139 - Being There For You
Aisle watched as Cloudbank and Drafty slowly carried Pillowcase’s body away.
They’d spent the last few minutes covering him up, wrapping a sheet tightly around his body and then tying it down with a few lengths of rope that Drafty had brought. The entire process had been done silently, with the three of them communicating with nothing more than glances and gestures, both because they didn’t want to wake Cozy – still slumbering a few feet away – and out of a nebulous sense that this was too solemn for words.
Finally, when they’d finished, Aisle had indicated to the two mares that they’d need to carry the body out. Drafty had obviously been uncomfortable with the idea, but Cloudbank had been resolute, calming her girlfriend with a reassuring look. Gingerly, Aisle had moved Pillow’s body so that it was laying across the two mares’ backs, letting the two of them exit the makeshift room before turning back to regard Cozy.
For a long moment, he just stared at her, wishing that he didn’t have to wake her up and reintroduce her to the cold reality of what had happened. I hope you’ve been having a pleasant dream, he thought as he reached a hoof out and gently brushed her mane. Something wonderful, to make what’s happened just a little easier to deal with. For a moment he wished that he could look into her dreams the way Princess Luna could, and then hoped that maybe the princess was in Cozy’s dream right now, gently comforting her and reminding her that there were still ponies that cared about her deeply. But a small part of him, the part that had learned to be cynical after everything that had happened, said that wasn’t likely. After all, the princess hadn’t appeared in his dreams, nor anypony else’s that he knew of, since Vanhoover had gone down the drain. Why should now be any different?
Sighing as he realized that there was no more procrastinating, Aisle put a hoof on Cozy’s side and gently shook her. “Cozy,” he called softly. “Cozy, wake up.”
It took a few more attempts before he finally got a response from her. Slowly, her eyes fluttered open, looking at him blearily. “Aisle? What…?” Her voice trailed off in drowsy confusion, and for a moment she looked around with clear incomprehension. Then her eyes fell upon the operating table where Pillowcase’s body had been, and all sleepiness fled from her instantly, her eyes widening in remembrance as she leapt to her hooves. “Pillow! Is he-”
“No,” interjected Aisle immediately, not wanting her to get her hopes up. He’d lingered close enough to the medical area before that he’d overheard most of what had passed between Lex, Sonata, and Cozy, and what he hadn’t heard was fairly easy to guess. “Pillow’s still…he’s still gone, Cozy.” He could almost see the hope dying on her face as he spoke, and the sight twisted his stomach into knots. “Cloudbank and Drafty and I…we took care of-, of the body.” Pausing as he almost tripped over how to refer to somepony that he’d known that was no longer alive, he kept going. “I mean, we didn’t get rid of it or anything. We just…we wrapped it up and we’ve gotten it ready to move.”
“Him,” said Cozy, her voice turning frigid.
“Huh?”
“You didn’t get rid of ‘him.’ You’ve gotten ‘him’ ready to move. Not ‘it.’” The look she gave him was one of icy disapproval, as though she was trying with all her might to resist blowing up at him for what he’d said.
Although Aisle knew she was speaking out of grief, and that he couldn’t take what she was saying personally, he nevertheless flinched, biting his lip. “I… You’re right. I’m sorry. We’ve moved him out of here.”
Apparently mollified, Cozy’s face softened only a little, turning towards the exit. Aisle watched as she moved towards it, only to stop after she’d taken a few steps. Without turning to look at him, he heard her take a slow breath and then release it before speaking. “Did Lex use his magic on Pillow’s body?”
The question made him flinch a second time. Although he knew he could have pleaded ignorance to what she was asking, the fact was he’d overheard enough to be confident about how things had gone, and she had the right to know what had happened. “Yes.” He momentarily thought of pleading Lex’s case – preserving a body that they quite obviously weren’t going to dispose of was clearly a good idea – but he knew that saying so would draw Cozy’s ire down on him, and that wasn’t something he wanted to experience. Lex would simply have to own up to his own actions.
A spasm ran through Cozy’s body, which quickly turned into a shudder, and her breath grew heavier. “That miserable…” She couldn’t finish, her voice choking as she tried to get a grip on herself. “I told him not to! If he had left us alone, Lashtada would have brought Pillow back! I know it!” She grit her teeth, her thoughts traveling down rage-inspired paths. “He doesn’t have the slightest bit of love in his heart! Not for Sonata, not for anypony! In fact…” A thought occurred to her then, and she latched onto it in a sudden burst of hostility. “He did it on purpose!” A hoof came up then, pressing against her holy symbol tightly. “He knew that Lashtada would bring Pillow back, and he wanted to stop it! He didn’t want everypony else to see that love is stronger than him and his evil goddess!”
Behind her, Aisle’s eyes were widening in growing alarm. “Cozy…”
She didn’t hear him. “He won’t get away with this,” she hissed. “I’ll show him what happens to anyone who tries to keep two soulmates apart!” With that she strode forward, intent on making good on her threat.
For a moment Aisle could only gape in horror. He didn’t know very much about gods, but he very much doubted that Lashtada would suddenly imbue Cozy with unstoppable magical powers. And without that, he was absolutely certain that any confrontation between her and Lex would end with the dour unicorn easily overpowering her, and that couldn’t be allowed to happen. While Aisle felt reasonably sure that Lex wouldn’t be too hard on a mare that was quite clearly out of her mind with grief, he refused to put that theory to the test. Instead, he dashed forward until he was in front of Cozy, turning and putting himself directly in her way as he held out a hoof. “Stop!”
“Get out of my way, Aisle!” She barely slowed down, trying to move around him.
“No!” He darted to the side, making sure to stay in front of her. “Cozy, this is crazy! Lex isn’t responsible for what happened to Pillow!”
“Yes he is!” roared Cozy, her features twisted into a snarl of fury. “YES HE IS! He’s a monster, just like King Sombra was!” Every suspicion she’d had about Lex came rushing back then, flowing out of her mouth in an out outpouring of venom. “He’s a twisted, hateful thing that only wants to control everypony around him! He doesn’t actually care about any of us! We’re all just some, some scoreboard that he’s using to judge how powerful he is! He couldn’t save Pillow, so he doesn’t want anypony else to be able to do so because he thinks it’ll make him look weak! And now I’m going to show him just how weak he really is!”
Aisle quailed, not because of what she was saying but simply because he’d never seen Cozy act like this before. But he refused to back down. “Look…maybe you’re right. Maybe Lex doesn’t see us as friends. But he’s put his life on the line for all of us more than once. I just…I can’t believe that someone would be willing to die for somepony else if they didn’t care about them.”
“You’re wrong!” screamed Cozy. “He’s just trying to hide how warped and ugly his heart is! That’s why he wouldn’t let me bring Pillow back! He knows that love conquers all and he’s afraid that everyone else will see that too!” She pawed at the ground, lowering her center of gravity.
Intuitively recognizing that Cozy was about to become violent, Aisle wracked his brain, trying to think of something, anything, that he could say that would snap Cozy out of her grief-induced rage. A moment later something occurred to him, and he immediately blurted it out. “If Lashtada’s power is so great, then how come Lex’s magic interfered with it?”
Cozy’s brow furrowed, not understanding his question. “What?”
“If love conquers all,” replied Aisle quickly, “if Lashtada’s power is so much greater than Lex’s, then how come that spell he cast on Pillow’s body is enough to disrupt it? Shouldn’t she be able to overpower one spell by somepony with no love in his heart?”
“No! I mean, yes! That just…” She faltered then, and for a moment her aggression wavered. But then she shook her head, pushing the question aside as she glared at Aisle, her rage refocusing. “Why are you doing this?! Pillow was your friend too! Why are you-” She stopped abruptly then, her eyes narrowing dangerously. “Oh, I get it. You’re getting in my way because you want me for yourself.”
Aisle’s eyes widened. “That-”
But she wasn’t listening. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before! Ever since Pillow left, you’ve been all over me!” The look she gave him then was one of utter loathing. “This must be a dream come true for you, huh? With Pillow out of the way, you’ve got me all to yourself. Is that why you’re the only one here? Because you’re hoping that the priestess of the love goddess will want some physical comfort in her hour of need? Well go ahead!” Turning around, she moved her tail aside and presented her rump to him. “Come on, big boy! Climb on and do me until I can’t even remember my husband’s name! This is what you wanted, right? Be a big, strong stallion and make me yours!”
“Stop it…” Aisle closed his eyes, grimacing as he turned his face away. Her earlier ranting had been upsetting to face, but the things she was saying now were painful to hear. “This isn’t what I want.”
“Liar!” Cozy looked back over her shoulder at him, her eyes blazing. “Why else would you be doing this?!”
Looking up slowly, Aisle met her eyes as he spoke. “Because I’m your friend, and I’m worried about you.”
That was more than Cozy could take, baring her teeth as she spun around and got right in his face. “YOU ARE NOT MY FRIEND!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Friends help each other! Friends support each other! All you’re doing is getting in my way and making things worse! You’ve never done anything useful and now you’re worse than useless! When we leave here I don’t ever want to see you again you miserable, selfish, cowardly-”
She would have kept going, but at that moment Aisle stepped forward and wrapped a leg around her neck, pulling her into a hug. “Hey!” Cozy immediately struggled to free herself, but he tightened his grip, refusing to release her. It was enough to make Cozy lose the last vestiges of her self-control. “Let me go! LET ME GO!” She cocked a hoof back before slamming it into his ribs as hard as she could. “Don’t touch me! I don’t want you! The only one I want is Pillow!” She hit him again, drawing a grunt from him but not loosening his grip. “The only one I want is Pillow and he’s gone and it’s all Lex’s fault and your fault and that awful mare’s fault and I’ll never forgive any of you!” She hit him again, but there was less power in it now, tears gathering in her eyes. “I’ll never forgive any of you for letting me get him back only to lose him again!” This time her blow barely had any power behind it, and although she tried to keep it in a sob escaped her throat. “You made me lose him again even though I got him back but I couldn’t do anything and now he’s gone and it’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fair!”
And then all of her anger was gone, and she clung to Aisle tightly, burying her face in his neck as she cried. A torrent of sobs came rushing out of her, each one wracking her body as she wailed with grief. Aisle made soothing sounds as he held her, gently rocking her in hope that it would provide even the slightest amount of comfort for her broken heart, wishing he could do more.
But being there for her was all he had to give.
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Poor Cozy.
Another unfortunate instance of Lex alienating people by acting unilaterally. He's really good at that.
The typos are respectful enough to stay away, for now.
OK, kudos to you as an author here, Cozy's breakdown was truly heartbreaking.
Putting the feels aside, this chapter makes Aisle feel like the glue that held their group together and the metaphorical rock for them to lean on in times of trouble.
Cozy's breakdown and lashing out at others is to be expected of someone who just lost someone so her irrational behavior is indicative of how she's becoming desperate for everything to go back to normal though unlike us, she has the eventual option of getting back what she lost if fate is on her side.
As for her blaming Lex, that would be like rubbing salt into fresh wounds for him , which would might make him do something to deteriorate his image even further. Hope Sonata's plan to salvage it pans out soon or else getting to the blockade might be more difficult than expected.
Greif leads to rage, rage leads to hate, hate leads to the Dark Sidhe.
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And the dark sides have cookies.
8404182 To be fair, I don't think that this one is really Lex's fault. Cozy is pretty clearly acting out of grief, and as Aisle noted, Pillowcase's body did need to be preserved.
8404222 Whew! I was nervous that some would slip through and undercut the impact of this chapter.
8404320 Thank you so much! Positive feedback like this is what makes this all worthwhile!
8404495 There's no way to know for certain what the group dynamic was before Lex showed up, but you may be right about Aisle being the one who helped keep things together. Don't forget that, back when Lex first met them, Aisle was the one who kept his head on straight when most of the others were panicking or incapacitated.
Hopefully Cozy is through the worst of it with the events of this chapter. As for what she does next, well, right now I doubt that even she knows. As you noted, everything she said in this chapter was a product of her grieving, and so shouldn't be taken to heart. Fortunately Aisle knew that, though some of her words still wounded him. Given that she's now at least reached the point of being able to express her heartbreak, maybe Cozy won't get in Lex's face?
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8405492 But good friends lead to the light side, and they have Pinkie Pie.
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And Pinkie Pie has freinds on Every side. :DEATHChess:
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Again, I'd count the guide (or similar guides) as more of a "Spellcasting Course": Basic material applied to a wide range of things. "Blasting 101" would be more advanced and versatile sources applied to a very small concept (in that case, dealing direct damage).
Jep, and we still don't have 'em :/
Never said they were. Simply meant to say that the system wasn't designed to counter high resistances because they weren't meant/expected to exist.
Yeah... Special fits it quite well. What screams balance more than "all enemies automatically fail their saves", after all?
If it weren't for the random overpowered supplements and monsters, I wouldn't need to spent >90% of all CP to not just fall over from a random SoS/D or similar nightmare. Though I suppose if that's the price for playing sandbox, it's fine in my book :3
...For example? Forgive me if I'm missing the super-obvious, but so far the assumptions for a highly specialized fire built that deals double damage against fire-resistant creatures appear to be:
-Specialization allows you to sink enough CP/feats/whatever you may call it to one-shot CR appropriate encounters
-Immunities are nonexistant
-SR can be ignored by various spells/abilities
-Saving throws can be ignored by various spells/abilities
-Resistances of 120/150 are easily overwhelmed
-Protection from Energy and Temp-HP fail to absorb the most damage
-Antimagic may be ignored (by various possible means)
-Counterspelling will likely fail for everything beyond a disjunction
So far, the only thing I can see working against flat-out buffed firedamage would be a build designed with the very abusable 3.5-version of regeneration and nonlethal-immunity, though a good Trollbane or maybe even an alotment of Flasks or other nonmagical attacks that deal elemental damage seem to get around that quite well too.
Am I missing something major there?
Ugh, I kinda feel like this is aimed at me in my current group. There is having an optimized character and then there is having a group that went out of it's way to gimp their own characters so I look double bad. Our Epic Adventuring Party is basically made out of Adept, Expert, Warrior and... me, the Ardent. What's even worse is that I agreed to this stupid Paladin-Oath thing so now everyone's mad that I don't fix their problems when I'd loose all class features if I were to do that T_T
I can see where you are coming from, but then I'd have to justify it over:
1. Common Knowledge that no one has done such a thing and thus all previous people just automatically consider it impossible without checking/fearing that people have done it, but these people mysteriously "disappeared"
2. It having happened and no one noticed it so far as the people developing such power generally take to the planes in search for more power.
3. No one has done it before because a botched attempt failed so spectacularly that no one dares attempt it again.
4. It's happened multiple times across the Universe/the planes, but any civilization that develops such an individual collapses due to so many high-powered people running around. The reason why no other civilization noticed it before could just be that there happens to be no overlap between such small timespans (between high-powered individuals - the collapse of their society and the existance of a different civilization just about to reach the stage where they can detect and understand it - now).
5. Civilizations developing to a stage where they CAN use such high-power abilities are rare because they normally annihilate themselves well before that, which explains why the campaign is still standing instead of being ruled over by superbeings.
6. There just could not be any civilization that had enough time to develop such power at all until now.
7. Beings with such power choose to be undetectable otherwise/conceal their power, possibly due to fear of others reaching (or having reached) such power.
8. Being with such power prefer to live in their own worlds, made by magic or other means. As a matter of fact, since gods and other beings are littered around everywhere, giving a mortal their own world might just be modus operandi for them, performed on a daily basis with only an insignificant amount of the refusing.
9. Someone has to be the first, it might as well be the PCs. While it's true that it's unlikely for them to be the first, it is just as unlikely for everyone else in particular.
Not saying it's invalid, but I wouldn't say it's guaranteed. I mean, everything to "make" a computer is technically been here for thousands of years, and yet it is a rather recent thing.
I understand that, but what if there is a scenario in which these things have been done and then an exploit is found? Should I just go back on everything and retroactively ban the spell, effectively destroying the way the world used to work?
"Millions of hit points" is actually fairly easy to achieve. The monster "Shambling Mound" does it pretty much automatically. Again, I'm not against banning things that utterly violate how things normally work (like the Hulking Hurler violates the regular logic behind most weapons), but the basic idea of "this infinitely feeds on electricity, give it electricity" is kinda hard ot argue against without throwing the entire monster out of the window.
Well, my interpretation is technically correct. Which, as I have been told, is the best kind of correct
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Darm, you beat me to it.
Cozy has started to grieve.
this is a short chapter but vary good also.
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And I maintain that any "101" course won't get into synergistic effects between feats and spells across several different sourcebooks. If something is an introductory class to a course that is advanced in-and-of itself, then the proper designation for that is "201." Even then, such a class is more likely to spend a good deal of time making sure that the basics have been covered so as to provide a strong foundation for 202 and 203 classes.
'Tis a shame.
Given what the optimization (sub)community has come up with, I'd say that it's easier for the game to be twisted into creating super-damaging builds than it is into creating high resistance (or high DR) builds that can resist them. Neither are intended, of course, but damage-dealing tends to be an easier goal to achieve than damage resisting...which would seem to validate the idea of immunities. In fact, it points to the reason why allowing such munchkin builds is a mistake in the first place, to my mind.
Quite frankly, appeals to "balance" are so nebulous and imprecise that I'm honestly not moved by people saying that something is "unbalanced." I once had a member of my group say that the Eldritch Heritage feats were unbalanced, because you could take them with the Aberrant bloodline to gain spell resistance and 50% resistance to critical hits and sneak attacks. When I pointed out that you could do that without spending any feats just by being a sorcerer, his objection mysteriously vanished.
"Balance" is, in other words, something that is understood very little and fetishized very much. I'll admit that the Immortal's Handbook products weren't perfect, but that's the nature of writing books meant for characters with hundreds or even thousands of levels, when the main game is already showing strain when it approaches level 20. Quite frankly, I'm happier that it was willing to make the attempt, and that it gave us quite a lot of great stuff in doing so. I don't judge the merit of something on its failures, but on its successes.
No, it's not. If you're the GM, you're under no particular impetus to allow a given book or any element therein to be utilized in your campaign! Just unilaterally disallow it! And if you're trying to avoid powers with bad effects on a failed save, some Luck will help with that (presuming that the GM keeps a limit on how much you can buy, so as not to make saving throws meaningless).
What you're missing is the massive opportunity costs that come with expending character (and item) resources towards overcoming a particular limit rather than circumventing it. Leave aside that you can't specialize something without the GM signing off on that (again, that's true for all of Eclipse), that most abilities that directly deal damage are subject to SR, and numerous other issues with what you wrote above (mostly in terms of "how, specifically?"), this all ignores that when you're facing some sort of encounter that can't simply be vaporized into non-existence, you're going to run into serious problems. The build you've posted won't help you if you fall down a pit (onto poisoned spikes) or are suddenly submerged. Or get hit with a mental effect, or some ability damage to your primary spellcasting ability score, or planeshifted onto the Negative Energy Plane, or having to face an evil duplicate of yourself from a mirror of opposition (with the mirror being removed before you can destroy it), or have an enemy go back in time to kill you as a child, etc.
There's a reason why blasting is, in the optimization community, taken to be inferior to battlefield control, after all.
Leaving aside my surprise as using the ardent class (there was very little in Complete Psionic that I liked), this sounds perilously close to why nobody likes having an optimized character in a group that's built their PCs more casually. It doesn't matter that you've done everything "right," if you're system mastery is causing everyone else to have less fun, then you're the bad guy. Saying "I'm just doing things my way" won't cut it, since - as I linked to Thoth's saying before - the nature of sitting down at the table means that you've already implicitly agreed to act as part of a group, rather than completely on your own.
In this case, you've already let the genie out of the bottle by affirming the underlying premise about no one having done it before. If the PCs have utilized some sure-kill uber-build, then don't be afraid to have the NPCs they're facing "just so happen" to have the same build when they fight the PCs. Likewise, if someone thinks that another person is coming up with an unstoppable power, then it's not unbelievable that they'd move to eliminate them as quickly as possible; that's Evil Overlord List stuff, after all.
This problem generally strikes me as self-correcting, because if such individuals take to the planes in search of power, then that's the way that the PCs are going to go also, at which point they're going to run smack into the fact that (hostile) NPCs have been using the exact same thing, longer.
How would this work under the d20 System rules, where most magic - and certainly the build you're talking about - is entirely safe to use, and most mishaps simply result in the spell shutting down rather than going wild?
This one is difficult to believe, simply because the tactical nature of high-level spells doesn't lend itself to the large-scale destructiveness necessary to destroy entire civilizations. There's a reason why things like The Rain of Colorless Fire or the Invoked Devastation were never given game statistics, and even the destruction of Netheril was the product of circumstances outside of the particular 12th-level spell that was used (e.g. it would have caused unspecified "permanent damage" to the "Weave" and Mystryl sacrificed herself to shut down all magic...which sent the floating cities crashing to the ground. And even then, several survived). Moreover, the high-level characters in question are the best-placed to survive such a thing simply because they're already high-level.
See above; d20 magic doesn't lend itself to "they all blew themselves up, repeatedly" very well. Likewise, the idea of "only just now reaching a point where such powers can be reached" strains disbelief because of how fast adventuring characters level up (and how regularly they defeat death after getting 5th-level spells). If your group is able to go from 1st to 20th level in under six months of game time, and includes spell research rules and a full-progression caster, then why wasn't that just as true for a group from ten years ago?
Again, the rules need to support this particular proposition. If your group can hit 20th level in less than a year, take a full-progression spellcasting class, and invent/buy/locate high-level magic spells/items, then why can't anyone else? For that matter, why does that operate at the "civilization" level, when most of these things are particular to individual characters? I can't imagine that they're having a hard time conducting spell research because glass beakers haven't been invented yet, or can't make magic swords because the technique for creating steel from iron and carbon is still being discovered.
Which means that there's a cold war - probably threatening to turn into a hot war - going on, which will enmesh the PCs once they become powerful enough to make a difference. At this point, you're essentially moving into the area wherein you're going to have powerful actors on the world (or similarly large) stage, who aren't going to be happy that there's a bunch of loose cannons going around with the same level of power that they have. So in other words, it's like the sorcerer-kings in the Dark Sun setting.
Which suggests that the PCs are already living in a world tailor-made for someone else, and they're not going to be happy that these upstarts, who exist solely to serve them, are now acting like they own the place...
Which, again, needs to be reflected under the rules. If that's the case, then there had better be a good reason why nobody else was able to take the options that the PCs are, and why they're able to do so with (I presume) no particular difficulty. After all, it took over a century before Charles Babbage's analytical engine was turned into a general-purpose computer, and then another fifty years or so to become the ubiquitous PC that we'd recognize now. And that's on the back of centuries of pushing the boundaries of mathematics and mechanical engineering, as well as parallel discoveries such as harnessing electricity, creating plastic, etc. If your PCs are blithely advancing to 20th-level and beyond and whipping out never-before-seen power that they've invented over the weekend, then that's hardly the same thing.
Ideally you won't have to do anything retroactively, because you'll have looked at all of these and decided ahead of time what's allowed and what isn't, rather than having an open-door policy that allows for (almost) anything to be used and so leaving yourself and your campaign open to unintended consequences. If you've already let that happen, then you're going to have a much larger problem, not just for what the PCs can do but because then there's no reason why other people can't do it themselves. The PCs aren't special, and what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Unless your PCs are shambling mounds, and are somehow being hit by electricity all the time, this is a moot point. Moreover, if we accept that the rules represent how things work, then there really should be a limit on this, since at some point there'll be a limit to what the creature's body can hold before the negative charge repels further lightning. But the game designers didn't think of that, which is why the GM has to.
All joking aside...no, I don't think it's even technically correct.
8407706 Thanks!
Although, I don't think this chapter was particularly short, was it? 2,170 words is about par for the course for this story.
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vary true this chapter is normal length for this story, i had just finished a story with chapters in the 15k+ size.
8409402 Yeah, I see a lot of those too. I have no doubt that I could write chapters that long, but then I wouldn't be able to keep to my once-every-three-days routine, which quite frankly I need in order to keep to a regular schedule.