(Vol 2) Chapter 2: Darting After Fortune

The night passed by without issue for Samantha’s Followers in their travels. She studied meditation while everyone slept, then tried it out in several choice locations. The top of the pyramid; out in nature. She altered her mindscape for a few extra spots. A babbling brook. A rocky hilltop above the forest canopy. They seemed to work nicely, especially with her being more Zen than before.

Mana increased permanently by 1 through meditation.

She took a look at Create Servitor to begin theory-crafting…

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Create Servitor (77/44 FE)

This generates a tangible spirit entity that will serve you and to whom you may delegate deific tasks. Personality details determine independence level. The entity can take material form if summoned by you (one action, 3-minute cooldown) or an authorized clerical agent (7-minute ritual or faster with certain spells). This is possible once per day for each entity. Dematerialization back into your demiplane domain takes 1 minute.

You always have perfect mental communion at the maximum relationship with your servitors. Servitors count as a [Priest] class of your deity level with a max personal FE equal to 10 + 10 per level. They cannot lead any rituals, provide FE, and are restricted from some mortal-only spells (Note: inability to provide FE means they can only recharge via your expenditure of FE; you may do this 1 additional time per day).

Servitors may have up to 4 special abilities — you may expend one of these to attune a servitor to a domain, which gives them an ability similar, but lesser, to your own core deity Power of that domain, but also reduces their spell access of domain spells not of their specialty by 1 level. They may also have 1 Special Skill.

Abilities are reasonably flexible, but must not blatantly be iconic to domains you do not possess (many abilities are not tied to a domain at all). Overall, the theme must be consistent.

Servitors are technically bodily Immortal so long as you persist (though their physical forms vary in durability). If a physical body is killed/destroyed, they return to your demiplane domain, and there is a 24-hour cooldown on recreating a body — this costs 22 FE.

You may have ‘Lines’ of servitors up to your deity level — the first in a Line costs 77 FE and serves as an ‘Archservitor.’ Other servitors may be created under them for 44 FE that have the same abilities but start at level 1. Their personalities by default are individualized and may be customized further before generation. The Special Skill can vary.

One servitor may be generated per 7 Followers. If your total number falls below this threshold, you do not lose servitors.

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Sammy was just a little bit leery of faffing around with fully sapient entities, so after forming basic thoughts, she consulted Redberry for any further thoughts or assistance.

This went smashingly, as Redberry was very keen on her ‘not screwing it up.’ It just so happened that Sammy’s idea was very interesting to the nature goddess. The excuse was rather feasible considering that the idea had Fae elements. She wanted the first entity to utilize Illusion…

As such, the idea she seized on was to make a faerie dragon. A partner in tricksome crime.

One of the first tricky things she wanted to create was shapeshifting with a physical component… Redberry instructed her to utilize the combined concepts of fae and illusion to give it Glamour-based shapeshifting. This was illusory and physical at the same time. More detectable as magic and more easily dispelled or reversible, but still physically relevant.

Flight, Shapeshifting (Glamour), Lesser Create Illusion… for the final bit, she added Toughness. The entities could serve as taunting tanks, she figured. Protectors. To that end, she went ahead and gave the Soon To Be dragon the Special Skill of Taunt. It seemed quite useful both in battle and for other possibilities, and naturally it would have absolutely no other consequences.

Redberry effectively gave her a big list of descriptors and commands to use in filling out the form for the entity, after Sammy described what she wanted. ‘These are just things learned from centuries of trial and error. Use it or not, but I suggest you do, for you and for your new ally.’

She definitely used it.

Servitor created. Dartagnan is born.

A crystal materialized before her throne, and began spinning rapidly, flashing prismatic lights all around, then it unfurled upward into great multicolored wings like a cross between a reptile and a butterfly. High up, they spread wide fully and revealed the majestic creature within — a smallish blue dragon with glittering scales, highlighted with accents of pink and purple. Where light hit it, it gleamed prismatic.

“Ha ha! I live!” came a supernaturally-tinged, vaguely masculine voice, resonating through space as sound though its mouth didn’t move. “And I’m magnificent. Watch me go!” It flew around the throne realm, languid and quick at the same time, flowing snake-like and barely moving its wings. A long tail trailed behind it.

Sammy laughed as she indeed watched it go, standing near her throne and grinning uncontrollably. “So you are… Dart.”

The head cocked at her as it flowed back around, slitted green eyes meeting hers. “Dart?! Moments since creating me, and already I’ve been nicked. Isn’t that just like you?”

“You know me?!”

“Not at all,” he sing-songed at her mysteriously as he swooped in at her, causing her to lean back and almost trip back into her seat. But the fae-like creature shrank in size with a poof of sparkling prismatic energy, down to parrot size… then landed on her shoulder.

Dart crawled around on her rapidly, muttering, “Let’s get a look at you then…” Sammy endured it with a wince that almost closed one eye from the tickling sensation of his gripping claws over her back. “Hmm, yes,” and then over her hair and crown, “Yes, yes,” then skittering down to her hand to lift the palm up with two hands and inspect it. “Mm-hmm, mm-hmm…”

Finally, he floated up to her face to turn it this way and that judiciously. In a poof of smoke, glasses appeared at his eyes, making him seem — she was sure for no other reason than to be cute — like a doctor. “Now stick out your tongue and say, ‘ah’.”

Instead of doing so, she stuck out her tongue and made a raspberry at him. His little reptilian eyes squinted disapprovingly at her. “The rudeness serves to complete my assessment: a quite healthy ascendant human goddess, functioning at peak performance. If saucily.”

“I’m so thrilled to hear of your approval,” she said deadpan, though with a small smirk. “Is this where you ask how you can serve me?”

“Your wish is my command!” In a poof of prismatic smoke, he turned into a little blue genie doing a dance shaking his hips and big gut side-to-side. “The Ever! Impressive! Dartagnan!... is at your service — for even more than three mere wishes!”

Grinning, Sammy lifted the ‘genie’ up into her hand, at which point it poofed again and turned into a lamp with little eyes peeking and blinking from the top. “Hold your horses, actually. You can keep me company for a while. Maybe we’ll see about delegation of routine buffs and so forth later.”

Another poof of smoke and the little dragon skittered across her arm to perch on her shoulder. “Ho hum. I don’t exactly have a heart for drudgery work. When do we get a new guy I can boss around?”

“I just created you, Dart!”

“Well, your humblest of humble servants humbly requests a near future allocation of the Goddess’s resources to draconic expansion, so as to free up Yours Truly for the fun stuff! Like the CEO playing golf with the owner while the millions roll in. I’m sure that’s how it works! Preferably skill the next one for the pencil-pushing stuff.”

“An accountant faerie dragon?” Sammy frowned. “Seems weird. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Don’t worry, Dart. I want to get into the mix of things as much as you do. I’m just holding back in case I happen to require an emergency Avatar appearance up northeast.”

“I bow to your infinite… well, drat, I can’t say ‘wisdom’ now can I…”

She spent the early morning double-checking on Zadkiel’s locations and perhaps doing a little extra scouting for movements. She found some signs of such in the county of Heimus she’d been assigned which was near Zadkiel’s campaign spearhead. Knight contingents from this or that outlier barony finally responding to the call, she imagined.

Finally, it came time to report on her findings. Sammy wanted to keep it nice and professional, which worked out perfectly as Zadkiel was distracted and inclined to just get the info and run. He was clearly impressed though, and thanked her, especially for her ‘going the extra mile.’

Yeah gee, I’m a real team player. I can also make a venti whole milk chai tea latte no foam 5 pumps of syrup with whipped cream quicker than you can decide on your pastry. Now get your ass out there and beat up the Dominion for me, soldier.

Meanwhile, Orswyth led the whole ship in prayer in the morning — even the poor night shift stayed up to listen in on an opening speech drawing on Samantha’s words of promise and optimism for the future… then expanding on it, because there was another domain to incorporate! A big one.

Sammy felt better than usual with it all… being the Goddess of Fate meant she really could tap into the core desires humanity had for deities. Potentially the entire world would want what she was developing, what she could provide.

18 FE (Mirrors, Illusion, Fate) obtained from worship.

She checked on Galynth, who remained resting, but he was recovering well, despite that he definitely took a concussion. He was subdued and sad due to his failure and the deaths that came after he was disabled. Particularly Hagrin, who was a mentor of his. But Sammy assured him he had done well and had acted with great bravery and heart. He had survived, and through it had grown stronger. He could hardly deny this, as he was only a few exp from level 3.

Orswyth spent a long time talking to other Followers about the group and assigning ranks. Tashome, Bast, and Bamm all went out of their way to swear as Devout and Samantha granted it to them gladly. Bamm had been deeply changed by the miraculous events… he seemed to hang on to Orswyth’s words more than Galynth ever had and was spinning it out to others in simpler terms, essentially.

He also was using an interesting alias for her: the Seeress of Tomorrow, and more simply just the Seeress.

Sure. Why not? Ambiguous. A codename… and nothing to do with mirrors. And yet it really does speak to it, doesn’t it? Ha! I see so, so much through them, after all…

She loved it, and so she approved it and congratulated Bamm.

As she had forgotten to, Sammy drew up the other Grant Prayer she’d obtained.

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Grant Prayer (Fate)

3 times per day, or for 1 FE (to a total maximum of 10+level times per day), you may grant aid to any mortal conducting in matters related to your [Fate] domain. In matters of raw guessing, you may bestow an Intuition-like effect improving their odds by 1/3rd until the matter is fully resolved or 10 minutes pass.

The statistical bonus of 1 Effective Class Level is possible, if the subject can manage to leverage it (note that not everyone is creative enough to in all situations).

You may also potentially answer questions related to the future in general guidance, intuitively drawing insight or sometimes having minor, personal-scale premonitions come to the surface. You may translate this directly as desired. This effect can draw blanks (hidden test) but will not generate lies. It returns the FE (but not the daily use) if failed.

Only 1 use per day on a given mortal is allowed in each case.

The mortal will sense a divine presence granting the boon, and a nascent two-way communication will persist for 24 hours (at the same level as an initial Follower).

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“Oh. Holy shit, that is different. Wow… there’s that Fortuneteller aspect…”

“I think that calls for a Holy Forkin’ Shirtball, Sam Sam,” Dart said from her shoulder. Then he coughed out a little puff of smoke that looked vaguely like a balled-up shirt, with a beam of light glowing down on it from heaven, with the sound effect of a choir-like ‘Ahhh!’

“Uh, thank you. That’s… touching.”

“You’re super welcome!”

“Too bad I can’t tell you your fortune, Immortal Dart.”

“Oh, my fortune is perfectly fine, Sam Sam. I’m just waiting for you to unleash me on this fat, beautiful ocean so I can gorge myself on fish. It’s their fate that is sealed, I’m tellin’ ya.”

“Damn it, Redberry, how and why did you sneak meat-eating in there?!”

“Oh, she didn’t, I just decided it. Fish only. I’m a picky eater. I have a teensy bit of free will, you know. So be sure you don’t mistreat me.” He struck a proud pose.

Sammy sighed. “I wouldn’t dream of it… Ooh! You know what I haven’t checked on? Those magic items! I think Bast probably needs a bit of help there by now, with the Identifies.”

“Oooh, juicy stuff, momma!”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Aw, come on, I didn’t mean nothin’!”

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