Elliott: There's a darkness upon the stage, but Sadabus blows it up.
BOOM!
Sadabus: Jazz hands.
Elliott: Thus our story begins with 120d6 of Not-damage.
Sadabus: lambd6 :fuguechip:
Gailizia: To our misfortune, sadabus always rolls triple 6s.
Elliott: Where is Sadabus, when we begin? It's been perhaps a day since what went down went down with the Custodian and Gaidel and…
…you know. The Happening. The Unpleasantness.
Sadabus: I'm enjoying a nice, relaxing weekend in my upside-down sanctuary reading tomes of black magic.
We've finally gotten all those pesky legal troubles sorted out…
I achieved a minor vengeance on Osamunda (for now)…
Everything is basically lovely and nothing in our delightful chapter of darkness is going wrong.
Gailizia: Gailizia hasn't even stopped you from murdering someone for like, a week!
Sadabus: I know, you've all been so quiet!
- Sadabus levitates his book of goetia with one hand while levitating a backscratcher with the other. :spotcreation:
- Sadabus pops a Revenant Rite as he enjoys this moment of peaceful indulgence.
Gailizia: Truly livin' it up.
Elliott: What about our other friends?
Semegastes: Semegastes is trying to wheedle some useful magical tidbits out of Sadabus that might help with stabilizing an Emissary, but instead he is reading his book about goats and relaxing!
Sadabus: "What's an Emissary again? Also, have you seen Radegesis?"
"It's been a while since I heard a sudden crashing noise."
Semegastes: "Radegesis is…" Seme pulls out Everett's phone, checks the page views on the livestream from the Incident, refreshes, and sees that it's gone up by one again. "Probably still watching that video." :fuguechip:
Sadabus: "There's a video? Has she finally gone viral?"
"Her viral, not your viral."
"Did you ever go viral? Her viral again, not yours."
Gailizia: Annalee has been going back and forth with some of Gailizia's other flores. Aside from the fan chat, the others haven't really seen her die like this before. She's… doing fine, if you ask her.
Gailizia is elsewhere.
Scalbrand has been with Annalee a lot, lately.
Semegastes: "Yes, except it sucks and is horrible for her, possibly because she isn't an experienced e-celebrity."
Sadabus: "I haven't heard from Gailizia, either. Probably doing a week of miming to scrub off the horrid residue of Creation."
It becomes evident that Sadabus has not been paying attention to anything that's been going on lately.
Which explains his good mood.
- Sadabus spotlights this in order to politely indicate that as a result of spending the past two months in a state of perpetual overcommitment, he doesn't actually know what an Emissary is and has only the faintest idea of what the Incident actually was from people's Twitter comments.
- Sadabus hopes that he may be forgiven now that all of his sins are encapsulated in the Bad Year and are no longer a valid target for effects.
Semegastes: "Emissaries are…" and then Semegastes explains what Emissaries are.
Semegastes: "So, the whole Tri-County area is like a landfill for the refuse of the Bellum Magnum."
"Emissaries are… Excrucians? Maybe? But they're commingled with the Is, and, I am told, they inevitably lead to gigantic catastrophes."
Sadabus: "So… exactly like an annuja, then."
Gailizia:
themotleyfoole: they're like when you try to whip egg whites but got yolk in the mix
Semegastes: "When Gailizia merged Uul and Scalbrand, that apparently created an Emissary, which is why Mr. Oh-I-Know-So-Much-More-Than-You Warmain ripped them apart, in addition to him being just the worst."
Elliott: Semegastes: Awfully Sure They're Right Since Time Immemorial.
Semegastes: Semegastes peeks at Sadabus' grimoire and looks thoughtful. "Maybe… we could make some kind of goat that would eat up all the disaster?"
Sadabus: Sadabus can't remember whether he favored or opposed doing that, but he definitely thought it was dumb to get involved in the first place which is good enough to consider himself Right Since Time Immemorial.
Sadabus considers. "That… is at least close to how goetia works."
"Ultimately a law-being is simply a collection of, well, laws, and, you know, contingent bits. In this case, angels have strength and beauty and such—"
At this Sadabus bites his tongue as a really terrible idea passes through his mind.
Gailizia: :spotattention:
Sadabus: "—but if we could separate those elements, we could potentially pull out the bits you don't like."
"It's not really that different from the process I use to create Mimics."
Semegastes: :spotattention: So, tell us about the Mimics that Sadabus has made. :sadmote:
Sadabus: (Sadabus is thinking that using formism for evil and disassembling Uul could potentially give him a lot of raw material for Frankenfurtering a boyfriend together.)
- Sadabus considers this question.
Elliott: Aaaand somehow this becomes the Rocky Horror Episode.
- Sadabus considers answering that he broke the True God of Gender in order to invent the himbo, but that is too far.
Honestly, Mimics are hard to invent.
Gailizia: We didn't actually get the body back, right?
Elliott: You did not.
Presumably, Gaidel has it or knows where they put it.
- Sadabus considers.
Gailizia: …and I guess we technically already have half in the form of Scalbrand, but that's less helpful for Sadabus.
- Sadabus considers Sadabus' interests, which probably revolve around Law somehow, since his major beef with Creation is his perception that the whole show is arbitrary and doesn't follow its own rules.
Sadabus: "Anyway, the principle is sound. We just need the two corpses and then we disassemble them into their base elements, then pick out the ones that will cause the disaster of which you spoke."
Semegastes: "…well, ideally, neither of them would be corpses."
Sadabus: "Assuming we have enough raw material. Perhaps we could disassemble Osamunda or somebody for spare parts?"
Sadabus: "I suppose you can be disassembled and then die, which is good because Osamunda is known to be immortal. I suppose Uul could go on technically 'living' in that state."
Elliott:
galileogalileogalileo: good luck with that.
Sadabus: "Oh, my dear. To be eternally dying is quite awful, but to live eternally with no possibility of death is to have no cap on your potential for suffering at all."
- Sadabus isn't even really sure who he's talking to. He probably didn't broadcast his nobilisection plan to the web.
Semegastes: "I'm sure it's not at easy as just… here's the doom organ, yank it out, problem solved. Gaidel says others have tried to fix it, and they've always failed, and we're not lucky enough for it to just be that everyone who went before us was an idiot."
"Maybe instead of taking pieces out, we add something in?"
Sadabus: "That's what I said, yeah."
"Or I suppose we could use, like… extra flour, to thicken the mixture."
"We could… bake an angel."
Semegastes: "I think what would just end up as an eschatological cake, that tastes awful."
Sadabus: "How difficult could it truly be, if even Cneph could do it?"
Semegastes: "Oh! I forgot to tell you, Rad killed Gailizia."
Sadabus: "wait what"
Semegastes: "It was an accident and she's extremely bummed about it."
"We're trying to sort of tiptoe around it."
Sadabus: "Okay, let me just put a tiny pin in this angel food cake plan…"
- We pull back to a sudden distance shot of the upside-down castle vibrating around as Sadabus begins shouting.
- The chapter ends.
Gailizia: Somewhere, outside Sadabus' Sanctuary, Annalee is frying something up to eat while Scalbrand sits at the table, half-heartedly toying with a bundle of electrical components.
On the radio, were anyone paying close attention, there is the sound of someone singing a half-remembered tune and the flow of running water.
"Though they wander… hmmmmm, haaaaa… picking o'er the furthest shore… my love, my love… wait, or is it wracking? Been too long to remember."
The singer sighs.
"No matter. Won't be much longer until I see… home, again." :spotdecisive:
- Gailizia invokes the Revenant Rite.
Sadabus: I cast a spotlight on Gailizia's circumstances.
:spotcreation:
Gailizia: The sound of running water. The impression of the rushes against your skin. The stars above twinkle in the lightlessness. She is cleaning nothing in particular in the waters, lost in thought, river stones stones sparkling with electric flashes of not-color as they click together under shifting weights. The air here is clean, and she could be- is- happy for a time, but it is not her place of being. :fuguechip:
Sadabus: tfw you accidentally spotlight someone while they're bathing
Gailizia: TBH, I'm done here if you want to move to the next chapter.
Sadabus: XP for all!
Semegastes: XP for some, tiny American flags for all!
Elliott: So, now that Sadabus has been brought back up to speed, where does our unlikely duo of Sad and Seme find themselves drawn to next? Are they out seeking reagents for their Frankening, checking in on their various enterprises, or something else entirely?
Sadabus: I still don't actually know what happened, but sure, let's just roll with it.
Semegastes: Semegastes is probably inclined to let their plans simmer a bit for now, so maybe onto something different?
Sadabus: Sadabus has stopped yelling and has simply plunged his fingers into an empty notebook he keeps for this purpose, which is rapidly filling with words none of you can read.
Presumably they are swears in ancient and magical languages.
Gailizia: Wizard swears…
Sadabus: :spotlight: Oh, let's Revenant again while I purge myself of these angry wizard emotions.
"This is… fine," says Sadabus. "I'm sure it will all… work itself out. Somehow."
Semegastes: Maybe move it along with a quest flavor?
Can I declare that `a minion makes a considerable demand of you`?
Sadabus: I can't stop you!
Elliott: Which among your minions seems most likely to make a demand?
Sadabus: …all of them?
I basically run Unseen University only it's also Hollywood.
- Sadabus tries to think of something more helpful.
Gailizia: We haven't seen Helena for a while.
Sadabus: Did we ever get what's-his-name out of the attic?
Gailizia: Or maybe one of your boy toys?
Semegastes: Helena is probably the one we owe the biggest favor.
Sadabus: Helena.
Elliott: Helena seems likely.
Through the mirror and into the world, you find yourselves in the parlor-office of Helena Wickermore. She's made herself quite cozy at your studio, Sadabus. You're not sure how much she engages with the broadcast part, but she seems to have the day-to-day magic stuff in hand, able to take things off your plate when they inevitably start to spill over. But she is still, for all of it, undead. And she's been morose about it, sure, but in a resigned way. Resurrection is a pipe dream. But today, when you and Semegastes emerge from your castle, she's standing there, an ancient folio in hand and her eyes full of dangerous purpose.
Sadabus: I approve of this.
Elliott: "You know, of course, how grateful I am to be alive again, even in this reduced capacity," she says. There's this thing in how she's approaching you where it's obvious that she's flattering you, but in a way that makes you know she knows it. It's very much the obsequious version of the wine scene from Princess Bride. "But I have found what I believe might be a slight upgrade. Of course, it might require a teensy bit of graverobbing."
Sadabus: "You intend to become a demilich?"
- Sadabus nods approvingly.
Semegastes: "Or, like… alive?" Semegastes asks, with a smug tone to cover up for not knowing what makes a lich demi-.
Gailizia:
clownfucker69: demilich is basically the same thing as a demiboy, right. just for lich-ness
Sadabus: Oh, well, let me explain!
Elliott: "Alive indeed," she says with a smile. "I've been tracking certain forces, correlating them with certain texts, and I believe I've located a locus of raw power. Some refer to this as the resurrection pit."
Sadabus: You see, a demi-lich is a lich whose magical power is so far advanced that they have largely unfettered themselves from the limits of their physical body and exist largely in astral form, plumbing the recesses of existence for wisdom.
Sadabus: On the physical plane they are mostly an empty shell animated by powerful magic, since their true intellect is in the higher reaches.
Thus do they combine all the most powerful attributes of the evil wizard and the himbo. :fuguechip:
Gailizia:
clownfucker69: oh so like a sapiosexual. sapiolichual. :fuguechip:
Semegastes: "And are we going to be digging up… a test corpse?"
Sadabus: "This seems like a total downgrade, but who am I to question a blasphemous ritual?"
It's not like I couldn't have made her alive again if I'd wanted to…
Elliott: "We're going to dig up the source itself."
She shows you a few things from the folio, pointing out maps and the like.
Semegastes: :spotreckoning: on any relevant details, plus who's grave is it in?
Elliott: So, Semegastes might notice that she's had to print maps of the Tri-County Area and reconcile them with those in the folio. That's neat! But they might also notice that the name of whatever made the pit… it's all messed up. Like, you try and look at it and almost bounce right off; it's corrupted and jumbled and overlaid atop all the chaos you sense the texture of an identity: `The Mendicant.`
Sadabus: "Are we going to need to carry this home with us?"
"Oh, let's bring Apox; he loves bones."
Semegastes: "Sadabus… do you really want Helena and Apox in the same room?" Seme stage whispers, "what with them both being your nemeses?"
Gailizia: Annalee looks over one of your shoulders, a fork in one hand and a plate of hot hash browns in the other. "Oh, are you all going to be messing with the zoning board or something now?"
Semegastes: "Magic zombie hole."
Sadabus: "I do not currently have a dedicated nemesis," said Sadabus. "I am 'playing the field.'"
"Also, Madam Wickham and Apox are both my minions and therefore not free to nemese me."
Elliott: "I am no one's minion," Apox protests, whining at Annalee's feet for a spare bit of hashbrown. "I am one of the enlightened elect!"
Sadabus: "An excellent reason to be my minion."
Semegastes: "And there's like, no way they might team up to get revenge on you, you think?"
Gailizia: "Well, let me know if you do declare any nemeses with county governance, because they do pay me and I'd like forewarning."
She focuses on the name on the map.
"Is this another one of those Emissaries?"
- Gailizia "drops" some hash browns by her feet.
Gailizia: "Anyway, I have no idea what this is, either, so, good job, Wickham!"
Elliott: Helena doesn't seem to know what Emissaries are.
So she just shrugs at Annalee.
Sadabus: Sadabus doesn't really, either, but he's eager to find out! Let's break open the seals on this baby and see if it is one.
- Sadabus summons some hench-men, who are like minions, but the buff kind. Specifically, the kind of buff where lugging a coffin around is easy enough that you don't make a spectacle of yourself doing it.
Gailizia: "Hmm. Scalbrand might come along with yall since Gailin is still—" she almost trips over her words and pauses a second- "out."
Sadabus: "I thought some Warmain killed that thing."
Semegastes: "How's Scal doing, what with the-" Semegastes mimes being a world-ending cosmic god, and then having an Angel ripped out of you.
(It's kinda like miming being Godzilla, and then having your heart ripped out)
Sadabus: Fucking Warmains, can't do anything right.
Anyway.
Off! To the graveyard!
Sadabus swoops away dramatically, cloak merging with the night.
Eventually he wanders back to work out the driving arrangements.
Elliott: Chapter Get: 1 XP
Gailizia: She scratches behind her head with the hand holding the fork.
"It was hard to console the first few days, but now I think it's taking it as… a kind of lesson in loneliness? Ask it yourself, if you want."
Elliott: And our next chapter opens… at the Dara County Public Pool.
Semegastes: "This is not a grave, Helena."
Sadabus: "Perhaps we should come back in the daytime."
Elliott: "In fairness," Helena says, skeptical herself, "it is very hard to get a good map here."
It's night, but also, there's tons of people.
So many people.
Especially people in robes.
Sadabus: "Vampire moonbathers?"
Elliott: There's a line of them waiting to enter the pool, where a balding man is… I guess baptizing them? There's a lot of singing and hymning going on.
Sadabus: …regular hymning or, like, evil hymns?
At least tell me there's a sexy lifeguard.
Gailizia: Could be a sexy priest, with how this is going.
Elliott: Regular hymning, which is to say: PG, but still unsettling.
Sadabus: "It would appear that we are beset by… Baptists."
Elliott: The priest isn't sexy, but the guy who's kind of managing the line is.
Semegastes: "Out of the way, poolboys, e-celeb coming through!"
Intensity to cut to the front of the line.
Sadabus: Sadabus decides to let the celebrity take point.
Elliott: "I'm gonna pee in it," Apox says, softly but with determination.
Gailizia: Scalbrand steps out from one of the vehicles you came in; it's taller than it was, a full adult height now. It follows after Semegastes.
Elliott: To your surprise, the sexy man with the clipboard interposes himself in front of you, Semegastes! It looks like it took some pluck to do so, but he did.
Sadabus: Call me when it's time to just transmogrify them all and be done with it.
Elliott: "I'm sorry, friend, but if you want to receive the father's blessing, you'll have to wait in line. It's not fair to all these good folks who've waited so patiently."
Semegastes: "This is the Semegastes Sarcocystidae Automatic Funk-o-tronic Eschatonic 24-Hour Livestream coming at you from Dara County Public Pool, Tri-County Area, Wracking Shore, and long-time livestream guest Helena has taken us to a resurrection pit, which, it turns out, is a bunch of people in cloaks lining up to get what may very well just be ordinary Christian baptism, at a public pool, at night!"
"I was hoping to give your blessed father's rites some extra publicity by getting baptized, live, on camera, on YouTube!"
Elliott: "I… uhm …hi," he says to the camera, but stays in your way. The man looks flustered, but resolute.
Semegastes: "I was specially invited! See?" Semegastes waves Everett's phone, which could potentially be displaying an e-vite on the screen with how little time line guy gets to see it. "Could you check with, I don't know, your supervisor, or whoever's telling you what to do?"
This craven act is a `Stunt` of being an e-celeb.
Sadabus: Sadabus pulls out his magic mirror and just Googles to figure out who this is.
Elliott: "I… uhm, I am the supervisor," he says, now more sheepish than before. "But… I guess if you're just video-streaming? On your cellular telephone? That's probably fine. If you could just step this way." He gestures to get you on the other side of the pool, away from the line of people walking into the shallow end and meeting the pastor in the middle to get dunked on.
Semegastes: Ah, to the place where Instagram influencers go to get beaten with tire irons.
How could Semegastes not go that way!
Gailizia: When Scalbrand speaks, it's through Semegastes' phone speakers and the man's own, or any radio he might have. Its voice is much more cohesive than it was before.
Who is the Father?
Sadabus: …oh. God.
Semegastes: Yeah, that guy!
Sadabus: This is going to lead to something so blasphemous it wraps around to being holy and then back around to being blasphemous again, and yet Sadabus still disapproves.
Elliott: "The father?" the man asks, and a strange look plays across his face. "He's just the father. He's come to bless the faithful here. You've got faith, right? In something? We're pretty egalitarian about that. It's the having that matters."
Semegastes: "We're all a faith-having crowd here, by those pretty generous standards, but I'm streaming international worldwide interplanetary, and some of our audience may not be familiar with the father. Can you fill them in?"
Gailizia: It tilts its head, curious.
My faith is in the self I tore from the flesh of the world. What do you have faith in?
Elliott: "This seems all kinds of unwholesome," Apox says. "Why don't you just go ahead and nuke the place, Sadabus? Buddy? Master?"
Semegastes: Apox anti-Christian moments
Elliott: "Dark Lord," Apox ventures.
- Helena rolls her eyes at this.
Gailizia:
`hotquackbatarang: oh shit r/apox is gonna have a field day with that clip`
`hotquackbatarang: nu atheist nerds`
Sadabus: "I think it would be for the best," agrees Sadabus.
Elliott: "The father… he's just here to help cleanse us all. The world's a dirty place, isn't it?"
Sadabus: Okay, I'm spotlighting all the various spells I could use to break up this situation before somebody baptizes an Actual.
Gailizia: Scalbrand stills seems as confused as is plausible for a bear's head.
Nnn…no?
, it tries.
It is wrongful, but it is not… dirty? Unless you have been rolling in dirt? :fuguechip:
Semegastes: "Uh oh, folks. Sounds like we've found the dark side of the Mr. Clean fandom! No, I'm just kidding, my guy, tell us more. What kind of cleansing does the father do, and Sadabus, depending on the answer, maybe Apox is right."
:fuguechip:
Sadabus: I still don't have my minotaur…
Elliott: "It… makes you dirty. But the right kind," he says, and there's a terrible sense of familiarity to all of this. "It's not about wiping away sin. Just about reconciling yourself to it."
"Oh, I instantly regret everything," Helena says.
Semegastes: Semegastes stops talking in the livestreamer putting-on-a-performance voice, and yells at Helena, "hey, you were right, this is it! Good job!"
Sadabus: Okay, I'm starting 'er up.
Elliott: "Not a great day to be right," says Helena.
Sadabus: I start doing random transmogrifications, starting at the back of the line.
Gailizia:
How does this… reconcile you? What is the deeper gyre of correlation?
Sadabus: Looks like our first result is… "wemic."
Gailizia: What's a wemic?
Elliott: "C'mon, Dark Lord!" Apox says, suddenly shrinking down to sit on Sadabus' shoulder. "Lots of fire! Then ice! Then salt!"
Sadabus: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Wemic
Gailizia: Oh, a lion-taur.
Semegastes: "You know, maybe we should just…"
Semegastes: `Greater Destruction` on all the pool water.
Elliott: So… there's a tiny problem, Semegastes.
Sadabus: Oh, just let me use horrid wilting, it's cheaper.
Elliott: You turn your attention to the pool, will away the water.
- Sadabus goes on a polymorphing tear.
Elliott: A very thin layer disappears. But not most of it.
Most of what's here? It's mud, and not just the wet dirt of Creation, but also the cloying gold-clay muck of the Not, churning with promise.
You might then realize that there's not an exit line.
Gailizia: I'd been wondering about that.
Sadabus: Sexy man with clipboard: minotaur!
Theoretically-holy man: parakeet!
Semegastes: "All my viewers out there, I am pretty sure this is not just a regular Christian night baptism." :fuguechip:
Sadabus: "We might need someone to look that up. I'm not familiar with every denomination."
Elliott: Sadabus, your miracle bounces off the clipboard man and the father.
Sadabus: WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO ACQUIRE A MINOTAUR
:fuguechip:
Elliott: I mean, you've got lots of other taurs!
Gailizia: Spend more Cost.
Elliott: And also that.
Gailizia: This is the price of leaving it to chance.
Elliott: Clipboard man will probably hit you for ~3; the father will be a full on conflict if you try.
Sadabus: I didn't become a lord of darkness by just randomly gulping down Stilling every time somebody turns out to be a Power or something.
"Fiends!" calls Sadabus as he turns somebody into a pterodactyl. "Worshippers of mud!"
Semegastes: "Well, folks, I don't think this is a problem that can be solved by livestreaming it, no matter how much folks have been donating. So, get ready to brace for some technical issues…"
Gailizia: Scalbrand looks at the mud and speaks to the clipboard man.
Seems strange to put them into the mud to clean them of dirtiness.
Sadabus: Oh, wait!
I can use transmute mud to rock.
Elliott: The father, covered in muck to his waist, smiles at the lot of you and makes a beckoning gesture.
Sadabus: And I do.
Wait, are there people in there?
There might be people in there.
Elliott: There are about ten folks in there.
Sadabus: "Apox," says Sadabus, "I think you should reconsider your plans to urinate in this pool."
"When you pee into the abyss… the abyss also pees into you."
Semegastes: ‘Greater Talent`: Strained beyond its limits, Semegastes’ Eide shatters, and what emerges is a vast androgynous figure - like their Costumery, only unclothed, and with wings sprouting from its shoulder blades and shoulders and heels and more besides. A thousand whirling eyes of glass and lightning orbit it, bearing witness to the power of an e-celebrity unleashed. :fuguechip:
Semegastes: And then kaiju-Semegastes kneels down, scoops up a big glob of mud, and swallows it.
Sadabus: WHAT DID I JUST SAY?
Semegastes: And keeps doing that until the pool is empty.
Elliott: The mud slides down your kaiju-gullet, and the father smiles. As you drain it bite by bite, you see the layers of bodies that have piled up at the bottom of the deep end…and you can see a light coming from the pool's drain there. An ancient, terrible, golden-green light.
Semegastes: Are they alive bodies?
Sadabus: https://castlevania.fandom.com/wiki/Legion
Elliott: The bodies are not alive.
Elliott: (There's a certain unwholesomeness to the mud; it's probably going to be 1 Immersion and 1 Fugue to digest it.)
Semegastes: nom nom
Gailizia: It points to the father, finger segmented and insectile and sharp, voice ringing from the pool's PA system.
Explain yourself.
"It's a bad time to be lonely," the father says. The father. The father. There's a heat haze around him; a shimmer. Now that you're really looking… isn't he familiar?
And isn't that light terrible?
Gailizia: :spotreckoning: Tell me of the father.
Elliott:
Mud-Soaked Emissary
T̶̞̈́h̸̆͌ĕ̴̀ ̶͐̋C̷̀̚u̴̧̓s̴̘̐t̴̥͝o̴̐̓d̸̨͒i̴͑̃a̷̟̓n̴̒̀
It's that guy.
Semegastes: Semegastes brings down their fists on the bottom of the pool, pulping corpses and shattering tile to get at the Thing underneath.
Sadabus: "Well, this is just gross," says Sadabus, and considers what would be useful in this situation.
Semegastes: "RAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGH"
Elliott: The Thing underneath is a figure wearing a tasseled cap and robes that billow around withered limbs, mummy-thin and impossibly long. Where he touches you, Semegastes, you feel a withering. If there's enough of you still coherent to check your phone, you'd see your bank accounts draining, your custom emojis replaced with the basic kit, and even the shedding of followers.
Sadabus: Well, that's even grosser.
How was this blasphemous resurrection of Helena's even supposed to work? :spotcreation:
Elliott: "I know this isn't a great time to ask," Helena says, "but maybe you could get them to save me a piece of…that? Interesting properties to be sure."
I mean, she was absolutely right. This is a place where life and death are mixed up beyond all hope of repair. If she'd gotten to marshal the forces here, it would have been completely doable! But life and death are messed up here because it's the prison-sepulcher of one of the Emissaries, now awakened.
Semegastes: Semegastes speaks in a voice that is being shared across all their social media platforms even as they speak their words. "OFFICIAL SEMEGASTES SARCOCYSTIDAE EMISSARY MUD $29.99 PER EIGHT OUNCE JAR SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED BUY BUY BUY"
Sadabus: "Well, then," says Sadabus.
"Our plan was to dissect an angel down to its basic formist components and work with the most basic laws of Creation in order to form a new and complete and non-apocalyptic being."
Semegastes: Semegastes is gonna rassle it.
Sadabus: "We now find ourselves having the opportunity to put this theory to a practical test."
"Don't wrassle it; dissect it!" calls Sadabus.
Semegastes: "HASH TAG GIRL BOSS"
Elliott: Whether wrassle or dissect, the being responds in kind, assumping their own kaiju form — that of a wasting wind, full of prayer and austerity. It is a vacuum; into its gullet goes all fanciness, all pretense, all artistry and comfort. Even the hats of the assembled Strategists!
Gailizia: There is a moment where Scalbrand's eyes flare in rage, but it brings its hands together and breathes in, and then out, speaking next with it's actual throat, glancing to Sadabus.
You need it vivsected? Torn asunder? Broken and made not itself?
Sadabus: "…yes," says Sadabus.
Elliott: And WOOF!
Sadabus: "My hat!"
Elliott: Apox is a very extra boi and apparently counts as enough of a luxury to get caught up in the singularity.
Sadabus: I disintegrate the hat before it can be stolen.
:fuguechip: That shit's a mystic link.
Semegastes: Semegastes takes hold of either size of the vacuum-gullet, and begins to streeetch.
Sadabus: "Scalbrand, reduce it to pure information, so that I may see about using it to make you whole (and also achieve mastery over life and death)." :sadmote:
Semegastes: :spotreckoning: Is that a thing Scalbrand does?
Sadabus: I dunno; it offered.
You want to atomize something; ask a molecule.
Hm, what miracle do I need to use to examine this bullshit at the logical level, ensure its proper disassembly, and acquire the machine code of life and death?
I'm going to suggest Greater Casting.
Since that's what makes Mimics.
Semegastes: Greater Casting makes places.
This does not sound like making a place.
Sadabus: Wait, no, it's Greater Invocation that does that.
Elliott: So I'm thinking we might want a full-on conflict here.
Semegastes: Makes sense.
Sadabus: Seems reasonable.
I still need to come up with a plan for Greater Invocation, which I assume kind of amounts to: Semegastes holds the Emissary in place; Scalbrand starts carving it to bits, while I do some spectacular ritual miracle that more or less drains away everything but the source code of this creature, which I then separate into individual strands that I can piece together later.
Gailizia: Yeah, I'm just writing up a thing since I'm working a few angles with this action.
You mean Inchoation, the Lore miracle, right?
Sadabus: No, Invocation, the planning miracle that lets you attack, bind, or banish using your mastery of Lore.
Elliott: I'm going to pin this as "a few exchanges;" maybe no more than three. The minimum Cost to clear is a semi-secret, but it's over 25.
Sadabus: Ah, well.
Elliott: Accordingly, please keep track of your Costs with each exchange.
Sadabus: I'm going to start by spending 31 Fugue on an epic Greater Invocation.
Elliott: o-o
Sadabus: …can we start a new scene? I'm out of spotlights.
Gailizia: I'm good either way, but regardless I'm gonna spend a spotlight in my action.
Elliott: Are you serious about the Invocation?
Sadabus: Extremely.
Elliott: I assume you're aiming for the wind-kaiju?
Sadabus: Yeah. My aim to to walk away with a handful of law-being Estates, a handful of Wyrd, and maybe some pocket change, all conveniently-separated and ready for new configuration.
I activate the sorcery I had prepared in advance, and seventy-times-seven magic circles appear in the sky over the graveyard heart, each one smaller than the last.
It is effectively a very large microscope.
Its function? To look.
Perception, of course, is violence. :fuguechip:
Elliott: Semegastes and Gailizia are entitled to their actions, and then we'll attend this thing that you have definitely done.
Sadabus: Yes, if y'all could just pin this thing down and then maybe maul it a bit…
Helena sits in the middle of the chaos and reapplies her nail polish.
She is well aware that, in the absence of any practical thing she can do, being noticeably unflappable is a great way to earn brownie points with the dark lord.
I teach a class on style on Tuesdays and Thursdays!
Semegastes: Semegastes is doing their level best to rip this thing in two, with their sustained `Greater Talent`.
Gailizia:
Somewhere else, someone familiar reads:
In the beginning, at the start of the world, Cneph invented loneliness. They didn't know at the time, but looking back- they were alone. They were fearful of what they had done. The void was alight with their crime.
And so they continued to Make.
But the things that came before still remembered that loneliness, and held it close to their hearts. The pain of it, the joy of it, the existential weight of it. They were hungry, and could not be sated. They were cold, and could not know warmth. They were the logic that built worlds, but not the things which could enjoy those worlds they built.
"…Maybe I'll read something else, one of my other books."
But instead they put it away, lay back, and send their spirit to dream of Creation, and those they left behind.
`Revenant Rite, running Cost at 2`
Scalbrand looks to the windstorm Mendicant and unravels itself.
I am the Law and the Void and the logic that precedes form. I have bent the arc of the world to myself. And I am the spines that cage you in wherever your formlessness may turn, wherever your austerity may blight.
It is as a vast web now, or always was as a vast web. It is a piercing, living, insectile thing that grabs hold of the Emissary and pierces it with bones of the law preceding law, the logic that contorts the world to itself.
`Greater Ignition. 2(4) Cost to invoke, plus paying another 3(6) Immersion for effective level 15. Running Cost is 12` :fuguechip:
Sadabus: The terrible eyes pierce the Emissary, rendering it down into a series of Names, and beyond that, the thing that is nameless, the thing that we can only call the Wyrd, and then, separating those two things from each other.
Elliott: The matter ends swiftly and decisively; caught by Semegastes and imprisoned within the laws of Scalbrand, it is a simple matter for Sadabus to direct his array towards the Mendicant, to begin stripping it away into its components. In his mind, a ledger opens and makes an account: So much of Creation, so much of the Not — but no more than a tenth of each go into the making of this being. The vast majority of it is something else, something compromised and toxic. It is nausea to behold and pain to manipulate; it is something like lava and salted wounds and roiling, infected puss.
It is the stuff of which the Glitch is made. It is wretched and radioactive; it strains against you even as you coax it into strands of spiritual substance, little skeins of spiritus DNA.
You have a measure of this creature now, Sadabus Argand. And perhaps you could salvage something from it, those rare parts wholly Void or Creation. But the sickness? You will have to attend to that quickly and at dire price; it would consume any vessel that might seek to contain it. Of those parts, you sense…something like a Wyrd, but weak. Shriveled. It is vestigial and malnourished.
Sadabus: Thoughts, everyone?
I spotlight my options here: :spotcreation:
I suppose we could always just shove it into Apox.
Semegastes: With the Mendicant bound and unwoven, Semegastes begins to shrink as their Eide recongeals, wings folding themselves back along vectors of negative space, eyes winking shut with thunderclaps.
Gailizia: You could do an Inchoation if you want to reignite the Wyrd for some reason.
Sadabus: I suppose if it won't be contained in any vessel I have to build it out of itself somehow.
Semegastes: Find a temporary container while one of us does a Greater Casting and makes a pocket dimension to hold it?
Sadabus: That's two temporary solutions in one.
At least let's turn it into a minotaur.
Gailizia: Inchoate it into a minotaur, and the labyrinth that contains it.
Bam!
Vessel and hot monster.
Elliott: A note: Gaidel did tell you that pocket dimensions aren't foolproof where Emissaries are concerned. Do with that what you will.
Gailizia: I mean we could try and destroy it proper.
Semegastes: I'm thinking maybe a labyrinth built inside the mind that lets me shunt the bad stuff of it into me taking Burn.
Sadabus: It seems I am going to wind up paying all this Cost myself regardless, so.
First, I am going to take a Transformative Wound.
I have not figured out the details of this but it probably is something like "really can't stop doing impulsive magic."
Semegastes: Yeah, that tracks.
Sadabus: Second, I am going to enact a Greater Strategy using this Wound as the basis.
And this is what I am going to do.
Gailizia: Scalbrand turns its attention towards the Custodian.
It's a bad night to be lonely.
It is long and winding, a web of bones and a centipede of insect legs and fur ending in its more mundane form, individual and phenomenological.
It tilts its head in curiosity at the second Emissary.
Sadabus: I am going to use Greater Inchoation to start this tangled mass of writhing, Glitch-riddled… material into an auto-evolving, self-constructing void being that will slowly build itself based on the patterns I give it as its birth matrix, and this schema will also allow Scalbrand to do the same thing and self-generate full awareness.
Gailizia: Scalbrand already did that.
Sadabus: Didn't that get ripped out along with Uul?
I assumed their progress was set back.
Semegastes: We never spotlit that.
Elliott: "I̸ ̵w̶i̵l̶l̸ ̵f̶i̴n̷d̵ ̶t̴h̶e̵ ̷o̵t̶h̵e̷r̵s̷,̵ ̴t̵h̵e̷n̷.̶," it says, and is gone — gone into the depths of the earth and the secret places therein, seeping through the crevices of Is and Not alike.
Gailizia: Yeah, their process of becoming has certainly be fucked with, but the essential insight into selfness happened
Sadabus: Well, it's a useful technique in both evolving Actuals and repairing broken angels, and what the hell I didn't say you could go.
Elliott: It is frustratingly elusive.
Gailizia: Is it lonely?
Semegastes: `Greater Destruction` of its movement.
Sadabus: Oh, well, I guess all the Emissaries will just auto-evolve into new Imperator types now.
Or destroy the world.
Problem solved, guys! All problems solved!
Elliott: I wouldn't say Lonely. Something like it, but not it.
Sadabus: By the DARK BRILLIANCE of your LORD AND MASTER, SADABUS ARGAND
- Sadabus uploads a few of his own memories to serve as the birth matrix for this new creature.
Memories of people, mostly.
Or Mr. Neff, always demanding too much and preposterously too little.
Of Griffin Cole, who was never born to be a prince, but somehow was.
Of James, who basically was born to be a prince, which wasn't really an improvement.
(In retrospect Sadabus' rolodex of friends is a terrible source for a miraculous birth.)
Ah, well! Farewell, gentle creature! Be happy and fruitful!
Elliott: So, you're transforming it into a self-evolving creature. What's stopping it from becoming an Emissary again, given the reagents are… just one (1) Emissary?
Sadabus: Basically it should feed on the Glitched material, and having consumed it, process it into something neutral based on the template I gave it.
Elliott: Like…that's how you get Emissaries. The Glitched material is what you get when Is and Not are forcibly fused.
Sadabus: I think in this case what is formed will definitely be of the Not.
Gailizia: Scalbrand strides across the pool's floor, compacting itself into a seeming of individuality, of having but a single body that is not the world.
I need Uul. It has the true heart that is Loneliness, the authority of Imperial will.
It absentmindedly makes a sign, something none of you have taught it.
I have achieved. :fuguechip:
Sadabus: That fits Sadabus' prejudices and solves the underlying problem.
Semegastes: It could be that we've given it metaphysical cancer.
Gailizia: Why not distill out the Not?
Sadabus: Because the Not is cool and Creation sucks.
Except the bits of Creation I am currently using to achieve limitless power.
those bits are okay
Gailizia: Yeah, but if the problem is their specific admixture, then it follows that unmixing them should be a technical fix.
Sadabus: I guess it could split into two beings.
Elliott: Like, you've still got 10% Creation, 10% Not, and 80% Sludge.
Sadabus: I have decided that I can process sludge into good honest mud, and I have spent a bucketload of Cost, and therefore I contend that I am successful.
Gailizia: Well, will become successful.
Sadabus: Assuming that the sludge can ever be processed, that is.
If it can't you should probably just say.
Gailizia: Well…
I don't think he formally can.
Elliott: It can be processed, but you have to either do something to change the ratio or split things up or sieve things out.
Sadabus: Let's split it up, then.
Semegastes: Fractional distillation stratagem!
Gailizia: This does indicate that Scalbrand has an edge over these other folks on account of being made with significantly less Bad Sludge.
Sadabus: I'll just get 50% Is and 50% Not, like I originally intended.
Radegesis: Isn't this what happens in Kingdom Hearts?
Sadabus: In one hand, raw Estate machine code. In the other hand, a sleeping Wyrd.
Gailizia: custxodian
Sadabus: Then I can figure out how to assemble them into something less gross.
Elliott: As yet, Scalbrand is not made of any appreciable amount of sludge. Make of that what you will.
Radegesis: I feel like we're about to reinvent alchemy.
Sadabus: Hm, Actuals aren't glitched?
Radegesis: nigredo albedo citrinitas rubedo
Sadabus: That's… extremely interesting.
Gailizia: Not any more than anything else Creational.
Semegastes: boy-norting juice
Elliott: And then Vance was compacted.
Wait, wait.
Gailizia: I could see arguments that they're more or less impacted though given their weird position relative to the world proper.
Elliott: Where are you getting Estate code from?
Sadabus: Whatever part of Creation they're made from.
Whatever forces of life and death are broken and entangled in this place.
Gailizia: Scalbrand is made of healthy and all natural exoskeleton, bones, and polyvinyl. Also some amount of flesh. Not sure whose. None of this "sludge" nonsense.
Elliott: Indeed.
Gailizia: So remind me what miracles we have running on the Mendicant's remains?
There's a Greater Strategy to do something, right?
Radegesis: Only vaguely skimming but… it sounds like if we could just distill off the sludge we get a 20% skeleton and then a 80% blob of sludge?
Gailizia: Yeah the problem is, we need to process the sludge since "leaving it to rot" doesn't seem to be an efficacious method of reconciliation.
Sadabus: Yes, I have a Greater Strategy running that's meant to process the sludge by Inchoating its Wyrd and having it consume all the sludge material to generate a new lambda-creature.
Radegesis: Is there anyway we can make it Osamunda's problem?
If we… turn it into a flower somehow… something something flower rite.
Semegastes: Okay, so, for the Strategy…
What if we did it with magnets?
Gailizia: Is this a bit? :sememote:
Semegastes: No.
Sadabus: Hm. Nobody really knows how those work.
Semegastes: Sadabus inchoated it with memories of Creational people.
What if we anchor it to something similar but for something Ninnuani, like Radegesis' feelings about having killed Gailizia?
Gailizia: So using `magnets` to separate out bits that have been creationalized/voidified??
Semegastes: And then let it pull itself apart?
Sadabus: Do we have something better than Sadabus' vague good opinion of Everett Neff for the other side?
Gailizia: So the Inchoation can serve as a nucleus for the magnetized Ninuanni bits.
Semegastes: My working theory is that the sludge isn't totally homogenous, and we'll end up with the mildly different flavors of sludge separated out
Sadabus: I hesitate to say "oh, let's just let it pull itself apart between guilt and thirst."
Radegesis: You could take Rad's sisterliness to Cole.
Semegastes: Wait, Sadabus wants to bone Everett? :turnback:
Radegesis: A boyfriend is a boyfriend.
Sadabus: No, I mention thirst because it's a much stronger element I have lying around.
Semegastes: Okay, good; he's a disaster.
Gailizia: What if the minotaur and the maze are the magnets that grow from the sludge as they separate?
Gailizia: So they fill out as they process the sludge?
Radegesis: Ah, Glitch metaphysics.
Sadabus: On reflection, Sadabus' trouble is that basically all his impulses are wound up with his aggression.
…honestly, giving it Sadabus' aggression might be fun.
His Transformative Fugue Wound could be him becoming purified and chill.
Sadabus Argand, master of white magic.
Gailizia: Transformative Wound of having a huge blunt.
Sadabus: knower of all cleric spells
And then the other pole can be guilt.
Radegesis: Wow, that is a Transformative Wound.
Sadabus: I guess… aggression is the Not pole and guilt is the Creational pole?
Elliott: I dig it.
Gailizia: That tracks with the Strategist thing.
And also means it could be the not-minotaur, if we do do that.
Sadabus: It doesn't have to be a minotaur, I mean.
Elliott can tell us what it turns into later.
Okay, so:
This is what happens.
Sadabus is struggling with the horrifying weight of the red, Glitched mud. It is oppressive and… it's the weight of everything he doesn't want to think about. It's everything about Creation he doesn't want to ever touch him. In a panic, he calls upon the strongest force his Wyrd can reach. It's something he can't adequately name, something that can only be expressed in a tangled way by his Eide, something that could only be properly understood by going to therapy like a normal person.
Sadabus Argand, master of the holy dark, does not attend therapy. Instead, he calls up something redder than red out of his own soul and sets it against the Glitch. :fuguechip:
:sadmote:
It works. It responds to him, recognizes his power as greater, begins to reshape itself according to his directive. But it's not sufficient. The blackened threads within the mire, the veins of Creation-stuff in cancerous bloom, are unresponsive. They ruin the shaping of the new Wyrd before it can begin, like trying to bake a loaf of bread in the oven, only, there's a puppy stuck in the dough. :fuguechip:
Radegesis: doguette
Sadabus: He needs an opposing pole; something that will pull these burning puppies in the same way his red goetia cards the void.
He looks inside himself and fails to find it.
In desperation he reaches out to those outside energy sources close enough for him to touch, and finds… yes.
Something black, and empty, and terribly sad.
He fails to understand it, fails even to really understand exactly who he's evoking it from, but whatever, if he waited around until he understood things he wouldn't be a wizard.
The black power responds to his call and takes its place on the opposite pole of his working.
Slowly, very slowly, the threads of blackened blood and bloody black… begin to twitch apart.
Gailizia: oh hell yeah
Sadabus: "Behold… the unstoppable power… of my Art," says Sadabus, and passes out.
Elliott: :spotattention:
Gailizia:
Is he supposed to do that?
Elliott: To general surprise (especially her own), Helena catches Sadabus as he falls.
She hears Scalbrand's question, then looks to Semegastes as if to ask: Is he?
Semegastes: "To all you on the livestream, are good friend Sadabus seems to be having some technical difficulties of his own after doing just some incredibly badass wizard shit. I'm… pretty sure he'll be fine."
"But lets get him back home for a lie down."
Elliott, what level Wyrd miracle would you call it to Elysium your way into another Strategist's sanctuary?
Elliott: Uuuuuuhm.
Gailizia: I'd think that would be a Navigation
Sadabus: I wonder if you could get through by just… carrying Sadabus onto a roof?
Gailizia: Or if you know the route anyone can use you can just do that?
Sadabus: Like feeding a Strategist through a keyhole?
Elliott: Any of these are acceptable.
Semegastes: I'm just spitballing with the non-specified uses of the Attributes.
Sadabus: Let's just end the chapter and when we begin again we're home.
Gailizia: Sounds good to me.
Sadabus: Maybe recite some poetry.
Semegastes: A powerful magic!
Gailizia: :black:
Semegastes:
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Elliott: `Chapter Get: 2 XP`
Close program?
Semegastes: Seems like a good enough stopping point.
Gailizia: And that closes out my recovery quest!
Gailizia is out of her infection state.
Elliott: And can emerge whenever you're ready.
Sadabus: Later, Sadabus wakes up and immediately resurrects Helena.
Gailizia: Oh, she's gonna hate that.
Love it.
Elliott: Sadabus, Mystic Theurge.
Gailizia: "You mean you could have resurrected me the whole time instead of doing an extended Duckula bit?"
Sadabus: No, because he's a cleric now.
Gailizia: Oh, good point.
Sadabus: Now I have to look up the cleric spell list.
What are his new Domains?
Semegastes: Healing and Magic!
Sadabus: Let's go with Love and Strength.
Gailizia: What's that get you?
Sadabus: I have no idea.
Semegastes: Strength is strength and also growing bigger.
Love is charm person et al., because D&D.
Sadabus: Hm, I finish my quest with 17 points over the top.
That lets me heal 34 points of Cost.
Gailizia: let's see, 30 XP quest for The Work is Never Finished, so 1 CP and 20 lost Cost.
Sadabus: Also I now have 5 CP. I wonder what I should buy.
More Lore?
Semegastes: Oh, incidentally.
Off-screen, before this, or after this, or at some temporally vague point, Semegastes is doing a Masking because she wants to try out she/her pronouns for a bit.
Sadabus: …I was already using those.
Once again I find myself incorrect! Not to mention Sadabus' insensitive remarks about going 'viral.'
Gailizia: inventing a new vtuber persona to try on new pronouns
Semegastes: It's a big mistake to think you're the only one who can livestream as a cute doggirl.
I'm a doggirl now too!
Gailizia: Is she a doggirl vtuber vocaloid now?
Sadabus: I guess I'll buy a rank of Ability and a rank of Lore.
Semegastes: nah the doggirl is just the only vtuber I know
- Sadabus writes a phrase into his ending book:
Semegastes: uh oh
"I guess being evil was just a phase."
Radegesis: hi guys im bbbbbb oh my god
Elliott: Sadabus just regenerated.