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Fate/Awakening Mirror - Distortion of Aqueous Moon Part II

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 14 Aug 2025 16:27:36 No.6290324 View View Reply Original Report

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Yumigawa Rushorou was plunged into a life-or-death struggle in a surreal otherworld when, one day, he went to sleep in his familiar bed and found himself thereafter in the burning ruins of a nameless city. After ten days of struggle, he emerged victorious, standing as one of very few survivors of a crucible called the Akeldama. His enemies, one way or another, were dead. His allies had been protected. The ultimate prize was his. Then he woke up.
After two strange days of confusion, a stabbing, and the realization that there never was such a person as Yumigawa Rushorou, a man people call Archer found that there was a noose around his neck, and started looking for a way to get rid of it. You haven't found it yet.

Sequel to Fate/City Akeldama, originally run from March to May 2019, and remake of Fate/Awakening Mirror, originally run from May 2019 to October 2020. Both quests, as well as the first thread of this quest, can be found here:
https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=Sweets-Loving%20QM

Status Menu: https://pastebin.com/VbRZ5pwX
Character List: https://pastebin.com/aZ7WFPmj
Magic Menu: https://pastebin.com/8MXXtGnB

Quest OP: https://odysee.com/AMQST-OP1:3

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 14 Aug 2025 16:28:18 No.6290325 Report

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You'll have to get rid of the restraint on your feet, but there's no telling whether your level of Magic Resistance would allow you to do much to it going that route. You could try breaking it with your arrows, the mental image of Caster's lions with holes blown out of them and still sizzling away comes to mind quickly, but if you had to use more than one or two it would take too long. Nothing for it but to use your own magic on the damn thing, and hope you can separate out its binding quality. Sensing it as a system of patterns, you think it should be possible; to undo Caster's magic in a more orthodox way, you would probably have to understand the principles at work in her binding, but just as Liliesviel didn't have to know every detail of the process which made the stone she used, you should be able to remove the solidity of the barrier around your feet as long as you treat it simply as an object to be acted on, rather than a piece of magic to be unraveled.

The question then is where to put that solidity; attach it to the water around you or something else to hand and you'd be creating a new piece of clutter to get in the way of your maneuvering, not as inconvenient as having your feet bound, certainly, but hardly convenient either. You briefly consider trying to send Caster's barrier back her way, but no, trying to apply a property to something that far out of reach is much too heavy a gamble. Then it hits you. The perfect dumping ground is open to you at any time, an infinite space already filled with infinite impossibilities, but which will never run out of room for more. Magic from the Age of Gods even sounds like it belongs more in the world of Imaginary Numbers than reality; why not send it there?

Without time to reconsider your plan, check it for holes, or second-guess yourself, you move into action. You pour your own magical energy of Emptiness into the barrier Caster has raised around your feet, and for a single taut moment you think it might fail, as that incalculably more ancient and expert magic resists incursion by a novice. You know with an unconscious certainty, feel with a deep sensory apparatus more closely attuned to magic than any mind imitating that of a human could be, that if you were using any of the elements Caster wields this would be utterly futile. Then, all at once, it gives way and you can do what you want with the barrier. You feel something that is like the sound of a silk sheet being ripped down the middle, though it isn't a sound at all, as you tear away the solidity of the barrier around your feet and dump it into that boundless sea of chaos on the other side of your cloak, and you are free.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 14 Aug 2025 16:29:19 No.6290326 Report

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A manic thrill runs through you as you realize that your own magic, novice though you may be, has in this one instance triumphed over Caster's powers. For all the disdain Caster has heaped on modern magi as being infinitely inferior to those who wielded power in her day, she can still be bested. 100 meters apart through you are, the look in her eyes would tell you what a blow to her pride this is even if you didn't know her thoughts on the subject in advance. So much for being nothing more than an artifact.

The second of Caster's beams of light lances out from one of her magic circles, but it doesn't find its mark. You can't move faster than light to dodge, of course, but Caster has to aim at a speed within her own capabilities. The witch is considerably less agile than you, and she's still close enough for you to count her eyelashes if you'd care to. It's a simple thing to see where the attack will land and, at the last moment, put yourself elsewhere. Five more to dodge, or so you had thought. As the third circle prepares to fire, you realize the two she's already used are quickly reappearing, and resign yourself to a long course of evasion.

The rain of light goes on and on and on, pounding the surf like a World War One artillery barrage, the kind that would hammer away at a trench for weeks on end, hoping that by the time they let up everyone in the enemy position would be so much reddish mud, the substance of the soldiers mixed inextricably with the substance of their emplacement. You have to wonder how Liliesviel feels about countless spots in the underwater sand at this shore being turned into glass, but then again, the whole place is indoors; whatever magic creates the illusion of the south seas can surely repair the island between visits. The question wouldn't even have occurred to you if Caster weren't so ridiculously persistent with this one tactic.

You can dodge one beam, you can dodge two, or five in a row, or ten in a row, and in fact you haven't been hit yet after the first blow while you were trapped, but Caster seems intent on proving out the notion that you can't go on dodging them forever. Meanwhile, none of this is accomplishing the purpose of today's training. The idea was to work on your physical barriers, which is exactly what you aren't doing now that you have to focus on dodging these beams. Oh, you get a bit of use out of them dealing with Caster's familiars when she tries using them to hem you in, and the site of an enormous crocodile struggling futilely to close jaws wedged open by nothing more than empty air is gratifying, but it's nothing like the level of practice you'd be getting if Caster had only gone on using those boulders. You keep moving, gritting your teeth at Caster's unhelpful attitude, and all the while she's flapping along high above you, raining down judgment like the angry goddess she once was.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 14 Aug 2025 16:30:20 No.6290327 Report

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Finally, your patience has worn down to nothing, and you materialize your bow to shoot back at Caster. If she won't make the training productive by sticking to physical attacks, you have no reason to restrain yourself to defensive maneuvers. She obviously decided from the start to make this an anything-goes kind of spar, and only stubbornness or foolishness can have made you keep up your own role for so long in the vain hope she'd go back to hers. At that moment, as you prepare to attack, you see Caster's lips shape a new incantation, and a gale whips up all around you. It's a kind of inverted cyclone hurricane-force winds blowing in toward the center from every direction and bearing blades of air along on them. The most dangerous thing about the new attack is that it would seem almost harmless if not for the water around your legs. Just a high wind, except that you can see the way those invisible blades sheer mercilessly into the waves the wind raises, shredding them just as they'll shred you if you don't get out of this circle.

The barrier of inertia-absorbing air, however, has to be stationary. You can't make a solid mass of air which can't be moved and then move it along with yourself as a shield, nor do you have mastery over the wind as Caster evidently does. Mind racing, you dart toward the only solution that comes to mind: a lunge for one edge of the shrinking circle, and just before you're struck by those blades of wind, you harden the air in front of you. In another moment it's done, the circle has a hole in it, and it's passed you. The place at the center where the wind would come down on you from all sides is three paces behind your back. Now you know for certain that you can defend yourself with this technique at a split-second's notice, at least provided your enemy is using a physical attack and lacks Magic Resistance strong enough to simply cut through your magically treated air.

In this way, defending against now winds, now boulders, now waterspouts, now huge old uprooted trees from deep in the island's jungle, and of course more of the beams of light and familiars, you spend hour after hour sparring with Caster. When it's done, and the sun indicates it's just past noon, you feel a return of yesterday's bone-deep weariness. In spite of the additional magical energy you received from Liliesviel last night, you feel completely drained once again. It seems that when strenuous exercise alone burns magical energy, continuously using magic during that time multiplies the consumption several times over. From the feel of it, you'd guess that you could fire about ten arrows with the energy used in a single barrier. That you received several burns and scrapes in the course of the battle, though no serious injuries, and had to heal them with magical energy, you're sure did nothing to ease the situation.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 14 Aug 2025 16:31:20 No.6290328 Report

Quoted By:

Even so, as you and Caster walk back toward Liliesviel's beachside villa, the weariness feels more like a mark of pride than a burden. You've made clear progress since yesterday, learning your first practical application of magic in battle and polishing your essential combat skills at the same time. In the end, you never attacked Caster directly. It would have put an ally in too much danger if your arrows struck home, and would have been too humiliating if she were able to avoid them. Perhaps if you can figure out a way of firing blunted training arrows, or something along those lines, you'll be able to spar with Caster on an even footing one of these days. This morning, though, was purely defensive, and quite productive because of it.

"Well, Caster," you ask, a wry note in your voice, "have you attacked me to your heart's content?"

"Perhaps," the woman answers vaguely, though the gleam of genuine cheer in her eye suggests her anger has mostly faded. "Your resilience is still lacking, to face our strongest foes. Your endurance must be trained to the limit, but we shall continue tomorrow. This is good enough for today."

"You aren't wrong," you agree, and chuckle as you remember the ridiculous power displayed by Rider and Saber. You've become superhuman yourself, now, but those two are on an entirely different level. Fill a grail war with six Servants of your caliber, and Saber would be able to cut the lot of you down at once and hardly break a sweat. It should be a sobering, chilling thought that you'll have to face them, but perhaps because you've been facing death by expiry date for the last 24 hours, it seems to have lost its power to frighten. Instead, you find yourself listening more to that part of you which whispers how wonderful it would be to defeat such truly legendary foes, if only you can become powerful enough to achieve it. That would surely wipe away the sense of purposelessness that's lurked in the dark corners of your mind since discovering your true nature. It would be, in its own way, as much a rising above as your current abilities would represent the rise above humanity, had you been human to begin with.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 14 Aug 2025 16:32:44 No.6290331 Report

Quoted By:

But then it comes back to the question of how. Caster can talk about training you to be more resilient all she wants, but it isn't as though you're going to put on muscle by exercising like an ordinary person, or get tougher by taking hard knocks and healing from them (a method which rarely works well even for humans). It all comes back around to learning the inner workings of the Servant construct. If Transference is used to bring souls into the real world, and the great miracle the Einzbern are working toward is the materialization of the soul, then the Servants must act as a kind of container to allow the immaterial Heroic Spirit to interact with the world. If you can only find a way of altering the parameters of the container itself, seeing it on its own as a system and actually changing the traits of it rather than moving them from one system to another, there should be no limits on your power beyond the amount of magical energy available to you. Of course, you're still very far from knowing enough to pursue that line of action, and you have no way of knowing whether a Servant even can modify his own container from within.

"Splendid, both of you," Liliesviel calls out, waving cheerily as you draw near the villa's covered front porch and the porch swing in which she reclines. "That was a lovely spar. Onii-sama, I simply cannot tell you how happy I was to see you applying our magic to your battle so skillfully. Blood will out, truly. I believe you shall know as much as I of the Einzbern magic in a week!"

"That's quite an optimistic estimate." The sardonic reply falls out of your mouth almost automatically, your mind on the ocean of knowledge still unknown to you. No matter how quickly you learn, you doubt very much that it's quickly enough to digest the entire built up knowledge of an ancient family in the Holy Grail War's limited time-span, let alone a week. "I can only hope you're right."

"You have managed more shocking things already," the girl ripostes with a smile. "Now, shall we go to lunch?"

"Go?" You arch an eyebrow. From the way Liliesviel and Caster have acted so far, you'd formed the impression that all meals were to be had inside the secure perimeter of the hotel.

"Yes, of course," the girl replies as if this were all utterly obvious. "Having come all the way to Tokyo, I should like to see more of the city than the inside of my family's hotel and the battlefields at night. There is a shopping center nearby, and I believe they have all sorts of little places selling quaint native street foods such as roasted sweet potato, or pastries shaped like fish. Why don't we sample them, and then look for some proper clothing for you?"

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 14 Aug 2025 16:33:45 No.6290332 Report

Quoted By: >>6290339 >>6290348 >>6290398 >>6290410 >>6290417 >>6291141

The incongruity of it all is stunning. You'd guessed it already, of course, but only as a point of information. Now you're really coming face to face with the fact that for this girl, the trip to Tokyo is both a life-or-death battle and her first opportunity to experience the world outside the home in which she was raised. Prepared might be a better word. The way she had described it at first, homunculi being grown for a purpose, used, and discarded, you suppose you really knew it right then. That her life before this hotel was the life of a tool in a drawer, waiting to be taken out and put to use. Now, to her, the peaceful and prosaic world that you've largely ignored for the last eighteen years in your pursuit of another man's goal is a completely new landscape full of intriguingly alien scenery. You wonder what it would be like to have such enthusiasm for the ordinary things meant to make life pleasant for ordinary people; if you would have such enthusiasm had you been isolated all this time, or if it's something deeper in you, a fundamental bit of individual difference even in the manufactured beings. You can't say.

>[ ] Play along. There's no harm in waiting until night to continue with the action of the War, most Masters won't be active under daylight anyway.

>[ ] Tell Liliesviel you'd rather get a proper meal from a restaurant than street food; after the morning you've just had, you're starved.

>[ ] Say that you don't mind looking around the shopping center a bit and getting something to eat, but instead of buying clothing you ought to go and see the overseer after that. It might be best to get what information you can from her while the risk of another Master watching the area for vulnerable enemies is minimal.

>[ ] Say something else. (Write in)

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:vYGejCbD Thu 14 Aug 2025 16:51:41 No.6290339 Report

Quoted By:

>>6290332
>[X] Say that you don't mind looking around the shopping center a bit and getting something to eat, but instead of buying clothing you ought to go and see the overseer after that. It might be best to get what information you can from her while the risk of another Master watching the area for vulnerable enemies is minimal.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Thu 14 Aug 2025 17:11:01 No.6290348 Report

Quoted By:

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 14 Aug 2025 17:48:12 No.6290370 Report

Quoted By: >>6290410 >>6291143 >>6292073 >>6292912

So, now that we're on a second thread and two months into the quest, there's some things I'm curious about.
How many of you are players who stuck around since I first ran City Akeldama in 2019, and who picked this quest up as a new player?
Is there anybody who picked up the quest during the original run of Awakening Mirror who's still around?
What other Fate quests have you read or played? Have there been a fair amount on the board over the years while I was gone, or has it stayed pretty niche?

Also, about the new menus in the OP. Status menu is the same as last thread, of course, but the character and magic menus are new. They're meant to be a little like Shirou's Weapons menu from F/SN, in that they catalogue what the protagonist knows, including stuff that hasn't actually shown up in the text updates but which I thought you'd find useful or interesting. They'll get updated over time as he learns more.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Thu 14 Aug 2025 18:32:46 No.6290398 Report

Quoted By: >>6290455

>>6290332
>[ ] Say that you don't mind looking around the shopping center a bit and getting something to eat, but instead of buying clothing you ought to go and see the overseer after that. It might be best to get what information you can from her while the risk of another Master watching the area for vulnerable enemies is minimal.
Our elemental magic is super-effective against more orthodox magics, noted. I will NOT play along with Lily's every whim in this continuity.

>Player Longevity
Thread one of City Akeldama, dropped Awakening Mirror after capturing Rider.

>Character Pastebin
Might want to explain Archer's Affection score boss. Wtf the Nurse is a heroine??? Papa Yumigawa needs to be put to death (in another timeline where we care). Ayaka, you will win in some continuity, I swear it.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:teGmOk/l Thu 14 Aug 2025 18:52:03 No.6290410 Report

Quoted By: >>6290455

>>6290332
>[ ] Say that you don't mind looking around the shopping center a bit and getting something to eat, but instead of buying clothing you ought to go and see the overseer after that. It might be best to get what information you can from her while the risk of another Master watching the area for vulnerable enemies is minimal.

>>6290370
>How many of you are players who stuck around since I first ran City Akeldama in 2019, and who picked this quest up as a new player?
I'm a new player, haven't touched a single Fate quest until now.
>Is there anybody who picked up the quest during the original run of Awakening Mirror who's still around?
Not that I know of, sorry boss.
>What other Fate quests have you read or played?
I haven't played or read any. But from what the anons said last thread the original quest sounds interesting. Might give it a read.
>Have there been a fair amount on the board over the years while I was gone, or has it stayed pretty niche?
I haven't seen many Fate quests, so I'd say it's pretty niche.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:HebNe2yY Thu 14 Aug 2025 19:10:48 No.6290417 Report

Quoted By:

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 14 Aug 2025 20:56:46 No.6290455 Report

Quoted By: >>6290464 >>6290505

>>6290398
>dropped Awakening Mirror after capturing Rider.
Understandable. I'm glad you came back!
>Might want to explain Archer's Affection score boss.
It reflects the affection that [Archer] feels toward that individual at present.
>Ayaka
When you go back to the prologue...

>>6290410
>I'm a new player
Nice. Do you find that a lack of familiarity with the previous quest makes it more difficult to follow what's going on here? Alternatively, does it make it more interesting by creating mystery?
>Not many/no other Fate quests
Interesting.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:teGmOk/l Thu 14 Aug 2025 21:14:48 No.6290464 Report

Quoted By:

>>6290455
>Do you find that a lack of familiarity with the previous quest makes it more difficult to follow what's going on here?
A little bit, though I don't feel like that's really a bad thing. I feel like I'm mostly here for the ride rather than going for a specific ending.
>Alternatively, does it make it more interesting by creating mystery?
It does. It's been pretty fun.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Thu 14 Aug 2025 22:46:46 No.6290505 Report

Quoted By:

>>6290455
>When you go back to the prologue...
I shall pursue that golden path even if it takes another five years

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:qirQs1EN Sat 16 Aug 2025 06:31:57 No.6291141 Report

Quoted By:

>>6290332
>[ ] Play along. There's no harm in waiting until night to continue with the action of the War, most Masters won't be active under daylight anyway.
almost missed this

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:qirQs1EN Sat 16 Aug 2025 06:33:45 No.6291143 Report

Quoted By:

>>6290370
I'm a new one, started it with the last thread

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sun 17 Aug 2025 02:57:26 No.6291712 Report

Quoted By:

Incongruous, inexplicable, or otherwise, Liliesviel is waiting for you to reply. The program she's suggested doesn't exactly fill you with delight, however. It's easy to picture what the 'quaint native street foods' she's looking forward to will consist of. Taiyaki, takoyaki, dorayaki, probably a few crepe stands doing the best business of the bunch, and some sweet potato sellers carrying on their trade as long as possible after their main autumn season. Most of it holds no appeal, and none of it, your stomach protests, will have much in the way of nourishment. A Servant shouldn't need to eat, you suppose, so there's nothing really insensitive in Liliesviel's not considering the hunger that comes with strenuous exercise in planning this little trip, but whatever sort of abnormal existence you've come to be, that principle doesn't seem to apply to you. You glance at Caster, looking for any sign of support, but there's no opposition to Liliesviel's idea in her bland, slightly amused expression. Then too, looking at the anticipation in Liliesviel's own face, you find your motivation to quash her idea flagging. You can always eat several helpings of whatever is available, or find your own food later on.

More important is the waste of time that looking for clothes would be. The girl's motivation is understandable enough, it's the kind of outing often shared by close companions, family or otherwise, but in the context of the Holy Grail War and your unknown remaining time alive, wasting an afternoon picking out an outfit or two seems like a luxury you can't afford. True, what you're wearing now is drab, but it's not as if you have a reputation to keep up anymore. Maybe some other time, if you find yourself with a name and a social life again, you'll start thinking more about your appearance. Right now there are other things to be done.

"Walking around the shopping center sounds fine," you say, "and there's nothing wrong with getting something to eat, but I'll have to suggest we leave buying clothing for another day. Remember your idea to tell the overseer about the Servant using ordinary people to clean up the Yumigawa house? We'd be better advised to do that now, while the sun is still out. There's a decent chance another Master or Servant will have had the idea to stake the overseer's base of operations out and ambush anyone coming or going from there after dark."

"Even should we defeat the enemy, a battle would put an end to any other plans we make for the night," Caster muses, agreeing. "Diplomacy has always been best done in a place and time without risk of bloodshed."

Liliesviel looks momentarily crestfallen, but her expression soon clears, taking on a contemplative cast as she sets aside the frivolous thoughts of the daylight world for the considerations of war.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sun 17 Aug 2025 02:58:27 No.6291713 Report

Quoted By:

"I suppose what you say does make sense," she admits. "Even if we were to pay a call to the overseer at night, she might not be in, being busy with some task on behalf of the Church. We'll simply have to find you a proper suit of clothing another day, Onii-sama."

<> <> <>

Music: Shopping Center (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM9:f) 

As it turns out, walking around the busy streets of Shinjuku is more pleasant than you would've thought. On a Thursday afternoon, it's not as crowded as it would be on the weekend, and even those passersby who are on the street don't react to your strange appearances. A convenience of Einzbern magic arranged by Liliesviel, apparently, transferring their attention elsewhere. With no real lines you're able to make a circuit of several vendors in a short time, and Liliesviel savors one treat after another with manifest delight, holding forth on how they differ from her own country's pastries. As for yourself, you eat four servings of takoyaki, but it hardly makes a dent in your hunger. As expected, you'll have to find a substantial dinner at some point this evening. It only takes about an hour before you make your way to a local church, one of many serving the sizable Christian minority in Tokyo. This one in particular, apparently, has a more complex purpose.

Walking up to the door, you're impressed in spite of yourself by the grandeur of the construction. The building looks as if it were raised centuries ago, huge blocks of rough-hewn dark stone, stained glass windows, and decorative flourishes of sculpture that all lend authenticity to a direct imitation of a European Gothic cathedral. Only the scaled-down size, about twice that of an average house, and your own knowledge of the extent of Tokyo's destruction during the second World War make it obvious that it's no more than fifty years old. Then, perhaps there's more to the presence of the building than its looks. The space around it feels weighted down with an energy neither mundane nor magical, the territory of a wholly different art of mystery which seems to warn against any intrusion by the heretic practitioners of magic. Hardly a place you can easily imagine holding someone who has chosen to watch benevolently over the Holy Grail War and ensure it's carried out in proper order.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sun 17 Aug 2025 02:59:29 No.6291714 Report

Quoted By:

You're not the only one who feels hostility from the church, clearly. As soon as you're within a few meters of the entrance, Caster disappears into spirit form. Before she fades out of sight, you glimpse a dubious expression on her face. She seems to expect only misfortune to come of getting involved with the overseer, but to be resigned to the course of action anyway. That, or it could be a simple expression of a former deity's abhorrence for the worship of any other divinity. At any rate, you'll be doing no equivalent disappearing act; the entrance consists of a pair of thick open doors adorned with cast iron finishings, much too heavy for someone of Liliesviel's stature to move.

Music: Sacred Place (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM11:2) 

Heaving open the doors, you experience a second surprise as you pass over the threshold. Inside the church, its forbidding atmosphere vanishes like the winter's chill. Candles, together with the stained glass windows, light the space with a warm and gentle radiance that feels somehow pure. The sense of age in the old stone and wood that seemed redolent of stolid and oppressive hostility out there now seem to impart a comfortable stability, welcoming any visitor with the promise that things will always be just as they were when they visited last. Only the emptiness of the church, its grand space echoing with the sound of footsteps as the three of you make your way up the aisle, still feels vaguely unnerving.

"Oh my. What a surprise!" A soft voice, hardly more than a murmur, greets your ears, and as you look toward the sound you see a nun hurrying out toward the pulpit from a door which evidently leads to a back room. Though her words express shock, the woman's warm tone and the gentle smile on her face convey only a kind of mild pleasure and welcome, as if she'd been expecting you all the time, but is happy to see you just the same. The nun, a striking beauty, favors you with her smile for a moment, a slight question in her warm gaze, but soon focuses on Liliesviel. Evidently she recognizes the girl.

"To think, the daughter of Einzbern would favor my humble place of worship with a personal visit. To what do I owe this pleasure, and who might your companion be?"

In any other circumstance, you would assume the words to be sarcasm, but this woman actually seems to mean them. The contrast with the last representative of the clergy you encountered could hardly be more extreme, although calling Cid Ajisartous a member of the clergy might be unfair to the church. Perhaps this is the secret to how an organization hostile to magic on general principle is able to watch over the Holy Grail War, by sending the most tolerant, sweet-tempered people it can find to do the job.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO Day 4 Church.png, 239KiB, 800x600

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sun 17 Aug 2025 03:00:29 No.6291716 Report

Quoted By:

"Good afternoon, Overseer," Liliesviel replies, and bobs a curtsy, her own formal politeness seeming almost icy by contrast with the nun's demeanor. "My name is Liliesviel von Einzbern, as you know, and this is the Servant Archer, with whom I am collaborating." At the verbal cue, you dip a shallow bow. At Liliesviel's identification of you as Archer, a tiny show of surprise ripples across the nun's features, her eyes widening just a hair before her calm returns. You doubt if the reaction would have been visible at all, if not for the preternatural vision you gained upon becoming a Servant.

"What a pleasure, finally meeting you in person," the nun coos, and as she glides over toward Liliesviel the ridiculous thought crosses your mind that she's going to pick her up or pinch her cheeks, like an overly affectionate aunt. No such thing happens, of course, and once she's close enough to speak comfortably, she turns her attention to you. "And the same to you, Archer-san. I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you or your Master yet, although I was of course familiar with Liliesviel-chan, the Master of Caster. I am called Luciadonna, a servant of Christ who has been blessed with the responsibility of overseeing the struggle for the Holy Grail and ensuring that no innocent blood is shed in your battle. Please, call me Sister Lucia."

"The pleasure is all mine," you reply, "but the occasion of our meeting isn't so pleasing, I'm afraid. The shedding of innocent blood is exactly what's happening. A Servant, I really can't guess which, seems to be manipulating ordinary people to some unsavory end, using them as pawns in the War."

"Good heavens!" Lucia looks genuinely perturbed, concern creasing the fair skin between her brows. "How monstrous! I was warned that some of the Masters might be the vicious sort of mage who makes sacrifices of innocents for the sake of their own power, but actually bringing them into the conflict? How did you discover such a terrible thing?"

"Last night we paid a call on a married couple named Yumigawa," Liliesviel explains, "acquaintances of the Einzbern who are not part of the Moonlit World, but who might provide me with information on events in Tokyo of which I had not heard. When we arrived, we found their home empty, with a sign in the yard advertising it for sale. Several strange-looking men were going around the property. They were apparently employees of the firm selling the home, Yoyogi Realty, but I was quite sure the Yumigawas would not have sold their home and disappeared. When we investigated these men, we found that they had no memory of the past week, and traces of the energy of an unknown Servant was clinging to them."

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sun 17 Aug 2025 03:01:30 No.6291717 Report

Quoted By: >>6291723

"But they were otherwise untouched by magic?" Lucia's voice is tinged with horrified outrage, yet somehow anger hasn't quite managed to creep into her tone or her expression. You wonder if this could be one of those rare people who truly has no temper; all her emotion seems focused on concern for the potential victims, but you would expect anyone who cares as much as she seems to about a subject like this to be made furious by the story.

"They were ordinary people, without magic circuits or knowledge of mystery," Liliesviel agrees, "but they weren't victims of a magus, either. If ordinary magic had been used to control them, Caster would have discovered its nature. The only possibility seems to be a Servant controlling them by using a Noble Phantasm."

"My, my, my..." Lucia bites her lower lip, looking into the middle distance, her mind visibly racing. "There's no telling how many victims there might be, or how rapidly the number could be increasing. I'll need to warn all of the Masters. Perhaps everyone will cooperate, if I offer the perpetrator's command spells to the Master who stops him..." Then she seems to snap back into the here and now, focusing on Liliesviel and taking the girl's hand between hers. "Ah! But I'm sorry, I'm forgetting myself. Thank you for telling me about this, Liliesviel-chan, I'm so grateful. People like that have to be stopped as soon as possible, or you can't imagine how far things might go!"

"You might thank Archer, as well," the girl replies, looking amused by Lucia's outpouring of emotion. "Pursuing the mystery men was his idea."

"Well then!" Suddenly Lucia pivots, clasping your own hand with fervor. Her skin, you can't help noticing, is extremely warm, almost feverish. "Thank you as well, Archer-san. Now, what I said about awarding the command spells of this brute to the Master who defeats him is true, of course, but I have another reward for the two of you, for telling me about what's happened." At those words, a strange shift happens in her face. Although obviously still worried about dealing with the mysterious Servant, she looks almost happy at the same time, as if the situation has been resolved just by deciding to resolve it.

"What you've told me about isn't the only strange anomaly haunting the Sixth Holy Grail War, you see. A few days ago, when I was examining the site where the Holy Grail will descend, I made a discovery: in this Holy Grail War, not seven, but fourteen Servants have been summoned."

"Fourteen?!" You and Liliesviel exclaim almost simultaneously. You had thought there must be a few additional Servants, of course. You exist, and Caster, and Adelheid, the Berserker you knew in the Akeldama, should be somewhere as well, but that would only come to a total of ten. For the war to have double the normal number of participants suggests a much larger anomaly.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sun 17 Aug 2025 03:02:44 No.6291718 Report

Quoted By: >>6291769 >>6291782 >>6292073 >>6292314

"But that would play havoc with the Heaven's Feel," Liliesviel continues, real horror in her voice. "For there to be so many heroic spirits summoned could very well tear the ritual apart!"

"Yes," Lucia nods, "and if it does go on, the effects on the local population will be unthinkable. I feel sure that these anomalies are connected. Some monster must have arranged for additional Servants to be summoned and started controlling the people of Tokyo, all to twist the Holy Grail War to unholy ends! We must find this person and put a stop to their evil plots as quickly as possible! I hope the two of you will help me."

"Yes, of course," Liliesviel murmurs, looking dazed. "Now, if you'll excuse me..."

>[ ] Leave with Liliesviel and head back to the hotel. You need to discuss what this means for the War.

>[ ] Stay here for a moment. You have something you want to ask Sister Lucia. (What?)

>[ ] Leave, but tell Liliesviel and Caster you'll make your own way back. You need to be alone for a while and think about things.

>[ ] Do something else. (Write in)

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Sun 17 Aug 2025 03:33:36 No.6291723 Report

Quoted By: >>6291725 >>6291782

I guess two cups allows for two subrituals/servant sets?

With us being activated likely by the Akeldama ritual, it's spawned in the second set. However given it was under the influence of the Akeldama ritual, it's shoved (or transfixed) Akeldama centric candidates as other Servants? This must be how/why Sweets had labelled the extra set as [Class Name] to designate that fact.

Given the Overseer is meant to be neutral, we're unlikely to get any further information that is actually useful as that would break the neutrality. She'd also be revealing it inadvertently to the Einzbern (who are mega heretics, given they made false 'grails' and are a major reasonwhy the churchhas to be here to shield the masses) which I doubt She'd be interested and in doing.

She seemed surprised to meet us personally (but also knows of the other Servants) so she may not have met anyone else who is new yet. Or she now suspects (given our appearance) that the eituak splitting is the faukt of the Einzbern as the new Archer is by visuals alone, and associates, very clearly Einzbern aligned. Did she know the original Einzbern Caster too?

>>6291717
We need time to think honestly. Away from the birb and the cup. Its daytime still, so this is probably our last reprieve to start planning and processing what we've experienced to this point (we also need to eat, clearly hunger bothers us).

The more we interact with the Overseer the worse the risk is that she actively decides to send other Masters our way for the ritual ballooning like it has.

>[ ] Leave, but tell Liliesviel and Caster you'll make your own way back. You need to be alone for a while and think about things.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Sun 17 Aug 2025 03:36:02 No.6291725 Report

Quoted By: >>6291769

>>6291723
Worse still if she has actually met the original Archer already, and that's part of why she reacted as she did when she met us.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Sun 17 Aug 2025 04:50:59 No.6291769 Report

Quoted By: >>6291782

>>6291718
>[ ] Leave, but tell Liliesviel and Caster you'll make your own way back. You need to be alone for a while and think about things.
I need to heroically brood on this new information and on my motives/identity. This isn't encounter bait, no siree.

>14 Servants
>6 remaining from the normal ritual plus a full (Akeldama-derived?) set
>Our Caster has limited observational ability
Fuuuuuuuuck. We've gotta be a bottom tier duo in this War. Circe and [Archer] need to step uo. Also... Saberich is still alive isn't he? Unless the extra [Saber] and [Rider] have some other source? It's plausible that both Vaisset and Ayaka were selected as Masters with doubled servants afoot. Still doesn't explain our memories versus Lily claiming to have summoned Judas.

>Saber: Artoria, possibly fully artificial Rushorou-based [Saber]
>Lancer: Bryn, Matsuda
>Archer: Us, tbd normal servant
>Rider: Chariot guy, tbd Akeldama fabrication
>Caster: Judas, Circe
>Berserker: Adelheid, tbd normal servant
>Assassin: Tsubaki, tbd normal servant

Finally, I don't know what the warm skin and odd lack of reactive emotion tell us about the Overseer.

>>6291725
Her meeting the actual Archer would make sense. We spent the start of the War as a schoolboy after all.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Sun 17 Aug 2025 05:47:12 No.6291782 Report

Quoted By: >>6291791

>>6291718
>[ ] Leave, but tell Liliesviel and Caster you'll make your own way back. You need to be alone for a while and think about things.
>>6291723
There's also the fact that the Einzberns used the Akeldama in the first place to involve 1050 civilians into the world of magic and then kill almost all of them.
>>6291769
>Finally, I don't know what the warm skin and odd lack of reactive emotion tell us about the Overseer.
If you ask me, that and the gold eyes might mean she's not entirely human. Or is running her circuits at maximum output for some reason.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Sun 17 Aug 2025 06:50:29 No.6291791 Report

Quoted By: >>6291805 >>6291910

>>6291782
I don't think she or even Liliesviel are aware of that little 'accident' yet, are they? I take it Circe informed her new Master, but being a mage a thousand cattle don't matter if she's found her onii-sama safe and sound.

Gold eyes are a variant of Pure Eyes. She might be a Saint? Or they're a variant of Mystic Eyes (Pure Eyes are probably the only variety the church would tolerate).

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Sun 17 Aug 2025 08:47:09 No.6291805 Report

Quoted By: >>6291910

>>6291791
She clearly hasn't connected it with the Einzbern, since we haven't been raided by the Burial Agency. In all likelihood, it will never be connected, since those people died inside a separate world that vanished days ago. But if someone were to figure it out or give away clues, then the Einzbern will be in hot water.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Sun 17 Aug 2025 15:31:08 No.6291910 Report

Quoted By:

>>6291805
>If someone were to figure it out or give away clues
One Truvietianne Edelfelt comes to mind as someone with the ability and motive to connect the ritual to the Einzberns, esp if she ever meets [Archer].

>>6291791
Pure eyes or some kind of psychic ability a-la Caren would make sense.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:TCC8WYpS Sun 17 Aug 2025 19:25:39 No.6292073 Report

Quoted By: >>6292385

>>6291718
>[ ] Stay here for a moment. You have something you want to ask Sister Lucia. (What?)

Ask her if she has a directory of the officially-registered Masters and their Servants that we could review, and if there are a lot of unaccounted for belligerents, which classes they are. We'd give away the fact that we don't have an official Master and add ourselves to the directory as a sign of good faith that we're trying to be helpful and have the war be waged in as safe a manner as possible to get in her good graces.

This will be useful for general intel and to look for plot hooks on our next step.

>>6290370
I hopped into Awakening Mirror a couple threads in, but caught myself up on Akeldama at the time.
Confession time: I'm Low Speed Anti-Divine QM, the guy who ran 14 threads of the Akeldama redux quest before putting it on hiatus when 4chan was hacked and haven't restarted it. I would have liked to continue since it was getting close to a notable inflection point but my IRL situation changed in a couple ways making it difficult notably my friends talked me into being the D&D DM for a while which takes up most of my fictional creative energies.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:TCC8WYpS Sun 17 Aug 2025 19:34:19 No.6292079 Report

Quoted By: >>6292091

I'll add that Lucia already smelled a rat when she heard we were an Archer, so it's not like we're giving her a big vulnerability on us in the first place by telling the truth.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:TCC8WYpS Sun 17 Aug 2025 19:51:05 No.6292089 Report

Quoted By: >>6292267

As an additional detail of my write-in: we *wouldn't* tell the whole Akeldama saga to Lucia, since that would implicate the Einzbern as the source of the anomaly even though Judas seems to have used them for his own ends.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:75yRgsWF Sun 17 Aug 2025 19:51:36 No.6292091 Report

Quoted By: >>6292095

>>6292079
This is the taste of a liar! Giorno Giovanna!

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sun 17 Aug 2025 19:55:37 No.6292095 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292091
https://youtu.be/1t2upIbBJw4?si=96VHmCt8xuN2-Fx0
It's all in the face...

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:8411L4Rm Sun 17 Aug 2025 23:10:31 No.6292267 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292089
>Not retelling the Akeldama Saga to every player in the Moonlit World we meet
This might be a step too far departing from the original Awakening Mirror anon.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:qirQs1EN Mon 18 Aug 2025 00:05:25 No.6292314 Report

Quoted By:

>>6291718
>[ ] Leave with Liliesviel and head back to the hotel. You need to discuss what this means for the War.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Mon 18 Aug 2025 01:08:49 No.6292341 Report

Quoted By:

"Thank you for the information, Sister," you say, nodding to the woman as you follow Liliesviel out. A few steps, and you've slipped back into the ordinary world, the strange tranquility and warm glow of the church exchanged for winter's chill and the darkening gray of the overcast city in late afternoon. From the church steps, you look out on a street now deserted, empty of pedestrians and with only the occasional car. Liliesviel doesn't seem inclined to speak, still lost in thought and carried away by her reaction to the revelation of the additional Servants. Just why she and Lucia seem to think these additional presences will have such a catastrophic effect isn't clear to you, and for a moment you almost give voice to your curiosity, but you think better of it. You'll get clearer answers once Liliesviel has had time to collect her own thoughts. Caster seems to draw a similar conclusion, as she materializes looking about to speak, but shuts her mouth when she catches sight of her Master's face.

Suddenly you realize that this is the moment. Liliesviel will need time to think about what the overseer told her, and Caster doubtless plans to discuss the results of her investigation into traces of any Servants' past presence at the church. It will all take time, time when neither of the two will be particularly focused on you, and time you can put to other use. All day, and really since last night, you've had the nagging feeling that you need to get away from everyone else for a while, be in the company of no one but yourself long enough to work out just exactly what it is you intend to do. Not in the immediate future of the next battle or training session, but in the war as a whole, and in your life as a whole, whatever remains of it. Fighting to survive is well and good, but if you don't have a reason for that survival, how long will you be able to go on?

"Liliesviel, Caster," you begin, cutting through the silence, "Go back to the hotel without me, would you? I'll catch up later."

Without waiting for a reply, you turn and start walking up the street, in the opposite direction of the way back. Behind you, you can hear Liliesviel and Caster reacting. They sound surprised, but since neither one chases after you, you guess they're amenable enough to the idea. You quicken your pace, and find you're walking into the teeth of the wind, away from the semi-residential district where Lucia's church stands and toward the unknown.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Mon 18 Aug 2025 01:09:50 No.6292343 Report

Quoted By:

Music - Lonely Crowd (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM17:3) 

The unknown. That, you suppose, is where you'd be headed no matter what direction you point yourself in. You have no clear future, no past, and no real idea of what constitutes the world around you. On the one hand, a set of lies told by an illusion; on the other, half-understood notions glimpsed within an incomprehensible reservoir of instinct or explained by strangers you have no way of proving are trustworthy. Though your feet are on firm ground, you find yourself assailed by a sense of freefall, plunging through a vast space filled with mist, populated only by insubstantial shapes. Whenever you try to grab one of these forms, apparently solid from a distance, and orient yourself, it only dissolves into whorls of fog and your flight continues, directionless and purposeless. You blink away the vision angrily, rejecting it with all your will. There must be some way in this shadow world to get your bearings, point yourself in the direction of some worthy end.

As you walk, you find that gradually you pass more and more pedestrians. The character of the buildings is changing, and you realize you're coming into an entertainment district, the lighted signs of bars and restaurants calling passersby to come in and rest their weary feet. Of potential customers, there are plenty. Solitary or in groups, drunk or sober, off work or hurrying about an errand, they all move toward their own individual ends, countless disparate threads of life unconsciously woven together in the fabric of population. Among them, but not of them, you move, a pale figure shadowed by a black cloak, standing head and shoulders above anyone else on the street. If you could see yourself from outside, you think, you'd look like grim death stalking these peaceful burghers, and suddenly you wish you could blend in. They don't see you, eyes glossing over your presence under the influence of your cloak, but this does nothing to assuage your own unpleasant consciousness of your alien presence.

You recall the strange sense of being thrown outside the world you felt when walking the empty halls of Kyoutenkan High, looking in on the classrooms full of students. How much more complete a world have you been ejected from now? Is it the world of the mundane, of those who know nothing of magic and believe they occupy a universe ruled by rational science? Is it the human race altogether, mage and mundane alike dissimilar to this occult creature? Or have you been removed from the world of the living of any species? You touch a finger to your own arm and find it cold as stone. Your own flesh carries not even the faintest suggestion of the feverish heat you felt when Sister Lucia took your hand. Are you, as Caster claimed, only an artifact of magic, an inanimate object laboring under the misconception that it lives?

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO Day 4 Street.png, 242KiB, 800x600

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Mon 18 Aug 2025 01:10:51 No.6292346 Report

Quoted By: >>6292494

Adrift in a sea of questions, you long to return to the simple, human past, even if it was a lie. If you can become more a part of the world around you, the world you understood, in any way, however small, perhaps you can find some relief. Then your roiling mind settles on the cloak, that patently fantastical emblem of the past, the Noble Phantasm which marks you out as a Servant. You will it to dematerialize, dissipate into magical energy as your bow does when not needed, vanish from your person and leave not a spectre of the fantastical, but only an unusually tall, pale man in dark clothing. It disperses, but not completely. A scarf remains wrapped around your neck. It is the form, you realize, that the cloak took when it was first made in the Akeldama. So, it has a physical core, and can no more become a spirit than you can. Fine. This is good enough; in February, a scarf is nothing strange. You walk through the crowd, feeling the eyes of the ordinary people fall on you and linger as they observe someone unusual, then move on, and your mind is more at ease. At the very least, you are in the world.

Then your stomach reminds you of its presence. If there is anything about you still alive and human, that's it. The snack you had earlier was only a temporary fix, and the black hole that took up residence in your core after this morning's workout is once again demanding sustenance. Fortunately, there are restaurants all around you, from ramen shops to pizzerias to yakiniku restaurants to izakayas to open air oden stalls. As the afternoon fades into winter's early nightfall and the sun begins to disappear, more and more are turning on their lights and opening for business. Unfortunately, you have no money.

Indeed, you have no personal effects of any kind. Nothing Yumigawa Rushorou carried on him made it into any pockets your cloak might have, and you suppose it was all left behind on the grounds of Kyoutenkan High after your run-in with Lancer. An unsettling discovery for the groundskeeper, you don't doubt. Then again, perhaps Shijou and her Servant scrupulously cleaned up the scene in deference to the magus' rule of secrecy. The mental image of that battle-mad woman trying to clean blood off of the grass puts a smile on your face, though it does nothing for your present situation. Of course, no pocket money came included with the outfit you received from Liliesviel's maids.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Mon 18 Aug 2025 01:12:04 No.6292347 Report

Quoted By:

There is one easy solution to your problem, of course. You only have to put a hand on the crowd surrounding you, and after a moment's deliberation, you decide that's what you'll do. Glancing around, you size up a prosperous-looking businessman, quicken your pace, and just as you pass the man on the street your hand darts into his pocket and returns with his wallet. Moving with speed and agility no mundane pickpocket could approach, you reflect that after all, the powers of a Servant are good for more than combat. The businessman never notices a thing, and you move on as you consider what you'd like to eat.

<> <> <>

The ramen shop is an old one, and not particularly spacious. It looks like it might not have changed a detail of the interior decor in 40 years. Just the same, the smell wafting out of it was delicious enough to pull you in and sit you down at the counter.

"Tonkotsu ramen, firm, with extra chashu and two orders of gyoza," you tell the cook, who's also the man taking orders. He looks to be about seventy years old, and to have spent fifty-five of them behind this counter. The old man squints suspiciously at you.

"Yer Japanese's pretty good, sonny." The compliment, if you can call it that, is delivered in tones suggesting an accusation of profoundly subtle evil. You reflect on your appearance yet again, and decide that the man probably detests tourists. There are certainly enough of them in Tokyo, of all varieties, for a shopkeeper or restaurant owner to form any kind of opinion about them and ground it in experience.

"I've lived in Tokyo for a long time," you answer shortly. "Since I was a child."

The old man just nods at you and sets about preparing your order. You can tell he doesn't really believe you, and sees you as some kind of oddity, but isn't really curious to find out more. You glance around the shop as you wait for your food observing the other customers. On the stool beside you sits an overweight man in a threadbare suit, with the slumped shoulders and tired eyes of a traveling salesman. He eats slowly, savoring every bite as if to eat is his only real pleasure in life, and the moment he finishes his food it will be back to the grind. To his right, a man in a baseball cap and denim jacket who obviously works with his hands, maybe a construction worker or a trucker. He eats with ravenous speed, taking in the heavy food like fuel to be pumped into his tank and moved on from. On your left, a few stools removed from you, three high school boys sit loudly talking, joking with one another and arguing good-humoredly about sports and the girls at their school.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Mon 18 Aug 2025 01:13:05 No.6292350 Report

Quoted By:

Their talk mingles with the noise of the crowd passing on the street outside, and with the conversations of other patrons you don't bother to examine, a melange of discussion of all the trivialities one can quibble over when the really essential facts of life are understood and set in stone. Work, love, television, the economy, politics, the progress of road resurfacing, professional wrestling, last year's baseball season and speculation on the one to come, and more are discussed by the handful of people in this little store. All topics which mean nothing to you. All intersections of a fabric from which your string has been precisely unraveled.

"Here."

A bowl of ramen is set down on the counter in front of you, flanked by dishes of gyoza. Unfriendly the old man may be, but he's quick about his work and the food is good. Hot, filling, and flavorful. Sustenance seems to revive you a bit, and you wonder if just living might be enough reason to fight after all. There are things to enjoy, aren't there? Moments of natural beauty, good meals, pleasant music. But what would it mean, that kind of purposeless existence? Surely it would be even less fulfilling than the life of Yumigawa Rushorou, a life you trudged through without emotion, because even in that existence you had a purpose to work toward. You lived with the purpose of achieving Yumigawa Gorou's lifestyle. Unsatisfying as it was, that purpose gave your actions meaning.

Then there was the Akeldama, and your second purpose. To rise above humanity, lead from the position of a higher being, to go beyond your limits and prove a superiority you had always felt. Now it is proved. You were never a human at all, but something else, and you're now indisputably superior to them. Where, then, is that desire for rule now? Is it buried beneath anxiety over your lifespan? If you could be certain of living beyond the end of the Holy Grail War, would you feel yourself filled with that purpose again, or is it something else? Perhaps that desire was a mania that impressed itself completely on you only while you were within the Akeldama, and now only its shadow remains. Certainly it isn't easy to dredge up your old pride in light of how your power compares to that of the competition in this Holy Grail War.

Your bowl is empty, and so are the side dishes. Time to go. You pay with cash from the stolen wallet and leave the restaurant, finding that night has fallen and the sky has cleared of clouds while you were eating. Probably best to get back to the hotel. You let your cloak take shape again, hiding you from the world, and climb to the roof of a nearby building via the fire escape. You're intending to look around, figure out where you are, and head back toward the Marco Polo Hotel, when you catch sight of something odd: a rooftop garden.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Mon 18 Aug 2025 01:14:06 No.6292352 Report

Quoted By: >>6292368 >>6292371 >>6292372 >>6292380 >>6292422 >>6292496 >>6292598 >>6292607 >>6292769

Two blocks away, the top of a residential high-rise has been cultivated so as to resemble a lush park, complete with trees, shrubbery, gravel paths, a bench, and an old-fashioned lamp post. The sight of a rooftop garden is hardly unheard-of, but for the life of you you can't imagine why someone would want to cultivate one to resemble a city park. Still, something about it entices you, and after a moment of thought you realize what it is. It would be the perfect place to stargaze, and you recall a dream you had not long ago. Looking upward in darkness, while a voice from a star told you to remember your true desire. Without attachment to your past reasons for living, and feeling only revulsion at the thought of serving the purpose assigned to you by those who sought to use you as a Holy Grail, it seems that if you truly have such a thing you haven't been able to follow the voice's advice. If you've ever needed help to remember a true desire, you surely do now.

>[ ] Go to the rooftop garden and stargaze, meditating on your dream, and find a direction in life.

>[ ] Put this nonsense behind you and go back to the hotel. What matters is having the ability to live, not finding a reason to do so.

>[ ] Do something else. (Write in)

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:TCC8WYpS Mon 18 Aug 2025 02:03:01 No.6292368 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292352
>[ ] Go to the rooftop garden and stargaze, meditating on your dream, and find a direction in life.
Maybe we will encounter another stargazer while we loiter on their property too.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:zoB/YcIE Mon 18 Aug 2025 02:09:29 No.6292371 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292352
>[ ] Go to the rooftop garden and stargaze, meditating on your dream, and find a direction in life.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Mon 18 Aug 2025 02:13:47 No.6292372 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292352
>[ ] Go to the rooftop garden and stargaze, meditating on your dream, and find a direction in life.
It's what we came here for.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:tWWRrlqB Mon 18 Aug 2025 02:31:41 No.6292380 Report

Quoted By: >>6292385

>>6292352
>[ ] Go to the rooftop garden and stargaze, meditating on your dream, and find a direction in life.
Fuck me this bgm is funny

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Mon 18 Aug 2025 02:45:40 No.6292385 Report

Quoted By: >>6292394 >>6292405

>>6292073
Thanks for carrying the torch while I was gone. Interesting that you started with Awakening Mirror, but ended up deciding to run a remake of City Akeldama. What made you pick that scenario?

>>6292380
Is it?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:TCC8WYpS Mon 18 Aug 2025 03:15:44 No.6292394 Report

Quoted By: >>6292434

>>6292385
>Interesting that you started with Awakening Mirror, but ended up deciding to run a remake of City Akeldama. What made you pick that scenario?
Well, a guy called "High Speed Divine QM" began the scenario then dropped it partway through the first thread. So I made an alter-ego persona "Low Speed Anti-Divine QM" as his antithesis and assumed direct control since I liked the potential that the story had, then filled in all of the blanks in my own way, no doubt developing it in a way completely different than the original QM envisioned. I felt kind of bad that Awakening Mirror never reached its resolution and wanted something that found an ending, though it seems to have not succeeded. Hopefully the players had some fun while it lasted, I at least did. Would consider ending the hiatus if my IRL situation changes.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Mon 18 Aug 2025 03:47:51 No.6292405 Report

Quoted By: >>6292434

>>6292385
I'm not the best with instruments, but the harmonica(?) is so old-fashioned that it's funny. Between that and the rundown Ramen shop it has an 80s feel.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:ToLGeiEY Mon 18 Aug 2025 03:56:39 No.6292422 Report

Quoted By: >>6292434 >>6292452

>>6292352
>[X] Go to the rooftop garden and stargaze, meditating on your dream, and find a direction in life.
I'm absolutely loving this soul searching and introspection.
Rushorou is at his best when he's trying to put the pieces of himself together. It was like this in Akeldama too.
Cheesy as it might sound to some, Rushorou finding what made him human and what brought him genuine joy is my favorite part of his character. Just an Empty guy trying to fill his hollow heart with something worthwhile.
It's peak!

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Mon 18 Aug 2025 04:05:01 No.6292434 Report

Quoted By: >>6292452

>>6292394
Funny. The story is a lot like how I turned Gulag's City Akeldama into mine in the first place. Turns out, making something that finds an ending is tougher than it seems, huh? I know how that feels. Here's hoping I finish Awakening Mirror this time and we can put that regret to rest.

>>6292405
>Between that and the rundown Ramen shop it has an 80s feel.
That's pretty much just the feel I was going for, so that works out. The aesthetic of the late Showa era is something I really like when it comes to Japan. If I ever run an OC anime-style quest, I'll probably set it in Tokyo around 1980.

>>6292422
Glad you like it! It's something I really enjoy writing, so there's always the concern for me that I'll go too far with the introspective monologuing and people will get tired of it.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Mon 18 Aug 2025 04:45:29 No.6292452 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292422
>>6292434
Introspective brooding is what made City Akeldama so memorable. I too am a sucker for the authentic search for meaning, especially when it takes the form of self-affirmative value creation.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Mon 18 Aug 2025 06:36:47 No.6292494 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292346
/fa/

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Mon 18 Aug 2025 06:44:30 No.6292496 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292352
>[ ] Go to the rooftop garden and stargaze, meditating on your dream, and find a direction in life.

Akeldama's park bench is back, combined with a rooftop.

Absolutely peak brooding location.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:i06brWuc Mon 18 Aug 2025 15:07:35 No.6292598 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292352
>[ ] Go to the rooftop garden and stargaze, meditating on your dream, and find a direction in life.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:teGmOk/l Mon 18 Aug 2025 15:38:34 No.6292607 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292352
>[ ] Put this nonsense behind you and go back to the hotel. What matters is having the ability to live, not finding a reason to do so.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:qirQs1EN Tue 19 Aug 2025 00:03:00 No.6292769 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292352
>[ ] Go to the rooftop garden and stargaze, meditating on your dream, and find a direction in life.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 19 Aug 2025 05:05:05 No.6292885 Report

Quoted By:

Music: Uncertainty (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM2:6) 

The water is the second strange thing you discover about the rooftop garden. As you land on the path your shoes make a soft splash, and you realize that the entire rooftop is flooded , covered in a few centimeters of water. Where the flooding comes from you can't say, as there seems to be no fountain or other water feature, and you hear no running water. Looking down at the odd feature you stare into your own red eyes; what had been transparent at a distance now seems perfectly reflective, strangely doubling everything on the roof. The light from the lamp post shines up from below, as well as down from above. Trees and shrubs stand rooted in their own inverted bases. For each step you take, your doppelganger follows, a wavering shadow who seems to drift, lost, through the water. Of course, the moon and stars are replicated as well, a river of light flowing through the inky blackness far below your feet.

You make your way across the roof to a bench which balances precariously on its inverted feet, each step disturbing, but not dispelling, the reflected world below, and take a seat. Gazing into the sky you see the Milky Way, astonishingly clear in spite of the light pollution from the great metropolis which surrounds you, but there is no solitary bright star, no point of red fire. The sky is empty of answers, as of course you knew it would be. The days when mysterious beings spoke to men out of stars ended long ago, and there was nothing to hope for in reminding yourself of the dream. You remember every detail already, and the voice from the sky made no mention of what exactly your 'true desire' should be. Still, you find it calming. Looking up at that impossible distance, your mind becomes tranquil, your thoughts clear.

"True desire," you murmur, "but desire depends on the thing that desires." What, in the end, are you? Living things have base needs and desires derived from them, all of which tend toward one purpose. Survival of the fittest, propagation of the species. To this end, loyalty to kin. To this end, love. To this end, fear for one's life.

You suppose that Liliesviel von Einzbern must long for humanity in some way, long for an escape from the prison of her own nature, and it is from this questing after humanity that her care for you arises. Family, a brother to cling to, two against the world united by bonds of blood and defying the brutally short lifespan imposed on them by their makers. It's an understandable desire. In her, loneliness might be even stronger than the instinct of self-preservation, and her goal of prolonging her life a means to the true end of building a family, that essential structure of which the Einzbern carry the name, but lack the substance.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 19 Aug 2025 05:06:05 No.6292887 Report

Quoted By:

Caster's desire, can it be love? Do gods, or nymphs, exist subject to the dictates of evolutionary impulses? Her life, you know, was spent in pursuit of her idea of love, a purely selfish, monopolistic impulse to possess a great man and ensure that he be devoted to her, body and soul. Perhaps, though, that was an expression of the divine desire for worship, to have a suitable mirror to her vanity rather than the human urge to procreate. You can't say.

Neither human, nor seeker after emulation of humanity, nor god, perhaps these desires and the purpose of life for life's sake are unsuitable for you. Can a homunculus reproduce? Is it a species to be propagated? You seem to have all the necessary components, but whether they can create life is unknown. Can a complex mechanism of alchemical magic enjoy the worship of a devotee as can a deity which exists to rule? You doubt it. What, then, is the alternative? The purpose of an object created through human artifice, however complex, is given it by its maker, and you have a fair idea of what that was. To sacrifice yourself for another's end, complete the ritual of the Holy Grail War so that whatever magus regards himself as your owner can have his wish granted. The notion is more horrible than any conception of purposelessness or failure in pursuit of a purpose not fitted to your nature. It is impossible, then, to embrace the identity of a device.

Something nags at the back of your mind, a voice not giving commandments from the sky but inarticulate, emanating from deep within, hinting that there is a desire, a purpose unique to you, lying just out of sight. When you reach for the idea it dissolves, another phantom in the mist.

Purpose and desire are dependent on the nature of the one who desires, and your nature is neither man, nor animal, nor object. In that case, you can identify yourself only as yourself, and measure desire by past experience. In the earliest years of childhood, you remember feeling a pure happiness when receiving praise for fulfilling the expectations of those you thought were your parents. It faded with time, as did the praise itself when excellence came to be the expected norm, but it was there long ago.

There were moments, over the past eighteen years, when you felt a flicker of that happiness recur after accomplishing some goal. When you received a perfect score on a particularly difficult test, or the first time you were elected to a position in the student council. You even remember a moment of self-satisfied happiness the first time you received a love confession from a female classmate. You turned her down, of course, but the satisfaction at having cleared another metric of the highly successful individual was there.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 19 Aug 2025 05:07:06 No.6292888 Report

Quoted By: >>6292914

Did this reflect a desire for perfection of self? Did it represent a desire to satisfy the people you thought of as your parents? Was it a desire for community, for the respect and even adulation of your peers? There is some merit in this last, as you think of the profound sense of loss which afflicted you as you realized you had been cut off forever from the community of Tokyo-ites, of the Japanese people, and of humanity itself; all the communities of which you had believed yourself a born member. Is there merit in Liliesviel's path, then, of seeking the community of family where the community of mankind is no longer available? Perhaps.

You move on, seeking other moments of happiness in your memory. There were many, it seems, in the Akeldama, but those have taken on the quality of emotions felt in a dream, only tenuously connected to waking life. The person you were as you fought across those ten days seems almost like another man, or someone whose emotions were twisted by the effects of some subtle drug. The pride and self-love you felt, the desire to gather up underlings, protect them and order them about, the sense of duty to your inferiors, the longing for the adoration of women, all these emotions have traces which can be turned up if you go digging through your soul, but in that other world they were heightened to an extraordinary degree. Was that the nature of your spirit when decoupled from limits placed on it by your body? Did the atmosphere of that spiritual plane, saturated with death and destruction, somehow intoxicate all those who lived within it? If Cid were here, perhaps you could demand answers from him, but your memories hold none.

More recently, you recall the pleasure you felt as you humbled the delinquent who picked a fight with you at Kyoutenkan High. You consider your frustration as you were faced with the superior power of Saber and Rider, knowing you would be humiliated if you tried to defeat either. You consider the rage you felt at Naragasa Tsubaki for the impertinent way she dealt with you. Yes, all the traces of the man who was Master of Caster in the Akeldama are there. Perhaps, then...

You feel the earth ripple beneath your feet. But no, it's still and solid as ever. A line of energy flows, churning the land below you only in the realm which you feel with that other, intangible sense, and a cord pulls at your mind. You are hauled out of yourself, stretched to an infinite length, driven into the heart of Tokyo like a nail, and for a moment you feel everything, every Servant, every Master, the entire vast system which exists to subvert time and death, to bore a hole out of reality, and just as everything seems to be coming into focus, forming a coherent picture, the vast consciousness compresses to a single point.

<> <> <>

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 19 Aug 2025 05:08:14 No.6292890 Report

Quoted By: >>6292914 >>6292937

Interlude

Music: Special Operations (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM21:e) 

A white skull floats in the darkness. It is a mask on the face of a sage, or so he was known by those who knew him. He had other titles. Fanatic, killer, demon, scourge of the faithful, plague upon the unfaithful, but of names he had none. His skin is black, as is the turban above the glimmering skull. His robes are black. Once they were the costume of a doctor and natural philosopher in a time and place far distant, but they were changed to suit his purpose. Even in light they hide the shape of his body; in darkness, only the skull is there.

The sage is being hunted, and he is hunting. The one who attacked him is a fool, of that he is certain. A weakling who made his own presence obvious and lost track of the sage almost from the first. The sage's partner is far away, and so there is no danger of his being struck down. In this darkness, below an elevated roadway, there is only the sage, and the fool who will soon be disposed of. The sage has no need even to make use of his techniques. The fool is weak, reliant on tools he doesn't understand. The sage has seen many like him, weaklings who believe they are made strong by possession of some powerful object, and who grovel and beg when it is taken from them. He won't torment the fool with the knowledge of his death, however. The sage is not a cruel man.

The hand of the sage, long-fingered, reaches out of the darkness to settle on the neck of the fool. The fool turns, his face suffused with terror, and fires wildly. The muzzle flash from his rifle dispels the darkness for a moment, and the sage is no floating skull, but an attenuated form wrapped in ragged black cloth. Quick as a spider he moves, rushing out of the path of the fool's uncontrolled fire, and though the light falls on him no bullets do. His wrist flicks, and the fool's neck is broken.

"Now! Seven, Twelve, finish it!"

In the moment in which the sage focuses on the kill, he is bathed in light. Not the flashes of the fool's weapon, but beams shone down on him from many directions. There are lights on the elevated roadway, lights from the rushing water of the canal, lights from the darkness out of which he himself came. The muzzle flares come later. Only a fraction of a second, but an eternity for realization. Quick or slow, there is no direction the sage can move to put him out of harm's way. The thunder of guns pounds through the night, and the body becomes as ragged as its clothing.
interlude out

<> <> <>

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 19 Aug 2025 05:09:33 No.6292891 Report

Quoted By: >>6292937

Music: None 

Your head is being pounded into flour. Your body is being tenderized so someone's dinner won't be so tough. From out of the vision comes an assault, a torrent of raging energy, energy foreign to you which burns through your skin as it flows into your magic circuits. The reservoir, too vast ever to fill with the energy you can produce, is subject to a deluge, it is inundated, thrown under a flash flood, and surely in a moment it will overflow.

But no. You gather up your reeling thoughts and examine yourself through the pain, and find that there is no danger of your inner reservoir of magical energy overflowing. The torrent of energy, the spirit of the dead, doesn't even come close to straining the limits of the energy which can be contained within you. This, after all, is the purpose for which you were made. It sickens you, the truth of that proposition proved in the bluntest possible way, but soon you lack the mental leeway to be sickened. The pain is all you can see.

Even though the reservoir is less than a quarter full, it's filled up to parts of the sides that have never been wet before. Water is seeping into cracks built up from 18 dry years. Knives are being driven into the cracks in your insides. Energy saturating you is raging like a flame, trying to get out through walls that have cracked from disuse. You're going to explode, fire knives water energy is going to burst out of your abdomen and you're going to explode like a man who's eaten a bomb thinking it was a harmless part of his dinner.

Every muscle in your body tenses, straining to hold yourself in place, stay perfectly still, keep yourself in one piece. Finally it happens. The pain cools and subsides. You open your fists one finger at a time, looking incuriously at the red, crescent-shaped cuts left on the palm of your hand. You relax your jaw, and immediately feel the tooth you cracked begin to knit itself back together. All that's left is a strange feeling of fullness and emptiness.

You get to your feet, meaning to do something about this situation, because you need to... to stay upright, at least. You sway, the world swirling around you, and the stars wink out one by one as darkness closes in. You're unconscious before your face hits the water.

End of Day 4

<> <> <>

And you fall through the surface, into the depths. Far down there is something which is not the moon, and this time you won't be held back from it. The tiny circle of gold grows as you draw nearer, wider and wider, now the size of a baseball, now a tea saucer, now a dinner plate, and finally a portal too wide to reach the edges as you pass through, even if you wanted to hold yourself back.

Out of the black, into the gold.

Out of water, you breathe air.

Your feet find solid ground.

Below the river's deepest depths, on the other side of a hole past which water flows but into which it never pours, you stand in a vast space of light.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 19 Aug 2025 05:10:34 No.6292892 Report

Quoted By: >>6292912 >>6292914 >>6292917 >>6292922 >>6292937 >>6292945 >>6293010 >>6293045 >>6293173

Music: World of Gold (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM14:0)

It seems to be a chamber of gold, hollowed out of the earth. Far off you can see carved pillars, arches, gateways, and all manner of flourishes that speak of builders who saw themselves first as artists, and all these structures are wrought of gold. Beneath your feet is not a floor, but a surface of gold coins which threaten to shift like sand as you move. How deep they go you don't dare guess, but dunes rise before you. In the heaped up waves of coins you spy other things. Crowns, amulets, goblets, plates, torcs, armbands, anklets, rings, chains, daggers, swords, and still other precious objects of treasure poke here and there out of the great mass of coinage, a hoard of unimaginable proportions.

The chamber is larger than Kyoutenkan's assembly hall, larger than a cathedral, larger than the Tokyo Dome, and everywhere you look the gleaming treasure meets your eye. As if the light itself gives off heat, the air has the inviting warmth of a kitchen where the oven has been operating all day, come home to on a chill December night. It is utterly silent and utterly still, a tranquility which seems inviolable. 

>[ ] Climb the gold dune in front of you and go on walking straight until you find something of interest, a person, wall, door, or at least something that might tell you where you are.

>[ ] Try going in the opposite direction, behind you, where there seems to be a slight downward slope in the landscape of treasure.

>[ ] Jump up toward the opening in the ceiling you fell from, see if you can reach that exit.

>[ ] Dig into the treasure at your feet and try to find out how deep it really is.

>[ ] Call out for someone. Though the place is so quiet you almost don't believe a voice will come out, you might rouse an occupant.

>[ ] Do something else. (Write in)

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:vYGejCbD Tue 19 Aug 2025 06:16:30 No.6292912 Report

Quoted By: >>6292914 >>6292918 >>6293128

>>6292892
>[X] Try going in the opposite direction, behind you, where there seems to be a slight downward slope in the landscape of treasure.

>>6290370
Picked up the quest during the original Awakening Mirror, I believe it was while searching through Medusa's mind, but I read all the archives up to that point, including Gulag's original run. Lasted all the way up until the final tie that ended the quest for good.

Besides the quests done by High/Low Speed Anti-Divine QM, I haven't noticed any that really lasted that long. It's been pretty barren except for WhatIs' Shinji quest that apparently went up in flames at some point.

Also loving the music, I'm really feeling the VN vibe reading the quest right now.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Tue 19 Aug 2025 06:35:43 No.6292914 Report

Quoted By: >>6292918 >>6293128

>>6292888
A bit uncharitable to Circe's motives for the heroine with the highest affection score, no? In any event we can come to no definitive answer as to his goals what with [Archer]'s outright rejection of his nature as a cup. Although that leaves the role of a servant supporting a master with a respectable wish...

>>6292890
>Assassin got killed by mortals
Ahahahahahahahahahahahah the trve worst class exposes itself yet again. I wonder if we can make anything good of this newfound energy.

>>6292912
Agreed, the music suited the scenes extremely well this update.

>>6292892
>Do something else (Examine the coins and other treasures. Do they seem like natural artifacts, what time periods are they from, etc)
I have no clue what this is.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:ToLGeiEY Tue 19 Aug 2025 06:45:48 No.6292917 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292892
>[X] Call out for someone. Though the place is so quiet you almost don't believe a voice will come out, you might rouse an occupant.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 19 Aug 2025 06:46:03 No.6292918 Report

Quoted By: >>6292923

>>6292912
I'm kind of surprised Awakening Mirror picked up players that late into the run. I remember people really did not enjoy the Shapeless Isle story arc, and then the events afterward with bringing the gorgons into Alberich's entourage were pretty controversial as well. Thanks for sticking with it to the end, I hope you got some fun out of it.
>Also loving the music, I'm really feeling the VN vibe reading the quest right now.
Nice! I really think OST adds a huge amount to the enjoyment of a VN, especially in the ones with no voice acting. In the original Higurashi, for example, at least a third of the emotional impact comes from the score and use of sound. So, if the tracks I picked for this are working to enhance the scene, I couldn't be happier!

>>6292914
>A bit uncharitable to Circe's motives for the heroine with the highest affection score, no?
Not so much uncharitable as just honest. He saw her life in the Servant-Master dream link, he has a certain idea of how she thinks. Circe's love is the love of a Greek goddess, it's essentially selfish. More of a desire to be loved than a desire to devote herself to someone, if you catch my meaning. [Archer] isn't judging her for this, his own impulses in the direction of love are similar, but he is in a position to observe it.
As for the highest affection score, it's the highest of a low set. As I'm sure you've noticed, our protagonist here is a pretty cold fish.
Thanks for your feedback on the music as well!

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:teGmOk/l Tue 19 Aug 2025 07:03:56 No.6292922 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292892
>[ ] Climb the gold dune in front of you and go on walking straight until you find something of interest, a person, wall, door, or at least something that might tell you where you are.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Tue 19 Aug 2025 07:05:09 No.6292923 Report

Quoted By: >>6292925 >>6292938

>>6292918
>He saw her life in the Servant-Master link
One might argue that [Archer]'s lived experience of Circe had a more loving and mutualistic character. While surely influenced by the servant-master dynamic and the exigencies of the war, the fact remains that Circe cultivated [Archer]'s abilities because she both recognized his potential and desired a hero to love. I'd favor this over an understanding of her loves based on the literal ancient past experienced in dreams even if it's wrong and I'm just coping that the birb loved Archer in a more virtuous manner.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 19 Aug 2025 07:09:56 No.6292925 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292923
Well, their relationship during the Akeldama war certainly did happen. It's worth taking those events into account when forming your own opinion of her character, I won't argue against that. I guess you'll just have to see how things turn out, depending on the choices players make and what [Archer] does.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Tue 19 Aug 2025 07:59:30 No.6292937 Report

Quoted By: >>6292941

>>6292890
OHNONONO HASSANKEKS NOT LIKE THIS?

THE GREAT SELF PROCLAIMED SAGE DEAFEATED BY MODERN FIREARMS?

>>6292891
Ez slurp. I wonder if we get preference for Servant absorption for a specific set of Servants, its purely luck based, or is it a proximity thing?

By picking this location were we closer to where sagekek met his end?

>>6292892
Why does it feel like we've fallen into the Gate of Babylon? Is Gil in the cup after the HF disaster? Thing is, GoB shouldn't just be gold. I also had some thoughts about it being the Cave of Treasures from Apocryphal Christian lore, but that explicitly contains bronze and ivory as well. Same problem as its not straight gold.

Is this a mental scape of a wish granter (cup) akin to a lamped djinn? Or just a metaphor for desires?

Before I vote, Sweets - what are we wearing? Is it the /fa/ scarf version cloak chan we were in when we passed out? Have we retvrned to nudity? Where is Cloak-chan?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Tue 19 Aug 2025 08:02:31 No.6292938 Report

Quoted By: >>6292939

>>6292923
Birb has extremely jealous oneitis tendencies.

We might have already betrayed her initial idea of a love interest by double dipping with cute and funny moustache man (aryan), Truvi, jk and now snubbing some of her magic training for her other cute and funny Master.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Tue 19 Aug 2025 08:08:32 No.6292939 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292938
I'm under no illusions as to whether the Birb likes our brainwashed philandering empty cup and indeed struggle to imagine how they could reconcile knowing our playerbase... this reader just reflexively defends the honor of his first love.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 19 Aug 2025 08:11:43 No.6292941 Report

Quoted By: >>6292945

>>6292937
>Before I vote, Sweets - what are we wearing?
In the dreamscape you're dressed the same way you were when you passed out. That actually wasn't with the scarf, though; you rematerialized the complete cloak when you went up to the rooftops.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Tue 19 Aug 2025 08:27:43 No.6292945 Report

Quoted By: >>6292951

>>6292941
Ta

>>6292892
>Grab a prominent example of the gold that surrounds you and examine it thoroughly with both base and magical senses (use Cloak-chan to support this). Try and apply a very simple property that could normally not be applied to a substance such as gold to test its structure and nature (eg. Corrosion/rust).

We just got a big helping of magical energy, may as well use a small amount right away if this will help us get some information on the situation.

Einzbern should have high aptitude for Alchemy/Gold as an inbuilt Magecraft aptitude anyway. It might unlock this dormant branch of Magecraft that should be inside us anyway.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Tue 19 Aug 2025 08:48:48 No.6292951 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292945
https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Magic_Spells#Alchemy

Alchemy enables necromancy and portal bullshittery too. Would be neat to have. We're already applying Transference to things which is a major component of Alchemy as a whole.

https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/Displacement_Magecraft
Darius uses something very similar to how we've started to Transfer things form INS. His is actually restricted to his own little box, where as we can access the whole sea of Imaginary Numbers. Portal magic into a sea of infinity. Dump things we don't like into INS or send things out into the world for others to deal with.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Tue 19 Aug 2025 12:48:38 No.6293010 Report

Quoted By: >>6293080

>>6292892
>[ ] Climb the gold dune in front of you and go on walking straight until you find something of interest, a person, wall, door, or at least something that might tell you where you are.
There's no way that wasn't a brainwashed stooge Assassin was possessing. Not even Hassans can be so pathetic that they bend the rules of Mystery and die to GUNS.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:XD5TzY0T Tue 19 Aug 2025 15:04:35 No.6293045 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292892
>[ ] Climb the gold dune in front of you and go on walking straight until you find something of interest, a person, wall, door, or at least something that might tell you where you are.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Tue 19 Aug 2025 17:29:42 No.6293080 Report

Quoted By:

>>6293010
Maybe they're magic guns used by a mind-controlled Yggdmillenia hitsquad? Who knows with this clusterfuck of a War. The Energy that flowed into [Archer] tells us that a whole servant bit the dust

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 19 Aug 2025 19:41:39 No.6293128 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292912
>>6292914
By the way, to anyone who liked the track "World of Gold", I encourage you to check out other works by the composer, Kobayashi Izumi. Similarly, "Uncertainty" is from Hoshi Katsu, and "Special Operations" is a track by Lee Jackson (although I think it sounds more like John Harrison or John Carpenter than most of Jackson's work).

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:qirQs1EN Tue 19 Aug 2025 21:54:39 No.6293173 Report

Quoted By:

>>6292892
>[ ] Climb the gold dune in front of you and go on walking straight until you find something of interest, a person, wall, door, or at least something that might tell you where you are.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Wed 20 Aug 2025 05:17:30 No.6293370 Report

Quoted By:

Music: World of Gold (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM14:0) 

Into the glimmering vastness, then, you'll walk. Coins clink beneath your shoes as you ascend the hill of treasure, shifting and falling in miniature landslides of wealth. With the heavy stuff sliding down beneath your feet, the ascent is harder than you'd expected, and you find yourself paradoxically tiring, here in this dreamworld. At last, though, you crest the dune and see what sort of place you've arrived in. From here you stand as on a hill overlooking some sheltered valley, and the landscape before you is of a scale to make the comparison apt.

What spreads out beyond and below that first dune is a sprawling desert beneath a golden sky, each grain of sand replaced with an object shaped from gold. The chamber is vaster even than you'd first thought, rolling hills of treasure continuing as far as the eye can see, going on and on until they reach some uncertain vanishing point, a wall or horizon. There's even a curving channel winding its way between the hills, forming the shape of a river. Do your eyes deceive you, or does it actually flow? Occasionally, taller shapes rear up out of the dunes; cities in the desert, outcroppings of unshaped gold, or something else? At this distance you can't make out the details. In your dream, you seem to lack the preternatural vision you obtained when you became a Servant.

It seems you stand on the hoard of all hoards, every bit of wealth ever collected by the hand of man, or perhaps every gram of gold ever mined, heaped up in this surreal chamber. You bend to take something up from it, see more closely what it is you travel across, and find a goblet beside your feet. Hoisting it aloft, you might take your fill if you could drink gold; the cup brims with coins of every vintage and language. At a glance you can pick out German, Spanish, Latin, and English inscriptions, and other languages you don't recognize. You raise the goblet in a silent toast to the strangeness of this subterranean world, and return it to its place among the other treasures. You'll walk on.

<> <> <>

How long you continue in this way, making your straightforward path toward the center of the chamber, you have no way of knowing. Hours seem to pass, perhaps days, but no sun shines to mark the passing of time here. The light and heat from the gold are constant. It is toward the center you go, you're now sure. When you entered this cavern, one decorated wall was no more than one or two hundred meters behind you. Now all boundaries are left behind, and the shining landscape seems to go on forever in all directions. Though you walk across the gold, and past the first descent from that high dune there has been little downward slope, the sense pervades your mind that you are plunging into the bowels of the earth, drawn inexorably toward the center of this realm by gravity.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Wed 20 Aug 2025 05:18:32 No.6293372 Report

Quoted By: >>6293454 >>6293508 >>6293525 >>6293588 >>6293665 >>6293670

The strength and endurance of a Servant, like the vision, have deserted you, leaving you no stronger than you were in the Akeldama. Your pace is frustratingly slow, unpleasantly human, and even so you tire. Thirst and weariness have begun to prey on you, wolves which as yet only nip at your heels, warning of the savage attack to come.

In the vast and empty landscape of gold, however, one object has become your landmark and guide. Some time ago you pointed yourself in the direction of one of the taller things you'd seen in the distance, keeping your eyes fixed on it as a differing point on the horizon. As you draw nearer and nearer, the shape eventually becomes clearly recognizable as that of a leafless tree. As the distance shrinks further, the detail of its shape marks it as something unique.

Finally you stand near the base of the 'tree' and look up at its 'branches'. At their thinnest ends these are fine strands of unworked gold, spreading in fractal profusion from thicker veins which all converge on the central 'trunk'. It is as if the gold, spreading in the earth, had worked its way into solid rock in a path mirroring the growth of a plant's roots in soil, and that rock was later scraped away to leave only the mineral likeness of vegetation. It stands as tall as a great oak, its trunk wide enough to lean on, and your weariness speaks of the need for rest. Ridiculous, you think, to want to take a rest in the middle of a dream, but that's just what your body is crying out for.

There is the other need, though. That inexplicable channel you saw from the crest of the first dune was some distance past the tree where you've arrived. You'd have to change course a bit, you think it was off to your right, but with no set destination that hardly means anything. If it really did flow, if it was water, it would be your salvation in this world of metal. Perhaps, you think wryly, the river would be of costly champagne in keeping with the cavern's theme of treasure.

>[ ] Sit down and lean against the tree for a while. You can move on later, for now you have to rest your legs.

>[ ] Make for the river. You must have something to drink, if there is any such thing in this place.

>[ ] Push yourself to go on without rest or sustenance. Somewhere there has to be an explanation of this place you've found yourself in.

>[ ] Do something else. (Write in)

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Wed 20 Aug 2025 05:19:57 No.6293373 Report

Quoted By:

Shorter update tonight. I'd like to post earlier than usual tomorrow to make up for it, maybe in 12 hours provided nothing unexpected crops up regarding work. Fingers crossed.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Wed 20 Aug 2025 11:28:58 No.6293454 Report

Quoted By:

>>6293372
>[ ] Sit down and lean against the tree for a while. You can move on later, for now you have to rest your legs.
Something something Hollow Limb of Destiny

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Wed 20 Aug 2025 14:53:42 No.6293508 Report

Quoted By:

>>6293372
>[ ] Sit down and lean against the tree for a while. You can move on later, for now you have to rest your legs.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:ToLGeiEY Wed 20 Aug 2025 15:37:10 No.6293525 Report

Quoted By:

>>6293372
>[X] Push yourself to go on without rest or sustenance. Somewhere there has to be an explanation of this place you've found yourself in.
Find "It".
Whatever "It" is.
"It" has to be here, somewhere.
This tree ain't "It".
The river ain't "It".
But "It" has to be somewhere and there's no point getting distracted by anything else.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:vYGejCbD Wed 20 Aug 2025 18:09:06 No.6293588 Report

Quoted By:

>>6293372
>[X] Sit down and lean against the tree for a while. You can move on later, for now you have to rest your legs.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:qirQs1EN Wed 20 Aug 2025 20:16:35 No.6293665 Report

Quoted By:

>>6293372
>[ ] Make for the river. You must have something to drink, if there is any such thing in this place.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:teGmOk/l Wed 20 Aug 2025 20:33:03 No.6293670 Report

Quoted By:

>>6293372
>[ ] Push yourself to go on without rest or sustenance. Somewhere there has to be an explanation of this place you've found yourself in.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Wed 20 Aug 2025 23:02:27 No.6293706 Report

Quoted By:

Yes, you're weary. Almost too tired to stay on your feet, in fact. Whether there exists some goal to reach at a distant point in this aureate landscape, whether there is water to be had in the river-like channel you saw in the distance, these concerns are secondary. First, before all, you must have a bit of rest. You turn around, back to the trunk, lower yourself to sit on the ground, and lean against the tree, feeling your body relax as the strange heat which seems to emanate from the gold soaks into you. The heat no longer seems draining, as it did while you moved, but soothing as a warm embrace.

You let your mind wander aimlessly, gazing up toward the golden sky that is the roof of this colossal subterranean chamber, and from nowhere the thought occurs to you that this is an ash tree. Ridiculous, of course, to compare the mineral formation behind you to anything more specific than the abstract notion of 'a tree', yet it is there just the same, and that the hillocks of gold on either side of you are formed by huge old roots, grown massive with the tree they feed until they raise up the soil that covers them to the height of a man. It has all the clarity of a shape glimpsed in imitation of memory, the cloud which by happenstance resembles an acquaintance's profile just enough to call their face vividly to mind, but have you ever seen such an ancient tree? You doubt it.

In the silent cavern, the quiet shifting of coins is as clear as a cymbal.

From the opposite side of the great tree, directly behind your own back, comes the same sound your footsteps made as you approached. In a flash you're on your feet, shaking off your lassitude. Some occupant of this chaotic treasure-house is drawing near, and for all the beckoning of the voices that drew you to the portal, you can't be certain they'll be a friend. Indeed, the occupants of this place may not even resemble human beings. Perhaps the one who has come to greet you will bear all the similarity to animal life that this tree bears to the vegetable, a rough-edged, chaotic thing of ore veins shaped in vague imitation of limbs, come to purge whatever violates the mineral purity of the cavern. You still your breathing, will your heartbeat to grow silent, and wait for the unknown figure to pass the tree.

Whatever your imagination might conjure for the inhabitants of this place, it bears little similarity to the sight that greets you. A man walks around the tree trunk, moving with a kind of loping, animal grace, as if he had spent more time in the company of wolves than humans in his childhood. His clothing bears out the notion, for he wears only a pelt of black fur around his waist in gesture of modesty, though the belt that fastens it and the pair of brown leather boots on his feet bear the marks of fine workmanship. The gold he imitates in nothing but his hair, a pale blond. In one hand he bears a sword, not gold, but steel shining with a deadly gleam.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO World of Gold 1.png, 281KiB, 800x600

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Wed 20 Aug 2025 23:03:28 No.6293707 Report

Quoted By: >>6293723 >>6293833 >>6293882 >>6293897 >>6293925 >>6293945

Music: Hero's Memory (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM22:c)

"To think," he says, giving you an easy, relaxed smile, "a surprise at last. It is a rare thing, to have visitors here. You're a welcome guest, though there isn't much I can offer in hospitality. No bread, salt, milk, or honey to be found here. Meat or mead would be a still vainer hope."

The man offers you his hand, and as you shake it you realize his blue gaze is meeting your eyes straight on, with no upward cast. He's as unusually tall as you are, and has similarly heroic proportions. In the contact, you grow certain of what you had already expected. The man isn't entirely human, though he's no creature of metal either.

"No, I can't imagine you would get many visitors," you agree. "I came here by a strange path myself, and don't know just where I am. What is this place?"

"Haha!" After a short bark of laughter, he shakes his head. "That, I can explain no more than your eyes. We stand amidst gold and treasure. When I lived, I gained it through heroism, and was made a hero by it. Now a part of me remains with it. If you'd know more, ask the elf, or the dragon, or the mistress of this place."

"Elf, dragon, and mistress, eh? Before I arrived here, I was called by three voices. Yours wasn't one of them; would those be the ones, then?"

"I doubt that. The elf and the dragon aren't so eager for company as I am, and she's been asleep almost since I arrived. If you were lured here by calling voices, like as not they were the river maidens. They found all their joy in singing over this place once, and it may be they take up the art still." 

>[ ] Who are you, then? You can tell me that, at least.

>[ ] You sound more like a prisoner than a man welcoming a guest. Why are you the one who came to meet me, if others know more and it was these river maidens who invited me?

>[ ] Are you, the elf, the dragon, the river maidens you spoke of, and this sleeping mistress the only ones here, or are there others?

>[ ] When you say the mistress of this place has been asleep since you arrived, how long is that?

>[ ] Say something else. (Write in)

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:7xNDTVON Wed 20 Aug 2025 23:30:25 No.6293723 Report

Quoted By:

>>6293707
Oh shit, this has to be Siegfried. By extension this is his hoard, with the Rheinmaidens, Fafnir, Alberich (the real one) and... I forget who the mistress would be. Therefore I vote

>[ ] When you say the mistress of this place has been asleep since you arrived, how long is that?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:ToLGeiEY Thu 21 Aug 2025 04:02:07 No.6293833 Report

Quoted By:

>>6293707
>[X] Who are you, then? You can tell me that, at least.
Even if WE can guess, feels weird not to have Rushorou ask.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Thu 21 Aug 2025 06:59:36 No.6293882 Report

Quoted By:

>>6293707
>[ ] When you say the mistress of this place has been asleep since you arrived, how long is that?

This'll help us in story also piecing together Seigfried's identity. He might very well share his story from this anyway. But also, I don't remember any specific 'mistress' of the rheingold. Would be good to get an idea of the unknown.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:qirQs1EN Thu 21 Aug 2025 07:28:51 No.6293897 Report

Quoted By: >>6294044

>>6293707
>[ ] Who are you, then? You can tell me that, at least.
you're the first qm I see using odysee links.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:eyDmHDrA Thu 21 Aug 2025 10:51:15 No.6293925 Report

Quoted By:

>>6293707
>[ ] Who are you, then? You can tell me that, at least

It's the most polite thing to do.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Thu 21 Aug 2025 12:38:57 No.6293945 Report

Quoted By: >>6294157

>>6293707
>[ ] Who are you, then? You can tell me that, at least.
Odin you son of a bitch, I've got a knuckle sandwich with your name on it.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 21 Aug 2025 16:47:56 No.6294044 Report

Quoted By: >>6294179

>>6293897
Is that so? I guess it's hardly a popular platform; I don't use it much myself, outside of this. First found it when I found out the old AMV Hell site/compilations from the early 00s started hosting their stuff there because youtube shoots it all to hell for copyright. Used to be those were mainly distributed by bittorrent, but I guess they wanted video streaming for the release of the new one last year, after the 10 year break.
Anyway, tangent.
I needed someplace to upload tracks on a fresh account though, and youtube makes you give them your phone number these days. Didn't want to go for that. Thought about file hosting like catbox, but I figured you folks would be more comfortable playing the music through a video site than downloading it. So, I ended up using odysee.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Thu 21 Aug 2025 20:55:59 No.6294157 Report

Quoted By: >>6294472

>>6293945
He's got two eyes bruv. That ain't the drunken poet.

He'll get his when the time comes.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:qirQs1EN Thu 21 Aug 2025 21:31:43 No.6294179 Report

Quoted By:

>>6294044
I see. I only used it to see rw content creators that were nuked from yt and to watch some Murdoch Murdoch when I feel like it. A shame that the odysee embed doesn't give you a video to open here like yt does.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Fri 22 Aug 2025 11:11:01 No.6294472 Report

Quoted By: >>6294689 >>6295586

>>6294157
I always assume that Odin is pulling some bullshit. In fact, I've already prepared myself for the inevitable climax when he burns Bryn's soul and summons himself into her empty container as [Lancer].
Moving on from that topic, I'd like to know why Yumi is meeting Siegfried, and not someone related to the Hassan. Maybe the chain of logic is:
>Einzbern have the Rheingold
>Yumi's a Lesser Grail
>Therefore Yumi has a connection to Siegfried

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Fri 22 Aug 2025 21:29:50 No.6294689 Report

Quoted By: >>6294692

>>6294472
That's very Prototype plotline-like.

https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/Das_Rheingold

The Einzbern used the Rheingold tp some extent a basis of their cup. It might even be part of mc's origin, and meeting Seigfried might mirror his own psyche the most? They're both very empty people. Maybe this similarly in a Servant vessel is why Bryn was do dead set on rescinding our being alive loicence that she pursued even through a CS?

Given he's been energised by the Akeldama and has no mystery basis for his HS container, the Greater Grail woke up this aspect of his to give him a pseudo legend? Onigawara has the gaian Oni lineage, Matsuda is ???? (For now).

His origins and touching the reverse side also gives reason for the cursed treasures being bought forth from his Einzbern make-up to an extent too.

Will we meet Alberich (True) before we meet Alberich (Pretender/Saber)?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:DiiN5wqq Fri 22 Aug 2025 21:53:03 No.6294692 Report

Quoted By:

>>6294689
A compelling theory

>[Archer], Saberich, and Alberich (True) in a 3-way Faker standoff
Kek

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sat 23 Aug 2025 21:07:37 No.6295209 Report

Quoted By:

Music: Hero's Memory (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM22:c)

"Who are you, then? You can tell me that much, at least."

"That I can. There was a time when I was called hero, dragonslayer, master of kings, last of the Wälsings, but you don't seem a man to judge by reputation. Plain Siegfried, you should call me."

Siegfried! It's a name to conjure with. You've heard of him, of course, the greatest hero of German legend and a central figure in the opera you read in the Akeldama, the Wagner's Ring Cycle. You'd thought him fictional, but if there is as much truth to myths as the Holy Grail War suggests, it really isn't so strange for the ghost of Siegfried to wander the Earth in whatever strange place you've come to. A world of gold, twinkling with its own light in a world of subterranean shadow; could your dream be taking place, then, in the cave where dwelt the dragon Fafner, and the hoard of treasure it guarded? That would answer the dragon, and the elf, too, might be one of several beings Siegfried met in life, but the "mistress" is an enigma. You remember no mistress of the dragon's hoard, nor any woman in Wagner's opera with a closer relation to the gold than Siegfried himself had.

Perhaps it isn't worth speculating on your location. To lapse into contemplation in mid-conversation would make a poor impression on your host, and now that you've met an inhabitant of this dreamscape you can surely find an explanation of where you are. If Siegfried can't give it, you'll speak to one of these others. You put a smile on your lips, and return the man's friendly attitude.

"I'm glad to meet you, Siegfried. I'd offer my name in return, but I'm afraid I don't know it myself. Call me by my profession if you'd like, Archer."

"To not know your own name..." Siegfried's brows furrow in a look of startlingly genuine sympathy. You threw out Archer as a probe to see if he knows of the Holy Grail War, but he seems to take no note of the term. "That's a hard fate to labor under. Though my own mother died in bearing me, and I never knew my father, I had at least my name from them. It's no very strange thing, then, for you to be here."

"Oh?" You raise an eyebrow. "Why should my lack of a name have brought me to this place?"

"You don't know it?" Now it's the other man's turn to look surprised, though the expression soon gives way to a knowing smile. "Ah, you're a stalwart fellow but young, as I was. It's desire that brings us here, my friend, and it's those who lack that feel desire most keenly. When I set out into the world, I had neither kin, nor folk, nor home. Lacking even a name, how much more desperate must your quest be?"

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sat 23 Aug 2025 21:08:37 No.6295211 Report

Quoted By:

"I-" You open your mouth to contradict Siegfried. You were raised in a home, and although it's gone now, you have another place to rest your head. For kin, as a homunculus, don't you have Liliesviel and the other Einzbern? You begin, but find you can't finish the sentence. The home you thought you had is gone, and though the Einzbern may be your family in truth, they're too strange to you to feel like it yet. Isn't that just what you've been tormented by tonight, this sense of isolation?

"...Perhaps you're right, at that." You sigh. His words make too much sense to dismiss, though they don't line up altogether. Isolation troubles you, true, but aside from that you've struggled not with desire, but the aimless lack of it. If longing had brought you here, wouldn't you be better aware of what it is you long for? Or do you know it already, and only avert your eyes out of an insistence on logical reason?

Before you can come to an answer you feel the weight of Siegfried's hand on your shoulder. The ancient hero is actually trying to comfort you, strange as it seems. From a man with such a bloody life, you would expect more stoicism than sympathy.

"You seem a less hot-blooded man than I, at your age," he says, "but take heart! All that I lacked, I gained in seeking glory. Be a hero, and live without fear, and you'll find all things open to you in time. It is from quavering, and retreat, that most of men's sorrows are born."

Sympathetic to your trouble he may be, but it's an infuriatingly simple piece of advice Siegfried gives. As though everything that troubles you can be brushed aside with nothing more than an adventurous spirit, and what troubles you is only the difficulty of reaching some goal, rather than the emptiness you truly feel. You aren't some coward, fleeing before a danger set in your path; if the lack of fear were all you needed, you'd have found happiness already. The desire to make the whole thing clear to Siegfried seizes you, to see how he grapples with your insoluble problem.

Music: Predecessor (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM23:0)

"Suppose I don't know my own desire any more than my name," you counter. "What use is the courage to pursue my end when I have no purpose? Whatever dangers a man may be willing to brave for the sake of his goals, can you deny that it's wasted without a goal to pursue?"

To your surprise, Siegfried bursts out with laughter, a deep baritone roar that echoes off all the countless treasures surrounding you, doubling and redoubling in the vast cavern. He slaps you on the shoulder, unable to communicate any more clearly for a time as he remains overwhelmed by mirth. Finally the gale of laughter subsides, and as he regains control of himself Siegfried gives you a grin so broad and open that it actually seems to glow.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sat 23 Aug 2025 21:10:50 No.6295213 Report

Quoted By:

"I am sorry Archer, take no offense. I mean no mockery. You truly are the mirror of my own past! To meet my former self, here at the other end of all the ages that have passed, it seems that even after death life never runs dry of surprises."

"You were without purpose as well?"

"I was, though I was never a thoughtful fellow. It troubled me not at all, for I never stopped to consider such things. I acted with decision to the end, but looking back, I was aimless as you."

"What made you act, then? Didn't you say it was your desire that brought you here?"

"That is where we differ. I acted because it wasn't in me to stop and think. Desire came later. I too had no purpose or dream when I set out. I knew what I lacked, but I had no thought of seeking to regain it."

"Then what? You must have acted for some reason, purpose or no."

"Yes, a trivial one." Siegfried runs his fingers through his hair, giving you a rueful, self-deprecating smile. "When I first ventured forth into the world, it was with the ridiculous goal of learning fear. After that, whenever I tried some new danger, it was because it was said that only a hero might triumph; only the greatest of men. I thought that these might teach me to fear, and show me the limits of my own power."

"Then you were trying to gain something you lacked," you muse. "You wanted to make yourself whole, more human, find the emotion that others possessed, but wasn't in you."

"Right you are. I sought ever greater glory to test myself, and find what might bend my courage." He laughs again, shaking his head at the memory. "I never did find it, but as I won glory, I found the things that come with it, and learned and satisfied the desires I had known nothing of. The world changed around me as I strove. In time, when I met new challenges, it came to pass that I heard them spoken of not as what 'only a hero' might achieve, but what 'only Siegfried' could do. and then I sought glory for its own sake."

"You think I should set aside my own lack of purpose, and do what other men can't," you summarize, "to make a reputation for myself?"

"Not merely for reputation, but..." The hero thinks, rubbing a palm across his chin, then smiles again. "You've struck near enough the mark. Win glory, make yourself a paragon, and the desires hidden from you now will reveal themselves. Mark me, you're not without them. You'd not have come here if you were."

You return Siegfried's grin. Though still a simple answer, you find that there's a blunt and sturdy logic to it, the reason of experience rather than contemplation. Even so, there is a hole in Siegfried's idea which amuses you.

"It could be you're right," you say, "but what you accomplished, you say, was what only Siegfried could do. What makes you so sure that I can do the same?"

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sat 23 Aug 2025 21:11:51 No.6295214 Report

Quoted By: >>6295240 >>6295259 >>6295399 >>6295406 >>6295524 >>6296420

"Simple," the hero answers, "I see in you my past. Mayhap you must use different means, but what glory I achieved is open to you also. I can feel it."

You look at the man in silence for a few moments. Can he be telling the truth? If so, how? How much similarity can there truly be between such an icon of the heroism of life, of pure instinct striving after the impossible, and your own coldly formed nature? But then, what reason would this phantom have to lie?

"Kind words," you say, "from one who achieved so much."


>[ ] Tell Siegfried he's given you a lot to consider, but you ought to be getting home, and ask if he can show you the way out.

>[ ] Thank Siegfried for his advice, and ask if he can tell you how to find the elf.

>[ ] Thank Siegfried for his advice, and ask if he can tell you how to find the dragon.

>[ ] Thank Siegfried for his advice, and ask if he can tell you how to find the mistress of this place.

>[ ] Say something else. (Write in)

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Sat 23 Aug 2025 21:43:45 No.6295240 Report

Quoted By:

>>6295214
>[ ] Thank Siegfried for his advice, and ask if he can tell you how to find the elf.

>"Ball out and the rest will come"
What a man Siegfried was

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:2C8omIdo Sat 23 Aug 2025 22:43:21 No.6295259 Report

Quoted By:

>>6295214
>[ ] Thank Siegfried for his advice, and ask if he can tell you how to find the mistress of this place.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Sun 24 Aug 2025 01:50:09 No.6295399 Report

Quoted By:

>>6295214
>[ ] Thank Siegfried for his advice, and ask if he can tell you how to find the elf.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:AwhLFBBI Sun 24 Aug 2025 01:59:37 No.6295406 Report

Quoted By: >>6296420

>>6295214
>[ ] Thank Siegfried for his advice, and ask if he can tell you how to find the elf and the dragon.
>Adl him what he knows of the mistress after this as you don't recall anyone that fits that description from his tales or the Rheingold.

If he's that talkative there shouldn't be issues just asking him about all 3, right?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:qirQs1EN Sun 24 Aug 2025 04:36:48 No.6295524 Report

Quoted By:

>>6295214
>[ ] Thank Siegfried for his advice, and ask if he can tell you how to find the elf.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Sun 24 Aug 2025 08:41:10 No.6295586 Report

Quoted By: >>6297794

>>6294472
Given Adelheid was singing Erda's Warning way back in Akeldama. It might come full circle if Odin is actually in play.

If he desires the Ring of the Nibelungs (Rheingold/possibly us as the cup) it will ultimately lead to his downfall.

Ultimately he has to actually appear again like in Awakening for any of that to mean anything.

Maybe the mistress is actually Erda, the goddess of Earth or the Norn of Fate who actually warns Odin/Wotan of the final outcome of engaging with the cursed treasures?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:qYUcXxgT Mon 25 Aug 2025 22:58:18 No.6296420 Report

Quoted By:

>>6295406
>>6295214
Support

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 26 Aug 2025 07:46:39 No.6296646 Report

Quoted By:

"You've given me quite a bit to consider, Siegfried," you say, "and for that I thank you. Still, I'd like to know where this place really is; what it really is, I should say." You grin. "Can you tell me where to find this 'elf' you mentioned?"

"Tell you?" Siegfried laughs, apparently the idea strikes him as ridiculous. "I'll do better than that, for what path could I point to in this trackless treasure-house? No, I'll take you to him, though I cannot accompany you. Where I go, he never shows his face, for that old rascal will hold tight his grudges to the end of the world."

With that the hero pulls a hunting horn from where it hangs at his belt and blows a call that could wake the dead. With a gold mouthpiece and intricately intertwined golden bands running up and down its length, the horn is the most decorated thing in Siegfried's possession, and the only article he carries that seems as if it could fit naturally in with the array of treasure surrounding you. You don't doubt it's part of the treasure he inherited when he slew Fafner. For a moment the horn seems to have no effect, the hero sounding it only to deafen you, yet just as the note begins to fade and the echoes to begin, a rumbling stirs the gold beneath your feet.

Your foothold, formerly quite solid as the golden items had long ago settled into positions interlocking one another, shifts and flows as a dune, wave, or hill suddenly rises beneath you. As you jump backward to avoid being toppled over by the sudden stream of treasure, you catch sight of what has answered Siegfried's call. The tip of a mast peeks up through the gold, rising and rising until you can see the sail, and then a prow masterfully shaped into the likeness of a roaring dragon. It surges upward at an angle, head first as if sailing up an invisible slope carrying it to the surface, until suddenly it turns, crests the swell of treasure, and the entire longship is there in front of you. Nautical transit for one; it could be the very ship which carried Siegfried up and down the Rhine and along all the other rivers of Central Europe, but for one thing. Just like the 'sea' it seems to float on, the longship is made entirely of gold. Even the sail, cast as if filled with a billowing wind, is a solid sheet of metal, and the air in the cavern is as still as ever.

"What ails you, my friend? Get in!" Siegfried waives an emphatic hand at the longship, impatient with your shock. "My boat will take you to him."

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 26 Aug 2025 07:47:40 No.6296647 Report

Quoted By:

You almost ask about it. The appearance at the sound of his horn, the impossibility of a solid gold boat being seaworthy, the ridiculous metal sail, the lack of wind, and all the rest. You almost ask, but don't. This is a dream, or something like one, and nothing has made sense since you arrived. Why should an impossible conveyance be unbelievable? Instead you wordlessly answer Siegfried's invitation by grabbing the side and vaulting over into the ship. It doesn't even wait for a second blast of Siegfried's horn; as soon as your feet touch it, the golden longship is 'sailing', borne along on a nonexistent swift current and a hypothetical favorable wind.

"Thank you again," you call back, raising a hand to Siegfried as he quickly shrinks into the distance, "for everything!"

"Good luck to you, my young friend," returns the booming voice, "and remember, she favors the bold!"

<> <> <>

When the boat sinks back beneath the surface of the golden hoard and leaves you on your feet, you find yourself in the midst of an almost naturalistic scene. Before you and behind you, high hills of treasure rise, and these far more closely resemble the shape of true hills of soil and stone than the wave-like dunes you've come upon for the most part. Between them flows a wide 'river' of incredibly fine golden powder. Compared with this, grains of sand would look like boulders. Small wonder you thought it looked like water from a distance. Even under close examination the illusion of fluid is hard to break. Your thirst will have to be slaked another time, you suppose. Perhaps "the elf" has some beverages to offer a weary traveler, though Siegfried had none. Unfortunately it seems to be a vain question. Although your boat has disappeared, you seem to be alone once again.

Running your eyes over every meter of your surroundings and finding them quite empty, you decide that if you can't sate your curiosity through conversation, and you can't slake your thirst at the river, you can at least sate your curiosity about the river. You walk to the 'shore', squat down on your haunches just where the 'ground' made up of a layer of tightly packed coins slips below the 'water' made up of dust, and dip a finger into the flowing substance. It's slightly cool, or at least not warm. While the rest of the gold all seems to faintly radiate light and heat, this does not. To compare the powdered gold to sand or even flour would be far too rough. The sensation is almost as if a sheet of silk or satin were being dragged along your finger, but again, these don't quite fit the bizarre smoothness of it. It's like nothing you've ever felt before; a dry liquid, a solid that flows perfectly. The absurd notion of dehydrated water comes to mind.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO World of Gold 2.png, 350KiB, 800x600

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 26 Aug 2025 07:48:41 No.6296649 Report

Quoted By: >>6296710

You cup your hand and scoop a handful of the stuff up, then watch it run through your fingers exactly like water. No, you realize, not exactly. There is a difference, a lack of cohesion. It takes a moment before it hits you: there is no surface tension. Water adheres to itself in a way that this powder does not. It's just as impossible for it to form a bubble clinging to a mostly dry surface, the way water might, as it is to heap it up in the way you could a cone of sand. Truly bizarre.

"You make yourself quite free with the works of others."

Music: God-Hater (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM29:7)

The dry, acidly sardonic voice suddenly rising out of the silence behind you almost gives you a shock, but you had been expecting it after a fashion. Here was where the boat left you, so here "the elf" must be. If you didn't see him, it stood to reason he'd show himself if you waited. You straighten up slowly, turning to face the voice with a composed smile.

"I haven't seen a maker's mark on anything in this treasury," you answer, "and if it's meant to be a lockbox, the security is lacking."

"Well then?" Pointedly ignoring your reply, the speaker continues, pointing an unnaturally long forefinger at the river now behind you. "Since you have taken it upon yourself to fondle it, how do you evaluate the product of my passtime?"

The elf, which indeed seems to be what he is, for his ears are as long and sharply pointed as Caster's, is a figure far more in-keeping with the landscape than Siegfried. He wears a cloth-of-gold robe adorned with elaborate gold decorations and set with occasional jewels, wears a pair of gold slippers, and a gold circlet rests atop his head. He's almost as tall as you or Siegfried, but incredibly slender, as if the mass of a much smaller man had been distributed over an elongated skeleton. Long black hair frames a gaunt, bony face, thin lips set in a sneer, and eyes of a baleful cat-like yellow. His pointing finger ends in a small hooked claw, another feline resemblance.

"If you mean the river," you reply, "it's a remarkable thing. I've never seen anything like it. In fact, it's so remarkable that I have a hard time believing anyone made it. It looks like a natural feature of this place."

"Ha!" After a strangely sharp, hissing laugh, the elf shakes his head. "Natural! What nature do you see in your surroundings, boy? There is no nature here. Everything was made. That river, and in fact the entire tableau in which we stand, is the product of centuries of artistry. A sublime recreation of the site of my greatest triumph. Only the vegetation has yet to be forged, and that shall take me no more than twenty-five, or perhaps fifty years."

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 26 Aug 2025 07:49:41 No.6296650 Report

Quoted By:

"And the 'water'...?" You raise an eyebrow. While the general strangeness of this place is enough that you don't really doubt the elf's claim, you're curious enough how the thing was done to try provoking him into an explanation. You certainly aren't inclined to flatter information out of someone already so supercilious.

"Separated from solid gold." Far from being put out by your doubtful attitude, he seems only the more pleased to have further occasion for boasting. "It is broken into the smallest possible motes which might yet remain solid. Only a Nibelung could perform such fine work, and of the Nibelungs, only Alberich."

"I see," you answer distantly, more interested now in the name than the answer to your question. This being is far from the misshapen dwarf of legend, skin blackened by forge-soot, back hunched by a life bent over an anvil, and hands covered in a rock-like layer of callouses. Then again, at least the label of misshapen does apply. It seems legends don't always cling so tightly to the true shape of a person as they did with Siegfried.

"Well?" The elf is looking at you with pointed irritation. "Have you no manners, boy? You have heard my name. Speak up with your own."

"I don't have one," you answer shortly. "Call me Archer, if you have to."

"Nameless, yet." Alberich sniffs as if offended. "Then you are unfinished, and sent out into the world so. The artistry of men has sunk low indeed."

"Just what do you mean by that?"

"A work without a name is incomplete, unfinished, lacking its power." Alberich makes a cutting gesture with one of those strangely long-fingered hands, a physical break in progress. "You must find your maker and be revenged. To have worked with such material and left you unnamed, he must be a malignant sluggard or a fool."

He's actually angry on your behalf, you realize with a start. Perhaps the elf is more kindhearted than his attitude first suggested... but no. It isn't that. You find yourself growing angry as you take in the meaning of his words. He knew you were a homunculus immediately, and sees you as an object, a work of art poorly treated by its creator. The anger you see is the offense that might be taken by a painter seeing another artist piling finished works haphazardly on the floor, careless of damage to the paint or canvas.

"You have a fine way of looking at people," you sneer, matching the elf's disdain with a contempt born of fury. "In your eyes, I'm no different from that river of yours, is that it? No, you probably think I'm a good way lower down on the scale of artistry. Why don't you try thinking before you speak? An object may need a label to explain what it is, but a man can explain himself. I'm no unfinished product."

"Oh?" The elf smiles. "Fond of your creator, are you, grail?"

"I've never met him. Whether he's good or bad doesn't matter, that's not the point. The way you describe it, I may as well be a sword."

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 26 Aug 2025 07:50:42 No.6296651 Report

Quoted By:

"Then you leap to your own defense," concludes Alberich, letting emphasis fall on 'own'. Your insult makes no impact on him, as he seemingly thinks aloud. "You won't be seen as what you are, but defy it, and strike back at who disdains you. It seems we meet at a fine place, for your choice is that which I made in this place."

"Don't be ridiculous. This is meant to be the Rhine, isn't it?" Although it's even more irritating to change the subject before you can really get into it with the elf over his last comments, you can't help engaging with the bizarre statement. "I have no plans to steal anything from you."

"Pah. Foolishness. I speak not of theft, but of self-regard. Here I was mocked as a Nibelung, a low creature fit only to shape stone, doomed forever to gawp at beauty from afar, longing for what I was too rudely shaped ever to clasp and yet could not give up. A slave to lust which could be neither slaked nor escaped. Such a thing is a Nibelung, dweller in deep abysses, I was informed." His eyes are far away, staring a burning anger into the past, and you recognize it for the anger you have just felt. "How those cold and bony fishes cackled as they slipped and slithered about their submarine rocks! I would not be defined by them. I knew myself greater than what they saw, as you know yourself to be more than a mere goblet, and placed that understanding of myself above all else. Thus did I obtain what it was said I would never touch, make a king of stone's slave, and forge such wondrous works as have never been equaled."

"What good was in it for you? Your kingdom was overthrown, your treasures were all stolen from you. You were thrown right back into the old role, weren't you?" It could sound inspiring the way he tells it, you think, but only as long as the ending is left off. Just as the prepared vessel will die with the end of the Holy Grail War no matter how you assert your own identity as more than a ritual tool, all of Alberich's work to rise above the status he was born to came to nothing in the end.

"You think yourself informed of my life," the elf scoffs, "but a true story is not the truth. I ruled my people for seven hundred and twenty-three years before Wotan descended to steal the Rheingold and all I had made from it. I cursed it for him in parting, but I was well-served by my choice. Seven centuries is not so mean a term of happiness, and my achievements as an artisan are eternal. Had I not kept my pride that day, had I slunk back into the shadows, stooped by the taunting of those wretched troutwives, I would have had no happiness at all."

"You may have a point there," you reply, "but your story only deepens your insult. You say you defined your own nature, and that's why you could do what you did. Why should I be 'incomplete' until I have a name from my creator assigning what he thinks I should be?"

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 26 Aug 2025 07:51:43 No.6296653 Report

Quoted By: >>6296658 >>6296710 >>6296727 >>6296860 >>6296878 >>6296889

Alberich laughs another rasping, hissing laugh. "Hate me, then! Good, good. I never forgave an insult either. Hate me, but heed this all the same. Everything is incomplete without a name. Man, beast, or object. You must find one. Learn it from your soul if not from your maker."

"Why?" In spite of yourself, you're curious what he's getting at. "What makes you so insistent? A name is only a label, a convenient way of referring to someone. It can color perception, but that's all."

"Foolish, foolish. Men never understood the world around them well, and it seems that now they know still less. A name gives shape to the concept, embedding an identity upon the world. Without a name you are rootless, changeable, more easily shaped than shaper. An unfinished work, still able to be remade at any time."

"Flexibility can be an asset of its own," you observe.

"It is not power," declares Alberich with a dismissive sweep of his hand. "A sword still hot enough to be reshaped will cut nothing."

"That's what you think I am," you say. It isn't a question, only an angry summation. "A sword too soft to cut."

"Not entirely. You have power, even as you are, but it is not settled. You know not who you are, and until you have determined it, you will remain incomplete." 

>[ ] You seem to know quite a bit about me. How so?

>[ ] I would have hoped that if I could find a name within me, it would be here. I came here via a dream, but it doesn't seem to be my mind. Does this place have a name?

>[ ] Suppose I decide a name at random, pick one out of a hat or something. How does your idea of power in names deal with that kind of triviality?

>[ ] You say that, but you never gave the ring you made a name, did you? That was nameless, and it was your most powerful creation.

>[ ] Say something else. (Write in)

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Tue 26 Aug 2025 08:20:24 No.6296658 Report

Quoted By:

>>6296653
>[ ] You say that, but you never gave the ring you made a name, did you? That was nameless, and it was your most powerful creation.

Definitely not the charismatic support Seigfried was, but he's much more knowledgeable on our own design given his magical talents.

In this last post he's impressing the importance of a True Name for not just ourselves but also our NPs, but also implying that the choices will allow them to vary greatly.

Also, poking someone so prideful at his masterpiece should bait a good response. Pride was originally a major motivation for mc in Akeldama (ultimately it consumed him when he took on the same namesake in Awakening too).

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Tue 26 Aug 2025 12:13:42 No.6296710 Report

Quoted By: >>6296865

>>6296653
>[ ] You say that, but you never gave the ring you made a name, did you? That was nameless, and it was your most powerful creation.
>>6296649
>He's almost as tall as you or Siegfried, but incredibly slender, as if the mass of a much smaller man had been distributed over an elongated skeleton.
Did he change his height and simply stretch everything over a taller skeleton? Shoddy work if so, Alberich (True).

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:2pQ+X75T Tue 26 Aug 2025 13:26:05 No.6296727 Report

Quoted By:

>>6296653
>[ ] You say that, but you never gave the ring you made a name, did you? That was nameless, and it was your most powerful creation.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Tue 26 Aug 2025 19:59:08 No.6296860 Report

Quoted By: >>6296865

>>6296653
>[ ] You say that, but you never gave the ring you made a name, did you? That was nameless, and it was your most powerful creation.
So Siegfried is [Heroism] or some such and advises [Archer] to embrace his natural heroism to define himself. Alberich is [Pride] and advises [Archer] to redefine himself in spite of his nature as a cup to achieve happiness/power. I wonder what Fafner and the Mistress will say...

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Tue 26 Aug 2025 20:10:42 No.6296865 Report

Quoted By: >>6296868

>>6296710
lol. That would be amusing if so, but it's just a means of description. NIbelungs have different bodily proportions from humans (and from gods) and as such look unnatural and distorted. They're also far more flexible than human beings, and can compress their bodies into much smaller spaces than you might expect; a useful quality in navigating the more treacherous regions of their underground homeland. Those two traits are what gave rise to the conflicting descriptions of them as elves and dwarves. Were you as surprised by what Alberich ended up looking like as the protagonist?

>>6296860
Very clever, anon. You're beginning to see the shape of things. If you were the anon I was discussing emotional paths with in the last thread, consider this your hint as to how that system will shake out.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Tue 26 Aug 2025 20:19:39 No.6296868 Report

Quoted By:

>>6296865
I am he. Ahhhh fuck

>[Duty] -> Siggy
>[Pride] -> Alberich (True)
>[Self-preservation] -> Fafner?
>Compassion -> Mistress?
So this realm IS [Archer]'s soul, these figures are parts of his old alignment and provide guidance as to how we can cope with our current position in the real world.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Tue 26 Aug 2025 20:27:34 No.6296874 Report

Quoted By:

I'm a fool. Maybe the correct answer is that we can take on one of their names and be correspondingly empowered?

>Fem option
Volksgemeinschaft rears its head yet again

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:eziEO6gc Tue 26 Aug 2025 20:40:39 No.6296878 Report

Quoted By:

>>6296653
>[ ] You seem to know quite a bit about me. How so?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:vYGejCbD Tue 26 Aug 2025 21:11:19 No.6296889 Report

Quoted By:

>>6296653
>[X] You say that, but you never gave the ring you made a name, did you? That was nameless, and it was your most powerful creation.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Wed 27 Aug 2025 01:00:15 No.6296976 Report

Quoted By:

"You say that, but you never gave the ring you made a name, did you? That was nameless, and it was your most powerful creation." An oddly glaring hole in Alberich's argument, for how sure of himself the elf seems. Unless he considered it incomplete in spite of its power; it could be, you guess, that the famous Ring of the Nibelung was one of those perpetually unfinished masterpieces which some artists go on laboring at all their lives, like the Mona Lisa.

Sandpaper rubs across the vocal cords of a cat who can sing bass for the opera. Alberich is laughing again.

"My ring? Nameless, you call it? No, grail, that was a thing of many names. For seven centuries, in the time of my prosperity, it was known as 'The Sacred Seal of Alberich, King of the Nibelungs'." As he speaks, the elf produces from his sleeve a strange-looking construct of thin sheets of gold. He crushes it in his fist, and the powdered gold flowing in the river begins to rise into the air in thin streams. They converge, and coming together disperse into the shape of a circle. Then the details fill in, lines of gold tracing lines once stamped in wax and ink. The seal hangs in the air before you, its central mark a drawing of exquisitely fine detail depicting a mountain rising from the earth, the interior of the crag hollow, and the sun shining in its center. It reminds you more of an engraving by Doré than any stylized medieval coat of arms. Putting that on the surface of a ring, you reflect, is work as minute as the creation of this river. More difficult, perhaps.

"Then it was a signet ring?" You've never heard of the Ring of the Nibelung having such a shape, although you're far from an expert. Somehow you were sure it would be a purely unadorned band of gold, catching the eye by radiating an inner light.

"At times," answers the elf. "I formed the seal anew each time I used it, to put beyond doubt that Alberich and the ring were one." Suddenly he laughs again, ruefully, his own words opening an ancient pain. "Yet gods can separate the inseparable. Later, when I lay bound and bruised by the haft of Wotan's spear, when all the wealth of my kingdom had been stripped from me, it was 'That Ring There. So, You Have Some Gold Left After All. Hand It Over, Wretch!' He knew its power, and sought to buttress his mastery of the world by it." The elf gazes into his memories, one pointed nail idly clicking against the gold of his other hand's bracer. Then he continues, with sardonic merriment.

"Why Wotan, already the lord of creation, was perpetually seeking means to redouble the power of the gods was always a mystery to me. So too it was a mystery to all the gods, I was once told. The Mighty Allfather seemed ever tormented by the premonition that one day the power of the gods would desert them; that his spear would no longer bind the laws of the world, Donner's hammer no longer ring with thunder, fire no longer spring from Loge's fingertips."

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Wed 27 Aug 2025 01:01:16 No.6296978 Report

Quoted By:

"He was right," you interject. "The Age of Gods ended centuries ago."

"So it was said even then." Putting on a voice laden with respect, audibly ignorant and fearful of divine mystery, Alberich continues. "It may be that he is right to prepare against such a doom, for his one eye beholds all wisdom."

The elf cackles at his own mockery, and you find the suggestion of a smile moving your lips as well. Knowing that all efforts to save the gods' power were ultimately in vain, the reverence this voice from the past expresses for Wotan's supposed wisdom is palpably absurd. After a moment to collect himself, Alberich continues his narrative.

"Thus did he take my ring to reinforce the gods' dominion, yet it did not remain Wotan's prize long. In time he would be compelled to pay the giant brothers, Fasolt and Fafner, for their services, and the price was Freia's hand in marriage. A love-struck fool was Fafner, and a more ridiculous sight you cannot imagine than their wedding would have been, that mountainous brute set aside such divine fragility. Of course, the gods at first tried to worm their way out of paying, but they were trapped by their oaths. They had asked for the impossible, and impossibly, the giants had delivered. They had no choice but to yield Freia up or replace her with a treasure of such fantastic value that it was equal to her."

"If only Fafner had had the good sense and discipline to forswear love when he saw it denied him, what marvels that giant might have achieved," Alberich exclaims, suddenly shifting his topic. The constantly acidic tone in his voice, however, makes it almost impossible to tell whether his compliments to the giant are genuine or sarcastic mockery. "A fool he was, but a builder such as never strode the earth after him. How splendid my kingdom might have remained, with no gods visiting to loot it and settle their debts thereby. Yes, it was my treasure they paid with, and what a hoard there was! As I have said, Fafner was mad with love for Freia, his whole being a single roaring flame of passion, and if ever something caught his eye which reminded him that she lived and was not his, some fool heaved on a bellows and stoked the flame higher. Only by hiding her existence completely could he forget her, and with giant-like directness this was just what he asked for: a mountain of gold so high that it would block Freia from his vision.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Wed 27 Aug 2025 01:02:17 No.6296979 Report

Quoted By:

"You, boy, have never seen a giant," Alberich observes. "You may then imagine a man when I speak of Fafner. Taller and burlier than the norm, perhaps, but man-like in essence. Indeed there were some giants who fit such a description, for they were a chaotic race, no two families alike. Fafner and Fasolt, they were not such giants. You might stack five men atop one another, each standing with his feet on the shoulders of the man below, and still the uppermost man's eyes would be of a level with Fafner's chest. Freia was slender, willowy, delicate. One might even say small. When Fafner's lovestruck gaze darted affection at her, he stared down from a looming height. He must have been enamored more with the top of her head than her face. Imagine, then, the sort of treasure that must hide her from him."

"There are ways around that," you reply. "Say they made their agreement on the price, swore their oaths, however they seal the deal, and then tied a gold blindfold around his eyes, or put a gold mask with no eye-holes on him."

"Your thoughts are not so different from Loge's," comments Alberich with a chuckle. "That was the first payment the gods tried. Finding a mask made to fit Fafner's boulder of a head must have seemed unlikely, but they had all the treasure of all the artisans under the earth. Through the years we had made many things for the giants, and many returned to us in time. Thus, Loge found a mask and fixed it on Fafner's head, and the giant could not see Freia. Even so, the oath was unfulfilled. With all the world hidden from his sight, Fafner said, and Freia a part of that world, he felt her presence as keenly as if he looked on the world unmasked. Romantic nonsense, but apparently true."

"Fine, blindfolding him was a cheap trick anyway. The gods could still build a mound of treasure around Freia herself. That would be a fortune, probably a fair payment for the giants' work, but still much less than they'd spend building up to Fafner's eyes."

"Indeed, that was Loge's next idea," Alberich agrees, but wags a finger. Somehow or other, this didn't work either. "The gods piled gold around Freia's feet, rising up and up around her sides, and finally covered the top of her head, and to all eyes was only a conical heap of loot. All eyes, save Fafner's. He looked at that pile of gold sitting in the midst of all the gathered gods, save one, here in the great hall of the gods' marvelous new castle which he and his brother had built, and he knew that the gold could only be adorning the one missing deity: Freia. Freia, Fafner said, was the gods' greatest treasure, and a treasure set among the gods was Freia."

"What a madman," you groan. "Those were his real feelings, he wasn't just haggling for a better price?"

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Wed 27 Aug 2025 01:03:18 No.6296980 Report

Quoted By:

"The unalloyed truth. Fafner would have preferred to leave with Freia, and was persuaded only reluctantly to accept the gold. Any suggestion of her presence, and he could think only of her. Such a thing it is to love, or so I have been told."

"So? Did Loge have any other ideas?" You give up on trying to solve the gods' problem for them and just spur the elf on to finish his story. You've strayed some distance from the name of his ring, and though the tale is interesting you've heard permutations of it before.

"Oh yes," Alberich nods. "His next device was to use a magical item from the hoard, the Tarnhelm, to transform Freia into a monstrous creature, an enormous bird with five legs, five wings, and five heads, reasoning that the Tarnhelm was obscuring Freia by its power. Fafner said he could still see the noble beauty of the goddess's soul in her eyes, and would recognize Freia by them alone. He even offered to marry her in the form of the bird, if the gods preferred it that way. I believe Loge tried eight schemes in all, but I won't bore you with the details of every one. They all failed."

"So in the end they had to use all the gold to build a mount big enough to sit between Fafner and Freia and hide her from him, right?"

"Precisely. The gods, who had set the giant brothers to raising their walls, now had to build a wall themselves. Piece by piece they fitted the treasures together, until the enormous thing truly did hide Freia from the giant's gaze. Only one gap remained, through which he spied the ends of her hair, and in this was set the ring Wotan took from me. The giants took the gold and the ring, and all the love that Fafner had felt for Freia he now directed to the gold. With great affection, he named the ring Eye-Blocker."

"And? I don't expect you to tell me that's the real name of the ring."

"And eventually Siegfried came and slew the giant, who had made himself a dragon with the power of the Tarnhelm. After that it was named 'That Ring I Took from the Dragon's Hoard', until he met his first wife. She called it 'Siegfried's Vow of Love', and when he at last found his downfall it was known as 'The Proof of Siegfried's Treachery'. After Siegfried died, the gods had another name for it: 'The Doom of the Gods'. Their power had indeed begun to wane, and they blamed the curse on the gold for it. Wotan must have known better. I believe he only invented that notion as a story to tell the rest so they wouldn't turn against the real cause. Wotan loved humanity, for some inexplicable reason."

"Is that the name you left it with, then? 'Doom of the Gods'? It's certainly grandiose enough."

"No, it had one more name at the end. Its final holder melted it down and tossed it into the river. Thus, I called it 'The First Piece of My Treasure to be Given Over to those Wretched Singing Fish'."

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Wed 27 Aug 2025 01:04:38 No.6296982 Report

Quoted By: >>6296995 >>6297001 >>6297052 >>6297060 >>6297090

"Then it never had a real name," you conclude, looking at Alberich with equal parts irritation and surprise. You can't decide whether to laugh or hit him, and do neither as a result. "I had it right in the first place, and you talked around this entire narrative just to waste my time! Or is it that you like the sound of your own voice so much?"

"It had a true name," Alberich sighs, contemptuous of your frustration. "I have never told a soul the true name of my ring, and I never shall. It is a name given by its maker, and for its maker only. Such things, too, have power. A power equally different from the straightforward existence of something which wears its identity openly and from the protean nature of that which is nameless."

"I'll bear it in mind," you answer sarcastically. "Whether to keep my name a secret is a few steps beyond me, as long as I don't have one." 

>[ ] Earlier, you said something about learning my name from my soul. What exactly did you mean by that?

>[ ] Enough about names. What can you tell me about this place? It seems obviously related to the hoard that you had, then Fafner, and then Siegfried, but I have no connection to your lives. Are there others here unrelated to you? Has a person from the modern day ever wandered in here before?

>[ ] You've told me quite a bit about your life, but I've told you next to nothing about mine, and you act as if you already have all the answers. Just how much do you know about me, and how?

>[ ] Before coming to your river, I spoke with Siegfried. He mentioned four people here: himself, you, a dragon, and someone he called "the mistress of this place". It's obvious the dragon is Fafner, but who is the mistress?

>[ ] Say something else. (Write in)

By the way, the music for this update is still God-Hater, continuing from the last one.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:teGmOk/l Wed 27 Aug 2025 01:51:08 No.6296995 Report

Quoted By:

>>6296982
>[ ] You've told me quite a bit about your life, but I've told you next to nothing about mine, and you act as if you already have all the answers. Just how much do you know about me, and how?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Wed 27 Aug 2025 02:00:57 No.6297001 Report

Quoted By:

>>6296982
>[ ] Earlier, you said something about learning my name from my soul. What exactly did you mean by that?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:qirQs1EN Wed 27 Aug 2025 05:35:31 No.6297052 Report

Quoted By:

>>6296982
>[ ] Enough about names. What can you tell me about this place? It seems obviously related to the hoard that you had, then Fafner, and then Siegfried, but I have no connection to your lives. Are there others here unrelated to you? Has a person from the modern day ever wandered in here before?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Wed 27 Aug 2025 05:46:43 No.6297060 Report

Quoted By:

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:amJxdXjB Wed 27 Aug 2025 07:41:59 No.6297090 Report

Quoted By:

>>6296982
>[ ] Before coming to your river, I spoke with Siegfried. He mentioned four people here: himself, you, a dragon, and someone he called "the mistress of this place". It's obvious the dragon is Fafner, but who is the mistress?

This is specifically the only person we don't know.

Given Alberich spent the longest with the rheingold out of all of its known wielders/bearers/owners, and is happy hamming it up and revealing whatever knows, it's quite important we get some idea of who this person even is.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 28 Aug 2025 08:29:12 No.6297567 Report

Quoted By: >>6297605

Music: God-Hater (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM29:7)

"But enough about names," you continue, striding angrily past Alberich, up the hill and away from the river. You sweep a hand across your sight-line, taking in the hills, the yawning roof high above, Alberich's bizarre 'art', the entire alien landscape around you. "What is this place, really? You've told me your story, and gold is the centerpiece. Siegfried and Fafner are here too, fine, I'm not so much of a fool that I'd miss the connection; but if this some representation of your hoard, why am I here? I can understand the souls of the dead clinging to a symbol of their fixation in life, even existing in a closed space symbolizing it makes a kind of sense, but I have no connection to your hoard. Moreover, I'm not dead. Is your afterlife here always open to visitors? Have you had the living stumble in before, or am I the first?"

If your derisive rant bothers the elf, he doesn't show it. Alberich stares up at you with eyes that seem placid and remote.

"Do you truly believe you have no connection to my treasure?"

"Of course!"

"Youth," the elf comments obscurely. "I wonder, did I ever know so little of myself? No, boy, we have had no new arrivals since Siegfried died. With the end of the power of the gods, so ended the accessibility of this place to the souls of outsiders. We are inside of the Rheingold itself, and though it retained its potency as a material and its power to beguile, no longer are the shades of those who fall under its spell summoned here upon their deaths."

"You're talking as if it were still all one thing. Didn't you make your ring and other treasures out of it? No matter how much of the stuff there was in the first place, you must have run out eventually. How can we be inside something that was split into countless pieces?"

"No," Alberich sighs, "an artisan can never use all of the Rheingold. It is self-replenishing. Take away whatever part of it you wish, and the orb remains unblemished and none the lesser. The Rheingold is mother to all the gold in the earth. It is a world itself, and that is the source of its boundless power. As a complete world, it contains all possibilities. In the hands of a true artist, anything at all can be made from it."

"Fine," you answer. Though bizarre, it's not unbelievable. A supply of gold that can never run out is hardly out of place among old legends, and you have found yourself in what seems like a different world. "That still doesn't tell me a thing about why I'm here. I've never so much as laid eyes on the Rheingold, and even if I had you say it doesn't have the power to bring people here anymore."

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 28 Aug 2025 08:30:14 No.6297568 Report

Quoted By:

"It was a world for one, originally," the elf says, as if this answers your question, "but its mistress did not care for solitude. Longing for company, she brought those she enchanted in life here in death. When the power of the gods faded, those who held the Rheingold could no longer hear her voice. Though she could watch their deeds, no longer had she the power to change them. Without the promise of more spirits to populate her home, the company of the shades she had already gathered was unsatisfying. She fell into slumber, yet here we remain. Though she sleeps, even unconscious she will not be without souls beside her."

"Then this 'mistress' brought me here as well, and from the sound of it I'm trapped with the rest of you. How dd she do it, if that's a power she's lost?"

"You are here because of the unique confluence of circumstances and events which gave rise to your existence. As for your being trapped," he says, waving a dismissive hand, "worry not. I doubt she would keep you here for eternity, or could, as you yet live. You are kin to her, and the first in many years whose existence is weighted enough to hear her voice."

"Kin?" A shock runs through you. What sort of relations could Alberich, who's treated you like an unusual piece of sculpture almost from the moment he saw you, imagine you having?

"Oh yes," the elf replies with a smile. "Your progenitrix, one might say."

"Do you mean the Einzbern are-"

"Now go. I tire of your company, and I would feign tempt the wrath of a goddess." Cutting you off with one last sarcastic quip, Alberich produces and crushes another device of gold leaf. Before you can react, the golden hill you stand on opens beneath your feet and swallows you up.

Gold surrounds you. It presses in on all sides, squeezing against you and forcing you along some course unclear. You have the sense of being forced through a tunnel so deep within the earth that it's warmed by subterranean heat. A tunnel scarcely big enough to fit your body into, let alone maneuver through, but a tunnel you have no way of escaping, no way of going back, only worming your way along and hoping for the best.

<> <> <>

When the tunnel finally spits you out onto the surface, or what passes for surface in this huge cavern, you find yourself at the base of an enormous slope. A hill of treasure more vast than any other feature of the 'landscape', and one which serves not as an object itself, but as a base. Propped up on the slope, seeming to recline, is the most enormous statue you have ever seen. It depicts a woman, and despite its genuinely colossal size, every detail is perfectly worked out. Between the size and the artistry, you guess it must be a statue of the mistress or goddess Alberich referred to. It has the look of a monument raised to an object of religious devotion. Even the posture, though odd, really isn't so different from that of a reclining Buddha statue.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 28 Aug 2025 08:31:14 No.6297569 Report

Quoted By:

The stone surface of the statue's body appears to have the genuine color and texture of smooth and flawless skin. The raiment the statue wears seems to be a thing of genuinely silken thinness, folding and hanging with perfect authenticity. On the surface of that replicated fabric, more astonishing still, rivers of liquid gold flow like monstrous snakes wending their way across an alabaster landscape. This is not the powdered pseudo-liquid of Alberich's river replica, you feel certain, but molten gold contained by fantastic artistry. The statue's hair, eyelashes, and nails are of gold as well, all perfectly shaped and individuated. From where its hands rest against its bed of treasure, luminous golden threads wrapped around each finger extend high above, to the cavern's vaulted ceiling.

Then, as you look up at it, the statue moves. Its eyelids flutter, its lips part to take a breath, and as its hands shift they send an avalanche of treasure cascading down toward you. A 'goldslide', thinks one part of your mind, amused by the surreality of it all. By the time you've gotten out of the path of destruction, what you had taken to be a statue has propped herself up on one elbow, leaning on her side as she looks down on you with huge, luminous eyes. This is the mistress of the Rheingold.

Music: Presence (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM25:3)

"Child," the goddess sighs, and you recognize the voice from your dream. Hers is the voice from the star, warning you to remain true to true desire. It fills the space, a soft murmur from her lips, massive as the voice of the world itself. "At last, you have come to me."

"It seems I have," you reply. The words fall from your lips without thought. You find yourself paralyzed by the sheer presence of the being before you, hardly capable of gathering your thoughts, let alone making any witty remarks. She's more than the mistress of this place; she is the entirety of the world you've been brought to. You can feel it after only a moment in her waking presence, at the first exposure to her mystic energy you knew instinctively. All the light that illuminates this cavern, all the heat which warms it, has been the reflected glow of her radiance. The gold itself, the cavern walls, everything you've seen since arriving here has been an extension of her will. Only the spirits of Siegfried and Alberich, and your own spirit, are separate from her omnipresence.

"You have made me wait some time," she says, her voice colored by gentle reproof, "tarrying as you pleased with Siegfried and Alberich. Have you become friends?"

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO World of Gold 3.png, 808KiB, 800x600

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 28 Aug 2025 08:32:24 No.6297570 Report

Quoted By: >>6297749

The presence of the goddess weighs down on you like pressure at the bottom of the ocean. Your mind feels no more agile than a glacier, stalled out by intense concentration of an emotion you can't name. Is it abject fear, is it awe, is it something else? Still, you have to answer. Behind the smile and soft words, you sense the enormity of death. If you make an enemy of this being, here in her own domain, you will be annihilated with infinitely less effort than it takes to draw breath.

"I was called here," you finally manage, "without knowing the way, where I was being called, or who my host might be." The most you can do is formulate the unvarnished truth. Diplomacy is still beyond you.

"Indeed, I told you nothing," agrees the goddess. "I wished you to find your way to me guided by familial affection. It wounds me so, the coldness of my children. In a thousand years, only you have even bothered to listen to my voice."

"Familial..." you echo. "I still don't understand. Just how am I related to you?"

"Pitiable child, told so little of your nature," the goddess laments. "All things born from the Rheingold are born from me. You were created from my body, as was your sister, and all other masterworks of the Einzbern smiths."

So, you reflect, that is the secret to creating life from inanimate objects. Homunculi are made, or begun, or somehow derived from an artifact which embodies infinite potential. You suppose that explains why something based on a human could contain the souls of defeated heroic spirits, as well. The original material is filled with infinitely more power, so using it to make a vessel for magical energy must have seemed obvious. That leaves you with one more question, though.

"Alberich called you a goddess," you say, "but what you're saying, it sounds like you are the Rheingold itself. Who are you?"

"I am Gullveig, the goddess of desire."

Even had Alberich not told you, you wouldn't be surprised to hear that this woman is a goddess. Not as you stand there, feeling the mystic energy radiating off of her like the sun. Desire, though? You look around you, and think of everything you've seen here. It doesn't reflect a broad variety of desires. In fact, you had expected her to answer that she was the goddess of gold.

"Ah, so innocent," you hear, and refocus on the goddess. She looks amused. "You know little of desire, my pure-hearted child. Gold is desire made solid. He who looks on gold longs for it. It is not the only desire, but a symbol of desire. It is of me, but I am not of it."

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 28 Aug 2025 08:33:25 No.6297571 Report

Quoted By: >>6297605 >>6297627 >>6297658 >>6297889 >>6297914 >>6297992

>[ ] How is it that you came to inhabit the Rheingold, if gold is only one facet of your authority?

>[ ] You told me to remember my true desire, but I don't think I have any. Do you know of some desire within me that I haven't recognized in myself?

>[ ] Alberich said that you can observe what those with a connection to the Rheingold are doing. How much about the outside world do you really know? Is it because of the Holy Grail War that you've called me here?

>[ ] Say something else. (Write in)

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Thu 28 Aug 2025 12:28:47 No.6297605 Report

Quoted By: >>6297909 >>6297992

>>6297567
>"No," Alberich sighs, "an artisan can never use all of the Rheingold. It is self-replenishing. Take away whatever part of it you wish, and the orb remains unblemished and none the lesser. The Rheingold is mother to all the gold in the earth. It is a world itself, and that is the source of its boundless power. As a complete world, it contains all possibilities. In the hands of a true artist, anything at all can be made from it."
Crazy stuff. Makes me wonder if you could theoretically use this in a defensive manner, like Akhilleus Cosmos.
>Homunculi are made, or begun, or somehow derived from an artifact which embodies infinite potential.
And because the original material is self-replenishing, the Einzbern have an unlimited capacity to produce homunculi. It also makes sense to use the Rheingold to gather heroes and kill them, since it was a treasure that attracted heroes to their doom from the start.
>>6297571
>[ ] How is it that you came to inhabit the Rheingold, if gold is only one facet of your authority?
>[ ] Alberich said that you can observe what those with a connection to the Rheingold are doing. How much about the outside world do you really know? Is it because of the Holy Grail War that you've called me here?
I really want to ask both of these. If you only want to write for one, count my vote for either one of these.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:knyUOI9n Thu 28 Aug 2025 13:58:39 No.6297627 Report

Quoted By: >>6297749 >>6297909

>>6297571
Why am I the first to hear you? If others have the same familial link to you, what makes me different? Is it because those who have nothing of their own feel desire more strongly?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:DcAdQz+y Thu 28 Aug 2025 15:17:59 No.6297658 Report

Quoted By: >>6297684 >>6297903 >>6297909 >>6297914 >>6297917 >>6297934

>>6297571
>[] Say something else. (Sit with her. Take her hand, if she'll allow it. Ask how she's doing? Is there anything she wants or needs help with?)
She wants familial affection, we can do that.
If you think about it, it's like a visit with Grandma.
Giant Goddess Grandma.
Triple Gma.
Might as well ask her how she's getting along.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 28 Aug 2025 16:53:42 No.6297684 Report

Quoted By: >>6297818

>>6297658
Taking her hand would be a bit of a challenge, anon. You're about as tall as one of her eyes. If you want to clamber up there and give it a try, though, feel free.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Thu 28 Aug 2025 19:51:23 No.6297749 Report

Quoted By: >>6297778 >>6297909

>>6297570
I suspect that her ending up in the Rheingold is as simple as it being an independent and alternative domain to the IN realm held within her power. So,

>[ ] You told me to remember my true desire, but I don't think I have any. Do you know of some desire within me that I haven't recognized in myself?

>>6297627
Probably has something to do with [Archer]'s deeply conceptual nature from the Akeldama, which gives us a firmer connection to the divine/mystic than lesser Einzbern homunculi.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Thu 28 Aug 2025 20:38:12 No.6297778 Report

Quoted By: >>6297794 >>6298018

>>6297749
There was probably the assumption that it was Justeaze speaking to any cup who got close too. I imagine a fairly full cup would have stirred the waters somewhat, and also Angra was polluting the grail back in Fuyuki.

Makes sense why Cloak-chan is A rank too, it's made from the Rheingold by an AoG mage. It's almost like Circe was working with Orichalcum or Adamas in an unawakened form originally. After the Akeldama ritual was funnelled inside mc, if it's managed to awaken the Oni bloodline once lost to the Ogawara, it must have also found this divine remnant within him and empower the cloak into something akin to the Tarnhelm, as a side effect, while elevating his homonculus form directly to Servant level. It's also given enough mana, in combination with our unique Origin/affinities for Gullveig to wake up. She might also be why Judas hasn't been able to speak to us. He'd be conceptually weak to the allure of treasure and might end up trapped here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullveig
Gullveig was the leader of the Vanir, a trive of divine beings that Odin's own tribe, the Aesir, killed and raped/enslaved btw. An aspect of her may have become Freya, but given she eas speared and burned to death multiple times but wasn't able to be 'killed', Odin may have had a direct hand in her being reduced to a hoard of cursed gold. He also cannot keep his hands off the Rheingold, he keeps meddling with it throughout many of his myths because he's probably still obsessed that Grandma never accepted him willingly.

If he's around again, it is our family duty to avenge her.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Thu 28 Aug 2025 21:28:07 No.6297794 Report

Quoted By: >>6297906

>>6297778
Also, Judas baited by the Rheingold nature of Liliesviel (catalyst), Odin baited by it as her Servant in Awakening.

Explains a bit of Adelheid's attachment in Awakening after just one coffee too. Germanic servant likely has predisposition to simp to gold from her myth.

Comes full circle with my earlier post about >>6295586 with her singing a song directly from the Germanic interpretation of the Rheingold saga.

I do hope she's around still. Would be such a waste otherwise.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:B2cIO1iQ Thu 28 Aug 2025 22:32:11 No.6297818 Report

Quoted By: >>6297823 >>6297903

>>6297684
I'm sure she could reach down and hit Rushorou with the "Gwynevere Dark Souls cut animation", but if that's simply too much to ask for, feel free to ignore that part and focus on the rest of the post.
She's the Goddess of Desire on top of being mostly alone here, I'm sure she isn't asked if she's doing well often. More importantly, she's someone who claims to be an elder relative of sorts. Before hitting her with the 20 questions, the who/what/where/when, let's start with, "How do you do, granny? Can the only grandson to visit you in millenia do anything for you?".
Of course, I'm not saying he should literally say this, but you get the vibe, I hope. Genuinely ask after her well-being, or as close to that as Rushorou can get.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Thu 28 Aug 2025 22:43:57 No.6297823 Report

Quoted By:

>>6297818
I get you, don't worry. If your vote gets the majority I'll adjust things as necessary to make sense spatially. There's always the option of standing in the palm of her hand, as well.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:qirQs1EN Fri 29 Aug 2025 01:07:55 No.6297889 Report

Quoted By: >>6297909

>>6297571
>[ ] How is it that you came to inhabit the Rheingold, if gold is only one facet of your authority?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:h+odld0N Fri 29 Aug 2025 01:53:35 No.6297903 Report

Quoted By: >>6297905 >>6297909 >>6297934

>>6297818
>>6297658
I'm actually more for this type of option, given even as 'Yumigawa' mc held allies close in Akeldama, and tried to remain attached to his surrogate family outside it.

Showing a level of care or concern for what might be his closest true kin besides the equivalent of his IVF sister seems quite authentic and might help him in constructing a 'reason' so to speak.

Ball out re Seigfried's advice, fuck Odin re Alberich and Gullveig's past indicates. Helps in constructing a direction and a sense of purpose. Chasing Desire as she's advised too should help package it up nicely.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Fri 29 Aug 2025 01:58:23 No.6297905 Report

Quoted By: >>6297906

>>6297903
Are you changing your vote from something else? Which ID were you previously, if so?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:h+odld0N Fri 29 Aug 2025 02:00:35 No.6297906 Report

Quoted By: >>6297909 >>6297943

>>6297905
I haven't voted yet, I'm >>6297794

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Fri 29 Aug 2025 02:06:15 No.6297909 Report

Quoted By:

>>6297906
Ah, I see. In that case, we have votes as follows:

Ask how she came to be in the Rheingold
>>6297605
>>6297889

Ask why no previous homunculi heard her voice
>>6297627

Make a gesture of affection and concern (?) for her
>>6297658
>>6297903

Ask if she knows of a desire within you that you're unaware of
>>6297749

What are your thoughts, folks?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:vYGejCbD Fri 29 Aug 2025 02:22:57 No.6297914 Report

Quoted By: >>6297934

>>6297571
>>6297658
Sign me up for some filial piety.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:zoB/YcIE Fri 29 Aug 2025 02:27:30 No.6297917 Report

Quoted By: >>6297921

>>6297658
Look I'm not trying to bring back edgy Alberich but this feels very simp-y and a very sudden turn for [Archer] as he's been presented so far. We've only just met this lady.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:vYGejCbD Fri 29 Aug 2025 02:29:55 No.6297921 Report

Quoted By:

>>6297917
I trust Sweets to make the vote work out.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Fri 29 Aug 2025 03:10:11 No.6297934 Report

Quoted By: >>6297942 >>6297969

>>6297658
>>6297903
>>6297914
Before I confirm this choice and write the update, I'd like to ask if you've considered the implications of asking after her wellbeing in the way DcAdQz+y described. We are talking about a goddess, here.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:W3Yh6KcX Fri 29 Aug 2025 03:26:19 No.6297942 Report

Quoted By: >>6297943

>>6297934
Meeting your Divine ancestor is a pretty potent experience. It should be a reaction balanced around both respect and care but not condensing to a goddess. I'm not sure how to accurately articulate that right noe, but its not just calling her grandma, simping, or asking if she's lonely/ok. Stucopres should have some ability to respond in a way that is respectful, shows care and reverence surely with his budget diplomacy practice. Nips should also have some capacity to recognise an appropriate way to respond to a deity beyond dogeza KAMISAMA LET ME KISS YOUR HAND

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:W3Yh6KcX Fri 29 Aug 2025 03:28:34 No.6297943 Report

Quoted By:

>>6297942
I'm >>6297906
Btw

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:Ws0w0148 Fri 29 Aug 2025 04:22:06 No.6297969 Report

Quoted By: >>6298217

>>6297934
>Hey guys, have you *really* thought about how this form of affection will go over with an actual goddess???
First dead end for Awakening Mirror 2.0 inbound?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:teGmOk/l Fri 29 Aug 2025 05:01:28 No.6297992 Report

Quoted By: >>6298018

>>6297571
>>6297605
+1
Because I genuinely don't know who she is and how she came to be in here.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:gyuBPODB Fri 29 Aug 2025 05:30:41 No.6298018 Report

Quoted By: >>6298451

>>6297992
Read her wiki to get a rough idea >>6297778

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Fri 29 Aug 2025 09:18:58 No.6298115 Report

Quoted By:

Music: Presence (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM25:3)

No, you think, not the only desire, for isn't she embodying another desire of yours already? The desire for family, for an identity, which has grown within you since you discovered that Yumigawa Rushorou had never been. But then, was family truly what you sought? To have been parted from the common stream of humanity was the more painful separation, to realize yourself without purpose, without identity, and alienated from all your life had once consisted of. What kind of experience must it have been to endure such a separation, not only in identity, but total, and for a thousand years? To have once had a place in the heavens, amidst her own kind, and then to spend the long ages here in this isolation, able only to reach her voice out to those in contact with the Rheingold? To have lost even that ability, in time? The scale of such emotion, piled up over all those years, is something you likely can never comprehend.

"I must thank you for calling me here." Though you struggle to force the words out through the paralyzing pressure of the goddess's overwhelming presence, your voice is filled with unfeigned emotion. To know that such a being cares for you as family, after discovering the lies of those you had thought of as your parents, is strangely moving. "To be without a family is a hard thing. On behalf of the other homunculi over the years, I apologize for our very late response."

"No, child," Gullveig chides gently, "it is not for you to bear responsibility for their lives. You are here, and that is enough."

Is it enough? You wonder. Alberich said that Gullveig trapped his soul, along with those of Fafner and Siegfried, in this place to assuage her loneliness. Gullveig herself speaks of loneliness, being unable to speak to her 'children'. To have finally brought you here, after so many years, she must want something more from you than only to see your face. More than one something, you expect. How many social acts could a lonely person have imagined and longed for in a millennium of near-isolation? You open your mouth to give voice to your thoughts, and find you can't speak.

Nothing is wrong with your throat, or your mouth. It's because Gullveig is laughing that you can't speak. In a woman of ordinary stature, it would be a softly musical laugh, hardly audible and certainly not intrusive. Her lips are barely parted. From that titanic frame, however, the least utterance fills your ears and utterly overrules the possibility of interruption. You could yell at the top of your lungs, and still be unable to hear your own voice.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Fri 29 Aug 2025 09:19:58 No.6298116 Report

Quoted By:

"I see the question in your heart," the goddess explains after her brief mirth, an amused smile still on her lips. "You would know how you might remedy my solitude, give salve to the pain of loneliness? Dear child, do not fret over such things. I make no demands on you, or on those three boys. Their souls were brought to my realm by their own longing, not mine. Fafner knows he is here because he wishes it, but oh, proud Alberich and bashful Siegfried. How they turn away from the truth."

An alabaster arm like a snow-clad mountain descends from the height at which Gullveig reclines, and the point of a long, gold fingernail hovers before your eyes. The tip of the index finger with which Gullveig points to you, you can now see, is larger than your head.

"You, dear child, can do nothing for me but answer my call. It is for your own benefit that I have brought you here, for without my help, you will be lost."

"Lost?" There's a finality and a sadness in the way she pronounces the word that chills your blood. "What do you mean by that?"

"Those who brought you into this world wished to make from the Rheingold a disposable vessel, and such is the role you have been thrust into, poor thing." As she speaks, the goddess's brows draw together in a look of exaggerated compassion. "A grail poured full with spirits for another to drink, and when the master drinks, 'Prosit!' The grail is shattered. Already the energy of one defeated soul dwells within you. Is it your wish to meet such a fate?"

"You say you can see into my heart," you answer. "Then you know how much I hate the idea."

"Of course, and so you should. What reason can there be for a vessel which thinks and feels to unthinkingly obey the one who shaped it? You can put the power which fills you to your own use. Already your sister pursues such an idea, but her method is a hard one, and will bear fruit only at the very end of her labors."

"There's a more immediate way of extending my life, then?"

"How could there not be?" The goddess smiles, and the glow of her eyes grows brighter, more like the golden star in your first dream of her voice. "You are born of my earthly body, the Rheingold, and what is made of the Rheingold is infinitely changeable. With the power of the felled spirits as your fuel, reforge yourself. Then shall you be freed from the doom laid upon you."

"But how?" The idea isn't entirely new to you; you had envisioned a similar project, if you could learn enough about the magic that gives shape to a Servant's existence, but the problem you had with that method is just as present with this one. "I'm sure what you're describing is possible, but I understand only a fraction of the Einzbern magical tradition. Learning to remake a homunculus, and to perform a modification like that on myself, will take years of study at least! I don't even know all the details of my own nature as a Servant yet."

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Fri 29 Aug 2025 09:20:59 No.6298118 Report

Quoted By:

"A trivial thing. While your spirit sojourns within my realm, I will use the energy within your body to change you. The greater need that must be answered, you have not seen. Dear child, to live beyond your term, you must wish to live."

"That's settled, then," you answer, slightly confused. It seems odd for her to bring the topic back up after already asking you whether you were willing to die at the end of the Holy Grail War a moment ago. "Of course I want to live."

"No, child, you have no such wish in your heart. You wish not to die, but have no wish to live. It is this lack which has tormented you since you came to know of your true nature."

"There's no answer I can give to that. I discussed the subject with Siegfried and Alberich, and they both had some interesting ideas, but I'm still uncertain."

"Worry not," Gullveig replies with a smile. "For this, too, I have prepared a remedy. Before aught else, you must know yourself. Gaze you upon this mirror, and behold your heart."

With those words Gullveig brushes her finger across the gold at your feet, at the base of the hill on which she reclines, and at her touch a full-length mirror rises out of the treasures. In its reflection you find yourself, though not as light reflects you. It is your form, but insubstantial, as if you'd been replicated in the medium of cellophane. You see through yourself, within yourself, and find that in the mirror invisible qualities appear plain elements of your form, while simple realities of appearance are invisible. After a moment you realize that the mirror is reflecting, as a visible image, the structure of your magical energy. For the first time, it seems, you have a complete understanding of your own nature as a Servant.

Status Updated

After giving you a few moments to process the information, Gullveig's hand descends again, and the mirror dissolves into a golden haze, and as it vanishes a new change begins. Three openings form in the hill of treasure, like identical cave mouths in a steep rock-face. Inside, there is only darkness.

"Carrying in your breast the Rheingold," Gullveig continues, "you are its bearer, and it is in the lives of your predecessors you shall find your answer. Connected to me, so to are you connected to they who dwell in my realm. Thus may your uncertain steps be guided down the paths they have walked, your unformed power given shape."

Forms begin to appear in the caves as the goddess speaks, at first only an indistinct mist, then of a substance that gathers closer and closer, first into a silhouette, then a detailed shape, and finally the complete body. Perfectly still and perfectly lifelike replicas of Siegfried and Alberich stand in the first two cave mouths. In the third rests the huge head of a dragon, his scales the varying red, brown, yellow, and orange of autumn leaves at the peak of their season. This, you gather, must be Fafner.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Fri 29 Aug 2025 09:22:00 No.6298119 Report

Quoted By: >>6298180 >>6298194 >>6298204 >>6298218 >>6298259 >>6298263 >>6298357 >>6298399 >>6298426 >>6298473

"You think if I decide to emulate one of these three, I'll find desires of my own?" You raise an eyebrow. Siegfried's method at least seemed to make some sense as a way of living even without a guiding desire, but why Alberich and the sleeping dragon are included in Gullveig's list you can't guess.

"I know that you shall," answers the goddess. "Three archetypes of desire; three forms of happiness, found. Three shapes of virtue. Determine to follow one of these, my child, and you shall find your way. Siegfried, the seeker after heroism, you have met. He devoted his life to the doing of what men said was impossible, ever seeking after greater glory and trials, and in surpassing them, found happiness. Alberich, the pillar of self-regard. Knowing himself perfectly, and trusting only to his own judgment, he surpassed all others' assessment of him. In being ever true to himself and proving to the world the greatness he knew was in him, he found happiness. These, you have met already. Last is Fafner, the flame of passion. In love, his feelings were all-consuming. In what he enjoyed, he found a complete and absolute joy. When creativity filled him, he built unrivaled marvels of beauty and comfort. When he set himself to guarding his treasure, he did so with perfect readiness to spend eternity upon his hoard."

After looking over the three for what seems almost an eternity, you finally decide... 

>[ ] ...that Heroism is what you need. Even if it gives you no intrinsic satisfaction, building a reputation for accomplishing great things is sure to bring happiness eventually.

>[ ] ...that Self-Respect is what you need. Even if you have doubts about your own abilities now, as long as you don't let yourself give in to doubt you'll eventually find the kind of happiness in excellence you enjoyed in the Akeldama.

>[ ] ...that Passion is what you need. Even if simple emotion seems trivial now, if you can learn to find happiness in the acts that make up the course of your life, you won't need to look for it in some far-off goal.

>[ ] ...something else? (Write-in)

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Fri 29 Aug 2025 09:38:52 No.6298127 Report

Quoted By: >>6298215

https://youtu.be/LjAjocV0ChY?si=smrclt0GCmQywOkC

We have the opportunity to do the funniest thing possible here.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Fri 29 Aug 2025 12:28:15 No.6298180 Report

Quoted By: >>6298215 >>6298363 >>6298410

>>6298119
>[ ] ...that Heroism is what you need. Even if it gives you no intrinsic satisfaction, building a reputation for accomplishing great things is sure to bring happiness eventually.
Siegfried route it is.

>Beyond these passive abilities, the cloak can manifest more active powers by consuming a portion of its fabric. By enmeshing its fabric in [Archer]'s skin, its motive power can be added to [Archer]'s own, temporarily doubling his strength and speed. If used as a shield, it can defend [Archer] against a powerful attack. The Shroud can even utilize the interstitial nature of Imaginary Number space to act as a portal for [Archer], though that portion which he passes through will be destroyed in the process.
Fuck, this rebalancing is killing me.
>A rather flimsy garment, the Shroud of Emptiness has one key weakness: should the cloak sustain damage, its beneficial effects will proportionally decrease in strength. When the cloak is damaged beyond a certain threshold, it will fade from existence as it gradually repairs itself within Imaginary Space. Under normal circumstances the repair process lasts a minimum of 48 hours. Providing a steady supply of magical energy to the cloak will speed up this repair process.
Can cloak-chan be repaired before that damage threshold, or should we just rip it up if we want to fix it?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:fvqkNXc+ Fri 29 Aug 2025 13:45:29 No.6298194 Report

Quoted By: >>6298215

>>6298119
>[] ...that Desire itself is what you need. Desire is the master and action is its servant. Our goal should be to become an existence like Gullveig.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:ZQg1fsuV Fri 29 Aug 2025 14:19:51 No.6298204 Report

Quoted By: >>6298215 >>6298410

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Fri 29 Aug 2025 14:52:56 No.6298215 Report

Quoted By: >>6298272

>>6298127
It's just about picking a goal. You're not going to take on the predecessor's name, and going for self-respect isn't going to turn the protagonist into Alberich from the original version of Awakening Mirror or anything.

>>6298180
It can be repaired from a state of partial damage, but it'll still be out of commission while you repair it.

>>6298194
All three of these choices are desire. That the protagonist needs a desire to follow is the central idea here; what that should be is the question. Trying to choose "desire" is choosing nothing.

>>6298204
I suggest you consider that conclusion very carefully. As I said to the other anon, these are all desire.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Fri 29 Aug 2025 14:57:53 No.6298217 Report

Quoted By:

>>6297969
Oh, I forgot to say this last night, but I'm trying to use dead ends less this time. When the negative consequences of a choice are just "make the choice again", it's a bit of a crutch. In a life or death battle that kind of thing can work, but I'd like to present lasting consequences in as many situations as possible.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:eziEO6gc Fri 29 Aug 2025 15:05:25 No.6298218 Report

Quoted By: >>6298410

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:vYGejCbD Fri 29 Aug 2025 17:33:24 No.6298259 Report

Quoted By: >>6298410 >>6298426

>>6298119
>[X] ...that Self-Respect is what you need. Even if you have doubts about your own abilities now, as long as you don't let yourself give in to doubt you'll eventually find the kind of happiness in excellence you enjoyed in the Akeldama.

I feel like this matches Rushorou at this point pretty well.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:fvqkNXc+ Fri 29 Aug 2025 17:41:02 No.6298263 Report

Quoted By: >>6298272 >>6298410

>>6298119
>[ ] ...that Passion is what you need. Even if simple emotion seems trivial now, if you can learn to find happiness in the acts that make up the course of your life, you won't need to look for it in some far-off goal.
I think that looking at great heroes from the past, most of them were passionate people chasing their passions and accomplishing great heroic things as a result. Going for heroism itself is ultimately an empty desire.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Fri 29 Aug 2025 18:05:38 No.6298272 Report

Quoted By: >>6298363 >>6298410

>>6298215
>>6298263
I like the heroism motive for a few reasons. Siggy wasn't pursuing Kleos/Time as such, but the pursuit of eternal glory would make [Archer] a thoroughly classical hero akin to my GOAT Achilles. For a being of [Archer]'s capacity, the exercise of power in overcoming both challenges and self is fundamentally satisfying. Finally, the active pursuit of heroic challenges will tighten the narrative.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:fvqkNXc+ Fri 29 Aug 2025 20:06:39 No.6298333 Report

Quoted By: >>6298352 >>6298363

I've got a name suggestion for Archer. Agilaz. Works on a couple levels. Proto-Germanic legendary archer. Alternatives are Egil or Aigil.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Fri 29 Aug 2025 21:18:59 No.6298352 Report

Quoted By:

>>6298333
Who will be the valkwife?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alruna

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Fri 29 Aug 2025 21:33:57 No.6298357 Report

Quoted By: >>6298363 >>6298410 >>6298451 >>6298460

>>6298119
I honestly think following multiple of these works to an extent, when the opportunities arise and are presented.

Given our immediate situation, mc is fundamentally and conceptually Empty.

So to find some form of meaning, when the situation grants it, perform heroic acts and build a reputation. Strive for excellence, don't give quarter to any form of doubt; given divine origins of infinite possibilities. Finally, find enjoyment in these acts. Even as Yumigawa, there's clearly a latent excitement for combat. Crushing those weaker got mc all hot and bothered.

Why should a son of Desire herself, that even Odin tried his best to subjugate (and ultimately failed) be content with anything less than wanting to have it all and relish the experiences and accomplishments along the way?

>I want it all. My Origin is Emptiness, so I have nothing but room within me to take in all experiences to the fullest. If I am both your scion and a vessel made to contain legends of the past, then I should aim to consume them all and build my own legend great enough to reflect my forebears. Why should a child of Desire itself be limited to just one path?

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Fri 29 Aug 2025 21:42:36 No.6298363 Report

Quoted By: >>6298365

>>6298180
>Fuck, this rebalancing is killing me.
Just in case it wasn't clear, the current description of the Shroud of Emptiness is its original list of abilities at the time the protagonist became a Servant. Nothing was gained or lost by looking in Gullveig's mirror, it just revealed the rest of [Archer]s stat sheet. Up until now you discovered [Archer]'s abilities and those of his Noble Phantasms by taking actions that tested or revealed them to yourself. So, Magic Resistance was tested when you sparred against Caster, but if Charisma was functioning you were never aware of it. If you'd taken a route that prioritized diplomacy and duplicity up until now, Charisma might have been revealed while Magic Resistance remained a ?? rank class ability.

>>6298272
It sounds like you know what you want and understand the choice, that's fine. I just want to avoid misunderstandings about the motive you folks vote for, since that caused some strife in the first quest. Heroism isn't chivalry, is the point I'm trying to make by stressing that they're all forms of desire.

>>6298333
Interesting idea.

>>6298357
Precocious children are always difficult, aren't they? After your mother just told you to pick one. You'll get an interesting response if you say that, at any rate.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Fri 29 Aug 2025 21:48:39 No.6298365 Report

Quoted By:

>>6298363
Any special attention is good attention for an empty husk of a child.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:nzsdjLhJ Fri 29 Aug 2025 23:57:45 No.6298399 Report

Quoted By: >>6298410

Yeah, there we go, see?
That's just about exactly how I expected that to go, give or take. Sweets had us worried for nothing.
A little common courtesy and filial piety never hurt anyone.
It's not simping to dial up your grandmas, Anons.
Call em if you got em.

>>6298119
>[X] ...that Passion is what you need. Even if simple emotion seems trivial now, if you can learn to find happiness in the acts that make up the course of your life, you won't need to look for it in some far-off goal.
Makes me feel bad we weren't able to speak to him in person, but Fafner's Reason is the one I like for Rushorou most here.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sat 30 Aug 2025 00:17:51 No.6298410 Report

Quoted By: >>6298426 >>6298458 >>6298466

Not calling the vote yet, but current tally:
>Heroism
>>6298180
>>6298204
>>6298218
>Self-Respect
>>6298259
>Passion
>>6298263
>>6298399
>EVERYTHING
>>6298357

>>6298272
From the flow of conversation, I'm assuming you posted >>6298204, correct?

>>6298399
I had a reason for asking you to think carefully about that vote. It represented a significant step in the direction of prioritizing family, and not just his past, that [Archer] hadn't taken up until that point. Since that is specifically family consisting of a deity and homunculi; it represents a shift in self-perception away from the human as well.
It's not a giant step, but it is meaningful, and I wanted to make sure you folks had thought about it.
Also, if this had been Amaterasu she would've vaporized you for having the temerity to even think she might need help or comfort from a mortal. Fortunately Gullveig is much more easygoing.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:vYGejCbD Sat 30 Aug 2025 00:52:56 No.6298426 Report

Quoted By: >>6298460

>>6298119
>>6298259
>>6298410
I suppose I'll go ahead and swap to

>[X] ...that Passion is what you need. Even if simple emotion seems trivial now, if you can learn to find happiness in the acts that make up the course of your life, you won't need to look for it in some far-off goal.

It's my backup pick, but I like it more than Heroism as a motivation.

>blasted
Yeah, Gullveig by her nature of a being of desire I felt would understand the desire for a family. It wasn't even in my thoughts that would happen. If there were a bad end here though I imagined it would be one where we'd just be stuck here forever, not even a dead end.

Also since she called us in the first place and was being helpful it didn't seem that dangerous to me.

Happy to see that [Archer] is gaining more as the story unfolds. Gotta fill up that void somehow.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:teGmOk/l Sat 30 Aug 2025 01:32:23 No.6298451 Report

Quoted By: >>6298458

>>6298357
+1
We greedy for desire, boys.

>>6298018
Huh. Thank you, anon.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Sat 30 Aug 2025 01:48:14 No.6298458 Report

Quoted By:

>>6298410
Ammy is also a goddess of war. Gullveig is Desire/gold/prophecy/fate/magic (Seidr). Checks out she's less trigger happy given she never initiated conflicts and conquests like Amaterasu had her offspring do. She also didn't have a warchad storm god for a brother to teach her bad habits.

All this Reason talk is very SMT3.

>>6298451
Insatiable chads ww@

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:vYGejCbD Sat 30 Aug 2025 01:52:32 No.6298460 Report

Quoted By:

>>6298426
>>6298357
Alright, and with that I'll switch to greed.

Didn't think it'd get much traction desu.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO Screenshot_20250829_205547.jpg, 60KiB, 549x159

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Sat 30 Aug 2025 02:00:39 No.6298466 Report

Quoted By: >>6298490

>>6298410
You have correctly identified my vote.

If I'm counting correctly it's tied between Heroism and "I want it all". Fuck. Honestly I just don't want Passion in the mix. Erotic love is fake and gay and the downfall of the great. Look at what it did to Fafner!

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:M1iYMdF1 Sat 30 Aug 2025 02:02:59 No.6298473 Report

Quoted By:

>>6298119
I honestly think trying to conflate the three into a single desire is going to end up hampering us; Heroism and Self-Respect are more tempered long-term goals while Passions is conversely hedonistic, making them irreconcilable.

With that in mind I vote for Heroism, against the current odds that it will pass.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sat 30 Aug 2025 02:13:20 No.6298490 Report

Quoted By: >>6298496 >>6298503

>>6298466
I think you might be looking at passion the wrong way. It's not just erotic love; if you have no passion, you won't be able to enjoy anything. To be totally without passion is like a state of extreme depression.
That said, the "everything" write-in is pretty odd.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:9BeF4uNo Sat 30 Aug 2025 02:21:14 No.6298496 Report

Quoted By:

>>6298490
I consider powerful emotion to be a handicap at worst and a double-edged sword at best. It's a form of motivation which inevitable betrays you through either excess or flight.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:M1iYMdF1 Sat 30 Aug 2025 02:31:51 No.6298503 Report

Quoted By:

>>6298490
It seems to be a flowery "have cake/eat too" write-in --a common type on this board, I may add-- that will likely bite us in the ass either now or later.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sat 30 Aug 2025 03:24:55 No.6298524 Report

Quoted By:

Well, it does look like Heroism is scraping out ahead by one vote, so I suppose I'll have to spoil something about the update. Given the nature of the write-in, if I just write and post the update for Heroism as-is, you might get the wrong idea.
So, as I'm sure those of you who were around for the original quest have figured out, these three desires are the reorganized form of the motivation system from Akeldama. The protagonist was always supposed to have all three of these desires within him. He's already connected to the Rheingold, and by extension, to the shades of Siegfried, Fafner, and Alberich. The motivations you built up during Akeldama have been reconfigured into these, so you have a small value in all three already.
This event with Gullveig, through addressing it as a matter of [Archer]'s conscious intent and giving him paths to follow, unlocks the system of viewing and influencing the desires numerically.
After this update, some choices (not all) will periodically increase one of the three values, gradually shaping what the protagonist pursues in life. What you're doing right now is deciding which of them you'll prioritize until the next time you'll see Gullveig, setting a tone and outlook for [Archer] over the next period of time.
So, when you see that there are already values in all three, it's not because I took on part of the write-in. It's just that there's a baseline level of desire built up from the protagonist's past experiences, even if he is mostly hollow.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sat 30 Aug 2025 06:03:06 No.6298576 Report

Quoted By:

Music: Presence (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM25:3)

After looking over the three for what seems almost an eternity, you finally decide that Heroism is what you need. Even if it gives you no intrinsic satisfaction, building a reputation for accomplishing great things is sure to bring happiness eventually. You have Siegfried's word, attesting to that. Self-respect is something you have already; to fixate on it as an end in itself seems pointless, though it apparently worked for Alberich. As for Passion, it could be that life would be better with more of it, but you don't think it's something you can get by pursuing it. Passion is emotional, surely, something which comes and goes irrespective of will. This leaves Heroism as the only one of the three you can really consider a goal and 'follow' as Gullveig says.

"I will follow in the footsteps of Siegfried and pursue Heroism," you declare. "Already, I find myself in a battle of life and death. What trials can be found there, I'll rise to, and overcoming them, find meaning."

"Ah," Gullveig sighs, "another swayed by the charisma of the hero, marching off to war with a smile, certain that there exists no danger he cannot weather. Take care, child, that in measuring your life by the admiration of others you do not gaze so closely at their eyes as to lose sight of your true self."

"I..." It's an ominous warning, and strange to hear from someone who was encouraging you to follow one of these paths just a moment ago; you're left speechless for a few seconds, taken aback. "Thank you," you finally reply. "I'll remember it."

"Now I shall change you." At the goddess's words, the caves containing images of Siegfried, Fafner, and Alberich seal themselves. Reaching down from the height of that mountain of gold, she extends a languid hand to lie palm-up before you, a white boat on golden seas. "Come, child, stand upon my palm."

As soon as you find your footing in that colossal hand, you're rising, surging up into the air with shocking force. It's a trick of the eyes, you discover; motion which looks slow and relaxed when judged against her body, considered in terms of the human body's original scale, actually carries far greater force. After all, in the time you might take to slowly lift a glass, her hand travels a hundred times that distance. All this you think through with mechanical care, focusing on the simple rationality so as to keep the vertigo assaulting you out of mind.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sat 30 Aug 2025 06:04:06 No.6298578 Report

Quoted By: >>6299224

Then all is still again, and you stand before the goddess's huge face. Her luminous eyes bathe you in twin spotlights, and as you look into the enormous slit pupils you're overtaken by a sudden premonition of death. Nothing mortal was meant to be so near the gods, surely. It's like standing on the surface of the sun, an act of pure madness. The radiant mystic energy exuded by her mere presence threatens to tear apart the fragile complex of magical formulae maintaining your existence and annihilate you. You tense every muscle in your body, straining to keep yourself upright and motionless against the gale of spirit. Then she purses her lips and exhales. A single puff of hot breath washes over you, and you feel the structure of a homunculus and Servant coming undone.

As consciousness fades, you seem to hear Gullveig's voice at the other end of a vast distance, calling, "Come back and visit when you have taken another soul!" Then, nothing. Every sense is engulfed in pure white.

Music: None 

<> <> <>

February 8, 2019 -Identity- 

Status Updated

There's gravel pressing into your right cheek. The first thing you feel as consciousness filters into your dim brain is the sharp points and edges of eight clearly defined little chunks of rock, warning you that this will not be a pleasant awakening. There's no bed here, the rocks say, no blankets, no shower, and no breakfast. You are lying somewhere you're unwelcome.

Music: Peaceful Everyday (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM3:e) 

You open your eyes and see the sideways plain of a gravel path between grass and shrubs. The base of a lamp-post is beside the path. Improbably, this sheet of park ground ends where a skyline begins. You get to your feet and remember. Remember the sensation of being part of the Grail system; of the man, Assassin, you know he was Assassin, dying, and of devouring his spirit; of your body being tested in its original purpose, and the searing pain that clawed at every nerve within you. Your head aches. Your muscles ache. Your magic circuits ache. The energy you absorbed is mostly gone, but you feel the change in your body. Stronger, more sure of itself, somehow more solidly here. Gullveig was true to her promise.

A gray roof of cloud meets your eyes when you look up to get an idea of time. It's light, but more than that the weather won't say. It could be a half hour after sunrise or before sunset. The cavernous hunger you feel suggests something closer to the latter than the former, though. You wonder how Liliesviel and Caster will have reacted to your disappearance, and with a sigh conclude that you should probably make your way back to the Marco Polo Hotel.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sat 30 Aug 2025 06:05:07 No.6298580 Report

Quoted By: >>6298583 >>6298607 >>6298641 >>6298653 >>6298683 >>6298878 >>6298951 >>6299000 >>6299224

Except that this notion begs the question of how, exactly, you're going to find your way back. As you look around the nearby roofs, scanning the city skyline for landmarks, you discover that the Tokyo of this morning seems to wear a completely different face than the Tokyo of the night. Somehow, none of the buildings around you seem familiar. Even the decor on this roof seems subtly different, as you begin to wake up more completely and apply a scrutinizing eye to the things around you. It's almost as if all the plants have changed places while you were unconscious. Someone must have drained it of the water that was here last night, and done a very thorough job, because there's no hint of moisture in the gravel you were lying on.

Whatever strange features this roof may have are really none of your concern, though. Better to focus on the unrecognized skyline than the unrecognized garden. Maybe you can recall the route you walked last night, you think, but that idea doesn't seem too reliable either. You were quite preoccupied, and walked with neither a fixed destination nor any real attention to your route. In fact, you realize, you don't even really know what ward you're in. Just how far did you walk after parting ways with the other two last night?

No matter how many times you scan the skyline or this commercial neighborhood of shops, restaurants, and the occasional condo for something to jog your memory, you don't find it. The buildings are unfamiliar, the streets are unfamiliar, the names on the street signs are unfamiliar, the names of the businesses are unfamiliar. Nothing is alien, it's all recognizably 'Tokyo', but none of it is familiar to you. You'll have to start moving if you're going to find anything out.

>[ ] First things first, deal with the needs of the body. With the truckload of magical energy you absorbed last night consumed in reinforcing your existence, you're low on energy again and your stomach is crying out for food. It may not be much, but at least you can generate a bit of energy for emergency use by eating a good meal. Find a café around here and get some breakfast.

>[ ] If you want directions, the local police are at the service of citizens 24/7. Find the nearest police box and ask how to get to Shinjuku.

>[ ] A train station is what you need. Head towards the largest concentration of the tallest buildings you can see on the horizon. Where you find the most prestigious office towers, you're sure to find a station, and from there you'll be able to get back to Shinjuku with ease.

>[ ] Do something else. (Write in)

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Sat 30 Aug 2025 06:22:21 No.6298583 Report

Quoted By: >>6298585 >>6298607

>>6298580

>[ ] First things first, deal with the needs of the body. With the truckload of magical energy you absorbed last night consumed in reinforcing your existence, you're low on energy again and your stomach is crying out for food. It may not be much, but at least you can generate a bit of energy for emergency use by eating a good meal. Find a café around here and get some breakfast.
>Str, Agi, Magic Res UP
Siegfried my guy, already paying dividends. Also, I think nobody commented on how massive it is that we have true independent action. If we, hypothetically, learned how to siphon mana from the city...

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sat 30 Aug 2025 06:33:10 No.6298585 Report

Quoted By: >>6298687

Alright! With that, two major systems for this quest are unlocked. The Path System and the Desire System! (Or upgrades and motivations, if you like).
By coming to Gullveig after you've absorbed the soul of a defeated Servant, you can invest that power into emulating Siegfried, Fafner, or Alberich. In doing this, you're using the energy of the Servant to draw out abilities they had in life, which have been recorded in their shades within the Rheingold. The upgrades from each are specialized differently based on the previous holder's abilities, so if you have a good knowledge of the three of them you can plan out the sort of abilities you'd like to invest in in advance.. Although this introductory upgrade was somewhat blind, to introduce the system, you'll also be able to discuss upgrades in more detail with Gullveig in future.
As for the Desire System, I explained that above, but the desires that the protagonist more alive and less inanimate are divided into the three fields of Passion, Heroism, and Self-Respect, each aligned with one of the three previous holders of the Rheingold. An upgrade specializing in the path of one of the three adds two points to your value in the associated desire; different actions you take in the story can also raise these values. When [Archer] left the Akeldama, he had 1 point in Heroism, 2 in Passion, and 2 in Self-Respect.

>>6298583
Your Agility was already B, but your ability to manifest Instinct went up from D to C. Strength and MR did go up, yeah.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:wprLUgZj Sat 30 Aug 2025 09:19:14 No.6298607 Report

Quoted By:

>>6298580
>[ ] First things first, deal with the needs of the body. With the truckload of magical energy you absorbed last night consumed in reinforcing your existence, you're low on energy again and your stomach is crying out for food. It may not be much, but at least you can generate a bit of energy for emergency use by eating a good meal. Find a café around here and get some breakfast.
Energy. Now.
>>6298583
It would be great if we could draw energy from the Rheingold, but that's Gullveig's energy and it probably can't sustain us for the same reasons Servants can't anchor other Servants.
Come to think of it, she's a goddess and a master of seithr, so surely she should have the authority to make use of the Divine Words. I wonder if we can finagle something there... probably not.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:teGmOk/l Sat 30 Aug 2025 12:20:18 No.6298641 Report

Quoted By:

>>6298580
>[ ] A train station is what you need. Head towards the largest concentration of the tallest buildings you can see on the horizon. Where you find the most prestigious office towers, you're sure to find a station, and from there you'll be able to get back to Shinjuku with ease.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:zoB/YcIE Sat 30 Aug 2025 13:11:00 No.6298653 Report

Quoted By:

>>6298580
Climb a tall building and get your bearings. Find a breakfast stop on the way back to Liliesviel

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:ToLGeiEY Sat 30 Aug 2025 14:32:30 No.6298683 Report

Quoted By:

Gullveig:"Come back when you have more souls, Child."
Yes, nanna.

Oh boy, lots of new fun/deeply irritating systems!
Fun because systems are fun. I'm a fucking sucker for systems, our choices impacting systems, and how those systems interact with narrative storytelling.
Irritating because I need to share them with others. Especially with the aspect of "power wank meta gaming" hanging over our heads, potentially guiding our choices more than what's narratively cohesive.
I trust Sweets have planned this out with prior experience in mind, though.

>>6298580
>[X] If you want directions, the local police are at the service of citizens 24/7. Find the nearest police box and ask how to get to Shinjuku.
All we need is a basic "You are here". Rushorou should be able to figure out the rest. And by "the rest", I both mean finding out where he's going and what to do about getting food if he wants it.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:ToLGeiEY Sat 30 Aug 2025 14:47:06 No.6298687 Report

Quoted By: >>6298717

>>6298585
>When [Archer] left the Akeldama, he had 1 point in Heroism, 2 in Passion, and 2 in Self-Respect.
>Passion and Self-Respect were the highest.

Sounds about right. Makes me more grumpy we didn't go for either of those instead of Heroism, but it's fine.
I'm curious what actions he took exactly to get this stat line though. I doubt it could be pinpointed to one thing, so what series of choices is aligned which way, I wonder.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sat 30 Aug 2025 16:05:47 No.6298717 Report

Quoted By:

>>6298687
In City Akeldama, the four main motivations were Pride, Self-Preservation, Duty, and Compassion. By the end of the quest, Pride and Compassion were highest, with Duty and Self-Preservation lagging behind.
Now, Pride obviously goes into Self-Respect. Duty goes into Heroism, because both are about evaluating oneself by the standards of others. Compassion, being an emotional impulse rather than a logical justification, is part of Passion. Self-Preservation can be split between Self-Respect and Passion, since staying alive is essential for the satisfaction of almost any desire; it isn't part of Heroism only because of the tendency to pursue a glorious death among that crowd. There was also a sub-motivation called Desire, a catchall term I used at the time for things like lust, enjoyment of combat, enjoyment of good food, and the like. That all goes into Passion.
Now, if I tallied these up in an extremely granular way Self-Respect and Passion wouldn't be equal, but as I've made clear before, the protagonist's emotions and desires were heightened while he was within the Akeldama for as-yet unknown reasons. Scaling it all back to the baseline of his current self, we get 1 Heroism, 2 Passion, 2 Self-Respect.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Sat 30 Aug 2025 20:57:16 No.6298878 Report

Quoted By: >>6298883 >>6298885

>>6298580

>[ ] First things first, deal with the needs of the body. With the truckload of magical energy you absorbed last night consumed in reinforcing your existence, you're low on energy again and your stomach is crying out for food. It may not be much, but at least you can generate a bit of energy for emergency use by eating a good meal. Find a café around here and get some breakfast.

If we're herokekking we can't afford to skip meals. Sounds like good encounter bait too.

I imagine picking Alberich is an increase to MGI given his talents, possibly AGI givne stereotypes of elves? Fafnir maybe END due to the impervious scales he grew upon dragonification to protect his precious shinies. Maybe also MGI given dragon core mana reactor?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Sat 30 Aug 2025 21:01:32 No.6298883 Report

Quoted By: >>6298885

>>6298878
Also, with the way stats work and the ability to have Cloak-chan temporarily overlay a second layer of stats, C str means we can exceed A rank STR temporarily. Or massively boost our AGI to reach sanic speed for short bursts.

Means we can (if not immediately speedmogged but Instinct C should help here) at least hold up against a knight class servant for maybe round 1-2 of an encounter before we have to look at gtfoing if we are caught up in melee.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Sat 30 Aug 2025 21:04:48 No.6298885 Report

Quoted By: >>6298939

>>6298878
Alberich probs boosts instinctive prowess for magical learning. Maybe Fafner's draconic essence could alter [Archer]'s Artificial Existence np?

>>6298883
>Sneak up on servant/master pair using presence concealment
>Observe at range for a while because clairvoyance and independent action lol
>Launch sneak attack
>Consume the shroud to run back between Circe's skirts
The only problem is if consuming the shroud counts as damage, inching us towards that brutal cooldown

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Sat 30 Aug 2025 22:10:37 No.6298939 Report

Quoted By:

>>6298885
Alberich might also give him access to Item Construction which would pair quite well with being able to premake INS trait consumables ahead of time. Plays into the stealth Archer kit too.

Unfortunately due to A STR with Mana Burst and Instinct we're still no here near climbing the wall that is Saber even in momentary burst strength. But with our magical affinity and raw stats plus PC, ironically Circe and Liliesviel would be a very easy target given we can get the initiative and manhandle Caster in melee distance with some degree of resilience against her magic. I do recall that her own use of teleportation magic was quite mana intensive in Akeldama so if she can't get a word out she doesn't have much recourse.

Give its a 14 servant (now 12 if Assassin is kill and Judas was replaced by Circe) in a city as big as Tokyo, 48 hours to brood and practice magic isn't as bad as a traditional war. It will make hiding difficult though.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:vYGejCbD Sat 30 Aug 2025 22:24:59 No.6298951 Report

Quoted By: >>6298953

>>6298580
>[X] First things first, deal with the needs of the body. With the truckload of magical energy you absorbed last night consumed in reinforcing your existence, you're low on energy again and your stomach is crying out for food. It may not be much, but at least you can generate a bit of energy for emergency use by eating a good meal. Find a café around here and get some breakfast.

Anyone think we may have gotten Kaleidoscoped?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Sat 30 Aug 2025 22:27:48 No.6298953 Report

Quoted By: >>6298955

>>6298951
Elaborate

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:vYGejCbD Sat 30 Aug 2025 22:29:26 No.6298955 Report

Quoted By: >>6298963

>>6298953
Well we just woke up in a "Tokyo" where it's still recognizably Japan, but we don't have a clue where we are.

The biggest evidence for this one would probably be not feeling damp under where we were laying, despite the area being drained of water.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Sat 30 Aug 2025 22:39:48 No.6298963 Report

Quoted By: >>6298964

>>6298955
I think you're close, but more that the whole city has been fucky for quite a while. The water on the roof last night, an alley that went on forever. I'm sure there were others I've forgotten but there's been more than a few rather explicit 'that's not right' moments. This to me just feels like something more front and centre of what has already been happening in the background.

Or.. there are also few specific timelines running simultaneously, one of which possibly being the original with Saber Alberich.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:MEo7dTLb Sat 30 Aug 2025 22:41:16 No.6298964 Report

Quoted By:

>>6298963
Consistent sightings of crows hanging out at night too. They're not a nocturnal bird species. That weird guy in the alley in Matsuda's interlude who eluded his animalistic senses until he was bumbling through him and the Yakuza.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:Z8kpjIL1 Sat 30 Aug 2025 23:45:09 No.6299000 Report

Quoted By:

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sun 31 Aug 2025 03:38:49 No.6299122 Report

Quoted By:

Sorry folks, it's looking like I'm busy tonight. I'll do tomorrow's update in the morning though.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:qirQs1EN Sun 31 Aug 2025 09:19:07 No.6299224 Report

Quoted By: >>6299443

>>6298578
>Music: Peaceful Everyday (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM3:e)
I'm surprised there's anon "channels" there
>>6298580
>[ ] First things first, deal with the needs of the body. With the truckload of magical energy you absorbed last night consumed in reinforcing your existence, you're low on energy again and your stomach is crying out for food. It may not be much, but at least you can generate a bit of energy for emergency use by eating a good meal. Find a café around here and get some breakfast.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sun 31 Aug 2025 18:54:08 No.6299443 Report

Quoted By:

>>6299224
Yeah, it's got some interesting features. Pretty convenient site; it's a shame youtube's got enough userbase to make sure no competitor ever really takes off.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sun 31 Aug 2025 23:52:47 No.6299618 Report

Quoted By:

Uncertain as you may be, you decide, it's not as if you've found yourself in the middle of a trackless wilderness. Someone will be able to tell you where you are, and once you have a name you should be able to fit it into your memory of the general area around Tokyo. Thankfully, you never were so dependent on digital maps that you completely failed to internalize local geography. First and foremost, then, you ought to deal with your most pressing need: food. You might have to travel a long way today, and as the old quote goes, an army marches on its stomach.

You dissipate the cloak wrapped around you, shifting it back into the form of a scarf, and look down at yourself to check how badly your nap in the gravel has saturated your clothing with grime. It's nothing too bad to brush off, as it turns out, though you wish you had a mirror to get a look at your face. Last night's reflecting pool would come in handy now. Too bad; there's nothing for it, and after all you'll look out of place one way or another.

Jumping down the side of the building a story at a time you drop to street level, a tall, foreign man in dusty black clothing that looks new, but much too light for the season. There aren't many people on the street to notice your appearance, and as you look up and down the block things begin to fall into place. It's a fairly upscale neighborhood, probably not too different from Yoyogi in prosperity, though more urban. There are decorated awnings over shop windows, among other gestures in a nondescript western direction that suggest the proprietors around here would like their establishments to be considered fancy without price-points that would restrict their clientele much. A block up the street is a patisserie, and you don't have to walk too much further before you find an equally French-themed restaurant which pairs coffee with more substantial fare, referring to itself as a brasserie. In six months, you expect, the picturesque wrought-iron tables and chairs taking up sidewalk space under their awning will attract plenty of custom, but on this windy, cold day they serve only as a statement of intent.

Music: Getting By (https://odysee.com/AMQST-BGM38:c) 

Beyond the deserted front step, there are a few customers inside, but not so many that it takes too long for you to be seated. Handed a lunch menu, you receive your first clue as to how long you were unconscious. An old-fashioned wall clock confirms the time to be 1:48PM. You order a pot of strong coffee, a pitcher of cream, and a croque monsieur sandwich to fortify yourself against the day. Once you've made the fried stack of butter-saturated bread, ham, and gruyere disappear, you order three more. The wallet you took off the businessman yesterday is still as full as your stomach is empty, and covers the cost without trouble.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sun 31 Aug 2025 23:53:48 No.6299619 Report

Quoted By:

"Just a moment," you tell the waiter turning to retreat after bringing your change, and give him a crooked, self-deprecating smile. "I wonder if you could do me a favor and tell me where we are. You see, I had a little too much to drink last night, and before I knew it I found myself this morning in a part of town I don't recognize in the least."

"Of course, sir," the waiter answers, his polite veneer layered over a mix of contempt and opportunism he can't quite keep completely off his face. You can see in that expression exactly how you look to him: another in a long line of idiot tourists, blundering through places they don't understand with a heedless, blind optimism born of money to burn, time to kill, and the certainty that nothing they do on vacation will impact their lives back home. Unpleasant people, but if he plays up to them the right way, some of that money they're eager to burn might end up in his pocket. It's a deeply infuriating expression, but one you make yourself ignore. You do want an answer, after all. "This is Itabashi. Specifically,"

"That's enough, thanks," you cut him off. You get the picture without needing to hear the name of the neighborhood. Downtown Itabashi. Yes, a well-to-do entertainment district, but not so 'entertaining' as to host anything red-light. Restaurants, boutiques, beauty parlors. It's probably about halfway between housing and a business district. Not strange for it to be unrecognized; you've never spent much time in Itabashi, and you're not sure you've been here before at all.

Placing a spot roughly in the center of Itabashi on a mental map, you come to a startling realization. You must have walked about 12 kilometers directly north from Shinjuku yesterday. Of course, that isn't impossible. Shinjuku and Itabashi are both wards of the Tokyo Metropolis, distinguished from one another primarily by legal designation. Seen from above, Itabashi would just be one more slice of the vast urban sprawl that spreads out from Tokyo Bay. The other night, when you were hurrying to the harbor, you covered 8 kilometers in a few minutes, so walking 12 kilometers in a few hours is really nothing strange. You could cover that even at a perfectly normal human walking pace. Except, shouldn't you have noticed how far you'd gone? Shouldn't you have noticed from the fatigue, if nothing else?

No, you decide, there's really nothing strange about that either. You were deep in your thoughts last night, and you haven't been a Servant long enough to have mentally internalized the different pace your body functions at now. You wouldn't have been fatigued if you'd walked all day and night, not anymore, but you're still thinking as if you'd feel things the way a human would. Small wonder you should lose track of distance, then. The only reason you're trying to explain it to yourself now is because of some lingering traces of the surprise you had, waking up in a totally unfamiliar place.

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ

Sweets-Loving QM !!m9IjZ66S7uQ ID:Vp1xfVW/ Sun 31 Aug 2025 23:54:49 No.6299620 Report

Quoted By: >>6299638 >>6299639 >>6299641 >>6299647

You take your change and leave to begin your trip over the rooftops, headed south.

<> <> <>

You're about halfway through Kabukicho, on the northern edge of Shinjuku, when something stops you cold on a fire-escape platform where you'd briefly landed before making your next jump. For a few moments you aren't sure what it was. Something glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, noticed unconsciously but significant enough to make you stop and look for it. A flash of yellow? Some familiar shape in motion? You look around, carefully scanning the area, and take in an ordinary alleyway overlooked by your present footing. Narrow and crowded with shadows even in mid-afternoon, its walls are formed by the backs or sides of buildings which put all their effort into an appealing front for the potential customers passing by. Grimy cement, aging metal fixtures, and and the occasional darkened window, possibly built at a time when the side of the alley where you stand had yet to be constructed, form the backdrop rising above a narrow stretch of pavement covered in detritus. Then you see it. A third-floor window set into the back of a comparatively low building, the only window you can see that isn't boarded up or shaded with interior blinds. It's about two doors down from where you are now; hypothetical doors, that is, assuming the buildings that abut this alley line up to a proper street on the other side.

From your current vantage point, looking down on that window, you can see a rectangular slice of tatami flooring belonging to what you assume is an apartment. Inside that rectangle, framed as if for a portrait of conflict, are two beautiful blondes. One buxom, the other slim, each girl has her hands on the other's collar, and from what you can tell they're engaged in a furious argument. A photographer might find the juxtaposition of passionate beauty with the squalor of the location interesting for its own sake, but what makes this tableau particularly noteworthy to you is the fact that you recognize both girls. Truvietianne Edelfelt and Adelheid, the Berserker summoned to the Akeldama, are on the other side of that window.

>[ ] Drop in on your two acquaintances.

>[ ] Pass them by and hurry back to the hotel.

>[ ] Do something else. (Write in)

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:GcevwWw6 Mon 01 Sep 2025 00:20:20 No.6299638 Report

Quoted By:

>>6299620
>[ ] Drop in on your two acquaintances.
How can I resist? Adelheid probably won't even kill us on sight!

>No, you decide, there's really nothing strange about that either.
In other words, something strange definitely happened last night.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:zoB/YcIE Mon 01 Sep 2025 00:22:40 No.6299639 Report

Quoted By:

>>6299620
>[ ] Drop in on your two acquaintances.

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:vYGejCbD Mon 01 Sep 2025 00:33:04 No.6299641 Report

Quoted By: >>6299644

>>6299620
>[X] Drop in on your two acquaintances.
I'm not falling for those rationalizations, [Archer].
You should trust in your Instinct more than that!

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:vYGejCbD Mon 01 Sep 2025 00:34:41 No.6299644 Report

Quoted By:

>>6299641
Ah, hold on, will they recognize us anymore?

Anonymous

Anonymous ID:ToLGeiEY Mon 01 Sep 2025 00:41:02 No.6299647 Report

Quoted By:

>>6299620
>[X] Pass them by and hurry back to the hotel.
Make note of them and keep it moving.
Circe is gonna LOVE hearing about this.

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