kenod

"Thank you," KanMien said. They signaled a nearby denizen using alleycant, telling them what to do with the wounded. "Sir, if you need anything, just ask."

Sure, I think.

KanMien nodded. "Alright, good to know," they said. They lowered their voice. "Look, given the current situation it might be best to have your people in a somewhat safer place, especially given the state of this place. If you want to, we can shelter your people in the alleys. The wounded the DA evacuated are there already." They paused, grabbing a piece of paper out of their pocket, and handed it to him. "Here," they said, "I was supposed to give you this."

KanMien was kneeling over one of the wounded, bandaging his arm, when Kumiko found them. "Hey," they said. "How are you?" Kumiko stretched a bit, shifting back to her fox form. "I'm good," she said. "I'm guessing you're not," she said, pointing at the bloody holes in her clothing. "Already healed myself," they said. One of the medics took away the wounded she was working on. "Come on," they said. "Let's go find the rest and figure out what to do." They walked up to Dan. "Hey," KanMien said. "Didn't figure I'd see you here. I was told you're one of those in charge? What's the situation?"

On the other hand, we want to keep the character count low to improve oversight, so at least at the start we'll probably just stick to one character per player.

Alright, sounds good. Edit: Input from others is (as always) appreciated.

The Acolyte watched Ciera leave, and turned to the other representative of the Ghostbloods. "Well, since she left in somewhat of a hurry, possibly because she figured she was losing the debate," they said, "do you have anything to say about this?" @I think I am here.

The Acolyte smiled a Ciera. "Of course. On the other hand, I'm not sure that a group that, until providing proper evidence, is considered responsible for unprovoked attacks on council guilds as well as mass committing of war crimes is really in a position to argue about the status of the DA, especially after we were the first to provide aid, while all your guild has been doing is offer vague assurances that you were not behind this, while refusing to discuss the implications of what has happened if you weren't, such as the fact that you have an army large enough that a small splinter group can rival the Great Guilds." They smiled. "Besides, if anyone else wants to comment of this they are welcome to do so, but so far I haven't heard anyone interrupt me."

Alright, that doesn't really sound like much of an issue. How good are they at following commands though?

The acolyte walked up to Ciera. "In that case," they started, "could you please explain why a single rogue faction of your organization has enough military strength that it requires the strength of two Great Guilds and the DA to deal with them? To me, this gives the idea that you people have either been building up your forces to way into excess of what the other Great Guild have, and what the Oasis Agreement allows for, or that this wasn't a rogue faction at all, and perhaps either an intentional attack, or one of your leaders going rogue and taking most of your army with them." They stepped back, and addressed the rest of the council. "I'm sure this council would very much want to hear the answer to this, as well as your evidence for why this was a rogue faction. After all, if there's already one Great Guild being attacked, what's to prevent an attack on another one?"

The acolyte snapped his fingers, and a number of other acolytes distributed pictures among the delegates. "Really?" He asked. "From the pictures we've received, it seems like this 'rogue' faction is engaging the the wholesale slaughter of civilians, including children, and the DA seems to be the only group that's currently trying to aid the Church. I'm not sure if I'd call that as having the situation under control."

Sounds good to me. An explanation for why this doesn't happen to other people might also be nice though. Personal idea, most spirits don't try it because of the danger of what happens if the host dies (I'm guessing this would likely kill the spirit too), and because most spirits aren't capable of this because of their stories, but as a trickster god, this spirit would be less constrained by this. So basically, the reason this happened in this case is a combination of desperation, the spirit's power being low enough not to kill the host, and the spirit's stories already having some element of possession, giving it the basic ability for forming the connection, that they then altered into a weird (and dangerous) variation of a Nahel bond. The fact that trickster spirits are often also seen as intelligent, or doing weird or taboo things might also have helped things along.

That would work, though the main thing I'm not entirely sure about is the fusion thing, mostly because I'm not really sure how it'd work, so I'd like some additional input on that from the others regarding ideas for how it could work. Though if you have any good ideas yourself I'd like to hear them too.

The issue is that the main reason they'd die would be a lack of worship, which would mean that they wouldn't get a lot of Investure through Natural magic. Still, if you're alright with using Investure crystals instead it might work, but I'd like some more input on this from other people.

Sounds interesting, and I personally enjoy shapeshifters, so there's that too. My take on it: You have two options, they'll either have this ability through natural magic changing them directly, or getting the ability from something else. Getting the ability directly would require certain stories about them. Not perhaps about them in particular, but stories about people like them in general. This would be the easiest to use, since the energy necessary for this would come directly from the Natural magic/ley lines. The downside, however, is that for this level of power the natural magic would have a decent influence on them, the stories limiting their actions and personality to the one the stories line out. For example, in Najavo myth skin walkers are basically the most evil type of witch, so if the story your character's powers came from was like this, they'd be forced to be evil. This particular method would probably also give a number of weird effects to their powers, such as special weaknesses, or things required for them to use this power, like wearing the skin of the animal they want to turn into. The ability could have an outside source, like, as you said, being a gift from a higher being, either in a way similar to how gods creating miracles would work or by the entity modifying your character's spiritweb and giving it as a type of Innate magic. This would have fewer limitations with regards to how they can act, but have different issues. Specifically, your character would need a source of Investure for the ability to work. If directly connected to this being it would be fairly simple, they could just channel its power. This would have the issue that their power functioning is basically down to the being's whims though, with said being capable of cutting of the flow, temporarily or permanently disabling their ability. Depending on the nature of the being there might also be a distance limitation for where the power will work. If they got the ability by having their spiritweb modified it would have the least amount of issues, basically functioning using the rules for Descendant Innate magic, but as such, would require them to use Investure crystals to use this ability. The actual energy cost would probably be lower than what a Fleshcrafting of the same level would cost though (assuming that it works through the same principles Natural magic uses, instead of just manipulating the physical form like Fleshcrafting does), and if they manage to get some stories about them started the energy cost would start decreasing as they would be able to tap into the energy given by their Natural magic instead, though this would come with the same issues as the first method, though possibly at a less significant level, at least at first (basically, for as long as they still need to use Investure crystals). Edit: Sounds good, but I kind of want to know how powerful his pack is. Are they normal wolves or are they affected by Natural magic as well? Also, how intelligent are they? Other than that it seems good, but do keep in mind that the current plot-line takes place inside a large city, so it might be good to work out how they'd fit in there, given that he likes to stay away from people.

Lilia walked across the countryside, moving through the crowds around her, the people she passed staring at her in surprise at her appearance. She didn't notice this though, walking after a small spirit instead. She looked around, watching the other spirits that flew through the crowd without being seen, softly laughing to herself as one curled itself around the head of a man walking through the crowd. "State your name and purpose please," a voice suddenly called out to her. As she stopped and turned around, the spirit she had been following flew out of sight. Sighing, she turning to the man. When he saw her, his eyes went wide for a bit, but he quickly collected himself. "Right, I guess you're here for the census," he said. "If that's true, I'll just need your name." "Ah, right, I am," Lilia answered, "though I'm also interested in visiting this academy." She looked thoughtful for a bit. " My name is Lilia Blumenkind. Can I pass now?" The man nodded, and she continued walking into the city, looking around her, amazed at how busy everything was.

Done. I also corrected what I thought were a few spelling mistakes (profits instead of prophets, hero's instead of heroes).

Sounds great. Do you want to add him to the character list or do you want to do it yourself?

One of the DA acolytes walked forward, putting a small spike in their hand to increase their vocal volume. They walked towards the Ghostblood's representatives. "It seems that the Precursors have already sent help," they loudly spoke towards everyone in the room. "When are the Ghostbloods going to send help? After all, they've already confirmed that this is a rogue faction, so they should clearly already be sending people to protect a guild that is part of the government." They paused. "Or," they continued, addressing the rest of the room, "are they not sending help because this is their own plan? After all, there are enough people attacking there to threaten a Great Guild, so this would mean the amount of soldiers involved would require a power on the level of a Great Guild doing this."

@Element of Chaos