Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Character Creation and Discussion

[SpaceBrotha]

First off, thanks to everyone who read and commented, and ofc thanks to PhoenixG and Aaron008R for beta-reading this.

Right, so after some serious writers blocks to the face, i finally got the chapter 2 together. It's a bit heavy, atleast at the beginning. I also attached some pictures that i managed to find.

Anyway, 5500 words. Enjoy!

Spoiler:

Spoiler for Davram:

Chapter 2: The Tower

And so the eons passed...

Circa 2900 years ago:

...And stopped with the immediacy of a human hitting a solid stone wall that appeared out of nowhere. While he was busy trying to remember where his nose was, the wall vanished silently.
The gods, it seemed, did really have a sense of humor. A very twisted sense of humor.

Meanwhile in a location far away, and very much underground, a single tower stood. It wasn't an ordinary tower, and now it didn't even try to be so. It had been most ungracefully buried here in the end of what could be called a catfight between spells. If spells could be compared to cats, and if those cats had also been on fire and glued together, trying to fit in the only source of water present which was too small for both at a time.

The tower was most unsatisfied at the scenery now, as it could only frown at the naturally rather solid wall which now encompassed it's entire field of vision. At least The Wall had not been anything more than gaudy and had known it's place. This new wall clearly didn't, but the tower couldn't do anything without it's masters commands, and so it kept waiting...
...and frowning.

Inside the tower, in the top floor, there was a skeleton shaped dent in one of the metal bookshelves. In this dent, was the master of the tower. Within his empty eyesockets, blue dots flared to, for the lack of a better word, life. He slowly awoke from something resembling dreamless sleep. From his resting place within the dented bookshelfs, he observed his chambers. They had been simple when he originally made it, holding only his magical workshop. But they quickly had grown to also hold a small library of gimoires in their preservation spells, a contaiment sphere for experimenting with greater spells, and his phylactey. Some grimoires now lay on the floor, and even though they had no life, he still had a feeling that they looked offended for him taking their places. But there was something amiss in the scenery. He could remember the hole in the wall, and the random rocks lying about from his rather flashy entrance to his workroom. But he could not remember his phylactery glowing white before. It now also sported an entire school of sigils and runes around it in several layers, all in a very unlichlike white, much to his dismay. Intertwined within the white runes and sigils were proper dark purple ones. The white sigils and runes didn't seem to be active except on the lowermost layer while the purple ones were glowing with a dim glow.

As he was pondering about these unfamiliar spell-circles, in his comfy metallic dent, a small white ball of energy flew from the hole with a little buzzing sound, like an overgrown bee, and into the only white sigil still glowing around his phylactery. When it entered, a dark purple one exited from opposite side and flew back down. Davram slowly picked himself up from the dent, stopping only to dislodge his staff-scythe from the shelf next to him. Yes, it had been a most powerful blast that had been the first reaction of the two mighty spells confronting each other, but it seems they had apparently come to a stalemate of sorts, very peculiar. He pulled the scythe blade back down against the shaft, deactivating the enchantments on it at the same time. The first version of the staff-scythe had been inpractical, the blade was extraordinary sharp and had powerful enchantments in it. After destroying several doors and a bookshelf, he had designed the switchblade style mechanism to it, making it a much more practical tool.

The tower felt it's master awaken, and was eager to finally have something to do. A hundred years of frowning at a cavern wall wasn't exactly the most interesting thing to do. It had kept the tower dustless, per its masters orders, after he had discovered that dust is not something you want an abundance of in a place where dangerous spells are weaved. Now the tower felt it's master wishing to know what was the condition of the lower floors, and happily obliged.

Davram sensed the tower. It had weathered the magical confrontation and the subsequent dimensional travelling very well. Much time had passed since, apparently a hundred years worth. He knew that there'd be a veritable jungle in his dungeons, but it couldn't be helped in the current situation. There was also something else in the dungeons at the moment, something he couldn't quite understand. Only one thing was sure, that something was the source and destination of these pulses of light. There also seemed to be a piece of the dungeons missing altogether, but he couldn't tell which one. Sensing the altered dimension that the dungeons had was always difficult from outside. He began descending the stairs from his study and watched with interest as the colored balls of magic flew past him every few minutes.

He arrived into the ground floor of the tower, and saw heaps of bones lying around, the clothing was still recognizable, though white had turned into grey and gold had lost it's luster over the century. It seemed that everyone had died where they had been when the logia had been activated. He continued through the skeletons and descended the stairs to the dungeons. A familiar feeling of suddenly shrinking into a rather miniscule size flooded over him as he descended the steps. He had wanted to make the dungeons fit his tower's width, so he had severely shrunk the space down here. He arrived to the laboratory and workshop where he conducted most of his experiments regarding life. It was your normal alchemists laboratory with several glass instruments, cookers and beakers lying on several tables. Some mortars and alembics were also present. The door he had just walked in from shared it's wall of the square room with another door, which held the record archives. The other three walls of the room held a door each, leading to the different scores of animals and creatures that inhabited this dungeon... or atleast had inhabited. Now that he had arrived to the distorted space, he could sense the area better.

The thing that was the cause of those pulses could be found in the ”peaceful” part of the dungeon, where there were no predators to harass the different species of herbivores present. It should be noted here, that even though Davram insisted upon the term ”dungeons”, they were more alike to habitats, like a crossover between zoo and a natural park with a bit of a gladiator pit thrown in for good measure. He had even created an illusion of night and day cycles to better accommodate the life inhabiting these areas, but even though the roof was high, the sky was merely an illusion, as many a bird had noticed. Right now though, the only thing inhabiting this area was a very peculiar liquidlike form. Davram decided to have a better look. Upon opening the door, the first thing he noted was the cracked earth, then the complete lack of any life in the vicinity. Everything was just as dead as the areas that had previously surrounded his tower. He stopped to think for a while.

Of course, water. His tower had pulled it's water reserves from an underground river flowing below it's previous location. It didn't have that luxury here, so no water for the plants or animals to drink from. He didn't feel any grief for their demise, after all, an undead feeling sad for the dead was like a human feeling sad for another because they were alive, which was preposterous, of course. He did feel a bit exasperated, it would take great amount of time to bring life back into this place. He watched the animal skeletons littered across the vast space that had held many different species of herbivores, both natural and magical, now all gone. He let out one of his rare sighs and took flight to find the source of those balls of magic.

As he arrived to the center of the dungeon, he saw a globe of transparent fluid that was suspended above ground by a pair of glowing white spellcircles that were whirling around the globe. He landed next to the globe and waited. Soon enough, the circles stopped their whirling and a white ball of energy shot up towards the 'sky' and disappeared. After some seconds, a dark purple one shot down from the same spot and entered into the globe and the circles started whirling again. He nodded, another mystery solved.

The seal was quite ingenious. It created a globe of liquid life out of any life present upon initial activation, in this case it had eaten some of the plants and animals in this part of the dungeon. The globe was fed magically via one of the circles whenever a pulse of magic entered the circle. After feeding magic, the other circle then absorbed some life from the globe, converted it into life magic and sent it up to the tower to be inserted into his phylactery, sealing him into a sort of undead version of sleep. This all was apparently being supervised by the far more complex circles in his study. He would have to study it further, but for now, he would have to check the damage that had been caused to the ”highly experimental” area.

He returned to his lab, and walked through to the door on the other side. As Davram opened the door leading to the dungeon, he noted that he would have to either rebuild, or abandon this part of the dungeons. Unlike the ”peaceful” area, the ”highly experimental” had a hall of cages before the habitat itself started, this hall had held his most dangerous creatures that he had been still experimenting upon. Nothing lived through 100 years of starvation though, so unfortunately only rotten remains were left in the cages. But not all cages were here, some of the cages nearest to the habitat had been broken off with the habitat. For indeed, the entire section had been broken off. It was most unfortunate. Mostly only two species existed there, experiments that had taken him nearly 150 years to perfect.

The Jumpers had been wolves, originally. He had heavily modified their appearance, first adding scythed appendixes to their back, in order to discourage bringing your face so close to others. He had once witnessed what happened to a wolf that was biting a gorilla. The poor canines neck hadn't had a chance to survive the shaking the gorilla had put it through. After the initial modification, he noticed that they couldn't manouver well with the extra weight now attached to their backs. So he encouraged muscle growth and modified their hind legs to allow powerful, long distance jumps.

This failed far worse than he had imagined possible. Who would have thought that by increasing their odds to catch things, they would instead miss more often? The first couple of ten of these jumpers killed themselves by jumping at breakneck speeds and hitting trees, large rocks, walls and other hard objects. One even died when it got frightened. It had jumped straight up and hit the 'sky', and died after it had found the earth again. The few remaining subjects were quickly put to stasis while he had thought up a way to treat this new problem. After encasing them in a heavy carapace to lower their speeds and to allow them to survive jumping at things he started up a new project. A big and slow, but very sturdy and intelligent snake like being with scythed talons. It had been a large snake previously, and it posessed a cunning intellect and a predatory instinct about tactics. It had been a most tremendous challenge to increase the capacity of thinking for an animal, he had enlarged the brain several times. And then was forced to add a whole carapace for it to support the now massive brain. Yet the ”coordinator” had only rudimentary intellect, though Davram suspected that it had only hidden it's true capabilities from him.

The coordinators and jumpers had hit off instantly, forming powerful packs where a single coordinator would direct the jumpers to either kill off the prey, or to drive/lure it into a position where the coordinator could ambush it directly. They brought down everything that he could find in nature. Now, staring at the cavern wall that had replaced his habitat, Davram hoped that his experiments had found a nice little planet to inhabit. It would be a shame if they had instead found the dark recesses of space, and frozen to death. He turned around, nothing much to do in here, anymore. He walked back into his laboratory, and started inspecting the various tools present, he would have much to do, investigating the seal, the curious liquid life and he also had to find a source of water. Yes, much, much to do.

Then he blinked in surprise. Or would have, had he posessed any eyelids to blink with. Liquid life? In an area completely sapped of water? He quickly returned to the globe to further investigate this contradiction. He stood there for a while until the glowing ball rose to the sky and another descended. Indeed, the returning pulse did not contain anything besides magical energy. Most peculiar. He slowly reached for the globe, his hand reached the first circle surrounding the globe and wouldn't go further. He grinned, but then again, he had little choice in facial expressions. The globe had a minute barrier around it, preventing entry from all but magical energy, and most likely it also prevented water from evaporating from the inside. He would have to wait until water had been restored to his tower, until breaking this superficial barrier. He was most interested in the globe, for it seemed to be some sort of a base form of life, something he had never ran into, or heard of for that matter. He went back to the laboratory and checked the rest of the tools there.

He then walked out of the dungeons and back into the entrance to his tower. He needed water, and a lot of it. Extending his senses first to the tower, and from there, began his mental search. Yes, some distance away was an underground river, not unlike the one that had existed below the previous location of his tower. He set off to work, the spell would take a while to cast. Permanent magical effects were always somewhat taxing to create.

Several hours later, two portals had been created, each perhaps 12 inches across. They were in the remaining dungeon areas, slowly bringing water back into the place. It would take a lot of time, but the water would slowly accumulate into a river or two, which would flow into a newly created pool that could be used to emulate rain in each of the dungeons, in order to prevent future disasters by dehydration. It had been a challenge to create the portals into the warped dimension where the dungeons were. He noted that he should create something to counter an incident like the one that had ripped his tower from Zhed. Otherwise he would most likely only have a stump for a tower. But for now, he had water. And with water came the opportunity to further study the globe. He entered the dungeon containing the globe with several tools floating behind him. Ranging from empty glass beakers to water filled stone buckets, from pincers to shovels. A small storage of equipment trailed him while he was making his way to the globe.

Upon arriving to the globe, he raised his staff, the blade snapped into position and the familiar runes activated inside it. He then proceeded to shred the defensive barrier with it. Snapping the blade back into it's more compact mode, he then waited for the pulse to leave and return in order to observe any changes in the globe. Nothing, very good. He experimented by pouring water on it, which quickly seemed to be absorbed by the globe, and when the next energy exchange happened, the globe grew slightly. Excellent. He then drained a bit into a glass beaker and upon noticing no visible differences in the globe, besides very slight diminishing, he returned to his laboratory. That experiment showed that it would be likely for him to be able to 'harvest' this substance from the globe. But what could be done with it?

After doing several experiments in his laboratory, he was left astonished. The matter was some sort of formless life. Given any 'idea' of a form, it immediately formed into this 'idea'. It was very difficult to prevent the substance from overdoing it. For example, dropping a simple seed into a beakerful of it created a beakerful of seeds. But since seeds didn't quite comform to shapes like liquid does, it also broke the beaker. He wondered how it would react to animals. He harvested a larger quantity of the substance and dropped in a skeleton of what had been a rabbit hundred years ago. He ended up with a wet rabbit skeleton, now coated with the substance. Clearly a living subject would be needed for anything to happen. He tapped his chin for a moment. There were the storages, where a thousand animals and plants were held in stasis, and this could indeed solve much of his problems regarding refilling his dungeons with life again. But with the dungeons in a problematic situation as they were, he would have to wait until proper amounts of vegetation had been returned to the dungeons. He suspected that the air in the dungeons would be somewhat poisonous if the plants weren't there to breathe it back to regular air. Work, he noted, was apparently worse than many other things, for not even being dead relieved you of it. And then he set out to do his...

60 Years later:

The tiger advanced quietly as only a feline can. It's eyes were set on it's prey, clearly unaware of the striped and clawed doom approaching. The tiger had never seen any prey like this, nor in colors like this. It wondered how it would taste. After all, it did not want an unsatisfying meal as a reward for all this prowling and sneaking. It slowly approached the figure crouching in the open, it's back towards the tiger. It took a few speeding steps and pounced the unsuspecting prey.

The tiger was standing in the spot where it had began it's assault. It stood there for a few moments, wondering what had happened. The prey was standing infront of it, it's back still towards the tiger. The tiger blinked a few times, took a few speeding steps and pounced...
...and was standing where he had began. This was most infuriating, it had done all the proper sneaking, like a tiger should, it had kept it's eyes on the prey like it was supposed to. The ambush had been perfect, the prey hadn't know it was already doomed. By all means, the tiger should be eating a nice dinner right now, instead it was standing around, staring at the black back of the prey in furious amazement. The black prey straightened, turned to watch the tiger and promptly disappeared. It was an affront, prey shouldn't just disappear like that! The prey should either try to run away, or try to fight back, but it should be food at the end and... The tiger's mental processes screeched to a halt when it saw the corpse where the prey had been. It didn't look the same, and as the tiger curiously advanced, didn't smell the same either. It's feline brain poorly equipped for such situations just concluded that it had killed the prey and it had simply looked different from the beginning, and the tiger happily dug in.

Meanwhile, in the laboratory, Davram walked out of the invisibility while holding a small glowing glass cube with steel edges in his hands. He reached a small pool holding substance from the globe of life and opened the cube, pouring transparent something out of it into the substance. The reaction was near instantaneous, the substance rearranged itself to the 'idea' that had been stored in the tetrahedron, and soon there was a living, breathing rabbit looking aghast in the pool. Some of the substance was still remaining at it's feet. Davram had quickly noted that the substance didn't react to any 'idea' that required more than there was. And apparently by draining a life force and soul of a being and entering it into the substance, you could recreate that being. But it would be a near perfect copy of the creature, including age and any deteoriation of the body, but wounds and the like were clearly not part of the creature, and hence did not transfer into the new body. He picked the now afraid rabbit and went to let it back out to the dungeon it had came from. The rabbit quickly kicked away from the door and into the bushes, something went ”CRUNCH!” and there was silence, only broken occasionally by a silent crunching sound.

Davram returned to his study at the top and peered into the spell circles around his phylactery. The glow of the white circles had overtaken the glow of the purple ones now. He estimated that he'd be asleep some 40 years from now. It seemed likely, considering his century of sleep before awakening, that he'd be awake for a century and then fall 'asleep' for another. The two spells balanced each other out like two planets of the same size, dancing their dance of gravitational pull in an eternal embrace. He would need a groundskeeper then, someone to watch over the life that was once again teeming in the dungeons. The skeletons still at the entrance could be easily reanimated, but granting any semblance of intelligence to them was nigh impossible. A golem wouldn't be any better. Golems were basically undead, but instead of reanimated bones, you had animated clay, or iron. A homunculus would work, but he didn't have the time to teach it all the things it needed to know, unless... He grinned as an idea formed in his mind, and he began thinking up processes and spells necessary, it would take some time to get everything into satisfactory state.

After months of painstaking preparations and some modifications that he had to impose on the tower, Davram finally was ready. Everything was set up into the entrance level, he had animated the skeletons and moved them to the edges to watch. The level also sported a large spellcircle in the mddle and several spellcircles surrounding it, they were all inactive, but you could tell that serious wizarding was about to be conducted in the room. Davram slowly checked his circles, it was one thing forming them magically for spells, but when you had to draw them by hand, you'd have to carefully inspect every detail. He had once seen an apprentice attempt a demon summoning spell with a spellcircle that had a single flaw in it. A single mistake. The dragon that had emerged from the summoning circle didn't quite appreciate the error, and was quick to inflict this knowledge on the poor apprentice and a good quarter of the academy before they could drive it away. But these spellcircles were complete, and it wasn't anything as dangerous as a summoning circle, but things should be done properly or not at all, he thought. He walked to the edge of the central circle, and slowly began casting.

Slowly, ever so slowly, sigils started to form on the edges of the circles, the towers magic responded to its masters call and ancient runes started flaring to life within the walls next to him, and slowly it spread further from him. Once every inch of the tower was glowing with runes, some of them glowing within the tower came out of the walls and moved into the central circle. They swirled for a while, condensing, forming a shape within the circle. After every rune and sigil had been sucked in from the air and into the form, it was complete. This proved that life was indeed something you acquired, rather than were given. This manifestation that was slowly standing up and inspecting herself was indeed his tower, now given a true will, and a way to excert it.

The little tower manifestation standing before Davram was critically inspecting itself. It... She had been given the choice of form, and this had seemed proper, for some reason. She was small, barely half of Masters length, and was dressed in a light blue skirt that nearly reached her ankles, it also sported a white lining, and a white, buttoned shirt that looked like someone had ripped the sleeves off. It also had a red ribbon right under her chin, tied to a loose bow. Her hair was light orange, waist length, and was in a ponytail, held so by another red bow tie. She just had to admire herself. She had arms, legs, everything! And now she could express her emotions! She turned around to see her master...

Davram was curious about the little life his tower had manifested as. She seemed to be looking herself thoroughly as if making sure everything was there. Then she turned around and saw him. She then barreled straight into him and gave him a hug with enough force to kill any living person, which he fortunately wasn't. He looked down, not quite grasping the situation. She couldn't cry tears, but she looked like she was trying her best. He wondered why she was sad, she had been given a form, after all.

IS THERE SOMETHING THE MATTER? He inquired from the little form clinging to him.
”I have arms, legs, expressions!” A voice answered from somewhere within his robes.

THEY WERE NECESSARY. Davram said, still not understanding the situation. The little manifestation wasn't paying attention, busily hugging him.
”I'm alive!” Davram paused at this, apparently she wasn't happy about it.

HOPEFULLY YOU CAN FORGIVE ME. He said.
”huh?” The little one had finally grasped what it's master was saying.

I NEEDED A CARETAKER FOR THE DUNGEONS WHILE I SLEEP, AND YOU WERE THE NATURAL CHOICE. Davram explained.
”Ehh, master, why were you apologizing?” She asked, now also confused about the conversation.

SHOULD I NOT APOLOGIZE FOR WRONGING YOU? Davram enquired.
”Wronging?” She still wasn't quite clear on what her Master meant.

ANYWAY, I SHALL REVERSE THE PROCESS IF YOU ARE THAT MISERABLE ABOUT BEING GIVEN LIFE OF YOUR OWN. He went on. The little tower manifestation finally realized what her Master had been misunderstanding.

”Nonono! I'm not sad to be alive! It's completely the other way! I'm the happiest little tower in the world!” She said while jumping up and down for emphasis.

IS THAT SO?
”Yes! Please let me stay like this?” She pleaded.

VERY WELL... He paused thoughtfully for a few seconds.

I ALLOWED YOU TO PICK YOUR FORM, NOW I NEED YOU TO PICK A NAME AS WELL. He continued.
”A name? I'm getting a name?!” She asked with the kind of glee any child could produce when dropped to a toy store and told to pick one, any one. Then she frowned a bit and let go of her master and started walking in a small circle around him, thinking profusedly. After a few rounds around, she was interrupted.

MAYHAP I COULD OFFER A PROPOSITION? Davram asked.
”Ah, yes, of course, Master.” she replied, looking at him expectingly.

AS YOU ARE THE FOCAL POINT OF YOUR ORIGINALS POWER, I THINK 'IRIS' WOULD BE APPROPRIATE. He said.

”Iris, iris...” She said a few times, like tasting the name, and liked it.
”It's a good name, thank you Master.” She said while bowing to him, with a large smile across her face.

VERY GOOD, NOW LET US DISCUSS YOUR FORM AND IT'S CAPABILITIES AND RESTRICTIONS.
”Haaai.”

ALTHOUGH YOU POSSESS A SMALL FORM NOW, YOUR SIZE IS IRRELEVANT AND YOU CAN CHANGE IT AS YOU SEE FIT, AS LONG AS IT FITS INSIDE YOUR ORIGINAL. Suddenly Iris was towering over Davram and just as quickly she was back to being child sized.
”That's kinda scary, everything seems to shrink on you.” She exclaimed.

INDEED, YOUR FORM IS ONLY AN ILLUSION WITH PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES, CHANGING IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF CHOICE. YOUR STRENGTH IS ALSO EXTREME, I CAN ATTEST TO THAT.
”Ah, sorry Master, did I hurt you?” She looked a bit scared at the notion of hurting him.

I CANNOT FEEL PAIN, AND YOU INFLICTED NO HARM ON ME. Iris looked instantly relieved.

BUT YOU MUST TAKE CARE OF THAT STRENGTH WHENEVER IN CONTACT WITH THE CREATURES AND ANIMALS IN THE DUNGEONS.
”Yes Master, I won't hurt a single creature there.” She said while shaking her head.

UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED TO. NOW, AS YOU ARE A PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION OF THIS TOWER, YOU CANNOT EXIT IT. GIVEN ENOUGH TIME, I MIGHT FIND A WAY TO LET YOU DO THAT, BUT UNTIL THEN, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO.
”All right, Master.”

GOOD, NOW LET US GO DOWN TO THE DUNGEONS, YOU HAVE MUCH TO LEARN, AND FOR A CHANGE, I AM RUNNING SHORT ON TIME...


40 years later:

Iris walked up the tower stairs, following Master. She knew that the time was at hand when he would 'sleep' for a century. The last four decades had been filled with learning about and playing with various animals and creatures. She was rather proud about how well she got along with the animals. She sometimes even cuddled with the few grizzly bears that lived in the dungeons. Now she was feeling a bit down, knowing that the long waiting that was be ahead. They arrived to Masters study in silence. He sat on his chair infront of the worktable there and looked at the circles around the phylactery. She stood next to him. The white circles were all glowing now, and only one of the dark purple ones were active.

IF THERE IS AN EXTREMELY DIRE NEED, IT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE TO AWAKEN ME BY DESTROYING THE GLOBE OF LIFE IN THE DUNGEONS. Master told her. But she didn't want him to sleep for a hundred years for a stupid globe.
”Master, are you sure you couldn't just disarm the seal?” She asked while fidgeting a bit.

NO, I CANNOT USE ANY LIFE MAGIC, I CAN ONLY MODIFY THAT WHICH EXISTS, HENCE THE NECESSITY OF THE GLOBE. IT CONTAINS BOUNDLESS OPPORTUNITIES AS A SOURCE OF LIFE UNLIKE I'VE EVER SEEN.
”B-but...” She started.

NO. I WILL SLEEP, AND I WILL REAWAKEN IN A CENTURY. Davram said, now turning his gaze to her. She felt like crying at this point. But all she could do was to nod sourly. She knew that there'd be no arguing Master, not when the only arguments were emotional ones. Of couse he couldn't understand such a thing as wanting to spend time together, they were a distant dream of the past for him.
She was suddenly cut out of her mulling by a skeletal hand that clumsily patted her on the head.

YOU WILL HAVE THE ANIMALS TO ACCOMPANY YOU, AND THE PLANTS TO TAKE CARE OF. THERE WILL BE NO LACK OF THINGS TO DO. She looked at her Master in astonishment. It was clearly an attempt in comforting her, and a clumsy one at that, but from the Master, that was like the epitome of sweetness. She looked at his slowly dimming eyes and nodded, now smiling feebly.
”Yes...”

He took the hand off her head and returned to gazing at his phylactery. The light dimmed out in his eyes. She looked at him for a moment and sighed lightly, then she smiled a little. She floated off the ground and leaned towards Masters face. It might be a skull, but it was her Master's skull. She pecked the bone cheek.
”Sweet dreams, Master.”

Spoiler for Iris:

I DO NOT DREAM.
”KYAAAA!” She screamed as Masters face turned to look at her, now sprawled on the floor, and truly, there was still a faint flicker in his eyes.

BUT THANK YOU NEVER THE LESS. And then the light truly died out. She could have swore that she saw a glint of glee in those eyes, but it might just have been an illusion from him grinning at her. She got up, and ran out of the study, closed the door and rested her back against it. She remained there for a while, trying to calm her emotions. She had never felt as embarrassed as she was now. She prayed that Master wouldn't recall that little bit as he woke up, a century from now. She then straightened up and slapped herself in the face with her palms.
”Right, work to do!”

There, comments?

Edit: thought to add a link to the first chapter: Prologue

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Tk3997

You’re REALLY just not getting what I’m saying at all are you? Yes the magic bolts have no electronics on board (as we know them),

Actually, they must have some equivalent on board. Even a CG missile must have a signal receiver and a control system. Homing will require sensor circuitry and processing circuitry as well.

IMO the bolts themselves are normally quite stupid and it’s the “brains” in the device that’s doing most of the work to make them appear smart, hence electronics.

Again, having the device do most of the guidance work because the rounds are stupid is antithetical to useful homing.

That doesn’t really prove much to me homing is only half the battle you still need to know how to use your weapons effectively, and indeed multi-tasking to be able to manage your weapons while other stuff is happening is important. It’s also worth noting that Nanoha was new, had no formal training, and while somewhat intelligent RH is no tactical mastermind. Just like her jacket is probably based on having watched too many magic girl shows her tactics are probably in many ways similar she might well be using manual guidance, not because that’s the best or most effective method, but because it’s intuitive and she thinks that how it ought to work.

At this point, from my almost 3rd party POV, you two are talking past each other. Keroko's emphasis is on whether the Shooters we saw employed in Ep1 and 5 A's are homing or command-guided, while you are on whether SAH is possible.

Given the above, you've probably just conceded the point he wants - the Shooters are CLOS, even if you think it is stupid. The only question left is whether they are MCLOS, SACLOS or ACLOS.

Since you've conceded above that the rounds themselves are pretty dumb, the idea of homing being necessarily superior looks thin as well. Even granting your workload argument, it is not superior if it keeps missing or you are forced to keep turning the "backup" command guidance function back on. Even the advantage of fire and forget (which is degraded if the homing bombs are dumb) is lost because of all homing methods you chose SAH.

Whether a guidance method is superior depends on a balance of conditions, and we don't have any information to deduce how the balance will fall in mage combat other than the final decision actually taken by our characters. SAH is clearly not the fave method in Terra (heck, when they had a chance, they went to TVM, thus placing the computational workload back on the firing platform!) And from what we can see, it isn't the fave method in Mid either...

Frankly this is even a debate IMO you’ve already admitted homing shots are possible canon says they are, given this semi-active modes are also entirely possible and vastly superior to direct manual control.

The one time we explicitly hear about their guidance method, it is passive (heat seeking). We never hear of an active homing weapon either. Given your linkage below about non-use = a strong sign of non-superiority, by extension SAH is either unworkable or at least not superior to confirmed guidance methods like passive homing or CLOS once all factors are considered.

There are any number of possible reasons, one of which probably involves the enemy mage's emissions effectively blanketing the weak reflections from an active weapon. Then there is your suggestion - the bombs are too dumb for any kind of homing to be very effective.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Just some thoughts, trying to assemble more or less a timeline in my head of events. Takes place over four days... I have day one down to the hour by hour playbook at this point.

Spoiler for Rough timeline:

Timeline

Day one

AM 4:30 Crash Wakes up from memory induced nightmare (Chapter One)

6:00 Crash Arrives at Tictocc (Chapter One)

11:30: Aces Arrive (Chapter 2 + 3)

PM 12:15: Test Operation over McGreggor -MOCK BATTLE- (Chapter 4)

12:30: LUNCH (30 minutes) (Chapter 5)

1:00: Office Conversations (Chapter 5)

1:30: Gift for Fox (Chapter 5)

1:40: Emergency Call to Selene (Chapter 5)

1:50: Going for a ride. (End of Chapter 5)

2:30: 'Deep Sky' over Southern Mid-childa. (Chapter 6)

3:00 Hayate Attacked/Thanatos One Engages (Chapter 6)

6:00 All AMF Projectors located and disabled. (Chapter 7)

7:00 Deep Sky Touchdown at Cranagan Airport (Chapter 7)

7:20 Arrival at RF6 HQ (Chapter 7)

Day Two

AM 6:00 Observing Forwards Training/Roland's reprimand **Use for serious moment
6:15: Crash gets suckered into training with the forwards. (Four on One) **Use for Comedy sequence

- Place additional scenes for investigation.
- Include Hayate recuperation

- Place in villain scene


Day Three.

- Emergency Situation, Imminent Attack on McGreggor
- Flight to McGreggor, Air Battle
- Island Ground Battle *Include many jokes in the chaos*
- Enemy forces stealing weapons from the high security ammo dumps, an inside job becomes suspect.
- EDI self activates and blows out of hanger to PWN enemyforces
- Include the 'tough call' and 'bomb' (DESTROY) the ammo dump and disposal on Angel Island after enemy entrenches in it to steal more weapons/materials.
- Include route of enemy forces as Roland organizes command with the Aces + the Shock Enforcers + the Wolkenritter + Local forces (& EDI)
- Roland's crack moment with an Abrams.

- Capture of traitor.
- Include the humorous 'Fox Interrogates Prisoner' Scene. (AKA Fox is SCARY! S&M joke scene with Levantin as the 'whip'.)

**Remember to include more Z0001 somewhere in the McGreggor battle to reinforce how tough it REALLY is... Also, don't forget the Admiral Lindy Plushie gift from chapter six.

Day Four

- Cherry finds Z0001 going through Cranagan traffic monitoring cameras.
- Investigation finally puts all the pieces together, realizes Cranagan is the target of a nuclear weapon.
- General Roland mobilizes everything at his command and Adm. Mishima stays at Tictocc.

- Battle of Cranagan City. (All characters involved in one way or another.)
- Have Lynn 'Kill' Z0001 with 'magic cartridges and microwaves don't mix' stunt from chapter five's "crash dominos" event.
- Stop the nuke, but have Crash Dominos bring down the building around him.

-Wrap up story/mission.

[Comartemis]

Actually, they must have some equivalent on board. Even a CG missile must have a signal receiver and a control system. Homing will require sensor circuitry and processing circuitry as well.

*Sigh*

Ark, why the heck are you trying to apply the workings of conventional weapons to magical weapons and spells? Quit beating a dead horse already, TK's provided more than enough evidence to convince me of the feasibility of a homing spell. Now can we drop this conversation before we kill off any more innocent catgirls?



Having the spell controlled by the device is a perfectly viable alternative to individually programming the rounds one or two at a time, and is even supported by canon. Drop it already, I stopped being interested in this conversation a while ago; homing spells have the green light so far as I care, and I doubt there's anything you can say that would convince me otherwise.

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Actually, they must have some equivalent on board. Even a CG missile must have a signal receiver and a control system. Homing will require sensor circuitry and processing circuitry as well.

Given that these systems are made up of an sort of amorphous energy blob these still safely fall well the fuck outside "electronics (as we know them)". They have some sort of on board intelligences, but it's not based on anything like what we know.

Again, having the device do most of the guidance work because the rounds are stupid is antithetical to useful homing.

Only if we assume the device is actually approaching being overburdened by the task. I conceded no such thing IMO it's easily up to task of managing the details at most a dozen shots of various shorts and imparting the programing needed for homing bolts as well.

At this point, from my almost 3rd party POV, you two are talking past each other. Keroko's emphasis is on whether the Shooters we saw employed in Ep1 and 5 A's are homing or command-guided, while you are on whether SAH is possible.

I never disputed this was an option in the first place merely that it's a bad one for maneuvering aerial combat.

Given the above, you've probably just conceded the point he wants - the Shooters are CLOS, even if you think it is stupid. The only question left is whether they are MCLOS, SACLOS or ACLOS.

All I've conceded is that they CAN be CLOS if the shooter wants them to be and in spite of the fact such a system is rather inefficient and something better is CLEARLY possible given what we know of canon. Don't put words in my mouth.

Since you've conceded above that the rounds themselves are pretty dumb, the idea of homing being necessarily superior looks thin as well.

Hardly where the guidance intelligence resides is of little concern in whether homing is a superior solution, which it utterly blatantly is when dealing with high speed targets which is why basiclly all modern weapons systems intended for such targets use some form of it.

Even granting your workload argument, it is not superior if it keeps missing or you are forced to keep turning the "backup" command guidance function back on.

Except there's no logical reason for it to miss more often or need to be turn off acutally given the reduced work load and increased automation it ought to be considerably MORE accurate if not screwed with by counter measures. Further given that whatever command link is in place is wireless that would be open to jamming too though so even here the advantages and disadvantages can be debated.

Even the advantage of fire and forget (which is degraded if the homing bombs are dumb) is lost because of all homing methods you chose SAH.

I chose Semi-active as an example of a homing mode that had some manual control and precision while still be massively less time and processor intensive then CLOS. I never advocated only one system you'd use different one as the situation demanded, though CLOS would always be low on my list when dealing with maneuvering targets. The magic bolts aren't missiles they're formed basiclly on the spot out of thin air so they can have whatever guidance package you please really so long as the device has the "blueprints" for it.

Whether a guidance method is superior depends on a balance of conditions, and we don't have any information to deduce how the balance will fall in mage combat other than the final decision actually taken by our characters.

Which means you're own theory's can't really be proved anymore then mine and could be just as valid or invalid as my own you've basiclly just admitted we don't have enough information and as such you must then logically admit you have shaky grounds to argue against me with canon, no?

SAH is clearly not the fave method in Terra (heck, when they had a chance, they went to TVM, thus placing the computational workload back on the firing platform!) And from what we can see, it isn't the fave method in Mid either...

Good thing it's only one option then isn't it? I don't see how the hell you could read my arguments and come away thinking SAH was the ONLY method I supported. I flat out said at one point that I advocated spells having different "seeker heads" for different conditions.

Also thanks for bring up still another method of guidance that could be used. Basically when we've got all these options for guidence with upsides and down sides and uses and such it seems so fucking BORING to just decree that spells must be guided by one method or another when allowing different methods opens up a range of new tactical options and factors for ranged mage combat.

The one time we explicitly hear about their guidance method, it is passive (heat seeking). We never hear of an active homing weapon either. Given your linkage below about non-use = a strong sign of non-superiority, by extension SAH is either unworkable or at least not superior to confirmed guidance methods like passive homing or CLOS once all factors are considered.

Guess what Ark I don't really care about your opinions that much.

You take this shit too seriously I apply a veiner of logic and work with what canon gives me to make things interesting. Canon gives me passive homers, passive homers can become semi-active homers easily and combined with a datalink (needed for CLOS) TVM should be possible as well. Active homing is up in the air, but hardly seems impossible given everything else magic can do (like making glowing balls of shit that can fly through halls and gather sensor data for the mage).

Regardless it's possible and as you yourself admitted above we lack hard evidence to refute it so basiclly since it's possible and I think it will add some interesting aspects to combat I don't really give a shit how probable you think it is since I'm trying to write interesting combat not figure out the intricate workings of or objectively asses the universe in anything but a passing manner. If we were debating who would win in a fight or some such then indeed I'd stick to canon, but we aren't this is about me trying to EXPAND on an aspect of the universe. Expansion tends to require adding things and, forgive the pun, but given the other shit that fic authors "get past the radar" alternate homing methods for spells and counter measures hardly seems like much of a big fucking deal.

So really I'm not going to change my mind, you sure as fuck aren't gonna change yours so why don't we just end this crap now?

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Comartemis

*Sigh*

Ark, why the heck are you trying to apply the workings of conventional weapons to magical weapons and spells? Quit beating a dead horse already, TK's provided more than enough evidence to convince me of the feasibility of a homing spell. Now can we drop this conversation before we kill off any more innocent catgirls?

Nobody is denying the feasibility or existence of homing spells - except maybe Keroko for a bit, and I think he stopped. We are engaged in a discussion on the finer workings of such things.

Having the spell controlled by the device is a perfectly viable alternative to individually programming the rounds one or two at a time, and is even supported by canon. Drop it already, I stopped being interested in this conversation a while ago; homing spells have the green light so far as I care, and I doubt there's anything you can say that would convince me otherwise.

Entirely agree here too. It is Tk's position that's contradictory. Somehow, he wants the rounds to be semi-active homing (self-guided), yet he wants the rounds to be controlled by the device (command-guidance scheme).

Regarding your idea, it isn't the homing part that's causing the feathers to rise. It is the 100 rounds (quantity) part.

[Comartemis]

Regarding your idea, it isn't the homing part that's causing the feathers to rise. It is the 100 rounds (quantity) part.

Which was dropped to about 25 a few pages back, if you were paying attention.

[arkhangelsk]

I noticed, and I'm not screaming very loud now, right?

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Nobody is denying the feasibility or existence of homing spells - except maybe Keroko for a bit, and I think he stopped. We are engaged in a discussion on the finer workings of such things.

*sneak reply with the excuse that my computer is rendering*

Pretty much the moment Baret F was mentioned, actually, all I was discussing with Tk was whether or not Nanoha was the one controling the bolts in episode 5, which I am still of the opinion that she is, and the entire 'electronics' thing, which I think Tk has realised do not exactly work like regular electronics, so really just the former bit.

[Wild Goose]

Today has been a really motherfucking loong depressing day.

I'll write a rant on today and why Christian funerals are inherently superior over traditional chinese funerals (not least is the cost, it's fuckloads cheaper to die and be buried in church than to get the monastary to do it for you)... wait, nevermind, rambling.

Comar: I'm still working on some ideas and stuff and will bounce them off Keroko & TK and get back to you. (And 25 isn't too bad, I've got a spell with 50 projectiles. Then again it's got fuck short range (25 feet) and the bolts are unguided and are really weak individually.)

TK: Will be following your expansion of homing & such. And while I don't have many OCs using homing spells (something Ivanovich has drilled into most of the Assault Company is to aim accurately and shoot unguided projectiles - though there is the bias he has, since he did grow up with unguided solid slug guns and was a slug-thrower sniper) these are good options that can be used to expand on the Air Wing girls' and their skillsets...

...uh basically to sum up I'm saying go for it and I'll look at the foundations and your stuff and see if I can help to expand on it further since I think I may have a use for it...

ark: Will reply to you when I can. Suggest you read this link and note category 2 of fan.

[Comartemis]

I noticed, and I'm not screaming very loud now, right?

Nope, it's nice and quiet on this end of the monitor. Though the explosive payloads of the individual rounds might get upped a tad, this one's turning into an Excelion Buster equivilant rather than a Starlight Breaker equivalent; that honor goes to the javelin throw I've mentioned a few times, "Asteroid Drop".

Preliminary concepts for a few of Dragon Army's other members have been drawn up and the squadron's starting to come together. Here's what we've got so far:

Rico
Nominal team leader, position earned by respect and a healthy dose of his infectious Kamina-esque charisma. Ranged fighter alone, hybrid with Nova's assistance. Something of an idiot hero, he's not the best with tactics but is perfectly willing to learn from his subordinates, especially Yuna and Zero, whose council he values highly.

Nova
Rico's unison device. Bad-tempered and occasionally quite sadistic, she nonetheless cares a great deal about Rico and does her best to make sure he comes home from a mission in one piece. Melee fighter alone, hybrid when fused with Rico.

Zero
Rico's second-in-command. You know him, you love him, and he still hasn't gotten his profile posted. I'll need to rewrite Zero's backstory a little to fit him into the TSAB prior to the JS incident, which will lead to him having a history that would get him relegated to this unit. Melee fighter, obviously.

Rena Ryuugu
The team's "little sister", a ground combat specialist with a berserk button. One of the team's more problematic members, she's nearly killed her own allies once or twice whilst in the throes of "Demon's Reign". Still needs to be rebalanced and beefed up a little to make her suitable for this squad. Despite her youth and delicate frame, she's actually the heaviest hitter among the melee specialists thanks to her mastery of Belkan Reinforcement spells, though her skill needs some work.

Yuna
Little girl, big gun. Yuna (See Yoko Ritona for a visual reference) is a ground combat mage who uses an armed device that transforms into various kinds of firearms, most notably an assault rifle, a sniper rifle, and a rocket launcher. Each form specializes in a certain form of attack; for instance, the assault rifle can spit out dozens of unguided magical rounds per second, but each one is ranked as a C-rank attack and the rifle itself is most useful for suppressing fire. The sniper rifle, by comparison, is specially-tuned for bombardment spells.

Yuna is the group's big sister figure, and helps Rico to ensure everything's hunky dory with the crew both in and out of combat. She's especially protective of Rae, who she's taken under her wing in the interest of teaching her how to live normally.

Rae
An artificial mage recovered from one of the team's early assignments, Rae (an Expy of Rei Ayanami) is a late addition to the team who specializes in defensive spells and martial arts. Having no real regard for her own well-being, she throws herself into the paths of enemy attacks, soaking them up with extraordinarily powerful shield spells and her Belkan Armored Device, "Sephiroth". Yuna has taken her under her wing, and she's rapidly developing a personality of her own, becoming a valued member of the team as she begins to adjust to normal life. She's especially noted for a pair of ethereal angelic wings that sprout from her back whenever she's using a particularly powerful defensive spell; this is thought by her teammates to be a side-effect of the tampering that was done to her linker core.

Comar: I'm still working on some ideas and stuff and will bounce them off Keroko & TK and get back to you. (And 25 isn't too bad, I've got a spell with 50 projectiles. Then again it's got fuck short range (25 feet) and the bolts are unguided and are really weak individually.)

Take your time, Goose. I know what it's like to lose a family member (my grandma, last year), so don't go and rush yourself on my account.

[Liingo]

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I was nearly finished writing up a reply to the last few pages when it disapperaed on me............

Man that really sucks. *despair* I'll get back to you tomorrow. *sigh*

[Evangelion Xgouki]

Originally Posted by ghazghkull

Well I'm intrigued :3 I look forward to what you plan to do with this story :3

Oh yeah, anyone get the feel that this is what Syn might look like when she's older? :3

Spoiler for Syn 19 years old-ish?:

*RUNS*

Ooo...nice

Originally Posted by Kha

No time to read profiles or episodes, class in negative 1 min, so I'll be quick...

Looks like Kha has his priorities set right

Originally Posted by Kha

I heard there was Cruchy Spider Surprise in there too, but using King Crab legs. And that is awesome.

That does sound good

Originally Posted by Liingo

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I was nearly finished writing up a reply to the last few pages when it disapperaed on me............

Man that really sucks. *despair* I'll get back to you tomorrow. *sigh*

*pats*

That sucks

[Tormenk]

Originally Posted by SpaceBrotha

First off, thanks to everyone who read and commented, and ofc thanks to PhoenixG and Aaron008R for beta-reading this.

Right, so after some serious writers blocks to the face, i finally got the chapter 2 together. It's a bit heavy, atleast at the beginning. I also attached some pictures that i managed to find.

Anyway, 5500 words. Enjoy!

Spoiler:

Spoiler for Davram:

Chapter 2: The Tower

And so the eons passed...

Circa 2900 years ago:

...And stopped with the immediacy of a human hitting a solid stone wall that appeared out of nowhere. While he was busy trying to remember where his nose was, the wall vanished silently.
The gods, it seemed, did really have a sense of humor. A very twisted sense of humor.

Meanwhile in a location far away, and very much underground, a single tower stood. It wasn't an ordinary tower, and now it didn't even try to be so. It had been most ungracefully buried here in the end of what could be called a catfight between spells. If spells could be compared to cats, and if those cats had also been on fire and glued together, trying to fit in the only source of water present which was too small for both at a time.

The tower was most unsatisfied at the scenery now, as it could only frown at the naturally rather solid wall which now encompassed it's entire field of vision. At least The Wall had not been anything more than gaudy and had known it's place. This new wall clearly didn't, but the tower couldn't do anything without it's masters commands, and so it kept waiting...
...and frowning.

Inside the tower, in the top floor, there was a skeleton shaped dent in one of the metal bookshelves. In this dent, was the master of the tower. Within his empty eyesockets, blue dots flared to, for the lack of a better word, life. He slowly awoke from something resembling dreamless sleep. From his resting place within the dented bookshelfs, he observed his chambers. They had been simple when he originally made it, holding only his magical workshop. But they quickly had grown to also hold a small library of gimoires in their preservation spells, a contaiment sphere for experimenting with greater spells, and his phylatectary. Some grimoires now lay on the floor, and even though they had no life, he still had a feeling that they looked offended for him taking their places. But there was something amiss in the scenery. He could remember the hole in the wall, and the random rocks lying about from his rather flashy entrance to his workroom. But he could not remember his phylatectary glowing white before. It now also sported an entire school of sigils and runes around it in several layers, all in a very unlichlike white, much to his dismay. Intertwined within the white runes and sigils were proper dark purple ones. The white sigils and runes didn't seem to be active except on the lowermost layer while the purple ones were glowing with a dim glow.

As he was pondering about these unfamiliar spell-circles, in his comfy metallic dent, a small white ball of energy flew from the hole with a little buzzing sound, like an overgrown bee, and into the only white sigil still glowing around his phylatectary. When it entered, a dark purple one exited from opposite side and flew back down. Davram slowly picked himself up from the dent, stopping only to dislodge his staff-scythe from the shelf next to him. Yes, it had been a most powerful blast that had been the first reaction of the two mighty spells confronting each other, but it seems they had apparently come to a stalemate of sorts, very peculiar. He pulled the scythe blade back down against the shaft, deactivating the enchantments on it at the same time. The first version of the staff-scythe had been inpractical, the blade was extraordinary sharp and had powerful enchantments in it. After destroying several doors and a bookshelf, he had designed the switchblade style mechanism to it, making it a much more practical tool.

The tower felt it's master awaken, and was eager to finally have something to do. A hundred years of frowning at a cavern wall wasn't exactly the most interesting thing to do. It had kept the tower dustless, per its masters orders, after he had discovered that dust is not something you want an abundance of in a place where dangerous spells are weaved. Now the tower felt it's master wishing to know what was the condition of the lower floors, and happily obliged.

Davram sensed the tower. It had weathered the magical confrontation and the subsequent dimensional travelling very well. Much time had passed since, apparently a hundred years worth. He knew that there'd be a veritable jungle in his dungeons, but it couldn't be helped in the current situation. There was also something else in the dungeons at the moment, something he couldn't quite understand. Only one thing was sure, that something was the source and destination of these pulses of light. There also seemed to be a piece of the dungeons missing altogether, but he couldn't tell which one. Sensing the altered dimension that the dungeons had was always difficult from outside. He began descending the stairs from his study and watched with interest as the colored balls of magic flew past him every few minutes.

He arrived into the ground floor of the tower, and saw heaps of bones lying around, the clothing was still recognizable, though white had turned into grey and gold had lost it's luster over the century. It seemed that everyone had died where they had been when the logia had been activated. He continued through the skeletons and descended the stairs to the dungeons. A familiar feeling of suddenly shrinking into a rather miniscule size flooded over him as he descended the steps. He had wanted to make the dungeons fit his tower's width, so he had severely shrunk the space down here. He arrived to the laboratory and workshop where he conducted most of his experiments regarding life. It was your normal alchemists laboratory with several glass instruments, cookers and beakers lying on several tables. Some mortars and alembics were also present. The door he had just walked in from shared it's wall of the square room with another door, which held the record archives. The other three walls of the room held a door each, leading to the different scores of animals and creatures that inhabited this dungeon... or atleast had inhabited. Now that he had arrived to the distorted space, he could sense the area better.

The thing that was the cause of those pulses could be found in the ”peaceful” part of the dungeon, where there were no predators to harass the different species of herbivores present. It should be noted here, that even though Davram insisted upon the term ”dungeons”, they were more alike to habitats, like a crossover between zoo and a natural park with a bit of a gladiator pit thrown in for good measure. He had even created an illusion of night and day cycles to better accommodate the life inhabiting these areas, but even though the roof was high, the sky was merely an illusion, as many a bird had noticed. Right now though, the only thing inhabiting this area was a very peculiar liquidlike form. Davram decided to have a better look. Upon opening the door, the first thing he noted was the cracked earth, then the complete lack of any life in the vicinity. Everything was just as dead as the areas that had previously surrounded his tower. He stopped to think for a while.

Of course, water. His tower had pulled it's water reserves from an underground river flowing below it's previous location. It didn't have that luxury here, so no water for the plants or animals to drink from. He didn't feel any grief for their demise, after all, an undead feeling sad for the dead was like a human feeling sad for another because they were alive, which was preposterous, of course. He did feel a bit exasperated, it would take great amount of time to bring life back into this place. He watched the animal skeletons littered across the vast space that had held many different species of herbivores, both natural and magical, now all gone. He let out one of his rare sighs and took flight to find the source of those balls of magic.

As he arrived to the center of the dungeon, he saw a globe of transparent fluid that was suspended above ground by a pair of glowing white spellcircles that were whirling around the globe. He landed next to the globe and waited. Soon enough, the circles stopped their whirling and a white ball of energy shot up towards the 'sky' and disappeared. After some seconds, a dark purple one shot down from the same spot and entered into the globe and the circles started whirling again. He nodded, another mystery solved.

The seal was quite ingenious. It created a globe of liquid life out of any life present upon initial activation, in this case it had eaten some of the plants and animals in this part of the dungeon. The globe was fed magically via one of the circles whenever a pulse of magic entered the circle. After feeding magic, the other circle then absorbed some life from the globe, converted it into life magic and sent it up to the tower to be inserted into his phylatectary, sealing him into a sort of undead version of sleep. This all was apparently being supervised by the far more complex circles in his study. He would have to study it further, but for now, he would have to check the damage that had been caused to the ”highly experimental” area.

He returned to his lab, and walked through to the door on the other side. As Davram opened the door leading to the dungeon, he noted that he would have to either rebuild, or abandon this part of the dungeons. Unlike the ”peaceful” area, the ”highly experimental” had a hall of cages before the habitat itself started, this hall had held his most dangerous creatures that he had been still experimenting upon. Nothing lived through 100 years of starvation though, so unfortunately only rotten remains were left in the cages. But not all cages were here, some of the cages nearest to the habitat had been broken off with the habitat. For indeed, the entire section had been broken off. It was most unfortunate. Mostly only two species existed there, experiments that had taken him nearly 150 years to perfect.

The Jumpers had been wolves, originally. He had heavily modified their appearance, first adding scythed appendixes to their back, in order to discourage bringing your face so close to others. He had once witnessed what happened to a wolf that was biting a gorilla. The poor canines neck hadn't had a chance to survive the shaking the gorilla had put it through. After the initial modification, he noticed that they couldn't manouver well with the extra weight now attached to their backs. So he encouraged muscle growth and modified their hind legs to allow powerful, long distance jumps.

This failed far worse than he had imagined possible. Who would have thought that by increasing their odds to catch things, they would instead miss more often? The first couple of ten of these jumpers killed themselves by jumping at breakneck speeds and hitting trees, large rocks, walls and other hard objects. One even died when it got frightened. It had jumped straight up and hit the 'sky', and died after it had found the earth again. The few remaining subjects were quickly put to stasis while he had thought up a way to treat this new problem. After encasing them in a heavy carapace to lower their speeds and to allow them to survive jumping at things he started up a new project. A big and slow, but very sturdy and intelligent snake like being with scythed talons. It had been a large snake previously, and it posessed a cunning intellect and a predatory instinct about tactics. It had been a most tremendous challenge to increase the capacity of thinking for an animal, he had enlarged the brain several times. And then was forced to add a whole carapace for it to support the now massive brain. Yet the ”coordinator” had only rudimentary intellect, though Davram suspected that it had only hidden it's true capabilities from him.

The coordinators and jumpers had hit off instantly, forming powerful packs where a single coordinator would direct the jumpers to either kill off the prey, or to drive/lure it into a position where the coordinator could ambush it directly. They brought down everything that he could find in nature. Now, staring at the cavern wall that had replaced his habitat, Davram hoped that his experiments had found a nice little planet to inhabit. It would be a shame if they had instead found the dark recesses of space, and frozen to death. He turned around, nothing much to do in here, anymore. He walked back into his laboratory, and started inspecting the various tools present, he would have much to do, investigating the seal, the curious liquid life and he also had to find a source of water. Yes, much, much to do.

Then he blinked in surprise. Or would have, had he posessed any eyelids to blink with. Liquid life? In an area completely sapped of water? He quickly returned to the globe to further investigate this contradiction. He stood there for a while until the glowing ball rose to the sky and another descended. Indeed, the returning pulse did not contain anything besides magical energy. Most peculiar. He slowly reached for the globe, his hand reached the first circle surrounding the globe and wouldn't go further. He grinned, but then again, he had little choice in facial expressions. The globe had a minute barrier around it, preventing entry from all but magical energy, and most likely it also prevented water from evaporating from the inside. He would have to wait until water had been restored to his tower, until breaking this superficial barrier. He was most interested in the globe, for it seemed to be some sort of a base form of life, something he had never ran into, or heard of for that matter. He went back to the laboratory and checked the rest of the tools there.

He then walked out of the dungeons and back into the entrance to his tower. He needed water, and a lot of it. Extending his senses first to the tower, and from there, began his mental search. Yes, some distance away was an underground river, not unlike the one that had existed below the previous location of his tower. He set off to work, the spell would take a while to cast. Permanent magical effects were always somewhat taxing to create.

Several hours later, two portals had been created, each perhaps 12 inches across. They were in the remaining dungeon areas, slowly bringing water back into the place. It would take a lot of time, but the water would slowly accumulate into a river or two, which would flow into a newly created pool that could be used to emulate rain in each of the dungeons, in order to prevent future disasters by dehydration. It had been a challenge to create the portals into the warped dimension where the dungeons were. He noted that he should create something to counter an incident like the one that had ripped his tower from Zhed. Otherwise he would most likely only have a stump for a tower. But for now, he had water. And with water came the opportunity to further study the globe. He entered the dungeon containing the globe with several tools floating behind him. Ranging from empty glass beakers to water filled stone buckets, from pincers to shovels. A small storage of equipment trailed him while he was making his way to the globe.

Upon arriving to the globe, he raised his staff, the blade snapped into position and the familiar runes activated inside it. He then proceeded to shred the defensive barrier with it. Snapping the blade back into it's more compact mode, he then waited for the pulse to leave and return in order to observe any changes in the globe. Nothing, very good. He experimented by pouring water on it, which quickly seemed to be absorbed by the globe, and when the next energy exchange happened, the globe grew slightly. Excellent. He then drained a bit into a glass beaker and upon noticing no visible differences in the globe, besides very slight diminishing, he returned to his laboratory. That experiment showed that it would be likely for him to be able to 'harvest' this substance from the globe. But what could be done with it?

After doing several experiments in his laboratory, he was left astonished. The matter was some sort of formless life. Given any 'idea' of a form, it immediately formed into this 'idea'. It was very difficult to prevent the substance from overdoing it. For example, dropping a simple seed into a beakerful of it created a beakerful of seeds. But since seeds didn't quite comform to shapes like liquid does, it also broke the beaker. He wondered how it would react to animals. He harvested a larger quantity of the substance and dropped in a skeleton of what had been a rabbit hundred years ago. He ended up with a wet rabbit skeleton, now coated with the substance. Clearly a living subject would be needed for anything to happen. He tapped his chin for a moment. There were the storages, where a thousand animals and plants were held in stasis, and this could indeed solve much of his problems regarding refilling his dungeons with life again. But with the dungeons in a problematic situation as they were, he would have to wait until proper amounts of vegetation had been returned to the dungeons. He suspected that the air in the dungeons would be somewhat poisonous if the plants weren't there to breathe it back to regular air. Work, he noted, was apparently worse than many other things, for not even being dead relieved you of it. And then he set out to do his...

60 Years later:

The tiger advanced quietly as only a feline can. It's eyes were set on it's prey, clearly unaware of the striped and clawed doom approaching. The tiger had never seen any prey like this, nor in colors like this. It wondered how it would taste. After all, it did not want an unsatisfying meal as a reward for all this prowling and sneaking. It slowly approached the figure crouching in the open, it's back towards the tiger. It took a few speeding steps and pounced the unsuspecting prey.

The tiger was standing in the spot where it had began it's assault. It stood there for a few moments, wondering what had happened. The prey was standing infront of it, it's back still towards the tiger. The tiger blinked a few times, took a few speeding steps and pounced...
...and was standing where he had began. This was most infuriating, it had done all the proper sneaking, like a tiger should, it had kept it's eyes on the prey like it was supposed to. The ambush had been perfect, the prey hadn't know it was already doomed. By all means, the tiger should be eating a nice dinner right now, instead it was standing around, staring at the black back of the prey in furious amazement. The black prey straightened, turned to watch the tiger and promptly disappeared. It was an affront, prey shouldn't just disappear like that! The prey should either try to run away, or try to fight back, but it should be food at the end and... The tiger's mental processes screeched to a halt when it saw the corpse where the prey had been. It didn't look the same, and as the tiger curiously advanced, didn't smell the same either. It's feline brain poorly equipped for such situations just concluded that it had killed the prey and it had simply looked different from the beginning, and the tiger happily dug in.

Meanwhile, in the laboratory, Davram walked out of the invisibility while holding a small glowing glass cube with steel edges in his hands. He reached a small pool holding substance from the globe of life and opened the cube, pouring transparent something out of it into the substance. The reaction was near instantaneous, the substance rearranged itself to the 'idea' that had been stored in the tetrahedron, and soon there was a living, breathing rabbit looking aghast in the pool. Some of the substance was still remaining at it's feet. Davram had quickly noted that the substance didn't react to any 'idea' that required more than there was. And apparently by draining a life force and soul of a being and entering it into the substance, you could recreate that being. But it would be a near perfect copy of the creature, including age and any deteoriation of the body, but wounds and the like were clearly not part of the creature, and hence did not transfer into the new body. He picked the now afraid rabbit and went to let it back out to the dungeon it had came from. The rabbit quickly kicked away from the door and into the bushes, something went ”CRUNCH!” and there was silence, only broken occasionally by a silent crunching sound.

Davram returned to his study at the top and peered into the spell circles around his phylatectary. The glow of the white circles had overtaken the glow of the purple ones now. He estimated that he'd be asleep some 40 years from now. It seemed likely, considering his century of sleep before awakening, that he'd be awake for a century and then fall 'asleep' for another. The two spells balanced each other out like two planets of the same size, dancing their dance of gravitational pull in an eternal embrace. He would need a groundskeeper then, someone to watch over the life that was once again teeming in the dungeons. The skeletons still at the entrance could be easily reanimated, but granting any semblance of intelligence to them was nigh impossible. A golem wouldn't be any better. Golems were basically undead, but instead of reanimated bones, you had animated clay, or iron. A homunculus would work, but he didn't have the time to teach it all the things it needed to know, unless... He grinned as an idea formed in his mind, and he began thinking up processes and spells necessary, it would take some time to get everything into satisfactory state.

After months of painstaking preparations and some modifications that he had to impose on the tower, Davram finally was ready. Everything was set up into the entrance level, he had animated the skeletons and moved them to the edges to watch. The level also sported a large spellcircle in the mddle and several spellcircles surrounding it, they were all inactive, but you could tell that serious wizarding was about to be conducted in the room. Davram slowly checked his circles, it was one thing forming them magically for spells, but when you had to draw them by hand, you'd have to carefully inspect every detail. He had once seen an apprentice attempt a demon summoning spell with a spellcircle that had a single flaw in it. A single mistake. The dragon that had emerged from the summoning circle didn't quite appreciate the error, and was quick to inflict this knowledge on the poor apprentice and a good quarter of the academy before they could drive it away. But these spellcircles were complete, and it wasn't anything as dangerous as a summoning circle, but things should be done properly or not at all, he thought. He walked to the edge of the central circle, and slowly began casting.

Slowly, ever so slowly, sigils started to form on the edges of the circles, the towers magic responded to its masters call and ancient runes started flaring to life within the walls next to him, and slowly it spread further from him. Once every inch of the tower was glowing with runes, some of them glowing within the tower came out of the walls and moved into the central circle. They swirled for a while, condensing, forming a shape within the circle. After every rune and sigil had been sucked in from the air and into the form, it was complete. This proved that life was indeed something you acquired, rather than were given. This manifestation that was slowly standing up and inspecting herself was indeed his tower, now given a true will, and a way to excert it.

The little tower manifestation standing before Davram was critically inspecting itself. It... She had been given the choice of form, and this had seemed proper, for some reason. She was small, barely half of Masters length, and was dressed in a light blue skirt that nearly reached her ankles, it also sported a white lining, and a white, buttoned shirt that looked like someone had ripped the sleeves off. It also had a red ribbon right under her chin, tied to a loose bow. Her hair was light orange, waist length, and was in a ponytail, held so by another red bow tie. She just had to admire herself. She had arms, legs, everything! And now she could express her emotions! She turned around to see her master...

Davram was curious about the little life his tower had manifested as. She seemed to be looking herself thoroughly as if making sure everything was there. Then she turned around and saw him. She then barreled straight into him and gave him a hug with enough force to kill any living person, which he fortunately wasn't. He looked down, not quite grasping the situation. She couldn't cry tears, but she looked like she was trying her best. He wondered why she was sad, she had been given a form, after all.

IS THERE SOMETHING THE MATTER? He inquired from the little form clinging to him.
”I have arms, legs, expressions!” A voice answered from somewhere within his robes.

THEY WERE NECESSARY. Davram said, still not understanding the situation. The little manifestation wasn't paying attention, busily hugging him.
”I'm alive!” Davram paused at this, apparently she wasn't happy about it.

HOPEFULLY YOU CAN FORGIVE ME. He said.
”huh?” The little one had finally grasped what it's master was saying.

I NEEDED A CARETAKER FOR THE DUNGEONS WHILE I SLEEP, AND YOU WERE THE NATURAL CHOICE. Davram explained.
”Ehh, master, why were you apologizing?” She asked, now also confused about the conversation.

SHOULD I NOT APOLOGIZE FOR WRONGING YOU? Davram enquired.
”Wronging?” She still wasn't quite clear on what her Master meant.

ANYWAY, I SHALL REVERSE THE PROCESS IF YOU ARE THAT MISERABLE ABOUT BEING GIVEN LIFE OF YOUR OWN. He went on. The little tower manifestation finally realized what her Master had been misunderstanding.

”Nonono! I'm not sad to be alive! It's completely the other way! I'm the happiest little tower in the world!” She said while jumping up and down for emphasis.

IS THAT SO?
”Yes! Please let me stay like this?” She pleaded.

VERY WELL... He paused thoughtfully for a few seconds.

I ALLOWED YOU TO PICK YOUR FORM, NOW I NEED YOU TO PICK A NAME AS WELL. He continued.
”A name? I'm getting a name?!” She asked with the kind of glee any child could produce when dropped to a toy store and told to pick one, any one. Then she frowned a bit and let go of her master and started walking in a small circle around him, thinking profusedly. After a few rounds around, she was interrupted.

MAYHAP I COULD OFFER A PROPOSITION? Davram asked.
”Ah, yes, of course, Master.” she replied, looking at him expectingly.

AS YOU ARE THE FOCAL POINT OF YOUR ORIGINALS POWER, I THINK 'IRIS' WOULD BE APPROPRIATE. He said.

”Iris, iris...” She said a few times, like tasting the name, and liked it.
”It's a good name, thank you Master.” She said while bowing to him, with a large smile across her face.

VERY GOOD, NOW LET US DISCUSS YOUR FORM AND IT'S CAPABILITIES AND RESTRICTIONS.
”Haaai.”

ALTHOUGH YOU POSSESS A SMALL FORM NOW, YOUR SIZE IS IRRELEVANT AND YOU CAN CHANGE IT AS YOU SEE FIT, AS LONG AS IT FITS INSIDE YOUR ORIGINAL. Suddenly Iris was towering over Davram and just as quickly she was back to being child sized.
”That's kinda scary, everything seems to shrink on you.” She exclaimed.

INDEED, YOUR FORM IS ONLY AN ILLUSION WITH PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES, CHANGING IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF CHOICE. YOUR STRENGTH IS ALSO EXTREME, I CAN ATTEST TO THAT.
”Ah, sorry Master, did I hurt you?” She looked a bit scared at the notion of hurting him.

I CANNOT FEEL PAIN, AND YOU INFLICTED NO HARM ON ME. Iris looked instantly relieved.

BUT YOU MUST TAKE CARE OF THAT STRENGTH WHENEVER IN CONTACT WITH THE CREATURES AND ANIMALS IN THE DUNGEONS.
”Yes Master, I won't hurt a single creature there.” She said while shaking her head.

UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED TO. NOW, AS YOU ARE A PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION OF THIS TOWER, YOU CANNOT EXIT IT. GIVEN ENOUGH TIME, I MIGHT FIND A WAY TO LET YOU DO THAT, BUT UNTIL THEN, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO.
”All right, Master.”

GOOD, NOW LET US GO DOWN TO THE DUNGEONS, YOU HAVE MUCH TO LEARN, AND FOR A CHANGE, I AM RUNNING SHORT ON TIME...


40 years later:

Iris walked up the tower stairs, following Master. She knew that the time was at hand when he would 'sleep' for a century. The last four decades had been filled with learning about and playing with various animals and creatures. She was rather proud about how well she got along with the animals. She sometimes even cuddled with the few grizzly bears that lived in the dungeons. Now she was feeling a bit down, knowing that the long waiting that was be ahead. They arrived to Masters study in silence. He sat on his chair infront of the worktable there and looked at the circles around the phylatectary. She stood next to him. The white circles were all glowing now, and only one of the dark purple ones were active.

IF THERE IS AN EXTREMELY DIRE NEED, IT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE TO AWAKEN ME BY DESTROYING THE GLOBE OF LIFE IN THE DUNGEONS. Master told her. But she didn't want him to sleep for a hundred years for a stupid globe.
”Master, are you sure you couldn't just disarm the seal?” She asked while fidgeting a bit.

NO, I CANNOT USE ANY LIFE MAGIC, I CAN ONLY MODIFY THAT WHICH EXISTS, HENCE THE NECESSITY OF THE GLOBE. IT CONTAINS BOUNDLESS OPPORTUNITIES AS A SOURCE OF LIFE UNLIKE I'VE EVER SEEN.
”B-but...” She started.

NO. I WILL SLEEP, AND I WILL REAWAKEN IN A CENTURY. Davram said, now turning his gaze to her. She felt like crying at this point. But all she could do was to nod sourly. She knew that there'd be no arguing Master, not when the only arguments were emotional ones. Of couse he couldn't understand such a thing as wanting to spend time together, they were a distant dream of the past for him.
She was suddenly cut out of her mulling by a skeletal hand that clumsily patted her on the head.

YOU WILL HAVE THE ANIMALS TO ACCOMPANY YOU, AND THE PLANTS TO TAKE CARE OF. THERE WILL BE NO LACK OF THINGS TO DO. She looked at her Master in astonishment. It was clearly an attempt in comforting her, and a clumsy one at that, but from the Master, that was like the epitome of sweetness. She looked at his slowly dimming eyes and nodded, now smiling feebly.
”Yes...”

He took the hand off her head and returned to gazing at his phylatectary. The light dimmed out in his eyes. She looked at him for a moment and sighed lightly, then she smiled a little. She floated off the ground and leaned towards Masters face. It might be a skull, but it was her Master's skull. She pecked the bone cheek.
”Sweet dreams, Master.”

Spoiler for Iris:

I DO NOT DREAM.
”KYAAAA!” She screamed as Masters face turned to look at her, now sprawled on the floor, and truly, there was still a faint flicker in his eyes.

BUT THANK YOU NEVER THE LESS. And then the light truly died out. She could have swore that she saw a glint of glee in those eyes, but it might just have been an illusion from him grinning at her. She got up, and ran out of the study, closed the door and rested her back against it. She remained there for a while, trying to calm her emotions. She had never felt as embarrassed as she was now. She prayed that Master wouldn't recall that little bit as he woke up, a century from now. She then straightened up and slapped herself in the face with her palms.
”Right, work to do!”

There, comments?

Edit: thought to add a link to the first chapter: Prologue

It does read like a fantasy tale for the most parts though I have read few of any. Anyway, the last parts had me smiling in earnest. Looking forward to the continuation.

@FlameSparkZ: A late welcome back.

[tshouryuu]

Originally Posted by SpaceBrotha

First off, thanks to everyone who read and commented, and ofc thanks to PhoenixG and Aaron008R for beta-reading this.

Right, so after some serious writers blocks to the face, i finally got the chapter 2 together. It's a bit heavy, atleast at the beginning. I also attached some pictures that i managed to find.

Anyway, 5500 words. Enjoy!

Spoiler:

Spoiler for Davram:

Chapter 2: The Tower

And so the eons passed...

Circa 2900 years ago:

...And stopped with the immediacy of a human hitting a solid stone wall that appeared out of nowhere. While he was busy trying to remember where his nose was, the wall vanished silently.
The gods, it seemed, did really have a sense of humor. A very twisted sense of humor.

Meanwhile in a location far away, and very much underground, a single tower stood. It wasn't an ordinary tower, and now it didn't even try to be so. It had been most ungracefully buried here in the end of what could be called a catfight between spells. If spells could be compared to cats, and if those cats had also been on fire and glued together, trying to fit in the only source of water present which was too small for both at a time.

The tower was most unsatisfied at the scenery now, as it could only frown at the naturally rather solid wall which now encompassed it's entire field of vision. At least The Wall had not been anything more than gaudy and had known it's place. This new wall clearly didn't, but the tower couldn't do anything without it's masters commands, and so it kept waiting...
...and frowning.

Inside the tower, in the top floor, there was a skeleton shaped dent in one of the metal bookshelves. In this dent, was the master of the tower. Within his empty eyesockets, blue dots flared to, for the lack of a better word, life. He slowly awoke from something resembling dreamless sleep. From his resting place within the dented bookshelfs, he observed his chambers. They had been simple when he originally made it, holding only his magical workshop. But they quickly had grown to also hold a small library of gimoires in their preservation spells, a contaiment sphere for experimenting with greater spells, and his phylatectary. Some grimoires now lay on the floor, and even though they had no life, he still had a feeling that they looked offended for him taking their places. But there was something amiss in the scenery. He could remember the hole in the wall, and the random rocks lying about from his rather flashy entrance to his workroom. But he could not remember his phylatectary glowing white before. It now also sported an entire school of sigils and runes around it in several layers, all in a very unlichlike white, much to his dismay. Intertwined within the white runes and sigils were proper dark purple ones. The white sigils and runes didn't seem to be active except on the lowermost layer while the purple ones were glowing with a dim glow.

As he was pondering about these unfamiliar spell-circles, in his comfy metallic dent, a small white ball of energy flew from the hole with a little buzzing sound, like an overgrown bee, and into the only white sigil still glowing around his phylatectary. When it entered, a dark purple one exited from opposite side and flew back down. Davram slowly picked himself up from the dent, stopping only to dislodge his staff-scythe from the shelf next to him. Yes, it had been a most powerful blast that had been the first reaction of the two mighty spells confronting each other, but it seems they had apparently come to a stalemate of sorts, very peculiar. He pulled the scythe blade back down against the shaft, deactivating the enchantments on it at the same time. The first version of the staff-scythe had been inpractical, the blade was extraordinary sharp and had powerful enchantments in it. After destroying several doors and a bookshelf, he had designed the switchblade style mechanism to it, making it a much more practical tool.

The tower felt it's master awaken, and was eager to finally have something to do. A hundred years of frowning at a cavern wall wasn't exactly the most interesting thing to do. It had kept the tower dustless, per its masters orders, after he had discovered that dust is not something you want an abundance of in a place where dangerous spells are weaved. Now the tower felt it's master wishing to know what was the condition of the lower floors, and happily obliged.

Davram sensed the tower. It had weathered the magical confrontation and the subsequent dimensional travelling very well. Much time had passed since, apparently a hundred years worth. He knew that there'd be a veritable jungle in his dungeons, but it couldn't be helped in the current situation. There was also something else in the dungeons at the moment, something he couldn't quite understand. Only one thing was sure, that something was the source and destination of these pulses of light. There also seemed to be a piece of the dungeons missing altogether, but he couldn't tell which one. Sensing the altered dimension that the dungeons had was always difficult from outside. He began descending the stairs from his study and watched with interest as the colored balls of magic flew past him every few minutes.

He arrived into the ground floor of the tower, and saw heaps of bones lying around, the clothing was still recognizable, though white had turned into grey and gold had lost it's luster over the century. It seemed that everyone had died where they had been when the logia had been activated. He continued through the skeletons and descended the stairs to the dungeons. A familiar feeling of suddenly shrinking into a rather miniscule size flooded over him as he descended the steps. He had wanted to make the dungeons fit his tower's width, so he had severely shrunk the space down here. He arrived to the laboratory and workshop where he conducted most of his experiments regarding life. It was your normal alchemists laboratory with several glass instruments, cookers and beakers lying on several tables. Some mortars and alembics were also present. The door he had just walked in from shared it's wall of the square room with another door, which held the record archives. The other three walls of the room held a door each, leading to the different scores of animals and creatures that inhabited this dungeon... or atleast had inhabited. Now that he had arrived to the distorted space, he could sense the area better.

The thing that was the cause of those pulses could be found in the ”peaceful” part of the dungeon, where there were no predators to harass the different species of herbivores present. It should be noted here, that even though Davram insisted upon the term ”dungeons”, they were more alike to habitats, like a crossover between zoo and a natural park with a bit of a gladiator pit thrown in for good measure. He had even created an illusion of night and day cycles to better accommodate the life inhabiting these areas, but even though the roof was high, the sky was merely an illusion, as many a bird had noticed. Right now though, the only thing inhabiting this area was a very peculiar liquidlike form. Davram decided to have a better look. Upon opening the door, the first thing he noted was the cracked earth, then the complete lack of any life in the vicinity. Everything was just as dead as the areas that had previously surrounded his tower. He stopped to think for a while.

Of course, water. His tower had pulled it's water reserves from an underground river flowing below it's previous location. It didn't have that luxury here, so no water for the plants or animals to drink from. He didn't feel any grief for their demise, after all, an undead feeling sad for the dead was like a human feeling sad for another because they were alive, which was preposterous, of course. He did feel a bit exasperated, it would take great amount of time to bring life back into this place. He watched the animal skeletons littered across the vast space that had held many different species of herbivores, both natural and magical, now all gone. He let out one of his rare sighs and took flight to find the source of those balls of magic.

As he arrived to the center of the dungeon, he saw a globe of transparent fluid that was suspended above ground by a pair of glowing white spellcircles that were whirling around the globe. He landed next to the globe and waited. Soon enough, the circles stopped their whirling and a white ball of energy shot up towards the 'sky' and disappeared. After some seconds, a dark purple one shot down from the same spot and entered into the globe and the circles started whirling again. He nodded, another mystery solved.

The seal was quite ingenious. It created a globe of liquid life out of any life present upon initial activation, in this case it had eaten some of the plants and animals in this part of the dungeon. The globe was fed magically via one of the circles whenever a pulse of magic entered the circle. After feeding magic, the other circle then absorbed some life from the globe, converted it into life magic and sent it up to the tower to be inserted into his phylatectary, sealing him into a sort of undead version of sleep. This all was apparently being supervised by the far more complex circles in his study. He would have to study it further, but for now, he would have to check the damage that had been caused to the ”highly experimental” area.

He returned to his lab, and walked through to the door on the other side. As Davram opened the door leading to the dungeon, he noted that he would have to either rebuild, or abandon this part of the dungeons. Unlike the ”peaceful” area, the ”highly experimental” had a hall of cages before the habitat itself started, this hall had held his most dangerous creatures that he had been still experimenting upon. Nothing lived through 100 years of starvation though, so unfortunately only rotten remains were left in the cages. But not all cages were here, some of the cages nearest to the habitat had been broken off with the habitat. For indeed, the entire section had been broken off. It was most unfortunate. Mostly only two species existed there, experiments that had taken him nearly 150 years to perfect.

The Jumpers had been wolves, originally. He had heavily modified their appearance, first adding scythed appendixes to their back, in order to discourage bringing your face so close to others. He had once witnessed what happened to a wolf that was biting a gorilla. The poor canines neck hadn't had a chance to survive the shaking the gorilla had put it through. After the initial modification, he noticed that they couldn't manouver well with the extra weight now attached to their backs. So he encouraged muscle growth and modified their hind legs to allow powerful, long distance jumps.

This failed far worse than he had imagined possible. Who would have thought that by increasing their odds to catch things, they would instead miss more often? The first couple of ten of these jumpers killed themselves by jumping at breakneck speeds and hitting trees, large rocks, walls and other hard objects. One even died when it got frightened. It had jumped straight up and hit the 'sky', and died after it had found the earth again. The few remaining subjects were quickly put to stasis while he had thought up a way to treat this new problem. After encasing them in a heavy carapace to lower their speeds and to allow them to survive jumping at things he started up a new project. A big and slow, but very sturdy and intelligent snake like being with scythed talons. It had been a large snake previously, and it posessed a cunning intellect and a predatory instinct about tactics. It had been a most tremendous challenge to increase the capacity of thinking for an animal, he had enlarged the brain several times. And then was forced to add a whole carapace for it to support the now massive brain. Yet the ”coordinator” had only rudimentary intellect, though Davram suspected that it had only hidden it's true capabilities from him.

The coordinators and jumpers had hit off instantly, forming powerful packs where a single coordinator would direct the jumpers to either kill off the prey, or to drive/lure it into a position where the coordinator could ambush it directly. They brought down everything that he could find in nature. Now, staring at the cavern wall that had replaced his habitat, Davram hoped that his experiments had found a nice little planet to inhabit. It would be a shame if they had instead found the dark recesses of space, and frozen to death. He turned around, nothing much to do in here, anymore. He walked back into his laboratory, and started inspecting the various tools present, he would have much to do, investigating the seal, the curious liquid life and he also had to find a source of water. Yes, much, much to do.

Then he blinked in surprise. Or would have, had he posessed any eyelids to blink with. Liquid life? In an area completely sapped of water? He quickly returned to the globe to further investigate this contradiction. He stood there for a while until the glowing ball rose to the sky and another descended. Indeed, the returning pulse did not contain anything besides magical energy. Most peculiar. He slowly reached for the globe, his hand reached the first circle surrounding the globe and wouldn't go further. He grinned, but then again, he had little choice in facial expressions. The globe had a minute barrier around it, preventing entry from all but magical energy, and most likely it also prevented water from evaporating from the inside. He would have to wait until water had been restored to his tower, until breaking this superficial barrier. He was most interested in the globe, for it seemed to be some sort of a base form of life, something he had never ran into, or heard of for that matter. He went back to the laboratory and checked the rest of the tools there.

He then walked out of the dungeons and back into the entrance to his tower. He needed water, and a lot of it. Extending his senses first to the tower, and from there, began his mental search. Yes, some distance away was an underground river, not unlike the one that had existed below the previous location of his tower. He set off to work, the spell would take a while to cast. Permanent magical effects were always somewhat taxing to create.

Several hours later, two portals had been created, each perhaps 12 inches across. They were in the remaining dungeon areas, slowly bringing water back into the place. It would take a lot of time, but the water would slowly accumulate into a river or two, which would flow into a newly created pool that could be used to emulate rain in each of the dungeons, in order to prevent future disasters by dehydration. It had been a challenge to create the portals into the warped dimension where the dungeons were. He noted that he should create something to counter an incident like the one that had ripped his tower from Zhed. Otherwise he would most likely only have a stump for a tower. But for now, he had water. And with water came the opportunity to further study the globe. He entered the dungeon containing the globe with several tools floating behind him. Ranging from empty glass beakers to water filled stone buckets, from pincers to shovels. A small storage of equipment trailed him while he was making his way to the globe.

Upon arriving to the globe, he raised his staff, the blade snapped into position and the familiar runes activated inside it. He then proceeded to shred the defensive barrier with it. Snapping the blade back into it's more compact mode, he then waited for the pulse to leave and return in order to observe any changes in the globe. Nothing, very good. He experimented by pouring water on it, which quickly seemed to be absorbed by the globe, and when the next energy exchange happened, the globe grew slightly. Excellent. He then drained a bit into a glass beaker and upon noticing no visible differences in the globe, besides very slight diminishing, he returned to his laboratory. That experiment showed that it would be likely for him to be able to 'harvest' this substance from the globe. But what could be done with it?

After doing several experiments in his laboratory, he was left astonished. The matter was some sort of formless life. Given any 'idea' of a form, it immediately formed into this 'idea'. It was very difficult to prevent the substance from overdoing it. For example, dropping a simple seed into a beakerful of it created a beakerful of seeds. But since seeds didn't quite comform to shapes like liquid does, it also broke the beaker. He wondered how it would react to animals. He harvested a larger quantity of the substance and dropped in a skeleton of what had been a rabbit hundred years ago. He ended up with a wet rabbit skeleton, now coated with the substance. Clearly a living subject would be needed for anything to happen. He tapped his chin for a moment. There were the storages, where a thousand animals and plants were held in stasis, and this could indeed solve much of his problems regarding refilling his dungeons with life again. But with the dungeons in a problematic situation as they were, he would have to wait until proper amounts of vegetation had been returned to the dungeons. He suspected that the air in the dungeons would be somewhat poisonous if the plants weren't there to breathe it back to regular air. Work, he noted, was apparently worse than many other things, for not even being dead relieved you of it. And then he set out to do his...

60 Years later:

The tiger advanced quietly as only a feline can. It's eyes were set on it's prey, clearly unaware of the striped and clawed doom approaching. The tiger had never seen any prey like this, nor in colors like this. It wondered how it would taste. After all, it did not want an unsatisfying meal as a reward for all this prowling and sneaking. It slowly approached the figure crouching in the open, it's back towards the tiger. It took a few speeding steps and pounced the unsuspecting prey.

The tiger was standing in the spot where it had began it's assault. It stood there for a few moments, wondering what had happened. The prey was standing infront of it, it's back still towards the tiger. The tiger blinked a few times, took a few speeding steps and pounced...
...and was standing where he had began. This was most infuriating, it had done all the proper sneaking, like a tiger should, it had kept it's eyes on the prey like it was supposed to. The ambush had been perfect, the prey hadn't know it was already doomed. By all means, the tiger should be eating a nice dinner right now, instead it was standing around, staring at the black back of the prey in furious amazement. The black prey straightened, turned to watch the tiger and promptly disappeared. It was an affront, prey shouldn't just disappear like that! The prey should either try to run away, or try to fight back, but it should be food at the end and... The tiger's mental processes screeched to a halt when it saw the corpse where the prey had been. It didn't look the same, and as the tiger curiously advanced, didn't smell the same either. It's feline brain poorly equipped for such situations just concluded that it had killed the prey and it had simply looked different from the beginning, and the tiger happily dug in.

Meanwhile, in the laboratory, Davram walked out of the invisibility while holding a small glowing glass cube with steel edges in his hands. He reached a small pool holding substance from the globe of life and opened the cube, pouring transparent something out of it into the substance. The reaction was near instantaneous, the substance rearranged itself to the 'idea' that had been stored in the tetrahedron, and soon there was a living, breathing rabbit looking aghast in the pool. Some of the substance was still remaining at it's feet. Davram had quickly noted that the substance didn't react to any 'idea' that required more than there was. And apparently by draining a life force and soul of a being and entering it into the substance, you could recreate that being. But it would be a near perfect copy of the creature, including age and any deteoriation of the body, but wounds and the like were clearly not part of the creature, and hence did not transfer into the new body. He picked the now afraid rabbit and went to let it back out to the dungeon it had came from. The rabbit quickly kicked away from the door and into the bushes, something went ”CRUNCH!” and there was silence, only broken occasionally by a silent crunching sound.

Davram returned to his study at the top and peered into the spell circles around his phylatectary. The glow of the white circles had overtaken the glow of the purple ones now. He estimated that he'd be asleep some 40 years from now. It seemed likely, considering his century of sleep before awakening, that he'd be awake for a century and then fall 'asleep' for another. The two spells balanced each other out like two planets of the same size, dancing their dance of gravitational pull in an eternal embrace. He would need a groundskeeper then, someone to watch over the life that was once again teeming in the dungeons. The skeletons still at the entrance could be easily reanimated, but granting any semblance of intelligence to them was nigh impossible. A golem wouldn't be any better. Golems were basically undead, but instead of reanimated bones, you had animated clay, or iron. A homunculus would work, but he didn't have the time to teach it all the things it needed to know, unless... He grinned as an idea formed in his mind, and he began thinking up processes and spells necessary, it would take some time to get everything into satisfactory state.

After months of painstaking preparations and some modifications that he had to impose on the tower, Davram finally was ready. Everything was set up into the entrance level, he had animated the skeletons and moved them to the edges to watch. The level also sported a large spellcircle in the mddle and several spellcircles surrounding it, they were all inactive, but you could tell that serious wizarding was about to be conducted in the room. Davram slowly checked his circles, it was one thing forming them magically for spells, but when you had to draw them by hand, you'd have to carefully inspect every detail. He had once seen an apprentice attempt a demon summoning spell with a spellcircle that had a single flaw in it. A single mistake. The dragon that had emerged from the summoning circle didn't quite appreciate the error, and was quick to inflict this knowledge on the poor apprentice and a good quarter of the academy before they could drive it away. But these spellcircles were complete, and it wasn't anything as dangerous as a summoning circle, but things should be done properly or not at all, he thought. He walked to the edge of the central circle, and slowly began casting.

Slowly, ever so slowly, sigils started to form on the edges of the circles, the towers magic responded to its masters call and ancient runes started flaring to life within the walls next to him, and slowly it spread further from him. Once every inch of the tower was glowing with runes, some of them glowing within the tower came out of the walls and moved into the central circle. They swirled for a while, condensing, forming a shape within the circle. After every rune and sigil had been sucked in from the air and into the form, it was complete. This proved that life was indeed something you acquired, rather than were given. This manifestation that was slowly standing up and inspecting herself was indeed his tower, now given a true will, and a way to excert it.

The little tower manifestation standing before Davram was critically inspecting itself. It... She had been given the choice of form, and this had seemed proper, for some reason. She was small, barely half of Masters length, and was dressed in a light blue skirt that nearly reached her ankles, it also sported a white lining, and a white, buttoned shirt that looked like someone had ripped the sleeves off. It also had a red ribbon right under her chin, tied to a loose bow. Her hair was light orange, waist length, and was in a ponytail, held so by another red bow tie. She just had to admire herself. She had arms, legs, everything! And now she could express her emotions! She turned around to see her master...

Davram was curious about the little life his tower had manifested as. She seemed to be looking herself thoroughly as if making sure everything was there. Then she turned around and saw him. She then barreled straight into him and gave him a hug with enough force to kill any living person, which he fortunately wasn't. He looked down, not quite grasping the situation. She couldn't cry tears, but she looked like she was trying her best. He wondered why she was sad, she had been given a form, after all.

IS THERE SOMETHING THE MATTER? He inquired from the little form clinging to him.
”I have arms, legs, expressions!” A voice answered from somewhere within his robes.

THEY WERE NECESSARY. Davram said, still not understanding the situation. The little manifestation wasn't paying attention, busily hugging him.
”I'm alive!” Davram paused at this, apparently she wasn't happy about it.

HOPEFULLY YOU CAN FORGIVE ME. He said.
”huh?” The little one had finally grasped what it's master was saying.

I NEEDED A CARETAKER FOR THE DUNGEONS WHILE I SLEEP, AND YOU WERE THE NATURAL CHOICE. Davram explained.
”Ehh, master, why were you apologizing?” She asked, now also confused about the conversation.

SHOULD I NOT APOLOGIZE FOR WRONGING YOU? Davram enquired.
”Wronging?” She still wasn't quite clear on what her Master meant.

ANYWAY, I SHALL REVERSE THE PROCESS IF YOU ARE THAT MISERABLE ABOUT BEING GIVEN LIFE OF YOUR OWN. He went on. The little tower manifestation finally realized what her Master had been misunderstanding.

”Nonono! I'm not sad to be alive! It's completely the other way! I'm the happiest little tower in the world!” She said while jumping up and down for emphasis.

IS THAT SO?
”Yes! Please let me stay like this?” She pleaded.

VERY WELL... He paused thoughtfully for a few seconds.

I ALLOWED YOU TO PICK YOUR FORM, NOW I NEED YOU TO PICK A NAME AS WELL. He continued.
”A name? I'm getting a name?!” She asked with the kind of glee any child could produce when dropped to a toy store and told to pick one, any one. Then she frowned a bit and let go of her master and started walking in a small circle around him, thinking profusedly. After a few rounds around, she was interrupted.

MAYHAP I COULD OFFER A PROPOSITION? Davram asked.
”Ah, yes, of course, Master.” she replied, looking at him expectingly.

AS YOU ARE THE FOCAL POINT OF YOUR ORIGINALS POWER, I THINK 'IRIS' WOULD BE APPROPRIATE. He said.

”Iris, iris...” She said a few times, like tasting the name, and liked it.
”It's a good name, thank you Master.” She said while bowing to him, with a large smile across her face.

VERY GOOD, NOW LET US DISCUSS YOUR FORM AND IT'S CAPABILITIES AND RESTRICTIONS.
”Haaai.”

ALTHOUGH YOU POSSESS A SMALL FORM NOW, YOUR SIZE IS IRRELEVANT AND YOU CAN CHANGE IT AS YOU SEE FIT, AS LONG AS IT FITS INSIDE YOUR ORIGINAL. Suddenly Iris was towering over Davram and just as quickly she was back to being child sized.
”That's kinda scary, everything seems to shrink on you.” She exclaimed.

INDEED, YOUR FORM IS ONLY AN ILLUSION WITH PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES, CHANGING IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF CHOICE. YOUR STRENGTH IS ALSO EXTREME, I CAN ATTEST TO THAT.
”Ah, sorry Master, did I hurt you?” She looked a bit scared at the notion of hurting him.

I CANNOT FEEL PAIN, AND YOU INFLICTED NO HARM ON ME. Iris looked instantly relieved.

BUT YOU MUST TAKE CARE OF THAT STRENGTH WHENEVER IN CONTACT WITH THE CREATURES AND ANIMALS IN THE DUNGEONS.
”Yes Master, I won't hurt a single creature there.” She said while shaking her head.

UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED TO. NOW, AS YOU ARE A PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION OF THIS TOWER, YOU CANNOT EXIT IT. GIVEN ENOUGH TIME, I MIGHT FIND A WAY TO LET YOU DO THAT, BUT UNTIL THEN, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO.
”All right, Master.”

GOOD, NOW LET US GO DOWN TO THE DUNGEONS, YOU HAVE MUCH TO LEARN, AND FOR A CHANGE, I AM RUNNING SHORT ON TIME...


40 years later:

Iris walked up the tower stairs, following Master. She knew that the time was at hand when he would 'sleep' for a century. The last four decades had been filled with learning about and playing with various animals and creatures. She was rather proud about how well she got along with the animals. She sometimes even cuddled with the few grizzly bears that lived in the dungeons. Now she was feeling a bit down, knowing that the long waiting that was be ahead. They arrived to Masters study in silence. He sat on his chair infront of the worktable there and looked at the circles around the phylatectary. She stood next to him. The white circles were all glowing now, and only one of the dark purple ones were active.

IF THERE IS AN EXTREMELY DIRE NEED, IT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE TO AWAKEN ME BY DESTROYING THE GLOBE OF LIFE IN THE DUNGEONS. Master told her. But she didn't want him to sleep for a hundred years for a stupid globe.
”Master, are you sure you couldn't just disarm the seal?” She asked while fidgeting a bit.

NO, I CANNOT USE ANY LIFE MAGIC, I CAN ONLY MODIFY THAT WHICH EXISTS, HENCE THE NECESSITY OF THE GLOBE. IT CONTAINS BOUNDLESS OPPORTUNITIES AS A SOURCE OF LIFE UNLIKE I'VE EVER SEEN.
”B-but...” She started.

NO. I WILL SLEEP, AND I WILL REAWAKEN IN A CENTURY. Davram said, now turning his gaze to her. She felt like crying at this point. But all she could do was to nod sourly. She knew that there'd be no arguing Master, not when the only arguments were emotional ones. Of couse he couldn't understand such a thing as wanting to spend time together, they were a distant dream of the past for him.
She was suddenly cut out of her mulling by a skeletal hand that clumsily patted her on the head.

YOU WILL HAVE THE ANIMALS TO ACCOMPANY YOU, AND THE PLANTS TO TAKE CARE OF. THERE WILL BE NO LACK OF THINGS TO DO. She looked at her Master in astonishment. It was clearly an attempt in comforting her, and a clumsy one at that, but from the Master, that was like the epitome of sweetness. She looked at his slowly dimming eyes and nodded, now smiling feebly.
”Yes...”

He took the hand off her head and returned to gazing at his phylatectary. The light dimmed out in his eyes. She looked at him for a moment and sighed lightly, then she smiled a little. She floated off the ground and leaned towards Masters face. It might be a skull, but it was her Master's skull. She pecked the bone cheek.
”Sweet dreams, Master.”

Spoiler for Iris:

I DO NOT DREAM.
”KYAAAA!” She screamed as Masters face turned to look at her, now sprawled on the floor, and truly, there was still a faint flicker in his eyes.

BUT THANK YOU NEVER THE LESS. And then the light truly died out. She could have swore that she saw a glint of glee in those eyes, but it might just have been an illusion from him grinning at her. She got up, and ran out of the study, closed the door and rested her back against it. She remained there for a while, trying to calm her emotions. She had never felt as embarrassed as she was now. She prayed that Master wouldn't recall that little bit as he woke up, a century from now. She then straightened up and slapped herself in the face with her palms.
”Right, work to do!”

There, comments?

Edit: thought to add a link to the first chapter: Prologue

Well, you know my thoughts already and here is a little joke from yours truly.

Spoiler for Omake:

Omake: By tshouryuu

After a century of sleep, the first thing that Davram did was to summon the personification of his tower, Iris and ask for a status update. After the report, he noticed that Iris seemed to be nervous for some reason.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU NEED TO INFORM ME OF?
"Well... " she started while fidgeting all the while "Not really..." and then, she starts blushing.

Thinking that there is something wrong with his eyes, not that he has eyes as he belatedly remembers, he moves his head and takes a closer look. Curiously, his caretaker is blushing. Unable to understand why and desiring to know the reason, Davram questions Iris further.

WHAT IS IT YOU'RE NOT INFORMING ME OF?

Unable to answer her master, Iris just embarrassedly points at a nearby window. Looking out, the lich surveys the surroundings and sees dull plain cavern walls, some stalagmites, some nice buildings in the style of his tower, more stalagmites. His thoughts grind to a halt as he looks back to the buildings.

IRIS, IF I RECALL CORRECTLY, I HAD INFORMED YOU NOT TO LEAVE THE TOWER.
"M-master, I didn't leave..."

EXPLAIN TO ME THEN HOW DID THOSE ADDITIONAL BUILDINGS CAME INTO BEING. I DO NOT SENSE ANY LIVING BEINGS THAT COULD HAVE CONSTRUCTED THEM ASIDE FROM THOSE IN THE DUNGEONS AND THOSE CLEARLY DO NOT HAVE THE CAPABILITY TO DO SO.
"Well... Master, after you when to sleep, I followed your instructions and perform my duties. However, I have gotten used to talking with you and soon grew lonely."

PLEASE GET TO THE POINT. I ASKED YOU FOR DETAILS ON HOW THOSE BUILDINGS GOT CONSTRUCTED NOT YOUR DAILY LIFE.
"Master, it is related..."

VERY WELL, CONTINUE.
"Yes, Master. I was lonely then during some free time, I caught sight of my old enemy, the Wall. After I yelled at it for a while, I felt much better. Eventually, after about thirty years, I got used to it around and then I got surprised."

SURPRISED?
"Yes. It seems that my old nemesis acquired a new trick"

Even though he could not see what does the story has to do with the buildings, Davram could not help but get more interested, something that did not happen since his discovery of the life globe below in his dungeons.

WHAT NEW TRICK?
"Master, the Wall got personified..."

THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE.
"Actually master, there seems to be a leak of magical energies from the chamber where you created me..."

REMIND ME TO FIX THAT LATER. FOR NOW, CONTINUE WITH YOUR STORY.
"Okay master. As I was saying, the Wall got personified. Now that I have an actual target, I really gave vent to my hatred of it. And he just stood that with a smug look on his face, smiling at me."

HE?
"The personification took a male form master."

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
"For the next twenty-five years, whenever I had some free time, he would appear and we would argue or more correctly, I yelled at him and he smiles at me."

INTERESTING, BUT THAT STILL DOESN'T EXPLAIN THE BUILDINGS
"Master, there is a quote that basically says 'You know that when I hate you, it is because I love you to a point of passion that unhinges my soul.' My hatred of the Wall soon turned to love and... well... ”

At this point, Iris blushes a rosy red. Staring at Iris and then at the building outside, Davram came to an unsettling conclusion.

YOU MEAN YOU ARE THE MOTHER OF THOSE BUILDINGS?!
"Well... That's not exactly correct master. I'm actually ... the father. Since the children are 'born' from the Wall, so he should be considered the mother."

Staring at Iris, Davram could not help but do a rather impressive facepalm despite the lack of both palms and face.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Tk3997

Regardless it's possible and as you yourself admitted above we lack hard evidence to refute it so basiclly since it's possible and I think it will add some interesting aspects to combat I don't really give a shit how probable you think it is since I'm trying to write interesting combat not figure out the intricate workings of or objectively asses the universe in anything but a passing manner. If we were debating who would win in a fight or some such then indeed I'd stick to canon, but we aren't this is about me trying to EXPAND on an aspect of the universe. Expansion tends to require adding things and, forgive the pun, but given the other shit that fic authors "get past the radar" alternate homing methods for spells and counter measures hardly seems like much of a big fucking deal.

So really I'm not going to change my mind, you sure as fuck aren't gonna change yours so why don't we just end this crap now?

If you want to end this, that's fine by me. However, you should remember that I have no objections to your expansion idea. My initial objection was to your assertion that programming SAH rounds will be easier on balance than using a MCLOS system. Later I added a few more objections, but none of them threatens the core of your plan.

In fact, part of the reason I am debating this is because if anything, I'm actually supportive of your expansion idea. The other part is because I was treating this as a normal Technical Discussion (your "somesuch") rather than a h3xxbust session.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

**Tigerclaw stumbles in after something like eight hours of video editing...**

@_@ "It was worth it!" *dies.*

Spoiler for Remember the Deep Sky?:

Essentially how I envisioned the scene...

I tend to see my thoughts in CINEMA style...

[Liingo]

Welcome back Flame XD. Looking forward to more Sweet-cheesium from you XD

Originally Posted by Evangelion Xgouki

*pats*

That sucks

Indeed it does.

Right Lets try again shall we. (Starts up word to prevent any more raging)



If I missed anyone, let me know and I'll give you a slice of my mind.

Kagerou, Spacebrotha, I'll reply to your pieces in the FF thread.

Originally Posted by keroko

Type-0 Sentoukijin

Rebuilt of Uomo

Hmm more traps from the trap master….. No problems, both the spell list and the background are excellent as usual.

Originally Posted by tormenk

Rebuilt of Katrina

Couldn’t really pick up anything that you had changed… but that’s more since I can’t really remember her profile all that well to begin with. Still, the skim through I had of the profile yesterday didn’t have anything alarming in it.

Originally Posted by Aaron

Hayate GenerationS Version.

As expected of the resident hayate stalker expert. A well written profile.
You managed to point out some things that I wasn’t aware of(sekuhara of the bridge bunnies ) so good job XD.

Just one thing, the picture of her in her BJ is a tad NSFW…….. Just a tad

Moving on to the spells, I’m not so convinced that she needs Black Impact. It doesn’t fit at all with the rest of her spell list. Balmung is enough of a close in defensive attack that can be used to keep people aware from her. A melee range attack is something that should really be avoided in favour of a nice strong shield then getting away as quick as possible, using Vita’s copied spell as a distraction (just add a blinding light to it and you’ve got yourself a flashbang.)

Also, I’m highly sceptical of the need for Hayate to be able to use Fate/Nanoha’s spells (Excellion Buster and Genocide Shift in particular.) The wolkies attacks aren’t so much of an issue as since they were part of the book, it’s not so much of a stretch that she will be able to use their spells.

The relationship section was well written although I have to admit that

In GenerationS, Signum’s resolve and faith shall be tested to its fullest… as the Leader of the Wolkenritter… and as a friend…

the variations of the quote above started to get annoying after a while.

Originally Posted by Evangelion

Arrival

Seems like the TSAB aren’t immune to the perverts by the station gate either Nice into piece XD

Originally Posted by PhoenixFlare

Long Bluecheese Dump goes here

Scene1
Hmm funny, it looks like you managed to edit the thing that I was going to comment on yesterday in here…. Or maybe I was just tired and read it wrong

What could have happened that Grandia would suffer from so many wounds of the past

I did find the above quote a little weird… although it is explainable if the templars came from different backgrounds/etc. before their appointment. Nay? Yay?

Looks like it isn’t all just roses on the ‘villains’ side. Should be good… apart from the imminent expansion of the main cast

Scene2
XD you go ARF! Horray for the shafted ones Points to Vivio for the scene with all the things she manages to pull. Upstaging the Aces *chuckle*

Although best would have to be

“I think Yuuno-san has fallen for Nanoha-mama. But, since one is as dense as a rock and the other as straight as a log, nobody gets anywhere. They need a little … encouragement.”

XD Much laughter was had yesterday Many thanks

On the Leona side of things, I demand a joint inquisition of her by Aurion and Yuuno. XD

Scene3
Oh yes, the defection is imminent…

Scene4
You continue to impress, this time with knowledge of linguistics and Myths + Legends, very cool However must you always leave us at cliffs that are hanging

Originally Posted by tormenk

Well glad that Katrina was received favorably but I'll hang her out to dry longer while I'm away for the next few days. Currently I'm looking at profile-fic look into her past and/or a future work with the introduction of her and the Prize. Characters figuring prominently to show up right now are the Aces, minus Hayate. I have no idea creating a role for her or the Wolkies to play and feel it's better her excluding her altogether rather than semi-shafting her later on.

A good choice there, leaving Hayate out of it. Better to shaft her like this rather than do a character assassination later since you’ve got no clue what to do with her.

Originally Posted by TK

Basically I find the Mid style in Nanoha a tad bland I think a big reason so many OCs avoid it and make new systems or go Belkan is becasue Mid just seems a tad pedestrian compared to all those cool Belkan armed devices or your own personal magic system. I'm not bashing guys that go that route, but I want to try and make Mid as complex and interesting as Belkan and custom styles in my fic and to be about something besides just focusing on range, since frankly quite a few Belkans and other styles also have good ranged attacks.

I look forward to your work on the matter. If I can, I’ll give you a hand as well since I’ll be may need it later on once I get around to re-making my OC’s that have been neglected (power ranks, etc.) since most of them are generic Mid types with Storage devices.

Originally Posted by aldw

I am interested in writing up a character for a storyline dealing with the aftermath of the TSAB council power vacuum and bureaucratic fighting, if it hasn't be touched upon yet. If it could complement the stories written here, that'd be great.

Looks interesting, Nothing like that has been looked at in the thread as far as I’m aware of so feel free to go ahead with it. XD

Originally Posted by PhoenixFlare

Chapter 8 spoilers

That wasn’t just a spoiler, it was an EVIL teaser!

Originally Posted by Sheba

Where is original when all I seem to see is some kind of obsession over porting characters from other franchises?

Please don’t lump us in the same boat as Kha

Originally Posted by Stormturmoil

most of all, DON'T compromise UNLESS and UNTIL you're happy with the compromise...if you feel you need to fight for a concept that others don't like the sound of at first, by all means fight for it. Don't let yourself be bullied into watering down a feature you like just because some others don't think it fits. MAKE it fit. don't drop it just because it's easier than arguing over it...argue, and hash out a middle ground.

but don't abandon something just because the haxbusters don't like the sound of it.

Originally Posted by TK

Above all this thread ought to be about telling interesting stories and if a charater in a good story happens to be a little Hax... Well nothing can ever be perfect.

QFT. Like they said, it’s your characters, ultimately we can’t do anything if you don’t want to listen to us, although of course it isn’t going to be very productive in trying to get feedback on other things later on in the line. Some hax is always going to be floating around somewhere, if it makes the story better then sure go for it. That said, having hax just for no reason isn’t going to fly… no matter how cool it may be.

Originally Posted by Ghazghull

It has even been specified in canon that with the gathering of that many mages of high rank, their overall powers must be reduced so that it meets a maximum quota. Therefore, all your characters would require to drop a rank or two by limiters, as per canon.

I was under the impression that the limiter thing only applied for Ground Force units…… Could someone clarify? Thanks

Originally Posted by Nightengale

I suppose I felt cheated mildly, seeing how Nanoha talked about the role of Strikers. Things like teamwork, etc, in the end of things, held little weight in the story.

Likewise… I’m still annoyed at that since they’ve done nothing of the sort. ‘Respectable’ leaders my foot… out of the 4 of them, Teana is the only one I would give the thumbs up to(the whole Striker thing)

Originally Posted by TK

Red Baron

Nice background and all. Looking forward to the time where he makes his entrance.

Originally Posted by Reiji Tabitio

Legends 3

Nice set-up chapter.. Nothing much more to be said really

Originally Posted by Eva

Darkness Within, pt 1

Likewise, a nice set-up chapter

Originally Posted by Comartemis

Character Briefs

No problems there… although it is hard to say much when I don’t have any details

This however caught my eye..

Nope, it's nice and quiet on this end of the monitor. Though the explosive payloads of the individual rounds might get upped a tad, this one's turning into an Excelion Buster equivilant rather than a Starlight Breaker equivalent; that honor goes to the javelin throw I've mentioned a few times, "Asteroid Drop".

From what I’ve read of the snippets so far, none of your characters are going to be S-ranked so please don’t make them power equivalent.

[Comartemis]

Originally Posted by Liingo

From what I’ve read of the snippets so far, none of your characters are going to be S-ranked so please don’t make them power equivalent.

Ah, perhaps I should clarify then: by "equivalent" I'm referring to their places in the arsenals of their respective characters; Starlight Breaker is Nanoha's ultimate tech (all variations aside), and Asteroid Drop is Rico's ultimate tech. AD actually does reach into the S-rank zone, if only because its' power is much more focused than an SB, so it's more like S-rank armor penetration, A-rank destructive power.

It's kind of a moot point, anyways, because I am once again rethinking Rico's combat tactics. His character would fit better with a pure martial artist rather than a spear-wielder, so I'm optimizing his spells and combat strategies to be more akin to Adell from Disgaea 2; melee-oriented with average ranged capabilities, moreso when in unison with Nova.

[Comartemis]

Mmmm. All's quiet on the OC front. Time to stir things up a bit. Haxxbusters, go!

Phantom Blazer
Rico's most powerful spell, developed during his time as a student of Takamachi Nanoha. Phantom Blazer is a powerful self-enhancement spell that provides a significant boost to Rico's attack and movement speed as well as the power of his physical attacks, but can only be used when in unison with Nova.

The spell begins with Nova initializing a collection array, identical in concept to the basis of Nanoha's infamous Starlight Breaker. Instead of gathering the collected power into a beam or energy attack as Nanoha does, however, Nova redirects the accumulated power into her own systems until she has reached a desired level of strength. When this point is reached, the accumulated mana is shunted through a multi-level enhancement array and applied directly to Nova's and Rico's merged body.

The benefits of this spell are multifold: for the spell's duration, Rico's movement and attack speed increase by over 500%, effectively acting as a Flash Move-type spell for the duration of the boost. In addition, Rico's body is unable to contain the entirety of the accumulated power, and acquires a sort of battle aura of magical energy which he can ignite at will, wreathing his entire body in flames and making melee combat with him especially dangerous (while Rico's flame and heat-resistant barrier jacket keeps him from roasting himself). These flames can also be directed into energy attacks or used to boost the power of Rico's melee attacks, as with his normal flames.

The downsides, however, are also multifold. While Rico developed this spell with Nanoha's assistance, he and Nova lack her natural talent with the collection template, and the charge time for this spell is almost a minute in length. Moreover, because Nova's attention must remain on maintaining the collection template, for the duration of the charge-up period Rico does not gain the benefits of being in unison with Nova, and must resort to using spells he can use without her assistance. Most important, however, is the spell's effect on Rico's body.

When Rico designed the spell with Nanoha's assistance, he swore an oath to her that he would not maintain the spell for more than a minute at a time. Going beyond this limit risks severe damage to Rico's body, an accelerated form of the damage done to Nanoha's body by her intensive training regimen. For every second after one minute that Rico maintains this spell, the probability of a catastrophic breakdown of his body's physical structure increases by one percent. Even if Rico adheres to this limitation, using this spell more than once or twice a week risks doing the same damage to his body as exceeding the time limit does.

Inspired by Adell's Vulcan Blaze attack in Disgaea 2. (fast forward to 6:47)