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>>5745384
You are the DRAGONBORN ANTIPALADIN, a weapon born and raised to end the Age of Man and to usurp the surface-scum who the False Gods unleashed upon your people’s world. You were meant to destroy the Paladins and their Paladin King, to bring low the races of Man and Elf and anyone else who stood in your way. You were meant to bring about the New Age of Scales…

But sometimes destiny traces a serpentine path, winding and circuitous, and to a destination unseen by even the patient and ancient Gods of Darkness.

What began as a mission to rout a few kobold rebels and maintain the Great Conspiracy of the Serpent Priesthood blossomed into something MORE. You became a divine champion, took it upon yourself to resurrect the Bloodrise Kingdom of the Red Dragon King from days of old. You forged alliances, slaughtered monsters, and overturned the old order to remake the world in your own image!

Oh, you’ve slain a few Paladins, even one who was almost the Paladin King… But Hawksong still stands. You are a friend and admirer of Elvenkind (albeit mostly of an outcast, subterranean breed). You have a Dwarven apprentice. Some of your best friends are humans—well, half-human, in the case of your bodyguard and best friend, but your newest wife is in fact the very DAUGHTER of that Paladin King which you were born to destroy, and your child—so, too, a spiritual child of a Dark God—is seemingly destined to inherit that shining city.

You are a Dark Messiah, yes, but not of an Age of Scaly Supremacy, but of a multicultural and egalitarian New Age of Darkness for ALL peoples, united by the strength of your conviction and forged in the fires of your Dargon Soul.

Though no slouch with a sword, your faith has been your greatest weapon—in yourself, your mission, your friends and loved ones, and of course in your Gods Beyond and Below! After all, what is an Antipaladin without his divine patrons?

Only… They seem to be upset with you at the moment.

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>>5745389
Ever since you disregarded a direct order from the Serpent Ascendant, the Dark God of Glorious Bloodshed to whom you pledged your undying loyalty, you have felt… Off. The sensation has only worsened since you agreed, under oath and in the name of that same God of Prideful Conquest, to always and forever place the needs of Hawksong’s people—now YOUR people, with your wife soon to be formally coronated QUEEN Ekaterine—before even the Dark Gods.

Within your breast, the once-bound spirit of the Red Dragon King—your noble and uncompromising ancestor-of-yore—roils and rouses. Divine guidance alludes you, as the Feathered Serpent God whom you have served refuses to return your meditative missives.

You dream of fire. You, mostly dreamless for much of your life, now routine wake clutching your chest, your mind flashing with the sight and sound of a recurring nightmare wherein your draconic firelung swells, and burns, and finally explodes forth in an act of spontaneous combustion which leaves only your crown-helm intact, upon the brow of another.

The coronation of Queen Ekaterine is a month away. The birth of her child—YOUR child, albeit not your firstborn—is likely to take place shortly thereafter, given her abdominal swelling and usual human gestation periods.

What is a Dragonborn Antipaladin to do?
>You must discover the source of your spiritual malady, and address it—a journey to the deep places where the Master Race worships will help you find your centre and commune with the Gods
>You must be here for your Hawksong Queen, as her Prince-Consort and her loyal husband and protector, and to prepare for the coronation
>You will swallow your pride and turn to your embittered enemies (but also your wife’s avowed servants) for aid—the Holy order of Hawksong, AKA the Paladins
>Write-in

previous threads and the successor quest are at https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=reptoidqm

>>5745390
>You must discover the source of your spiritual malady, and address it—a journey to the deep places where the Master Race worships will help you find your centre and commune with the Gods

Without our faith we are nothing

I like Eka, but we have done much for her in recent times. We must do this for us

>>5745390
You must discover the source of your spiritual malady, and address it—a journey to the deep places where the Master Race worships will help you find your centre and commune with the Gods

We’re back

>Some of your best friends are humans—well, half-human
Lol

>>5745390
>You must discover the source of your spiritual malady, and address it—a journey to the deep places where the Master Race worships will help you find your centre and commune with the Gods

We gotta start out by pointing out they lost against the gods of light. They're losers. They should just shut up and put all their chips behind a winner like us.

>>5745390
>Write-in
>Go find your brother big green and mediate alongside him, doing so in the past has always calmed your draconic spirit.

I don't think you should go see, the dark gods. They will probably just complain we haven't been massacring enough worships of light
again. Or they will condemn or try to punish us for not listing to them, even though most the the aid they have given us has been firmly transactional.

>>5745401
>Without our faith we are nothing

We killed the devourer, beat hako's greed demon, burned the shogoth alive and cut down hapo's troll zombie. All without any hint divine aid. We don't need them to be a powerful warrior.

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>>5745401
>>5745412
>>5745433
>>5745467
It in unavoidable. You may resent the Dark Gods their impositions at times, but they are your very genesis, and your destiny: Alpha and Omega. You were conceived as the result of illegal, unauthorized cross-caste breeding, raised as a weapon, but it was your own choices—your own True Faith—which made you an Antipaladin. Religion is no mere transaction to you, justa s it was not to your Reptilian infiltrator mother. You are truly devout, and you must reconcile yourself with your Gods, or you are nothing.

“Eka, My beloved One…”

“You’re leaving.”

You’re stunned by her matter-of-fact response, and confused by the small (albeit sad, you think?) smile upon her flattish, pink-skinned human face. You hold it in your hands, and she giggle softly and blushes, brushing your hands aside and then holding them for a moment.

“You are not so sly a serpent as you seem to think you are, Prince-Consort,” she teases you gently.

You’re not so sure about THAT, since she still doesn’t know the full, grisly story of how she BECAME the sole candidate to succeed her father and (Gods willing) never will, but you let it slide.

“We share a bed. I’ve seen how this, ah, religious matter has troubled you,” she points out.

“I know you are due to be coronated ssoon,” you say, and your gaze drifts down, to her midsection—to her womb. “And…”

She squeezes your hands and stands on her tip-toes to kiss your cheek—a tender gesture.

“Then hurry back, if you can,” she says. “And if you can’t… You have done a lot for me. You need to do this for YOU.”

You smile, an expression that comes more naturally to you with each day you spend here in Hawksong, among the humans, in your human disguise…

“You know,” Ekaterine gently chides you, “you still do that too wide. You don’t need to show ALL your teeth.”

“It isss genuine,” you assure her.

“I know,” she says, smiling back. “It reaches your eyes.”

And so, with the blessing of your Human Queen, you set out.

Your course will be a winding one, over hills and through dale. Your ‘big brother’, the Great Green Dragonborn, has been waiting for well over the allotted week in the rocky hills past the ruins of Hawksong’s farming communities. Reestablishing security and food production in these places will be vital for your wife once she ascends to the throne, and preventing your brethren from falling into conflict with your newly-secured kingdoms will thus be key for the both of you… Something that will be difficult if they begin raiding farms for livestock (and farmers) to eat once more.

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>>5746136
Before you leave, though, you must consider whom to bring with you, and who to leave behind. Ekaterine may be Queen, but you know she is not without detractors-how could she be, a frail and sheltered neophyte monarch, scarcely more than two decades in age, with a common-born foreigner for a husband, filling the greatest power vacuum the northlands have seen in decades?

(Ha! ‘Foreigner’. If they only knew…)

And then there are the nobles and Paladins who DO know…Who have every reason to believe you are a Reptilian invader and a servant of the Dark Gods. They will be keen-eyed for weaknesses and missteps, opportunities to oust her or assert their own will… Something that might be all too easy when she gives birth. After all, you do not yet know how human your shared spawn shall be, once it emerges.

Who will you bring with you? And who will you leave to safeguard Ekaterine’s safety?
>Oluawadamilare the Archer, your half-human bodyguard and a stalwart servant and friend
>Infiltrator Halle, the snarky young female Silkscale who has helped your repeatedly in your time in Hawksong (though she DID briefly mutiny against you in favour of your rivalrous father and the Serpent priesthood)
>‘Albacete’, the mysterious elder Infiltrator who helped you reassert order over Hawksong’s Reptilian operatives and whose cover has apparently expired
>Sir Ewald, the outcast elder Paladin whom the Holy order cast out and stripped of his status after he agreed to comrpomsie with you following a decisive duel
>Someone I forgot
[Feel free to select multiple for either; anyone you don’t select to bring with you and do not assign to Eka’s defence will be assumed to remain doing their own thing, unattended.]

>>5746138
>Oluawadamilare the Archer, your half-human bodyguard and a stalwart servant and friend
>Infiltrator Halle, the snarky young female Silkscale who has helped your repeatedly in your time in Hawksong (though she DID briefly mutiny against you in favour of your rivalrous father and the Serpent priesthood)

Olu is solid. We need albacete to keep the rest of the reptilians at ease while hawksong sort out the plague

Halle seems good without her father and brotherhood


>>5745412

>>5746138
>Oluawadamilare the Archer, your half-human bodyguard and a stalwart servant and friend

>Infiltrator Halle, the snarky young female Silkscale who has helped your repeatedly in your time in Hawksong (though she DID briefly mutiny against you in favour of your rivalrous father and the Serpent priesthood)

Awww yeah, back to Dragonborn quest.

>>5746138
>Bring Olu, leave all others

>>5746150
>>5746154
>>5746247

[To be clear, are these all votes to leave Ekaterine to her own devices without an assigned aide/supervisor/guard, or are >>5746150 and >>5746154 votes for Albecete to take up that role?]

>>5746285
I was thinking sir ewald could serve that role while albecete deal with the rest of the reptilian

I’m >>5746150

>>5746296
>>5746292
[Duly noted! Also...]
>>5746150
>without her father
[To clarify: Roth is your dad, but not hers. Halle's a different caste altogether, more closely related to Albacete, your maternal grandma, or your big bro's concubines than to your dad.]

>>5746297
My bad. Must’ve misremembered a thing or two.

I’ll still stick with my vote. We don’t need roth intervening.

>>5746138
>Oluawadamilare the Archer, your half-human bodyguard and a stalwart servant and friend
>‘Albacete’, the mysterious elder Infiltrator who helped you reassert order over Hawksong’s Reptilian operatives and whose cover has apparently expired

Halle’s cover is intact - she should stay

It would be good to bond with Albacete, she could become a good adviser to our Serpent Queen back home

[Today's update will likely be late, as my bud has a birthday thing at the pub after work. Tomorrow's update will be sandwiched between a VtM game in the morning and a date in the evening. Just a heads up!]

>>5746285
Albacete was meant to be Ekaterine's guard in my vote, at least.

>>5746540
Good luck on your date RqM
May your date interested in reptilians and vampire, without being as extreme about them as a certain QM

>>5746285
Have Albecete do it
She's experienced enough

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>>5746999
>>5746547
>>5746391
>>5746300
>>5746292
>>5746247
>>5746154
>>5746150
[Alright, locked and writing!]

>>5746935
Thanks, anon. Our first date involved watching From Beyond, so I think we're in the clear there.

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>>5747177
Well, first of all, you are OBVIOUSLY bringing Oluwadamilare, your half-human ally whom you know better as ‘Olu’ or ‘The Archer’. He is a skilled Infiltrator, yes, but ill-adapted to this land of pale and pinkish people, with his dark, brownish Southman hide, ESPECIALLY in a city which your people have conditioned to distrust men from the southern lands. Besides, he is probably your closest companion—DEIFNITELY, if you exclude the allies you’ve incorporated into your harem and your Big Brother—and you always feel better with him at your side.

But before you leave, there are two other Reptilians with whom you must meet.

You find the Infiltrators known as Halle and Albacete here. Both resemble the locals more closely than your Archer, though in truth they are far more distantly removed in their lineage—not human at all, but rather a pair of Silkscale females, from that caste famed for subtlety and finesse. When last you’d seen them, your swiftly-resolved ‘civil war’ among the Reptilian operatives in Hawksong had left them scorched and singed by your biological father’s breath weapon. When you are once more reacquainted, however, they are as good as new—and, in both cases, dressed more gaily than ever you have seen them.

“New clothes, courtesy of the Paladins,” Halle explains in Northern Common-tongue, before reverting to the true speak. “It is almost like these thieving surface-scum champions have nothing SIMPELR than filigreed silks.”

“They may not, for females,” Albacete notes wryly. “They do not admit them. These are clothes intended as gifts for… Well, let us simply say that they are less strict about their chastity than their membership criteria.”

Halle blanches, and gags a little, asking: “Is THAT why that one human was looking at me like… Oh gods. With an APE? I might vomit… Ah, no offence intended, Superior One.”

You simply stare until, embarrassed, the young female averts her gaze and mutters something unintelligible. The elder operative rattles softly with undisguised, Reptilian mirth, and bows her head.

“They have been treating you both well, then?” you inquire. “Attended to your health?”

“As they must, I understand,” Albacete confirms. “By order of the Queen-to-be and pricne-Consort-in-waiting, is it not so?”

“It is,” you confirm. “And it is in their best interest, if we to to contain, or avert entirely, the coming plague.”

“Are we?” Halle asks, pointedly.

“We are,” you affirm. “Infiltrator-called-Albacete, I expect you to aid the Paladins—and the human called ‘Ewald’—in quarantining affected areas, administering whatever aid is possible, and preventing spread. The Paladins shall purify the water if they can and—failing that—the Chaplain’s Daughter will soon provide a cure for the affliction.”

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>>5747216
You refer, of course, to the chimeric affliction which was set in motion by your father, and by the late Chaplain of the northern forward base: a Fleshweaver-wrought malady that turns men into false Degenerates’, scaled and fork-tongued, before beginning to cripple their inner tissues to the point of infirmity, sterility, or even death. Much like a siege by your Dragonborn brethren, this is one more attack by your fellow Truly Faithful which you have spared Hawksong, in your benevolent generosity.

“And what am -I- to do?” Halle asks.

“Share whatever information you have kept in strategic reserve, Infiltrator,” you command her, and your expression silences any objection that she has not done so. “Spare no details. Albacete will carry out her duties. You, you will be attending to duties of your own… With me. We are going home.”

Halle bites back a groan, instead bowing her head in supplication and hurrying to gather her things. When you depart, you can’t help but notice that—for someone who so criticizes the humans—she has acquired far more knickknacks and tchotchkes that your thrice-as-old progenitor, which she lugs in her pack as she joins your and the Archer.

Your journey to rejoin the other Dragonborn is a quest that takes the better part of a day. You could travel further by carriage, but for a few issues. First and foremost, of course, is your mutual antipathy with equids. Horses sense something wrong about you, no matter your guise, and seem to reject you instinctively. The gryphon-mounts of the Holy Order of Hawksong are an even more dire option, filling your companions (oaky, and even you) with a subtle dread. Besides this, and in spite of your new ‘arrangement’ with mankind, you are instinctively reticent to share the location of your fellows Reptilians or your people’s aeons-old hiding places with the race of Man, even now.

(You somehow doubt it would score many pints with the Dark Gods if you DID, for that matter.)

As a result, you risk being forced to camp out for the night in the forested plains or scorched farmland away from Hawksong’s beaten path… Or else to press on through the dark.

What will you do?
>Travel all through the night—you will rest when you reach your Big Brother’s hiding-place
>Find a farmstead and impress yourself upon the locals—you have coin to pay, and have grown used to comforts
>Camp in the woods and fields, far from prying eyes, that you and Halle may shed your disguises, and the three of you may speak openly among yourselves
>Write-in

>>5747218
>Camp in the woods and fields, far from prying eyes, that you and Halle may shed your disguises, and the three of you may speak openly among yourselves

People might think something’s wrong when prince consort is out here basically alone

>>5746150

>>5747218
>Camp in the woods and fields, far from prying eyes, that you and Halle may shed your disguises, and the three of you may speak openly among yourselves

>>5747218
>Travel all through the night—you will rest when you reach your Big Brother’s hiding-place.

Last we saw big green was sleeping in a cave, we will have plenty of privacy to shed our disguise once we get there.

>>5747218
>Travel all through the night—you will rest when you reach your Big Brother’s hiding-place

>>5747768
>>5747747
>>5747447
>>5747352
[We'll await a tiebreaker before I tally and write, or I'll roll for it in a couple hours.]

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>5747938

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>>5748037
>>5747938
>>5747768
>>5747747
>>5747447
>>5747352
Well, one thing you CAN’T do is stay in a farmstead or settlement. Oh, sure, you are wearing a cloak and not your horn-crowned helm, and news can only travel so fast PARTICUALRLY in a time of political turmoil and dragon-attacks, but do you really want to run the risk of being recognized in your distinctive ‘Easterling’ identity and pegged as the Prince-Consort? It can only raise questions, and since you are resolved to at least TRY to avoid killing witnesses as a convenient way to hide your agenda moving forward, it is best to sidestep the matter entirely.

“Then can we not simply rest in the woods or something?” Infiltrator Halel whines.

“You have been forgoing the physical fitness regimen prescribed by the Serpent Priesthood, I see,” notes the Archer dryly.

“Your camp is NOT the one to be criticizing me for skirting regulation, Degenrate,” she snaps as your forced march continues. “And anyway, my cover identity as that of a human of low station and birth, and a female no less. The duties of Halle the Human are CLEANING and SEWING, and occasional light lifting, not trekking for many miles over difficult terrain!”

“Truly,” Olu the Archer quips, “I is an era of many changes.”

You suppress a laugh, and carry on. There will be time to rest when your each the Great One’s cave.

“BROTHER!”

Even the booming voice of the Great Green Dragonborn, towering titan of the purest draconic bloodline extant in the modern age, cannot compete with the screeches, rattles ,and chatters of the Red Dragonborn. You and your two companions are rapidly set upon by your nine orange-brown ‘younger siblings’ upon your arrival, an experience made particularly harrowing for your Silkscale ally by the Young Ones’ great size. To their credit, they at least do not attempt to eat with her, and even seem to show some restraint in how they lift, jostle, and toss her about.

“I have been t-teaching them ruh-ster-aint,” the Great One explains. “Med-uh-tating. Like we did together.”

You bow your head in grateful thanks, both for this newest task he has taken upon himself and for all he did for you growing up. IT is true: without his shamanic, often worldless lessons on finding inner peace and delving deep into the true heart of soul of being a Dragonborn, you would not be the king or prophet you are today—certainly no Antipaladin! You owe this elder male as much as the Dark Gods Beyond and Below, and more directly. Alas, before you can give him and his young charges the home which they deserve in recompense, far away in your mountain kingdom, you must ask him for one more thing.

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>>5748053
“May we shelter here for the night, Oh Great One?” you ask him. “We are weary… And soon, of course, we will be traveling again.”

“To our new home?” he asks, unable to hide the eagerness from his booming voice.

You nod, and he rattles in glee, which the younger Dragonborn mimic.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Of course, Litt-tul Brother.”

Halle (and even Olu, though less obviously) breathe a sigh of relief, neither of them eager to continue your travels tonight, deep into the collapsed and abandoned northern froward base or beyond. You all gather around a deep bit, filled with gathered forest debris, and with your siblings you light a blazing flame with your combined breath. The surviving harem-mates of the Great One—Silkscale females, unadorned with disguises, attend to you, and you and Halle both shed your own Amulets of Disguise and take up your true forms as the Dark Gods intended.

“Aaaaah,” Halle breathes out in relief, flitting her tail as it finishes reforming. “That IS better, I must admit. And… Oh! Is this…?”

“Human flesh,” one of the other Silkscale females confirms. “Yes.”

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>>5748056
Halle rattles happily, rubbing her hands together, before digging in. You look to the Great One questioningly, and he bows his head slightly in apology and shrugs an enormous shoulder.

“Wanderers,” he explains. “Got too cuh-lose. Had to take action, so we could hide. Did not want a big-guhr fight, or to have to move.”

You nod in understanding, but as one of the harem approaches you with a roasted human arm and a bowl of thickened blood, you cannot help but stare down at it. It would not be your first time—though sapient mammal-meat was a rare delicacy even for one of your station. There is still pork, mutton, and beef available, as well. But, well… You ARE part-human, as you have learned over these last few years, and have the capacity to empathize with and even LOVE humans like Ekaterine. Your tenth child (or eleventh, perhaps, depending on how things fare with the egg which you Serpent Queen ahs no doubt laid by now) will be half-human himself!

…Not that any of this stops Oluwadamilare the Archer from partaking, you suppose.

Will you consume human flesh and blood?
>Yes, when proffered or for ritual purposes
>No, never again—you can no longer bring yourself to do so
>No, and you will outlay anthropophagy in Bloodrise and beyond
>Write-in

While you are within the cave, taking your rest, is there anyone you wish to speak with, about your crisis of faith or other matters?
>Oluwadamilare, your close ally and a worldly traveler, raised as a ‘Degenerate’ hybrid
>Halle, a relative outsider and a loyalist of the Dark Gods and the Old Ways until recently
>The Great Green Dragonborn, your elder brother, wise in his way and perhaps enlightened by the Diadem of Clarity
>The females of the harem—did you ever learn their names?—who have been raised and taught in the ways of service, and have directly served the Serpent priesthood in some cases
>No, you will contemplate this alone, and take and earlier and fuller rest

Is there any other topic you wish to discuss?
>Marriage and parenting
>The future of the Master Race and the True Faith
>Anthropophagy and the future of Man
>The Gods of Light
>None
>Write-in

[Consider this a chance to pick companions' brains and establish plans, policies, and Theral's feelings.]

>>5748061
>Only the blood and flesh of worthy foes, not any simple mortal

>Oluwadamilare, your close ally and a worldly traveler, raised as a ‘Degenerate’ hybrid
>The Great Green Dragonborn, your elder brother, wise in his way and perhaps enlightened by the Diadem of Clarity

>The future of the Master Race and the True Faith

>>5748061
>Write-in.
>You will allow anthropophagy in regards to enemy's or criminal who you were planing to kill anyway. But you will try to limit anthropophagy based purely on recreational sacrifice.


>The Great Green Dragonborn, your elder brother, wise in his way and perhaps enlightened by the Diadem of Clarity

And


>Oluwadamilare, your close ally and a worldly traveler, raised as a ‘Degenerate’ hybrid.

>Write-in.
>Your kingdom and how to best bring long term prosperity to it.
>The future of the Master Race and the True Faith

>>5748061
>Yes, when proffered or for ritual purposes

>The Great Green Dragonborn, your elder brother, wise in his way and perhaps enlightened by the Diadem of Clarity
>Oluwadamilare, your close ally and a worldly traveler, raised as a ‘Degenerate’ hybrid

>The future of the Master Race and the True Faith

>>5748129
Supporting this

We shall not seek our human flesh, but cooked meat offered to us is different

>>5748061
>No, never again—you can no longer bring yourself to do so

>Oluwadamilare
>The Great Green Dragonborn

>The future of the Master Race and the True Faith
>Anthropophagy and the future of Man

Times are a changing and you if we're to be a force of change then we need start treating our future citizens and religious followers as more than meat.

>>5748061
>No, never again—you can no longer bring yourself to do so
>Oluwadamilare, your close ally and a worldly traveler, raised as a ‘Degenerate’ hybrid
>Halle, a relative outsider and a loyalist of the Dark Gods and the Old Ways until recently
>The Great Green Dragonborn, your elder brother, wise in his way and perhaps enlightened by the Diadem of Clarity

>Marriage and parenting
>The future of the Master Race and the True Faith

Never neglect wisdom, no matter where it comes.

>>5747352

>>5748061
>>Yes, when proffered or for ritual purposes
>Oluwadamilare, your close ally and a worldly traveler, raised as a ‘Degenerate’ hybrid
>Marriage and parenting

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>>5748464
>>5748362
>>5748349
>>5748161
>>5748129
>>5748109
>>5748073
You stare at the arm, at the fire-blackened, grasping hand. You turn the human limb over, regarding the liens of the palm, and consider this man or woman’s life and death, their likely profession, their family—their possible hopes and dreams, their future cut short.

You dig in.

It is what it is, you decide. You are hungry, and humans are meat… As, you suppose, are Reptilians, though your reaction to cannibalism of THAT sort still gives you a somewhat more visceral feeling of nausea. Oh, it’s not as if you plan to hunt humans as game-beasts, or to farm them for their flesh, but you are a DRAGON. If someone commits a crime worthy of torturous execution, should you simply throw their body, wastefully, from the cliffs, or burn it or bury it? And if you are offered delicious blood to quench your thirst, or to commemorate a great victory or anniversary, are you to deny your rich cultural heritage for the sake of propriety?

No, you are not so soft, and nor shall you impose such weakness upon your people.

Once you are done quenching that exact thirst, and your belly is full, you feel a little better for it—more YORUSELF, in some unplaceable way, or perhaps like the being you were not so long ago, before Hawksong and its Queen. You feel emboldened perhaps, and eager to set right whatever has one wrong in your three-chambered heart and in your lizard brain. The Hawksong Infiltrator called Halle and the other Silkscales seem to discussing things amongst themselves—she seems to be regaling them with tales of her assigned city in fact—but you wrest your subordinate from the harem’s clutches with some muted grumbling and set her to watch; the other females, you assign to supervise the Red Dragonborn.
“And what will YOU be doing, Superior One?” the Hawksong Infiltrator dares to ask, though with a deferent head-bow.

You call a council of your fellow males of the Master Race, to beseech their advice.

“Archer, Great One,” you address them both. “Our journey will take us not just to Bloodrise, but first to the northern forward base.”

You see your Great Green Dragonborn brother tense up at the thought of returning to the place which he has so recently escaped captivity, but you assuage his fears—it is to be a brief stopover, but a necessary one.

“I fea—I have concerns,” you begin, haltingly, unsure how to explain your predicament without showing weakness. “We have achieved many victories in Hawksong, but they were victories of… Compromise. Diplomacy. Marital politics. Mercy and compassion. All WORTHY methods… But not, necessarily, the Methods of a Knight Ascendant of the Feathered Serpent God.”

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>>5748686
“I do not understand,” the Archer admits. “The subtle arts are key to the Great Conspiracy, yes? They always have been. Why should the Dark Gods Below and Beyond care for the particulars?”

The Great One simply tilts his head in silent consideration. You wonder how much of this he truly understands, in truth. He is wise, and old, and a good friend, but his creation and first century-or-so of life left him with rather stunted development… And in truth, you have never really had cause to discuss deeper matters of the True Faith with him. However, you also glimpse the gleaming glow of the Diadem of Clarity upon his forehead, your gift to him which was further augmented by the Dark God of Wisdom. His grammar has improved, and his ambition has grown since he first donned the great circlet… And who are you to neglect wisdom at this time, no matter the source? You need all the advice you can get.

“Pow-uhr,” the Green Dragonborn concludes.

“What do you mean by this, Great One?” you ask curiously.

“The Gods… They are like the Chap-luhn, maybe,” he says. “They want your pow-uhr… Hrrr… POWER. They want you to do their work, use your strength, but in their way. If you do it your way, it is YOUR power, not theirs.”

The Archer fidgets with a discomfort you feel, and notes carefully: “The Dark Gods are the source of all power. That is what we are taught. Dark magic flows from them. When we divine the stars and signs, it is with their borrowed senses. Those who grow sickly and ill do s for their neglect; those who grow strong do so because they please the Dark Gods Below and beyond, and are permitted to live, and destiny curved in their favour.”

You nod along, for all this is true… And in particular, one of your gifts as a Knight Ascendant has been to grow mighty without limits, or so you were told when you made your great pact to serve your divine patron as the Glorious God’s personal Antipaladin. But your older brother, well, he seems to regard this with skepticism, snorting and shuffling his great wings.

“I was made stuh-rong. BORN st-strong. I never asked for strength. No one gave it me—TO me. Only tried to use it.”

Maybe so… But his greater consideration and articulation were, arguably, a gift from the Dark Gods, albeit through you. His freedom, too, since your mother was the one who freed him; the exact particulars are unknown to you, but you know she was loyal to the Dark Gods are well, Truly Faithful, and they no doubt guided her and aided her in her course. And since you disobeyed the Gods Below and Beyond, well, haven’t you FELT weaker?

Hm.

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>>5748687
You turn the topic from this matter to the Reptilian Race and True Faith more broadly, and to the future.

“The New Age of Darkness—an Age of Scales, also—is almost upon us,” you announce, to pleased rumbling and rattling. “But what does that LOOK like, to you, when you picture it?”

The Great One’s vision at first recalls your biological fathers, you note.

“Fi-yuuuhr,” he sighs happily, some smoke escaping from betwixt his lips. “So much fi-yuhr, burning away all the little pests. Swallow whole herds of an-ee-muhls.”

“Surely you dream of more than that, Brother?” you ask him gently.

He thinks on this for a moment, and then nods, and more quietly adds: “Trah-vuhl. Travel. Go places. See wuh-ruhld. World. Rule wherever I am, take what I want—be KING. Be… Free.”

Of course—so long in captivity, first in one horrid dungeon and then in a slightly nicer one and with his female companions… Well, what could he desire more than freedom, even from (as Ekaterine would call it) a ‘gilded cage’ like the one he spent the last twenty years in? To live like that, to be subordinate to others… It must rankle a demigod like he, forged from the heartblood of a True Dragon.

“And what of you?” you ask Olu the Archer.

Your half-human companion looks embarrassed, at first, but with some prodding he speaks up.

“I am not sure I see my future and that of the Master Race as the same,” he admits.

You are quick to assure him that he IS of the Master Race—that he belongs to it as much as you, or anyone else, but he shakes his head.

“You know that is not wholly true, Superior One,” he says.

He uses the honorific with respect but also with ironic purpose—to point out the gulf between you and he, despite your own Degenerate ancestry. He is visibly quite human, and this diluted blood is known to all. He has been sterilized for the crime of his birth, and his kind—like yours—is regarded as a weapon… But a shameful weapon-of-necessity, not a symbol of military achievement and might, like a Dragonborn. IT is something you have always understood, and gradually understood to be WRONG in some way, but again it was Ekaterine who gave you the tools and theory to fully grapple with what he is describing.

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>>5748688
“What if I could MAKE a place for you amongst the Master Race?” you ask, hopefully. “Give your status… A title?”

The Archer’s eyes widen, and if his skin were not so dark you think he might well blush as crimson as your pink-skinned human mate. He looks away, stammers in uncharacteristic self-consciousness, but eventually bows his head in gratitude… And shakes it.

“The Master Race should not—WILL not—bow to something like me. It is… WRONG. If you allow this, if you make it so, then what is their future? Your new Age of Darkness… I believe in it. I truly do! And I thank you for all you have done for me, and those like me, Oh Dragonborn… But Pureblooded Ones are few. Our position is weak. If we are to integrate the humans, and dwarves, and dark elves, in truth it is WE who will be integrated into THEIR ranks. They outnumber us ten, a hundred, to every one of ours… And in such an order, Degenerates will still have a role to play but if it is as rulers, that will mean our Master Race’s absorption.”

You are surprised at this level of insight, in truth. Ever a brave and worthy battle-brother, this Archer has never struck you as an ESPECIALLY deep thinker. As for the content of those thoughts…

“Would that not be good for you?” you ask. “Why would you not wish to be part of the ruling class?”

He seems to have no answer for this at first, and the question itself seems to make him uncomfortable. Has he been so long a servant and slave that he would elevate his masters, irrationally, at his own expense? The thought makes you sad for him, and you consider whether you might rectify it with prayerful meditation upon the Dragon Soul… But then he speaks up.

“I don’t know what is right for the Master Race… or for hybrids like me. It is not my… I was not trained for such things. But I know what you choose will be right. For our people… ALL our people… My faith is in you, Dragon King.”

He looks at you with deep respect in his eyes.

“It is enough to serve a worthy king,” he decides. “I do not need to rule.”

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>>5748690
You return his gaze, and aren’t quite sure how to feel about this mindset… But then something of that mad, mischievous smile of his splits his face.

“Though if you were to make me an military liaison to Wevenore…”

You laugh.

“You will see Jazkarmel again, Archer,” you assure him, recalling his lover—and your good friend—the Drow Princess from the subterranean dark elf city of which he speaks, a leader amongst their most distant scouting forces.

“I serve the Master Race loyally,” Olu reiterates, his tone wistful, “but I am VERY glad for the integration of the Drow.”

You nod in agreement. You never took a mate or queen from among them, but who doesn’t enjoy elves? After that, the topic turns to the usual sort of discussion among young and virile males—booty, in all is varieties, from gold to weaponry to the squeezable sort upon a well-shaped female. When this discussion runs its course, you each take your torpor in turn, and relieve the Hawksong Infiltrator that she might do likewise—and then you set out.

What is your objective, when you reach the northern forward base?
>You will tunnel your way deep, to find the temples of old where you have prayed, and perform a ritual there to summon and appease the Dark Gods
>You would find the remains of the Chaplain—if he is indeed dead—and commune with his spirit, seeking ‘paternal’ advice from the ale who reared you
>You plan to seek that Serpent Priest Degenerate called ‘Heretic’, whom your Serpent Queen introduced you many months ago, and who studied secrets of the Gods which even other Serpent Priests dare not
>You wonder if Glowie’s mother, the Greatworm Queen, might be able to advise you on such matters? She is, after all, a near-direct creation of a Dark God, akin to a Dragon King in some ways…
>Write-in

>>5748691
>You plan to seek that Serpent Priest Degenerate called ‘Heretic’, whom your Serpent Queen introduced you many months ago, and who studied secrets of the Gods which even other Serpent Priests dare not

>>5748691
>>You plan to seek that Serpent Priest Degenerate called ‘Heretic’, whom your Serpent Queen introduced you many months ago, and who studied secrets of the Gods which even other Serpent Priests dare not

>>5748691
>You plan to seek that Serpent Priest Degenerate called ‘Heretic’, whom your Serpent Queen introduced you many months ago, and who studied secrets of the Gods which even other Serpent Priests dare not

>>5748691
>You plan to seek that Serpent Priest Degenerate called ‘Heretic’, whom your Serpent Queen introduced you many months ago, and who studied secrets of the Gods which even other Serpent Priests dare not

Perhaps a ritual at the temple might be in order, but only after we figure out the right way to approach this matter.

Also, Olu is such a bro. Been at our side since day one.

>>5748691
>>You plan to seek that Serpent Priest Degenerate called ‘Heretic’, whom your Serpent Queen introduced you many months ago, and who studied secrets of the Gods which even other Serpent Priests dare not.

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>>5748706
>>5748794
>>5748802
>>5748821
>>5748878
You recall one figure who could help with this matter, and it is he whom you shall seek out first and foremost: The Heretic! A half-human Degenerate born of a forbidden union with a Serpent Priest, his full-blooded fellows permitted his survival—impoverished, and on the fringes—for the unique insights he could glean, and unofficial service she could provide to those few who knew of his existence and whereabouts. Luckily, your first Beloved One was one possessor of that rare knowledge, and she passed it onto you.

Now, you just have to hope he survived.

The northern forward base is a shambles. Already old and ill-maintained outside of the most functional aspects, your brethren’s rebellion and escape left the place well and truly ruined. Even now, weeks later, if smells of burnt flesh and skin. The walls are caked in ash. Mural have been smashed apart by the passage of great bodies, while toppled statuary were trampled by hundreds of smaller feet in flight. The place is empty of life—Reptilian Master Race or otherwise. Those few scavengers—cave drakes, insects, bats, and their ilk—scatter in a secondary exodus as you and the other Dragonborn (and Olu, and Halle, and your brother’s attendants) make your return.

Hale groans to see it, wobbling with dismay-induced weakness at the sight of so much ruined history. Youa re unsure of her age, but you would not be surprised if she was hatched near to here, and raised here or hereabouts, just as you were. At the very least, it has been the meeting-place, worship-space, mess-hall and part-time quarters for your race’s operatives for over a century now, and you well know the special place this admittedly0spartan remnant of Reptilian legacy must hold in her heart.

Your brother’s freedom was worth it, but you still feel the loss.

“The one whom we seek dwelled apart from the rest of our kind, in a hidden alcove,” you note.

You speak the words almost more to reassure yourself than anyone else as you pass through grave-quiet halls, seeking without <Guidance> the path which the Serpent Queen—then Novice Fleshweaver—once helped you to trace. The rest silently follow, until you reach space so narrow that you must leave your fellow Dragonborn—TRUE Dragonborn, larger than you with their wings taken into account—behind.

“I will return,” you promise.

“Will wait,” your older brother confirms with a nod, before falling to the stone with a loud crash and shifting into a more comfortable position. His attendants gather around him to massage and caress him, and the younger Red Dragonborn begin to explore or to play with one another. You watch them for a moment, remembering your Wyrm Princess back home in the Bloodrise Mountains, and then you return to the mission.

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>>5748918
It takes you some time, but eventually you find the tunnels which lead to the hidden, miserable alcove of the one called The Heretic. You are pleased to find the way is clear of signs of damage from the struggle which consumed all else. His ostracization has proven his salvation, perhaps… Though as he struck you as no hunter, you begin to worry that he may well have perished from starvation for lack of outside aid.

“… The Dragonborn?”

You needn’t have worried, a sit turns out—or, well, at least not yet. The twisted, deformed being looks more gaunt and sickly than when last you were here—which is saying something!—but he yet lives. He greets you, and bows his head to the other two companions who accompany you. He hesitates before doing so for Oluwadamilare, as his breeding technically outranks the ‘lesser’ Degenerates, but he does so—perhaps because The Archer is at least a legally-produced servant, or simply because he accompanies one such as yourself.

“You are the first guest I have had in many, many weeks,” he acknowledges, once you have all settled in his small living-space, amongst his sigil-swathed scrolls, his charts and samples, and his many weathered tomes. “Even those who laid my meals outside the door have not been here for a long time.”

That explains his condition, and confirms your suspicions. You tell him—briefly, without details-of what has happened.

“The northern forward base is fallen?” the HEretic asks, startled. “Then… The aeons of struggle are over, and all is lost? Or are we to retreat to the Southlands?”

“Neither,” you say, surprising him again. “We are… Winning. After a fashion. At no small cost. But the Northlands are well in-hand.”

“Is… is that so? The hunched and broken thing before you asks, and hisses quietly. “Strange days. Is that why you have come to me.”

“…In a way.”

In truth, you are here before this barely-tolerated, defiled creature of twisted form and illegal ancestry, practitioner of dread demonology and trafficker in forbidden secrets, to ask…
>How one might appease a Dark God and regain their favour—specifically, the Serpent Ascendant
>If it is possible to transfer in service from your current patron to become an Antipaladin of another dark deity instead
>If there is a way to retain and recoup your power without pledging allegiance to any particular Dark God—to make yourself more than a servant
>What the true nature of the Dark Gods is, and how one might bring them to heel or control them
>Write-in

>>5748921
>If there is a way to retain and recoup your power without pledging allegiance to any particular Dark God—to make yourself more than a servant

Looks like the best path

>>5748921
>If there is a way to retain and recoup your power without pledging allegiance to any particular Dark God—to make yourself more than a servant

This is what Theral has always desired, imo.

>>5748921
>If there is a way to retain and recoup your power without pledging allegiance to any particular Dark God—to make yourself more than a servant
This is what started this mess to begin with, our circumstances have changed yet their attitude hasn't. I'd vote for a more confrontational posture if they insist on making this an issue.

>>5748921
>Write-in.
>Is there a means for a mortal to rise up and become a god in his own right?

>>5749013
This is the end game though, should be looked into.

>>5748921
>How one might appease a Dark God and regain their favour—specifically, the Serpent Ascendant
>What the true nature of the Dark Gods is, and how one might bring them to heel or control them

>>5748921
>If there is a way to retain and recoup your power without pledging allegiance to any particular Dark God—to make yourself more than a servant

>>5749082

backlink>>5748362

>>5748921
>If there is a way to retain and recoup your power without pledging allegiance to any particular Dark God—to make yourself more than a servant

We should bring him back with us to Bloodrise as well

>>5748921
>>If there is a way to retain and recoup your power without pledging allegiance to any particular Dark God—to make yourself more than a servant
Also supporting the idea to recruit that guy

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>>5748931
>>5748969
>>5748975
>>5749013
>>5749030
>>5749056
>>5749082
>>5749083
>>5749254
>>5749395
“Circumstances have changed so much, from when I began by journeys… For even the last time I visited YOU, Heretical One,” you tell him. “Yet the Dark Gods… They do not recognize this. Their attitude remains the same: they are masters, I am servant.”

“It is as they made things,” Infiltrator Halle points out. “That IS our role—even yours.”

Olu the Archer says nothing, but you see his own brown furrow as well, confused or concerned by your misgivings. You ignore them for the moment, focusing on the Heretic.

“Is there a way to… To decouple the source of my powers from a patron? To draw upon the Darkness Below and Beyond itself, as the Gods of Darkness do?”

“This is what you desire, Superior One?” the heretic asks, his voice barely a whisper. “Youa re… Certain? To be like the Gods?”

The greedier aspect of your nature cries out to you to ask for EVERYTHING, every piece of information this unusual outcast ahs accumulated. Perhaps, with all that, you could become a Dark God yourself! After all, is not a True Dragon a demigod? And if you can ascend to become practically a True Dragon—a DRAGON KING, even—then why not a deity in truth?

But… No. You remain loyal to the True Faith, for oen thing. For another… Well, if the Gods are displeased with you now, you can only imagine how they would react to such a direct challenge. Maybe SOMEDAY, but for now…

“No,” you sigh. “Just to be… Independent. Sovereign. Free to serve our people—and our faith—as I see fit, without the bindings of a sworn holy knight.”

“…But with all the power of one?” he asks.

“Yes,” you confirm, for a LITTLE greed is good.

The Heretic is silent for a moment, bowing his head apologetically and retreating into his books. He skims the spines of them, traces the aps of scrolls, eyes following his spindly finger as he seeks the literature which will help you. Already, you feel hope rising like a fire in your chest, for he would not be looking so intently if he already knew it was impossible… And indeed, your suspicions seem to be proven correct.

“It can be done,” he says, producing from his collection a single, small book bound in hide. You tilt your head curiously as he flips it open, scanning the small print as he flips pages, before pressing a claw to a single passage. “Here.”

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>>5749942
You step forward, and crane your neck to read over his shoulder, and our lower-ranked companions do likewise from further back. The writing is archaic, the noble Draconic form of the True Script, but you have read some of this before. Still, it is a struggle to parse the meaning, until the Heretic helps you:

“What the Dark Gods offer us as the boons is… Not Unlike the pact magic of a demon. However, while a demon’s power is quite finite, and the boons it can offer are limited and require a rite of possession, a Dark Gods is a mightier and… Erm… Holier thing.”

You narrow your eyes. You understand that the Heretic regards demonology as key to understanding the nature of the Dark Gods Below and Beyond. The view is (naturally) heretical in traditionalist circles, for the Dark Gods are an entire separate, purer class of being from the Lesser Darknesses of the Hellish Realms. He now walks carefully that thin line between outright sacrilege and the fervent respect your kind regularly show your creators… But then, you ARE asking to undermine and bypass their will, to some extent.

“A Dark God’s holy champion is given not the whole power of a God, nor bound so tightly as to become their vessel—we mere mortal CANNOT bear such power, concentrated within our small bodies. Even a demigod would struggle! Rather, a small portion of the Dark God is placed within us—in YOU, Dragonborn—and your natural magical energies are attuned more closely to a realm beyond our own. You are made not a vessel, but a PORTAL of sorts, through which the energies of another plane can flow, slowly, at a rate commensurate to your own natural energies. As the portal grows within you, this can expand BEYOND your own energies, and you can channel and manipulate them to achieve specific effects. The spells and magical effects of a specific Dark God reflect their own will helping to ‘pre-shape’ the flow of energy into digestible, ready-to-utilize ‘packages’, even as the words and gestures serve like a release valve.”

“And in the absence of a Dark God’s approval, and assistance?” you ask, dreading the answer.

“The energy still flows, but it is unmanageable, wild, chaotic… For a mortal. Perhaps even for a demigod. Only a being of purest magic, native to realms beyond this one, can properly direct it. Luckily, the Dark Gods have not cursed you so. Rather, they seem to have simply allowed that portal to the Power Beyond to shrink, to begin to seal and heal.”

“But there is something I can do about this, you say? To rectify it, to maintain the flow?”

The Heretic nods slowly, confirming this, and taps the passage again, before explaining.

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>>5749943
“In ancient days, there were more Dark Gods—and Gods of Light—than there are today. More Gods, many Gods, all warring with one another. We know this. And those who fell… Were often consumed. By other Gods, yes… But also by mortals, when they fell on the material plane.”

Your eyes widen, and you hear Hale hiss in displeasure at this sacrilege, but you nod to the hesitating Heretic, and he recites the passage aloud:

“‘Those who ate of the Gods’ flesh, drank of their blood, who consumed their essence, a soul-beyond-soul. They became like the Gods, akin to the Gods’ own children, and some of them were worshiped like Gods, and lived eternally as the Gods live. They ceased proper worship, for they had no need to worship. Finally the Gods grew angry and jealous, and fell upon them, killed and ate them, and took back what was theirs by right.’”

“This does not sound like a wise course of action, then,” Halle notes.

And yet… It could work. But how, exactly, are you to eat a god’s flesh, drink a god’s blood, consume a god’s essence? You ask, of course… And to your surprise, you receive your answer.

“The heart of the Great Green Dragon, king of the ancient plains and forests,” the eerie Degenerate suggests. “The Serpent Priests kept it hidden, using it to make the new Dragonborn. To eat of it, drink of it, would perhaps be enough to begin the process…”

“…But what of the divine essence? They mean the soul, do they not?” the Archer asks, speaking for the first time in a while.

“Yes,” the heretic agrees. “You would need the spirit of a divine being—as pure as possible. A direct, immediate product of the Gods themselves.”

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>>5749945
You recall every such entity you know. The shoggoth-sword would be most obvious… But it is lost to you, in the damnable depths of the ocean, far beyond your reach and impossible to find while the Gods deny you <Guidance>.

The Nothic, knowledgeable teacher and spawn of the Baleful Beholder, who taught you to wield the shoggoth-sword as blade and armour alike, and to shape it in other ways… This being might be in your reach, even if its Ever-Insightful Master is not. And there was that rabbit-masked Tryue Fey, whom you defeated, held at swordpoint, and granted mercy and released… Is THAT being sufficient, you wonder? Then again, like the Nothic, you would need to find and ensnare it again.

But then there are three others, those whose whereabouts you know and whose resistance to such a plan would be more limited: the Red Dragon King’s ancient spirit, nestled uneasily within your heart; the soon-to-be-born child of yourself and Ekaterine (and, of course, child too of the Mother of Dragons). But can you truly justify consuming—potentially destroying—you most noble ancestor, or your own child? You suppose that if you could find the Queen Mother of the Greatworms—Glowie’s mother—this could ALSO prove an avenue to this forbidden power, but similar moral complications arise...

No option is guaranteed to succeed—not with the fragmentary knowledge at your disposal—but you sense potential here. There IS something to this, you know it! The only question is whether the risk,a nd the price, are worth it.

What should you do?
>It is a long-shot, but hunting a True Fey could bring you this power… Though you know already that it is a grave danger, and risks bringing the Gods of Light down upon you directly
>Seek the Heretic’s help in summoning, binding, and consuming the Nothic—your teacher in the dark arts—to steal its power
>Perform a dread rite to fully supplant and consume the soul of the Red Dragon King, denying him his eternal rest in exchange for assuming his full power
>Glowie Mother has never been but an ally-of-convenience to your kind, and while that MAY change in years to come, eliminating her as a threat and stealing her link to the Darkness Beyond is a sacrifice you can stand
>Your child with Ekaterine must die, that your dream can live… it is the surest path, the simplest and easiest, if the grimmest
>This is too dangerous and profane a path—you will find another way!
>You do not know what is best, and you must consult with other allies, and think on it…
>Write-in

>>5749946
>Perform a dread rite to fully supplant and consume the soul of the Red Dragon King, denying him his eternal rest in exchange for assuming his full power
Seems the most fitting, not like he hid the fact he would take us over if he could. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

>>5749946
>>Write-in
>You know of a greater demon Irinnile. Ask the Hertic whether devouring her would be enough to keep the portal of divine power open.

Is this a valid write op? Irinnile isn't a divinly made creature, but the hertic implied that " Only a being of purest magic, native to realms beyond this one, can properly direct it." Eating an extraplanar being of pure power would be sufficient to maintain ones self's as a font of unholy power.

>>5749981
[That... Is a valid write-in, yes.]

>>5749946
>It is a long-shot, but hunting a True Fey could bring you this power… Though you know already that it is a grave danger, and risks bringing the Gods of Light down upon you directly

Minimizes dark god anger

>>5750000
The light gods are just as powerful as the dark gods though.

>>5749946
>Glowie’s Mother has never been but an ally-of-convenience to your kind, and while that MAY change in years to come, eliminating her as a threat and stealing her link to the Darkness Beyond is a sacrifice you can stand

She’s not close to her mother - this is an easy sacrifice to make

>>5749981
+1

She won’t be unavenged.

>>5749082

>>5749030
>>5749013
I feel like becoming a rising new deity is doable right now. We eat the green dragon's heart to absorb the demi-god power in his flesh. We consume irr so we can manipulate flows of unholy power, gain stronger via worship and grant our followers pact powers like a greater demon can. And then after that we digest big red's demigod spirit. And then finally we have our citizen's in bloodrise start worshiping us.

>>5749946
>>Perform a dread rite to fully supplant and consume the soul of the Red Dragon King, denying him his eternal rest in exchange for assuming his full power
I'm pretty sure "we will become what we eat" apply there, so...

>>5750131
The red dragon isn't going anywhere, we can just keep him as a infinite mana battery or eat him later if we need the power up. By comparison irr will slip our grasp like the shoggoth sword did if we don't rightfully seize the power our mom helped her earn.

Also that dread rite sounds like necromancy and death despises those who do necromantic rituals.

>>5749981
+1. A good starting place, since she BAILED on us so hard.. I lost any pity for Iri a long time ago.

>>5750557
[Not to steer you, and by all means go for it, but that WAS because players voted for her to do so.]
>>5750131
>>5750050
>>5750032
>>5750000
>>5749981
>>5749959
[Likely going to miss an update today, as I have an unexpected visitor tonight! Sorry, team.]

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>>5750557
>>5750131
>>5750050
>>5750032
>>5750000
>>5749981
>>5749959
[Well, plans fell through. Good news for you folks! Bad news for Irinnile.]

>>5749946
>Perform a dread rite to fully supplant and consume the soul of the Red Dragon King, denying him his eternal rest in exchange for assuming his full power
I ain’t killing Iri- it’s the only thing left of Izzy besides us ffs

>>5750762
I swear I’m always late when anons vote on Iri’s shit- same thing happened on the vote where she ran away, Izzy would’ve stayed and fucking fought ya autists

>>5750557
If only I wasn’t traveling at the time, I would’ve voted that she stayed and fought like Izzy would’ve

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>>5750762
You wrack your brain for options. Hunting a True Fey like that rabbit-fairy you encountered in the woods would probably avoid angering eth Dark Gods too much, which is ideal, but it will be no easy hunt… And what if you become akin that which you devour? Will eating a Child of Light make you less attuned to the Darkness Beyond?

If you are what you eat, then surely the Red Dragon King would be the best option… And, conveniently, you know exactly where to find THAT quarry. A softer creature than you might feel sympathy, to deprive such an auspicious figure of his final rest, but then HE was never shy about his intent to possibly possess you, seizing your body and your life for his own. As the elves in Wevenore say: ‘they who live by the sword shall also die by the sword’. Here, neither ‘life’ nor ‘sword’ are entirely literal, but you still believe the meaning holds true. However, it will be no easy battle, now that his soul is no longer slumbering... And even a success would surely infuriate the God of Death, gatekeeper of your OWN eternal rest.

Glowie’s mother is an option. The Greatworm Queen is nested nearby—if she has not moved, following the collapse of the base here—and Glowie herself has shown only the most half-hearted reluctance to kill and consume her Queen Mother. Youa re confident you could best her… But is she not more useful alive, as an ally, at least for now? And how divine IS she, really? She was created with the Dark Goddess’ aid, but indirectly, by Fleshweavers of the Master Race.

“…What about a demon?” you ask. “A Greater Demon?”

All heads turn to you, and the Heretic traces a talon in an idle circle across the sigils on his desk as if channeling wisdom from beyond a she considers it. You, of course, have a specific demon in mind—or demoness, perhaps. Irinnile, ‘Auntie Iri’ in her own mind, is the target you envision. Oh, she ahs been an ally at times, but never one without complication. She may have been your mother’s lover—even helped to hew you from raw materials, and to shape you-but she has also repeatedly endangered and betrayed you, seeking to manipulate you or rob you of your powers for her own benefit. You and she had come to a place of understanding, even of mutual trust… But then, when the Paladins of the Holy order of Hawksong struck, she was nowhere to be found, instead fleeing the city without warning and never returning.

Cowardice! Impudence! Disloyalty! And she is still bound to that damnable Green Knight, Sir Heinrich Yosef, who KILLED your mother—bound by a pact and by some twisted and incomprehensible affection. While Irinnile still lives, Heinrich is protected from righteous retribution for this murder, and many more killings of the Master Race’s agents. It is a state of affairs that you have long resented, even if you could force yourself to tolerate it for expediency’s sake.

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>>5750783
Finally, the Heretic answers, explaining: “It will attune you to the Hellish Realms, you understand… Not the Darkness Beyond and Below. Your magic will be demonic.”

“What is the difference?” Halle asks, ignorantly.

“The lesser shadows which we call ‘demons’ and ‘devils’ are beneath the Dark Gods,” you quickly reply.

“…And yet a Demon Prince is a formidable force, indeed,” the Heretic notes. “In matter of fact, a demon is an immortal creature, and by their acquisition and absorption of mortal souls they become not UNLIKE a God… And if the Hellish Realms’ powers are different in source and in their particulars, there ARE broad similarities. If you could wield the powers of a Greater Demon, and feed upon mortal beings to maintain that power… You COULD effectively become an equal to a demigod.”

This is the power Hapo and Hako sought, you recognize, as the (false) Dragonwrought of Bloodrise. It filled you with shame and disgust at the time, but that was then, and this is now. Your priorities and outlook have changed, evolved. You will not TRUST in demons, not make DEALS with them… But to wield their power, to make yourself TRULY sovereign?

Yes, that you could do.

“We need only the heart of the Great Green Dragon of old then,” your Archer says, excited.

“And the demon,” the Infiltrator chimes in. “Just because the Dragonborn knows what power-source he seeks, does not mean we can just snatch a Greater Demon up as if plucking grubs from a bug-farm.”

“I know where the heart was last kept.”

You and your associates now turn once more the Heretic, who spoke up but quietly, and who recoils from so much focused attention.

“I—I was asked to study it, once… In ways which the Old Ways forbid, to apply my… Unique expertise, as you have come to me to request now for yourselves.”

“Where?” you demand.

He flinches, but shakes his head.

“I… I request recompense, Superior One.”

“Sanctuary and sustenance, then?” you ask. “Well, I already planned to invite you to stay in Bloodrise. IF that is all—”

“No,” he interrupts. “that is not… ALL.”

You stare at him, and the gangly, spindly creature shrinks in upon himself.

“I seek… Status. To not be forced to hide away, or to be made to suffer the… The disgust and condescension of the Pureblooded Ones. I wish to be made whole… Better than whole!”

What will you offer the Heretic, if he can help enable your ascent?
>A position of nobility and prestige in Bloodrise, to make him superior in status
>The services of your Fleshweaver Queen, to make him whole in body
>A bespoke Amulet of Disguise, to allow him to hide his stigma and go where he will
>His miserable life, if he delays you no longer with this insulting insubordination [Intimidation]
>Write-in

>>5750777
>>5750779
>>5750781
Bit late as you said, anon. However, in deference to the closeness of the vote, you will be given options to consider how you next approach this, after the heart is acquired.

>>5750786
>His miserable life, if he delays you no longer with this insulting insubordination [Intimidation]

>>5750788
I’m sure Catanon is thrilled by this latest development, but I thank you anyway. I find it darkly funny that consuming the Incubus would’ve been a better fit for us, considering our current position.

I’ll be happy to see the Green Knight again- I honestly expected more narrative development with him by now ngl, and it’s always been my desire to take Iri’s heart away from the Green Knight, though not so literally.

Also, would Foxy been considered a Fey creature, or her race something similar that’s help our power? I’m curious, considering the parallels here.

>>5750786

>The services of your Fleshweaver Queen, to make him whole in body
>A bespoke Amulet of Disguise, to allow him to hide his stigma and go where he will

Yeah, that’s fair.

>>5750777
>I ain’t killing Iri- it’s the only thing left of Izzy besides us ffs.

The real Irri is basically dead and gone anyway. When yosef killed our mom and destroyed irr's soul bond and then sealed the demon into his magic sword. It warped Irr's mind, personality and essence (thats why her color changed from red to green I'm guessing)

https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2023/5533885/#p5571054
>“Irinnile, what would happen if our bond was ever broken?”

>The demon freezes, her expression a transfixed mask of pure panic, until your mother titters quietly and clarifies:

>“By force. By another summoning and binding you with ritual. I do not plan to forsake you just yet, not when I still need you.”

>“A-and still love me?” the demon mewls.

>“And still love you,” your mother grudgingly attests, to your further scandalization.


>“We-ell… I guess I’d have ta’ serve the summoner. You know, rules are rules and all that shit. Nothin’ personal!”

>Your mother’s smooth brow furls, and the demon practically trips over herself to clarify:

>“But I wouldn’t WANT ta’! And you’d just, like, you know… get me back, right?”

>She slides her hands down your mother’s body, to cradle her waist, and nuzzles into her neck, voice a husky whisper.

>“You’d never let anyone take your favourite succ away from ya’, would you, Hotstuff?”

>“But you ARE a ‘succ’,” your mother presses, impersonal and merciless in her retort. “A succubus is shaped by desire. Bianchi and his books were clear, and the Chaplain clarified it. YOU admitted as much. Whatever your summoner desires… You reflect. Your personality is… SHAPED by your summoner. You want what he or she wants, and become a shadow of it.”

That's why Irr who used to hate it and gripe when ever Izzy got too serious. Considers Yosef's stoic obsessed revenge quest to be the hottest thing in the world. It's why irr thinks she and yosef are star crossed lovers even though Yosef seems to loathe her and was actively starving her when we found them. As of right now she is just Yosef's delusional yandere rapist girlfriends who happens to have some of old irr's memory's.

>>5750801
Are you really going to shit on our only lead

>>5750786
>The services of your Fleshweaver Queen, to make him whole in body
>A bespoke Amulet of Disguise, to allow him to hide his stigma and go where he will

Fine with either, or both

>>5750804
>The real Irri is basically dead and gone anyway. When yosef killed our mom and destroyed irr's soul bond and then sealed the demon into his magic sword. It warped Irr's mind, personality and essence (thats why her color changed from red to green I'm guessing)
Yea, I definitely don’t like GreenIri- I always found it weird and deeply insulting that she fell in love with Izzy’s killer to the point of saving his life, at the expense of her freedom. Still do, in fact- and I doubt that’ll change, even if RQM decides to monologue on how this buzzard narrative/character decision totally makes sense.

>>5750805
It ain’t our only lead- there’s a shitton of other ways to go about this, including an adventure through Hell (or becoming one with Sloggy-Sword and Moonking Sword), and killing one of the last major connections to Izzy was always going to be a difficult sell to me.

>>5750786
>>A bespoke Amulet of Disguise, to allow him to hide his stigma and go where he will

>A position of nobility and prestige in Bloodrise, to make him superior in status.

He is skilled enough and knowledgeable enough to be worthy of it. Also novice has the plague victims and soil fertilization issue to deal with, we shouldn't be giving her even more work.

>>5750805
Unless you mean intimidating the Hectic- we haven’t chosen an evil/Dark Lord action in a while now, and that just the reason why I chose it- we are supposed to be playing a bad guy here, not this morally grey shit that anons are trying to switch to.

>>5750807
>and killing one of the last major connections to Izzy was always going to be a difficult sell to me.

We will be eating her and taking back all the hard work Izzy did to make her a greater demon into ourselves. This is the only way to wash away how hard Yosef cuckholded and robbed our mom. Since we cannot kill him as long as Irr lives due to the oath we made (irr would also be willing to die to protect him anyway.)

>>5750811
I disagree- the only way to wash away the cuckolding is to steal her back and reclaim her heart (not literally). I could care less about the direct power or essence aspect- I want her soul (or character essence, whatever the demon terminology is) intact- a bit like Big Red desu.

>>5750801
>fox-folk
[They are mortal beings, albeit with fey origins. Not demigod-tier by any means, however, outside of perhaps a few exceptional members of their species.]

>>5750807
>RQM monologuing
[>>5750804 summarized it quite well, honestly, though how much of Irinnile's current persona and tastes reflect pact-feedback and how much reflect two decades of personality evolution (versus the couple years she spent with 'Izzy/Lisspy' ) is up to interpretation. Even Irinnile probably doesn't know for sure.]

>>5750809
That just sounds like evil for evil’s sake. And doesn’t help us that much.

A dark lord shouldn’t have to watch his back more than he really needs to because he antagonizes people more than he really should. Why bother intimidating him when material rewards work just fine? Less chance of him backstabbing us that way, too.

>>5750820
Even if I ignore how deeply insulting it is that Izzy was cuckolded outta True Love twice, it still doesn’t make narrative sense- like, as an asspull to keep the rival Green Knight alive and active, I could maybe swallow and tolerate, but he’s been a nonentity for the majority of the quest besides some epic foreshadowing and the Duel of the Fates. It’s just a curious creative decision, and not one of your better ones, I’m forced to admit.

>>5750823
Reinforcing our authority over him without materialistic expectations is not just useful Dark Lord behavior, it’s fucking Reptilian- he’d be used to taking orders and not backstabbing his superiors. Besides, granting him his wish as a unexpected reward after we’re successful is arguably a better play- it doesn’t delegate our authority away by bargaining, it reenforces our authority, rewards him for his loyalty and results with his lack of materialistic gain, and he’d be blown away by being rewarded after trying to extract a concession from us.

But mainly, intimidating uppity subordinates is what Dark Lords do- not in cartoonishly evil ways, but pragmatic and practical ways. The Novice would agree, I bet.

Also, would like to splice our genes with Mewtwo Telepathic DNA and go back to meditating with the Moonsword to be Moonking- just go ham with it. Hell, I wouldn’t mind getting Sloggy back from that damn puddle.

>>5750831
[I don't really go into quests trying to construct a specific narrative, so much as just setting up situations I think will raise interesting questions, pose challenges, or help shape the characters and world. Choices and rolls the players made helped shape how the Green Knight and Irinnile's roles played out, which was different than I expected, but I wasn't going to try to force things to follow my original expectations.]

[As for Iri herself, the possibility of Irinnile being dangerous and unreliable by her very nature, that was foreshadowed as far back as her summoning, and I tried to emphasize that repeatedly in RIQ and this quest. If it didn't make sense to you or land for you, perhaps I did so poorly. I'll try to do better in the future. This will be the last I comment on the matter for now, though.]

>>5750831
>Besides, granting him his wish as a unexpected reward after we’re successful is arguably a better play- it doesn’t delegate our authority away by bargaining, it reenforces our authority, rewards him for his loyalty and results with his lack of materialistic gain, and he’d be blown away by being rewarded after trying to extract a concession from us.

You don’t know that. What if he betrays us and sabotages our plan before it comes to fruition?

>he’d be used to taking orders and not backstabbing his superiors.
The situation has changed. His superiors aren’t present anymore. Right now, all we got is our word, and he holds the key.

>>5750836
>I don't really go into quests trying to construct a specific narrative, so much as just setting up situations I think will raise interesting questions, pose challenges, or help shape the characters and world
Yea, the pulp-fiction vibe I coined, but at least some thought should be reserved for how the veteran playerbase will view the ‘interesting questions’- it struck a core in a very unpleasant way, though that’s probably just me.
>As for Iri herself, the possibility of Irinnile being dangerous and unreliable by her very nature
There’s a difference between dangerous and unreliable, and disloyal to True Love because of abusive Stockholm Syndrome. Like, come on, would Iri really come to love the man who killed her lover and starved/abused her for decades on end? I don’t buy it, even if her personality is shifty and moldable by nature.

I’ll rest on the matter for now as well, I don’t want to ruin your night over a largely successful narrative run in the quest.

>>5750838
>You don’t know that. What if he betrays us and sabotages our plan before it comes to fruition?
Then it’ll be exciting- I’m less worried about the results and more focused on the journey.
>The situation has changed.
Yes- we’re his highest authority now, not the priesthood that’s given him tounle to no end.

>>5750863
>Then it’ll be exciting
You are literally voting to be retarded for content

What the fuck happened to>>5750831? This shit is basically asspull, too. Theral gets retarded not because he was emotional or vulnerable but because someone arbitrarily decides to vote for shit like this

>>5750864
>You are literally voting to be retarded for content
Not really? I’m voting for what I feel is appropriately evil, not cartoonishly evil. Like, I expect the roll to either succeed (with Fearsome Presence bonus), or fail and us ultimately giving him what he wants. Like, I’m not being super unreasonable here.

>>5750866
You could not betray his trust to begin with

>>5750871
We met the guy once or twice- I’d hardly call it a trusting relationship. He ain’t Olu or Glowie.

>>5750786
>A position of nobility and prestige in Bloodrise, to make him superior in status
>A bespoke Amulet of Disguise, to allow him to hide his stigma and go where he will

>>5750786
>A position of nobility and prestige in Bloodrise, to make him superior in status
>The services of your Fleshweaver Queen, to make him whole in body or reshape him in any way he wants

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>>5750947
>>5750878
>>5750808
>>5750806
>>5750803
>>5750801
[Locked and writing, but I'm dining with friends tonight so the update may or may not get completed before I head out.]

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>>5751463
There are many things you can offer a deformed outcast like this and, champion of hybrids and social lesser that you have become, you honestly have no real aversion to any of them. Still, you are a Reptilian of the Master race, and as such you are cognizant of the costs-authority, respect—which come with offering too much at once, or for too little. It could compromise the ‘strong hand’ which your burgeoning world order requires. And besides, your Serpent Queen is busy already, fixing your food problems and attending to the abortive mutagenic plague which the Serpent Priests attempted to set in motion. You do not wish to distract her overmuch.

Maybe… A small thin?

“Status and be earned, and gifted, in time,” you allow with a tone of grave uncertainty. “Perhaps my mate could even make you whole—she who you met before. Repair the damaged of your ill-fated conception and birth.”

This excites him, but you hold up a hand to halt his excitement.

“IN TIME,” you remind him, sternly. “First… Do this thing for me, prove yourself trustworthy and loyal, and earn yourself respite. An Amulet of Disguise—bespoke, made to your requirements, that you may go where you will and live as you’d like. I will free you from the shackles of stigma and deformity… For a price.”

The Heretic taps his claws upon the desk and hisses with a low gurgle, considering the offer… But his position is weak, and you both know it. You could just as easily torture him for information, or kill him and scour the likely regions of the underdark on your own—it cannot be far, after all, to be of use in this forward base.

“As you say, Superior One,” he relents. “I accept.”

The Heretic travels with a limp as he leads you, and pauses or steps back affrighted from any unfamiliar sight or sound. Your progress is, thus, rather slow going. It is perhaps inevitable, when you cosndier how many decades this Outcast One must have lived in just his small room.

“We will come back, yes?” he asks repeatedly. “To… Collect my affects, my researches?”

“The valuable ones, yes,” you assure him. “Leave anything you do not need.”

“I will need all of it,” he asserts, nervously thumping his truncated, crooked tail upon his leg in a nervous tic as he glances back—yet again—in the direction of his long-time habitation. “It must be put back just as it was, JUST as it was, in the new realms…”

You say nothing, growing irritated even as you pity him.

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>>5751488
Still, he leads you where you need—though you must martial the might of the Great Green Dragonborn and his young charges to do so, clearing away rubble and reopening tunnels.

“Why do we not just use your earth magic?” the Infiltrator, Halle, asks.

In truth, the reason is simple: your mana is no longer the nigh-infinite well that it once was… Or, rather, it is, but it is a poisoned well, like those your race infected in Hawksong. The Red Dragon King’s stolen soul is no longer asleep, not entirely. Every time your each down into your ancestor’s energies, you risk rousing him further, and facing a contest of dominance for your mind and body. Until you have the mystical strength to master him once more, you would rather not chance it.

The Green Dragonborn cannot follow you once the tunnel is cleared, for the carved passages beyond are too narrow. They are sturdy with the craftsmanship of the ennobled ancients, and far from the path of the Great One’s great escape and thus uncollapsed, but they were not made for twenty-foot-tall godkings.

“I will return soon,” you assure him.

However, as you proceed into the tunnels, your <Danger Sense> thrums. You may presently lack the ability to seek greater forms of <Guidance>--such as peering into the future, or spying upon probabilities related to distant travels—but your middle command of divination magic is not COMPLETELY gone for your severed connection to the Gods Below and Beyond.

“The heart is attended,” you surmise aloud, drawing your companions’ attention. “There are guardians.”

What will you do?
>Go in alone, and attempt diplomacy
>Go in quiet, with your subtler party members, and attempt assassination or extraction
>Go in loud—bring the Red Dragonborn, and ambush your ambushers preemptively
>Write-in

>>5751493
>Go in quiet, with your subtler party members, and attempt assassination or extraction
Numbers arent on our side

>>5751536

>>5750803

>>5751493
>Write-in.
>>Go in loud— Assume your dragonshape, bring the Red Dragonborn and cow your foes with your fearsome presence.

If the guards of the heart were actual people, they probably would have left their post after the base collapse.

The enemies we are sensing are probably pit beast's made via the serpent priest's flesh crafting skills, So we might be able to scare them into submission.

>>5751493
>Go in quiet, with your subtler party members, and attempt assassination or extraction

>>5751493
>Go in quiet, with your subtler party members, and attempt assassination or extraction

>>5751542
supportin' this line of thought

>>5751542
Sure, what the hell. +1

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>>5751536
>>5751542
>>5751545
>>5751579
>>5751653
>>5751925
[Alright, here we go! Writing,]

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Rolled 13, 8, 6, 8 = 35 (4d20)

>>5752102
You double back slightly as the seed of dreadful anticipation blossoms into a theory: no Serpent Priest of the College of Fleshweavers would remain in this forsaken place once the base collapsed. They would have escaped by now, made contact with other Reptilians, even extracted the heart and made your mission fruitless. If something remains here I is one of their creations. As such, you reason that entering full force—including those among your rambunctious Dragonborn brethren who can fit—is best. You can put the fear of a <Fearsome Presence> into whatever you run into, or overrun it with numbers.

What you find, however, is not what you expect.

You advance down the tunnel without caution, for no amount of stealth on the part of your or your Infiltrator-trained allies will do much to muffle the enthusiasm of the Red Dragonborn hatchlings. You draw your blade and brace yourself with magically-tautened muscles ready to spring—to evade, to attack, to threaten violence or to enact it. What you DON’T expect, however, is for the walls to shift in shape, becoming smoother, blockier, more geometric—newer, cleaner, more cubist.

You CERTAINLY don’t expect them to suddenly shift and rearrange, with great slabs and blocks sliding down to cut and cordon off you and your allies or—for those unlucky enough to fail to evade them, to CRUSH them!

[Athleticism roll, DC 10 thanks to your <Danger Sense>]

>>5752106
>13
You dodge—though narrowly, such is the shiftness and unpredictable, rapid adaptation of the blocks to your movement. Even with your athletic ability and divination-augmented directional sense, you are nearly pinned between two walls as they come together with a soft grinding sound, interlocking to form a new shape—a great block which hurtles towards you, sliding along the ground. You are reminded of the earth elemental monsters which doomed your priestly masters’ favoured replacement for you, which killed Ivno the Kobold and nearly spelled the doom of your entire party. These are something ELSE, though—less alive even than the rock-monsters of the deep darkness, a living labyrinth of stone forming and reforming around you.

You roar a command to your followers—to the Archer, Hawksong Infiltrator, and the Red Dragonborn, and the physically-feeble Heretic—telling them to step backwards. As they do, the strange stone trap seems to ignore them, sparing them an ugly and untimely demise. You leap again, evading another vice-like assault by the surrounding stones, and grimace as your tail-spade just barely avoids being further flattened and pinched off like so much clay.

You have much of your magic—even without the presently-risky prospect of dipping into the Red Dragon King’s reserves. It Is a finite resource, though, and you suspect even the full might of your <Dragonshape> will be denied to you—IF you can evade the lethal obstacle course to return to the safety of the way you came and assume the form.

What will you do?
>Press on alone—have the others wait, while you find whoever or whatever is working this magic
>Use your earth magic—mana be damned—to create a safe passage for your party to follow you
>Fall back—dodge through the murderous mountain-passage to where your allies wait, assume <Dragonshape>, and then return to the fray
>Lead your friends and family through the lethal labyrinth and onward—through it risks their injury or worse if they fail [specify if you leave anyone behind]
>Write-in

>>5752114
>Press on alone—have the others wait, while you find whoever or whatever is working this magic

It’s one thing to treat and carry one injured person. Another if there’s three.

>>5752114
>>Press on alone—have the others wait, while you find whoever or whatever is working this magic.
+
>Write-in
> Draw your Kopesh blade, and cut into a moving block. To test if it's ability to nullify enchantments and break magic spells, can halt some of these moving wall's

[We'll wait another couple hours to tally and write.]

>>5752143
Supportin'

>>5752143
Sure, +1.

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Rolled 2, 14, 11, 16 = 43 (4d20)

>>5752533
>>5752523
>>5752143
>>5752126
“Stay back!” you command the others.

“But—” begins the Archer, concern upon his face.

“I will return when… Whatever this is… has been dealt with,” you insist.

He does not argue further, nor do any of the others. For all their ferocity, the battering which even that brief entanglement with the mechanisms gave the Red Dragonborn has clearly left them startled, and they shrink back, hissing and growling in their preverbal fashion. The Hawksong Infiltrator and Heretic, more mercenary allies, are eve happier to hang back and watch.

For your part, you are already trying to work out a winning strategy. You step forward tentatively, leaping back when a squared stone column from above meets one from below. With your Serpent khopesh in hand, you chop at the moving masonry… But to no avail. Your blade may be magic—and have the ability to negate normal magical protections—but it is still just a sword in other regards. You do little more than chip a sliver of stone and, fearful of dulling your prized weapon with additional attempts to cut apart the rock, you relent.

…At least the little ship of stone isn’t moving?

With this matter left unfortunately unsettled, and the true nature of this enemy still unknown, you can do little more than press on. Once more, you hurl yourself down the tunnel, doing everything in your power to avoid an ignoble death in this place.

[DC 14 to make it through uninjured without divination, 9 to make it through at the expense of some magical energy]

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>>5752566
>>5752566
>16
The lifestyle of a Knight Ascendant is one of daily physical and mental exercise, by divine mandate, and you have never been one to shirk it. Even without the limit-defying divine assistance of your patron, you are a skilled athlete and acrobat, and more than a match for these stones now that you recognize which parts are wont to move in which ways, and at what speed and angel. You need not even dip into your own magical reserves any further to leap, dodge, dive, and barrel through the passage… Though it DOES leave you a little winded, and you are doubtful many of your allies could manage to replicate the feat.

You glance back at them once, and then carry on, alone.

Your khopesh is still at the ready when you enter the fateful chamber of the Fleshweavers’ Dragonborn Project—that which perfected the Great One’s body, birthed the Red Dragonborn and—albeit indirectly—led to your own creation as a sort of mundane imitation of those draconic demigods.

It is in shambles.

The place was once a ritual chamber of highest magic and alchemy, that much you can tell. It doesn’t look to have been touched by the rampaging escape of your brethren, either. Instead, the smashed apparatuses, spilled fluids, shattered pots and torn, burnt, and hastily scribbled over notes and symbols attest to a more purposeful destruction…

And there are the perpetrators.

Three Serpent Priests, cloaked in the red-trimmed and black-hooded robes of senior members of their order, stare bug-eyed in your direction. Two are in the process of collecting—for destruction, or to hide them away?—scroll-cases enough to fill their arms. The third is clutching something in his claws—a round ball of some sort, seemingly hewn from tone, with flattened sides bearing symbols. Between them is a massive statue, chipped and battered but unmistakably hewn in the familiar shape of one of the stout and bearded dwarf-folk… Which seems to be in the process of picking up a large, ornate canopic jar, with the unmistakable symbol of a three-chambered heart on the side.

The heart of the Great Green Dragon!

What will you do?
>Shout at them to stop their unholy activities, and demand to know what they think they’re doing [Intimidate]
>Lay down your weapon and attempt to negotiate, assuring them that you’re all on the same side [Diplomacy]
>Attack! These fools are destroying your race’s legacy, and your own destiny! You must stop them! [specify a method of attack, items or spells used, etc.]
>Save the jar! You can take a hit or two—nothing you cannot have healed, you hope—if it means ensuring the safety of the jar [Specify a method if you have anything more complex than diving in and grabbing the canopic jar in mind]
>Write-in

>>5752575
>Shout at them to stop their unholy activities, and demand to know what they think they’re doing [Intimidate]
>Save the jar! You can take a hit or two—nothing you cannot have healed, you hope—if it means ensuring the safety of the jar
Mom fuckin’ stole that shit- that DNA was supposed to be ours!

>>5752589
+1

>>5752575
>Shout at them to stop their unholy activities, and demand to know what they think they’re doing [Intimidate]

>>5752575
>Shout at them to stop their unholy activities, and demand to know what they think they’re doing [Intimidate]

They will stop this or we will destroy them

Obedience means continued life at a position of privilege in the new Fleshweavering Circle in Bloodrise

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Rolled 7, 8, 12 = 27 (3d20)

>>5752589
>>5752664
>>5752713
>>5752773
Your eyes remain fixed upon the dragon-heart sigil for a moment, fury and fear rising up in your heart. This is your mother’s gift to you, down across decades and lifetimes, just as much as your draconic face or your privilege to parley with the Dark Gods. How DARE these false priests of a failed order try to deny you—and ALL your people—this legacy?!

“STOP!” you command, though unfortunately without the will-withering authority of the <Voice of the Metatron>, which would just now be so very useful. “Surrender the heart, or be DESTROYED, in the name of the Copper Dragon King of Bloodrise!

[DC 14 and a bonus die for your Reptilian Empathy, though this too has become weaker as a result of your decisions last thread which curbed your spirit towards humanity.]

>>5752575
>Shout at them to stop their unholy activities, and demand to know what they think they’re doing [Intimidate]

Walk away.

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Rolled 1, 10, 20, 6 = 37 (4d20)

>>5752863
>>5752866
>12
Rather than react as you might have hoped, though, these loyalist Holy Ones simply speed up their efforts to destroy that which belongs, by right and by fate, to you and yours. The priest holding the strange polyhedron holds it aloft and chants words in a guttural tongue—a mammalian tongue, superficially at least resembling that of Bloodrise’s conquered dwarven population—and the overlarge dwarven effigy lifts the canopic jar containing the dragon’s heart aloft, preparing to smash it.

“NO!”

You lunge forwards to stop this act of sacrilegious sabotage, but the other two priests move into place to stop you. They hiss syllables in a mxi of Draconic old-speak and the True Speech more familiar to you, and trace feet and tails in dance-like step, waving their hands in masterful execution of biological magecraft. Their fell magic slows your approach, knotted and spraining muscles and causing blood vessels to clot or to burst, and nerves to sizzle with agony just beneath your skin. You recall how your Serpent priestess—nee Novice Fleshweaver—hurled imprecise and weak bolts of flesh-searing magic in battle, or hurled potions, and you begin to understand why she was not called Initiate or Mistress in spite of her brilliant mind.

Still, you are no weak-willed creature, to be stopped by pain. You steel yourself, and advance…

[Athleticism to save the jar and the heart inside, DC 16 due to the excruciating pain of the Fleshweavers' combat arts]

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>>5752872
Will only goes so far, alas. You feel tendons tear and hear joints pop as your own body works against your mind, to forestall or stop your purposeful advance. The Fleshweavers approach you clawed hands reaching out to touch you, and you know from your intimate knowledge of your Beloved One’s own healing arts that their touch will bring a true and lasting doom…

>1

…And yet you cannot move. You clench your jaw, gnashing your teeth even as it tries to lock, and strain to breath even as your throat works to asphyxiate you. You feel your khopesh fall from your hand, even as you struggle to swing it. In desperation, you lift your arm still higher, stretching your empty claws out, and out, towards the golem and the jar. The magically-animated statue lifts it high, and brings it down…

>20

…Just as you manage to clench your fist and summon forth the powers of the ice elemental trapped within your <Ring of Elemental Command>. A beam of heat-sapping magical energy lances forth, and winter winds buffet all of you cold-blooded males as the canopic jar is struck, blasted against the wall, and flash-frozen in place. The Fleshweavers all turn and stare, dumbfounded, before the one who controls the golem frantically begins sputtering commands in broken maybe-dwarftongue, and his rocky minion begins trying to pull it free.

It is no use, however, and the surprise of your manoeuvre provides ample distraction for your assailants, allowing you to regain feeling and function in your limbs. You take a deep, steadying breath, and then you are upon the loyalists to the Old Ways.

>Cook them alive with dragonfire—which the heart shall surely survive, given its provenance
>Slay the golem-commander, and seize his strange relic, then see how brave and loyal these Holy Ones are
>Attempt to use <Earth Tremor> to shake the golem apart, and end its threat forever
>Smash the jar, size the heart, and use a <Dazzle> to cover your daring escape
>Give them one last chance to surrender [Intimidate, DC 12]
>Write-in

>>5752885
>Smash the jar, size the heart, and use a <Dazzle> to cover your daring escape

We certainly can’t afford the fleshweavers to touch us

>>5752885
>Cook them alive with dragonfire—which the heart shall surely survive, given its provenance.

The priest's will use inflict wounds on us to harm our internal organs, and flesh weaving to lock us in place if we don't kill them first.

>>5752885
>Give them one last chance to surrender [Intimidate, DC 12]
Let's not kill our own people. If this doesn't win I'll back
>Smash the jar, size the heart, and use a <Dazzle> to cover your daring escape
as a second choice.

>>5752885
>Give them one last chance to surrender [Intimidate, DC 12]
>Slay the golem-commander, and seize his strange relic, then see how brave and loyal these Holy Ones are
Fuck these guys

>>5752885
>Slay the golem-commander, and seize his strange relic, then see how brave and loyal these Holy Ones are

They are nothing without him

I don’t want us to lose their eons of flesh weaving knowledge

>>5752885
>Slay the golem-commander, and seize his strange relic, then see how brave and loyal these Holy Ones are.

Changing my vote to this, the golem might survive fire breath. But if we seize control over it the flesh weavers won't be able to easily pry the heart out of the ice. And the golem won't be affected by their mentalism or wound infliction either.

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Rolled 15, 3, 14, 1, 15 = 48 (5d20)

>>5752896
>>5752961
>>5752981
>>5753043
>>5753078
>>5753080
You don’t relish the idea of killing your own—your TRUE people, the MASTER Race—even as you have come to expand your definition of personhood to encompass others. To turn against the Serpent Priesthood is one thing, but to SLAY Serpent priests is another. Still, you see no other way forward without at least SOME maiming or killing, and there is at least ONE obvious target for your wrath: the Serpent Priest holding the strange, dwarvencraft relic. You draw your secondary blade and, even as the Holy ne in question desperately directs his golem to do his bidding and stymie your efforts by destroying the Great Green Dragon’s heart, you lunge for the kill.

“DO it!” the Serpent priest demands of his stolen supplicant.

“I do not think so,” you cooly interject, staggering forwards and bringing your moon-blade down in a killing arc.

[With a lack of specific attack method, you default to your best stat. DC 14.]

Rolled 1, 10, 4 = 15 (3d20)

>>5753098
>1

The dwarven golem reacts with remarkable speed as the Serpent Priest in control of it sees you coming—you HAVE been slowed by his fellows’ fell magicks after all—and it abandons its pursuit to swing a massive, roughhewn fist towards you. The impact would surely pulp your relatively-feeble flesh, but you do not give it an opportunity. The golem is slow, after all, and you are as swift as a beam of moonlight—if only at great pains, do to the injuries already inflicted.

>15

The golem-commander’s hands are removed in a single swift motion. As the twenty-sided stone is removed from his control—along with his extremities—the golem stops abruptly, its deadly haymaker inches from your respected countenance. You spare the earthenware assailant a single glance, and then turn back to the Serpent Priest. Only now does he register his newly-amputated status, and his brian seems to consciously register the associated pain only AFTER he sees his removed forearms hit the ground. He opens his mouth to scream…

>15

…But you give him no opportunity to do so. He is no worthy foe—not once you close distance to melee—and you do not treat him as such. Instead, you, allow his bisected body to splatter in a bloody mess amongst the other spilled fluids of his order’s research, and you plant you boot upon his remains and clean your moonlight-white sword with a scything arc before sheathing it. You glance back at the now-still golem for a moment, and then down at the control-stone which seemingly animates it… And finally, you turn you withering gaze to the two remaining Holy Ones.

“Have you reconsidered your position?” you inquire innocently.

[Intimidate, DC 11]

>>5753100
>1
The two Serpent Priests regard you with terror, but without respect. They see you not as a conquering her—which you ARE, obviously—but with the same understanding with which a loyalist of the Gods of Light might regard you. To them, you are as foreign, as ‘evil’, and antithetical.

“Burn in Hell!” one shrieks, and drops his scroll-cases.

“Worse,” spits the other, “let the Gods in Heaven find you, and make of you what they will!”

Both begin to move their hands in arcane patterns, to adjust their stances. You recognize the imminent onslaught and—on instinct, almost without thinking—you react to preserve yourself and prevent further suffering. You exhale flame…

And the Serpent Priests, and the research on and around their persons, and all else that they might offer your newborn empire, are lost forever.

You realize what you have done too late, and a part of you regrets the waste. These loyalists—stubborn and dedicated to your enemies as they were—might well be the best and most knowledgeable practitioners of their art. Their researches, now smoldering in crumpled, imploded scroll-cases, represent decades of research into eugenics, biological manipulation, and all that remains of the secret of creating Dragonborn. The Great One and the Red Dragonborn may breed, likely with diminishing returns, but never again will the Master Race produce a ‘True Dragonborn’ of demigodly proportions…

Except, now that you have the heart, maybe YOU.

With a slow exhalation of your remaining flame, you defrost the base of the canopic jar containing the heart, and remove it from the wall. You open the jar’s lid for moment, just long enough to regard the shriveled organ within—still, even after all this time and being used to make or modify nearly a done organisms, easily the size of a halfling or dwarf. You replace the lid and take it with you. You also snatch up the queer control-stone, though you lack the dwarven or mystical knowledge needed to direct the golem, and must abandon it.

At least the hallways fails to attack you as you return to your allies, no longer directed by that same stone.

“What happened?” your Archer asks.

“I won,” you say simply, though it is a hollow victory, and present him the jar to carry.

“Now what?” The Hawksong Infiltrator asks.

“Now,” the Heretic answers, “we need only the last ingredient and we may perform the rite…”

Ah, yes, the Succubus. Having destroyed knowledgeable, powerful allies to secure the dragon’s heart, you need the essence of an immortal being to complete the ritual which will make you whole once more: that of ANOTHER ally, albeit a flighty one.

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>>5753112
You take a moment to remember Irinnile the Succubus, in her positive and negative aspects.

She loved your mother, you know, and your mother loved her. It was the ONLY lasting love which your mother shared, and which her mission did not cost her… Until your maternal progenitor was slain, and that love was lost, replaced by a twisted bond with the murderer.

Still, she helped to make you. Together, you betrayed the Green Knight—your mother’s killer—and made of him a political plaything and sexual accessory. Irinnile—‘Hot Auntie Iri’—then went on to be instrumental in your seduction of Ekaterine and the corruption of her royal family. When you set upon Chase and Deepvein—the ill-fated adventurers—Irinnile defeated their Elven Sage companion and resecured the rebellious Prince Rufos. Oh, she’d betrayed your trust once or twice, but then that is the well-known nature of demons and devils, and at least she never cut and run…

Until she did.

You have no idea where she is now. When the Paladins of Hawksong’s Holy Order freed Rufos in your absence, Irinnile abandoned her post. She took the Elven Sage Nenaias and the green Knight Heinrich Yosef, and he abandoned the field for parts unknown. This, more than anything else, ahs em bittered you…


And now, it is too late to make nice.

The only question is who will seek her out, to capture her… And end her.

What is your plan?
>Return to Bloodrise with the heart, and reunite with the Serpent Queen and Worm Queen
>Return to Hawksong, to see to Ekaterine and your child and newest kingdm
>Hunt down the Succubus yourself
>Write-in
[Wherever you go, please specify if you bring your followers or dispatch them elsewhere, with other duties. These include the Green Dragon, nine Red Dragonborn, Halle, Olu, and the Heretic.]

>>5753114
>>Return to Bloodrise with the heart, and reunite with the Serpent Queen and Worm Queen

Bloodrise is where all our skilled companion's are. The dragonblooded demonologist, The lancer, the thief, the dogbold junior novice hunting hound and the famous monster hunter.

Right now we only have oul to help us with tracking, and just the heretic alone to try to suppress Irinnile. If we sought her out right now we would be doing it unprepared and half cocked.

Also we should try to see if the novice can inject and flesh weave some blood samples from big green and the red dragonborn. Into our heir to further draconicify him. And we need to drop off the dragonborn anyway since I doubt they will be very useful in a hunting scenario since irinnile is good at stealth and they are too big and obvious.

>>5753114
>Return to Bloodrise with the heart, and reunite with the Serpent Queen and Worm Queen

We’re in no shape to go after her now. No lead either.

>>5753114
>Return to Bloodrise with the heart, and reunite with the Serpent Queen and Worm Queen

>Use the dragon soul instead of the succubus - its rousing makes it a liability more than an asset

>>5753124
>>5753129
>>5753135
[TO be clear, so you wish to take your whole party to Bloodrise for now?]

>>5753287
Yeah

>>5753124
>>5753129
>>5753135
>>5753307
[Then I'm gonna' watch the new episode of My Adventrues with Superman, then start writing if no more votes come in to change things.]

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>>5753124
>>5753129
>>5753135
>>5753307
As much as you wish to secure your power and your destiny, you are no impulsive fool. Even once you and your compatriots have regrouped with the great One, you know your retinue here is no worthy hunting party… Or certainly not a STELATHY one. If you were to scour the countryside with such a party—a frail scholar, a pair of Infiltrators with no particular tracking skills or demonological knowledge, and ten VERY visible and only partially-controllable Dragonborn—you would only succeed in scaring your quarry away long before you found the shapeshifting ‘Greater Succubus’.

“It is time,” you tell the Green Dragonborn instead. “We are going home.”

An overland route is unthinkable, unless you wish to advertise to all the nations of the surface-world that the terrifying heir to the Great Green Dragon is roosting in your mountains. Which… Well, maybe SOMEday, but not today. You have enough on your plate without reigniting the flames of Paladin wrath, and burning through all your diplomatic goodwill. You are not going to be there when your Human Queen is crowned for the second time, nor when your shred heir is born. The LEAST you can do is avoid triggering yet another crisis so early in her reign.

Journeying through the Underdark is slow going, eve following the familiar routes. Partly, this is because you must stop frequently to hunt, and hunting is never easy in the underdark. Your provisions are WOEFULLY insufficient for a coterie like yours, though. Where does one even find the meat to feed over a dozen obligate carnivores in such barren wastes, let alone those the size of the growing Red Dragonborn or your massive Big Brother?! And then there is the limping Heretic, the long-coddled females of your brother’s harem, and the almost-as-unathletic one called Halle.

“Pardon me,” she snaps, sounding not-at-all-apologetic, “for focusing upon the exercises and duties required for my ASSIGNED position!”

“Bettering yourself in all aspects is an important part of serving the Grand Design,” you pronounce, though in truth this slower pace is also much easier on your Fleshweaver-fatigued body, still healing from their cruel manipulations of your biology.

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>>5753367
Each evening, you regard the hart—saddled in stolen fabrics to prevent it oozing its precious fluids onto the floor. More than shriveled, it looks… Eaten-away, as if my fungus or rot, and yet in a much cleaner fashion. It smells of preservatives, and strange herbs, and tingles with magic. The Dark Gods still fail to answer your prayers and, in their absence, THIS becomes your answer. Soon, you will be home with your OWN Fleshweaver—your Serpent Queen—and you will decode the mysterious of this ancient heart, and never again will any God, demon, or mortal stand between you and what YOUR heart tells you is right for this world and its people!

It takes the better part of two-and-a-half weeks to reach the by-now familiar outcroppings where your dark-adjusted eyes can STILL make out the traces of the explosion and rockfall which introduced you to the Drow of Wevenore—the black-skinned, big-rearing, androgynous subterranean partisans who were your first allies among this world’s myriad other peoples. You still hold a fondness for their peculiar in YOUR dragon heart… But it is nothing like the fondness in Oluwadamilare’s heart, which seems to pour from his eyes in a glimmer of longing.

You recognize it well, as you follow his eyes into deeper darkness, where his Beloved One dwells. It is the same feeling YOU feel, when you think of Sseztlussth, and of the Worm Queen Glowie, and of your children. You have been gone too long…

Your stomach rumbles for food, though, such that even ghoul-flesh would suffice! Nor would you turn down the charming company, crystalline laughter, and mystical knowledge of the mage-princess Jazkarmel, whom your Archer so pines for and who you count among your closest friends.

What will you do?
>Stop in to visit with the Drow, and perhaps to consult with Jazkarmel about your quest
>You must press on—time is of the essence to get the most value from the heart and to set out in search of the succubus
>You will continue on, but you will give Olu leave, to stay with the Drow and with his Beloved One
>Write-in

>>5753371
>>You will continue on, but you will give Olu leave, to stay with the Drow and with his Beloved One
drop the dead weight of Halle too

>>5753371
>Stop in to visit with the Drow, and perhaps to consult with Jazkarmel about your quest
I wanna embrace our role as Moonking, and that means learning more about the Moonsword we won from the beast.

Just think of it- the Dragon Reborn, the Bloodmoon, King of Bloodrise, Protector of the Dark Elves, the Scourge of Underword!

>>5753428
>Why is the naked heart leaking and wrapped in cloth, when we successfully obtained its preservative jar?
[Uh...]
>tfw you forgot your own plot point because you sort of expected the jar to get smashed
[Good catch, anon. My bad, brain-fart. Theral takes it out to look at it like he's Thorin, let's say, and carefully squeezes the preservatives back into the jar. Reduces the time crunch a little, at least!]

>>5753436
>crunch time
[Though, addendum, all you huge muscular hypercarnivores are still pretty famished. Ironically, Olu and the Silskscale females are faring the best nutritionally. Even the heretic is pretty big, and would stand at eight feet tall if he wasn't a hunchback.]

>>5753371
>You will continue on, but you will give Olu leave, to stay with the Drow and with his Beloved One

Reduces the food requirements too

>>5753371
>You will continue on, but you will give Olu leave, to stay with the Drow and with his Beloved One

at least one guy will have his happy end

>>5753371
>You will continue on, but you will give Olu leave, to stay with the Drow and with his Beloved One

>>5753744
And now you’ve jinxed it ;^)

>>5753371
>>You will continue on, but you will give Olu leave, to stay with the Drow and with his Beloved One for a time.
He can catch up later since we plan to pause in Bloodrise.

This option gets out hungry boys to their dinner fastest right? Or would the drone have food for them if we stopped? If so I'd vote to stay the night.

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>>5753885
>>5753802
>>5753744
>>5753565
>>5753428
>>5753422
>>5753389
“Go to her.”

“What?” the Archer asks, looking back at you with shock and confusion.

You simply nod in the direction you both know leads to the Drow encampment—and to Jazkarmel, the Drow Princess.

“We are stopping over then?” he asks, hopeful and excited, only to return to his previous confusion when you shake your head.

“You have served me well,” you say. “Consider this your reward.”

“Superior One, I cannot—”

You raise a hand to stop him and, loyal as ever, Oluwadamilare the Archer ceases his well-meaning objection.

“You are a skilled warrior, and I will have need of you again in the future,” you explain, “but I also have need of one such as you in THIS capacity, as… What was it you’d said? Cultural Liaison to the Drow of Wevenore?”

The Archer’s crooked smile returns, and he tilts his head, saying: “I appreciate it, truly, yet—”

“I get enough argument from the Hawksong Infiltrator,” you interrupt him again. “Do not tell me she has been a bad influence upon you?”

That elicits a laugh, and before long you are joining him.

“Thank you, Dragon King,” he says, “truly.”

You rejoin the others, and tell them of your plans. The Hawksong Infiltrator is equal parts wary and excited by the news, though both emotions give way to abject disappointment when you tell her she will not be joining the Archer.

“What?” Halle balks. “But I am… I mean to say, SUeprior One, that HE is… More USEFUL to you than I.”

“In this capacity OR as a companion,” you readily agree, “but you will carry his burdens well enough.”

“His burdens?” she asks. “What do you—OOF!”

She nearly buckles under the weight of the repackaged dragon-heart in its great canopic jar, before adjusting her stance. She glares at you, though when you meet it with your own, she quickly bows her head in subservience.

“Yes, Dragonborn,” she mewls.

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>>5754004
You cross your arms but, taking some pity on her, explain that she and the other Silkscales shall share the burden.

“Why not the Great One?” she fairly—if impetuously—inquires.

“He and I must be ready to fight,” you explain. “The underdark is no safe place, patrolled by guardsmen and protected by walls.”

“And the Red Dragonborn?” she asks.

You, she, and the masseuses of your big brother’s harem all watch as the overgrown hatchlings clamber about, belching smoke and sparks at one another and occasionally falling upon one another is savage, haphazard ‘play-fights’ to establish their pecking order or settle petty disputes, known only to them… or maybe just to burn off energy. The dearth of food may have reduced their rambunctiousness at first, and slowed their movements, but it ahs only made them testier in the long run—less obedient, more aggressive, and overeager to bolt after any possible food-source if not reigned in. Truly, the Great One spend smore time fighting THEM than any adversary, most of which seem to be frightened by your combined <Fearsome Presence>.

“…Ah,” Halle acknowledges, and says nothing more, your point having made itself.

The rest of the trek back to Bloodrise is a slog. You take the time to discuss your plans for the Succubus with the Heretic, though he is plainly nervous to be so far from his life’s work and the oppressive safety of his allocated sanctuary, and he struggles to adequately explain or clarify the ritual and its effects. Your conversations with Halle prove a bit more stimulating, at least, and she DOES seem to lift out of her critical mindset as you describe the wonders of Bloodrise, and the future you envisage for it.

“A multicultural metropolis like Hawksong then?” she asks, wonderingly. “But… We can go about openly, in our true forms, and live as kings and queens? And worship freely?”

“Something like that,” you agree, “eventually. We are building something new.”

This brightens her mood, and she chatters excitedly with the others of her sex and caste as you fall into easy silence beside your big brother, and help him to maintain order among the younger Dragonborn until your arrival.

The Bloodrise that welcomes you home is different than the one you left, by now almost half a year prior. For one thing, there are FAR more Reptilians than you remember. You return to cheers and fearful, hissed whispers, emanating from lizard lips on faintly familiar faces.

“Operatives, merchants, and servants,” Halle whispers. “From the northern forward base. Though… Some of these ones I had heard rumoured to be dead, or deserters.”

“Not dead, NOR deserters, you reply, with a touch of pride. “Refugees from the failing Old Ways, come at my invitation… And with my blessing!”

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>>5754005
You raise your voice at the final phrase, drawing attention anew, and you proclaim loudly: “Welcome! The Copper Dragon King of Bloodrise welcomes you, children of the Reptilian Race, to our new kingdom!”

At this, the cheers far outnumber the hesitant hisses, and many who seemed unsure how to react to your arrival settle upon celebration. Attendants hurry to you and your companions—‘Svrifneblin’ slaves from among the conquered dwarves, driven forth by the boots of Duergar or Bloodrise Kobold masters—while Reptilian supplicants crowd around to speak with you, or simply to celebrate in the survival nd return of the Great One and his kin.

“Enough, enough!” you cry, overwhelmed by the flood of petitions for your immediate attention; when this fails, you will your <Fearsome Presence> to manifest more fully, projecting your will, and allow the Red Dragonborn to surge forth and put the fear of the Dark Gods into these willful subjects.

“We have traveled long and far, and need rest and food,” you explain, in a took that allows no argument. “Then, I will speak with my council.”

The crowd disperses, or IS dispersed by force in some cases, and you allow your posture to relax with a weary exhalation. You very much intend to eat, and drink, and rest… But even considering the first two matters reminds you of the precarious food situation when you departed. With this surge in refugees… Well, you can only hope that the supplies and livestock traded with Blackpine were enough to shore up your rations, so that there IS food and drink for you! Or perhaps the efforts by the Geologist, Engineer and your Serpent Queen bore fruit in your absence?

Regardless, you are HOME, at long last! What is your first order of business?
>Reunite with Glowie and the Wyrm Princes, and take your rest and respite with them
>Pay a visit to the Serpent Queen, to hold her close and speak of matters of magic, materiel, and your mating
>Call the council—you wish to get a report on all that you have missed, and to begin assembling your team for the mission to come
>Write-in

>>5754006
>Pay a visit to the Serpent Queen, to hold her close and speak of matters of magic, materiel, and your mating.

Novice was given regent authority, so she can give us the run down on anything that might have happened while we were away.

>>5754029
+1

Sounds good.

>>5754006
>>Pay a visit to the Serpent Queen, to hold her close and speak of matters of magic, materiel, and your mating

>>5754006
>Pay a visit to the Serpent Queen, to hold her close and speak of matters of magic, materiel, and your mating.

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>>5754276
>>5754029
>>5754069
>>5754084
While the siren song of relaxation calls out to you—not unlike to rhythmic humming of your insectoid mate and her spawn—you know you ought to get at least a brief breakdown of what ahs transpired in your absence. You aren’t sure you have the energy for a full-blown council meeting at this time, but here is one place—one female—whom you know for certain can provide situational analysis, useful advice, AND creature comfort to you. You will visit she who you have loved longest, once called Novice Fleshweaver but now more accurately titled Serpent Queen.

“Well, look what the hominid dragged in. And you DO look as if you’ve been dragged! I am your ‘royal’ physician, you know, and I don’t know that I’ve seen you look so weary even after nearly drowning for the third time!”

You sigh. You’re not sure what else you expected, for this is how it has ever been with this one, who was your childhood tormentor long before she was ever your Beloved One. Still, for all her harsh mockery, her fine and steady talons find your flesh with medical precision and the same gentle care which you have come to expect from the self-proclaimed ‘royal physician’, a she immediately sets about checking your condition. Maybe it is not what the humans and elves call ‘love’, but your Sseztlussth cannot hide that she cares about you.

“You are skinny,” she chastises you.

“The underdark can provide for one Dragonborn, maybe even a few Dragonborn, but I traveled with nearly a dozen.”

The Serpent Queen freezes, then seizes your chin and glares at you with those yellow eyes of hers.

“You brought them HERE?!”

“I did,” you admit (though you are not certain why it should feel like an admission).

“You blithering FOOL! You sentimental SIMPLETON.”

“Fleshweaver,” you growl in warning, “I have had a logn journey. I am not in the mood for—”

“A long journey INDEED,” she groans, “from our FORWARD BASE, which those Dragonborn brought to RUIN!”

“Ah,” you say, then pause. “SO you, uh, heard about that.”

She gives you a sharp look.

“Over two hundred and fifty needy Reptilians do not arrive from NOWHERE with NO cause, to increase our food demands—MEAT demands, no less!—by over 30%. So, yes, your LOYAL and HARDWORKING regent heard about THAT.”

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>>5754292
You spend the next few minutes assuring the Serpent Queen of the Great One’s desire to join in Bloodrise’s society, and of the control—a rapport really, but you know what word and what framing will bring your cold-hearted mate more comfort—that you have over them. She still seems unconvinced, such that you hesitate to bring up her father, the (apparently deceased) Chaplain of the northern forward base. It is at least easier to lie to this Beloved Oen than to Ekaterine, for a Reptilian relationship has the coldly-comforting certainty of MUTUAL deceit and manipulation.

“You are looking skinnier yourself,” you note wryly, changing the subject as you rest a hand upon her midsection. “You have laid our egg, then?”

The Once-Novice stops mid-insult as you pull her close and trail claws down her flat abdomen, drawing a small shiver from her despite—alas—surely not being in heat so soon after laying an egg. She averts her gaze, but allows you to hold her without protest, and her long, thick tail even seems to find yours instinctively—a subconscious admission that she missed you, a you missed her.

“You will wish to see it, no doubt,” the Serpent Queen suggests. “You are soft of heart and soft of head like that.”

“I am,” you happily agree. “Show me our child.”

You follow your mate to a chamber within the ever widening complex which was once the Bloodrise Kobolds’ warren, but increasingly resembles a dwarven mountain-hold, for its primary architects. The complex becomes rougher as you turn a corner, more utilitarian and cramped as you enter an area more uniquely ‘kobold’, and it is here than the rookery of the Reptilian races—Master and kobold-servant—can be found. To your surprise, she leads you past and BEYOND the clutches of small, ovoid eggs attended by dozens of kobold females, though you see larger eggs of the Master race among them.

“You left me pregnant with a single spawn, oh ‘Prince of Love’,” the Serpent Queen notes, when questioned. “You expect me to leave my only claim to lasting legitimacy among the unsorted eggs of the rabble, when I have no idea when or IF you will return?”

Indeed, you find the egg—not very different from any other tall, white egg of the Master Race—alone, attended by nearly as many kobolds as the rest of the mountain kingdom’s brood COMBINED—and by Serpent Priestesses who you take for ‘Mother’s Daughters’, the priestesses of the Lady of the Rookery and Mother of Dragons. You approach the egg under their watchful, curious eyes.

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>>5754296
“How long?” you ask.

Inferring your meaning, your Beloved Ones explains that she laid the egg only a month or so ago, and thus its hatching is expected in another month’s time.

“Assuming,” she adds, whispering privately and approaching you so close you can feel her body against yours, and her breath on your neck, “that scions of your Degenerate bloodline matures and hatches at the normal, decent Reptilian rate.”

“I do not remember you complaining about that bloodline when you were begging for me to impregnate you,” you note.

She sputters, then corrects you: “Commanding, not begging.”

“Care to reassert that dominance?” you ask, casting her a sidelong glance.

She hisses and smacks your rear with her tail.

“Down, beast,” she refuses, though without venom, and you stifle your <appetite>.

You both look back at the egg—at your son or daughter, waiting to be born—for a moment longer. You know you must depart soon, if you are to deal with the matter of the Succubus and of the Red Dragon King’s opportunistic consciousness within you, to resolve the matter of the Dark Gods’ apparent abandonment, and to secure your legacy and destiny. But this… This soon-to-hatch child of yours… is it not ALSO a part of your legacy? Your wives here, your family here… You are Prince of Love, a Dragon King who covets community above all else. A part of you wishes to stay here, at least for a while longer.

What will you do?
>Remain in Bloodrise until the Serpent Queen’s egg hatches, that you might see, hold, and name her child
>You cannot afford to delay for a month, or longer—you will get your briefing, resolve what issues are most pressing, and move on to complete this demon hunt

Before your council-meeting, is there anything you wish to discuss privately with the Serpent Queen Sseztlussth?
>The food situation and its possible solutions
>The population dynamics and racial relations of Bloodrise
>The probably death of her father, the Chaplain who raised you both
>Ekaterine’s crowning and the changed diplomatic situation abroad
>Your shame—the truth of how you disobeyed the Dark gods, were forsaken
>Your solution—the plan to hunt down and consume the Succubus, and the Great Green Dragon’s heart, to become a sort of demigod
>Write-in

>>5754297
What will you do?
>Use Bloodrise as a basis to bind Dragon Heart and Dragon Soul - we have everything here and now

>Your shame—the truth of how you disobeyed the Dark gods, were forsaken
>Your solution—the plan to consume the Dragon Soul, and the Great Green Dragon’s heart, to become a sort of demigod

>Ponder if that will make children Quatergods

>>5754297
>You cannot afford to delay for a month, or longer—you will get your briefing, resolve what issues are most pressing, and move on to complete this demon hunt.


>Your shame—the truth of how you disobeyed the Dark gods, were forsaken

>Your solution—the plan to hunt down and consume the Succubus, and the Great Green Dragon’s heart, to become a sort of demigod.


>Write-in: Ask Sseztlussth, if she can take material from the assorted dragonborn. And flesh weave it into our child to draconify the growing embryo inside of the egg.

>>5754297
>Remain in Bloodrise until the Serpent Queen’s egg hatches, that you might see, hold, and name her child

>The food situation and its possible solutions
>The population dynamics and racial relations of Bloodrise
>The probably death of her father, the Chaplain who raised you both
>Ekaterine’s crowning and the changed diplomatic situation abroad
>Your shame—the truth of how you disobeyed the Dark gods, were forsaken
>Your solution—the plan to hunt down and consume the Succubus, and the Great Green Dragon’s heart, to become a sort of demigod
since we're staying

I'd be down to do this too
>>5754305

why leave to hunt down iri when we can just use big red here and now

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>>5754305
>>5754379
>>5754380
[Just a friendly reminder: the necromantic rite needed to use the Red Dragon King for your ascent will destroy your ancestor's sense of self forever, preventing him from attaining eternal rest, and also upset the God of Death. This, and grievance with Irinnile, seem to have been motivations for the previous vote, so I just wanted to make sure they hadn't been forgotten.]

[That said, if it's what you vote for, it isn't too late to change tack.]

>>5754380
The red dragon king himself was a powerful necromancer, Hapo learned everything he knew from big red's library books. If we try to use a necromantic ritual to break and usurp his soul. I fear he might attempt to pull an Uno reverse card on us using his greater knowledge and mastery of that type of sorcery. Especially now that his spirit is no longer suppressed by our ant-paladin powers.

And then death might also curse us or worse our kids or family. i
In retaliation, for destroying the soul of a previous champion of darkness.

Irr is just a lot less dangerous and the potential consequences less severe to face off against.

>>5754297
>Remain in Bloodrise until the Serpent Queen’s egg hatches, that you might see, hold, and name her child

Obviously speak about these in private:
>The food situation and its possible solutions
>The population dynamics and racial relations of Bloodies
>Ekaterine’s crowning and the changed diplomatic situation abroad
>Your shame—the truth of how you disobeyed the Dark gods, were forsaken
>Your solution—the plan to hunt down and consume the Succubus, and the Great Green Dragon’s heart, to become a sort of demigod

+

>Write-in: Ask Sseztlussth, if she can take material from the assorted dragonborn - without killing or harming them. And fleshweave it into our child to draconify the growing embryo inside of the egg.

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>>5754506
>>5754380
>>5754379
>>5754305
[Alright, can't put it off forever. Locked and writing!]

>>5754665
Where is the second linger a little vote?

>>5754697
See >>5754506 and >>5754380

>>5754665
You resolve in that instant, looking upon this soon-to-hatch offspring, that you will be there to hold and name this child. You even tell your Serpent Queen such when you return to the privacy of her quarters—now stocked with considerably more materials for her research, you note, and a higher grade of equipment.

“Pathetic,” she replies. “Saccharine with sentiment. Ridiculous. What sort of…”

She pauses in her half-hearted lambasting of you to turn to face you, hand on hips and eyes narrowed.

“Wait, where ELSE would you be?” she demands. “You just got back!”

“So you DID miss me,” you note.

She hisses in annoyance, and you sigh and fill her in on your plan to ascend to a state of near-godliness. The Serpent Queen is so exhilarated at the news that you have recovered the Great green Dragon’s heart that it actually takes her a while to register the rest of what you’ve said.

“Your intent is to ABSORB a DEMON into your own SOUL?”

“Well… Yes, essentially,” you say. “The Heretic—whom YOU introduced me to, I will remind you before you begin criticizing my sources—tells me he knows of an ancient ritual used to consume and absorb the properties of a fallen god or demigod, and believes it should be transferable.. Provided a skillful Fleshweaver can also augment my physical form with the heart-blood of the Great Green Dragon.”

“I suppose the potential dangers of this failing have occurred to you?” your mate demands. “Why must you engage in this foolishness? With the dragon-heart ALONE, we could make your Amulet of the Dragon into something more potent, and with the Red Dragon King’s spirit bound to you in order to power it…”

She catches your expression and, shamefacedly, you are forced to explain the REST of your rationale: that is to say, your refusal to follow divine edict, and subsequent loss of power and prestige.

“Idiot!” she cries out. “It is that damn pet HUMAN of yorus—”

“The Queen of Hawksong, you mean?”

Your Fleshweaver wife misses only a single beat, before continuing: “She can be matron to whatever troupe of monkeys she wishes—she is still a liability She has infected you with ‘compassion’ and ‘kindness’ and all sorts of other degeneracy, and look where it has gotten you! Just go back to that damnable surface-scum city and kill her family!”

“I cannot,” you reply. “I made an oath.”

“You don’t need to KEEP oaths if you’re NOT EVEN A KNIGHT ASCENDANT ANYMORE,” she shrieks, before stopping to take a series of deep breaths, clutching at her workbench.

>>5754739
She’s… She’s TREMBLING, you realize. You step forward, to take her in your arms, but she flails and lashes you with her tail until you let her go. You let her have her moment, watching silently, until finally she can bear to look at you again.

"The oath matters to ME," you admit. "That is the truth of it."

“What does this mean for… For us? Our race? Our family?”

You have to admit, despite her outburst, it is refreshing and even sort of heartwarming to hear her expressing immediate concern for your shared spawn and your people in this fashion, self-centered creature that she usually is.

“Nothing serious, I hope,” you say. “Few adherents get the privilege of directly speaking to the Dark Gods, after all, yet it does not mean they forsake their common worshippers. And if this goes well… I shall no longer be a SERVANT to the Dark Divines, but I shall asend to almost be ONE of them!”

“Egotistical blowhard,” she murmurs, but you see the light of that uncanny ambition in your belove One’s amber eyes now. “Why not simply consume the spirit of the Red Dragon King, then, though? It is closer at hand, and less…”

The Serpent Queen trails off, but sticks out her longue tongue in disgust at the thought of Irinnile the Succubus. You laugh, and nod, for it had occurred to you as well.

“It is a fine fallback plan,” you admit. “I had even considered it. But there are… Complications.”

“More moral compunctions?” she groans.

“Not so,” you retort, then reconsider. “Not ONLY that. There is the matter of how the Lord of Endings might respond to necromancy of that sort, or even the other Dark Gods. He is their champion from ancient days, after all, and belongs to them in eternity.”

“He was a necromancer himself, yes?” the Serpent Queen notes brusquely. “Why should the Gods of Death care what happens to one such as he?”

“Perhaps he has ‘moral compunctions’ about disturbing the natural order in this way,” you tease your mate with her own words. “And is that not a cause for concern as well? His spirit is strong, and his knowledge of magic is vast. What if the Old King can… Reverse the process, somehow? Take the initiative to seize my body and devour MY spirit?”

“Do you think I am his ‘type’?” Your mate asks, tapping her chin with a claw.

You stare at her.

“It was a joke,” she says. “If a true Dragon King is like YOU but MORESO… I have quite enough difficulty with my PRESENT king, thank you very much.”

“Right,” you say flatly. “Though on the subject of you integrating a Dragon King into your bloodline… Do you suppose that once I have assumed demigodliness, it shall pass onto our spawn?”

>>5754746
“What, and make of the, ‘quartergods’?” the Fleshweaver asks, rattling with laughter, before she sees you are serious. “Well… Maybe. It is difficult to say. I do not know the rite, but I must admit I am not certain it is possible to so extensively modify your default state—let along your reproductive tract and gonads—such that you could pass on such a transformation. It would risk rendering you as sterile as those afflicted humans you asked me to remedy. It is safer to apply it to your Dragonshape, via the amulet.”

“What of the Wyrm Princes?” you point out.

“I modified them in-utero,” she reminds you, “and I would hardly call them DEMIGODS, would you?”

You aren’t sure, honestly, and so you say nothing. They’re certainly not like your brother the Great Green Dragonborn… Not yet, at least. Meanwhile, the only such being she has modified as an adult is… Well, the Junior Novice, a patchwork ghoul-hybrid of rather unattractive and unstable nature.

“Could you modify our egg, then?” you press.

“Right before you leave me alone, AGAIN, to serve as regent, AGAIN?” she asks. “Without any other heir, should it go wrong and destabilize the embryo’s gestation?”

You step forward, seizing her by the hips and making her squawk in surprise.

“We could see about producing another,” you suggest in a low, seductive rumble.

“I am not heat,” she whispers.

“Well then,” you say, with mock-lament, “I suppose this shall be just for fun. You DID once promise me that you would attend to such matters, yes?”

The Chaplain’s Daughter, first of your Beloved Ones, regards you cooly… And then sighs and tilts her head, as her own hands slide down her chest and to your groin.

“You are incorrigible,” she notes, “but predictable, and easy to manipulate.”

“So manipulate me,” you reply.

With skillful healer’s hands and inhumanly long tongue, she does. With overlarge and squeezable hindquarters, you extract your pleasure. And finally, weary from travel and glad to be reunited with your wise, wily Reptilian wife, you take your torpor in one another's embrace, her face buried in your neck and her arms, legs, and tail binding you to her as if a raft in a storm, in site of her protestations of indifference.

At home in her embrace, you dream…
>Of hellfire
>Of dragonfire
>Of steel
>Of ghosts

>>5754748
>Of dragonfire

Discard bitches, acquire draconic glory

>>5754748
>“I modified them in-utero,” she reminds you, “and I would hardly call them DEMIGODS, would you?”

>You aren’t sure, honestly, and so you say nothing. They’re certainly not like your brother the Great Green Dragonborn… Not yet, at least. Meanwhile, the only such being she has modified as an adult is… Well, the Junior Novice, a patchwork ghoul-hybrid of rather unattractive and unstable nature.

>“Could you modify our egg, then?” you press.

>“Right before you leave me alone, AGAIN, to serve as regent, AGAIN?” she asks. “Without any other heir, should it go wrong and destabilize the embryo’s gestation?”


I don't understand the novice's rational here or her argument.

The entire reason we greenlight her usage of the red dragonking's slain hatchling, and the body of the Ghoul-dogbold in her cruel experimentation. Was so that she could get hands on experience with flesh weaving draconic material & to refine her technique. Now when it's time to put her experiment's to practice she gets cold feet?

She tore out some of the ghoul-novice's internal organs and inserted draconic ones in their place, to the point where he developed a pseudo fearsome presence. She twisted his Skelton and musculature, She even messed with his spine and implanted/Grew functioning wings into him.

But manipulating an embryo is too hard for her? Even though embryo's have significantly more plasticity than fully grown adults.

And furthermore how would her child in the egg even become a suitable heir in the first place, if the novice refuses to flesh weave and draconicify him?

Our nine bug sons, and nine dragonborn cousin's are all extremely competitive with one another. The red dragonborn are constantly wrestling and nipping at eachother for supremacy. The wyrm's almost murdered and ate each other until we drilled a sense of comradery into them. How does the novice expect her child to command and control two and a half dozen dragon-chimera princes, if her heir is a mere serpent priest with trace amounts of dragonblood. Giving dragonborn commands from a position of weakness did not end well for the northern base and the serpent priests within it.

>>5754748
>Of ghosts

>>5754886
>How does the novice expect her child to command and control two and a half dozen dragon-chimera princes

I meant one and a half dozen, don't know why i wrote two.

also I vote this.
>Of hellfire

>>5754748
>Of dragonfire

>>5754886
Pretty big difference between using some weird creature that can't even talk as a test dummy and doing the same to your own child. We've already seen a lot of cases where Reptilians behave emotionally rather than with the pure rationalism they supposedly possess.

>>5754886
>Novice's rationale here
[Sorry, perhaps I wasn't clear. What she was trying to convey to Theral was that she doesn't want to mess about experimenting with her own, ONLY egg, if he's about to leave again on adventure without officially appointing her his regent. She wants a credible claim to status and authority in Bloodrise even if he gets himself killed or captured, and cannot return to rule. She PROBABLY could graft the embryo in her egg, but if she messes up there's no spare (not like Glowie's several dozen fertilized eggs when she had the procedure done), and Theral won't be around to sire another heir for her to raise as a Prince or Princess.

>>5754905
So she will start the dragon grafting process if we name her permanent regent in our absence instead of a temporary one?

>>5754970
[She just might!]

>>5754748
>Of steel

It’s our forte anyways

>>5754893
Hey Mom

>>5754748
>Of dragonfire

>>5754748
>>Of hellfire
Some insight into our future source of power perhaps?

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>>5755109
>>5755083
>>5754977
>>5754902
>>5754895
>>5754893
>>5754869
[Locked and writing!]

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>>5755466
In your dreams, you find yourself at the centre of the mountain—deep in Bloodrise, where the volcanism is still active, where the fire-lizards bask and the chemosynthetic and thermosynthetic fungi and mosses grow and Feed the ecosystem leading up to them. In the dreams, you are among them, resting in the magma itself as if a sauna (though without the heart-palpitating fear which accompanies such submersion these days). One of your tamed lizards rests beneath your left hand, as you run your talons gently over its pebbly skin; your right hand rests atop the magma, stirring its surface whenever it threatens to settle and form a rocky crust. You wear your true form—faintly copper, really more salmon-pink, wingless, thin of scale and skin—and yet you do not burn. You do not question this, not in any depth, and instead turn to your companion in this great, burning bath:

The Red Dragon King.

He is towering and bipedal in this dream, unlike the depictions and tales you have heard of him—more akin to your Great Green Dragonborn brother… Or perhaps like you yourself may one day be. You express the thought aloud, feeling relaxed and uninhibited.

“You? Like me?” he rumbles with laughter. “Not by absorbing that little lust demon!”

“The Succubus is a Greater Demon now,” you note, a touch defensive of your plan. “She has fed upon OTHER Greater Demons. She will be a worthy font of power.”

“Maybe it is mightier than I credit it,” you noble ancestor allows as he spreads his tremendous hundred-foot wingspan and leaning back, lowering more of his torso into the molten spa. “But it will not make you MY equal.”

“Then you would rather I perform the ritual with YOU as its principle component?” you suggest, provocatively.

It only elicits another booming laugh,

“I would like to see you TRY, Little One,” he challenges. “You are… What, twenty-one years old? Twenty-two? Only counting the time I was ALIVE, you would need a thousand years to be my equal, or longer. I would eat you alive, Oh ‘Dragonborn’, and reclaim my kingdom. Make no mistake.”

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>>5755496
“I will not live that long enough to equal you, without SOME ritual,” you note, a little sourly. “I do not even know that I will reach the end of my own NATURAL lifespan, with the Gods turned against me.”

“Young One” the Red Dragon King addresses you then, “MOST kings and priests hear from the Dark Gdos rarely, if at all. I MSYELF ruled my kingdom from these mountains for centuries, and I only heard the voices of my creators a dozen times across a whole millennium. You told your mate the truth of things, yet you do not seem to accept this truth yourself: you do not NEED the Dark Gods’ constant interference to rule, or to win wars, or to be Dragon King.”

“But what punishment might they inflict upon me, and my line, my kingdom?” you lament. “I have failed them, and angered them—at least some of them. And my enemies mass against me—or will, soon enough, will they not? I need to be ready to defend my family, my people, my Beloved Ones! I NEED power to do this!”

“Power,” the Red Dragon King rumbles thoughtfully. “Victory. Dominance. Destiny. You chase after these things, but you already know you are made of softer stuff. If you REALLY wanted these things, wanted them as a TRUE Dragon would, you would seize them!... But you do not. You relinquish them, again and again, for the sake of others, and for the sake of that heart.”

“You sound like the Dark Gods,” you grumble, “or like the Novice… I mean, the Serpent Queen. Or like her father, for that matter.”

“The difference is,” your ancestor says, “you do not need to OBEY my advice, or your mate’s, or her dead father’s. You are a DRGAON KING, are you not? My heir? My successor? Or you CLAIM to be. Yet I CONSULTED with the Gods, and did not always heed them. I championed an Age of Dragons, and paid them tribute, but I was SOVEREIGN.”

“Because you were a TRUE Dragon,” you sigh. “A demigod. That’s why—”

“No!”

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>>5755498
You stop, looking up at the Red Dragon King as he looms over you, and lifts a great arm like an ancient tree-trunk, stretching it out to poke you in the chest.

“You tell your stupid apeling—Duergar Regent, whatever you call it—that a True Dragon Soul dwells within, yet you seek your own path to dragonhood WITHOUT.”

He takes his finger away, splashing the magma across the cavern in a great splatter of heavy molten metal and rock, sending insects, lizards, and more native organism scattering in flight.

“Is THIS your fire?” he asks you. “Am -I- your fire? Is your fire found in the Hells, or gifted from above, or even from Below or Beyond?”

You look down where the King of Old prodded you, and find your bare chest alight from an inner flame, swelling and glowing until you can see it through skin. You feel yourself filled with warm, and wonder, until the sheer magnitude of it threatens to consume you utterly.

“Seize the demon and bend it to your will if you wish,” he says, “but remember: before you were an Knight Ascendant, or a Dark Prophet, or whatever other silly little titles you saw fit to bestow upon yourself, you were a DRAGON SHAMAN. Your fire comes from WITHIN.”

When you wake, the dream lingers. You rise slowly, though the still-slumbering Serpent Queen hisses and scratches angrily at you, trying to reclaim your warmth—your fire within. You lightly trace your talons over her chin, down her neck and back, until she is soothed back to restfulness and you extract yourself. Sitting upon the floor, you meditate on the nature of your Dragon Soul, while the dream is still fresh.

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>>5755499
It isn’t longer thereafter that the Serpent Queen rouses herself properly.

“Rare that you wake before my Pureblooded self,” she notes.

“Hm.”

She narrows her eyes, and clicks her tongue.

“You are in one of your serious moods, I see,” she notes. “And even after I allowed you to spill your seed so many times. I begin to feel unappreciated!”

“Hm.”

“Well, get back in your IMPERIOUS mood,” she suggests, standing with a stretch that you cannot help but quickly glance over to admire, especially in light of the memory of your evening together. “It is time to earn your sexual release.”

“I thought your position of power was my price?” you ask wryly.

“I DID tell you I planned to manipulate you, and you even agreed to it,” she reminds you, though with some humour in her tone. “Ugh, and with all the cleaning I had to do, you had BETTER be pliable to my will.”

“It depends what you ask of me,” you say, stretching and standing as well, for you can tell she does not plan to leave you to your meditations.

“Merely that you meet with the council,” she begins, beginning to dress herself in her queenly attire.

“I will,” you agree easily enough, pulling on your Drow-woven silks and chitinous, gem-studded armour overtop of it.

“And follow my lead, obeying my directives for this kingdom unquestioningly as my puppet-king,” she adds casually.

“I will not,” you reply, just as easily, drawing a half-hearted hiss.

“It was worth a shot,” the Serpent Queen says. “I suppose I should have made you make the oath BEFORE your orgasm was spent, yes? Something to keep in mind next time. Well, then there is just one thing…”

You cross your arms and tilt your head, waiting for this more serious request.

“The Serpent Priests,” she says. “Not the PriestHOOD, wherever they are hiding away and plotting our demise, but those who fled here and accepted your—OUR—invitation to join the Kingdom of Bloodrise. They shall join the council.”

You narrow your eyes, and ask: “How many of them are here?”

“A little over a dozen,” your mate replies. “Maybe as many as two dozen, actually, counting myself and the Translator from the first expedition.”

Enough to easily dominate the council and its proceedings, and to establish a Reptilian ruling class—the same caste-dominance which they enjoyed in the society in which you and your mate—a Serpent priestess herself—were raised. The implications are not lost on either of you, and under your skeptical gaze the Serpent Queen squirms slightly.

>>5755502
“Listen to me,” she snaps, “it is not a matter of… of clan PRIDE or any such thing. Though it IS worth remembering that we alone of the Master Race can work great magics, communicate with the Dark Gods, that we are stronger and taller and more beautiful, AND that we have all been RAISED for leadership.”

“Hm,” you reply.

The one-time Novice Fleshweaver’s tail lashes the stones and she adopts a combative stance and glares at you, then falters and deflates when her threat-posture achieves nothing.

“Our race’s numbers swell here,” she notes. “Most of the newcomers—newcomers YOU invited, and who I accepted because I knew YOU would want me to do so—are not used to… YOUR ways, with dwarves and elves and, ugh, BUGBEARS living among us almost as equals, and kobolds speaking above their station. Without you here, I needed to make… Concessions… or risk mutiny and being replaced.”

“You could have enforced compliance with our soldiers,” you note.

“Oh please,” she huffs, “and be assassinated by poison or demon-summoning or some other secretive means instead? Then who would you be rutting with—GLOWIE? And who would rule—that DUERGAR you’ve taken on as Apprentice? The BASTARD? Be reasonable. I made the compromises I needed to, in order to keep YORU kingdom together and follow YOUR instructions.”

“You already promised it to them,” you infer. “You told them they would form my council.”

The Serpent Queen at least has the good graces to avert her gaze and look somewhat embarrassed.

Will you allow the Serpent Priests of Bloodrise to form the majority of the ruling council?
>Yes, for they DO have much to recommend them and will be readily accepted by the other Reptilians
>Some, and ONLY as representatives of their kind—not as any sort of authority over other Reptilians or the non-Reptilian races
>No, the Serpent Priesthood and their rule has been a failure—it is why you made Bloodrise and independent nation, and you will NOT have them spoil that
>No, and you will have those who object too vociferously imprisoned or executed if they don’t wish to accept this
>Cancel the council meeting—you have no time for this nonsense
>Write-in

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[Oh, and a more accurate pie chart (with Bogbarri included, woops) is attached, to help communicate the over all situation. It doesn't include Drow who live in the outpost you gifted to Wevenroe, who aren't TECHNICALLY your subjects--only the Drowgons and their family.]

>>5755503
>Yes, for they DO have much to recommend them and will be readily accepted by the other Reptilians
This isn't a democracy, though does this option mean the priests have authority over others? The only authority they should have are the ones WE grant them.

>>5755531
[Official members of your council will be seen as respected authorities who have your ear and can influence policy. This will make them de facto community leaders and, due to the nature of Reptilian society, de facto leaders of the Master Race and maybe the kobolds. Failing to clarify the matter or check their authority will inevitably lead to them entrenching themselves as religious and civic leaders of all followers of the True Faith again, as they and the rest of the Reptilian population have long been conditioned to think is good and natural.]

>>5755545
> Failing to clarify the matter or check their authority will inevitably lead to them entrenching themselves as religious and civic leaders of all followers of the True Faith again.
Then we should tell our beloved Serpent this and "check" the priests during the meeting. This isn't the outpost, this is Bloodrise. If they start some bullshit, they WILL be replaced.

>>5755503
>Some, and ONLY as representatives of their kind—not as any sort of authority over other Reptilians or the non-Reptilian races

Three may join the Council - how they decide that there is up to them.

We will not have our multi-species Kingdom dominated by one faction.

In our society merit and draconic will to succeed, not birth, matters most.

>Your fire comes from WITHIN.
I like this source of power the best.

I’d vote to double double on increasing our draconic power, not stealing it from Hell or relying on the Dark Gods

>>5755503
>Some, and ONLY as representatives of their kind—not as any sort of authority over other Reptilians or the non-Reptilian races

Make it clear this comes from us so we take the assassin heat and not bae

>>5755503
>Write-in: The novice claims that serpent priest's are "we are stronger and taller and more beautiful, that we have been RAISED for leadership, work great magics and communicate with the Dark Gods." You believe they are upjumped nepotistic social climbers with half decent propaganda. Nonetheless you are a just king. You will make them prove whether they are worthy of a leadership role in your fiefdom instead of rejecting them outright. Go get the karz and tell him to gather up his armada of reptiles and insect's he summons. Go find the bastard as well and tell him to grab non lethal practice equipment and meet in the arena where we boxed agno.

>If any member of the serpent priest wishes to be amongst bloodrise's leadership, they must either best the bastard in a non-lethal martial duel or best Karz and his beasts in a non lethal contest of magic for the less martially inclined. If any serpent class members feel unconfident in either test. They can instead try their hand and impressing us directly with whatever other skills they profess but warn them you are a harsh critic, and loathe having your time wasted.

The bastard, karz, the pit guard, the thief, the hunter, and others all earned their positions in our kingdom through sweat, blood and mettle. If the serpent class wants similar positions of influence they will have to work for it and prove themselves not just be handed it via nepotism like usual.

>>5755503
>Some, and ONLY as representatives of their kind—not as any sort of authority over other Reptilians or the non-Reptilian races

Echoing statements about checking these scheming fucks.

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>>5755552
>>5755587
>>5755619
>>5755622
>>5755681
[Alright, writing!]

Rolled 13, 5, 7, 4, 8, 5, 20 = 62 (7d20)

>>5755732
“They already have you on the council, and as the regent in my absence,” you point out, frustrated with the scheming Holy Ones. “AND the Translator besides. Is that not enough?”

The Serpent Queen’s expression tell you that it is not—not for the Serpent Priests and, by her words, not necessarily in her OWN opinion either.

“This is not some operational outpost,” you endeavour to explain. “This is a kingdom made up of many races from entirely different biological taxa, created in some cases by different GODS. Everyone else on that council ahs earned their place by service, social merit, or loyalty. By blood, sweat, and effort. What have THEY done?”

“We Serpent Priests are BORN better,” she points out, not as a boast but as a neutral statement of fact which the Serpent Queen, even now, still believes. “We are capable of more. Oh, with modern alchemy and your whole… Meritcoratic THING… Others can become as good—”

“Or better,” you interject.

“…Or better,” she begrudgingly allows. “But the Serpent priests represent the biological and intellectual pinnacle of the Master Race under the old customs. It would be foolishness to throw that away for… IDEOLOGY.”

You hiss in displeasure, and so she adds: “The kobolds get THEIR council of elders. Consider this the same, yes?”

“Then they will have what the kobolds have,” you pounce upon her example before she can rescind it. “That and NO MORE. They will get a small council to represent the Serpent Priesthood in Bloodrise, with NO authority over the other races—not Steeltalons, not Dragonblodoed Ones, not Silskcales, not kobolds, bugbears, or dwarves.”

The Serpent Queen’s tail twitches.

“They will not like this,” she notes.

“Then they can take it up with me,” you note lifting your head high and projecting your <Presence>, “and if they care to make an issue of it, they can take it up with me in the same manner Agno the Kobold did—above the Basilisk Pit, hand-to-hand.”

Your Serpent Priestess wife throws her hands up in exasperated surrender, and stalks off. You follow after her, and together you stalk towards the cavern—expanded and beautified as well since your last visit—where council meetings are held.

[Rolling 6d20 for Leadership, with a bonus die for Intimidation and Reptilian Empathy, DC 15/18 due to losing your Knight Ascendant/Voice of the Metatron bonus.]

Rolled 74 (1d100)

>>5755757
There, you are reunited with many familiar faces—the South-Merchant, the Cartographer, and the masked Thief who you sent ahead; The Bastard, Regent of Kobolds, and Karz Throat-singer, Duergar Regent and your personal apprentice; the Pit-Guard and his Apprentice; the Kobold Elders of Bloodrise; the Boss of the Bogbarri bugbears and the Ambassador from Wevenore elves; your wives and queens, both Serpent and Worm.

“Mmmizzzzed you~” Glowie hums happily, squeezing her massive breeding apparatus into the room and curling it about you in embracing intimacy, while her four reflective eyes regard you with unmistakable affection. “You will be staying for a while, my King?”

You clasp her spider, chitin-armoured hand in yours and squeeze in gently, drawing a little chirp of delight, and tell her that you will be. She extracts a promise—easily acquiesced to, unlike those concessions your OTHER queen here seems prone to demand—that you will visit often with her and with the sons she has born you: your Wyrm Princes, first of your line.

Last to enter the room are the Serpent Priests’ displeased coalition. The Translator is among them, though he at least bows his head in supplication quite readily. The stiff-necked nods of the other two Holy Ones who join him is less enthused…

>20

But as your gaze holds steady upon them, their eyes widen, they bow lower in an almost obsequious fashion, and they shuffle speedily and silently to their allotted space. You know well that your message, conveyed via your Serpent Queen’s attendants and by way of the loyal Translator, has been heard, understood, and properly feared: defiance in this chamber will NOT be tolerated. This realm is no democratic one, but nor is it to be a tired theocracy like the last Priest-run Reptilian state.

(CERTAINLY not while the Dark Gods remain absent and silent in response to your prayers, though you don’t say as much)

“I have returned from a long journey,” you say, “to find the Kingdom of the Bloodrise Mountains stronger and more populous than ever! Richer and more beautiful as well! You have all done good work, and THANKS to that good work, we have been able to welcome guests and new subjects to strengthen our society still further. You have served your Serpent Queen well, and you have done me proud!”

This is followed by the cheers and ululations which one might expect, breaking the solemn and almost fearful silence which had preceded it. You bask in it for a moment, and in the cries welcoming you back, and then you hold up a hand.

“I understand that I did not leave you without challenges, though,” you note, and bitterly add: “…And more challenges yet AROSE in my absence, which I did my best to deal with, but some of which will require your aid as well.”

[Food project DC 50/70/90 by default; -30 DC for placing three experts on the matter, +10 DC because you divided the Serpent Queen's attention. Final DC: 30/50/70]

>>5755757
>they love it
lol, where’s our victory nooky novice?

>>5755795
>>5755800
The first and foremost matter which you must discuss, of course, is that of population and of food—two countervailing factors in individual prosperity and kingdom-wide stability, and a principle issue which you journeyed forth to solve. The Translator, who accompanied you to Blackpine, is able to confirm that the shipment of food, furs, livestock and materials arrived as planned. Minerals, tools, and carefully-selected relics were exchanged for these by both representatives of Bloodrise and (under the South-Merchant’s supervision) the Ambassador of Wevenore and the Drow raiders here under his auspices.

“The agreed-upon ratios were followed, except in individual private trade, where this was permitted,” the Translator notes.

“Though more freedom for trade NOT performed by Blodorise citizens would be appreciated,” the Wevenore Ambassador adds quickly, drawing a hiss and a sharp look from the Translator and South-Merchant.

“Is it enough to offset the addition of so many hungry mouths, though?” you ask worriedly. “How many do we number?”

“Roughly 1500, and growing, not counting the Drow,” the Cartograher says.

“More with the Bogbarri,” notes the South-Merchant, a little bleakly.

The Boss of that spiny-and-hairy goblinoid race puffs out his chest proudly, clearly not reading the mood properly.

“They have the same meat preferences as the Ma—the Reptilian race, but they have a warmblooded metabolism, and thus are even HUNGRIER.”
“Growing warriors and breeder both need much meet, Theral,” the Bugbear Boss says with gleaming, snaggle-toothed grin. “They will breed FAST, and fight WELL, huh? I have hit them often, at the right times, so that they know not to eat our skinny or short friends, or any lizards that stand on two legs.”

You nod, slowly, understanding the dilemma at play. The South-Merchant hands you a scroll-passed by Agno, present as your personal servant—and you read it carefully. It is highly technical and numerical—neither your strong suit—but you get the gist.

>74

“Food is still a problem, then,” you note flatly. “We are not starving, but we also are not THRIVING… But I understand we have the means to resolve this?”

>>5755862
Karz stands proud, head held high, and claps his hands (clad in fine leather gloves now you note), and summons two of the Svirfneblin slave-dwarves, who carry an array of charts, maps, materials, and even little dioramas. These all bear the unmistakable craftsdwarfship of the Engineer and her Geologist father—two dwarven experts, not quiet subjects and yet not slaves in the same sense as the Svirfneblin, who you have kept in your captive employment. The Engineer, who you had dressed down rather fiercely when last you saw her, avoids your gaze.

“With the aid of the Serpent Queen’s biological expertise,” the Geologist begins, “and using our own mechanisms, runes, and my knowledge of geology, we have worked out a method to produce food enough for ALL of Bloodrise’s population, and to allow for growth!”

This draws murmurs of appreciation, and of skepticism, but in all cases of extreme interest.

“Do tell,” you prompt him.

Tell he does. The Geologist—and eventually his daughter, too proud of her work to stay silent forever—explain how they used the elder dwarf slave called ‘Stone-sniffer’ to help them find specific mineral deposits which correlated to underground streams and wells, as well as those deposits which seems to best feed productive mossbeds. Using dwarven machinery and magic, they were able to divert these streams and reservoirs closer to the surface, forming oasis-like well. The stone was churned and crunched into small soilbed of sorts, and the process sped further with specific insects and fungi provided by the Drow idea for the purpose or for further fertilizing the resultant earth—

“We are pleased to be of assistance, of course, for all our mutual benefit,” the Wevenore Ambassador chimes in.

—and the one-time Novice Fleshweaver was able to guide them in growing crops of fluffy, almost grasslike moss beyond its normal proportions, and in such a way as to extract and process the chemicals of the stone below into something palatable to the rearing of goats, sheep, and even cattle.”

“It is a good thing that you were able to secure trade with the humans, though,” the Geologist cautions. “One cannot simply BUILD animals, sadly—they must be grown, and then reproduce, and then be housed, raised, and trained to obey, and only once they have bred again can they be slaughtered. We CAN make your kingdoms elf-sufficient… But it will take time.”

“There ARE ways, however, to speed this up!”

>>5755867
All eyes turn to the South-Merchant, who unravels another scroll across the table, and begins to read his proposed suggestions for how to approach the matter of food security in Bloodrise. Theya re, broadly and generally speaking, as follows:

>Limit the trade of Wevenore subjects—and your own subjects as well—to create a government monopoly on trade, and insist upon more livestock and on the trade of fertile soil and livestock feed
[-happiness, -Drow relations, -short-term self-sufficiency, long-term self-sufficiency]
>Tax Wevenore trade through Bloodrise more heavily, and demand food as tribute from the dark elven court
[+happiness, --Drow relations, ~self-sufficiency]
>Divert the Serpent Queen’s biological expertise from the creation of a cure for the Reptilian-made chimera-plague in Hawksong to increase fertility and maturation speed in livestock
[--human relations, +self-sufficiency, +happiness]
>Open trade with other neighbouring baronies and integrate more closely with Hawksong-dominated trade in the region
[--self-sufficiency, +human relations, +Drow relations, +happiness]
>Tighten belts and discourage rampant breeding, until food production scales up
[-happiness, +self-sufficiency, --population growth]

Which do you choose? Or do you…
>Write-in
…propose your own fix?

>>5755873
>Open trade with other neighbouring baronies and integrate more closely with Hawksong-dominated trade in the region

We’ll probably need to do that in the future anyways

>>5754977

>>5755873
>Tighten belts and discourage rampant breeding, until food production scales up

You need to walk before you can run