>>3956298
Basic parapsychic theory… both an old and a new entry in your research notebook. From one hand it has been there since the creation of the notebook, but before now you didn’t have enough information to start working on it. So, before you start experimenting, you should probably structure what you know so far about psi. After all, the only difference between science and screwing around is in writing it all down.

To start, psi seems to have a universal power source that is absorbed from the environment by its users. A set amount of it is created at a certain rate in a set volume. This psi energy does not get stored and if it is not collected immediately it disappears. This “psi field” is omnipresent and psi users and devices collect it in a certain radius around themselves. You’ve learned how to vary the radius and rate at which you absorb this energy and it seems to be the basis for most common psi detection methods. In addition, it is possible that two or more psi users in close proximity would compete for psi energy if combined they absorb more than is created by the field.

To use psi abilities, you need two things: psi energy and “Mental Mold”. Mental Mold is a type of mind pattern that contains specifics of how psi effect should manifest and after being energized and/or triggered it initiates the effect. For Synthetic Gods and Cup Bearers it seems to be a highly intuitive process, while “mortals” require a good deal of mental discipline and concentration. Many in addition to that require assistance in the way of chanting, prayers, gestures, rituals, sigils and/or psi foci items to successfully form and maintain the mental pattern. People who can cast completely silently and without assistance are rare and are considered to be very talented. While you are technically capable of that, you also tend to gesture when using telekinesis to direct your “spell” more accurately.

>>3956299
Intense psi use causes a mental strain on its user and can damage the “enchantment” in an item. Mortal casters also risk strokes and aneurysms when overextending their powers, but it seems to be a biological issue with baseline humans who weren’t designed with psi use in mind. Cup Bearers and even some individuals with Bloodline Gifts are lucky enough not to risk their lives when using their powers.

Psi powers also seem to have two “layers” to them: base layer and specialized layer. According to Nike’ and your own observation, base layer is something that every psi user can learn to use and it includes creation of “psi circuits” (aka enchanting), transfer of psi energy, condensation of psi matter and so on. Specialized layer is some aspect of psi that the user is extremely good at. They can be broad, as in your case, or they might include only one aspect like pyromancy or healing. For you it is “spacetime psi”, also known as “Alpha Psi” for being the first specialized psi that was discovered. For Mina it is apparently self-targeted telekinesis and she is not capable of long-range telekinesis. The other examples of psi specializations are energy manipulation (pyro, photo and electrokinesis), bio manipulation (healing, plant and animal tissue biomancy), mind manipulation, illusions and many others that you haven’t encountered yet.

Your recent observation of Nike’s enchantment process gave you a lot of information about psi field’s mechanics. In particular, you’ve managed to observe “psi waves” that occurred as Nika pumped the energy directly into her target without the need to absorb and emit it. Some of those “waves” managed to create higher psi potentials than naturally occurring. And that is what gave you an idea…

You quietly float out of your lab and leave your house through a door on the third floor’s balcony. From there you make your way above both walls and get far enough from the village that you would not be seen. There you find a spot of dry packed ground and take a seat there closing your eyes and trying to focus on the psi field around you.

At first, you don’t notice anything, but then you come up with the idea of “breathing” with this energy. In measured rhythm you absorb and reemit psi energy in and out of the field and eventually you start sensing waves that you’ve produced. They die down almost at the edge of your absorption field but once you even so slightly modulate it, the waves start traveling further. You wonder if this is possible to use this as an analogue to radio waves for communication at some point, but you don’t have the know how just yet. After some more meditation you’ve managed to pick up very weak ripples travelling through the psi field, but you could barely sense them so there was no chance to know if it was a transmission or just some natural psi phenomenon.

>>3956302
You open your eyes and the morning sun manages to shine through the tree canopy right into your eye. Good morning, world. You return home around 6 am and you try to get something more done in your lab while people are sleeping, but your experiment with your “sealing solution” fail spectacularly today. The material is foamy and your body somehow heats it up to 70-80 degrees Celsius once it is exposed to the wound and your ceramic vials keep shattering from sudden thermal stresses. As the material cools, it becomes more akin to rubber which makes it nearly impossible to apply to anything. It is a surprisingly good thermal and electric insulator though, so maybe you could coat wires with your blood, but then again, you’d prefer to get a polymer plant instead so that you won’t have to wound yourself constantly.

A bit tired, you seal your laboratory again, change your clothes, get some breakfast with Rheia, Haven and Sig and then walk out of the front door. The time is up for today’s research, next on your agenda are some social things.

>Check up on the cultists. You wonder how they are doing
>Check the “quest board” in the Town Hall. Let’s see what you can help with
>You wanted to test Mina’s abilities and skills. Call her for a friendly mock fight
>Check up on the Cat- mom and her cohabitants. You’ve never talked with her before, always relaying messages through Signy
>Check up on the dwarven ruin. You wonder how things are going there…
>Other ideas?

>>3956303
>>Check up on the Cat- mom and her cohabitants. You’ve never talked with her before, always relaying messages through Signy

and after the chat we can drop by

>Check up on the dwarven ruin. You wonder how things are going there…


we told cat mom we would transport her eventually so if she reeeeeally wants to go(which I'm against) we can drop her and go the ruins on the way back

>>3956303

>You wanted to test Mina’s abilities and skills. Call her for a friendly mock fight

>>3956303
>>You wanted to test Mina’s abilities and skills. Call her for a friendly mock fight
iirc we already told her that

>>3956311
Went out to get food. Vote would be slightly prolonged until I get back

>>3956303

>You wanted to test Mina’s abilities and skills. Call her for a friendly mock fight
>Check up on the Cat- mom and her cohabitants. You’ve never talked with her before, always relaying messages through Signy

>>3956322
>>3956316
>>3956312
>>3956311
Alright, I'm back. Testing Mina and checking up on cat- mom

>>3956341
Writing

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>>3956346
You decide to start your day with visiting the cat-mom and the people who want to join her and return to their home. You don’t really want people to leave your territories because they wouldn’t be under your protection in the wilderness, but you respect their choices. Today, you think that you know enough of their language for a simple conversation and it would be a nice idea to pay them a visit and talk to them face to face for once.

Cat- mom Irma along with her fourteen-year-old daughter Alda live in a house that you’ve built to the north of the inner perimeter near to the wall and it doesn’t take you long to reach them in the morning. Irma is surprised to see you personally and how quickly you learned their language to speak only with a very noticeable accent. To be fair, their tongue and Ceno Lingua have almost identical sentence structures. After you were allowed in, she placed a teapot on and sent Alda upstairs so that she doesn’t disturb the discussion.

The cat- people are interesting from physiological point of view. The thing is that their ears are not really on top of their head. The ear channel is placed at the same place as with baseline humans and the ear itself stretches up to the top of the head and the side is closed by a skin flap forming what looks like conventional cat- person ears that were so popular in the media of your time. In this case, however, you can open up the ear by pulling the flap backwards and sideways, although no one would really let you do that.

Not everyone of her cohabitants is a cat person. You’re pretty sure that one of them is a deer- person, a couple have more canine looking ears set up in a similar way and one person has a ring of feathers around the ears. From Signy you’ve found out that they all are of the same type of people. They don’t know what determines what kind of features they’d get and even if mom and dad have cat features their child is not guaranteed to also be a cat person. They also know that if they reproduce with a baseline human the child would be with animal features. You wonder what bizarre biology allows for that to happen and who designed their kind.

>>3956449
You end up talking about why they want to leave back for their homes instead of staying here in safety and luxury by local standards. She explains that she misses her husband and parents and most of her people also were separated from their loved ones. They’ve been captured around four years ago and their culture places great importance on family bonds meaning that none of them wants to stay when most wish to get back to their friends and family. In addition, these people are not stone age tribals, they live in a village that is a part of a small civilization of people like them. They produce their own bronze tools and defend their tiny territory squeezed between Holies and Valistrat.

All in all, it doesn’t seem like you’d be able to change their minds on the subject of returning home, but you see some opportunity in this. They don’t have a god in their territory and they practice ancestral cults so maybe you could exercise some authority over their territories and you could integrate them into your realm… when you’d actually have a realm. In the meantime, they seem to be content with their current position and they are grateful for all that you’ve done for them and for your future assistance with their return. Before you do it though, you think that it might be a good idea to fly there just to check that their settlement is still there just in case.

You finish your tea, thank Irma for her time and return back to your home to gear up. The next thing in your list is some muse testing. You show up at Mina’s front door in full gear and tell her that you’d like to do a mock competition with her to see her performance and skills. She asks you if you are sure that you want to do that and you tell her that you’re positive. After all, it is not like she could kill you, right?

Roll 1d20 and pick how you want to test her:

>Archery competition: let’s see how good she is with her bow
>Generalized competition: who lifts more and runs faster, classic all around testing
>Unarmed combat: you wonder how well she’ll move with her self- enhancing powers
>Armed melee combat: tell her that you want her to go full out, you can handle her
>Other ideas

Rolled 17 (1d20)

>>3956454
General competition and
Unarmed combat
If she says she is better with bows we can do that instead

>>3956454

>Unarmed combat: you wonder how well she’ll move with her self- enhancing powers
Focus on integrating our TK in our dodges and hits to use different angles to make the attacks more unpredictable

Rolled 10 (1d20)

>>3956460
Lets hope we don't turn her into mist

Rolled 17 (1d20)

>>3956454

>Generalized competition: who lifts more and runs faster, classic all around testing
>Unarmed combat: you wonder how well she’ll move with her self- enhancing powers

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Rolled 11 (1d20)

>>3956454
>Generalized competition: who lifts more and runs faster, classic all around testing

Rolled 1 (1d20)

>>3956454

>Armed melee combat: tell her that you want her to go full out, you can handle her

>>3956489
sigh....there's always a one

at least the most lethal option was not the majority and we got some consistently good rolls

>>3956489
Fuck

Lets hope my roll is too late

We had good rolls but eh, this sucks

>>3956489
Nope, it counts because it is within 30 minutes after first response. Luckily there are two pics so it is only for armed melee combat.

>>3956498
My bad, I'm apparently blind, there is only one armed melee combat choice.

>>3956502
We ain't doing armed combat right?

>>3956458
>>3956460
>>3956462
>>3956463
>>3956480
General and unarmed wins by majority. I'm not counting armed combat for reasons of 1 being too out of character with other rolls and picking all 3 would get busy. Hope you're fine with that. Writing

maybe if her strength enhancement is good enough she could try our ultra high draw strength bow (if we still have that).
is it actually better (do projectiles go faster) than just throwing things with telekinesis for us?

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>>3956511
You decide to do two separate exercises: a general test of physical abilities and a mock fight without weapons and armor. This should allow you to get a better grasp of Mina’s true strength and skills without endangering her or you with an actual armed combat. You are not sure how good her weapons are and it would not be fun to regenerate after being reduced to a bloody pulp by a sword with a blade that is wider than your arm. If they are as good as you think, her weapons would easily break everything that you have with exception of the artifact shortsword.

To warm up you start with a foot race. The goal is to run all the way from Farsalos to the outpost and back in full gear. To make it a bit fairer, you won’t be using telekinesis on yourself utilizing only your own physical body which should be more than sufficient. At the start of the race Mina gets pretty far ahead of you as she accelerates faster with her powers but once you’ve gotten up to speed you’ve overtaken her 2/3 of the way to the outpost. She uses telekinesis mainly to accelerate to cruising speed after which she rarely applies it to maintain the constant pace. In the end, you finish when she is about a third of the way back. She is only slightly out of breath which is impressive since her average speed was around 60-65 kilometers an hour. Further dead sprint test demonstrated that she can boost it to around 120 for around 10 minutes after which she has to slow down as her energy and physical resources get depleted. You still beat her with your absolutely ridiculous 450 kilometers per hour psi-augmented dead sprint which leaves you massively craving for sugar so the two of you take a 30-minute pause to catch your breaths and get a snack.

The next test is for physical strength which you conduct by lifting special boxes that get filled by progressively more and more lead. A one-ton chunk of lead is around 90 liters in volume so it very quickly turned into the two of you deadlifting fridge sized boxes. With telekinesis Mina managed to lift 2,5 tons of weight but then her arms failed her and you quickly caught the mass of a large truck with telekinesis preventing it from falling on her head. You yourself managed to hold almost 50 tons above your head mostly with your muscles, but you had to stabilize the giant boulder (you didn’t have that much lead) with telekinesis and you kept sinking into the ground with your feet which made it very clear that you can’t physically test your maximum deadlift weight. With telekinesis you are quite capable of lifting small buildings while your companion can’t project it outside of her body completely so that comparison is out of the question.

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>>3956939
What surprised you is how Mina managed to slowly hover above ground by only pushing on herself with telekinesis reminiscent of your own early attempts at flight. She couldn’t control it at higher altitudes and attempts to go faster caused her to lose control but it is still impressive. In more realistic conditions she uses this to do quick jumps across the field and to rapidly alter her course in midair which is way more useful in reality than it sounds. At high speeds the friction with the ground and gravity becomes the main limiter of speed. Both of you are forced to make long strides instead of more conventional running which means that you spend more time in the air than on the ground during the run kind of like how people have to walk on the surface of the Moon.

You also tested her archery skills and she is pretty good at accurately hitting targets at half a kilometer away, but the arrow takes time to reach the target at those distances. While Mina can perfectly lead the target and account for the wind in controlled conditions, if the target is actively dodging, she has issues with hitting it at more than 200 meters. Her bow is about half of the strength of your bow and when she tried to pull your bow the main issue was the damage to her fingers and not insufficient strength. Any kind of protective leather glove got annihilated when she tried to pull and her skin is not as durable as yours. Luckily, she can self-heal quickly at the cost of her psi energy which is useful. She can’t heal other people unfortunately since it is an effect of one of her items.

For the last test, you’ve decided to do a mock fight. No weapons, no armor, just fists. And oh boy it went wild. Your strategy was to augment your dodges with telekinesis and to use different angles in an attempt to make your attacks unpredictable. She manages to just barely handle your onslaught and you’ve slowed down a little not to actually hit her but you didn’t need to worry. The moment you’ve landed a hit her shield was activated, which absorbed the force of your right hook impacting into her block. In return she uses that opening to land a punch with her left fist straight into your jaw causing you to literally eat your teeth. You’ve lost seven teeth in total, 9 to 12 and 21 to 23… and a half, 20 th tooth was chipped. The blow actually sent you ass first into the ground as worried Mina stopped the fight and ran to help you to get up while apologizing for this. You tell her that it’s fine, you knew what you were going for and besides your teeth can regrow. It was very painful though, so you decided to give this round to her. According to Mina, your punch depleted a fourth of her shield’s energy, which is mostly because you’ve expected her to dodge it and not attempt to block it so it was significantly stronger. It means that she can probably handle a cannonball to the face with that shield with some power to spare... albeit not by much.

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>>3956949
After taking this blow to your jaw and indirectly to your ego, you’ve decided to stop the testing for today to prevent any additional losses. You’d prefer to meet Elspeth with a full smile after all. Instead, you decided to look into metallurgy. Finally, you’ve come back to the subject of production improvements. You have several important things to consider here: the type of production chain, how far you need to take the chain and how large you want the production volume to be.

Let’s start with the first two. At this moment, you have two choices: black metals and colored metals. Black metals are everything connected to iron and steel. The production requires two distinct steps, but you can neglect the second step to gain access to large quantities of pig iron which is amazing for bulk structural metal. Industrial steel itself is so amazing that you don’t really need to describe it, all further mechanization depends on it.

Alternatively, you can establish colored metals manufacturing which would allow for you to produce a lot of tin, lead, zinc, nickel and copper in addition to their alloys which would be a great economic boost to the village. If you find any tin in the area, you’d even make yourself fully independent from imports for bronze production. In addition, colored metals are an invaluable source of alloys required for precise machinery and lead production is critical for chemistry and optical glass production.

Choice here really depends on what you want first:

>Colored metals plant: facility equipped for refining of colored metals into ingots and alloys. Required for further chemistry, glass and precise manufacturing, invaluable for steel alloys
>Pig iron blast furnaces: facility and its supporting infrastructure that produces pig iron from the ore, flux and coal coke. Amazing material for bulk item casting such as cannons or everyday tools and objects like cookware. Too heavy to be used for weapons or armor. Required for further processing into steel
>Steel production chain: facility and its supporting infrastructure that produces pure iron and various types of steel alloys from pig iron, coal coke and fluxes. Amazingly useful material required for anything from armor and weapons to construction beams. Mandatory for further precise manufacturing and large construction in general

>>3956954
The second main choice is the size. You could make do with a minimal metallurgic lab that would produce some material sufficient for minor projects or you could go for basically a small factory that would produce way more than is currently needed by the village. Bigger is more time consuming, it’s your call. You have 4 weeks until Elspeth’s visit

>Metallurgic lab (1 week): facility designed to produce small but usable quantity of metals for when you for example need steel tools but not steel beams. Limited production throughput would affect anything that you’d want to do with it.

>Metallurgic workshop (2 weeks): larger facility with several furnaces designed to satisfy metal demands of a small town. With this you can realistically provide material for various weapons, tools and items on the scale that would work for Farsalos, but you won’t have enough for something like metal construction or major export

>Metallurgic manufacture (3 weeks, requires additional personnel education): small factory capable of converting a constant stream of materials into metal ingots. You need this if you want to make steel reinforced buildings from time to time or if you want enough pig iron for small scale cannon production. This would significantly redistribute metal values in the village. Separate rolling mill or casting plant needs to be assembled for industrial material production.

>Metallurgic factory (4 weeks, resource drain, requires additional personnel education): a sizeable industrial zone that would require your existing metal supplies to construct. Capable of producing more metal than what Farsalos villagers could imagine. You need this if you want enough metal for large scale construction. Contains enough space for later addition of the rolling plant for production of wires, springs, rebars, metal bars, metal beams and metal sheets that are required for advanced construction. Rolling plant can be assembled once access to industrial steel is ensured.

Basically I need you to choose what plants you want to build at what scale. You are allowed to take more than 4 months of tasks, but only first 4 months would be finished until Elspeth’s meeting
_____________________________
And on that note, I have to pause for today. Tomorrow we would continue for some time to compensate for the lost posts today. Feel free to discuss, ask questions and make suggestions. Today’s main topic is metallurgy. I hope that you’ve enjoyed the game and see you tomorrow.

>>3956961
Also, minor update: my 4chan pass has expired. I will continue as usual but there might be cases when my IP gets range banned like it did just now. If there is a delay and I don't respond that's the reason.

>>3956954

>Pig iron blast furnaces: facility and its supporting infrastructure that produces pig iron from the ore, flux and coal coke. Amazing material for bulk item casting such as cannons or everyday tools and objects like cookware. Too heavy to be used for weapons or armor. Required for further processing into steel

>>3956968
Please note the second part

>>3956968

>Metallurgic manufacture (3 weeks, requires additional personnel education): small factory capable of converting a constant stream of materials into metal ingots. You need this if you want to make steel reinforced buildings from time to time or if you want enough pig iron for small scale cannon production. This would significantly redistribute metal values in the village. Separate rolling mill or casting plant needs to be assembled for industrial material production.

>>3956993
And

>Colored metals plant: facility equipped for refining of colored metals into ingots and alloys. Required for further chemistry, glass and precise manufacturing, invaluable for steel alloys

>Metallurgic lab (1 week): facility designed to produce small but usable quantity of metals for when you for example need steel tools but not steel beams. Limited production throughput would affect anything that you’d want to do with it.

>>3956954
>>Colored metals plant: facility equipped for refining of colored metals into ingots and alloys. Required for further chemistry, glass and precise manufacturing, invaluable for steel alloys

>Metallurgic workshop (2 weeks): larger facility with several furnaces designed to satisfy metal demands of a small town. With this you can realistically provide material for various weapons, tools and items on the scale that would work for Farsalos, but you won’t have enough for something like metal construction or major export

I assume that we could build onto the existing buildings and area if it turns out that more is needed or wanted

>Pig iron blast furnaces: facility and its supporting infrastructure that produces pig iron from the ore, flux and coal coke. Amazing material for bulk item casting such as cannons or everyday tools and objects like cookware. Too heavy to be used for weapons or armor. Required for further processing into steel
>Metallurgic workshop (2 weeks): larger facility with several furnaces designed to satisfy metal demands of a small town. With this you can realistically provide material for various weapons, tools and items on the scale that would work for Farsalos, but you won’t have enough for something like metal construction or major export
>Colored metals plant: facility equipped for refining of colored metals into ingots and alloys. Required for further chemistry, glass and precise manufacturing, invaluable for steel alloys
>Metallurgic workshop (2 weeks): larger facility with several furnaces designed to satisfy metal demands of a small town. With this you can realistically provide material for various weapons, tools and items on the scale that would work for Farsalos, but you won’t have enough for something like metal construction or major export


as much as I want cannons right now we won't have time to train them

as this tecnology is not so advanced could we hire someone on mirangi to train the villagers?

and could we make both facilities with room for a quick expansion to get to tier 3

>>3956961
>Colored metals plant: facility equipped for refining of colored metals into ingots and alloys. Required for further chemistry, glass and precise manufacturing, invaluable for steel alloys
>Metallurgic workshop (2 weeks): larger facility with several furnaces designed to satisfy metal demands of a small town. With this you can realistically provide material for various weapons, tools and items on the scale that would work for Farsalos, but you won’t have enough for something like metal construction or major export

>>3956961
I have to do some IRL errands. We’ll start when I get back home

>>3956968
>>3956993
>>3956996
>>3957008
>>3957260
>>3958340
Two people want metallurgic workshops and one anon wants pig iron manufacture and colored metal lab. Let's do it like this: we're building workshops now with the zone planned out for an upgrade to manufactures for both pig iron and colored metals. I'm compiling the next post

>>3958492
You decide that you can’t really go for steel just yet. As great as steel would be for you, the payoffs that you’d get from larger scale colored metals and pig iron productions are more important in the short to midterm. However, you don’t have enough time right now to assemble sufficient manufacturing capacity for either of them. To solve this issue, you’ve decided to construct two “workshop” scale plants with the territory and foundation designed for further expansion into a “manufacture” through the creation of more production chains in parallel.

First of all, you start with the colored metal plant design. It is probably unsurprising that almost every type of ore has its own processing. However, you’ve managed to pinpoint certain steps that would allow you to create a “universal” refinery chain that can be easily reconfigured to produce different heavy colored metals. The chain includes blast furnaces, sintering machines, roasters, froth flotation tubs and other devices and it requires an input of ores, fluxes and coal coke. Resulting chains interact with each other and feed byproduct supplies into various parallel processes which is required to fully refine the ores with minimal waste.

The first type of ore that you want to refine is galena. It is a combination of lead, zinc, silver and loads of admixtures and it is plentiful in the limestone basin. It is at first smelted with lime fluxes and coal coke in a blast furnace which separates it into several layers: slag and lead sink down and light admixtures referred to as “speiss” float up and can be separated. Speiss is mostly iron arsenide and it later gets separated into its constituent elements. Lead slag stream gets refined further to recover lead and zinc.

The next step is “copper drossing” where elemental sulfur is dumped into lead soup and binds with copper and certain other impurities forming a surface layer called “matte” that can be removed and sent to copper refining. Remaining lead is agitated in kettles and cooled down to 700-800 degrees which separates molten lead from most of its admixtures that collect at the surface. Zinc is collected from agitated vapor while silver is recovered through a “Parker process” where this zinc is added to the lead solution. Molten zinc and lead don’t mix similarly to how water doesn’t mix with oil and silver dissolves in zinc much easier than in lead. That way zinc- silver solution is separated from molten lead and zinc is removed through heating it to its low vaporization point leaving nearly pure silver. That way from one ore you’ve extracted lead, zinc, silver, copper, arsenic and antimony.

>>3958609
In parallel to this chain you have a copper refining process. You’ve modified it to manage any type of copper ores, but the main issue with it is that copper is very sensitive to purities. A purity of more than 99.7% is required for electric applications since lower purity copper has massively higher resistance and much worse mechanical properties. To get this high purity copper you have to use electrorefining. Thin sheets of pure copper on cathodes and thick slabs of low purity copper on anodes. As electricity flows through the arrangement it causes slabs to shrink while pure copper sheets grow. Less active metals are collected in “anode sludge” below anodes and go for further processing to recover gold and silver. Other admixtures that remain floating in the electrolyte are lead, zinc, nickel, arsenic, selenium and tellurium.

Nickel, the third parallel process, is produced from ore concentrates. Ore is pulverized, mixed with certain chemicals and agitated to separate nickel rich component. Nickel concentrate, similarly to some copper ores is drenched in ammonia and sulfuric acid, dried and smelted in flash and bath processes which results in an artificial nickel- iron sulfide known as matte that contains 35-45% of nickel. This matte has high meting point of 1350 degrees Celsius and it requires a rotating converter which draws off slag and produces 70-75% rich matte with a lower melting point. Similar device is utilized in copper refining since you don’t want to rely only on one type of ore. At this point matte gets roasted which produces high grade nickel oxides which then goes through pressure leaching in an autoclave. Funniest thing in all of that is that you don’t know of any nickel ore deposits in the area so all of your nickel production would have to come from byproducts of other processes, but you would be ready for when you find it.

>>3958611
To say the least, this monumental colored metal plant design would require lots of iron components and high manufacturing precision so you’d have to finish the pig iron furnaces first. What could be simpler, you could say and you’d be wrong. First of all, you need to prepare lime and coal coke. Both of these processes require large kilns, in one of which you produce lots of lime for construction and as fluxes in both factories while in the other coal is turned into coal coke and coal tar.

Second iron production step is blast furnaces and it is more complicated than it seems. The thing is, there are different pig iron types and they depend on input proportions, temperatures, microstructures and so on. The type that gets turned later into steel is special and other types are used for lots of different things from tools to cannons and structural members.

The first type of cast iron is “white iron” which is called that way because it has light color when broken. It gets transformed into “malleable iron” through annealing heat treatment and the resulting metal is softer. Alternatively, there is “grey iron” which is produced when cast iron gets around 1,2-3,5% silicon and by varying the speed of its cooling you can vary its hardness. In general, it is much more brittle and it can’t be worked even under temperature but it is easy to machine and great for structural and some moving parts since graphite in its structure provides some lubrication. The last type of cast iron is “ductile iron” which has high strength and is mostly used for piping and for some of the automotive parts where aluminum is not durable enough but steel is not required.

>>3958614
So, the plan is relatively simple. Within two weeks you construct the cast iron production chain and then use it to create cast parts for the colored metals plant. The only remaining question is where can you place these plants. You don’t have to place them together and you have several options:

>Place plants together: this would allow you to power both plants with your telekinesis at the same time
>Place plants separately: this would allow you to take different terrain advantages.

Where:
>Farsalos outer perimeter: it would be close to the village which would protect the workers from monsters but materials would need to be hauled in and there is no easy access to power

>Limestone basin outpost: close proximity to iron and lead ore in addition to coal and lime. Refining metal there would mean that you won’t need to transport unrefined material all the way to Farsalos and nearby small river could power the air compressors

>Farsalos river: placing the factory on the river bank would allow you to power it solely with water wheels which would reduce the need for workers and for your presence. Other options would require a steam engine for optimal efficiency, your presence or 3 times the number of workers.

>Dwarven ruin: placing the factory in the dwarven ruin would mean easier access to raw materials and new immigrants can work in the plant but Labyrinth would make transport of bulk materials to Farsalos risky. In addition to it being in dwarven territories which implies taxes.

>Other location?

>>3958617

>Limestone basin outpost: close proximity to iron and lead ore in addition to coal and lime. Refining metal there would mean that you won’t need to transport unrefined material all the way to Farsalos and nearby small river could power the air compressors

Iron
And colored there

They need to run independently and maybe that way the outpost will have some utility along with people.

Is it near the copper mine?

>>3958617
Colored at the ruins because its near the copper mine

And the iron at the limestone outpost

>>3958629
>>3958617
supporting this

>>3958632
Ruins are not that close to the mines. You still need to stroll through the Labyrinth to get to them. However ruins have their own material deposits

>>3958617
>Place plants together: this would allow you to power both plants with your telekinesis at the same time

>Farsalos river: placing the factory on the river bank would allow you to power it solely with water wheels which would reduce the need for workers and for your presence. Other options would require a steam engine for optimal efficiency, your presence or 3 times the number of workers.

River makes the most sense long term, especially if we start expanding up / down river since we'd be able to use barges to shift literal tonnes of input material and output product. Plus it could be linked into a network of canals connecting to elsewhere like Farsalos or such to reduce the travel times to there.

>Tldr: river best for long-term industry; ease of transit and access to markets.

>>3958665
Ok I change to this, makes sense

>>3958629
>>3958659
>>3958665
>>3958675
We have two people for Limestone basin and two people for Farsalos river. Let's pick one:

>River
>Limestone basin

>>3958683
>River

>>3958683
River

>>3958683
>river

>>3958675

>Limestone basin

>>3958683
river, as if it wasn't winning already
just don't dump the waste into the river, thats gonna bite us in the long run

>>3958698
>>3958693
>>3958690
>>3958689
>>3958687
Ok, river it is then. I'm having some 4chan pass bs at the moment so the next post would be delayed. Meeting with Elspeth would be what we'd start with next week

File: Primitive hydroplant.jpg (276 KB, 1000x750)

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>>3958719
You decided that the Farsalos river would be the best place for both of the factories. Water can power both the compressors and all the mechanical parts of the plants meaning that you wouldn’t have to sit there and crank the whole factory manually with telekinesis. This would also reduce the amount of people that the two plants would need for normal operation and it would allow for some cheap river shipping once you build more settlements on its banks. For now, though, it would mean that you’d have to haul quite a lot of raw materials around the place.

First of all, you create the foundations for the factories as well as lime kiln batteries and coke furnaces. You preload them to keep cooking while you are busy with other construction. Concrete is plentiful thanks to all of the lime you are cooking and with your telekinesis you can excavate and cast large areas of concrete foundations for your construction. As cast iron smelters come online you start refining pig iron in parallel and setting up cast iron framework and stilts to further reinforce the foundations.

Once the foundations are done, you assemble the walls and ceilings of your metallurgic plants. These are the biggest free-standing buildings made by your hand yet. They introduce iron beams in their skeletons, brick walls and tiled roofs. You decided to go for separate smaller clustered structures united by one foundation and purpose instead of one large factory building because you’d like to expand the production massively and this would allow you to finish one section of both plants before the meeting with Elspeth.

In the end you have two massive concrete foundations each of which is separated into 6 “slots” along with certain central locations for material deliveries. One slot in both of those foundations houses a hangar- like brick structure that contains an isolated production chain. Raw materials go in from one side and refined metals can be collected from another. As you ramp up production you should have an opportunity to build more of those “workshops” and in the end you’d reach the performance similar to your “manufacture” or even “factory” project plans.

File: Stream pump.gif (29 KB, 400x299)

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>>3958913
One of the most interesting pieces of this design is centralized kinetic energy distribution system. Factories are connected between each other through “power transferal lines” (aka axles) and plugged into a huge temporary wooden assembly that you’ve conjured up in the middle of the river. Essentially, you have a wooden frame bolted to the river bed with wooden stilts that supports batteries of water wheels each of which transfers their energy into one axle connected to this power distribution system. This allows you to mechanize most of the menial labor inside the actual workshops. People would be needed mostly to monitor and control the process as well as to shovel the materials in and haul the refined metals out.

Compressors are also powered by water but in a bit different way. You are going to use water stream compressor design which is a type of aspirator pump. It is capable of producing constant 10 atmospheres of air pressure and it was historically used to constantly pump air into the mines. For you these pumps would inject air into the blast furnaces. These pumps have no moving parts, no expensive or precise materials required and they can work nonstop for decades, just what you need.

Speaking of which, people. You didn’t have the time to teach them everything. At the start of the project you’ve placed a notice at the Town Hall and two dozen villagers decided to try their luck with working on your newest project just in time for the first test runs of the blast furnaces. You would provide significant wages by local standards that would be paid from sales of the refined metals to the merchants. You’ve managed to sufficiently train them in the operations of the iron refinery, but unfortunately your universal colored metals refinery is a bit too complicated to cram instructions and safeties into everyone’s heads in three weeks. You’ve provided workers with a set of fire-retardant clothing made from that dwarven fabric, closed colored metals plant and you’re pretty sure that no one should lose a hand while you’re away. You’d continue training them once you return after Elspeth.

As a finishing touch you link the plants to Farsalos with a gravel road off shooting sideways from the path to the piers along with adding a palisade fence around the whole thing and a lookout tower in case of monsters. Then you pulverize and haul literal tons of ore, coal and limestone into the area to fill up the stocks and after that you head back to your home. You need to look good when meeting the “head goddess”, right?
____________________________________
And on this note we’re officially stopping the thread for the week. Next week we’ll start with the Elspeth’s visit preparations. Feel free to ask questions, give suggestions and discuss. I recommend thinking about what you’d want to ask Elspeth. I hope that you’ve enjoyed and I’ll see you next time.

>>3958918
thanks for running and have a good week

>>3958918
thanks for running

>>3958918
Ok, short list i have to ask Elspeth:
Do you have any idea where the older gods went?
What is the end goal you have with that future sight time line?
what does a god normally even do as a day job, so to speak?

>>3958918
Quick note: Elspeth is one of the key individuals who worked on general psi theory and psi augmentations. Her work in studying psi effects that started manifesting in humans around 2020s makes her basically the mother of parapsychic theory (even though there was a whole team working on the subject). Some questions regarding psi mechanics might be a good idea, such as how it was discovered in general.

>>3960183
How it was discovered
How can we control it to cause effects
How can we infuse it efficiently into objects

Some other questions

What is her plan, now or after she deals with the Cielings

Ask about mad goddess, she seemed to know Elps personally.

>>3958918
we also need to decide how honest we are going to be
do we want to mention the "mad goddess" ?
do we mention that we have another pod ? elspeth might be aberl to detect it anyway if she ever showed up in our village

unrelated to this i think we should consider visiting sigrid's family sometime they sound interesting

>>3960714
Good point about the honesty. We arranged a meeting at a distance from our village in case Elspeth could sense the pods and to have a neutral ground.

>>3960714
Agree on Sig family visiting a lot.

As for honest I think we should be honest alright.
Talk about the mad goddess because hiding her existence might bring harm to the people and we know she is dangerous AND after Elspeth so we should warn her about that.

As for the pod, we can hide it for now, Nike herself mentioned that is quite normal for the other gods to hide new gods for some time, like Marco did and like Nike herself did for us, so I see no harm in hiding it even if she comes to discover the pod by herself

>>3960718
>>3960725
i agree, but i think we are going to need help with the damaged pod anyway, but it's not extremely important right now

>>3960739
we can always ask Nike for help with it, we are very close and I think we can trust her
the least she will do is advise us to seek Elspeth I think

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>>3958918
Good news everyone! Our banner is here

>>3962195
NOICE

>>3962195
Also welcome professor Farnsworth

>>3962195
looking nice

>>3962195
noice

>>3958918
UPD: I think it would be better if I separate people we know of into mortals and SGs/cups for easier navigation. We will have a new pastebin in the next thread.

>>3966018
Thanks dude.
Maybe separate those that are part of our group too.

>>3966032
I don't think that it would be viable enough for a whole pastebin, but I think I'll add a [tag] after all ally names or something. Still working on it

>>3966018
Ok, made it. I also added some extra information about the Holy Nation's pantheon that you guys haven't seen yet. Other pantheons are currently insufficiently written, but I will add information about them as soon as I finalize all points about them.

https://pastebin.com/ThR1eYvc

>>3967718
very nice

>>3967718
I've updated general npc list with some names that I used. It no longer includes any of the "gods" and "Cups". I didn't have time to write the local monster hunter team in Farsalos. Inventory was not updated either.

>>3958918
After weeks of nonstop work, you finally have some time to make yourself presentable. Elspeth might not be a literal goddess, but you still think that it would be a good idea to make a decent first impression. So, as a start you decided to take a nice hot bath using some of your scented soap. Nothing better to make three weeks of accumulated construction dust disappear while also giving you a sense of relaxation. After the bath you dry and tidy up your hair and clean your teeth one extra time. The ones that you’ve lost and chipped have already regenerated and you’ll never get tooth decay, but they still get dirty throughout the day so you decided to give them some extra shine before the meeting.

You’ve agreed to meet Elspeth essentially in the middle of nowhere. Mina already checked out the spot and it would happen roughly halfway between Farsalos and Platania. That way the spot is not too far from civilization to be at a constant threat of a monster attack and it is far enough from both Pantheon’s facilities and Farsalos to arguably count as a neutral ground between you and Elspeth. Mina would act as a human beacon so that Nike’ could easily find you and lead the head goddess to the meeting spot.

With about half a day left before the meeting, you have just enough time to polish your gear and wear something fresh out of laundry. The question is… what should you wear. You have quite a few options...

Roll 1d20, pick an outfit and propose how you should greet her

>H+ jumpsuit only: there is no more obvious way to demonstrate that you are a pod person than to wear this blue bodysuit
>H+ jumpsuit below armor: you can wear the bodysuit instead of your under armor along with your gear. Slightly less obviously H+ uniform from a distance
>Underarmor: padding and outfit that you wear below your adventuring gear and your shortsword. It is not like you are expecting a fight and your armor is mostly for looks anyway
>Full gear: your favorite shiny aluminum bronze laminar plate along with the rest of your weapons
>Peasant attire: your day to day working clothes that you use in Farsalos village
>Chiton: toga- like dress accepted in Ceno as semi-official clothes. While not overly rich, your set still is very decent
>Other ideas?

>>3969010
>Other ideas?
H+ jumpsuit beneath peasant attire, so we can expose our Podsality the superman way after meeting Elspeth

>>3969010
Jumpsuit under toga

Rolled 3 (1d20)

>>3969016
+1
>>3969010
rolling

Rolled 4 (1d20)

>>3969017
Forgot to roll

Rolled 1 (1d20)

>>3969010
I missed one part and the roll too.. >>3969016
Semi hide in the edge of the meeting spot until Elspeth comes into view, then come out and approach her. Greet Elspeth humbly with an underlying firmness as is proper of our position as the elected leader of Farsalos.

>>3969029
Nice

>>3969024
>>3969026
>>3969029
I see the Dice has abandoned us this day.

>>3969031
I take that this roll is for the journey? Things will be turbulent

Rolled 8 (1d20)

>>3967756
>>3969016
Support

Rolled 13 (1d20)

>>3969010
trying to save us form these rolls

>>3969016
>>3969017
>>3969024
>>3969026
>>3969029
>>3969032
>>3969039
>>3969043
>>3969052
Alright, H+ below peasant attire wins. Writing

File: Elspeth armored 3.png (1.13 MB, 811x1298)

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>>3969054
You decide that you also want to see Elspeth’s reaction as well and thus you came up with a small plan: you’d wear your H+ bodysuit below your civilian outfit. Since your civilian clothes cover your body below the neck completely with the long skirt and long sleeves it would not be visible from the outside and you could very simply use telekinesis to untie it at the back and remove it with a single movement. But until you’d do that, you’d look exactly like a normal peasant girl. You wouldn’t take any weapons or gear, mostly because if push comes to shove, they’d not be that useful in comparison to your powers.

With you looking pretty great, you set off with Mina for the meeting location and once you arrive Nike’ informs you that they have set off. Now you only need to wait. So, you wait… and wait… An hour later Nike’ and Mina start arguing a bit about directions, apparently she is not a literal beacon. Thirty minutes later you sigh, ask where they currently are, float up and use your skirt as a flag so they finally find you in the middle of a goddamn open field. Such good idea ruined by such a stupid unfortunate problem as navigation.

With surprise factor thoroughly ruined, you don’t even bother putting civilian clothes back on as Elspeth and Nike’ land nearby. Apparently, Elspeth was flying with Nika being telekinetically carried along which explains the source of the fuckup. “I almost don’t believe this… what a timebomb, Nika…” says Elspeth as she touches down. Without skipping a beat, you introduce yourself in English: “My name is Agatha Krasnikova. I believe that you knew my uncle, miss Bright.”

“You... you’re Agatha?! That’s amazing! I don’t remember putting you into nano-pods, but Dan must have used one of his. Is he with you?” she asks hopefully which somewhat surprised you. “No, he’s not with me, sorry. He did ask me to leave you a message” you say “2068 years late for delivery, but still.” The goddess quickly approaches you almost uncomfortably close smiling and tells you to lay it on her. You shrug, and slap her. It was not that strong but it caused her to fall on her butt as it was louder than what you expected. As she sat there with her right palm on her slightly red cheek you explain her that Dan was forced to defend the project in court for almost a decade because she decided to just hop into the pod with her friends before he could navigate all the red tape.

>>3969139
Nike’ is a little shocked and Elspeth starts quietly crying. “I’ve expected him to follow me, he had a dozen spare pods to take whoever he wished, why did he stay?” she sobs. “…do you at least know if he followed after you?” You reply that you don’t know that, apologize for the slap and help her back up on her feet. You didn’t want to lay it that thick and now you somewhat feel bad for the young goddess.

“Wait, how did you manage to get past Vera? And a decade later, how many were frozen alongside you? I need to see your pod asap!”

>Agree and show her the way to Farsalos
>Agree, but at some point later
>Refuse, your pod is your property
>Other?

>>3969140
>>Agree, but at some point later

tell her that our pod was alone when we entered and when we came out of it....just Sam...a scientist was the witness to it but he stayed locked inside our chamber until his death, we gave him a proper burial.

can we bombard her with questions yet?

>>3969157
>>3969140
agreed
man i feel bad for the slap now

>>3969140
Damn she's beautifull, nice view miss goddess

I feel bad for her, she may have lost someone very dear to her that she was expecting to see someday.

Confort Elspeth, say that we also hope our uncle got in one of the pods, we hope he did.

Tell her we will ahow her the pod later.
This will be good for us since we can learn alot about how it works and how we can put it to be useful with her.

See if she needs some time to recover from the news, support her through it.

>>3969157
I’ll reply to backed up questions after this point. You can bombard her with questions after the next post

>>3969157
>>3969167
>>3969164

Supportin

>>3969167
yeah, I'll support this too

uncle Dan had some good taste I'll admit

>>3969164
feel bad about the slap too

>>3969171
thanks

>>3969174
>>3969172
>>3969167
>>3969164
>>3969157
Writing

File: Elspeth official.png (1.2 MB, 811x1298)

1.2 MB PNG

>>3969195
You feel bad for the slap and you decide to comfort Elspeth at least a little. You tell her that you also hope that your uncle is sleeping somewhere in a pod and you would definitely show her your pod, but that would happen at a later date. You do remember that Sam mentioned that there were 300 people in your wave of pods. Elspeth replies that unfortunately, she thinks that Sam was probably hired after she was already frozen and she didn’t have the pleasure of meeting him, but she didn’t know about the new wave of pods. Considering the political backlash, she expected for only the people she has frozen personally to make it. Looks like there are 299 more SGs that she needs to look out for.

Elspeth gets a hold of herself in a few minutes after which you’ve managed to ask her a few questions. First of all, you ask her about the previous generation of gods. She replies that she is not sure where they’ve left, but she knows that it was in the midst of conflict in almost every SG group that existed on the continent at the time. Some left immediately, some fought between each other, some just dissolved and left their separate ways. She thinks that there was some kind of world spanning event that they became aware of that was seriously polarizing and she couldn’t gather enough information to figure out what it was yet. She does suspect that many of the gods of that time are very thoroughly dead and those that survived since that time refuse to talk on this subject.

Regarding the Golden Thread, it is the name of a certain plan to shape human cultural and technological development throughout the ages. Essentially, already twice in our history humans could not control the technology that they’ve mastered and during the Long Night we came way too close to the true end of our times. The Golden Thread is a timeline that the Pantheon attempts to reach. Verdandi is capable of predicting far enough into the future to reasonably steer our current situation away from any foreseen catastrophes. It is a very fine line, it sometimes takes some inhumane actions and sacrifices, but it is the only way to bring humanity to the point where it can survive without the guidance of the Synthetic Gods.

They can’t afford to move progress too quickly or the social instability would crumble the society. They can’t help mortals too much because humans would become dependent on the gods, they can’t leave mortals on their own or Pantheon’s influence would waver and they would no longer have the tools for emergencies. They can’t crush all of the state’s enemies because mortals would fear the gods and so on. There are hundreds of such factors that the Pantheon needs to balance. And if the Pantheon is to fail, Elspeth also wishes to leave the best chances for humanity to thrive without them. At the current rate, she expects to reach information age within the next 900-1200 years with all global Ceilings destroyed within the next 200-250 years.

>>3969263
The normal day of a god… that’s an interesting question. It very much depends on the person. Being a god is like being a very high-profile politician, like a King, a President of a Premiere Minister. You need to work with your face a lot to maintain your position, but at some point, you don’t really have to do that since they now rarely personally snow themselves to mortals. Beyond that you can decide if you want to work on some personal or one of numerous Pantheon’s “community projects”, but beyond that you are free to spend the time however you want. When not monitoring the economy, Sam almost exclusively relaxes in her palace, for example. There is also a risk of burnout if you overload yourself with work, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

“Regarding all of the Psi discussion, it is a very long story, so I don’t think that it would be a good idea to start debating on this topic in the middle of nowhere” Elspeth mentions and suggests to maybe move to some other place…

>Sure, let’s go to Platania
>You’d like to invite her to your home
>Let’s just use the masks and go to a nearby inn
>Other?

Feel free to bombard her with questions

>>3969266
>>Let’s just use the masks and go to a nearby inn


why did she decide to get into the pods at the time she did?

did she know a world ending war was comming?

tell her about the mad goddess and how she wanted to take revenge on her specically

ask how would we be welcomed into the pantheon

the gods and worship, do they really provide power? and can they really form afterlifes like the elves did?

what other regions or gods does she know? we are only aware of the holies valistrad and etheians, along with the wild goddess and the ice goddess


share a drink with Nike, this must be amusing to her

>>3969277
I guess one vote it is. I was writing a response to it, will post in a moment

“That’s an interesting question, I’m a transhumanist, Agatha, and I was allowed to access something that was developed by the first Hyperturing for purposes of human augmentation, it would be strange if I didn’t use it. I didn’t really choose the time when I placed myself in a pod. I froze myself once I made sure that everyone was placed in nanostasis correctly and I leaped in only when I understood that I could stall no longer. If I didn’t place myself in stasis when I did, I would have been sent to jail for thousands of cases of human experimentation or some similar charges. I didn’t know that there would be a nuclear war just decades after the second wave of pods, but it was one of possibilities that the pods were designed to handle, even if it was considered pretty low probability at the time.”

“That’s a pretty apt name, the “Mad Goddess”. I think it is most likely Jane, she was leading psi-borg project that was supposed to develop psi powered bio augmentations for transhuman use. She wasn’t ready at the time and funding was pushed towards my side of parapsychic research, I guess she was pissed. She refused to be placed in nanostasis, but I guess she had her own pod. I’ll keep an eye out for her, thank you for the heads up”

“Well, it is a thing, we just don’t use it much. Basically, Holies pantheon managed to find a way to imprint a psi transfer pattern into their religious practices. As people pray, they send some of their psi energy to their gods which, considering the population, supercharges the recipients.

Afterlives are also a thing. They work roughly like this: you need a certain mastery of Delta Psi, or deep mastery of the Base Psi to create it, but then as a person dies, they have a short window of time before their soul dissolves. If they pray or even sufficiently think of that afterlife’s “anchors” they’d get drawn in and at that point they are basically stuck in a virtual world of your creation. It feels a bit like a lucid dream but better and with less inconsistencies”

“We know lots of different regional pantheons. There are 16 pantheons comparable to us on the continent, but most are at too distant from us to even contact some of them reliably. There are dozens of individual gods that control their own island, Labyrinth geode or some spot in the middle of nowhere like Eira or Tlaltecuhtli. There is also an unknown number of Outsiders who travel across the continent and beyond. We know of certain pantheons only thanks to them.”

>>3969277
>>3969291
Writing the inn option

>>3969266

>Let’s just use the masks and go to a nearby inn

>>3969295
You suggest that Nike’ and Elspeth could use their masking pins and we could just go to some inn nearby. There was one that you saw while you flew here. It was placed on a farmstead near to the road and it is about halfway between Platania and Mirangi. A nice small place for travelers to get some rest and warm food on their way. Both of them agree and engage their masking pins. Elspeth’s hair becomes way less vibrant and her clothes change to something more suitable for a travelling merchant while Nike’ uses one of the pins that she used when visiting Farsalos.

As you make your way, you start discussing how you would be welcomed into the pantheon. Elspeth replies that it would not be that difficult, she would have to look through the myths to explain you away, but if you wish so, you may join in even today. Other gods would probably be thrilled to meet you. You would be recommended to move away from the borders to prevent any unfortunate incidents that stem from sitting in between three warring states, but beyond that you can start enjoying the benefits of being a goddess basically as soon as you want. If you’d prefer to stay in Farsalos, however, there would be some limitations to the help that Ceno Panteon could provide you, but Elspeth hopes to maintain friendly relations with you. It should probably be possible to establish you as an independent goddess like Eira, but it would be more difficult by the fact that you would have a land border between your holdings and three empires. The best and the worst kind of attention you could hope for.

As you make your way to the inn you’ve decided to ask some things about the start of the Psi theory. You remember there was some talk about it on the news in your times but you dismissed it as some occult weirdness like those Memory of Water guys. Elspeth explains that the research has started from a discovery made by the Theory of Mind. Essentially, it was a part of the effort to explain human consciousness for later use in AI and uploading technologies. The result was that a human brain’s calculations fell almost three orders of magnitude short in processing power required to maintain human-like consciousness. At the time it was thought to be some error in calculations.

In late 2020s numerous people across the globe started reporting a discovery of strange and unexplainable powers. Some could, for example, levitate a single biscuit into the air in violation of all laws of physics at the cost of extreme mental exhaustion while others found out how to produce direct current by their fingers and so on. Not actually powerful at all, but unexplainable at the time.

>>3969376
The breakthrough happened when her team of scientists decided to input these two theories among a number of similar cases into an expert system. After days of calculation it has produced something that no one has expected: a complete parapsychic theory. It was something that could only be compared to the discovery of electricity, it was huge. There were some things that it predicted but they didn’t find, such as a universal “afterlife”, but it predicted so much of the theory that it became possible to create psi effectors and utilize them for psi augmentation. It also predicted “self- awakenings”, but they required an intelligence orders of magnitude more potent than human minds with an ability to feel and modify their own psyche as they saw fit, a so called First Singularity being, something that Deep Blue Hyperturing was going to achieve around 2080s at its rate of progress. The psi effects also could only be created by self- aware beings and they are not affected by Darwinian evolution, they are essentially perfect techno- signatures. We assumed that the theory was wrong somewhere, but we could still use it as is. Physicists still couldn’t marry General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics so it was not that big of a stretch. And that’s roughly how it started.

The four of you walk into the inn, order some drinks and sit at the table somewhere near a corner. There you’ve decided to ask a bit more about psi. Elspeth is one of the people who stood at the forefront of this field’s inception after all. You were wondering how to control it better and how to create “enchantments”. Elspeth corrected you saying that most SGs call it “psi circuits” and it is very difficult to explain it on the fingers, but essentially you need to encode a certain pattern into the material that you want to infuse with the circuit. Some patterns can themselves collect psi field’s energy, some can store that energy, some perform calculations and some can produce effect when filled with energy. They respectively are called Psi Collectors, Psi Batteries, Psi Logic and Psi Effectors. There are ways to encode on extremely tiny objects like grains of sand, but it is difficult and usually done unintentionally, which is where Glow-Quartz comes from. Most of these circuits are much bigger and if the object is broken where the circuitry lies the circuit fails and is “dispelled”. Elspeth suggests that it would be better if she shows you how it is done at a later date.

>Order yourself some more drinks and continue asking questions
>You think that you’re done for today, tell Elspeth that you’d contact her through Nike’ regarding of when it would be possible for you to meet the other “gods”
>Other?

>>3969381
>>Order yourself some more drinks and continue asking questions


about the wars going on, what are they about, we can imagine why the other 2 pantheons appear to be....assholish....from what we heard but is the war because of the people or because of the gods?


the labyrinth, what does she know about it, tell her about the dark elves god that we learned and the fate of the refugees we are planning to harbor

ask her if there is anything she would like to know about us too, she can ask her questions and we should answer honestly, only hiding about the kid's pod that we found

ask if she has a list of people that went into the pod for us to check, maybe we know someone else.

>>3969381

>Order yourself some more drinks and continue asking questions

Ask about the country, interesting things we can find and see

Where is the limit we can take technology and interference?

>>3969381

>Order yourself some more drinks and continue asking questions

Any tips?

I'm willing to join them actually, I would just like to have Farsalos be more stable and independent, maybe we could stay here in hiding?
Or we could be a protectorate or something.

Another question

How far was she on the labyrinth and what has she found? Any theories about its formation and purpose?

>>3969393
>>3969404
>>3969413
>>3969446
Alright, writing

>>3969452
“The war is because of both of these things. We have treaties that prohibit our direct involvement into wars of expansion against other states. They can happen if mortals fight in them but we can’t field battalions of Cup Bearers or personally go ham on the enemy army. We could, but only if the opponent uses their synthetic gods or Cups or if they are too close to critical infrastructure like a Polis or one of our more specialized facilities. So, for minor expansion some SGs can stir up mortals to attack territories of other states. Then there are conflicts completely caused by mortals since they also want their states to grow and we live in basically an iron age so international trade doesn’t damper wars for resources.

There are also… holy wars. There are cases when the existence of the pantheon itself causes an external or internal conflict. Sometimes parts of a country believe in something others don’t and they wish to spread it or hamper the spread of it. We… try to minimize those but they happen and it always sucks. It’s honestly better not to touch that subject much, it makes everyone uncomfortable.” Elspeth also mentions that all the pantheons are made of people like you, there are some stereotypes between the pantheons, but that’s the main thing you should consider when trying to understand them.

She also asks a couple questions to you; they are mostly about your successes in Farsalos and about your life before the pod. You don’t mention anything about the second pod in your possession, it is too early for that, but you do tell her about metal plants, about the dwarven settlement and so on. She recommends you not to touch radio transmissions until the Ceilings are dealt with and she thinks that it is fine to build any tier of technology, it is not allowed to spread it to locals which in some cases means not letting locals work in your factories. “For now, I will close my eyes on this since you haven’t signed any treaties, but keep that in mind since we won’t be able to keep your existence secret from other pantheons. You might manage to pull off the same as Holies did, they argued that they are a smaller state and they’d need better technology to survive against Valistrat and Ceno and they’ve already spread the knowledge too far to contain.” So, basically, you can do whatever you want until more people find out about you and then you’d have to sign some limiting treaties.

>>3969549
Regarding the Labyrinth, Elspeth hypothesizes that it is a side effect of whatever psi technique was used to seal the breach in Earth’s crust after “The Contingent”, a faction in the previous era, blasted a hole in the continental plate when testing their weapons of mass destruction. Then their faction participated in joint attempt to seal the resulting breach forming this continent with such weird and unnatural formation as the Labyrinth.

The labyrinth itself seems to have three main layers with interlayer stages lying as the “padding” around these layers which is mostly extrapolated from upper one and a half layers that were possible for the Pantheon to explore. Interlayer spaces are much less porous than layers themselves and the structure is pierced with numerous diamond strands that support the unnaturally porous structure of the Labyrinth. It is also a reason why it is incredibly difficult to cut through the basalt layers which limits exploration even further. Elspeth also thinks that your elf refugee project is a noble cause and she wishes you all the best luck with it. She knew that their goddess has left and the most recent event that happened, but she couldn’t send anyone to check what actually happened in the Town. She hopes that the afterlife maintaining artefacts there are intact.

Elspeth has a list of people who participated in the project. There are 2800 pods scattered across the world roughly in equal measure and you might try to find some names you could recognize, but it is not like you’ve had many friends. These people were either very driven transhumanists, were dealing with something they wished to run away from or had a terminal condition that this project could help with. Not types of people you used to hang out with much. You don’t expect to recognize anyone in the list.

“And for the tips, there is so many you can’t even imagine. I don’t even know where to start, to be honest”
>Ask more questions or wrap up for now

>>3969554
The names list to see if we know someone was just an excuse to see if we can get more information on the kid inside the pod we have.

Ask if we enter the pantheon if we can bring Farsalos over, it is already inside Ceno's borders and the people there consider themselves Cenophilans, they even fought for Ceno in the wars so I don't think it would cause much uproar. If not maybe we could be under Ceno's protection.

I think that's it for now. If ahe has to go, if Nika stays around for a bit longer chat with her, it's always nice having her around...say we are planning on going into the labyrinth some time and she could cine with if she wants

>>3969554
Wrap up for now

>>3969583
>>3969581
Agreed.

Thank her for her time and say that she can visit us someday.

We have to find a new place for the pod now that the ceno gods may know where we are.

>>3969581
This

>>3969581
+1 and then wrap up

>>3969581
>>3969583
>>3969588
>>3969589
>>3969591
Alright, writing

The very last question that you have to Elspeth is if you could take Farsalos along with you if you join them. She personally doesn’t see the problem with relocating all of the people who would wish to do so. In comparison to you joining this won’t be that big of an effort even if they had to buy houses and new stuff for all of them close to the capital. But then again, you might want to keep it as a base of operations. It would be possible for you to basically form a small state and then set up a Ceno protectorate over it allowing them to send military aid to you in cases of dire need. But then again, who would dare to poke a home of a goddess, right?

Regarding the names, she gives you a list, roughly half of them are men and half are women, but the most important point is that none of them is younger than 24 years. Was the little girl projection just memories of an adult woman inside of the pod or was she placed there without Elspeth’s knowledge? Some names are highlighted in red, while some are scratched out. Elspeth explains that the red names went very wrong while the scratched-out names are confirmed to be dead synthetic gods. There are not many of either, to be fair.

In any case, you finally both run out of questions and after finishing a serving of local watery ale, you decided to call it a day. Elspeth decides to pay for you and heavily tips the owner of this inn. Both Nike’ and Elspeth said that they have stuff to do afterwards and when they leave the door, they both have to teleport out leaving you and Mina to stand outside of the inn alone. “Well, this was a good meeting” you tell yourself with a small sigh.

“May I ask a question, ma’am? Why did you hit her at the beginning?” asks Mina. “That was the message, Dan asked me to send it to her. I kind of feel bad about it now” you tell her back. “It’s time to head back, I guess” you say as you float up along with your Cup and head back towards your village. Time to get back to the salt mines…
______________________________________________
I’m sorry, but I’ll have to cut this session short. The medication that I’m taking made it very difficult to continue writing and I can barely focus enough to spellcheck myself. Feel free to ask questions, give suggestions and discuss. Recommended subject for today is what you’d like to do at the start of the next thread. Someone mentioned that it might be prudent to move the girl’s pod to a new location so maybe a new lab is in order. I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s session and see you next week.

>>3969723
thanks for running

>>3969723
Thanks for running and I hope you can get better fast

As mentioned, we might want to move the giris pod
But what is our longterm goal with hr anyway?
Aside from freeing her/completing the process.
Maybe trying to find a relative?
If so, how would we be able to do that without communicating with her.

>>3975343

if we can learn more about psy maybe we could find a way to get into her dream state? maybe talk to her....I don't remember clearly but wasn't she affecting people's dreams or was it the interdimentional abomination that we killed?

>>3975349
No it seemed like she broadcasted her dreams/memories in a certain radius, at least to those sleeping in it
I am not sure if we can use that to communicate, since it's a chaotic dreamscape even after saving her from her main stress factor

>>3975411
with the right application of psy I bet we could do it, we could practice with Haven, she has some psy potential right?

buuuuut we would probably need the help of that mind goddess to learn how to do this, she seems like the best bet we have of someone being capable of such things

>>3975343
I think that the biggest point of having the pod is that you’d have access to an SG. Essentially you’d have a chance to make a 2 god pantheon which would make it much more difficult to push you around on that level. If we save her she would basically owe us, but if Ceno pantheon saves her then it is much more likely that she would join them. It is a bit cynical but someone has to mention that factor so that it is considered.

>>3975439
Ah yes, I thought that was already clear
We could make a deal with elspeth to get her help in opening the pod and since she is a child keep her hidden until we can find a parent or something, because the girl should have the right to make her own decisions in this
Ceno might not get a new goddess, but even in that case a connection to another pantheon to be in their debt is still very valuable

>>3975446
Also the reason why Elspeth is not trying to talk Ag into joining Ceno pantheon is because there is a lot of value in buffer states. Basically if you join Ceno it is great for them but if you do your own thing while you are friendly with Ceno it is still very good for them. I feel like I should mention that

>>3975455
True, did not think of that

>>3975455
I still would like to join, become an ally or a protectorate of Ceno, alone we are tooo vulnerable and we will not be able to stay hidden forever, and they proved to be decent sort, at least the ones we know and the general condition of the population, besides, Elspeth seems to care about uncle and that is a plus

>>3969723
Hey guys, potentially bad news. I have a task that I need to do for my finances course that I'm running late with. If I won't manage to finish everything tomorrow I will be forced to postpone this week's game until the next week. Wish me luck.

>>3979155
good luck!

>>3979155
may the odd be ever in your favour and your χ abundant,
so that you reach your final form,
and successfully file it.

>>3979197
>>3979167
Yep, looks like I need Saturday for uni preparations. We'll be skipping this week's thread, sorry.

>>3980772
No problem QM, good luck with uni and see you next week, have a nice christmas(agmas)

>>3980772
np, real life comes first. good luck with everything!

>>3980772
its alright, concentrate on your studies, have a nice holidays/christmas/whatever and see you next time

>>3969723
>>3969723
There is a thing that I think we should discuss. One of the players PM’d me on Discord and voiced a concern about covert construction. Basically, everything that we’ve built is known to the villagers in both purpose and location. It might be mildly suspicious if we start hauling materials into the depth of the forest and not telling anyone why. My proposal is that to hide the assembly of the second pod’s hiding spot we could mask it with some other deep forest construction such as repairing that burned down village or building a new one. We have to go and retrieve those who wish to stay with Ag basically as soon as the next thread starts anyway.

The other subject that we should discuss is how and where to hide the second pod. If we don’t hide it there is a high chance that it could be randomly found through its emission during Ceno pantheon’s visits. We could dump a sealed subterranean “bunker” of sorts which is a cleaner equivalent of burying the pod in the ground far away from the village until it is needed. We could also create a separate underground storage/lab somewhere deep in the forest if you want to have a separate complex but someone or something might discover the entrance. The third alternative that I see is to hide it in a new construction like inside of a powerplant since few would question a “caution: superheated steam” on a door near to a steam engine.

>>3982996
Hmmm, would making a power generator with those rods and hiding the pod near them work to mask it?

Those rods have a pretty big power emission and consumption so the pod would be hidden I imagine.

Failing that I think under the forest village village or a complex near the labirynth dark elf refugge city would work well since we wpuld need the material on both locations

>>3983033
I’d say that we don’t know enough about psi to know for sure if that would mask it. After all, is this drain going to deplete girl’s psi resource enough to halt the transmissions? I was thinking more of a relatively remote place that is not literally in the city center that won’t attract as much Ceno attention. Deep lead lined bunker below the powerplant or something similar might work as is even if we don’t use the rods.

>>3984464
A bunker underground near the labyrinth where emissions are not that strange may work well, if we can supress it enough with lead and other covers whatever emission that escapes can be considered normal for the region

>>3984464
Wait, how about our old place? Where we woke up? Our pod was hidden there all thise years and nobody found it.

>>3984473
The place where the pod was? I’d say that you could renovate it a bit, but you did dig out of it and closed the hole with a steel door. You could clean it up and place some reinforced wooden door or that steel door could do the trick but then again what if Elspeth would ask you to show her where you woke up? Or if someone or something found it?

>>3984798
Well, shit. I have some bad news. Apparently an exam that I was expecting on Friday is moved to Saturday. We'll have to move the session again. I'll see if we could do it next Sunday instead and possibly if I could compensate with something. Sorry.

>>3986399
No need to worry, end of the year is a busy time for everyone too

>>3986399
don't worry, take the time you need

>>3986399
This thread is archived. Still debating on how to compensate. Most likely I'll manage to run on Sunday. I'll post on Twitter and Discord on Saturday regarding whether I'll manage to run this week.