The soft shifting of the snow 

The buoying waves of the pool

The quiet creaking of the dock

The solidity of the floor

is reassuringly restful and relaxing, as she sits and waits, taking in the beautiful scene(s).

Eventually, there's a certain... fullness, a sense of saturation, like the steady glow of your muscles after a hard work out. 

She exhales. She supposes it had to stop eventually. 

It feels less hard to let go, now, though. Easier to step away from comfort. Easier to face the day. 

She steps out through the shadowy veil and nods to Tiera. 

"All done," she says with a small smile.

She takes her hand gently, and in a moment beyond space, they're back at her office. 

"Alright, so, where were we — build details for perhaps the zombie world and the cyberpunk world, I think?"

"Or thoughts for the 20 token worlds, yes." 

"With a little more time to think, I think that what we should really be focusing on is — completing the mission objectives, in each case. For the zombie world that looks like doing major, worldwide damage to the zombie population, or else killing the shard of the evil deity — which largely works out to the same thing. For the cyberpunk world, it looks like establishing new supply chains that aren't dependent on the ultraelites and doing educational and financial reform. In other words, in the first case it looks like giving humanity the tools to fight back on a global scale, and having the ability to survive the shard stirring, whereas in the second case it looks more like founding a new nation or starting a revolution." 

She nods firmly. 

"That sounds about right - though with the right skillset it should be possible to coopt the existing infrastructure from the inside, rather than establishing an alternative supply chain. Even if that's not a particularly appealing path to you, it might be worth considering what you are looking to preserve." 

"A good thought. I think that in both these cases, direct combat prowess isn't actually the most outstanding feature I need. In the cyberpunk world it's more... charisma and technological and material resources to give people a chance to depart from or reform the broken system. In the zombie world it's something more like the introduction of more effective weaponry and farming technology to support the withering human population, though there is the possibility of a direct solution by "simply" killing the god-shard... Though that in itself is a tall ask. I wonder what similar resources might directly address the objectives on other worlds..."

She hums softly. 

"I'm not quite sure how to answer that. I will say that... the availability of certain magic and exotic technologies means that there's almost always odd alternative solutions. Even when there is a concrete threat, the approach you take, strategically and tactically can require very different skillsets. As for personal combat power... I think it's rarely wise to entirely neglect it, but some missions nearly require a much more comprehensive combat capacity then you are likely to need in those worlds." 

"Do you have any more specific approaches in mind?" 

"Good question. Give me a moment to review things again."

"Possible solutions to the zombie apocalypse... Take the 20-point holy grail and Gate Master. Use Gate Master to reach into the god shard's fortress and pour holy water from the grail on it. This has several flaws — I suspect the portal magic isn't going to be strong enough to stand up to a god shard, even if the Holy Grail's water is potent enough to destroy it — and it leaves me temporarily vulnerable in relative melee to a deity shard with no defensive powers of my own. But it'd maybe be possible. A similar build is possible with Extracalibur but again is all offense, no defense. If the mecha's angel fusion would overcome the deity's redirection effect, that might be worthwhile though."

"For the cyberpunk world, again the holy grail is a decent option since it can cure drug addiction on a large scale and heal away the damage caused by prosthetics. Another good buy is the 8-point version of technological uplift, or maybe even the 20-point one, which would allow us to develop an independent techbase more easily. Alternately one could purchase the Enterprise and park in orbit and beam supplies down to the surface, but I think that doesn't scale as well as I'd like it to."

"Honestly, I don't like my chances pouring water onto a deity from a mile away, even if it has a chance to work. I think the cyberpunk world might be easier to put together a working build for."

"I think... It's not impossible that contact with the grail itself would enough to overwhelm his defenses, but the effect of the water of the grail is considerably less potent. It could still be quite a valuable asset, of course, but it's unlikely to be a quick solution in-and-of-itself. The angel-binding is quite a useful tool, but I wouldn't want to rely on it being able to readily match both the fullness of his strength and defense both - even if it were able to completely counter the redirection effect, I'm not sure you would be able to match his magic in combat with that alone. The Enterprise is unforunately accounted for as an ally option - so I don't believe it will be available for either mission."   

She lets out a little tsk. 

"Perhaps, though it's always hard to say much without going through your options for both. What do you have in mind in the cyberpunk setting?" 

"Let me think..." 

"For combat capacity, we need to be able to effectively fend off or escape from a hitsquad of goons. There are multiple ways to do this. You could have the resources to hire your own "security contractors", personal combat or escape abilities equal to the task, or a bodyguard capable of handling the situation while you flee."

"Your own security contractors is the long term solution. Once there is something worth defending, it'll be possible to hire or influence people to defend it. But before then we still need personal defense."

"Personal combat or escape abilities would look like... well. You could have the fight not matter because you come back, with something like one-ups. You could avoid the fight entirely, with something like charmed life or save points. You could be personally tough enough to survive or fight back — something like the paladin package or captain america package."

"Bodyguards probably looks like Servants or other agents."

"Okay. So that's it for combat. Then there's building things and gathering resources. This is where the Holy Grail, Gamer loot drops, and technological knowledge come in. Charisma powers also live here because they gather the most important resource, people. Again, having an organization makes it easier to gather resources, but we need something to start off with. Simple Resources might work, or an Identity with pull."

"Then there's specifically breaking the drugged food thing — Survivor, Holy Grail, maybe the Paladin package."

"But I feel like I'm getting into the weeds here. Balancing a build within a limited point budget when you have multiple priorities is just genuinely difficult!" 

"By all means, get into the weeds. It's what I always recommend for people trying to get a green thumb." 

She smiles wryly. 

"Getting contractors is just good sense, as long as you aren't do anything with finnicky compartmentalization requirements, though in worlds in this sort of technological era there's usually a bias towards offense that makes it difficult to rely on them as a be-all-end-all defense where you can avoid it. Escape options can have a similar problem, given how dangerous those sorts of weapons can be, though more abstract options can bypass that to a significant degree. Even durability can be a little difficult to rely on alone, in the worst case scenarios where a genuine military force is being rallied against you." 

She taps her fingers against the desk. 

"One thing I'm not sure you've considered is broader magical options - many of them do or can include the capacity to enchant magical items that could be quite useful as well. As for starting resources... the idea behind basic equipment is that you have enough resources for an ordinary person in that world to be able to work for a while, I believe. Still, a basic identity and a token or two of equipment can go a long way towards making it easy and free from unnecessary obstacles, so long as you have enough of an advantage to leverage."

"And... While I agree that the drugged food is a serious problem and that it would likely be a substantial benefit to have an easy comprehensive solution from the start, I don't think it definitively requires an outside of context solution." 

"To be frank, I just experience horror at the prospect of having to eat drugged food to live, and since 90% of the food on the planet is drugged I assume it'd be hard to access safe food even for myself."

"I think what I'm most concerned about regarding combat is surviving things like bombings, poisonings, snipers, deaths I don't see coming. If I die that's mission failure in most cases, and I don't necessarily have the resources to defend against every sneaky idea someone could try. That's why I'm attracted to something like Save/Load or One-Ups, because I have to get lucky every time while an attacker only has to get lucky once." 

"Broader magical options... Hogwarts graduate has many odd one-offs that I'm not sure how to estimate. Functional Magic I was assuming not to come with item creation. I'm not sure what's included in the Lunar and Terrestrial exaltations, I'm not very familiar with Exalted."

She nods a little solemnly. 

"It's not so rare as to be impossible to find with wealth, but that's still far from ideal. I understand the appeal of more absolute defenses, but it might also be worth considering an advantage in luck instead? So many scenarios that would otherwise be instant deaths can be reasonably avoided with a lucky break, I've found, especially with a defense like the paladin package's healing. Heroic destiny is also a reasonable enough option for that - it will almost always try to at least make you able to fight and face your foes, and will tend towards helping you out even outside of defense as well." 

"I'm afraid I can't give too many details, but hogwarts graduate generally works best for relatively simple, disposable workings, functional magic tends to work best when narrowly mimicing spells you can cast and for expensive personal enhancements, and the magic of the exalted seems to work best in subtle enhancements and broader workings, though their work applies the best as the pinnacle of a nigh-industrial process in a magical world, though they can also naturally learn more conventional skills in those areas with aplomb. If you have something more specifically in mind, I might be able to answer your questions on that matter?"  

"Would Survivor be sufficient to remain unaffected by the drugs in the food, or would I have to take a more extensive option?"

"I'm not completely sure, but I'd expect it to hold up unless someone made a dedicated effort to research something that would specifically work on your physiology, at least so long as you don't select the world variant with spirits." 

"I wasn't planning to."

"So, hmmm. Charmed Life, Survivor, that's eighteen. Then some form of defence that fits into twelve points... I'm tempted to say a Servant. And then with the remaining two points, a better Identity to start with?"

She frowns. "If I take Heroic Destiny over Charmed Life then I can also fit in five-point Iron Will... I'm not sure if that trade is worth it or not."

"There's also the option to take some number of lucky breaks for even fewer - which might make sense, depending on how much you plan on avoiding more direct conflicts." 

"Managing limited resources tends to make me timid, but..." She blows out a puff of air, her violet hair stirring in the small breeze. "It's worth considering. I expect to be operating for a while, so one suspects I'd run out of lucky breaks fast, but..." 

She taps her fingers together. "Okay, I'm going to try and do the opposite of my current build philosophy — grabbing a large, 15 to 20 point item and then fitting smaller things in the corners — and instead try for something more grab-bag-y. Let's see what I can do without ever taking something over five points, then what I can do without ever taking something over ten points."

"Grab bag under 5 build..." She brings up a new window on the terminal and starts jotting notes. 

[30 Points, nothing over 5 points]

Flexible: [10]

Identity [5]

Resources [2]

Iron Will [3]

Personal Protection: [14]

Captain America Package [3]

Skill Upload (Small Unit Tactics) [4] 

Survivor [3]

Lucky Breaks [4]

Politics: [6]

Sincerity [2]

Skill Upload (Statecraft) [4]

"This one basically just makes me an exceptionally fit, strong, tough and skilled human. It's interesting to see what the priorities are on this more granular level. I feel like Iron Will is actually an odd duck out here, with no clear single purpose than to shore up my inner reserves. I waffled between putting Status in politics or in flexible."

"Okay. Let's try that again, but let's allow up to 10 point items this time."

[30 points, nothing over 10 points] 

Flexible: 

Identity [3] 

Heroic Destiny [10]

Defenses: 

Servant [10] 

Survivor [3]

Politics: 

Skill Upload: Statecraft [4]

"Here I'm reasonably sure that the defenses will be enough — a Servant and a Heroic Destiny together should hold — but I'm less sure about the politics side due to loss of Resources and Sincerity, and a weaker Identity. At least theoretically, Heroic Destiny should provide me with the kinds of resources I need, and the slightly weaker identity would give me a stepping-stone to the big leagues... But a lot would depend on exactly what kind of Servant I summoned."

She frowns. "Is functional magic limited to copying specifically d&d 3.5 spells for wizards, or does it have the capability to neutralize poison at a high enough level?"

"For the first build... I do think that you would likely benefit a bit more from marginal investments in social competency - a build like that to my eyes looks like you'd be best served by just trying to hire someone you could depend on being competent and leaving the details to them. Alternatively, I could see taking something like the base version of the jedi package making sense, as an additional backstop for personal defense and an additional tool in general for scouting out your options." 

"For the second build... I could see something like this working reasonably well, if say, you wanted to take a servant that had the ability to conjure food or remove poisons, or you were willing to rely on the limited undrugged food supply chain." 

Heroic Destiny [10]

Servant [10]

Sincerity [2]

Perfect Diplomat [3]

Identity [3]

Skill Upload: Statecraft I [2]

"Or if you instead wanted to take survivor still... Perhaps something like this?" 

Heroic Destiny [10]

Servant [10]

Sincerity [2]

Survivor [3]

Identity [3]

Skill Upload: Statecraft I [2]

"Though what exactly you'd prefer I think depends a little on how you want to weigh these social benefits against each other." 

"In terms of the magic offered by functional magic... You aren't bound literally to the contents of the rulebooks, but the general limitations and structure of the spells are much the same. You should be able to detect poisons exceptionally readily, and reinforcing your body or mind against poisons should be somewhat doable, but I'd expect you'd have an exceptionally hard time finding a practically scalable magical solution to poisons in situ."

"Wait a minute, I didn't even think of creating food from nothing. I thought about bringing my own food with Resources but by the time you get up to its rarity on the world it's probably better to take Survivor for personal protection. Conjuring... Hogwarts magic can't do permanent food. Dungeons and Dragons Create Food and Water is only for clerics. Magnificent Mansion does exist, but is seventh circle, which means I'd have to take archmage-level casting and spend literally all my points... What do the options look like for Servants?"