Editing Star-Bound Alliances (section)

==== Anja’s Research ====

* Anja looks into the Velgersi. She finds stories of different individuals in small towns, with grand followings and mystical powers, ranging through the history of Meropis. They all led to ruin, and many are tales of suspected Velgersi.
* One was a seamstress who supposedly wove the finest clothes of anybody in the kingdom, and so was given more and more power. There came a day where a beloved king in the Unclaimed Lands wanted this individual to make them their royal garb for their wedding, and so the seamstress dutifully, with happiness in their heart, went ahead and wove together the finest wedding suit the king could’ve imagined.
* And that’s when the Volgersi attacked using them. The king went mad upon putting on the suit, killing the bride-to-be and ordering the soldiers to start slaughtering everyone. IN three days, they were stopped, and everyone blamed the seamstress, who was hung.
* Looking into the Volgersi, it’s a spirit of low magic, sitting and hunting in one particular area or place. It chooses its victim carefully – they don’t like to have more than 5-10 people at any given time. They focus a lot of their attention on them, giving the individual power and feeding off of them, whatever they have. The spirit itself is invisible, intangible, not really ever seen. It’s a feeling in the woods, the shiver on a warm summer’s day, the thing you feel in the darkness watching but that you never really see.
* Looking into consistent traits they target, it seems like they target individuals with potential, personalities that lead to emotional attachments and bonds. Powers of creation and giving, things of that nature, and sometimes curses (or those who have been bitten by a Volgersi can manifest bad luck). 
* Anja finds paper and a writing utensil. She writes a jumbled journal entry, intending to refine it later when she has an empty book to work with. She writes down everything she knows about the Velgersi, a journal entry about how she just found this out. She’ll put more information in about herself to fill in the gaps, but she’s determined to not be one of these stories.
* Alphie tries to get sunfire resin from Gibby. They take a trip to the kitchen, and she gives him a grilled cheese. She tries to explain sunfire resin to him.
** “It’s this sort of gold-colored, waxy, crystal-looking… thing… that helps me stay warm.”
* The Gibbit eats the grilled cheese, bouncing up and down a bit. They get ready, and open their mouth, and a stream of honey is fired at Alphie.
** ““Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Um. Do you… do you want to try some?”
* They offer him some, telling him it tastes good with a peanut butter sandwich. He licks the honey, goes “Meh!” and immediately scratches at the tongue and flies away. 
* Jericho gets 4 hero points, and Anja and Alphie get 2 each.
* Gwyn and Astranna finish their upgrades! Everything we’ve been working on for the party is now complete. Astranna equips her new armor, and Alphie’s amulet is upgraded by 2. Jericho can now reload with an action ''or'' by using his bg action and movement, ''or'' by using a hotshot action (bg action, he rolls 1d6. On a 3+, it reloads, lower than that and the Naxos jams, and he has to spend an hour clearing it).
* As we distribute everything with the dumbwaiter system, Gwyn looks around and sees that the proximity detectors are going off on the temple. Because we turned off all the defenses, it’s now only the basic detectors left, and she discovers a large group of cursed individuals moving towards our position, maybe about 100 of them. She activates the scrimshaw bipeds, and sends Astranna to warn everyone. Anja convinces Maple into her new carrier.
** “I knew that you were the best owner. You have finally done a good job. I knew you had it in you.”
* Jericho extends a telescope, and sees a large group of cursed beasts. They’re in multiple groups, coming from multiple angles – they’re covering all directions. There seems to be no visible hierarchy, it’s just a mass horde.
* Anja quickly makes a potion (2 cool rocks, a Gibarette, some honey, a button from Gwyn). On a 3 (D10), this potion is crazy. Random lightning bursts out of the cauldron, with smells that range from fresh-cut grass to burnt sugar. As she looks in, the color is a lightshow. As she stops stirring, there’s a tiny little vial at the bottom of the cauldron.
** Potion of Fuck You – When you drink it, for 1 minute, when you take damage, you double it and give it to the next person. No way of knowing how “the next person” is determined.
* One of the cursed individuals shoots a laser at the wall. Swirling green energy wafts off, but it doesn’t seem to do much damage. Jericho looks for turrets, but a lot of the defensive measures were supposed to be handled by the Gibbit, as it could create weaponry where needed and fend off attacks.
* Gwyn sends some of the bimbos on the offensive, watching their operations from the cameras to see if she needs to send more. Jericho makes sure all of his guns are loaded, and casts Augury: “What is our best strategy to defeat this force?”
** He sees a vision of us all sitting around in the lab, drinking tea. Morgen’s at the table too!
* Jericho relays this to us and gets a china set. Gwyn checks on the bimbos’ progress. There’s fucking carnage on the feed. She sent about 60 of them, and they’re cutting through the entire army. One runs up to a massive creature, pulls off its arm, and shanks it with its own arm before blending its head apart. They leap and jump over each other at inhuman speed. The cursed creatures are on retreat. Blood coats the outside of the temple.
* Gwyn’s sitting and watching the cameras, her hand over her mouth.
** “Hey! Hello there! I, uh, sorry, I hope this isn’t a bad time. I saw the carnage outside here. Um, impressive. I brought housewarming gifts!”
* She sees an entity with moving constellations over their flesh, black eyes with a single pinprick of light at the center. They raise a burlap sack.
** “I promise, I got some candles in here, I got jerky [he pulls out a container with meat in it, he shakes it around]. I know Morgen liked telescopes. I don’t know if you like telescopes. Here just to talk.”
* Jericho hits the intercom.
** “Uh, yeah, we’re dealing with a witch’s assault here, can you wait a second.”
** “Oh, yeah, sure.”
* The figure leans against a wall. Jericho uses inquisitor on his statement that he just wants to talk… half-truth. 
* Alphie uses learn emotional state on him. He’s calm, like he’s just walking through the park. No amount of distress to this dude. He’s completely chill.
* Alphie uses the risk assessment device on letting him in and talking (+1hp for using it). Letting him in is a medium risk. On a scale of 1-100, 42. We evaluate the risk of not letting him in to talk to us. On a scale of 1-10, 42. We decide to let him in.
* Jericho buzzes him in, shutting the door behind him, and watches the guy follow the arrows. We get the table set up with tea again, and seat Morgen. The door to the lab opens, and as the individual walks in, Jericho, Astranna, and Alphie feel a tremendous amount of psychic power and energy radiating off of them.
** “Ah! So you’re the Tattercoat Knights. How do you do?”
* Jericho offers him coffee. He asks for two sugars. He sits at the table, and produces 5 scented candles (evergreen, vanilla, cherry). He also takes out jerky and a (very nice) telescope.
** “I didn’t really know what you guys were into, so I just tried to scattershot for a housewarming gift.”
* He asks how we’re liking the place. He knew it got taken over, but he’s actually surprised Morgen’s still alive. We explain the lobotomy. He says it’s so daring, he almost has to respect it. Almost – a part of him thinks her mind was a bit of a waste.
** “But you have to do what you have to do, judging by the fact that you here, what, you call yourself Gwyn, yes? Were likely going to be… deleted? I can see where the desperation comes from, and I can understand the actions.”
* He asks if it’d be possible for him to get that machine over there. Anja asks what it does, and he says that at a more base level, it changes reality. We’ll see if Morgen has made any adjustments.
** “Oh, I’m the Cosmic, by the way. My apologies. I read the stars. I know all of you. But I sometimes forget you all do not know me. [...] This reality is very changeable, I mean, look around, it’s a two-bit world I have to say, very poorly created, nothing makes a whole lot of sense, but that means it’s malleable. Pliable.”
* Jericho asks if we’re in the stack somewhere and he says no, no, no, no, we’re outside of it. We’re on a periphery, a bubble. Inside this bubble, there’s lots of possibility. We ask what changes he wants to make.
** “Um, well, I suppose, at its core, I want to… I want to refocus this place, so it can be a world I’d really like to live in. I have a friend who died, and I want them… Well, they just didn’t just die, they moreso ceased to ever exist, and I would like them to exist again.”
* He’d like to move into the tower, but he doesn’t know if that’d be imposing. Alphie asks who his friend was.
** “No one that you would know. They’re not a god, they are not famous, they were… to be honest, mostly just sludge on a boot in the grand scheme of things. But I need their knowledge, their know-how. And I need to talk to them. And I suppose more importantly, the people that I answer to want them.”
* We ask who that might be.
** “That I am… look, I could tell you. But there would need to be more trust kind of floating about. You know? [...] I don’t have any designs on Gwyn’s body or this Gellid Engine you have, or a Velgersi, or anything of the like. Your situation and my situation are… I like to think we are perpendicular to each other. We meet at this point, but I am not trying to be malicious. I don’t think you are trying to be malicious. You are trying to be heroes, I’m trying to do my job.”
* He says it’s his intention that this is the only dealing we have to make, unless we want something different.
** “To be quite honest, Cracklebones is posing a bit of a problem as well, and that’s something that needs to be taken care of.”
* He says she’s been creating many, many totems in the Elder Swamp, enough to eventually threaten the entirety of the Skybound Lands with its power. He doesn’t think it’ll affect either of us to a great degree, but they have been unleashing an eater of stars quite often. He asks if we’ve seen the map, and shows the recent map to us.
* He tells us he needs the machine powered.
** “My guess is you do not wish to give up your pet for the powering of the device.”
* He’d love to have the totems that have been constructed. Using that to power the device would be a win-win. Again. We ask how many totems he needs, and he says as many as we can find… at least 20 would be suitable. They’re about 1.5-2ft in size (he makes a motion when we ask).
* Jericho asks for a moment to confer. We discuss, and assess the risk of forming an alliance with the Cosmic. On a scale of 1-100, the readings are between 20-60 – it’s having a hard time figuring it out with the info it has access to.
* We agree to form a tentative alliance with him, and then have a brief panic about him leaving the table, but he just moved to the door, and was chilling. Not touching anything. He’d raise his hands when we looked over at him. He explains staying at the table would have made us think he was eavesdropping. He knows everything, though, because our conversation was all written in the stars. He refers to our “tentative alliance”.
* Jericho asks him to teach him about reading the stars, and he agrees. Alphie says they have a question, and he says that’s a bit more delicate. It involves the lake. As he says this, a pang of mourning and grief hits them.
** “Yeah, it’s like that.”
* He does agree to help them, though.
** “A quick bout of the reading of the stars, as it is about midnight and the moon is full, and then a trip to the swamp. How fun, Tattercoat Knights.”
* Everyone levels up. Caleb asks about the behavior of the animals, and discovers Henrietta wasn’t there. Yay.