the fellowship of the thing The Fellowship of the Thing - I'm bored. Let's mess around! (Retired)

[CryoZenith]

"Wonderful, thanks for directions. Name's Cryo, by the way." he said with a slight smirk, acknowledging the door indicated with a brief look but pointedly not moving towards it. "Okay, on a more serious note" Cryo changed his tone, making eye contact with everyone there in turn, then settling back on EmLee, "You are about to do things. The things you are about to do will affect many people. This, I know. Whether those effects are good or bad, whether you'll succeed or fail, and the entire why of the matter are a complete mystery to me, but either way, I don't judge. I learn. So, what's going on?"

Spoiler

Cryo is a Frontierist of Mandrell. Mandrell is a secret, gated city-state of (primarily) scholars and historians. Mandrell society is divided in the civilian population, mostly scientists of various fields, and the administrative classes, made up of Consuls, Factcheckers, Blurs, Infusers, Hieromancers and Frontierists. For magical reasons that I won't get into, Mandrell is immune from hostile influence by any faction, powerful individual, or type of magic or technology they thoroughly understand. The more they understand something, the better they are at avoiding it (as a location. Individual Mandrellians don't have special defensive magic, unless their administrative class specifically grants any). Since the outside world is constantly changing, evolving, and discovering new things, Mandrell has to constantly update what they know about the Outside to refresh their defenses. Frontierists are the the administrative class tasked with exploring the Outside, primarily for data gathering.

As a Frontierist, Cryo has the powers of uncanny intuition, perfect memory, and immunity to memory wipe and memory alteration magic (other kinds of mind control cut through him like butter though, so be careful). He is also highly resistant to cognitohazards (images and pieces of information that would normally be psychologically traumatic to a person hurt Frontierists to a much lesser degree), although this last trait is a skill developed nonmagically through Frontierist standard training, not a magical mental protection. Cryo has also taken a six month fencing class in high school. Don't... expect him to be very useful in combat :)).

Not sure if this last part is overly useful, but Cryo is a 25 year old male, 6'2" tall and weighing 175 lbs. He is average in terms of fitness. He wears high-diopter glasses without which he cannot function much of at all. His left forearm is encircled by a black scroll-like tattoo with runes. The tattoo has no magical properties whatsoever, but looks like it does.

 

Edited January 16, 2022 by CryoZenith

[Channelknight Fadran]

"Uhhh... currently? Not much. We're just sitting around and waiting for everyone to get their socks and shoes on so we can actually start punching the bad guys."

[#1 Taln Fan]

“Well I don’t know about you guys, but I’m  ready to get going. Is Fadran in command?”

[Channelknight Fadran]

"'In command'? Nah." Fadran shook his head. "I'm just the mother duck, or something. People do their own thing; I just tell you not to touch the hot stove or press the big red button. I guess I'm more of a supervisor than anything else?"

Technically, yes, he was in charge. They'd decided on that ages ago. It still felt strange, though--and he didn't want to be at all controlling to the other Fellowshippers.

Maybe you're just a wuss. Icona said.

Fadran rolled his eyes. Oh, okay. I see how it is.

Just stand up straighter and make them all salute! You've done it before.

Not with... these guys. Those were all regular soldiers, with swords and spears and a very controlled amount of magic. Here we've got gods and demigods and... all sorts of weirdos.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a weirdo?

Yeah.

Well... do what you will, Channelboy.

He snorted. You call me that again and I'll start talking about how you need to take responsibility because you're a big boy now.

You wouldn't dare.

[xinoehp512]

On 1/14/2022 at 8:10 PM, Channelknight Fadran said:

An... awful lot of anti-aircraft weaponry.

"That is a lot of guns!" exclaimed Echo Four's voice from Echo Six. "They sure aren't messing around."

14 hours ago, 2EmLee2 said:

EmLee put down her book and started listening to Fadran's and the Echo's conversation thoughtfully.

"I think I may have a way of gaining some information, though it probably won't work," she said.

"Any information we can gather will be vital!"

12 hours ago, CryoZenith said:

other kinds of mind control cut through him like butter though, so be careful

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So he is especially vulnerable to possession via spirit? Am I reading this correctly?  

35 minutes ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

"Uhhh... currently? Not much. We're just sitting around and waiting for everyone to get their socks and shoes on so we can actually start punching the bad guys."

"I would like to know what the plan currently is," stated Echo Three. "The end goal is obviously to cause the Empire to cease to exist, but what instrumental goals have you set? Which are you working towards at the moment?"

[Channelknight Fadran]

"At the moment, our goals aren't large. Liberating the locals here isn't going to come close to even making a dent in the Empire; but it'd make a massive difference to the lives of everyone who lives here."

[CryoZenith]

"Gotta be honest with you, chief." Cryo told Fadran, shrugging. "I'm neither opposed nor enthusiastic about bad guys getting punched. I'm just here to make sure that, whichever of those two happens, I will be around to see it happen. Although..." he continued on a lower tone, "I have reasons to believe that the future branch where you survive your goals has a higher probability weight of myself living to tell the tale. So... don't count on me, but do count me in."

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@xinoehp512: No, I was just emphasizing that Cryo's resistance to memory alteration is hyper-specific and doesn't confer him general-purpose mental resistance. He's not *worse* than normal, though, it's not a vulnerability. Your ability to spiritually possess him is equal to your ability to spiritually possess the average nonmagical adult human.

 

[xinoehp512]

2 hours ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

"At the moment, our goals aren't large. Liberating the locals here isn't going to come close to even making a dent in the Empire; but it'd make a massive difference to the lives of everyone who lives here."

"Securing this universe would provide a safe headquarters if we could pull it off."

[Sequence]

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I looked at Cryo's entrance, and you're supposed to just... appear? I'm still very confused as to the nature of this Thing.

 

[CryoZenith]

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No, Cryo just walked in a random direction until his magical intuition led him to the other characters. Why, was there a locked door he should've been stuck at?

 

[Frustration]

16 hours ago, Sequence said:

 

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yes just appear, random portal, no explination, something like that.

Or justofy it with world reasons, do whatever really.

 

[The Ward's Guard]

Try as hard as he might, Silver kept his head bouncing between the ghosts and everyone else, but still looked confused. He leaned over to Pearl. "If I'm getting this straight, they want to beat up some imperialist guys like Papa Caden's father, and then . . . Rule in their stead?"

@Zephrun's Imperium

[Zephrun’s Imperium]

"I don't think they want to rule, I think they just want to break up the empire."

[The Ward's Guard]

"But why? What does this empire do that makes it worthy of so much attention and effort?"

[Zephrun’s Imperium]

She shrugged. “It’s evil.”

[CryoZenith]

Cryo silently made a mental note that the Empire might not be evil after all, and to keep an open mind. At the end of the day, though, he didn't care. His job wasn't to prevent decent empires from collapsing. Let those stuck up Consuls concern themselves with matters of political stability. His job was to document.

[Channelknight Fadran]

11 hours ago, The Ward's Guard said:

"But why? What does this empire do that makes it worthy of so much attention and effort?"

"It just goes about conquering every universe it can find, assimilating the populace into its workforce and army to build up their own wealth and power."

[xinoehp512]

"So how do you intend to secure this universe?"

[Channelknight Fadran]

"By getting everyone here to fight back. To an extent, anyways."

[The Ward's Guard]

3 hours ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

"It just goes about conquering every universe it can find, assimilating the populace into its workforce and army to build up their own wealth and power."

Silver turned to face the man, he was called either Fadran or Cryo, but he couldn't remember. "Oh, forgive me for these annoying and yet prying questions, but wouldn't the darn think collapse in on itself? Ya know, like a Jenga tower thingy?"

[Channelknight Fadran]

"I don't know what a Jenga is, but it hasn't yet because it isn't intensive. Most universes are given a level of autonomy to provide for themselves, but give the Clan tribute in the form of goods, money, and people. And, like I said ealier, this thing has a lot of redundancies. Enough backups to make an engineer drool."

[The Ward's Guard]

"So this 'Empire' comes in, takes you over, but says that you can rule yourself, so long as you give them stuff? They don't like, offer a gateway into a larger economy for the multiverse or whatever? You know, a chance for the conquered to grow within the 'empire' that they couldn't have had without it?"

[Channelknight Fadran]

"Significantly advanced universes are put under more strict levels of control. The ones that are closest to Macrocosmic control themselves are occasionally wiped out. Most are kept under martial law, with local thugs keeping everyone in check." Fadran shrugged. "Honestly, in a lot of places, it isn't even that bad. Some universes aren't advanced at all, so the Clan takes over quietly and waits until they can provide anything decent. Most don't know that they've been conquered until they go industrial and start developing stuff of real value."

[xinoehp512]

16 minutes ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

"I don't know what a Jenga is, but it hasn't yet because it isn't intensive. Most universes are given a level of autonomy to provide for themselves, but give the Clan tribute in the form of goods, money, and people. And, like I said ealier, this thing has a lot of redundancies. Enough backups to make an engineer drool."

"How does one back up an empire?"

[The Ward's Guard]

14 minutes ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

"Significantly advanced universes are put under more strict levels of control. The ones that are closest to Macrocosmic control themselves are occasionally wiped out. Most are kept under martial law, with local thugs keeping everyone in check." Fadran shrugged. "Honestly, in a lot of places, it isn't even that bad. Some universes aren't advanced at all, so the Clan takes over quietly and waits until they can provide anything decent. Most don't know that they've been conquered until they go industrial and start developing stuff of real value."

Silver shook his head. "Author, this would be so much easier . . ." He leaned towards Pearl. "You really think we should get involved? Papa C always talked about things like this, he made it sound so much easier."

@Zephrun's Imperium

Edited January 18, 2022 by The Ward's Guard