Quoted By:
I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
- Robert Frost, the Sound of Trees
--
Congratulations Subjects! It took 57 cumulative turns, but you have manifested an EXTERNAL FEATURE in the ENVIRONMENT succesfully! That's not a mere psychogenic externalization of something that is still intrinsically tied to their mind, behold: NEW LIFE in all its dreadful glory!
>Bob gains +2CP
First off, for starters, there is one large immediate drawback: If you want to recycle that CP, Command doesn't think that tree is going to give it all up willingly. That's what Independence gets you. Still, it's not all lost, you could recycle it, but you won't get it all back and it might fight you.
But behold!
Sprawling new growths! Mutations! Life itself, stumbling across the land, anew and renewed! Something *outside yourself* yet bound to you, by will and thought and blood and strength and bone and horror and power!
A Trooper! Manufactured. . . *AT WILL*
And as the rules so very clearly say, if Troopers survive long enough, they may grow to be Allies, accumulating all sorts of prowess.
So how does this work?
It works like every other Trooper. Coordinators can shout orders, they Pile In, and you can direct them generally with 1 AP.
There a few noted differences, namely that their progenitor always gets preferene treatment for any orders. You can spend CP to manifest new features on the thing - but you might be better off simply testing your Changeling skill relevant to the thing to change it around, reshuffling the CP bound up in it. Ah, didn't know you could do that, did you? This lets EXTERNAL FEATURES properly manifested be a little more flexible.
Because naturally, that doesn't end your turn.
But there are some finnicky little details to be aware of. Unless it has a mind of its own, it's directed by instinct and will and your orders. A tree, for instance, does not possess a very finely formed mind. It's not quite as dumb as a bag of rocks. That would be an insult to rocks. But it doesn't exactly have initiative.
You can get around that. You could *give it* initiative. Refer to that line about reshuffling CP. Perhaps a few of those bound up can buy it some mind?
THE MOMENT YOU DO THAT, the Trooper HAS A MIND OF ITS OWN. At that point, officially, they cease to be your lumbering, unheeding pet, directly solely by your will and start making choices of their own. Not bad ones. Not negatives one. They are bound to you. But just do be aware that by fundamental implication "The ability to spend your own AP and MP" is the first thing you bestow, and once you bestow that, the chains are off.
You try to put them back on, the first thing it's spending AP on is *RESISTING YOU*.
