A Log of Something or Other

[zephyrIce]

A player list for refrence:
Amber (me!) - zephyrIce - Smith of Stars - Native Scout of Space
Alice - wishfulSuprise - Seer of Dream - Native Prince of Rage
Jenna - lilacSwirl - Prince of Sand - Native Dame of Hope
Danny - sparklerDoom - Bard of Time - Native Bane of Light
Trent - appreciativeHypnosis - Maid of Law - Native Page of Rain
Jason - placidTempest - Guide of Space - Native Sage of Blood

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Let's see. I'm a native Scout of Space, currently Smith of Stars. Sburb likes giving me S titles, mmkay?

Most of my sessions, I've been a Space player with various titles attatched to it.

I'm not entirely sure what session number I'm on, as I'm fairly certain one of my sessions was almost completely erased from my memory. I remember... someone prototyping with a Pumpkin and... something else really stupid to protoype, and a land that made you high as a kite the moment you breathed it's air. But honestly I could be imagining things. It was around that session(?) that I lost track of my numbering.... but I'm fairly certain it's past 13 total. Fairly certain.

I started my first session at 11 (really young, haven't heard of any other session starting that young) as session leader, and in my previous session our Time player put my chronological age as 19.

My current session is a 6-player one. In addition to myself, the Smith of Stars, we have a Seer of Dream, a Bard of Time, a Guide of Space, a Maid of Law, and a Prince of Sand. Yes I'm aware Smiths are usually male, this session's a little buggy (suprise suprise). Our Prince is a girl too, as is our Seer. Bard, Guide, and Maid are boys. The consorts keep screwing up everyone's genders, not just the mis-gendered titles. So far this has been our only noticeable glitch, so I don't really mind. Such a small thing in comparison to.... anything else that could freak out on us.

This session is still pretty new, been at it about three weeks (so I apologize for anything stupid I do, maturity reset and all that jazz....). My Land of Fields and Anvils is... weird. Really weird.

[zephyrIce]

Alice (our Seer) has discovered that her Denzien is hiding from her. At least, we THINK it's hiding, it could be completely gone knowing this screwy game. She did a fast run of her Awakening stuff, all about as normal as you'd expect, got to the lair and.... found a note. SHe sent everyone an image of it, I'll just stick it here....



So yeah. Morpheus, god of Dreams, is wandering around playing hide and seek with our Seer. I just hope he's still on her Land, some really odd gltiching involving consorts and imps using Gates have shown up recently and I don't even want to think about a Denzien wandering off to the wrong world...

And actually, how the hell did he leave the lair anyways? Alice did a really thorough job of checking to be sure he wasn't just invisible (that is to say, she smashed up the place with her spearKind) and the lair is completely empty. She also tried to get into the Hoard and snag her instrument, seeing as it was unguarded, but he went and dropped a huge piece of bedrock in front of the entrace. Which means she'll probably have to get him to come back to the lair to MOVE the stupid thing before she kills him. How did he even get a piece of loose bedrock anyways. It's too bad we don't have a Void player, they might have been able to move it. Uuuggg the area restriction parameters in this session are SO fucked up. Next thing you know our Ebonpyres will end up lacking restraints and we'll end up with Basilisks in our Homefrees.

Anyways. Alice is working on ways to Dream-scry properly to find him (she's been a Seer a bunch of times before but always with less metaporic aspects- things like Light, Space, Time, Law) but it's apperently really hard for her and she keeps cutting things up. None of us are too keen on getting near her right now but I'm about to force Trent (Maid of Law) to go and work his Law magic on her (he's been Law several times, has a fair grasp of what he can do right now) so she won't break anything important. Like one of us.

And while they're busy, I'm going to put my Awakening on priority. Surely the Denzien of someone who's title translates to "creator of attraction" could help lure in things that are big and hiding.... And I kind of want to be sure Morpheus is the only Denzien to have done a runner.

[zephyrIce]

Ok, Alice has gotten enough of a grip on her powers to confrim that her Denzien is in the very least still on her land. Which is good, as nothing ELSE is staying on it's land. I've got six kinds of consorts running around my house right now and I swear those pink Ogres originated from Danny (Bard of Time)'s land. And seeing aslkoiansev

...

Sorry, Pencilsprite wanted my attention. First prototyping was a cell phone and the only thing he seems to have retained from that is the ability to ring in a loud, obnoxious manner. The pencil was a good prototype though- He has to write everything down meaning I can read it over and over til it makes sense. It also makes for some very intresting Imps. They enjoy scrawling insults on everything.

Anyways, Pencilsprite is on his way to his spritey-doom so I have my Pendant and Song now. I'm amazed he lasted a month, everyone else's sprites bit the dust two weeks ago. Probably the lack of dead thing in his prototyping and the fact that I spent two weeks figuring out how to alchemize things without spikes, then another whipping up gear for all of my sessionmates. Smith glitch hit, I managed to suck up all the instrumancy. None of my sessionmates can alchemist their way out of a paper bag, though Jason (Guide of Space) can at least make things that aren't sludge.

...what was I talking about again? Oh yeah.

Instead of having three or four kinds of enemy to a Land (I think I'm responsible for Gold, Ruby, Oil, and Plastic, oddly enough), everyone's getting all of the kinds in different concentrations. I'm a Knell away from my Denzien so I'm going to see if I can get some answers out of her regarding the screwed up area parameters. I guess I'll head out and do that.

Actually before I go, I should stick a list of players and their names up at the top so I don't confuse anyone....

[zephyrIce]

My Denzien is Atlas. I've had this guy before. I mean that literally. He greeted me with "Welcome, Smith, to my Lair. I am- oh I've met you before. You killed me once. But that's cool, you were supposed to. Must have been horrible, seeing my body vanish after you started to like me. And now you get to do it again!"

He's not even pretending I don't know what's gonna happen. I can't tell if this is better or worse than him being a new, generic Denzien. And seriously, these guys REMEMBER every player they've encountered before? Or is this just another session glitch? Ug. Stupid glitches.

So I asked him about our fucked up area parameters and got this...

"The lines between safety and danger are often blurred in this life. Your worlds are no exception. But this is a blurring you may be able to fix with time."

So I'm going to assume that means terraforming will help fix this. Assuming. This could be completely wrong, but I couldn't get anything else out of the ass, so we're working with this. I'm instructing everyone to put Terraforming on high priority with the hopes that our Ebonpyre lines will get fixed when our Lands reset unpon their completion.

In other news, Danny is a dick. He's doing the Bard thing and building stupid, pointless stuff onto my Dwelling Spire. I've hat seven rooms fall off of it from at LEAST five stories up because he's trying to write his name in rooms at the top of the Spire.

Alice figured out that, due to the nature of Dream, she has to scry in a different way every single time. So she's trying to keep it to a minimum. So far she's done crystal ball scrying, and used a mirror. With the ball, she learned that Morpheus is indeed on her Land. With the second, she found out that he's somewhere close to her but she couldn't pinpoint the location because mirror scrying is fairly generic. It's comforting to know that she'll be able to find him, in the very least. ...I only know all of thi because I'm using my server player powers to creep on her a bit. She's not really stable...

[zephyrIce]

Jenna, Danny, and Trent are making good time on their Denzien prep. Jenna's taking the longest, but as this is her third session I can't fault her for it. Alice is still flailing about trying to find Morpheus. I got Trent to Law-block her so she can't kill anyone, so that's a potential accidental frustration-related PK incident hopefully averted. She thought up a REALLY creative way to scry for him that should get a very accurate reading on his location, but it's going to take some time to set up. And apperently involved a mirror on Prospit and some very exact timing? I'm a bit foggy on the details but I'm working under the impression that the more ridiculous an idea is, the more unique it is, and therefore the better it is for Dream use.

[zephyrIce]

My attacks are losing their bang from doing quests in close proximity to each other for so long (darn you Stars, why do you have to get weaker when I stay in one place?), so I went off to do a two-player dungeon with Jenna. It was an.... intresting experience. For the most part I did the usual Sand-decoding and largely acted like she said the opposite of what she actually said. Works pretty well, provided you're not being attacked at the time. Then it's best to just ignore them and attack something in the other direction.

Jenna's a pretty sweet girl, once you decode the Sand bits. Likes cats, like squishing Imps, misses her mom.

Dungeon was a pretty basic affair. Low level two player, puzzle lock. Reward was Jenna's neon pink glasses case. Had a minor issue where I accidently blocked the exit to a room when my [Rustless Fall]/[Omelette Sandwhich] combo went off right above it... But that was quickly fixed by developing a sudden intrest in something on the opposite wall and letting Jenna do her Sandy thing at the rubble.

After the dungeon a quick check on my Laser CompGoggles (they're like normal computer goggles only they can shoot lasers. I was just glad they lacked spikes, ok?) proved that the others were at good stopping points in their quests and shenanigans (Well, Danny wasn't, but he just time traveled his butt back to make time) so we had a full session meetup and planning session. Alice is "Almost done setting up my scrying method, I'll know that damned Denzien's location in five hours!". Jason got his Forge lit just before I called the meeting, and he "Will be all over this frog shizzle as soon as I get out of here." ....his manner of speech bothers me, but what can you do. Jenna "Haven't even gone near my Denzien, such a bore~~", which, if I'm translating Sand-to-normal properly, means she's almost done and is having a blast. Danny's got the usually Time shenanigans going (which is the entire reason he has time to fuck with my Dwelling Spire still), and "I've only had to save people's asses five times so far, ya'll are doin' real good. Keep it up." So yay us, we're good at not dying so far. Trent's only comment was "Everything's going according to plan.", which I'm just going to take as positive for now. ...and also keep a better eye on him, he refused to elaborate. I don't like it when Law players stop talking.

[zephyrIce]

So Alice found of Denzien. She set up this massive scrying circle on the roof her her dwelling spire, and got it all set up to activate when light from Skaia reflected off a mirror on Prospit onto the circle. I don't know how it worked, but it did, and she found out that Morpheus was.... on her wrist. He shrank himself, hid behind his note, and added himself to Alice's massive array of purple and white bracelets when she picked it up.

I just.

I don't even.

She had this massive freak out and tore up the roof of her spire when she found him, nearly went on a Beserk Trigger. It took the combined efforts of myself, Jenna, and Danny to calm her down. She is one of the least stable players I've ever done a session with, I swear. But now Morpheus is in the Lair as he should be, and he moved that chunk of bedrock that was in front of the Land Instrument.

I get the feeling it's going to be quite a while before Alice accepts her personal asshat and stops hating him.

As for the others, Jason and Danny got the standard Echidna and Hephaestus affair for Space and Time players, and Trent got Themis, Titan goddess of divine law and order, according to Greek mythos. Jenna's nearly there, I'm fairly certain she just needs to do her Knell but her exact words were "So far from finishing, I've barely even started!", which could mean several things. But I'm fairly certain it means she's at the Knell.

[zephyrIce]

Jenna's idea of something loud is apperently the sound of reality breaking and then mending itself. She's from a scratched world (post-scratch) and due to shenanigans, she met her older pre-scratch self and Sburb went NOPE and that's how she even knows what that sounds like.

My ecto-born Space tendencies are flipping out, and I just had to revive Jason. This is his first time as a Space player, and he hasn't had the time to learn to withstand crap like this yet. The others posted on Everybody Hates Sburb, our group chatroom, asking what the hell that was. They seem more rattled than anything.

I did a few maturity quests eariler, once my aspect let me back on my own damn land without crippling my power... I got some hints and reasons as to why I'm Stars this session. Part of it has to do with my usual Space reasons- a prefence for staying in one place and all that. There's also some things that occured to me that point to this being Sburb's way of telling me that I can't help everyone, and getting me to accept that fact. It's going to take a while for me to acctually accept that, I'm session leader, I SHOULD be able to help everyone! (Uphill battle, and half of it will be deleted when the session's done. Woo.) I'm headed over to the Land of Clouds and Colors (Alice's blinding land that somehow related to Dreams) to get her over to her quests. I'm hoping a few maturity quests will calm her down. Or at least get her to think twice before swinging at anything that gets near her.

....I'm going to alchemize a shield before I go.

[zephyrIce]

The shield was a good idea, she took a swipe at my head claiming that she "thought you were an imp" when I approached. Even though I told her I was coming. I got her off to a maturity quest, and she seems to be doing them on her own now, so that's good.

Jason's having some troubles with frog breeding so that's my next stop. I'm considering a UU with him to best help with the breeding (as a verteran Space player and as someone who's not squicked by frogs, honestly, Sburb's a dick but I didn't think it'd go so far as to give the guy who has a problem with slimy things frog duty), but I may ask Jenna to instead. I'm not sure a UU between her and Alice is a good idea and if anyone ever needed a UU partner it's Alice. She's a native Prince of Rage and that hasn't left her, she keeps trying to be active when she needs to be passive, and she attacks without thinking instead of planning the attacks of others. Danny and Trent are stable, thank goodness, as we have an active/passive imbalance and only two of the passive players can be part of a UU.

Of course, now that I've said that Danny will have a breakdown due to Dead Dannys and Trent will prove my wariness correct and do something batty with his Law powers.

[zephyrIce]

Sorry I dropped off the grid for a bit there, some stuff went down.

First off, I had Jenna start her UU with Jason, and they hit it off rather well. Jason's a Guide so he can set things on the right path and make sure they end right, and Jenna's a Prince so she's give plenty of oppertunities to end things. Works well. I also had Trent and Danny make a passive/passive pair, making a nice Hand of Destruction between Trent's Maid and Danny's Bard. I told them to keep to their own lands as much as they could until they got the hang of directional, passive destruction. Danny's Land of Towers and Pendulums has a great landscape for environmental destruction, as you can tell when a tower finally goes down, and Trent's Land of Books and Scales has roughly three times the average consort population and double the Imp spawn rate for whatever reason. Book lands are so weird.

So they left me and Alice. To be honest I think she'd benefit from a UU with Jason (if anyone ever needed a Guide, it's her) but I don't really trust her around frogs just yet. Just. No. Maybe when we switch up the UUs. Still, I figure as a Smith I'm well set up to get her on the right path, and I do like having a Seer around, and Dream is a very fun aspect for it. Once her Roleplay vaule went up (and she quit stabbing first and asking questions later) the Grid started giving her little hints here and there. I can tell because it roughly halved the time it took for her to do anything creative. I can see why she rolled it though- she's pretty creative and artistic. Seems to have been hidden away due to her native Rage. A lot of the stabbing was frustration at the game for forcing her to quell her creativity only to ask her to bring it right back out.

As for my own development, Smith works a little too well with my instincts for me to think it's anything other than a session-necessary title that I got shunted into (I love when that happens), but Stars... My instinct is to fight something until it works, not accept it. So far I've been accepting what I can (I highly doubt I would have gotten Alice to calm down if I hadn't forced myself into roleplay mode and simply accepted what she was doing and ask her why), but I'm sure you all know how frustrating it can get to do the opposite of what your instincts scream. Alice is a bigger help to me than I would have thought, though. I'm determined to help her, and she needs acceptance. So I accept. Pretty simple, and it does wonders for my roleplay value.

So the UUs got all set up and worked out rather well. That's not what caused my absence.

THAT was caused by Danny. Or rather, a Doomed Danny. There's apperently a timeline out there in which I decided to set up Danny with Alice in a UU for some reason (one of the weider splits), and Alice drove Danny to distraction and went PK, then decided that I needed to be prevented from setting up the UU in the first place (Bard logic) and came back to try and kill me. Alice stabbed him shortly after he got me, and managed to get me to my Quest Bed in time since it was near by (the good thing about a flat land- the spire with the Quest Bed is REALLY noticeable). So I got Tiger! Which as you all know is stupidly disorienting and the Drift is a little louder now. And having a shouting match with the World that clings to me. I wish they'd quit it, it's giving me a headache. And seeing as I think the Drift is attracting MORE World to me (I'm avoiding the Land of Slopes and Frogs for now) it really just needs to chill the fuck out.

The Smith's god hoodie is stupid looking, for the record. I want my Scout hoodie back.

I also got caught up in some Moon quests (which are really awkward when you're God Tier) while Alice did a ton of really creative scrying for any other freaky timelines. She's fairly certain that was the only one so far, and as such we're wondering what exactly caused it. I'm not a Mind player, my basic decisions shouldn't cause splits.

[zephyrIce]

Alice found out that the doomed Danny that came back and stabbed me jumped back too far. The Danny/Jenna UU was part of the second round of them, which makes more sense as I was considering suggesting it as the UU pairs that would produce a lot of benefits right now are Me/Jason and Alice/Trent. The first pair is obvious, as Jason still needs frog guidance. Alice/Trent would provide a lot of benefits to our overall direction, with Alice helping see what needs doing and Trent setting it in motion. So that's not a thing that will happen this time around! Seeing as Alice can't find any indicators of something gone wrong in the timeline, we're going to write this off as the usual timeline offshoot gone really sour. And hope it doesn't happen again. So for now, I'm going to plan on not suggesting Jenna and Danny make a UU any time soon. Till then, we're all still in the middle of our current ones.

Jenna has proven to be an excellent frog hunter, and she's good at getting Jason to go do non-frog things, which he seems inclined to ignore unless someone drags him off. Trent and Danny have graduated from accidentlly causing long-term corrosion when they use joint attacks to acutally aiming for the imps properly so they're free to wander wherever they like like the rest of us with no fear of things breaking when they leave. Alice and I are changing our location and focus randomly to the whims of the Drift. It's been working well, actually, now that it's stopped arguing with the World and all the other whisperings I'm attracting. I've turned into a whispering magnet.

[zephyrIce]

I'd have posted more on this, but everything's been amazingly normal. Changed UUs a few times, had Jenna and Trent get tiger. Quests completed, underworlds explored, revelawesomes reveled. Aspects aligned with and the reasons for getting said aspect understood.

And on that topic.

I figured out what I got stuck with Stars. I've pretty effectively avoided accepting the deaths of several players in the past. So it's high time I accept their deaths and the circumstances. So I made an In Memory Of thread for them. I can't think of a better way to really accept it and show that I have than that.

Alice needed to calm down and let her aspect guide her, mainly. She's gotten a lot better about that. No more random spear slinging outside of strifes.

Jenna needed to be more comfortable with lying. Apparently there's such a thing as pathological honesty? I was unaware, but she had it and Suburb did not like it. So it gave her the worst possible title for someone who can't lie. Of course.

Danny had the usual extensional issues, and had a run in with a dead self or two in his last session so he was dwelling on that fear. Pretty straight forward. Time issue usually are, if rather hard to fix.

Trent is a very go-with-the-flow kind of person who doesn't naturally care much about what others are up to. Law is one of the most involved aspects, as you get to tell everyone what to do and how to do it if need be! And most of the time, you need to. So this one was just Sburb being a dick in general.

Jason's dislike of all things slimy was a factor in his getting Space, but he also needed to do more moving around. He got a string of titles that let him stay put for long periods of time to plan and such, so Sburb forced him out of that.

...is it just me or does Sburb create a lot of the problems it tries to fix?

We're getting into the end game here. Mostly Black King planning and smashing of war machines. Next post will likely be a short notice to say we're going in.

[zephyrIce]

We're about an hour off from the final battle. This point of the game always makes me nervous, due to the fact that this is where the PK in my first session flipped his shit and we wen from 100% survival to 33%. Plan's simple. Alice is on long range coverage (she can throw those spears really far) and Official Second Set of Eyes (she's in charge of smashing anything that gets away from us). Trent's on buffs- anything that he can prevent the BK from doing will help, and I've never been one to say no to being forbidden from dying. Jenna and I are the primary attackers, as the active classes. Lots of up close and personal with the big ugly. Jason is watching the terrain (there was an incident with the war machines and now some of the battlefield is unsteady) and mid-range coverage. And Danny is combination Time coverage (obviously) and... whatever that weird thing is that Bards do in the final battle. His exact instructions are "Don't let anyone else die, and if you feel the need to let off some huge attack, do so." ...I really don't understand how Bards function.

Next time I post it'll be from a new session. See you the other side...