came through hell and back. Entire side has crumbled and you can see damage to the internal components. One of the barely readable warnings states "metallic protium blowout port, keep clear".

However the fuel blowout port is sealed, instead the damage seems to have occurred directly to the reactor integrity as you can see internal ceramic insulator of the "fusion donut". Something punctured the fusion reactor while it was operational and the plasma from it probably vented out creating the cave.

You have no idea where Elspeth could get metallic hydrogen which the most potent chemical propellant in the world and created in tiny quantities in labs. Maybe it is some kind of proton cycle fusion reactors which are supposed to be so hard to invent scientists predicted that it might not be possible even after 500 years of directed scientific progress? Well, normal fusion plants don't blow up like small nukes that's for sure. Not enough pressure with all that temperature to do any real damage.

One of the intact ports seem to be an emergency power supply input. It has a tiny readout screen. The screen says that the main power supply is down and the augmentation process is on pause until power supply is restored. Estimated emergency supply is 400 years and the occupant is alive. The pod can keep the person inside of it suspended for centuries but it can't finish the cooking. Looks like if you want to complete the process you need to plug in a multi- kilowatt source of electricity for several weeks. It is not in the realm of steam engines, you'll need good generators and steam turbines.

With the pod out of the question you decide to observe the anomaly. Rings and cubes of various colors continue to pass through each other and grow out in strange fractals. They appear and grow into existence while some shrink until they completely disappear. This reminds you of something...

BINGO, you've read a book once called flatword. It is about two dimensional beings living on a plane being visited by a three dimensional person. This is a similar situation, but the body of the anomaly is poking into our dimension through the additional axis. It exists in four spatial dimensions! It is not growing or shrinking, you just see a cross section of the body part. It doesn't disappear, instead it moves out of your plane of existence while still existing in the plane above! Genius!

Wait, then the other organic- looking anomaly is also a four dimensional being. Dan mentioned that the subspace has local primitive wildlife. Maybe it is one of those things. Fascinating! You should think up a way to observe these things directly.

>Inform the priests of your revelations
>Attempt to use telekinesis to affect the subspace
>Tune into psychic broadcast
>Other?

>>2836634
>>Tune into psychic broadcast

>>2836647
+1

>>2836634
>>Tune into psychic broadcast


we need to be alone with it, maybe we can convince it to send the priests away

>>2836679
>>2836658
>>2836647
Writing

>>2836714
These psychic waves... you wonder what these people saw. At the same time you would prefer not to be bothered, however apparently at least one of the priests always stays in the area so unfortunately you have to do with at least one witness. You take up a spot near to the wall and meditate tuning your mind into the psychic broadcast. These people tune in during their active sleep cycle but you can mimic it with mental exercise while still being alert just in case...

After a few minutes you have a first result. Your mind places an "emergency alarm" and directs your body to be controlled by your subconsciousness as the vision wavers and you find yourself in the middle of a city. Everything feels strange and unreal. You see and understand that there are texts and advertisements but once you look closer they turn into jumbled mess of letters which change each time you read them. You look at your hand and each time you count you get a different amount of fingers. Yep, looks like a lucid dream of sorts.

You note that you feel smaller and much younger. You haven't felt that since middle school. Waves of memories flow in as you remember how terrible it all was. Cruel children, uncaring teachers, not understanding parents, the weird sensation of being shorter and "below rank" of literally everyone you talk to...

You shake off the feeling and try to walk through the area. Grey blocks upon grey blocks. You understand what everything is for but you have a nagging sensation that it is all not yours, foreign. It causes a strange sensation of being lost. Like if you were supposed to be somewhere with your parent and they suddenly disappeared. Everyone's face just gets smeared once you look closely and they all look offensively unfamiliar.

You see a little girl, you can't recognize any of her facial features as it is as undefined as everyone else but you can clearly feel this sensation dripping from her into the environment. Is that the person in the pod? You approach her but you can't interact with her. Or with anyone. Your body, or your self-image would be more accurate, just passes through everything not a floor. Strangely you can't touch the people but they keep bumping you and the girl and each other as they pass which is annoying and alienating.

This is not a dream, it is a nightmare. You think it is a transmission of what the person in the pod feels. Like a movie or a book. You can read it, experience emotions but you can't interact with it. Yes, it beams sensations and visions but nothing is defined. Everything is just a one way connection. You are not psychic to change that so eventually you are forced to leave.

You come to your senses in this dark damp slagged cave and you are not sure what you should feel...
>Attempt to find a way to observe subspace
>Tell priest something
>Leave, you are too disturbed
>Other?

>>2836765
>>Attempt to find a way to observe subspace


we will have to take this pod from here and wake her somehow

>>2836765
>>Attempt to find a way to observe subspace

>>2836765
>>Attempt to find a way to observe subspace

>>2836852
>>2836799
>>2836796
Writing

>>2836883
Now, you can't handle the anomaly until you know what it is and you can only observe three dimensions while it is in four. How should you approach this problem...

Dan once mentioned that telekinesis augment and the subspace body augment share similar principle... Well, of course, it is not magical telekinesis, it is a sort of gravity manipulation. And gravity is a distortion in space and time. It means that you should be able to affect that "subspace" with your powers... right? You are pretty sure you wildly misunderstood the theory but something tells you that there should be gravity in there so your powers should reach out into it.

Unfortunately you have no idea how to do a directed application of gravity into the subspace, you can only do that omnidirectionally. As a sort of gravitational analogue of a sonar "ping". You will feel the returning reflected wave off of the objects with mass. It won't work in normal space as gravity pretty easily passes through objects but something tells you that it is different in subspace. Well, you won't know until you try.

It takes a whole load of concentration but eventually you manage to figure out how to prevent this wave from leaving the immediate area. It would suck if any asshole with an interferometer could know your exact location. Well, here goes nothing and screw whatever the priests think, it is finally the active phase!

Priest gets scared as a wave passes across the room. He doesn't feel it but he sees the effect on the light. It looks like everything got closer and then further away until it stabilized as if an invisible lens flew through him. Although in this case it literally happened. The distance between you and him got literally shrunk and then stretched by gravity.

>>2836943
The effects on subspace were... strange. The wave has arrived back with a delay and brought a picture of two beings. One of them is the first bismuth anomaly. It is now obvious that it starts inside the pod and stretches pretty far into subspace. What you see is just a tip of one of its appendages. It appears to be moving in relation to the second object trying to "swipe it away" or "shake it off" and it moves as if it is in a gel of sorts.

The second object is much stranger. You have to strain your imagination a bit but you finally figure out what it looks like. A phage, like a virus. But in four dimensions. Each of the slices looks like a weird organic blob or torus but it as a whole looks like a cross between a widely known type of viruses and an octopus of sorts stretched into the new axis more than into the well known three spatial dimensions. The comparison is really rough but you have literally never seen anything like it and your library has nothing on it.

The Phage seems to be some kind of subspace parasite. It is latching onto the primary anomaly and the gravity ping disturbed it! It has broken off and sets off roughly in your direction before ping echo wore off. You shout to the priest to get the hell away as the parasite is attacking and he has enough brains to get into the tunnel as the balls of organic matter start manifesting across the room.

>Roll a 1d20 guys!

Rolled 4 (1d20)

>>2836946

Rolled 9 (1d20)

>>2836946

>>2836946

Rolled 9 (1d20)

>>2836946
>>2836984
I clearly don't roll enough, i forgot the quantity of dice.

>>2836986
>>2836954
>>2836953
Writing.

>>2837005
Before you have a time to react literally everything around you starts moving away really fast and you find yourself in the weird expansive void. Something clicks in your neck preventing you from breathing out as it seems that there is not much outside. You are suddenly aware that you have only several hours of air supply, beyond that you will fall into a coma until breathable air is available or die within a week or so. The pressure drop causes the ringing in your ears which quickly subside as sensory overload protectors kick in. Now you are floating somewhere in the subspace, you presume.

It is... weird. There is atmosphere but it is much less dense than on Earth and seems to completely lack oxygen. You can see some amount of various sized rocks slowly floating through this void as well as... something extremely far away thanks to your vision. Whatever that thing in the distance is it is enormous, more like a small mountain in size.

It is also strange to invoke your powers. As you make another ping you feel like the spacetime here has varied viscosity, as weird as it sounds. While some waves travel normally others travel at much slowed down pace while massively losing energy in the process. As if they were physical and having to swim through a liquid similar to starch in consistency but it is somehow it is the spacetime itself. Some waves, however, have exactly opposite effect and you are yet to know how this is governed.

As the echo arrives you barely manage to push yourself out of the way of a grabbing motion from the Phage. You attempt to crush the exposed part of it and you succeed in damaging that part but it is not even a minor cut for the creature. As it is mainly hidden in the fourth dimension any damage you deal to the parts in 3d plane would be a minor flesh wound at least. You need a way to target it in fourth dimension but how do you even throw something there?

The echo subsides and you are no longer capable of predicting the blob appearance and the creature manages to smack you with its strange four dimensional limb causing a large amount of minor wounds and disintegrating a quarter of the dress on that side. It seems that your body has some protection against 4d attacks, but your clothes don't. Shit...

>Attempt to devise a way to attack the creature through the fourth dimension
>Allow the creature to capture you and attack in 3d the moment you pass something which looks vital
>Attempt to figure out a way of four dimensional propulsion
>A way OUT!
>Other ideas?

>>2837044
Shit, i can't keep myself awake anymore. We have to temporarily pause. We will continue our extradimensional attempts at pest control as soon as I wake up. Please vote in the meantime so I can start off with the prepared post.

>>2837044
>Attempt to figure out a way of four dimensional propulsion

>>2837044
>>Attempt to figure out a way of four dimensional propulsion

O shit, clothes disintegrating

>>2837044
>Attempt to devise a way to attack the creature through the fourth dimension

>>2837356
Oh! I hope Haven doesn't see us like this I hope she does

>>2837044
>Attempt to devise a way to attack the creature through the fourth dimension
We need to scare this thing off or kill it before we can focus on escaping.

>>2837356
>>2837465
Well, yeah, that's what happens when clothes are not as tough as you. Although it is not sexy at all. Impact area is covered in hundreds of thousands of tiny wound which are leaking repair fluid. Also preparing the post.

>>2837757
Our repair fluid is interesting, I wonder if we can reproduce it somehow

>>2837757
You can't fight this creature while locked in only three dimensions! You are like a water beetle trapped in a Petri dish. You can't dodge them fast enough even if you focus solely on evasive maneuvers as you are dodging blind. You need a way to traverse fourth dimension. One hour fifty minutes remaining on oxygen, shit. Ok, think...

You need to understand the nature of the environment you are in. You focus intently on the ping echo and you notice that there are concentrations of moving mass through the fourth dimension corresponding to slowed down or sped up gravity waves. Looks like this environment has some kind of space-time currents. Dust is attracted into them and pushed along and gravity wave slows down if it travels against the space-time flow and speeds up if it heads in the same direction as the flow.

You attempt to push yourself in the direction of one of these flows and you are pushed along. It is very confusing on your senses so you are forced to navigate solely by the gravity ping echoes. This technique is not refined and is draining on both your attention and powers, you will run out of juice within an hour at that rate! However you are capable of traversing fourth dimension through hopping between these currents which is better than nothing.

Now that you can effectively evade the parasite's attacks you need to find a way to damage it. It seems that the ping doesn't damage it much. It is only annoying it. An omnidirectional attack in three dimensions would do an equivalent of a cut to the creature's 4d body. If you are lucky you could cut off a tip of its appendage making the method next to useless. You need something better.

>>2837950
Unfortunately you can't wrap your head around four dimensional targeting. You can't designate the epicenter of implosion which is not on the same 3d plane as you. However these flows give you an idea. You focus as you iterate your new invention opening yourself to several attacks by the creature. The repair fluid flows out on your skin and hardens into a white rubbery protective layer. Finally you are done with your prototype and you launch it.

A complicated hyper sphere made out of interlocking gravity waves and shoddy artificial space-time flows disappears from view but you can still feel the powerful waves it generates as it slowly makes its way to the creature. Upon contact with creature's body the unstable shell of inward flow collapses and a massive wave is produced which stops after some distance and proceeds to collapse ripping out one of the numerous limbs of the parasite and turning it into dust. A four dimensional gravitational depth charge of sorts.

The creature's body curiously appears to be closer to foam than to animal tissue making it incredibly easy to damage with depth charge. Unfortunately you can't spam this attack. Making more than a single depth charge every ten seconds rapidly drains your power and you don't want to be stuck in this space forever without them. However, at least you have a way to make it bleed. Let's rumble!

>Roll 1d20

Rolled 14 (1d20)

>>2837959
let's dance 4d foam psychic parasyte!

Rolled 1 (1d20)

>>2837959

Rolled 8 (1d20)

>>2838008
Oh god, there goes our clothes, and hopefully nothing permanent with it

Rolled 16 (1d20)

>>2838008
sigh....

>>2838031
>>2838018
>>2838008
>>2837991
Sorry for late response, had to reload my laptop. Wow that critfail. Writing

>>2838131
The battle lasts for over an hour. While you can dodge the attacks easily your technique leaves you open for up to ten seconds as you cast the depth charge and while this animal appears to be simple it can still utilize those openings to strike you with great force through its strange organic fractal limbs. As they move through space the fractal pattern moves as well and if it is lodged into your body it rips apart your skin leaving so many cuts and stabs that you've stopped counting.

Your wounds are not deep but they are so numerous that you can't tell how much skin you have left. Hot healing solution spews on the surface of your body and welds the damaged skin together as the external layers start to solidify into a thick rubbery second skin. It will take days to regenerate if you are lucky and the numb pain and constant itching force you to lock out all tactile and damage senses from your mind so you can concentrate.

The behavior of the creature during the fight reveals that it has an incredibly simple brain comparable with solitary insects. While being capable of predicting your trajectory it is completely baffled by even the simplest tricks and evasive maneuvers. Its main way of evading your depth charges is to attempt to move directly away from them which leaves it with plenty openings. The creature is just insanely huge. It rivals some modern destroyer ships in sheer length through the fourth dimension.

However almost all that volume is inflated. While humans consist mainly out of water this thing seems to mainly consist of the local gas and dust with some harder elements in a highly porous skeleton which keeps it together. Its limbs and "beak" are made out of material comparable with bone and the only reason why it could damage you is how darn sharp those four dimensional fractals are. It is like a Morningstar with needles instead of spikes. Very nasty.

You feel almost completely exhausted after the fight but the creature is finally reduced to dusty debris and chunks of foamy bone. You have won, but you've suffered a lot of surface damage and you have less than half an hour of air to figure out a way to get home.

>Obtain samples of the creature
>Observe the primary anomaly
>Attempt to move towards your home plane
>Other?

>>2838250
>Observe the primary anomaly

>>2838250
>Obtain samples of the creature
>Observe the primary anomaly

>>2838360
>>2838270
Ok then, writing

>>2838250
>Attempt to move towards your home plane

We haven't got time to mess around let's just get home. We can return later once we've gotten another lung full of air.

>>2838385
Half an hour of activity should be enough for getting some samples. After a little bit of searching you manage to find a leather bag which you had on you spinning in the void and recover your knife and several ceramic bottles. Unfortunately leather strap was disintegrated meaning that you'll have to carry it in your hands.

You decide that it would be nice to get some samples of the creature. With some gravitational and knife assisted cutting you've managed to separate pieces of its foamy flesh and store them in the bottles after which you encountered a problem. The darn things phased out of the goddamn flasks. After touching a 3d surface the 4d object acquired some acceleration in fourth dimension and spinned out of the existence from the plane the bottle was in. Sort of like trying to catch a ball into a paper cutout of a bottle.

After a couple of minutes of fucking with this problem you've managed to separate a 3d slice of the foamy flesh and fractal bone and seal them into the containers. The pieces are pretty small but the bottles are glazed and thus should not leak too much atmosphere preserving them until you get into your lab and manage to do something with them.

As you were navigating towards the samples you also observed the primary anomaly. It ended up being a complex structure made out of millions of hypercubes and other cube- like hyper geometric shapes. It looks like this phage creature was disturbing it and now it no longer moves as much as the shapes phase into each other becoming much more compact and dense around roughly the area above(in subspace) of the pod.

It appears like this is the body of the pod person. It was "glitching out" of the container due to being disturbed. So that's what subspace body augment looks like. Yeah, a little bit less humanoid than you've been told. You don't feel comfortable with imagining what it feels like to be this strange Lovecraftean being. A literal horror from beyond space and time. And you were this close from getting it. Still, there is something beautiful and fascinating in all these complex shapes.

The psychic transmission is also becoming much less severe and seems like the emotional component of it is changing. All the anxiety and fear become much less pronounced. It appears that you've defeated the cause of this nightmare and this godling is finally returning to its calm sleep. The transmission itself becomes less and less potent as the pod person packs itself back into the pod operated area of subspace meaning that it should be much less tedious to potentially transport it.

>>2838557
With less than ten minutes remaining you make your way towards your plane and you encounter a problem. These flows "bounce off" before reaching it. You can't get home with the same way as you travel in subspace. With no time to lose you modify the depth charge to lack compression wave and detonate it in your hand so that you get carried in the correct direction by the expanding sphere of artificial subspace currents. It fails several times as you keep getting flung sideways more than towards your plane. Eventually you focus and detonate three at the same time exhausting your safe telekinetic stress capacity but this ends up enough to materialize you back in the real world. Somewhere close to the ceiling. Crap.

The fall is not too damaging but pretty painful nonetheless as the floor is sharp volcanic glass. Ouch, come on, can this shit get even worse? You were cut to ribbons by Lovecraftean parasite thing and now by sharp volcanic glass?! Oh, right, cultists. All head cultists are here. With pickaxes. Staring at you. Bravest of them asks you with a shaking voice what are you and what have you done. The fact that you look like you were dipped into grey rubber doesn't help.

>Explain everything, literally
>Explain the parasite and the pod but not much about you
>Claim to be a recovery person from the Pantheon and order them to keep shut
>Claim to be a not well known deity recovering one of your own
>Bullshit like you have never bullshitted before!
>Attempt to knock them out. You can't cast anymore but you are still stronger and faster than they are
>Nick the pod and GTFO
>Other?

>>2838565
>Explain the parasite and the pod but not much about you

If they dont get it

>Nick the pod and GTFO

>>2838565
>Explain the parasite and the pod but not much about you
>>"Gotta get this thing out of here, without me there won't be much to wake up"
>>"Dont think too hard about what happened"

If they still refuse just push our way through with the pod/knock em out.

>>2838666
>>2838610
supportng

>>2838708
>>2838666
>>2838610
Writing

>>2838736
"Ok guys, try not to think about it much because it is complicated" You start and you explain the basics of what has just happened. You explain that there were two creatures, some kind of parasite and the actual being from the "egg". They seem to be enraged by a realization that they sacrificed a bunch of food to a dumb animal which fed off their divine as well as not resisting when it ate several of them. Well it's not like they could fight it, maybe just leave the area but it is hindsight and not too useful for them now.

The second shock for them comes from your news that their deity can't wake up on its own. You claim that you want to help it but you need quite a bit of time before you can make the required machinery to pull her out. They are skeptical but you cram them with explanation of the requirements until they believe you. You claim that you need to make enough of specific type of steel as well as complicated casting methods and a lot of other expensive objects. Which is, to be fair, somewhat true.

Steel is an incredibly rare commodity in Cenophila. It can only be produced in major polises in miniscule quantities. Holy nation is rumored to have a more efficient method as more of their troops have high quality iron and more steel equipment but they are very secretive about it and rarely trade steel goods.

You reassure them that you can manufacture enough material eventually on your own, but it will take time. Years, maybe. But you can't leave the pod in the mine in the middle of nowhere and you have to excavate it and move to a different place for safekeeping. Without you the person in the pod will die.

You have to be pretty vague about yourself by changing subjects. You manage to catch the attention off yourself by claiming that the pod contains an Ancient Blood and not a deity. You explain that what they saw was echoes of the nightmare that person had and it is not a prophetic dream but instead a glimpse of the past.

You abuse these emotions to get these people to lend you a pickaxe to dig the pod out of the cave wall and to convince them to just return home. Cults caused by mind controlling creatures are nothing new and people usually return back to business as soon as it is dead so it is a perfect alibi for them. Just a monster hunter popped up and killed a psychic monster, business as usual.

The pod is a bit too huge for the tunnels so you have to widen several of them yourself before you get the pod to the surface. Now here is the question of how you should approach the problem of transportation since you are pretty sure "being covered in grey rubber" would be considered weird by the villagers and you can't easily cover literally every damaged part of your body. You are still a little salty about the dress...

>Ask cultists to lend you some clothes
>Contact Haven and ask her to get you some clothes which can cover most of you
>Just set off on direct path home with the pod straight after you tip off Haven
>Other?

>>2838874
>>Ask cultists to lend you some clothes
>>Contact Haven and ask her to get you some clothes which can cover most of you

first get some clothes from them to not shock Haven and them get some more clothes from Haven and go together to our house to safe keep the pod

>>2838907
This

>>2838943
>>2838907
Writing

>>2839012
While healing gel coating is pretty snug and thick enough to keep your modestly it still feels like you are wearing nothing at all. Last three words echo in your mind several times as you shudder. Stupid sexy literally ancient memes. In any case you can't just meet Haven like that so you ask former cultists for some clothes. Unfortunately they only have what is on them so after some searching they are willing to donate... an apron. Shit. Oh well, apron it is then. It is not like you would strip one of them naked or anything, right?

You put on the apron and grab the pod before setting off into the forest to meet up with Haven. She is really surprised to see you in only an apron... and a thick rubbery coating that is. After you explained what has happened she expressed her worries about your safety. While you survived the subspace it could have easily killed you.

And that parasite creature is to your surprise known to her. She never knew what it was and didn't quite understand the explanation but apparently similar floating shapeshifting blobs can be found deep in the Labyrinth. She has never been there but she has heard tales that mention anomalies that fit exactly to your description. And more.

Apparently anomalies are a thing. Areas charged by magic which cause strange effects on the world around them. Most just kill you in horrible ways like slamming you into the ceiling hard enough to turn you into a chunky salsa instantly, zap you into ash with lightning or spin you in the air until your limbs rip off but some are said to instantly cure all wounds or transport you into some other places. Which is usually one way and really dangerous in any case. They are apparently found in the transitory tunnels between the first and second layer but no one has ever wandered further and returned anyway. The deeper you go the more dangerous Labyrinth gets until you just die. Looks like you have to carry some metal bolts along with you from now on...

Haven is fascinated in the rubber material which covers you. After some explanation she theorizes that it must have been some kind of planned function. Maybe you will get similar reaction if you get into some other dangerous environment like extreme heat, cold or maybe even deep underwater. You should probably test this as it sounds potentially useful and you don't just have a manual. She also seems to force herself not to look in the direction of your chest. You smirk, yeah definitely jealous.

You ask Haven to get all your hunting equipment here so that you can hide all the coating and she agrees. She notifies you that she can pay you immediately out of her own cash as she will get paid later if you want to buy something specific. She suggests a 70/30 in your favor. Should you go for it?

>No need, friends help friends, right?
>Just buy me a new dress and we are set
>50/50, Haven's information was as valuable as your effort
>70/30 sounds good
>MOAR
>Other?

>>2839131
>>Just buy me a new dress and we are set

>>2839131
>>Just buy me a new dress and we are set

but I have to take some minerals from here with me, so you have to wait for a little until I get them.

Let's give Haven an awkward ride again

>>2839171
>>2839140
Writing

File: New dress.jpg (140 KB, 761x1050)

140 KB JPG

>>2839266
You tell Haven that if she buys you a new dress you will consider it even. She first tries to protest but you explain that first of all, she is a friend and you are glad to help friends. Second of all this pod is highly precious to you and without her you wouldn't get it. And the third reason is that the remnants of your villager outfit are now turned into tattered rags floating in subspace out of reach and you would like to get a replacement somehow.

She brings back your stuff and with full armor and gear on you are almost completely covered with exception of eyes and mouth. There is some white rubber seen there but you can bullshit it away much easier than if you went in with more of you exposed. After all you have designed your armor with complete coverage in mind. As badass as running into battle without a helmet looks people get frightened way too easily if you can block arrows with your face.

After some walk through the market you manage to find tailor and purchase yourself a new dress. Beforehand you had to get a bunch of bandages and get wrapped up like a mummy and claim that you got burned in the fight but now you have a new dress. It is of a completely different color but it still looks cute so you take it.

To your disappointment Haven has to leave you after that. She claims that she wants to get to the polis to get her payment after she got the signed document from the mayor about the job well done. You would stand out way too hard with the pod and all the healing gel. You give her farewells and set off home.

>>2839366
The trip back is pretty boring. You pay a visit to your own pod and take it along with you. Unfortunately the door ends up too huge to tug around without telekinesis so you just have to leave it there for now. Both pods are secure on the lowest level of your basement and it looks like the village fared pretty well for these few days when you were away. Smith family seems to focus mainly on refining the ore and they have made some progress. At this rate you won't even need to do it yourself. The farms are growing, the mills are turning, water is running and people are fed. What else is there to wish for?

You spend the next several days sleeping the adventure off, washing and dealing with minor problems. It looks like you can't remove the rubber right now as the skin below is still shagged and gel gets almost instantly replenished after you peel it off. It will take you several weeks to completely heal. Until then you should avoid people from outside the village. Luckily your powers are back to full power at the small cost of couple days of intense migraine so that's good. You are back up for new projects and ideas. You haven't done that for a while. What shall you do next...

>Defenses. More walls, better walls, better weapons
>Industries. Textiles, iron, glass, chemicals and other stuff
>Surveying. That place to the south east looked promising and it should have different deposits
>Projects. You have a few ideas for prototypes, tools and techniques
>Exploration. Let's gear up and go into the Labyrinth again. Who knows what you can find
>Other?

>>2839372
>>Surveying. That place to the south east looked promising and it should have different deposits

>>2839372
>Surveying. That place to the south east looked promising and it should have different deposits

Let's see if we can find some new material to generate energy

>>2839372
>>Surveying. That place to the south east looked promising and it should have different deposits

File: Galena ore.jpg (423 KB, 778x800)

423 KB JPG

>>2839421
>>2839411
>>2839405
Now that you have some actual acids you can do some proper geo-surveying. With your miniature lab packed you set off towards the unknown and this unknown is really darn huge, dangerous and far away.

You can't scout the entire area and you end up bumping into a type of highly aggressive oversized wolf with canines so large they didn't fit in its mouth. It took several of broken wolf spines until they learned to keep the hell away from you but it looks like several large packs exist in this area. You have no idea how the hell are these things ecologically sustainable. You are pretty sure that these things are the reason why no one expands in that direction.

The area to the north- east of Farsalos appears to be some kind of a basin made out of sedimentary rock formations. Which is mainly limestone. For metallurgy and chemistry it is one of the most important discoveries. It is used in everything, from fluxes to medicine. Until now you had to electrolyze gypsum from a tiny sedimentary deposit. Now you can set up an actual quarry and mine as much of it as you want. You wonder how it formed. It had to be a coral reef at some point which was pulled out of the ocean and compressed for thousands of years. What is it doing here?

After several hours of random drilling and testing you strike a major near surface deposit of galena. It is just enormous and it seems to contain mainly lead and zinc with small silver admixture. This is a common way for these metals to be found together and it is a great find. There is also some barite which is the main source of barium and wolframite which even though would be really annoying to extract is the main source of tungsten.

Lead has many uses but the ones you are mainly interested in is electronics, alloys and storage of chemicals. It is also the main component of optical glass. Without it you would have to figure out how to supply 2000 degrees to an oven which you prefer not to think much about. Something something hydrogen torches.

Zinc is a highly important additive for iron and steel as well as having many other uses such as batteries, luminescent pigments and dyes. It is also used to make fungicides and as a main component of potent modeling rocket propellant. Latter is not that important but it is not like you are swimming in hydrazine or other better options. Maybe you could make some fireworks with it.

File: Geyser lake.jpg (350 KB, 1920x1080)

350 KB JPG

>>2839625
On the edge of the basin you find a cinnibar deposit. This dangerous mercury ore is important for various technologies which you were having trouble with. It is the main component of the vacuum pumps which would be needed for thermometers, electronics, liquid bearings, batteries and maybe even some light bulbs. It is also needed for chlorine and caustic soda mass production processes. It used to also be a pretty red pigment but it is so toxic you would prefer to avoid it. Refining principle is relatively easy, you just roast it in a rotating furnace and then collect it through a rectification column.

About three days of travel away you find the source of the river. It is a lake which is formed by a potent geyser. The nearby area smells with sulfur and the geyser is so potent it bursts from below the surface of the lake once every several hours. After following the river you confirm that it leads directly towards Istrio. This is an interesting resource. You can use the difference in elevation of the river to make an industrial water jet compressor. This device has no moving parts and can be built with only concrete and ceramics while being capable of outputting up to 10 atmospheres of air through it with virtually no parasite vibrations. It can be used to pump air into the mines for human workers and to blow air into huge furnaces autonomously for literal decades.

The second most important part of this discovery is a whole ton of sulfur. That tiny pool of sulfuric acid won't last you forever while this here is a treasure trove for a chemist. This is basis for gunpowder, antibiotics, antifungals, fertilizers, and a ton of other applications. You should definitely exploit it at some point.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem that there is much gold in the river. There is some golden dust but sifting process is tedious and industrial extraction would lower the output of gold sifters directly downstream which would expose you. You think that you can't easily exploit this deposit.

The hill to the north of the lake turned out to contain quite a bit of coal ore. The coal is full of sulfur but it is a viable source of raw materials for coal coke after some minor refining which is nice. It would allow higher temperature furnaces to be made paving the road for mass produced iron.

Luckily for you the last discovery you make is hematite. It is a type of iron ore and this deposit is much bigger than magmatic magnetite you have discovered. Unfortunately you would need quite some processing to get it into its metal form. Still it is relatively rich and much closer to coal and limestone.

Now that you are back home you update your notes and you can now start doing something useful with it as you can't easily meet people in this state face to face.

>Industry: time to get something new mass produced
>Projects: you have a few new ideas
>Infrastructure: building stuff for the village
>Defense: those wolves make you a bit nervous.
>Other?

>>2839644
>>Defense: those wolves make you a bit nervous.

>>2839644
Defense, whIle we've done a lot already those wolves and the fact things like giants are around make me nervous

Other: Geyser? Geothermal power generator asap?

>>2839644
Defense maybe if we make this place secure enough we can grow our tiny domain

>>2839697
It would be an option, but you are currently limited by materials and manufacturing quality. You can't machine your parts, you don't have iron and your only option to waterproof things is copper welds. It is viable as a way to power things in the area eventually though.

>>2839716
>>2839667
>>2839651
Defenses time. Writing

>>2839717
Yea, I figured it would take quite a bit of preparation first, but it would be so worth it if harnessed effectively. That being the case, we could make note of which advancements get us there sooner.

>>2839747
I will add a list of proposed projects into the inventory when i update it next. Basically we need mildly mass produced iron, galvanization(better than lab condition electricity), part machining and something for moving part hermetization like rubber or plastic. However cheap power for anything in the area should be worth it, right?

>>2839724
These giant sabertooth wolves are troubling news. They are large and strong enough to potentially leap over the palisade or push in the secondary gates. What else can be there? You no longer feel like the village is secure and you need to think up some new defenses.

You could bulldoze existing palisade and replace it with something better. Maybe a tall wooden wall? Or a brick wall maybe? After all you have enough brick production and it is not as prohibitively tedious as stone walls. You should also add better gates and more towers probably. Might as well give village more breathing room while we're at it.

Alternatively you could build a sort of fort. You can artificially create a hill and make a large brick keep where villagers could hide during attacks. Unfortunately you have no idea if it would be any better than existing shelter system. It would definitely be impressive though.

You can also build a second layer of walls. This is a much bigger project than inner walls so you only have a choice between cheap construction methods. This wall would encompass the entire area around the village including all the fields. Village should be able to operate effectively even if they have to go into full lockdown.

One of the new ideas you have is making a signal flame. A large enough tower should be seen from Mirangi and thus villagers would have a way to contact local militia in case of danger. It would also be a nice way to observe nearby area for danger. It poses unique engineering challenges, however. Maybe some kind of chemical flare?

There is the last option of manufacturing large quantities of good weapons and armor for the basically nonexistent militia to make them more useful. Maybe an abundance of composite bows so that all adult villagers could just mass fire at whatever is coming. The village is still undermanned, however, and it would have limited effect.

>Inner wall upgrade. Choose between wooden walls or brick walls. Or maybe something else?
>External wall project. Moats, palisades or dirt mounds
>Keep. Maybe middle age solutions could work?
>Signal flame tower. It should be just twice as tall as water tower, not a biggie, right?
>Arm the civvies. Better than nothing but extra fast
>Other ideas?

>>2839783
>Inner wall upgrade to brick walls.
>External wall project. Moats, and palisades

>>2839815
Everyone okay with that vote or you guys didn't vote yet?

>>2839848
Well, judging by the amount of replies it looks like most of the players went to sleep. Well, to be fair it is 6:30 am here. Thus I guess it is time to wrap up.

_________________________
And we are officially done with this week's thread of SGQ. Next week we shall continue where we stopped. As usual tell me what you think of the session and feel free to ask any questions you have.

>>2839783
>Inner wall upgrade to brick walls.
>External wall project. Moats, and palisades

>>2839783
>Inner wall upgrade to brick walls.
>External wall project. Moats, and palisades

>>2847253
>>2839940
>>2839815
Ok then, building the wall it is. Next thread will start with wall construction. I've been sorting my huge image folder so hopefully I'll be able to use more artwork from now on.

Also a thing I wanted to ask you guys, do you enjoy the village construction and projects or should I decrease the proportion of it? As some have already realized, it was partially inspired by a similar mechanic in Frost Giantess Quest(I made a ton of fixes so it shouldn't have any FGQ associated problems like insane power creep).

Currently each session is planned with 1/3 construction or projects, 1/3 socially important encounters and 1/3 adventuring and combat with exceptions. The exact mix varies on size of the encounter, thread time and how hot voting is. For example this thread was mainly adventuring and combat section due to a long event. I also add a vote at the end of each of those sections to allow a choice between exploration, projects and so on. If we set up a long expedition construction obviously falls out of scheduling anyway.

So, should I keep projects as is or shorten them?

>Keep as is. 1/3 of thread time would be dedicated to projects. In other words it is 1-2 projects per week as usual.
>Half it. I will have a construction project section once a week. I will add an extra adventuring opportunity per week then.
>Quarter it. Major construction projects would happen once every two weeks. Industrial projects will be amalgamated together to keep the pacing. As an example, iron foundry project would also include all the assisted industries and skip minor events and some technical descriptions. Currently it is planned to be similar to Penicillin event chain in complexity with mini encounters and new social interactions.
>Automate it. Character would assemble new facilities between events according to votes and my best guesses of your intentions. Construction descriptions would shorten to general overview of new facilities(1-2 paragraphs instead of whole post).
>Other?

>>2848528
I'm between

>>Keep as is. 1/3 of thread time would be dedicated to projects. In other words it is 1-2 projects per week as usual.

and

>Quarter it. Major construction projects would happen once every two weeks. Industrial projects will be amalgamated together to keep the pacing. As an example, iron foundry project would also include all the assisted industries and skip minor events and some technical descriptions. Currently it is planned to be similar to Penicillin event chain in complexity with mini encounters and new social interactions.

I like the construction and planing but I like the social and events more.

>>2848528
>Keep as is. 1/3 of thread time would be dedicated to projects. In other words it is 1-2 projects per week as usual.

This balance feels perfectly fine for now. However I would consider changing the construction focus / reducing post detail once we've gotten more set up and can instead rely on others to assist, be they villagers, allies or other pod-folk.

I'm mainly against changing because I really enjoy your descriptions and shit of the technical issues and solutions along with our methods.

>>2848668
Good point, I will change regular posts like this:
>>2839372
To include more options not concerned with building.

Currently it is not that obvious, but I have long term exploration(like visiting the capital) along with all the rest of exploration options.

From now on I think it would look something like:
1) build something(industries, defenses, buildings, outposts amd so on)
2) research something(personal stuff, prototypes, anomalies, special psi techniques and so on. For example our current bow project was in this option)
3) explore something(Labyrinth, Cenophila or wilderness nearby)
4) optional or pressing project(like with broken arm, social issue solving or surveys. It would depend on hints gathered during exploration or social encounters)
and as always writein option.

I think this should make it look less building oriented.

>NEW PLAYER GET

Reading from Thursday's session onwards.

Or I guess I can just be caught up now thanks

>>2834672
Archive has been updated. Now featuring all the discovered deposits, section for potential threats and minor updates across the board: https://pastebin.com/gyZLMiNG

In addition introducing new pastebin to track player suggested projects. Newest entry- geothermal power and what is needed for it: https://pastebin.com/BzmXGRhq

>>2851106
And the new thread is up! >>2852545

And the thread is officially archived