Ch.23
The sensation was every bit as awesome but also completely different from unlocking Pneuma and Qi had been!
I was literally floored for a few minutes, losing all motor control briefly and faceplanting as my ability to manifest psionic powers and manipulate psionic energies being opened up had also left me with a serious case of vertigo, but just lying there for a few minutes took care of it pretty quickly.
I could feel the newly discovered, tiny amount of Psi rushing eagerly down towards my Pneuma, and the two of them meet, touch, and then come together and intermingle. They weren’t completely interchangeable, precisely, but I knew that all I needed was some practice before that was a thing!
Oh, man. What a rush! Let’s see what I can access now...
Sure enough, all of the basic Psionic Classes were now available! After a moment of deliberation, I grabbed a level of the Soulblade class.
Basically, a Soulblade could form a weapon out of pure psychic energy called either a Mind Blade or, surprise, surprise, a Soulblade. They could shape it to be like any weapon they wished it to be, including a ranged one, a shield, or even armor, with the proper training, and then empower it with their own psychic powers to make it on par with all but the very strongest magical Artifact weapons!
For a Soulblade, most of their Psionic powers were manifested in their psychic constructs. Other Classes could create constructs like the Mind Blade, but they were more akin to a Wizard’s spells; they were either created for a single attack or had a short duration similar to how spells work.
There was a lot more that could be done with it than that, like most Soulblades could throw their psychic weapon and have it do automatically do maximum damage, then just reform it. There were any number of ways to empower it with psionic power to make a Soulblade do more damage... and I could form it into the pair of shield gauntlets I’d been wanting for a while now!
Even better, there was a way to form it into a type of psychic armor that counted as if I was wearing nothing at all, and then empower it, too! It didn’t take an equipment slot, either!
Just because the majority of a Soulblade’s power manifested as their psychic constructs didn’t mean that ALL of their powers manifested that way.
Soulblades could manifest the lower level/weaker psionic powers once they reached 3rd level. I’d likely never be able to use higher than 4th Circle of psionic powers, but my powers would be able to hit just as hard as a pure psion of equal level... though I’d have a smaller pool of Power Points.
Basically, I couldn’t use the stronger Psionic powers from the higher Circles, but my Caster level was unaffected.
Of course, high stats could help with that, somewhat... except I could also spend Pneuma in place of psionic Power Points! Plus, Pneuma regenerates multiple points per minute, whereas psi points only regenerate after a full rest/meditation session!
Soulblades had abilities that let them teleport, manifest elemental energies, attack an enemy’s mind directly, the list was actually pretty exhaustive. Even better... Psionic Feats were AWESOME!
Just taking the class gave me the Feat Psionic Talent, which added two points to my Power Pool. It would have been Wild Talent, but I already had a reserve from Pneumatic Awakening... so now I had three points in my Power Pool.
Soulblade also gave a Bonus Feat at 1st level. After some mental juggling, I took the Psionic Weapon Feat.
Psionic Weapon – while you maintain psionic focus, your attacks do +1 damage. If you expend your psionic focus, it triggers a Psi Burst for +2d6. You must decide whether or not to use this Feat before you attack, and your psionic focus is expended whether you hit or not.
I had another Feat that I could still take today, so I took Speed of Thought.
Speed of Thought – if you are psionically focused and not wearing heavy armor, you gain +10’ movement speed as an Insight bonus. You may expend your psionic focus to increase this bonus to +30’ for your turn.
What can I say, super speed was always my favorite superpower!
To be completely honest, I wasn’t certain how useful any of this would be back on Earth. I was pretty sure that Speed of Thought would be fine, but everything else was a toss-up.
Psionic powers, for instance, come as much from within a person as from without, whereas Qi is mostly from within. Magic, on the other hand, was more about using a practitioner’s internal energy to resonate with and control external energies.
Using the four new skill points I got for taking a Secondary Class, I’d taken Lore: Psionics, Craft: Psicrafting, Meditation, and Use Magic Device. Surprisingly, in the latest versions of the rules Psicraft and Use Psionic Device had been replaced by their magical equivalents, in other words Spellcraft and Use Magic Device had replaced their psionic equivalents.
That was nice. It was two less Skill points I needed to spend every Primary class level.
Using my new Lore: Psionic skill, I felt pretty sure that I’d be able to use Psionic Weapon on Earth, because the user’s psionic focus, aka their Halo, was constantly feeding it energy and the discharge was nearly instantaneous. Manifesting a Mind Blade was a different story, though. Lore: Psionics and Spellcraft told me that I’d likely be able to use it for only around thirty seconds or maybe a minute before I’d have to reform it, though as I became stronger, I’d probably be able to use it for longer.
All things considered, though, few of my fights had lasted too much longer than that, really, in either world.
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Psionic focus, also known as a Halo, was a weird thing. Normally to enter the state required took a full round action. Using the Meditation skill, though, you could do it a lot faster. If you could make a DC 15 check, you could lower it to a standard action. For a DC 25 check, you could lower it to a move action. For a DC 35 check, you could lower it to a Swift action.
The Feat, Psionic Meditation, automatically lowered it to a Move action, for a DC 15 check, you could do it as a Swift Action, and a DC 25 was a Free Action! Though you could only do it as a Free Action once per round, sadly. There were several ways to be able to use your Halo more often, too, between Feats, items, and psicrystals.
Getting a psicrystal was probably my next move, I mean, who doesn’t want to manifest a piece of their psyche into the physical world as an independent crystalline construct that can communicate with them!? Right!?
Finally, I turned and walked up to the sealed double doors of the small outpost on the opposite side from where I’d entered. They were set in a massive cave wall, and I had no idea what I’d find here, but I was dreading it. It was entirely possible I’d have to stick to farming the spiders and those five Skraven if this led to something too tough for me to handle, like the temple full of undead on the other side.
Please don’t suck. Please don’t suck! I don’t want to be stuck grinding big spiders and Skraven for weeks!
I pushed the doors open, which, surprisingly, took a lot more effort than I thought it would! Since my increased stats have made so many other challenges trivial lately, I was kind of shocked that it took every bit of my 19 Strength just to open those danged doors!
What I found on the other side made me ecstatic, though! On the other side of the doors was a field, a mountain meadow, to be more specific! I could see the sun, and for some reason, that just felt amazing!
I was outside! I’d finally gotten out of the dungeon and was back in the ‘normal’ world.
As I stepped into the fresh air and early afternoon sunshine, I couldn’t help but smile. This felt good. This felt like an accomplishment!
I strolled through the meadow, glancing around at my surroundings, trying to fix landmarks so I could return on foot if I needed to. I doubted that it would be very hard to find another Hearthflame, but I also didn’t want to take anything for granted.
As I reached the edge of the glade, I was surprised to look down and see what looked like either a big town, or maybe a small city in the distance. Focusing really hard, I noticed that it looked like there was a lot of activity outside the walls of the town.
Like, a LOT of activity!
The only civilization within hundreds of miles of where I am is being attacked by monsters or something, isn’t it? I sighed, knowing the answer as surely as I knew I was going to head down there and help out.
I started heading down the mountain. The town was a good five or six miles away, at a guess, but that was only a light jog for me, now. After adding Speed of Thought, my normal run speed was nearly 40 mph, according to some quick math.
As long as I didn’t break my neck running down the mountain, I’d be there in less than ten minutes!
I’m on my way, town full of complete strangers. Hopefully, I’ll be able to tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys are quickly enough to be helpful!
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Finding out who the good guys and who the bad guys were turned out to be pretty simple, considering the people outside the city walls were busily reanimating corpses they were graverobbing from a couple of cemeteries just outside the town. The fact that the closest things to a splash of color in any of their outfits were the blood red sashes and lining around their hoods made it even easier to pick out who was who and what was what.
Yeah, yeah, maybe its showing my anti-Necromancy biases... deciding to attack someone just because they’re raising the dead while dressing like Edgelords probably isn’t really the best way to make that kind of decision.
But... there were also the demonic little imps prancing around and occasionally tossing exploding orbs of green fire at people on the walls...
I came to a stop and just stared. “Demon summoning AND necromancy, plus dressing like they shopped at medieval Hot Topic? Come on, man! There’s just NO WAY these guys aren’t playing for Team Evil!” I said out loud with a groan.
Dammit! Of course, the only town around for miles is under attack by a cult of demon summoning necromancers! I love being right, but I really wish I hadn’t been this time...
Then, if that wasn’t enough evidence, there were also the half-dozen poor bastards that were being crucified alive right outside the front gates of the town. They were wearing the same uniforms as the guys up on the walls who were looking down very grimly... but who also appeared helpless to intervene or stop them.
At least THEY thought so.
It was pretty obvious they would do something if they could and the fact that around twenty of the zombies were wearing newish looking versions of those same uniforms, covered in blood and burn marks, made it pretty clear, at least to me, that some of them already tried and failed...
Poor bastards. That’s some fucked up shit. Went out to fight to try and help their friends and ended up as animated corpses being used to fight against them. Its why necromancers are both so abominable and so powerful.
My Lore skills, mostly Religion, Planes, and Local were telling me that these guys were members of some crazy demon worshipping cult. The demon they worshipped was technically a minor god named Ka’ar-Ghuz'ar and that they were a fun combination of demon summoners AND necromancers, because they generally were both Wizard and Clerics... with some Warlock thrown in once in a while for fun!
A Wizard was your general spellslinger, you know, guys like Gandalf, Merlin, or pretty much anyone from Harry Potter. Clerics are a combination of priest and holy warrior, though they tend to lean on their Divine magic a little more than their war hammers. Warlocks make a Pact, which signs their souls away to some supernatural power in exchange for a variety of powers for themselves. Warlocks aren’t necessarily Evil, but the forces of Good are... pickier? Yeah, pickier sounds right I guess, about who they grant a Pact to.
Evil will just give a Pact to anyone who asks for one, basically. What do they care if you die an hour later? They still get your soul in the end, after all!
Or that’s what it would all mean if these guys were using L&L’s rules, which I still wasn’t completely sure they were. Dreamers and Awakeners used those rules, I was willing to believe Melnaria that much, but she hadn’t said anything about anyone else!
Ok, not gonna leave those guys to be slowly crucified to death... fuck that. I should totally take some time and come up with a plan, but I already know what my plan is. It’s simple. Attack!
I wasn’t a complete fool. I DID take five minutes to scout around, to see if I could find hidden snipers, or more forces... but I didn’t really see anything like that.
I wasn’t surprised. Nothing here spoke of a well thought out plan on the cultists side, either. The cultists had an overwhelming advantage in firepower and the ultimate force equalizer, necromancy.
One of our guys died? No problem, raise him as an undead.
One of our undead died? Again, no problem. Reanimate the body again after using a spell to repair the corpse.
Did someone on the other side die? Well, raise them, too, and make your enemy fight the reanimated dead bodies of their friends, allies, companions, and loved ones!
If you’re good enough at necromancy, you can even trap the souls of newly dead inside their reanimated mortal shells, increase both the undead’s power and the horror factor for the poor bastards having to fight them!
Er, even worse, turn them into undead spirits, things like ghosts, wraiths, spectres, shadows, etc., and then ALSO raise their corpses as undead!
Yup! Two undead for the price of one!
Sure, the ones here were a bunch of low-class undead, mostly skeletons and zombies, plus some ghouls. The imps, well really, they were Quasits, are the lowest level of demons and a common familiar of Chaotic Evil mages.
Though Quasits WERE among the most powerful familiars that a 1st level Arcane spell caster could gain, but they were still demons... which means capital ‘E’ Evil!
The plan was simple. Engage with Energy Spark and use Stealth and my speed to reset the fight. Alternate between melee range and kiting.
Shit. Am I really doing this? Yes, Ray, you really are. I’d never really considered myself a hero, but I sure considered the man who had practically raised me, Kai Hale, to be one... and I know what he would do if he were here.
I didn’t just owe him, I admired him. The whole world would be a better place if more people put their money where their mouth was like he’d always done. I wasn’t the only angry young man he’d knocked some sense into in the decades he’d run NW Kajukenbo, after all! Many of those boys were now police officers, firemen, and paramedics! Even more of them were now or had been Marines!
I knew what Kai Hale would expect me to do, too. To be honest, I knew that I’d be completely ashamed of myself if I didn’t help them.