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Samen returns to Hearth annoyed at how this day turned out. Too many loose ends tied up too quickly, Abnaki included. There would, of course, be more threats. There always were. Perhaps Aisling is developing into a dangerous godling himself. More observation would be necessary. Despite his misgivings, Tallmind Theta had proven a resourceful and dependable ally in the fight. The tensions of their first impression may have been unwarranted. Besides, Samen has much to learn from an original source of the ancient times. Squabbles about individuality may be of lower importance than the intelligence that could be gained. Concerns for past and future aside, Samen attends to Wamblee in the present. More details would be needed to adjust the plans against Moon. For now, though, his brother is safe, and Samen intends to keep it that way.
Samen immediately links minds with Theta with no hesitation. No convincing is necessary. This godling is ascendant and more of a threat than anything else they've dealt with today. At the speed of thought, Samen fills in Theta on Abnaki's one weakness. One story that ended the wrong way. "Name's have power, thrice slain! I announce another!" Samen pumps all the memory, despair, regret, and soul damning destructive psychic force he and Theta can conjure into a single word of power. A name. A narrative. A letter from an old friend to destroy what remains.
That's rough. As you always say, life comes first. It has been an epic journey over the years, but nothing lasts forever. Thank you for running this unique game for so long.
Looks really cool, but I hope your fingers are less mutated. :D
Samen doesn't want to leave Wamblee, but these new oathbreakers are going to be a problem. He quickly darts off to the opposite end from Gabriel and unleashes his last sunbeam for the day upon the line of undead.
Samen dismisses the tentacles to make way for Benedetto, but doesn't leave Wamblee's side. "Get Kallik out of there!"
Samen holds his brother tightly, relieved that worked. "Come on Wamblee, I know you're weak, but we need information! What is Obdurate doing, and why? Stof and Abby are both dead in quick succession, and I refuse to accept Obdurate's presence as a coincidence. What is going on?"
Samen thinks for only the briefest of moments. Deceptive magic has been employed on this mission, but that was air corruption, not earth. Surely this is real. But why would Wamblee be here before the path was cleared out? Uncharacteristically, Samen acts before gathering all of the information. The consequences of hesitating... He dives off the platform and plunges toward his brother. With desperation and no backup plan, he grabs his brother by the face. You're coming with me now.
With the smaller oathbreakers in check, Samen will move toward the edge of the platform to unleash holy sunlight on the creature below.
Samen can't quite reach the group of oathbreakers with the power of the sun, so he moves closer and instead unleashes the inky darkness of his subconscious anxieties.
Samen calls out to the more distant monks in Oread. "Courage, brothers! Divine aid from mortal hands is here to put these faithless wretches to rest. Form up on the one with the sword, his weapons are effective!" Meanwhile, Samen will move slightly closer and blast the three that attacked Qizz with a sunbeam.
Samen does his best to shake off the summoning sickness and assess the situation. "These are Oread boogeymen. We need ghost touch magic to hurt them and divine fire to keep them down."
Thoughts for another time. Samen compartmentalizes and focuses on the problem at hand. "I am as unfamiliar with this creature as you are Gabriel, but this circumstance is astonishingly similar to when we freed the Sunlord, is it not? Given the hooligans that were hanging about were not friendly toward her, I expect freeing her to be a net positive." Samen considers what is now visible, trying to determine the nature of her bonds and a method of loosening them.
That would be most efficient. Thank you for the offer. Samen can't quite believe his life's biggest regret was just so easily rectified. There would be more, of course. There was always more. But now the weight of the past was lifted. A sudden horrid thought occurs to him. One of Abnaki's last sane suggestions was to kill these two. If his narrative powers were at play here, then this outcome doesn't come without a cost. He looks at Aisling with concern.
Samen feels no joy in the death of Stof, but he does feel great relief in a breath of fresh air. On her knees before them, Samen dares not feel pity for her once again. One of us was always going to be the end of the other.
Samen coughs and gags as he tries to clear his adversary of old out of his lungs.
Samen sees the tangled air currents and knows they follow an order of their own. Better to flow with its circuitous route than insist on a straight line being the shortest path. The trick is to know when to exit the current.
As for the creatures, Samen summons a tangled mass of his own that follow his rules to impede any interference.
Samen glares silently at Tallmind Theta. I don't have time for this. Samen reorganizes his mind to make a wing of his mind palace that contains his childhood, the kindness of Krissa, the brutality of her family, the loss of his own one after the other, Abby wearing her skin, the exhilaration of learning and discovery, constant threat of imminent death, a changing and breaking world, and finally the passive aggressive judgmental ghost of a past long forgotten in front of him. He quickly copies it. Folds it. Folds it again. Folds it again, until it is a dart shaped paper airplane. With more aggression than is strictly necessary, he flings this crystalized collection of his memory directly at Tallmind Theta's tall head. Now stop asking questions.
Samen combats the creeping dread by analyzing its implications. What an intriguing, yet inconsistent mental attack. Clearly the aggressor is using residual concerns, but does not possess adequate knowledge to create believable phantoms. I suppose authenticity and accuracy are not required to induce panic, but if it read my mind or otherwise tracked my circumstances, it would know I at least believe my sister to be around Light, not here. Therefore, our foe is not nearly as powerful as they would like us to believe. This is more encouraging than frightening. Samen stands at the ready to cast Remove Fear if anyone fails their saves.
Samen brings a small quavering light to bear in his palm and considers it against the gaping umbral gloom before them. Weak, small, and insignificant. But light has an advantage over the darkness, because light is, while darkness is not. A single mind is much like this tiny light. Insufficient, but full of hope and life. It can grow, change, and evolve. It can be smothered and extinguished. But a mind is not the only metaphor for light. It is also knowledge and wisdom, making clear the path. It guides steps, drives efficient action, and answers questions. But light is also unity of purpose, a small band of disparate mortals striving against the so-called gods. Each with their own mind, each with their own knowledge, but unified across the spectrum of thought in this one objective, to cast out this darkness. Samen focuses on this small guttering light and pours all he knows of his companions, their histories, their wills, their flaws, and their hopes into in a mental lens in front of it. Very carefully, he aligns the light with the magnification of his friend's live and pushes it through toward the darkness ahead.
Samen winces as the heat intensifies, but through sheer force of mental control, refuses to let his flesh be seared.
Fault them not for being what they are. It is the duty of those of us who have strength to protect those who do not. Just as they can protect us from more physical threats. The mind being a battlefield is a relatively new reality for this world.
Size is a matter of perspective. It is not they who are big, they are normal sized for this place. It is we who are small here.
Samen says nothing and climbs aboard silently.
Samen glowers after Abby. Pursuit would be counter productive and dangerous. He takes a moment to decide whether or not leaving her alone is more dangerous. "That one craves everything she has ever known, including my mind. She'll be back when she gets bored." He directs his attention over toward Gabriel, but it seems as though Benedetto has beaten him to it.
Samen may not hear her words, but he knows well the feeling of voracious emptiness that approaches him. He turns toward it, expecting to see a familiar but distorted face. The formless ill wind is somehow less terrifying than he would've expected. He remains calm, knowing fear and panic are seasoning for her meals.
I assume Samen would've explained about Abby and Stof in detail to Qizz. You only met them briefly before Samen's transformation, but as curious as Qizz is, there's no way it wouldn't have come up. As for 'dying', I think it's more like the D&D concept of outsiders going back to their native plane upon dying. What Abby experienced was similar to what we did to that dragon, forcing it back home and limiting its access to life in the material plane. I'm not sure if it's a "you only die if you die on your home plane" situation, but for good or ill, every encounter with her has resulted in evolution rather than destruction.
Ghost is probably the wrong classification. She is/was an evil smoke elemental that had a Kirby-like hunger. By the time she ended up buried in a tomb, she was something more like a plasma demon and her hunger was only getting worse. Samen tried for a long while to justify not killing her, and she was somewhat useful in combat encounters. However, she was clearly going to betray everyone at some point. When she become entombed, he simply walked away. He considered leaving her in the tomb for some future generation to deal with one of his biggest acts of shame and cowardice.
Samen has no tools for countering invisibility, so he takes a defensive position, waiting for a threat to manifest instead of being simply foreboding. He dreads the feeling this is giving him. But no, it can't be her, right?
Samen will prepare by moving slightly away from the others and casting silence on himself to negate any potential sonic damage.
Samen barks back in agitation, "Of course we're not alone, we're here to end some elementals! If we were alone, we'd be doing it wrong."
Samen will activate his greater angelic aspect, steel himself for the encounter, and fly up to Gabriel to shelter him with is aura. It's stirring up the untouched evils that concerns me. I've played with fire and have left unspeakable horrors in our world. I would really rather not do it again.
Sorry! I missed what was being asked of me and didn't want to interrupt the Kallik scene just to say "okay I'm ready, let's go."
<<Come if you wish. You're as likely to find death as anything profitable, but it wouldn't hurt to have another ally in the fight. What will happen to your drones if you cross a planar boundary?>>
Samen considers the journey ahead of them. Even though he fears it, it must be done.
He's definitely got a lot of trauma filed away in that voluminous brain. That only touches on the mind controly things I remember. If survival and peace is ever to be an option in his life, I foresee years of therapy.
Samen relaxes a bit but still is not sure this won't end in bloodshed. "Very well. There is obviously much I do not know of historical humans, and I would very much like to learn. You however, accused my friend, a fully independent soul, yet fully human, of thievery. This is a serious yet baseless charge, and I will have none of it. There will be no peace between us until you recognize Gabriel's independence and humanity. I apologize for being overly harsh on this point, especially after you've just woken up, but there will be no better time to make things clear. Furthermore, you are not the first hivemind I've encountered." Samen's eyes glass over for a moment as he has visions of his childhood home. Friends and neighbors walk amongst the streets, devoid of will or ambition, enthralled by a proud brass dragon. The beginning of a long journey of destruction and the breaking of his family. He thinks of the antics of Gems, stealing the will of the weak, corrupting the Fey, and dominating any they could tempt. He thinks of the collective manic frenzy of Light, drunk on Moon madness, tearing itself apart. He thinks briefly of Abnaki, and the dream terrors he may yet inflict. "So then, possessor of ancient wisdom, what makes you, me, and Gabriel different from your drones? How is it that we have independent wills and they do not?" Samen pauses for a moment, but can't help himself. "And what's with the bones? Is that really how humans reproduce? It doesn't seem sustainable, nor in line with the character of Sun."
Samen tenses up at the mention of Gabriel. He thinks broadly, so that all around may hear. "As I said, in this day, YOU are the anomaly, and you had best learn that lesson quickly. He is fully autonomous, complete in his humanity, free of domination, and he WILL stay that way. I respect that you are a fish out of River here and it will take time for you to adapt, but I haven't fought off gods and demi-gods from here to the edge of the worlds beyond for the likes of you to question the rightful autonomy of every sapient being." "You will cease this line of inquiry, learn the ways of the present, and be content with things as they are." Aloud, for emphasis, "Do I make myself clear?"
"Please excuse the colloquialism. How is it that you came to be trapped in it? My concern is that your dreams while imprisoned have been the source of the darkspawn that have plagued us for millennia."
Samen frowns deeply at this revelation. This is not at all what he was expecting. He wanted other humans so that he would not be of a limited kind, and perhaps other more qualified individuals could do the work of offering humanity to elenity. Now it seems there's another monster of his own creation he must slay. "Greetings. Things are not the same as they once were. Our world today knows nothing of sentient hiveminds. Ants exist, and bees exist, but in this world in this day, you are the anomaly, not me. I'm curious to learn more of what once was, but I must confess, you strike me more as monstrosity than humanity. You could possibly set my mind at easy by revealing what you were doing in the Darkness for all this time."
Samen makes a symbolic gesture of respect to Volcano. "Come. We have a nest of newly granted drake citizens that are about to become unhomed. We should endeavor to make sure they're not there when it happens."
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