If yesterday's exercise session had been an improvement, then today’s was even more so. The Martial instincts of this class were specifically tuned to my Giant bloodline, which helped to solidify and correct a few key aspects of the formalized forms from my first two paths. While as a Half-Giant I shared many things with Humanity, and the forms themselves were generic enough to appeal to the broad number of races that had likely used them over their history, there were key aspects to Giant physiology that were simply not accounted for, like the abnormal thickness of our skins, or our proportions. Even at 8, I was likely lankier than most humans would be. This was important to take into consideration as I trained, as it would only exacerbate as I grew in age, height, and levels on my path to Giant-dom.
Because I suspected that was where that evolution was sending me. I couldn't see the exact shape of the end result, but the Atlantean, the Half-Giant, these were just steps along the evolutionary path of my Primordial Giant ancestors - those beings that once roamed the floating isle version of Atlantis as it orbited the planet and fought off threats to the planet under the command of Atlas, our forebear.
Or, that's what I imagined in my head based on the limited histories my mother left me, and the vague sensations I could garner from the Akashic record. It's possible that I was seeing patterns where none existed, but even if that was true, I kind of liked the thought of that as an eventual goal. Could I reach those heights of personal power? Would I someday be able to stand against the forces targeting the planet in defense of the peoples of Earth? It was certainly a lofty goal, as well as one far away for the time being.
Right now what I needed was to get strong enough to leave the caverns. Which meant more training and studying. The instincts garnered from my most recent path were already seeing benefits. I was intuiting solutions or understanding descriptions in a way that I wasn't just yesterday, which was immensely helpful as what my mother apparently deemed “basic instruction” was… a lot. There were books and texts spanning thousands of years and more than a handful of different kingdoms and empires, Atlantis, Lemuria and Mu being the only ones I recognize, though for some reason the names Thule and Valusia rang a bell as well.
In retrospect, considering the size of the library, the magic and artifice that went into the amenities and staff, and the wards surrounding this place, I came to the conclusion that my mother had to have been a pretty big deal. When I was younger I didn't really have the presence of mind to come to that conclusion, but looking back on my memories, I'm pretty sure my mom was a badass. I had already gone over this in my head, but the sheer amount of time and resources she spent was one thing, the fact that she was actually able to outlay that much… while it took her over eight hundred years, she eventually got her supercharged designer baby. It's just a shame she wasn't around anymore to see it.
Yet more motivation to get stronger.
Eventually I wrapped up my studying for the day and made my way to the pool. This would be my last path to open until all I was ready to advance to Level 2. It would be a while. I had a lot of fundamentals to pick up, and while there were some benefits to the overlap in my paths and possible opportunities for cross-training, it was still an incredibly broad base that I would need to develop - body, skill, martial, ki, chakra, arcane and psionic. I had overlap between ki and chakra in my monk, ki and psionics in my psychic warrior, ki and arcana in my sorcerer, and finally today would lend some overlap to my arcana and psionics. I pushed.
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Erudite Scholar 1
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Stamina: —
Martial Attack Bonus: —
Saves:
* Fort —
* Ref —
* Will —
Skills: 2
* Concentration
* Craft
* Investigation
* Linguistics
* Lore (Any)
* Profession
Qualities:
* Power Pool
* Add 2 Points to Power Pool
* Add Intelligence Bonus Points to Power Pool
* Unique Powers Per Day
* Add 1
* Add Intelligence Bonus Powers
* Powers Known
* Add 2 to Powers Known
* Add Intelligence Bonus to Powers Known
* Add Class Level to Manifester Level
* Add Intelligence Bonus to Power DC
* Add Bonus Feat to Feat List
* Mental Repertoire: Learn new powers through successful Lore (Applied Psionics) checks. Costs 20 XP * Power Level
* Arcana - Psionics Thesis:
* Add Lore (Applied Arcana) to Unlocked Skills
* Convert Spell to Power: Use Arcana and Psionics Lore checks to attempt to translate an Arcane spell to a Psionic Power. You may then attempt to add it to your Mental Repertoire
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I felt the changes taking place in my psionic field. This particular path had implications on the expression of my psionic abilities. Essentially, I now had a number of spells that I knew, and could expand that list in several ways - my psychic warrior path would be introducing some, my new erudite Scholar path introduced others directly from the Akasha as I grew in level, but I could also learn more powers either through psychic storage media or… by breaking down Arcane spells to first principles and attempting to reconstruct them as Psionic powers. The primary thesis of this path was that Arcane spells and Psionic powers shared a root, and that it was possible to translate from one to the other. This meant that, given sufficient time and resources to research spells or acquire existing recorded powers, I could build a rather considerable collection of available powers.
There was, naturally, a downside to this. My psionic field would only accept so much fluctuation before rest periods. This meant that I could only manifest so many unique powers before I had to allow it to reset. Granted, there was a ‘whitelist’ of powers that would not impact this limit, either because they were a part of my innate nature, or the powers were simple enough that they basically had no impact on my psionic field, and from those that would affect my field I could manifest any of those powers as many times as my power pool could support during a given day, but it was still introducing a new aspect to my field I hadn't had before.
Still, that was my last path unlocked for now. It was time to take stock of my current state. I concentrated and pulled up my Character Sheet once more.