Kevin Curry
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Summon Perfect Warlady Chapter 17
🕑 Added 2023-11-20 15:00:08 +0000 UTCOkay, this has gone on long enough that I might as well make it official.
Schedule is now alternating Summon Perfect Warlady and Psychoprotective. Starting next month, Psychoprotective will be removed from the monthly polls. Further, access to Summon Perfect Warlady content will be brought up to the same level as Psychoprotective, the $5 level, starting in January. I would have done this when I transitioned stories at Psychoprotective's conclusion anyway like I did when it became the primary work, but with a month and a half of forewarning I figure the New Year's a good time to acknowledge reality.
The point of the poll is to inject some variety in my work, so it's no good if it ends up with the same thing winning by a landslide every month. You'll still get an update every other week, you just don't need to pray I get writers block on Psychoprotective to keep them coming now.
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[Maggie Matcher, level 4 Adept Thinkamancer of Yojo Mojo]
Life under King Ansom and Princess Tanya was… acceptable. Maggie had long considered the various pros and cons of Yojo Mojo over Gobwin Knob. Some facets were better, like how she no longer has to constantly manage her mercurial ruler's moods, but some were worse, as she was no longer quite as essential to the side as she was before.
One big plus was the opportunity to learn more about Sizemore Rockwell, who she had never really spent much time with under Stanley. His mind was a lot sharper than she had initially gave him credit, and he had some truly fascinating ideas, even if they were, at times, rather quaint.
There was also Lord White, but that was just physical. Soldiers like him were easy to find.
The most intriguing mind, however, would have to be Tanya herself. It was a little interesting to compare her mind before and after she was coronated. Her grandiocosmic strings were always snarled, some quiet specter constantly stressing out her mind without release. Afterwards, and particularly after she got a chance to clean up her thoughts through a dream cycle, she was far more comfortable with herself and her position.
But whatever malaise was holding her back before, she changed surprisingly little externally. She took to royal etiquette like a gobwin to caves, finding comfort in the fact that she knew what to do, in contrast to before when her confidence was a paper thin facade over a thick sea of anxiety.
It was somewhat surprising, to both her and Headmaster Isaac, how easily Tanya slotted herself in as an ordinary Warlady, even if she remained rather odd for a Princess. It was expected that someone from another world would be… stranger.
But she fought for her Duty as easily as any other Warlady, risking her life with no hesitation. There was something disconfitting about how quickly she transitioned her loyalty to their side, and how easily she accustomed herself to the practicalities of command.
Even normally popped warlords tended to get uncomfortable with the thought of being Chief Warlord so soon after popping, but the Princess jumped into the thick of things without missing a step. Perfect Warlord, indeed.
Her fumbling start with magic, and her stumbles on the strangest facets of conducting war, did prove that she was still from another world, just… one that was closer to Erf than Headmaster Isaac imagined. Maggie wasn't privvy to whatever information the Great Minds had on where the Perfect Warlord was summoned from, only that Tanya was not the first, and there were expectations set by that other Perfect Warlord that Tanya did not match.
"Did you notice what Bunny did at the end there?" Tanya asked after taking a moment to comport herself. She was blushing, which was unusual enough that it intrigued Maggie. "To their string?"
Maggie's heart skipped a beat. She could see grandiocosmic strings? Still, it was a simple matter for a thinkamancer to control their emotions and expression, so she merely quirked her eyebrow. "I don't know what you're talking about, Princess."
"Ah, their heartstring." Tanya clarified, "Their Date-a-mancy connection." Oh. It was just a coincidence. "I thought thinkamancers couldn't see them, but then I noticed Bunny sending those love messages through it so I thought…" Hm. Perhaps there is a connection. She frowned. "Did Caesar ever say if Bunny was a Master or not?"
Maggie shook her head. "He did not, Princess. However, while I could not say for sure whether or not she was," the other Thinkamancer had expertly blocked all attempts for a sidebar conversation. "…I can say that she is likely more skilled than I." There was a good chance that she was a Master, but she could merely be on the cusp of the rank instead.
Princess Tanya hummed. "Emotions and feelings are parts of minds… perhaps learning a bit of Date-a-mancy would be useful for your development?" Maggie wasn't sure about that… but it probably couldn't hurt. In the worst case, she'll just need to sequester the knowledge, unavailable unless called upon.
Every caster hungers for knowledge, for a chance to advance their understanding of their discipline. They pop with a vague awareness of the higher capabilities of their discipline, enough to answer questions from their ruler if they ask for something beyond the skill of a novice, confirming that it was within the scope of their discipline.
Stanley never really had questions of that nature, but Tanya had plenty. She had immediately deduced several aspects of Thinkamancy that the Great Minds had declared secret with minimal information, and due to her status as the Perfect Warlady, she had the clearance to know many of those secrets. It was necessary in order to arm her for her eventual conflict with Charlie.
Maggie was just glad that Tanya didn't put up a fuss about making a pinky swear not to share those secrets. It's very safe, but Headmaster Isaac was worried about Tanya not understanding that without some convincing.
The turn wasn’t quite over, so they adjourned to handle the last few matters, most relevantly they needed to follow through on the plan outlined to Transylvito. Ansom did not like the news they had for him, but the idea of getting correspondence to Queen Jillian without getting ignored was an opportunity that motivated him to follow through with Tanya’s promises on his behalf.
When they reconvened in Tanya’s room, seated at the odd low table she had, the one that was too low to have chairs but instead used cushions, Tanya was not in a good mood. “He better be properly threatening in his letter.” She groused, “That damned heartstring is too thick for my comfort.”
Maggie cleared her throat. “If you could elaborate, perhaps, on the nature of that?”
Tanya took a deep cleansing breath. “Okay, so… date-a-mancy. Every person has a list of preferences. They value things differently than other people. Sometimes the difference is small, sometimes the difference is large. It is a basic economic principle, that each person’s price point is different. In the difference between objective value, cost, and subjective value, demand, is where profit can be made.” Maggie easily quashed the amusement that attempted to infect her face, even if Tanya’s money centric perspective on another magic was objectively funny. “Date-a-mancy is the magic of pairings, of the relationships between two things. It’s the first thing most people would tell you about the discipline, it’s even how it's described in Scripture.” Maggie nodded along. “The Hippiemancers would instead call it the magic of Love. Both of these things are correct. I find that few disciplines can be properly encapsulated in one thing without giving the wrong impression on the full capabilities of the discipline.”
Maggie could certainly agree with that, even what little she could access about the Great Mind’s vast treasure troves of knowledge proved that while all magical disciplines did have a singular axis on which it turned, Language was too limited to properly explain them succinctly.
Tanya continued her explanation. “These pairings are represented by a metaphorical string, which encodes all emotional contexts between the two sides of the pair. This is a heartstring. By spending juice, I can sharpen my perception of them, and thus can see things that I could only barely sense before. For example…” She paused, focusing on Maggie. “...your relationship with von White is purely physical, and you find him bland and uninteresting otherwise.” Tanya frowned, “That really isn’t fair to him, you know.”
Maggie hummed. She was right. “I suppose I could try and find someone a bit more… interesting.”
Tanya hummed. “You find Sizemore’s pacifism novel and interesting. Why not pursue that?” She could even tell that?
If Maggie wasn’t such a proficient thinkamancer, she wouldn’t have been able to conceal her blush. But she was and thus had. “Ah… Sizemore’s infatuation with Grand Abbie Atlantis precludes such things.” She admitted.
“I suppose.” Tanya acknowledged, “My point is that this kind of information should be within the purview of Thinkamancy to find, and Bunny’s manipulation of heartstrings during the thinkagram proves it. She used them to pass Ceasar secret messages, for one.” Maggie let her eyes widen. She didn’t even notice… “They didn’t seem like important messages, nor was her doing that any kind of a problem, but she did.”
Maggie knew that, as an Adept, her knowledge of her own discipline was incomplete. It had to be, for even Masters continued to learn and grow. “You are… probably correct.” Maggie admitted. “You see, much as how date-a-mancy operates by reading and manipulating those heartstrings, a useful metaphor for thinkamancy includes the use of strings. Thinkagrams connect the strings between two people, linking knots those strings, etcetera.” Revealing this was… potentially censurable, but Tanya’s previous pinky swear would also cover this, and she could downplay the broader implications behind the grandiocosmic strings. “We call them G-strings, although the reason for that is not particularly important.”
Tanya closed her eyes as she absorbed that information. Her adjutant entered the room, placing a tea service between them and pouring them both a cup. “Thank you, Visha. We’re discussing classified information, so if you could guard the door and not listen in?” She asked it as a request, but the thinkamancy of an order made it clear that it was not one.
“Yes Tanya.” The adjutant said, saluting before following the order. Tanya had started calling her that after the new caster, Elya, gave Victoria the nickname. Tanya’s only reason was ‘she liked it’, which was fair enough.
“Now, the G and H strings.” Tanya said, bringing them back on topic. “Their adjacency on the alphabet is no coincidence, I think.” She said contemplatively. “Each is just a step removed from the other. I wonder…” Tanya started casting, although Maggie could tell that she was trying something new.
Suddenly, a memory packet unfolded in Maggie’s mind, recalling the date-a-mancy spell she had assisted Tanya in casting while linked. Even for a thinkamancer, it was difficult to retain the information gleaned about other disciplines while linking, but the memory was clear as she braided the heartstrings of her knights into a mighty stack. It was somewhat like a thinkamancy information transfer spell… but it just appeared in her mind.
Wait… “...Do that again.” Maggie said, paying very close attention to her G-strings.
After another memory, this time of the unlinking of that link, but from Tanya’s perspective as she pulled an H-string that was providing tension to a G-string, but she couldn’t see the G-string, instead seeing the H-string. Maggie immediately sent back the opposite perspective through conventional thinkamancy, as she carefully untangled their G-strings until a tension that was there mysteriously vanished.
At turn’s end, she had leveled, and knew that she was a Master-class Thinkamancer. Soon, she’ll be one of the Great Minds who Think Alike.
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[Princess Tanya von Degurechaff, level 6 Chief Warlady of Yojo Mojo]
Tanya had been on Erf for eighty turns, and finally the peace she had been enjoying has been broken.
Faq had respected Ansom’s threat, and after absorbing Jitterati had continued on to fight Aussiemandayis. Haggar was still licking their wounds, but Jetstone had entered open conflict with Rightshoring, HobbitTM piling on that conflict. Dogfort had supposedly started a fight with the Sofa King and their protectorates, FoxMUD and the Hyatt Regency, and Unaroyal sent a column of units to prove to the Doge that fighting the Royal Crown Coalition was a mistake they will not survive to regret. It is expected that the result will be Hyatt’s ascendence into a proper peer to the other members of the RCC. Whether or not they actually started the fight or the Sofa King is just conquering to expand their subordinate side… unclear. Transylvito stayed out of things, content with their continual low boil of conflict with Metroland and Carpool.
It had been decided, now that half of the accessories had been finished, to send the augmented stacks to the Rightshoring conflict, supporting Jetstone and HobbitTM. There was just one small diplomatic issue that needed to get cleared up first.
“Return Jetstone’s caster immediately!” Shouted a furious King Slately.
…Elya had taken initiative and gotten Ace to turn, without spending a single drop of juice to do so, only seduction and manipulation. She even leveled for doing so.
Tanya had walked through the portal to Spacerock, Jetstone’s capital, to discuss the matter in person. “King Slately, be reasonable. While we acknowledge a debt has been incurred by Lady von Culper’s reckless actions, You need to look no further than the fact that our alliance is still intact to find that his turning was willing. Let us talk terms.” with their secret supply of gems, they could pay any reasonable price he could quote, and quite a few unreasonable ones.
“Holly Shortcake's golems are the backbone of our columns!” King Slately proclaimed. “There is no price sufficient to leave us without dollamancy!”
“Woah, your Majesty, let's not say things that I'm going to regret.” Chief Healomancer Pierce said, “We haven't had Ace bunking here for nearly forty turns now, and everything’s still standing.” On cue, the martini glass that he had set down got knocked over. “Oh now that's a tragedy.” He said, looking at the glass.
“It's true, it's true.” Lord Bernhard, Jetstone's dittomancer, added. “We can still dupe Ace for what we need him to do.”
“And that's the crux of the issue.” Tanya said, “if we were talking about Holly Shortcake, we’d be having a very different conversation. But we're not. We are talking about Ace Hardware. Acting at your direction, he remained a level one novice for 30 turns. After only slightly more time on our side, he is now a level 5 Adept.” Tanya shook her head in disappointment. “Allowing Lord Bernhard to continue to duplicate Ace on an ongoing basis is an acceptable condition. Our alliance is valuable and has benefited both sides. Name an acceptable amount for reparations, and it will be arranged with all possible speed.” After a moment, she added: “Naturally, this will include forgiveness for the remainder of the outstanding debt.”
Slately scowled, the short, squat, and old King looking more like a pouting child than a regal monarch. “Five hundred thousand Shmuckers.” He declared.
The courtiers and his casters gasped in shock at the price. A hundred grand per level was expensive for an adept, as Ace is not exactly a big deal, magically. But it was ‘overpriced’ expensive, not ‘insultingly unreasonable’ expensive. More importantly, it was an amount that Yojo Mojo could plausibly have, albeit possibly needing to downgrade a city to get the full amount. They wouldn't normally, their treasury only recently cracked three hundred thousand, but their mine was not normal.
“Your Majesty, “ Pierce started to object before closing his mouth, Slately having clearly ordered him to be silent.
“Well?” Slately asked, staring imperiously at Tanya.
Tanya put on a show of considering the figure, pretending to do mental math. After about 30 seconds of doing so, she shrugged. “Okay.” On cue, her tiara rumbled, and she took it off and shook it gently over a pillow presented by an exceptionally quick witted attendant. One by one, five gems fell out of it. After double-checking that they had the full one hundred thousand each, she allowed the attendant to present them to King Slately. “I believe that resolves this matter?” she had Maggie waiting in her room with a hat, specifically to enable this particular diplomatic coup.
King Slately didn't look shocked in a conventional sense, royal decorum was important and while emotions like anger were perfectly acceptable to make a point, surprise was a demonstration of weakness. She could still tell that he was discomfited by the ease with which she fulfilled his request. After a long pause, he nodded. “I suppose it does.” He said, resigned. No doubt he had planned to wheedle all sorts of concessions, but they could afford to take this on the chin; paying this bill in cash bought much more than just one caster.
“I assure you, this move will strengthen the Royal Crown Coalition.” Tanya said, giving him her best ‘battle maniac' grin. She was about to go into battle, she couldn't show fear. “In fact, we’ll be demonstrating Ace’s new products and their effectiveness on Rightshoring as a demonstration of his strength.”
Tanya sharpened her senses, sensing the many minor heartstrings that trailed from her to the people around. Visibility of a heartstring was a function of emotional weight and distance, so she could see their fear of her grew in equal measure with their respect. She was a foreign General, so it was good for them to fear her a little bit.
King Slately? The colors of that vibrant heartstring were complex… primarily respect, a blend of fear, as he fears all who have personally fought in battles, a little bit of pride and vindication… and just a tiny sliver of growing resentment. Spending a little more juice, she pulled that troublesome color out. Best not to let that take root.
Date-a-mancy was one of the weakest forms of mind control in Erfworld, but it was certainly capable of keeping relations peaceful, if wielded precisely. All she was doing was keeping the man calm and rational about his ally, nothing more.
After all, it was the magic of making friends.
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“Why did you hide this from me?” King Ansom asked, pacing around the tea room. In front of Tanya, all eighteen remaining gems gleamed. She had expected that Slately would not be quiet about things.
“Bluntly, I didn’t think the discrepancy would be so large.” Tanya replied, “Having a secret reserve of shmuckers seemed wise, in case of… various contingencies.” Mostly Ansom being a bit too generous with Jetstone. “I instructed them to only remove and conceal large gems, so as to minimize the disruption. By the time I had returned, the reserve had already grown to the point where revealing it would cause problems.” Tanya paused to sip at her tea, idly wondering if the Hippiemancers knew of matcha… or coffee. She should ask. The local variety was some kind of black tea that was just called ‘tea’, although she couldn’t recognize it. The natural changemancy that turned it from the tea bricks in the larder added a citrusy note and it was served with honey, which Tanya always added. For some reason, the kettle had rose petals steeping in with the water, which added a little extra something that Tanya found hard to describe. “I thought it would be better to pair the news with the resolution of a problem, thus our current situation.”
Ansom continued to pace, before stopping and taking off his crown, wiping the sweat off his brow. Hm, was his hairline always that high? As she understood things, units that were ‘poorly utilized’ for their side tended to gain signs of old age and infirmity, which was occasionally difficult to discern from signamancy indicating wisdom. Much like the line between genius and madness, she supposed. Another sign that ruling didn’t suit him. “...How could we have over one million shmuckers?” He asked, although it was rhetorical.
“It’s unclear.” Tanya admitted, “Presumably, we can spend some of it now, what are your orders?” She remained calm, with her metaphorical finger on her ruler’s emotional pulse. Much like his father, she’d had to nudge him in a direction that kept their relationship copacetic in the past, neither antagonistic nor romantic, but despite the negative emotions that he was currently feeling, there wasn’t anything that she felt the need to intervene on.
“Upgrade the capital to level five, to start.” Ansom said immediately. “Beyond that… Upgrading all of our level twos to three? Threes to four?” Upgrading a city to level four or five significantly increased the defenses and income… but conventional wisdom was to do such things in stages, ensuring that you didn’t present an appealing target for raiding. The difference in wealth generated by razing a level four or five city in comparison to a level 3 was substantial. “Make use of Lord Rockwell’s discount.” He added.
“Understood.” Tanya said, standing up and leaving the King to his thoughts.
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In addition to being able to convert their juice to increase the city’s defenses, which directly lowered the cost to upgrade, having a dirtamancer direct a city’s upgrade also provided a small discount, depending on their level of mastery. An Adept like Sizemore provided a three percent discount, which wasn’t much but upgrading a city from four to five cost a whopping two hundred seventy five thousand shmuckers, twenty-five thousand more than all the other levels combined, even three percent was over eight thousand shmuckers. When linked up, this increased to six, like it would if he was a master. Moneymancers can provide a similar, lesser discount even before spending juice that applies to any kind of moneymancy upgrade. These bonuses do not ordinarily stack.
“Think of the moment when you finally understood Moneymancy.” Maggie advised as they gathered in the tower. “That moment when the words of your lessons became knowledge. The first spell you ever cast with it. There is a comfort there, in applying knowledge rather than risking the unknown.” Tanya took a deep breath, dispelling the nervous energy. She gripped Maggie’s hand in time with Sizemore on the thinkamancer’s other side. “Restructuring.” She intoned, and then things got… weird.
Every piece of Stuff that composed the hex’s interior became known to them. Each piece was cataloged, organized and measured by the length of their value string. One and one and one and one and…
“We’re in the weeds.” the thinkamancer thought. “Zoom out and save bandwidth. Let’s TL;DR it.” Instantly, the deck pivoted to base ten.
“We must play to strengths.” the moneymancer provided, “Dirtamancer, next steps?”
“The low-hanging fruit would be the defenses.” the dirtamancer explained, “The old walls were best in class.”
“Walls are table stakes.” the moneymancer retorted. “Our OKRs don’t indicate that allocating our deliverables there will allow us to meet our KPIs.”
“Add some color.” The dirtamancer replied, confused. “Our core competencies…”
“Our core competencies are scouting and aerial assault.” the moneymancer insisted. “If any siege RTOs, we’re already circling the drain.”
“The tunnels are our bottleneck.” The thinkamancer added, “We can pivot from mining to defense, but the ROI on defense is not going to move the needle on our go to market strategy.”
“Can you see the gems?” The dirtamancer asked, frustrated. “We can’t trim that fat.”
They paused as they digested that. “We can see the gems.” The moneymancer eventually pointed out. “Can we drill down, do a deep dive on the situation?”
“Yes. Breaking down the silos.” The dirtamancer declared, their mutual anticipation vibrating their H-strings.
“Acquiring Assets.” They said as one, spending juice to convert every single one of those gems into the treasury.
Emboldened, they quickly assembled action plans for each facet of the city, designing the new defenses and economic outputs. They sent a confirmation to King Ansom, who ordered the upgrade with their now much larger treasury.
“It worked!” The dirtamancer exclaimed as they examined the results of their work.
“It’s a fallback option.” the moneymancer insisted, “ROI is negative in most use cases.”
“There are more gems to acquire.” The thinkamancer observed, bringing back their attention to the matter at hand.
“Acquiring Assets.”
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Tanya rubbed her forehead as the slight ache abated. “Thank you, Headmaster.” She said as the man removed his hand from her head.
“It’s no trouble, it’s a pleasure to work with you.” Headmaster Isaac said politely. “Tell me, did your plan work?”
Tanya grinned. “Yes, our tower is now capable of recharging its stores of juice by spending shmuckers.” Sure, at two thousand shmuckers per caster level, this was not a cheap option, and the unallocated juice was turned into cheap shockamancy attacks that were only about as strong as the basic among basic spells, which was called hadoken. But with her wand, those weak attacks could become anything. A hired shockamancer could also use the juice more effectively if they needed to use it to defend the city. Sizemore promised to find a trustworthy one to have a contingency contract with. “Oh, and the discount went up to ten percent.” She added. Most of that saved money went to paying Isaac for the decoupling, but that wasn’t the point of the linkup. Most importantly, it meant that they could quickly finish the accessories and increase the +2 bonuses to +3 by dropping around half of a million shmuckers on juice for Ace, allowing him to work on the transformation feature for however long it takes him to do so.
Sizemore beamed at the results of their work. “It’s fascinating, what we learned. You see, the portal column does more than just provide a link to the Magic Kingdom. It’s the keystone in which the entire city…no, the entire side depends on. You couldn’t set up The Exchange on an ordinary city site, I don’t think.” He spent some time thinking, the details of what they learned in the link already slipping from their minds. “It makes me wonder what else could be done with it.” He admitted, “...and if anyone else has already done so.”
“It’s good to get that confirmed.” Isaac said with a smile. “Moneymancy and dirtamancy is not a combination that has much experimental data, you understand.” Apparently, despite the power of it, few sides are willing to accept guild oversight of any three-way links, which usually ended very poorly for any who tried it anyway. “We’ll keep this knowledge safe for you.”
Admittedly, the Great Mind’s secretive attitude about their guild secrets, link results included, was a bit trying, but this world was war-obsessed, so it was understandable that they would prefer to balance the risk their members undertake with their curiosity. Besides, who would she tell? Transylvito?
…Actually, they have a moneymancer and thinkamancer, the ‘instantly empty a mine’ effect would be useful to them if they got a dirtamancer to play along. While not every mine will have the twelve million total shmuckers that Gobwin Knob’s did, getting even one million was well worth a link.
Still, their alliance with Transylvito was one of convenience more than actual good relations, although that was improving over the Faq issue, so she wouldn’t have told them anyway.
“I suppose you’ll be leaving next turn for Rightshoring?” Maggie asked, “Be careful.”
Tanya barked out a laugh. “I’ve seen Rightshoring’s unit profile.” She said, grinning. Jetstone had provided their intelligence freely when they had sent over the knights and single stack of dwagons plus King Bomber, two turns previous. They were currently resting at Spacerock, and next turn Tanya will join them through the portal and they’ll take Rightshoring by storm in a demonstration of strength that will either intimidate HobbitTM from attacking or provoke them into breaking the alliance.
“This won’t be a war.” She added, “It will be a live fire exercise.”
Comments
Leaf
Okay that lingo was good. What are you even supposed to do with that much money?
Chris Larson
Passport scene?
