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Hello and welcome back to Synthetic Gods Quest.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Hivemind_Chan
Archives: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=Synthetic%20Gods%20Quest
Current inventory: https://pastebin.com/gyZLMiNG
Previously mentioned individuals: https://pastebin.com/LUJ5fyqA
Player suggested project tracker: https://pastebin.com/BzmXGRhq
_________________________________________________________
In the last session we have received Haven’s report regarding the villager opinions and social groups. We decided to look at delegating communication between the village and us later and switched towards exploration of the sealed dwarven settlement with Haven. After easily dispatching some surprisingly weak psychic creatures that we have encountered earlier, the caved in entrance was carefully cleared. The settlement turned out to be a surprisingly large city of sorts. Damage suggested that whatever destroyed it could produce a cone of high temperature capable of searing flesh from bone and melting stone and metal. After scouting for a bit longer we have managed to discover the monster hibernating inside of the treasury. It is time to deal with it once and for all.
>>
>>3153089
This is going to be tough. The creature is the largest living thing you have ever encountered(the Fallen is almost twice as big, to be fair, and that killer whale was smaller). A hulking monstrosity that is almost 2/3 of the length of an antiquated USS Nimitz carrier if measured from head to the tip of the tail. You, compared to everyone else, should know how appearance could be deceiving, but analyzing the creature might give you a glimpse of what it might be capable of.

All the molten stone and burned bones suggests that the creature has some kind of high temperature directional attack. Its glowing maw hints that this is probably where it fires from. Unfortunately, you have no idea what could that be. It might be anything from fire breathing to superheated air to freaking laser beams if you are not lucky so it might be smart not to assume that you can block it. In the best case it might cause you to lose a bunch of your gear again.

The creature’s shape suggests that its head is specifically designed to resist impacts. It might use it as a powerful ram and attacks directed at the head might not cause much damage. It is probably also immune to concussions. Its hide is incredibly thick. It was shot with ballistae, rock throwers and primitive cannons with almost no effect. You’ll need to find some indirect way to hurt it.

The creature’s size suggests that it should have really high inertia. It doesn’t mean that it is slow, it means that the monster will have trouble with accelerating and decelerating fast. It might be possible to outmaneuver it and maybe even drive it into a wall. In addition, its eyes are placed on the sides of its head similar to herbivores and they are tiny. It could be similar to a rhino which is powerful at close range and yet somewhat blind. However, you can’t dismiss any additional sensory organs it might rely on.

The monster is equipped with three pairs of limbs. Its front and largest limbs house clawed hands with two huge talons in a configuration similar to bat’s wings growing out of the sides of the hands. You doubt that it can fly as they don’t seem to articulate well and they lack the membrane. It probably uses the “hands” for feeding as they are the only limbs that can reach its maw easily. The second pair of limbs is short and carries a similar set of clawed hands. Their purpose currently eludes you. Its third pair of limbs is configured solely to act as legs.
>>
>>3153094
So yeah, in short, beware of the fire breathing, tail whips, ramming, huge talons and thick hide. You might have some issues with the latter. First of all, Haven. While she is an excellent archer you can’t seem to find a spot where she might hit to hurt the beast. Maybe the eyes but even that is a stretch. In addition, she would definitely not survive any direct hit from it. Should she even participate? Or sit it out and leave if you fail?

Your arsenal doesn’t seem to be well designed for taking on creatures with the size of warships. Your halberd is just out, period. It won’t penetrate anything. Same goes for your sword. Your shield would probably be one use at best. The things that might hurt it are the bow and arrows. Your kinetic arrows mass almost 1 kg and they carry a punch comparable to certain siege weapons so you might hurt it if you score a hit in the eye or some soft spot. You are not sure your frag arrows would do much as they rely on fragmentation of their bronze casings. Maybe those can disorient it with a loud sound and flash or hit it in the eye or maw with the fragments? The last weapon you have is a single fougasse explosive charge. It might not be enough to damage it through the hide but if you cram it into a soft spot like maybe the insides of its mouth it might do a lot of damage. It would also blow up in your bag if you are torched with flame breath so that’s not great. Use it or lose it.

Regarding your psychic powers, you are not sure you could directly harm it. These things seem to have protection against telekinetic tampering with their internal organs and it might be too heavy to lift or overpower so you can’t just wrestle it. Your supersonic rock throwing would be too weak to penetrate all that hide and you can’t throw heavy objects at high speeds. Your powers will get much more potent of you enter the affect state but you can’t just trigger it, it activates if you are in grave danger so you might get heavily wounded before you can use it. Yes, you would defeat the creature but you might lose some stuff… or someone before you hulk out and turn it into fine dragon salsa.

The last thing you need to consider is the fighting area. The creature takes up a sixth of the entire room making it a really close quarters situation. There are some sturdy columns for cover but there are almost no heavy boulders you could throw. Maybe that’s great but maybe you should consider drawing it onto the open? In any case, time to decide on your attack plan.
>>
>>3153099
The fight plan:
>GTFO. You need more explosives and weapons. You will lose the surprise factor
>Fight it in close quarters in the chamber. You risk the riches inside and fire breath is more dangerous but the creature would be constricted in its movements
>Draw it outside. You will use city rubble to hammer it into submission

Haven policy:
>Order her to run for the hills. Her goal is to hide and then escape through the tunnel if you fail and die somehow
>Position her in the gallery suspended off the pillars close to the ceiling. She has the agility to leap past the collapsed segments and she should have better shots from there
>Order her to take cover between the pillars. There she should have the most cover but unfortunately there is a lot of open space between the pillars. It is probably the safest option if you plan to drag the creature out of the treasury
>Other?

Target areas:
>Focus down its eyes. Blind creature would hit you less but it would probably freak out and fire randomly
>Focus down the maw. If you somehow shut it down you would disable the fire attack completely
>Focus down the chest. It has glowey stuff there and all bosses are vulnerable if a part of them is glowing
>Look for some other spot? Maybe the neck or hacking off its ridiculous talons?

I know that’s a lot, but I’ll also need a 1d20 and any ideas you have on how to beat this thing
>>
>>3153102
>Draw it outside. You will use city rubble to hammer it into submission

>Order her to run for the hills. Her goal is to hide and then escape through the tunnel if you fail and die somehow


>Focus down its eyes. Blind creature would hit you less but it would probably freak out and fire randomly

i won't roll yet, since i want to see what other anons come up with first
My idea would be to bring some explosive close to his eyes and then detonate them
if we manage to actually get its eye-sockets open we could try to detonate even more inside to damage its brain
>>
>>3153102
>Draw it outside. You will use city rubble to hammer it into submission

>Order her to take cover between the pillars. There she should have the most cover but unfortunately there is a lot of open space between the pillars. It is probably the safest option if you plan to drag the creature out of the treasury
>Focus down the chest. It has glowey stuff there and all bosses are vulnerable if a part of them is glowing
(Probably a video game nerd designed it)

Aside from it, the bomb should go inside his mouth to create huge damage and maybe disable it.

"Haven, if anything happens to me you have to save yourself, promise me."

Finally a challenge
>>
>>3153106
Aldo, leave some explo arrows with her, she might come up with something and we might need her to bail us out and distract it so we can bith edcape
>>
>>3153108
Just FYI. explosive arrows weight just slightly less than kinetic arrows and they carry half a kilo of chlorine gunpowder. She might use them(or their warheads) as grenades but they are too heavy to be shot from her bow.
>>
>>3153116
No probs

Also, can we try to set up that explosive charge in his mouth as a wake up call

And we should attack his eyes only after he leaves the treasure room or else it wont find the exit
>>
>>3153121
Sure. I would go for sleep bombing it as the opening move unless anyone decided to risk keeping the fougasse for some other reason.
>>
>>3153116
How many explosives do we have with us and how strong?
>>
>>3153135
We currently have about 15 kg of chlorine gunpowder charge(1,5 times black powder output) as fougasse. We also have exactly 30 frag arrows and 30 kinetic arrows
>>
>>3153135
We have one that reacts with fire and could explode if he hits us, I propose we set that one in his mouth and explode it to wake it up and try to disable the mouth.

Then we have the explosive arrows that may explote too I guess if he hits his heat attack on us, I was thibking of giving some to Haven as a safety measure so she can try and distract it or cave in a passage while she runs. But she should stay hidden and help us after we defeat the thing since we will probably be banged up.
>>
>>3153137
Dang it I sent the post too fast. Frag arrows essentially carry a bit more than quarter kg of gunpowder configured for frag in their warheads. Think large primitive stick grenades with chlorine gunpowder instead of tol.
>>
>>3153102
Prolonging the voting period for another 30 minutes due to the discussion. Please don’t forget to roll.
>>
>>3153138
yeah, i agree with this

tell haven to hide somewhere remote and give her 2 of the frag charges, she probably can't carry/use the whole arrows anyway

anyone else has an idea, or want to vote i don't trust my dice
>>
Rolled 20 (1d20)

>>3153148
Well, I guess its what we have, lets roll

Oh, and if we fuck up and the beast goes for Haven we put ourselves in the way to save her since se can probably take a hit but she doesn't
>>
>>3153160
nope, we good
what the fuck did you do to these dice?
>>
>>3153160
Holy shit, I rolled a 20 on the mad goddess too.

Its funny how we fuck up againts shit enemies like the giabt and the t-rex and rroll well against real threats
>>
>>3153160
Wow, I bet we would lose to some asshole mugger but crit 5 times in a row and throw some deity into stratosphere leaving only sandals behind. We’ll need more than one roll for something of this size though.
>>
>>3153162
Roll my friend, all of them count and we need more
>>
Rolled 3 (1d20)

>>3153172

Fine, but if this goes pear shaped don't blame me >>3153182
>>
>>3153186
god dammit, i knew it
>>
>>3153186
>>3153187

No worries, trials and tribulations.

It may be a good opportunity to impress/save our elven companion, or be saved by her at any rate, Haven a cute.
>>
>>3153186
Don’t worry too much. I account for all votes and this is not THAT bad as we rolled a 20 before. I don’t punish bad rolls that harshly. Good plan > good roll.
>>
>>3153186
>>3153160
Also, writing
>>
Arrived a bit late but it seems we are off to a good start.
>>
>>3153193
The plan you came up with is pretty simple. You will open with the explosive and lead the creature outside where you would focus on its eyes and that glowing spot on its chest. After that you could just hammer it into submission with all the rubble from destroyed buildings outside. You would order Haven to stay at the furthest column and then bail once the creature leaves the treasury. She would make her way to the exit and leave if you somehow get killed in the fight. You probably won’t but some extra safety never hurt anyone.

After Haven was levitated into her hiding position you gave her a couple of frag arrow warheads. You’ve told her about those before but in any case you gestured that she needs to pull the pin and then they become impact activated. You don’t think she would need them but who knows. Maybe she could collapse that wedged slab in the tunnel to seal the place. In any case she should not interfere with the fight. You don’t think that she could actually do anything to the creature with her weapons.

To start off the fight you’ve landed next to the creature’s head and pulled out your fougasse charge. It is too dangerous to keep on you in a fight with a fire breathing monstrosity so you decided to kick it off with a bang. That would be one hell of an alarm clock. You placed your feet on the ground and firmly anchored yourself to the floor with telekinesis. Then you placed almost your entire strength into forcefully prying its mouth open while shoving the armed explosive down its throat. “OPEN WIDE!” you shouted at it as the creature woke up, immediately saw you and started to breath in hard. The flow of air dragged your bomb deep into the creature and you saw that the glowing area on the chest started filling up like a bird’s crop. It is probably the storage for the air that it would somehow ignite and fire and the bomb just flew right in!

You immediately slammed its mouth shut and nailed it down as hard as you could. The bomb went off sooner than you expected as a blast of hot air threw you back several meters. The creature’s chest was no longer glowing and it was bleeding weird black goo from the cracks that used to emit light. Its maw also seems to be damaged as it appears to be jammed. The rock directly in front of the creature is not quite molten but it is glowing hot. You were lucky that you weren’t standing there.
>>
>>3153296
The creature immediately gets off its gold pile and attempts to chase you just as planned. You draw it through the building and onto the street but you miscalculate monster’s reach and it smacks you with its massive claw sending you flying. You clip one of the walls with your head losing your helmet and ram face first into the paved road just outside of the gates. Ow…

While the creature could not fly it was quite capable of jumping. With several mighty leaps it made its way towards your landing spot. In the process it rammed cleanly through a tall but thin stone tower causing it to collapse. You believe those are called “turrets” and they were used for observation of the surrounding lands. Well, this one won’t be able to do that anymore.

The creature lands in the river causing a small tidal wave which almost knocks you off your feet allowing the beast to close the distance and attempt to trample you. Luckily you are tough enough to handle it but you get some nasty wounds in your shoulder and chest and metal plates in those areas snap from the stress. Dang it.

>Roll 1d20 to continue the fight. Strategy updates welcome
>>
>>3153301
lets try to shoot its eyes, maybe hit it with a big rock to distract it
either with the bow, or if we don't have the time, with tk, preferably the frag arrows to really damage it
>>
Rolled 16 (1d20)

>>3153301
Go for the eyes and try to disrupt and fuck what we can on the newly formed hole in his chest.

As a last resort we could try getting into that thing and fucking him from the inside.
>>
Rolled 20 (1d20)

>>3153301
>>
>>3153314
It is not a hole. The creature is just bleeding from those areas between the scales. The blast somehow didn’t rip the air bag
>>
Rolled 17 (1d20)

>>3153301
Try to find a weak spot with our tk, and are with less resistence or try to feel for a heartbeat so we can try to carve a way to it.
>>
Rolled 7 (1d20)

>>3153320
Oh, we can try to punture it using explo arrows through the cracks then?

Also

>>3153319
Lol

Trully, the biggest the foe the better we perform. Maybe we will manifest those scales again after being smacked around a bit.

If you want to really hurt us you have to put us against an angry mob of peasants I think
>>
Rolled 10 (1d20)

>>3153333
And one more roll to give the big guy a chance lol
>>
>>3153320
i just had an idea, it appears agatha is some kind of Mad Scientist Warrior.

She performs much better in combat, when she doesn't know what the hell she is fighting

she knew about giants, about huge spiders, about t-rex dinosaur things

but a weird bio-enginered god lady, a flesh eating extra dimensional virus thing and a giant gloopy dragon beast thing?
>>
>>3153333
First of all, nice quads. Second of all, only one roll per person, sorry. And yeah, it is like the dice gods want Ag to get some hubris going to then get smacked over by a villager with pitchforks.
>>
>>3153352
Yeah, I can see some resemblance.
>>
>>3153314
>>3153319
>>3153322
Writing
>>
>>3153368
You quickly get up and dodge the creature’s swing. You’d prefer not to get hit with that thing. Your head is buzzing and you’ve disabled your pain receptors again. Damn, the migraine after this will suck… in any case back to the fight. You pull out your bow and after accounting for the buzz in the head messing up the aim you nail the creature into one eye and then a few moments of dodging later into another eye with kinetic arrows. It had enough time to close the eyes but it seems that the impact causes intense pain and disorientation in this beast.

The creature, while not blinded, starts wailing around with its nasty claws but you manage to outrange it and get a breather. It looks like you are somewhat susceptible to minor concussion. To be fair getting domed by a stone wall at 150 km/h would probably lethally turn anyone’s grey matter into sludge but still, not great. You hope that your defenses were just asleep and not expecting it or you’d have to get some armor with a lot of padding. Also your thinking process is not disturbed, it is just the sensory input that needed a few moments to get it together.

Now where can you get something to throw at the creature… aha! The river was blocked with huge boulders. You could borrow some and use them to beat the monster’s face in! Unfortunately they are a bit too far away so you just lift some chunks of stone brick wall and ram it into the creature’s face. The wall breaks and the head remains intact. However it leaves you with enough opening to hit the eye with a kinetic arrow.

The creature is finally blinded so you can start looking for a way to kill it. Getting eaten and cutting your way out doesn’t seem like the best idea but getting to the creature’s brain might just work out. You have a bunch of frag arrows left so you tie them in together, arm them and throw them into the wounded eye.

This further disorients the creature but doesn’t kill it. You sigh, bait and blind its other eye and fly to the floodgates to get a few boulders. After that you proceed to hammer the creature with those until it stops resisting. It takes surprising amount of time as you play whack a mole with its face and it keeps randomly flinging its limbs in hopes of reaching you. In the end it tries several times to jump or run in a random direction to escape but it can’r run away from you and after almost two and a half hours of this shit it finally twitches and stops moving.

You know, it is even a bit sad. It could no longer resist at all and all it could do is to land a few hits that wrecked your shield and gave you a few shallow wounds that have already been sealed with that repair gel. You come over and check if the creature is really dead. Once it stopped moving you managed to probe it with telekinesis and apparently it was more than just a monster.
>>
>>3153526
It was a monster inside a monster. It had a surprisingly tiny brain that had a separate blood circulation plugged into an unknown and now unrecognizable organ. Its nerves lead into the creature’s body itself which had completely separate bloodstream that was not even based on the same organics as the brain. In other words it is organic computer in an organic…ish exosuit of sorts. You have no idea how the latter works. It consists out of weird foamy fibers, black liquid, bones and the thick skin. It almost completely lacks any other organs. It has a large stomach but it has no digestive tract. It has no lungs, only that weird bag filled with half molten quartz shards. It has no heart and the “blood” is just sitting there without any blood vessels. What the fuck is this thing?

Haven has rushed down from the castle gates towards you. She looks really worried and she immediately starts wrapping your head in bandages. Apparently according to her you were hit really hard and she thinks she can see the skull through the wound. It apparently looks… weird and unnatural. She doesn’t want to say more on the subject.

After she is done with the patchwork she asks an important question: what you plan to do with the place. Apparently if we give it back to the dwarves they would be really indebted to us personally and they might even establish trade connection with Farsalos. It might also give you the ultimate excuse about the rapid constructions called “dwarves were hired to do it” as they are known for good and quick masonry work. Unfortunately that would mean we’d have to leave a lot of the treasure here. Apparently most useful items have cultural and religious meaning for the dwarves and even though they will close their eyes on one or two artifacts they will still not like it if we take too much.

The other option you have is making this place into a base of operations of sorts. There is a ton of space, a lot of raw materials and maybe some functional structures and machines that can be salvaged. Labyrinth is pretty dangerous so you might get some nasty visitors here but still it will probably take less effort than setting up a base somewhere in the Labyrinth with your own power. It definitely won’t be suitable for human habitation though. Those glowing quartz rocks don’t produce same light as the sun and people would suffer from vitamin deficiencies and depression if they are forced to live here for long.

You could also just grab all the stuff and come here only to mine the ore from local deposits but that just feels short sighted. What should you choose?

>Let’s take a bit of treasure and plan to get some dwarves back in for long term benefits
>Let’s take this whole place and set it up for a whole new lab and storage. Dwarves would be pissed if they find out
>Let’s just loot the place and leave
>Other thoughts?
>>
>>3153531
that was, ... surpisingly anticlimactic

i somehow get the feeling that we killed some guys/gals exo-monster, for lack of a better term

in any case, we should best try to preserve whatever it is we have discoverd in this thing

>Let’s take a bit of treasure and plan to get some dwarves back in for long term benefits

the dwarves have the best bonuses, we could even ask them to set up a more sophisticted laboratory in or near their city, after they have set up shop again
>>
>>3153540
addendum: i didn't mean that in term of writing, so that no one gets any ideas
when we first saw that thing i was seriously worried, but agatha rekt it without much problems
>>
>>3153540
Yeah, I know, sorry about that. We rolled WAY too high and just wrecked it.
>>
>>3153531
"It seems se are now rich women Haven!"

Give a big grin, and use her for support if we still feel dizzy, we can use a little break.
>Other thoughts?
We will get the dwarves back here but!
Get the one or two artifact but gather all the monetary coin and ore we can find, those have no religious significanse and are just material wealth, well deserved to us for liberating an entire settlement. I want that pile of coin the monster was sitting on lol

And demand that they help Farsalos anyway they can and get us a nice place for us down here to, so it can serve as a base of opperations among the dwarven settlement.
Call them up I guess.
>>
>>3153543
i am not complaining, i was just very concerned at first
desu a fast and mobil 'mage' type character with the possibility to inflict serious dmg in creative ways would always be very effective against a large dumb beast
>>
>>3153547
I kind of agree.
Trade relations, wealth and a place to set up our explorations seems fair, we just liberated an entire city.
>>
>>3153531
—————
I would like to apologize. I managed to miss midnight so we will have to pause for now. Voting is prolonged until tomorrow if you want to chat or ask questions. See you guys and thank you for participating.
>>
>>3153581
Thanks for running.

Question, taking all the coin we can find but not many artifacts and asking for a place for us here would be unreasonable?
>>
>>3153581
thx for running, see ya tomorrow/later
>>
>>3153586
We can take a large chunk of the coin and gems that were not processed and cut into artifacts as well as the ore and a couple of that super alloy items or other random stuff Ag might like. I think that taking everything would look bad but we can take quite a lot relatively speaking. It is a goddamn city treasury after all. There is a lot of money here. Please note that those are dorf coins and they have no direct value in Cenophila. The stuff we don’t take will be used as political leverage with dwarves later so no worries, waste not want not.
>>
>>3153603
Oh, also regarding artifacts, think of them in terms of dwarf fortress but less randumb materials. Excellent quality objects that can be anything made out of best materials by best craftsmen in a fit of mad inspiration. Dwarves view them in combination of cultural and religious significance and they don’t like the prospect of an outsider owning some great dorf’s work of life and sometimes death too. Also same goes for super alloy objects as those are hard to make and controlled harshly by the dwarves. Only city military commander or small elite force can get equiped with full alloy gear. We’ll find some stuff but we would be able to take like 2 or 3 objects of that caliber.
>>
>>3153615
Good to know.
Regardless, haven and ag are filthy rich I imagine.
>>
>>3153531
>Let’s take a bit of treasure and plan to get some dwarves back in for long term benefits
>>
>>3153531
>>Let’s take a bit of treasure and plan to get some dwarves back in for long term benefits
>>
>>3153581
Well... I have some news about my pc. Apparently recent change of my keyboard is the most likely reason for crashes. I will go and deliver the old keyboard to the service center right now and it might take a bit of time. Due to this, SGQ will be delayed. Please wait for updates
>>
>>3155039
Good luck with that qm.

Keep us updated.
>>
>>3155039
I am finally home and the laptop keyboard was delivered to the repair shop. I am starting preparations to run the quest once more. It will take a bit of time as I have no access to my notes and item folders. I expect to start in an hout and a half, maybe a little bit longer.
>>
>>3155129
Nice,
Aghata and Haven rich as fuck chicks resuming.
>>
>>3155129
Good to hear, waiting patiently
>>
>>3155129
You think about it a bit more as you take a rest with Haven. Your head is still spinning a little bit after the fight but it seems that it is getting better and the wound is already getting sealed with white healing gel. You decide to let dwarves to move back in. The long term benefits would be great for both you and the village as a whole. However, you are not going to go cheap on them. You’ve just liberated a whole city from a forgotten beast. Recovered a major fortress all by yourself. You want to get your share of goodies. You want to buy some land here and build yourself a forward operational base. In addition you will take a couple items, a lot of money and a whole bunch of random things no one would miss like ores and ingots.

This makes you grin widely as you tell Haven that you two are now quite rich women. Haven looks a bit uncomfortable and points out that she hasn’t really done much during the fight. She wanted to try and operate one of the stone throwing machines on the walls but you beat up the beast way too quickly. She tells you that she would like to place splitting of treasure completely in your hands. She doesn’t feel comfortable asking for anything more than you would judge to be her reward.


After a short break you started looking around the place in search of anything valuable. Unfortunately, you were unlucky with the forge. You hoped that it would be intact so you could forge yourself something, but the creature made its way inside and torched what you assume to be the super alloy foundry. The entire area looks like after an underground nuclear test. Every wall and surface is covered in a layer of slagged metal and glassy rock. The foundry’s crystal heaters appear to be potentially explosive if something breaks the containment. You do manage to find a partially intact minor storage area where you found an ingot of the Mi’duevossai’ alloy and about twenty ingots of its predecessor mythic metal. It has similar melting temperature to iron so you currently have no way to process this light material and you definitely lack any ability or knowledge to process the alloy so you will mostly use it for research purposes. In other storage areas you found just stupendous amounts of pig iron and slightly less processed copper, bronze, brass, lead, tin, clear and colored glass and almost a full bag of uncut precious gems of various kinds. You especially like a ruby that is the size of your fist. You will extract a couple tons and store them in your lab but you’ll leave most of it here because you physically can’t carry away an industrial output of an entire city. Considering the amount of the processed materials you have decided that you won’t bother with moving hundreds of tons of ore for manual processing for reason of “you feel lazy right now”.
>>
>>3155281
Among the monetary items you have assembled and quickly sorted huge piles of silver, gold and electrum bars, coins and cut gems from the treasury, rubble and apparently a few small vaults hidden in the walls of the treasury specifically for precious metal bar storage. This is more than you need, want or can even carry and safely store in your lab. Not sure what you were expecting, it is a large dwarf city. By quickly throwing around the numbers in your head compared to the prices on the internal market of the other city you’ve visited this is more than enough to pay for an entire reconstruction and repopulation with some left over. You’ll have to take a lot of money to make a dent but the more you take the more time would be needed to restore the area and you would lose some of the clout in the eyes of dwarves. Let’s see what you can do:

Please note the new term: opinion modifier. It is not a new mechanic, it is just a measure of political influence of us. The measure to which we can leverage dwarves into doing us favors like forcing them to hurry up with repairs, forge you some gear or helping the villagers. Dwarves like to trade but they are even so slightly xenophobic so this would allow to speed up things they won’t do quickly or at all as long as it is reasonable

>Take little. An equivalent of the cost of a minor noble’s housing and several decades of similar lifestyle. You’ll gain an “extremely generous” opinion in the eyes of dwarves
>Take quite a bit more. An equivalent of a 15 room manor with servants of a well off noble and decades of similar lifestyle. You’ll gain “generous” opinion modifier
>Take even more. An equivalent of a major noble’s treasury, housing, staff and decades of similar lifestyle. You’ll gain a “fair” opinion modifier
>Take the highest reasonable amount. More money than some dwarven city rulers have. You can build a mansion bigger than that structure that monster wrecked and chose as a home while partying up a storm for a decade nonstop. You gain no opinion modifier and projects in this fortress would get a time penalty.

Please choose an option for you and for Haven. Your companion can take options one to three with no additional penalties. The largest option’s opinion modifier is applied.
>>
>>3155288
>>Take little. An equivalent of the cost of a minor noble’s housing and several decades of similar lifestyle. You’ll gain an “extremely generous” opinion in the eyes of dwarves

spit it with haven, in any way that she is comfortable and then when the dwarfs have moved back in ask for a weapon/artifact for both of you
>>
>>3155307
addendum, i say ask them for the weapons/artifacts to not get in any problems if we take an especially worthy or religious artifact for ourself and strain relations that way. since we are the hero, we are the lynchpin for new trade relations with our viallage and the region as a whole
>>
>>3155307
Just FYI, we will look at artifacts after this post. There are... a few
>>
>>3155288
>>Take quite a bit more. An equivalent of a 15 room manor with servants of a well off noble and decades of similar lifestyle. You’ll gain “generous” opinion modifier
>>
>>3155307
Supporting

>>3155312
I've got a good feeling about this.
>>
>>3155288
>Take quite a bit more. An equivalent of a 15 room manor with servants of a well off noble and decades of similar lifestyle. You’ll gain “generous” opinion modifier

For both of us, there is quite a lot here, invite her to live in Farsalos too, we could use the company and someone to keep an eye on things that we trust, think that as a way to help us if she feels she needs to do something.

Of course, she can come and go as she please if she wishes to do adventure, its just that we have a safe place to store all this and could use the help, and our house is quite big, as an added bonus....there's a sauna.

"So, how would you like to be roommates? Help me out there if you can?"
>>
>>3155307
>>3155311
I change my quantity to this and keep the rest proposed.

We would like a place here in the city for us to use as a forward opperating base and propose to Haven helping us in farsalos.
>>3155318
A very good feeling about artifacts
>>
I have a proposition, since we don't actually need much money, we just build it anyway, how about we gift some money to the village to make it easier for them to trade with the dwarfs
>>
>>3155334
I would like to keep money, we often find many interesting things to but in our travels and we usually couldn't take it all because we lacked money.

Instead of gifting them money I say we could invest in some venues, like invest in that inn they wanted to make, in a herbalist shop for the dark elf and other things like that, instead of giving, helping, but still keeping our since we will probably use it later.
>>
>>3155340
Good compromise, probably looks better for those who don't trust us as well, supporting
>>
>>3155307
>>3155317
>>3155320
>>3155318
>>3155324
>>3155334
>>3155340
>>3155341
Alright, writing
>>
>>3155307
>>3155311
>>3155320
>>3155340


Supporting
>>
>>3155349
After some of thought you have decided to take a little bit of money. The sheer fact that you could have taken a lot and didn’t should allow you to press a lot of favors from the dwarves and it is not like you need to hire them to build you a mansion. If you ever want one you can make everything from the raw materials to engravings all on your own. You’re sure you can just ask for some land without the need to purchase it as everyone who had a claim for specific spots died and dwarves would owe you a lot after they move back in. Maybe you could even ask for some mythic alloy gear…

Regarding Haven, you decided to give her the exact same amount of coins and precious metals. She was surprised at first as she didn’t think she earned that but you kind of wanted to reward her anyway. She was more helpful than she realizes. In addition, you proposed that she could move to Farsalos. We could use some company and we need someone we can trust to keep an eye on things. She can live in our house and in addition we have a sauna and a bath. In the meantime she can store all of this treasure there as it is too heavy for her to move at once anyway.

Haven replies that she will have to think about it more if possible. She has some matters to attend to afterwards regarding her family and some guild she is a part of and in addition, while you are a great person, you are still the same being as the ones that compose the pantheons. Even though you are not a goddess, from her point of view she would be essentially swearing service to another deity and she is not sure how she should feel about it. And that is not even considering living with someone like you. No offense, but there is a little bit of a power gap here that she can’t throw out of her head easily. It is worse than being a blue collar worker and having your CEO as a roommate. It is funny only if it is a comedy movie.

In any case, time for some more goodies. You’ve left the artifacts and high value individual items for dessert. Dwarves sure love their artifacts. From what you and Haven know about them it should be reasonable to take one or two of those things with no penalties to your relations considering the scope of your success. However, it would be really rude to take more than two or three so you’ll have to limit your appetite here. Or you could take none and hope you’d get presented something in return. Please note that artifacts are the apogee of a dwarf’s entire life work. You won’t be able to commission an actual artifact to be made under your own specifications.
>>
>>3155537
The first artifact type is the alloy weapons and gear. These things are mostly not real artifacts but they are still heavily controlled. There are dwarven alloy shields that are comparable to tower shields for them but they are slightly smaller than your analogue. There are some spearheads and short(for human) swords, a bunch of armor pieces that won’t fit you at all and about a single quiver worth of crossbow bolts.

Then goes individual items that seem to fit an artifact description:

A strangely shaped one handed sword with a scabbard made out of mythic alloy. It is decorated with more mythic alloy that has somehow been engraved with runes despite material’s incredible properties. It has completely no evidence of errors or deformations even at microscopic scale. The handle of the blade somehow emits heat and is warm and comfortable to the touch. The blade appears to be hydrophobic and just flicking it in the air is enough to wipe it clean from any contaminant.

A heavily decorated crossbow. It is made out of an unknown material similar in texture to bone or chitin but it is much tougher. It is heavily engraved and decorated with milky white gems and depictions of a dwarf slaying some unidentified horrors with a precise shot. Its arms are made out of high quality spring steel engraved with a decorative ornament. It has a gear crank mechanism with gears made out of high quality steel. The quiver filled with alloy arrows was probably made for it due to similar decorative pattern on the arms. It is comparable to late medieval heavy crossbows in draw weight while being much lighter and easier to crank allowing for a human to load it without bracing it against the ground.

A pyramid cut diamond suspended on a heavily decorated base, diamond is apparently cut and engraved with incredible precision to the point that it looks smooth to the eye but projects a hologram of the engraving on a nearby wall if lit up from the bottom. A specially cut glowing quartz crystal is placed in the base and it is rotated and activated through an intricate clockwork mechanism inside. When active the device produces an animated multicolored looping projection on every wall and ceiling similarly to a planetarium. However it appears to depict dozens of historical events or myths.
>>
>>3155542
Other artifacts are much less interesting such as the overly symbolic king’s throne or masterfully cut precious gems which matter little in comparison to their cost on your relationship with dwarves. Well, let’s pick something.

You can choose two items for free, three items for relationship debuff or less items for medium or large increase of opinion respectively.

>A masterfully crafted alloy weapon or shield. The items are not scaled for your use which can be changed for pole-arms manually while shield would be smaller and sword would be shorter than your current analogues
>An artifact alloy sword
>An artifact crossbow
>An artifact holo- book
>other?
>>
>>3155547
>>A masterfully crafted alloy weapon or shield. The items are not scaled for your use which can be changed for pole-arms manually while shield would be smaller and sword would be shorter than your current analogues

a pole arm, a halberd would be great, since it can be used as both a spear and an axe
then a shield

that should do it
>>
>>3155547
>An artifact alloy sword
For us

>An artifact crossbow
For Haven since she is ranged.


I like the piramid but that thing looks like the one with the most significance to them, and a resistant enough sword would do wonders combined with our tk powers.
>>
>>3155567
Unfortunately, you can’t seem to find a halberd. There are spears, hammers and axes that can be outfitted with a longer polearm but it seems that dwarves don’t utilize an analogue of halberds.
>>
>>3155547
>An artifact alloy sword

And let her pick something for herself.
>>
>>3155573
in that case i support >>3155574

maybe she finds a good bow in there, since a crossbow would probably be too great a diviation from her usual weapons
>>
>>3155583
>>3155574
For the reasons of not taking up a whole post, Haven would choose to grab the crossbow but she asks if you could craft her some more disposable bolts as firing alloy bolts at common foes is not a great idea.
>refuse
>accept and use bronze
>accept and use deficit aluminum bronze
>accept and forge them out of iron you salvaged from dorfs. Forge should be hot enough to mold iron but not melt it yet.
>other?
>>
>>3155610
>>accept and use bronze
>>
>>3155610
>accept and use whatever we think would work best because I really don't know lol
>>
>>3155610
>accept and forge them out of iron you salvaged from dorfs. Forge should be hot enough to mold iron but not melt it yet.

Besides the iron we have here we have a bunch more we bought right?
>>
>>3155643
Yes. Iron would just be a bit heavier and tougher but harder to make without sufficient infrastructure. It is a couple days of work instead of hours.
>>
>>3155646
>>3155616
We make some quick bronze so she can use the crossbow, and comission the iron bolts to the village smith, that way they can work on it and earn a little cash
>>
>>3155650
good idea, supporting
>>
>>3155646
>>3155650
>>3155652
wait, does the smith even have the knowledge to craft them, since the family is used to craft bronze iirc
>>
>>3155610
>accept and use bronze
>>
>>3155654
He used to be a smith elsewhere before coming to the village so I’d say yes but limited in techniques. For example, quenching relies on precise temperature range and at this tech level people mainly just eyeballed it instead of using things like curie point magnet test. His daughter has no experience whatsoever but she needs to train on something, right?
>>
>>3155654
Well, if they don't, some simple bolt heads is a good way to start practicing and learn how to do it, they have the nessary infraestructure to forge it, just not to smelt and cast it on a model. That way they can get the hang of working with it like the good smiths that they are.
>>
>>3155655
>>3155652
>>3155650
>>3155643
>>3155616
Alright, writing
>>
>>3155696
You decide to take the artifact sword. Your current weapon is no longer powerful enough to damage the creatures you are forced to fight. Even if this blade is half as amazing as dwarves described in combination with your inhuman strength and a little bit of telekinesis it might be possible to chop through steel armor like butter with no damage to the blade. You’ll do some tests on that ingot you’ve salvaged, but it is a straight up direct upgrade to your current backup melee weapon no matter the result. It also looks incredibly snazzy and the color scheme doesn’t differ much from the rest of your gear.

You decided to allow Haven to make her pick. She hesitated but eventually chose to get a crossbow. She apparently knows how to operate one and after a bit of training she should get sufficiently proficient with it. She, however, asks you to craft her some more disposable bolts. Alloy bolts are irreplaceable and incredibly powerful giving Haven an actual tool to kill better protected and bigger creatures. For anything that is not a freaking dragon less fancy things would suffice. You decided to craft her a bunch of bronze bolts for now while commissioning the smiths to make some iron bolts. That would be a nice exercise for them as eventually you plan to switch to iron and steel. In addition, they would earn some money which should slowly help with bootstrapping village economy.

In any case, what later followed is several trips with a cart to move all of the shit you’ve salvaged slash pillaged from the dwarven city. While you could just tk the whole mass and move it all at once you would like to not show off your full powers. In addition that would be tiring and you already have a headache after you dunked your head on a freaking wall. Lucky for you it was late in the night and you covered the cart with fabric so almost no one saw you and definitely no one knows what you were moving. People know that you are a huntress and a craftsman so they would probably assume you killed something and you wanted to turn it into gear or trophies. Speaking of trophies, you got a couple of forgotten beast fangs for yourself and Haven. Monster hunters are known for keeping souvenirs of their notable kills so you might as well do that too, right?

All in all, this adventure is finally over and both you and Haven retire for the night. Tomorrow is going to be a big day. You’ve been thinking a bit about the situation with the villagers and you came up with a few solutions that could make the situation better. But for now, you want to sleep. You have a literally head splitting headache.
>>
>>3155849
———————————
And that’s all for this thread of SGQ. We beat up a “dragon” and got the treasure. Unfortunately, it is getting really late here. Thank you all for participating and I can’t wait for the next Friday session. As always, you are free to discuss stuff and ask questions. I recommend to look into the subject of villagers and our image as that will be the first thing we would start off with next time. I have a few ideas but they seem pretty obvious and simple so you might come up with something better.
>>
>>3155851
Thanks for running

My idea would be to create something of a circle of elders, for the village
The most influential people get a place and a vote, including us
The village chief would be the head with the right to vetour and chosen by everyone in the village
Then we would promise to put our plans for construction in front of the circle to confirm so that it doesn't look like we just do what we want
>>
>>3155851
Thanks for running, if I think of something I'll be sure to post here
>>
>>3155866
I like that but I would like to have some representatives feom every strata and not just the "important ones" that way the decisions would benefit more people not just the select few that are better off.

That and I would like to put Rheia as our representative, ahe would attend the meetings and stuff and inform us what is being discussed so we can react appropriatly, she seemed to have a good grasp on how these people react and their customs and she is not afraid to tell us if we are screwing up or not
>>
>>3155878
The problem I see with choosing Rheia is how young she is. She is 16(just legally adult by local standards) and looks even younger due to going through malnourishment. The fact that she is smart and brave doesn’t mean she is qualified for becoming one of the main pipelines between us and the villagers. Asking village chief or forming a village committee of sorts for this purpose might work better. Also who are we again to make a villager become our representative? We are supposed to be a huntress and hiring a person specifically to talk to people is a bit above what even middle class nobles would do. If we were a goddess or a celebrity it would make more sense. You can do it, but I suggest to think more of the aspects of this decision.

The first option I wanted to suggest would be to form a kind of anonymous message system. A villager would be able to write down or ask someone to write down what worries them and drop it at your place or in town hall and then you’d look through it and see what you consider worth your time to deal with. A “quest board” essentially. It comes from Originals strata fearing to approach you with problems and this should result in an increase of trust over time.
>>
>>3155915
Also I’d like to add that I don’t oppose hiring Rheia in principle. I just don’t see her working as our official public face. If she is associated with us people would avoid her too. We could hire her as an advisor like with the “five year old evil mastermind’s advisor” gag so she would tell us if we fucked up anywhere or forgot anything.
>>
>>3155915
i like the idea of the message board, have them get whatever their missgivings are out of the way

and yeah, hire Rheia as our assistant, to handle our inbox, library and take notes and all that
maybe dust of the house when we are gone or something
including the "tell us when we fuck up" aspect as a key aspect
>>
>>3155939
>>3155922
Agreed

Seems reasonable
>>
>>3155851
Did we take stuff from the monster we killed? trophies or something?
>>
>>3156500
Yes, but not much. We took a couple of its fangs as a trophy for us and Haven because anything more massive would simply be too big to store. Those fangs are themselves about 40cm long so you can’t even turn them into a necklace like with crocodile teeth. It would go in a display case once you get your hands on some sheet glass.

The rest of the creature doesn’t seem to hold any materials that we can utilize for crafting. Unless you want to do some bone carving after spending hours cutting away meters of monster flesh you are unfortunately out of luck.

Our explosive charge has completely destroyed the fire breathing organ and the airbag is an organic ablation material so it is not even permanently heat resistant. It evaporates to prevent heat transfer and then regrows. The mechanism was apparently based on quartz but it has lost its psi effect completely due to being shattered and melted. Maybe quartz is good at holding psi charge related to heat and light? Who knows, you need more data.

Its skin is resistant mainly due to its thickness and it won’t work if you don’t have 100-150 cm layer of it. It completely lacks any cells but it is still made out of carbon based natural organic resins and polymers which are not that hard to find in nature. It has a high composition of sulfur but this changes nothing except that you can’t extract the resin out of it. The skin is, unfortunately, not a good electric insulator.

The bones are somewhat interesting. They are dark grey due to calcium being reinforced with some carbon in form of fullerene clusters. The main purpose of this seems to be to increase compressive strength. Due to square cube law a creature of this size would consist mainly out of legs to support its weight which would in turn be composed mainly out of bone making it useless. It is not feasible to extract the buckyballs out of the bone matter while the bone itself doesn’t have much beyond increased compressive strength and minor increase in durability in general.

The monster’s muscles appear to be a form of artificial muscle polymer but you can’t seem to find out how they work. They don’t contract from either electricity or heat or even electrolytes. In the end you are left thinking that the creature’s entire nervous system was virtual and provided through psi effects as there are no nerves beyond the “pilot” wetware organs.
>>
>>3157774
You took samples of the blood for testing but it seems to just be a form of biological coolant comparable to normal water in efficiency and it acts as creature’s heatsink and impact protection. It lacks any circulation, it doesn’t carry nutrients and it doesn’t have any cells floating inside. You can’t find any mechanisms for life support so you presume that the creature both digested its food, distributed energy and healed itself through an unknown psi based mechanism. It has stayed here for decades and it has probably almost never eaten so it could have a kind of psi battery or generator that was used as one and only life support organ.
>>
>>3157776
New thread is up. Sorry for being late. >>3170186
>>
>>3170209
Thread archived
>>
>>3170250
Oh ffs I balled it up. Oh well
>>
>>3170253
NVM managed to fix it, all good



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