All of my spent Sorcerer Spell Slots brightened to full. %^$*^%*!!!
It wasn’t a true Mana Pool... yet. It only seemed able to contribute directly to Casting with Fire and Cold Magic. But it could re-Energize spent Spell Slots and Spell Engrams after the fact!
No Mana Burn limits, no Renewal limits. Whatever kind of magic they used here was simply continuously usable. I didn’t even feel any lingering problems with channeling the magic, although admittedly I hadn’t used anything higher than I’s, except the boosted Fire/Cold stuff which wouldn’t be a problem anyway.
So, humans in this place didn’t need Implements to avoid Mana Burn when Casting, at least for simple spells? Damn, they were so lucky!...
It also meant they had incredible staying power, because their Casting ability was solely dependent on their Meditative ability and how fast they could refill their Stars and the Mana Pool the things represented. Heck, I imagined if they took a penalty to their Meditation check, they could Meditate on the go, constantly regaining Mana like a video game...
There was probably an Arcane Focus discipline to go with it, and all sorts of Feats...
My eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Or, you know, Eldritch Theurgy could fill them all up with Wrath...
I’d wasted my time waiting for Renewal!
I wiped away the Light spell I had used last night as a lure, lest it make an even bigger target out of me. In its place I Slotted Exterminate, a very minor Necromancy spell that allowed you to instantly kill something the size of a rat or smaller, basically used for killing vermin.
It was still Necromancy, and it completed the Elemental and School circles.
The Stars seemed to both gel and harden at the same instant as they ate the energies of the Cantrip one by one. Their ‘final forms’ seemed to settle in, arcane fire burning in each of them, the shells of their forms scintillating with multiple thaumic hues of magic, the power inside each of them apparent.
However, it was plain to me that they needed to be reinforced now. I’d completed the building, now I had to power it up.
Something surged quietly, but I held off investigating as I made my own choices.
I wasn’t sure what the limits on taking Levels and things were for the natives, but the Power of Ten rules on Classes and things definitely weren’t letting me take things as fast as I could.
If they had, I’d’ve been a Nine right now, picking and choosing stuff all night to get my survivability up!
If there was a twenty-four-hour rough timer, I would just tie it to dawn and keep planning ahead. I should be able to automatically tie my selections to Visual File and have them apply, while being able to revise on the fly if need be. I doubted it would ‘stack up’, so I would have to take the opportunities where I could. It would have been nice to build up a reserve and do a bunch at one go, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen.
Okay, I was going to have to Meditate and feed these Shells Mana point by point, keeping everything in balance, and see how much they could take before they stopped. THEN I was going to see how that expanded the Mana Pool.
Just having a seven-point renewable Mana Pool was like heavenly for staying power, even if filling them in combat was dangerous...
Whatever. “Give me Ur-Priest/1!” I declared firmly to nobody. “Assign all Skill Points to Intimidate! Favored Class bonus of +1 Skill Point and +1 to overcome Spell Resistance of Outsiders and servants of the Divine! Positive energy Channeling! +1 Soak! Wisdom bonus spell, Create Food!” I tested the Exterminate Cantrip Slot, and felt it was too rigid to swap out. Effectively, it was on cooldown. I’d have to test how frequently, but a rough guess was eight hours.
This was all magic derived from Faith. I coolly reached out and Up, Up, Up, into that cool and echoing silence that thrummed sadly in harmony with my Pact, where there was nothing and no one.
Nothing but the echoes of prayers and the residue of countless Good deeds gone unanswered, yet still belief that there was a better way.
Ur-Priests stole Faith, or misdirected it, tapping it for their own purposes. I grimaced at what I was doing, but my Pact thrummed, letting me know this was fine. There were no gods or their servants here to actually take my requests, so I was doing it myself!
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Technically, Ur-Priests couldn’t gain Domains, as those represented aspects of a deity. But I was firmly cementing myself to Heaven, so to heck with that restriction. If it cost a bit more Karma, that was fine. I could only pay for one, so I picked:
Domain: Silver Magic, the Domain of Sylune, Patron of all Good Magic! +4 to all Dispel and Counterspell checks! +2 to Meditation and Spellcraft checks!
Very pointedly, the first Domain Spell was Shards, connecting my Arcane and Divine magic through them...
Which left me my paid Feat and Mastery, and +1 Soak.
Extra Divine Domain Mastery/1: Good! +1 Caster Level to all Good spells! Domain Spells, starting with Protection from Evil! Heavenly Blessing: Touch self or another, +1/2 level Sacred bonus to all Attack rolls, saves, or skill checks for six seconds, 3+Wisdom bonus times a day!
Pointedly, the bonus for Sanctified Spell reached +2d6!
Feat: Imbue Holiness! +1 Caster Level to Good spells! Specific Kicker effects to Good spells of specific allied Domains! For Silver Magic, that was +# of Holy Dice to Girding and Spell Penetration vs Evil on all Good spells. For the Healing Domain, it was ‘Add all Holy damage dice bonuses when Healing’!
Sanctified Spell’s bonus topped out at +3d6 (three dice!), making it better than Banespell! Notably, +2 Caster Level meant another Shard! +3 Girding/Penetration and +3d6 when Healing something were pretty damn sweet at a low level, too.
I Wrote all the new spells into my Ring, and then swapped out Write for Create Water.
Then I finally exhaled and Assayed myself. I Prestidigitated a cup up to satisfy my thirst, reaffirming that I couldn’t put any more Karma into my Ring, or at least it was so slow that tying off the flow was just fine.
I’d use the Create Food once I was done drinking. Prestidigitation only allowed you to have one crude tool in existence at a time, so I’d swap the cup for a plate when I was done, mound up the chunks of manna, and then Presti them to taste like a cooked steak, or something.
Damn useful Cantrip. Stuff would taste like cardboard without it. I’d only need it for a day or two, until the Sustaining on my Ring kicked in, but I didn’t want to starve or be thirsty before then.
==========
Fae
Female* Human/2
Vizard/3**; Wizard/1; Sorcerer/1 (Arcane Sage); Ur-Priest/1
Strength (10): 8
Dexterity (16): 16
Constitution (16): 18
Intellect (16): 22
Wisdom (12): 16
Charisma (12): 16
---
Height: 5'5" Weight: 95 lbs. Hair: White Eyes: Silver (Warlock Sign, Blue) Age: 15
Health: 26
Soak: 34
Movement: 45’
Talent: Naturally Focused
Acquired Powers: Fire Template; Cold Template; affinity for Fire and Cold Magic (1%/1%); Sylune’s Grace; Master Archtheurge Incarnation
Skill Points: 57 (7 Unallocated)
Paid Masteries: 17/24 possible.
Paid Feats: 7/8 possible
Traits: 2
Favored Class Points: 16 (2 unallocated)
=============
Eh?
Oh, popped the Human/2 Level. That’s what that little surge was. I had completed the initialization of my seven little Stars. Was that some kind of breakpoint? I couldn’t seem to allocate Karma to my Human Levels. Was it all made up of breakpoints and achievements?
Whatever. Favored Class/Human, +1 to Health and half a Feat. +1 Health towards Maximum. Seven more skill points to allocate. Still limited to a maximum of three Ranks per...
Feats should nominally reflect the Human Level, which... gave me +1 to ‘Mage’ Caster Level, which seemed to stack with my base Arcane Caster Levels. So, I was CL 2 if I dumped a Star point into a shot...
I had no applicable Feats for the ‘Mage’ style of Casting, and thus no way to just buy them off with Karma. I would have to learn what was possible, or go with something straight racial for now.
Extra Traits it was, selecting Marked by Doom: +2 Trait bonus to Concentration, and Favored by Faith: increase all Sacred bonuses on self by +1.
Wouldn’t let me apply a Mastery. Perhaps I didn’t have a truly applicable Mastery, or they actually had to be learned?
I was going to need them to make Implements, so why not. Woodworking 3 Skill Ranks, Ivorycarving 3 Ranks...
-------
Points dispersal for the day taken care of. Now, what was I going to do today?
Created Food was divinely wholesome, if bland, and the manna literally satisfied your hunger for the entire day. I could Create Water on command, so that was fine, too.
I could run around, find trouble while I was a One Caster (oh, wait, I was a Two... with no native spells, thanks!), probably get killed, and call it an end to this life, or I could carefully scout out a limited area, try to find someplace secure (good luck), and try to stay safe long enough to Level up and be able to survive some of the dangerous stuff here.
I hadn’t seen anything truly dangerous, but... even the rats were Fives. The Owls were at least Eights. These were just normal critters here, it seemed like. The trees were averaging over two hundred feet tall. The big ones I could see were at least twice that.
I was literally the metaphorical size of a mouse here. This was plenty damn sobering. There were still very small rodents and birds running around, because there’s always small forms of life everywhere, but there was so much big stuff...
And I wasn’t an idiot. I assumed intelligent plants were going to be part of that spectrum, and I really had no wish to fight ANY of it right now.
Where was my fortified base of stout heroes keeping off the monsters so I could Level up in safety? I was a little disgruntled.
If this was a wild area, I should be helped by the fact that most creatures didn’t hunt during the middle of the day...
I glanced up at the sky. Birds of prey were a notable exception.
Well, I still needed to scout the area out, see what lived in the area, and what might bug me at some point... I just wasn’t going to spend a lot of time on it.