>>5838767“Have there been mental effects?” asked the Archmage.
“Psychological ones, yes,” you admitted. “How could there NOT be? But… I’m not a cleric, or a mentalist. I’m not sure how to treat that. I… I don’t believe their BRAINS have changed, and their souls… They look the same to my second-sight. I think it’s merely the effects of having seen themselves change so much. It has… Upset some of them, rather quite a bit”
The Archmage tutted disparagingly at such ‘weakness’, but to you she offered rare praise.
“Congratulations, Apprentice,” she said to you. “You have cured the dragon-pox, and saved a dozen people, as well ass many more to come.”
It’s true: none had died. None WOULD die. And nobody ever NEEDED to die of this disease any longer—any who were infected could be saved as you had saved these women and girls.
…But what sort of salvation WAS this? If most of them looked functionally human, like someone in elaborate magically-glamoured makeup, many more did not—no more than an orc, anyway. Less, perhaps, in that orcs and half-orcs were often called porcine, wolfish, or apish in appearance, and at least all THOSE were fellow mammals.
You often heard Costella weeping, for the loss of her beauty and for what she had become to escape agony and death.
What came next?
>You approached the Queen of Hawksong with your mutagenic ‘cure’, and sought her consent to roll it out to the rest of the afflicted>You spoke with Izirina about this—how did SHE feel about it? Would she want such a cure for her own case?>You refused to be satisfied with this solution—you would continue your research until you found a way to perfect the end-form of the transformed ones>Write-in 