Day 13 – Fire and Faith 4
They had their feet on wet grass for a while.
The rainfall was ultimately not that bad. It truly was light rain, accompanied by similarly mild gusts, combining into an altogether pleasant cooling against the lingering, tropical heat. They followed the coast for a while, until they came across a bay. Because it was low tide and because they could see the solid land on the other side, they decided to cut across.
Of course, that, like all other paths, had its perils.
“It’s another one of those… but larger,” Alex remarked.
The danger had been visible from a distance. It was a bright red, starfish-like thing that walked on four of its tendrils while using the fifth to look around. Its middle point was raised high enough into the air to be level with Alex’s chest. From one tip to another, it must have been more than five metres wide.
Though that bulk made it look impressive, Alex already knew that they were about 80% hollow, filled with sea water, and extremely slow. Swerving around it was fundamentally an option, but it was heading right towards them. If he didn’t kill it, it would become a problem for him or one of his women down the line.
Better to get it over with.
Spoiler
[Enemy Trait:
Duke among Starfish - After taking damage for the first time during combat, roll 1d6. After that many Rounds, the severed piece of the Duke Starfish regenerates into a regular Starfish, joining combat. (Represented as +5 Health, +4 AC and +10 Strength)
Traits Active for Alex:
Ranged Support - While Sara is in the party, every third combat roll gains +5, starting with the first, then fourth, then seventh, etc.
Chilling Presence - Enemies have -5 to their combat rolls
Stoneskin - Ignore the first instance of damage in combat.
Both sides suffer from the rain (-1 Best of Die for Physical Rolls).]
-Voting closed - 5 voters
| Votes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2/5 | |||
| 1/1 | |||
| 1 |
Dice: 2d100+45
Options: Individual. Threshold: 28.
89,68 + 45 = 134,113 (2 successes!)
1 off the Lewd Crit, whew
134 - 28 = 106 = 4 Increments = 5 + 4 Damage = 9 Damage
Dice: 1d6
1 = 1
A regular Starfish spawns at the end of Round 2
Dice: 2d100+15
Options: Individual. Threshold: 63.
65,74 + 15 = 80,89 (2 successes!)
Lower One, because Rain
80 - 63 = 1 damage.
Negated by Stoneskin
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Alex measured the distance with his mind, waited for the starfish to get close enough and then simply swung at it.
In the first second, it felt like hitting a beanbag with a steel pipe. Alas, the raw force behind this swing was too much even for these spongy limbs. Alex cut through one of the ‘legs’ of the monster, causing slimy water to spill from the stump. Some of it got on Alex, causing his stone skin to react.
‘Is it acidic?’ Alex wondered, happy to have found out this way if that was the case.
He retreated to safety, watching with a lingering sense of disgust as the gushing wounds clenched close like overgrown sphincters. The original starfish continued to shamble towards Alex, unpeturbed by the loss of a limb. That limb convulsed as it went through a rapid metamorphosis. Small tendrils emerged from the sides as a new middle was formed. It would become a new starfish quite quickly.
“Ew,” Yahui commented from behind.
Alex shared the sentiment entirely.
Spoiler
-Voting closed - 5 voters
| Votes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/5 | |||
| 0 | |||
| 0 |
Dice: 2d100+40
Options: Individual. Threshold: 28.
48,61 + 40 = 88,101 (2 successes!)
Yup, its dead.
Dice: 1d3
1 = 1
You killed this Starfish and all you got was 1 Inheritance
91/100
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Taking aim yet again, he lunged. The Cataclysmic Greatsword was not what one would call a precision instrument, but neither was that starfish something where centimetres mattered. The broad tip of the sword slammed into the middle segment, more punching than stabbing. It was enough blunt force trauma to tear something vital inside the creature. It flew backwards, propelled by a final tensing of its muscles, and lay dead in the mud.
Alex turned the enormous weapon around and stabbed the regenerating piece of starfish before it could get any further. The width of the blade was enough to bifurcate the whole thing, ending those attempts at life in their infancy.
They observed both pieces for about a minute before Astrid said, “Alright, good job, Master. Need relief now?”
“Honestly, that wasn’t even hard enough to get my blood up,” Alex responded. “Plus with all the rain… let’s just keep walking.”
“Roger that, bro!” the blonde declared.
Spoiler
[You have 10 Actions left.
Also I moved the tree icon to where it will be at the end of day.]
-Voting closed - 13 voters
| Votes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/8 | |||
| 2/6 | |||
| 3 | |||
| 1 | |||
| 1 | |||
| 1 | |||
|
Dice: 1d100
34 = 34
…There it is…
[This is an Event Tile (33 Rolled)
This is a Plot Relevant Tile. There will not be a poll on its content.
Lewd Crit Reward poll will be applied to the pre-set Event reward once its revealed.]
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______________________________________________________________
They swerved south-west after they were back on solid land.
The reason for this was simple: Alex wanted to see if they had a way back that wasn’t covered by jungle. The chances for this were high, courtesy of the volcano and the ring it had burned into the local woodwork. Approaching that area of the island confirmed that he was correct.
It also showed him something else he had been expecting to see.
At first, it seemed to be the remnant of a massive tree, something so big that it had survived the constant heat by virtue of the girth of the trunks. Getting closer and closer to it, however, revealed that there were no signs that this trunk ever had any branches. Indeed, its form was far too uniform to be that of a burned tree.
The heat it radiated was immense, as immense as Shiulrach’s chamber. Alex did not need to guess why that was. After all, one had fed into the other.
What they were looking at, standing at the centre of an utterly ruined, ash-covered complex, was a totem. Its runes weren’t visible anymore, the surface charred, internal heat glowing through the cracks, but it was a totem all the same. It was the same kind of heat manipulation that they had encountered several times before, scaled up immensely to the same effect that a power line was a scaled-up cable. The western side was scorched white and the eastern singed black.
“Trace the line of totems to its origin,” Alex muttered to the questioning gazes of the tomboys with him. “That’s what Shiulrach said. ‘Trace the line of totems to its origin and you shall find the place of my choosing’. He wants us to put a shrine there.”
Yahui crossed her arms, first looking at the totem, then towards the volcano in the far-off distance. “This was the endpoint of a heat transferral,” she said. “No… the endpoint was… the ice cave!”
“No, I do think this was the planned endpoint,” Alex disagreed with her. “Everything in the complex underground was geared towards heat distribution. There must have been a city here at some point, using the heat they transferred here. That ice cave on the first island more likely was some kind of magical counterbalance or an unfinished expansion of it all…” He shook his head. “In any case, the system obviously stopped working as intended. The heat got stuck here, channelling endlessly into Shiulrach, turning this land into ash and molten rock.”
“The heat is still going into that totem,” Astrid remarked. “No… one side is way more scorched than the other.”
“It’s now stuck in that totem,” Sara stated.
Alex slowly nodded. “Without Shiulrach, it’s unlikely another volcano is coming up, but the heat is stuck all the same.”
“Uhhh, so…” Astrid cleared her throat. “I wasn’t the best in the physics classes, but if all that energy is going into an unsuitable vessel, what are the odds it’s gonna blow up at some point?”
“It’s magic, so probably pretty high,” Alex responded. “Which begs the question whether we want to risk investigation, potentially preventing it, or book it to not get caught up in it if it goes up in the ten minutes…”
Spoiler
Choices -Voting closed - 7 voters
| Votes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/7 | |||
| 0 |
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Alex weighed the risks in his mind, then took a step forwards. The tomboys with him didn’t even question the decision. “If Selana was here, she’d ask ya why you thought about it so long,” Astrid teased him.
“Thankfully, her tits are too big to run ahead,” Alex joked, mimicking the sound that would make by smacking the palm of his hand against his chest.
Yahui chuckled behind an elegantly raised hand, “She might need a sports bra.”
“NEVER say that word in my presence again!” Shuddering head to toe, Alex felt a genuine aversion take hold of him. For a moment, he was confused why he was that upset by the concept. Obviously, he did not like bras. The nudism was his right! Still, that was a bit intense. “Huh,” he reclaimed control over his mind. “I think my incubus blood is reacting very poorly to the idea.”
“Y-you don’t say…” Sara muttered in the most adorable, sarcastic quietness.
The distance to the totem and the ruins around it was swiftly crossed. The remnants of houses were completely useless. They had been built on a ground that had gradually eroded by the magma flows beneath and the ash rain above. What remained were walls sunken into the dirt, the roofs collapsed and burned to ash alongside the rest of the contents.
The Necklace of Regulation was once more their saving grace. Without it, their eyes would have dried up and their lips cracked from the heat. Even with it, Alex stopped a solid ten metres away from the heart of it all. The titanic totem was radiating immense heat. Its base was surrounded by a solid stone altar.
Spoiler
Choices -Voting closed - 7 voters
| Votes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/7 | |||
| 2 | |||
| 1/ |
Dice: 3d100+40
Options: Individual.
20,60,52 + 40 = 60,100,92
No Crits, whew.
Choices -Voting closed - 12 voters
| Votes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5/8 | |||
| 3/6 | |||
| 1/ |
[On the note of a Reroll:
Lewd Fate activated from the Tile roll - you have 1 extra Reroll for today.]
-Voting closed - 7 voters
| Votes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/6 | |||
| 1/2 | |||
| 1/2 | |||
| 1/2 |
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The altar was a broad, dark and cyclopean thing. Runes covered the seamless surface, their original form warped and faded by the relentless energy of the totem. Though it being the endpoint of the energy flow was new, it had always experienced a measure of wasted heat.
Where that heat came from remained a mystery. If Alex had to take a simple guess, there was a genuine active volcano at the source. Islands did not pop out of nowhere. For whatever reason, the people that had lived there had wanted that heat harnessed here, rather than at its origin point.
“We are going to shut this off,” Alex decided.
“You think that’s wise?” Yahui asked. “For all we know, the harnessing was necessary to prevent an eruption.”
“Possible, but I think the land would look a lot worse if that was being held back.” There was no backing for that claim other than intuition, though in this case there was nothing to reasonably to make that claim besides paranoia either. “I think it’ll be better to return this to nature under our terms, rather than wait until the vestiges of this system fail fully.”
“Works for me,” Astrid agreed.
“S-same… but, uhm… how do we shut this off?” Tilting her head back, Sara took in the full height of the totem. It was at least twenty metres high and three metres thick. The altar around the base was fairly low, around the height of Alex’s hips, and added an extra six metres to the circumference. Likely it was a lot taller at its full size but had been partially swallowed by the ground like the other buildings.
“Magic is esotericism,” Alex led his explanation. “Everything is about symbolism. The runes and such used around that fundamental fact are supporting rules mankind either discovered or invented. That…” He pointed at the totem. “Is a dead fire totem, do we agree on that?”
The blonde fairy by his side gave him a couple nods. “That is a way to look at it, yeah.”
“Therefore, a living ice woman is its symbolical opposite.” Alex turned to Yahui. “I think you may be able to shut it down.”
“I can certainly try,” Yahui agreed.
They moved forwards as four, carefully watching for any kind of ash demon suddenly jumping at them. The heat rose to an unpleasant level. The stone radiated it. Yahui took a deep breath and focused her supernatural blessings. A mild cold consolidated into a visible mist around her hand. Surface runes took on the frigid white where her hand touched the rock. The totem thrummed. The cold spread through a quarter of the stone, dragging the heat down to a pleasant level. The black stone turned into a grey shade.
“Your theory is sound,” Yahui said, “but I lack the strength. Greater vitality is necessary…”
“Greater vitality, you say?” Alex did not need any further prompt. Huge hands seized Yahui by the narrow of her waist. He lifted her up, placing her atop the cooled segment of the stone. Instinctively, she spread her legs for him. Her gaze remained questioning, however. “If vitality is what you need, let us act to affirm life, deeply and fully.”
Just rubbing his cock on the entrance of her pussy confirmed his theory. As her excitement grew, so too did the frost-marked segment of the stone. The esoteric power of sex had been proven beyond a doubt several times over, especially when it came to his harem of nubile tomboys.
“Sara, Astrid, join her,” he ordered.
“You don’t need… a lookout?” Sara asked.
“We’ll need every bit of energy we can confer to this ritual,” he told them. “Plus, we’re on open terrain. It’ll be fine. Trust me.” The last two words initiated the transition of his voice to a tone that did not make requests. “Get on the altar.”
“”Yes, Master!”” blonde and brunette exclaimed in instinctive unison.
Spoiler
Dice: 1d100
Options: Sum. Threshold: 50.
99 = 99 (Success!)
Astrid is dicked into the Cultist stage.
Dice: 1d100
Options: Sum. Threshold: 55.
68 = 68 (Success!)
Two Crit-dodges in a row…
All the same, Yahui is dicked into Zealotry.
Dice: 1d100
Options: Sum. Threshold: 25.
34 = 34 (Success!)
Aaaaaand Sara gets the Crit…
So that's 3x34 involved in this now…
I'll add it to the reward at the end. Baseline, Sara gets dicked straight to Zealot as well.
[Right, that's also another Reroll gained, technically…
4 remaining for today.]
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