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Morty knows he shouldn't be screwing around with multidimensional shit. It's dangerous, it's impractical, it's blah blah blah. But it's a potential key to unlimited energy, how does nobody see that? He's built a dimensional siphon (it kind of looks like a cardboard box with a funnel and a TI-84 taped to it, but it damn well works), keyed in the dimensional coordinates to a random plane, and by God he's going to use it.
He flips the switch and waits for the energy bar to fill up.
It does! It fills up very rapidly. Then it explodes, along with the box. There's rather more smoke than there should be, and once the smoke clears someone is standing there.
"Oh dear," Morty says faintly.
Flicker at Whateley
heavymetal
"I'll probably go on with the Artificer bit and my backstory first, since I have it all composed."
She breathes in. "The Artificer is a magical being that crops up when a child with certain traits is exposed to large quantities of ambient magic. She has an amazing ability to use the powers of alchemy and create magical items much more quickly than any mortal mage. I grew up as a standard-issue little girl, but when I was thirteen years old I abruptly turned into, um, that. And started emitting hideously dangerous magical effects. I was summarily handed over to something approximating the Mutant Gestapo, which has since been disbanded. I'll spare you the gruesome and illegal details, but Ariel rescued me, her mother tried to turn me into her mindslave for my abilities, and she is now extremely dead. And Ariel has her powers. And I have sworn something of an oath of fealty to her. But my will is my own."
She breathes in. "The Artificer is a magical being that crops up when a child with certain traits is exposed to large quantities of ambient magic. She has an amazing ability to use the powers of alchemy and create magical items much more quickly than any mortal mage. I grew up as a standard-issue little girl, but when I was thirteen years old I abruptly turned into, um, that. And started emitting hideously dangerous magical effects. I was summarily handed over to something approximating the Mutant Gestapo, which has since been disbanded. I'll spare you the gruesome and illegal details, but Ariel rescued me, her mother tried to turn me into her mindslave for my abilities, and she is now extremely dead. And Ariel has her powers. And I have sworn something of an oath of fealty to her. But my will is my own."
heavymetal
"To answer your golem questions, before being given free will golems would usually act under direct command. Follow any relevant orders, if no orders are relevant then do nothing. Didn't respond well to novel stimuli, and their native intellect was only really there so they could follow orders without being annoyingly literalistic. However, that did mean that they were trapped in a nightmarish existence where they had no control over literally anything, were constantly conscious, and did nothing but nonstop repetitive and undignified menial labor. And the intelligences were usually pretty low-budget spirits anyway, so their minds weren't exactly stable to begin with. It's not really surprising that they inevitably went berserk when granted free will, but it is kind of a pity anyway. And if I knew how to make golems, I would not only not tell anyone, I would request Louis' assistance to immediately erase it from my mind."
point_b
"I don't want to know how to make golems so that I can make any, that sounds like a terrible idea, but it seems like it might be a good idea to have a clue what ingredients or whatever it takes to make people who don't think it's a terrible idea easier to find."
heavymetal
"I'm aware. I'm just very, very emphatic on the subject. Circe knows how to do it; Mrs. Grimes knows, I believe; there are people who know, and watch very closely to make sure nothing like that is being attempted. I do not have any desire to be one of them."
She sighs. "I apologize. I told you I was difficult to offend and immediately got offended. Golems are... something of a hot-button issue for me."
She sighs. "I apologize. I told you I was difficult to offend and immediately got offended. Golems are... something of a hot-button issue for me."
in-like-a-lion
In the space of this conversation, Ariel has very neatly skeletonized most of a cow. (The neatness is a trick she learned fairly early in her career in which she extends her field over the meat while she rips and tears at it so nothing can get anywhere other than her mouth. Had she not done so, it would have been... gruesome.)
"So, that got super depressing. What were you working on in the forge?"
"So, that got super depressing. What were you working on in the forge?"
heavymetal
Sally lights up. "Oh, Sky want, Sky wanted me to make it a blade so it have some defensive capababilities that-"
She breathes to calm herself. "That didn't force it to expose its wings, and it's just going to be so hard to hand it this thing over when I'm done with inset of hanging it over my mantel, it's-"
She breathes again. "It's just so nice. Sorry."
She breathes to calm herself. "That didn't force it to expose its wings, and it's just going to be so hard to hand it this thing over when I'm done with inset of hanging it over my mantel, it's-"
She breathes again. "It's just so nice. Sorry."
in-like-a-lion
"I mean, they're not, like, standard issue, but you see them a lot with the weirder BIT types and sometimes the GSD crowd. People's subconscious ideals: apparently pretty heavy on the wings?"
point_b
"Is that sort of data - wings and stuff - the principal evidence for it having to do with subconscious ideals?"
in-like-a-lion
"Well, the subconscious ideals thing is the general rule. Not all BITs are ideal, not all GSD is loathsome, et cetera et cetera. But yeah, most folks with BIT addons are into it. Like, I could do with some horns and butterfly wings and maybe fangs, but I'd get super bored with them and want to change them in five minutes, so if I was gonna get that kind of stuff I'd have to be a shifter. Which I'm not, so I have to make do with being a megababe." She wipes away an invisible tear. "But Sky loves its wings. Pretty sure it'd marry its wings if that was a thing, and not just a weird thought."
in-like-a-lion
"I mean... mine is that everybody likes 'em in theory, and the ones who end up unhappy do because their pretty horns almost got them lynched, or they just keep banging them on door frames, or they really like hats, or something. But there's a bunch of other stuff that gets bandied around. And, like, I'm so not up on Pattern Theory or anything, so don't go quoting me on that."
point_b
Nod, nod. Bella is much of the way through her dinner by now. "You were right about the food, by the way, this is great."
in-like-a-lion
"I mean, I think baselines have weird genders too. Sky just matches up a little bit better. They've got the whole sexless angelic being bit down. But, like, cause and effect, it's mostly just genderweird."
point_b
Bella goes back for dessert. She returns with decorously narrow slices of three kinds of pie and one each of four sorts of cookies.