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The Titanium Tyrant goes to Roses of Villarosa
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She clears her throat and goes through them all.

None,
This is just like your old world, where none of that exists outside of fiction. Why would you pick this? I'll throw in any perk you want for free, but seriously. How boring can you be?


("It is not just like your old world, in fact, because your old world had powers which would, if you tried to reconstruct them in Villarosa, necessarily have to be imported as a magic system," the angel explains. "The forms are insufficiently personalized to the applicant and I'm sorry about it.")

Low,
Magic will exist, but will still largely be the stuff of myth and legend, not a day-to-day part of life. Magic users will be exceedingly rare and almost always self-taught, and there might only be one person in a generation who rises to the level where their abilities are more than a mere minor special power. If there are any magical creatures in this world, they will be similarly rare, possibly unique beings.

At this magic level, there might be only one or two magic users in your story, or even none at all. Having any magical abilities, let alone powerful ones, could prove an unexpected strength that your foes are unprepared for.


Medium,
This is where magic really starts becoming a part of the world, and is our default option. We're still talking only a few hundred or a thousand real magic users in Villarosa, but that's enough that encountering magic is no longer a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Most magic users will learn from a master as an apprentice. Magical creatures definitely exist and have societies of their own.

At this magic level, multiple characters in your story could have magical abilities. Still, the majority of characters will not be magic users, and being one yourself can give you a significant edge.


("You can omit magical creatures with societies of their own if you choose. It's another unimaginatively written description.")

And finally High,
In this sort of setting, magic is everywhere and woven into the threads of everyday life. It'll likely be the case that nobles are expected to have magical ability. Magic is taught in schools, and even warriors will be using some magic. Magical creatures are common and some may be integrated into the society of Villarosa, though just how will vary.

At this magic level, essentially every major and most minor characters in your story will be magic users. You may take the perk Magic User for free, but it no longer gives you any real advantage over your peers.


"Again," she sighs, "you have much more ability to customize the exact appearance of magic in your Villarosa than the description implies."
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"Fascinating," he says, steepling his fingers. "For the moment we can put down 'high' and move on..."

... In a practical question, the question is if he wants Low (he is the world's greatest and only archmage) or High (AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA MAAAAAGIC!), and the real question there will be the value of a perk.

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She makes her little pencil note and turns the page.

"Next, Your Role." She reads from the page, "'Whichever role you pick, you will recover your memories at an age of your choice between fourteen and eighteen, recently engaged and beginning your attendance at the Royal Academy, the premier educational institution in the kingdom.' —though you can customize the exact nature of the Royal Academy fairly extensively in your notes to the worldbuilding team, if you choose. Anyway, the options are the Royal Princess, the Duke's Daughter, and the Rich Heiress, and I can guess that you're going to want the exact descriptions—"

Royal Princess,
This one is my choice. Every young girl and more boys than you might think go through a phase where they want to be a princess, you know, and vaguely omnipotent servants of the Will are no different. Pick this and you'll live that dream as the daughter of the King of Villarosa, the highest ranking and most desired bachelorette in the nation. This comes with all the obvious advantages, and will automatically make you the alpha female in any room. Yet abuse your royal privilege too much and you might find it less protection than you think... just like your canonical counterpart.


("I do not personally agree that it would be nice to be a villainous princess," the angel clarifies in a slightly grumpy tone. "This sort of thing is why I never just read the form out verbatim like some people.")

Duke's Daughter,
Here you'll be the only daughter of the highest ranking noble in the land - by default the Duke of Thorns, though the title will change based on the cultural influences you pick for Villarosa. This is a lot like being a princess, but less so. However, what you gain is that your engagement will be an important part of your father's political plans, so you can can call on his resources for aid in defending it. But that'll only last as long as the politics make sense... if things go wrong you will quickly find yourself disowned and left unprotected from your enemies.


Rich Heiress,
If you don't want to be nobility for some reason, here's your pick. You'll be the daughter of the wealthiest merchant in the realm; not noble, but rich and prominent enough to freely move in those circles. You won't have the power of a noble title, but what you will have is money. All the money. And that's a power all of its own. But be careful... unless and until you marry the right boy, you're still technically a commoner, and your father's money won't be protection enough if you offend the wrong people.
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The last thing he wants is to have to justify his strategic decisions to his father.

"Princess, I expect."

(Don't even go there)

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Little pencil note.

"Next, your Fiance, over whom the heroine will be in conflict with you. You will start the story engaged to him, but he will inevitably fall in love with her, and without significant effort on your part, he will reject you and marry her instead. The three options are:"

The Prince Charming,
The eldest son of the King, the heir to the throne, and all around nice, heroic guy. The same age or slightly older than you, talented in everything he does, and romantic enough to make all the girls swoon - including you. You can't really go wrong with him... except for the fact that he's going to betray you and fall in love with the heroine. He's also the most likely to take strong offense to any bullying or nefarious tactics on your part.

If you are the Royal Princess and pick the Prince Charming as your fiance, you may choose to make this character the son of the Duke of Thorns instead. Alternately, you may invent a convoluted excuse for not being blood related, or have royal brother/sister marriages be accepted in Villarosa. No judgment.


The Dark Rival,
This guy is the dark mirror frenemy of the Prince Charming, usually close to the same age as him, and therefore you. At the start of the story, he's even more talented than Charming, but ultimately the good guy surpasses and befriends him. You know how the story goes. Dangerous and dominant, he'll make your knees weak and your heart beat fast. He can be mean, but never quite evil, and he's got a heart of gold deep inside just waiting for the right girl to unlock it. Ah... that said, the right girl is the heroine, not you.

The Dark Rival can be either the Prince Charming's brother, or the son of the Duke of Thorns. If you are the Royal Princess or the Duke's Daughter and the Dark Rival is your sibling, you have all the same options as you did in the last choice. Still no judgment.


and The Noble Prodigy,
The oldest of your choices, this character has already graduated from the academy and made a name for himself. He is of lesser nobility, but by merit has ascended the heights of society. Your setting choices may alter his exact deeds, but by default he will have made a name for himself both as a warrior and a commander. To you he will be cold and formal at first - not cruel, not unwilling to be wed, but certainly the least emotional of your potential fiances. A tragedy in his past drives him and hardened his soul... but the heroine is the one whose love will melt the armor of ice around his heart.
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... NO.

... NO.

... "I think the third option is the only one who it would not be actively embarrassing to pursue," he says. Then he pauses. "Is there in fact any reason why I need to participate in this elaborate contest with the heroine, instead of letting her have him while I conquer the world?"

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She makes her little pencil note.

"Well, about that," she says. "The next choice is the choice of Heroine, but after that comes Fate, which picks out the canonical conclusion of your story, a conclusion which you can only avert by foiling the heroine and winning your fiance's love. I would describe approximately none of them as compatible with world conquest."

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"Aha. Thank you. And the heroine?"

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The Extraordinary Commoner,
This is the default option. Of humble background, without any social status, this amazing young woman won admission into the exclusive Royal Academy on sheer merit. Given the stratified social structure of Villarosa, this is quite the achievement, but makes her the proverbial nail sticking out. That gives her an obvious weakness, but she is by far the most talented of the potential heroines. She will outshine her more pedigreed classmates thereby attract the notice of your fiance. She will rise to meet any challenge or challenger... including you. Good luck, villainess.


The Poor Princess,
Despite being royalty, this heroine is for some reason neglected and powerless. The most popular reason is for her to be the King's daughter with a previous, politically inconvenient Queen. She might instead be a legitimized bastard daughter, or a refugee from a destroyed kingdom. Regardless of the reason, she lacks most of the advantages of her station that the Royal Princess enjoys, and while far from incompetent is the least personally formidable of the potential heroines. What she does have is the heart of a saint, the beauty of a goddess, and the love of your man. And, even if she is neglected, she is still a Princess, which will tie your hands in dealing with her.


and The Hero's Daughter,
You can consider this heroine a midway point between the last two options. Her parent died accomplishing some great deed - in the default setting, defeating the Demon Lord. This won a posthumous elevation to the ranks of the nobility. This gives his or her daughter legitimate noble status, but none of the experience or social mores expected of a noble young lady. She will be quite talented, but will lack the extreme genius of the self-made Extraordinary Commoner. What she will have is fame, the inherited gratitude of the country, and connections with her parent's influential and dangerous surviving companions. Your fiance's curiosity with her will soon turn to attraction, and the Hero's Daughter is not to be underestimated.
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The Extraordinary Commoner might actually be a threat. No. 

The Poor Princess would be very difficult to threaten, but she'd have all the resources of the kingdom investigating assassination attempts on her. (Probably. Maybe not if she was from a neighboring country, but even then she'd be hard for his assassins to find.)

The Hero's Daughter... hmm. More competent than the Poor Princess, less so than the Extraordinary Commoner. Fewer connections than the Poor Princess, more than the Extraordinary Commoner... no easy task, perhaps (or perhaps this add copy had never considered the Titanium Tyrant)... but communications with other star systems are slow, and... yes, he can customize a setting where those 'influential and dangerous surviving companions' are out of range. And assassins very rarely prefer the inherited gratitude to the country to money.

(Precisely what he is contemplating does not appear on his face, though that he is contemplating certainly does.)

"I think the Hero's Daughter would be the safest decision," he muses, "though if there are statistics on how commonly the villainess wins against each of those, I would certainly take those into consideration."

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"At a guess, without access to hard numbers, I'd say the Extraordinary Commoner wins substantially more often than the other two but I can't say which of the other two wins more, and anything can happen given strange enough circumstances."

She pauses, looking at him, then adds, "There will be an option later on to enable the possibility of peaceful reconciliation with the heroine. I venture to guess that you might find it more tedious, but by the numbers it's a surer bet than unilateral victory, provided you're capable of it. When villainesses fail at that one, it's generally because they overestimate their own ability to sincerely make peace."

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The response inside the Tyrant's head is a sudden scream of NO! If he was in better mental shape, he might be able to sort that scream out from his genuine arguments, he might update, he might realize that there was a new option, a better option, and embrace the illusion of goodness. Instead there's the scream of NO! and the most brilliant mind on Earth musters all its arguments for why he should reject the possibility of compromise. He will not be defeated either way, for he is the greatest villain who has ever lived, only one man has ever challenged Sandor and he will never be part of this story - whether he succeeds or fails, it is better to die free than to live a slave and he will not accept any compromise between slavery and absolute power; his failure in this life was that his power was insufficiently absolute, after all no heroine worth her name would be prepared to let him conquer the world - he read that description, the Star Kingdom of Villarosa needs him to fix it, nothing less than absolute power could mend it - yes, it is true, it would solve the problem where he can't have Thei and "his" love interest both if he simply yielded the young man he has no interest in to the rival, but then he'd have two competent enemies he'd need to destroy -

I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'

"Thank you,' he says grimly. "The Hero's Daughter, then?"

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Little pencil note.

"Your choice of Fate, then, has six options: Death, Nunnery, Servitude, Impoverished, Exiled, Disgrace. I'm sorry about the inconsistent naming scheme; my petition to standardize it is currently being fiercely debated in several relevant subcommittees. Anyway, Death grants a perk and Disgrace necessitates a flaw, and my colleague's descriptions are largely inadequate and misleading so I will just have to summarize them all myself as best I can."

She clears her throat and straightens slightly in her seat.

"Death: the story will by default end with you dead. You may submit notes to the story team on the details of what you would find to be a fitting end, but contrary to what my colleague wrote here, they can discard those notes if they see fit. Likewise, you can suggest to the worldbuilding team that your Villarosa be supplied with a comfortable afterlife or easy means of resurrection, but you should not expect those benefits to straightforwardly allow you to ignore this Fate. Again, you earn an extra perk by taking this."

"Nunnery: you will be forced to join some form of religious order or similar institution, where you will live a safe and stable life of hard work in a good cause, without luxury or romance. Picking this option will necessitate that such an institution exist in your world in common use as punishment for crimes, and you cannot avert it by providing worldbuilding notes that would seem to exclude the possibility. I don't know why people keep trying that one but they do it all the time and sometimes my colleagues let them try it without pointing out that it will fail, a practice I find deeply unprofessional."

"Servitude: at the conclusion of your story, if you fail to win your fiance back from the heroine, you will be stripped of your status and bound to her service. If magic or technology exists in your Villarosa that is capable of enforcing loyalty, it may be used on you here. Since the heroine is fundamentally a good person, you can be sure she will not treat you cruelly. Since the heroine is by and large not a complete fool, you cannot rest assured that this option will definitely provide you with a smooth and easy path to eventual power-behind-the-throne status. It's been done, but not nearly as often as it has been attempted."

"Impoverished: once again you will be stripped of your status, but this time simply cast out into the street to make your way as a common citizen. Your life from there depends largely on how well your Villarosa treats its common citizens. The description explicitly states that you will never again be wealthy or noble. It means it. There is no path through this option that leads to a more comfortable life than that of a completely ordinary person with no special advantages. Please do not fling yourself onto the growing heap of villainesses with clever money-making schemes who think they can trick Fate."

(She is, visibly, so tired of the growing heap of villainesses.)

"Exiled: You will not only be exiled from Villarosa, never to return, a pronouncement which once again has the weight of Fate behind it; you will also be forced to marry a stranger, an older, childless foreign nobleman. You cannot avert this fate by providing worldbuilding notes that heavily imply there are no foreign lands to be found; one will inevitably turn up regardless. It is possible to lead a happy life in this fate, but only if you work together with your new husband to build a life that you both enjoy. If you do not have the capacity to do that, you are better off trying something else. Also, and I cannot stress this enough, murdering him to steal his power is many, many people's first thought here and it has never, ever, ever worked."

(She is so tired.)

"And finally, Disgrace: you suffer the direct public humiliation of being abandoned by your fiance, and corresponding loss of reputation, but you retain your wealth and rank. Again, you must take an extra flaw in order to take this, and I'm sure you can see why; it's by far the most advantageous choice in practical terms, unless you're one of the very few who can pull off a turnaround on Servitude, or you manage to construct worldbuilding notes that make Death work for you."

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"Thank you."

The thing about being the Titanium Tyrant - inventor of powered armor, first villain to defeat the Atlantic Six, conqueror of Novapest in despite of all the world, and mentor to half the archvillains in history - is that people saying "it's very hard" stops really meaning very much to you. He thinks it will be Servitude, but -

"So the question, then is if Death, Servitude, or Disgrace is the simplest option to recover from," says the Tyrant. "Which depends on the nature of magical servitude in the setting, the afterlife mechanism, whether or not Fate opposes a Disgraced princess rising to power, and the strength of perks. Can you tell me more about all of these, either what they are or whether or not I have the ability to define them?"

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"You have the ability to suggest worldbuilding notes about the presence, absence, or nature of magical servitude, and likewise the setting's afterlife mechanism," she says. "Fate will not utterly forbid a Disgraced princess from rising to power, but, in addition to making it difficult, will increase the difficulty in proportion to your competence so that no matter how good you are at scheming to gain power, your odds of success will be no better than the threshold value. I'm not allowed to know what the threshold value is but I've been told it's worse than a coinflip. As for the strength of perks, we'll get to that in the Perks section."

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Suggest, not specify. Noted. "And if I am bound to Servitude, Fate ensures I cannot escape, but is it Fate or the heroine's competence that ensures I cannot rise to power through her?" If he cannot take power again, Servitude and Disgrace are identical; all men are tyrants or slaves. And he cannot count on an afterlife to save him. So. Check.

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"Fate lends her an edge if she needs it, and Fate ensures that the one thing you cannot do is convince her to free you under any manner of false pretense; but if, without leaving the position of a servant, you can contrive to exert influence through the one you serve, Fate will let you have that once you've earned it."

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"Thank you. And what are the rules and restrictions that define my ability to choose a magic system or an afterlife system?"

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"By default, all your suggestions will be implemented; the conditions under which they won't are if you make suggestions that contradict your chosen options, if you make suggestions that contradict themselves or each other, if you make suggestions that the worldbuilding team can't figure out how to implement as written, if you make suggestions that seem to contravene the spirit of the enterprise, or if something really weird is going on."

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... Damn it, catchall.

Well, he'll have to make this his backup plan.

"Thank you. Can I institute reincarnation as an afterlife system, and if so, would Fate apply to future lives?"

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"Reincarnation is a broadly acceptable afterlife system, but yes, Fate would apply to future lives, though tending to decrease in effect over repeated cycles if you stay within the system that long. At a guess I'd say that if you chose to implement reincarnation and then met your Fate whatever it happened to be, you'd find that your next five or ten lives after the first would be narratively appropriate for a failed villainess in a way reflective of your Fate, and outcomes could begin to diverge after that point."

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"I see."

Well, this seems not too hard to metagame. If he picked Death, he'd be fated to die young five to ten times - this process could be accelerated, given a knife. If he picked Servitude... "If I picked Servitude, died, and reincarnated, would I be bound to serve others or to serve specifically intelligent good-aligned others?" One of these is much more tolerable than the other.

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"The correspondence in situations like these is more thematic than direct; you could end up serving the heroine's next reincarnation, or you could end up in a position where your own servants treated you as you'd treated the heroine in a previous life, or something else that... echoed the concept of your original incarnation without necessarily reproducing it faithfully. In general, though, you would not end up serving someone who mistreated you in a way the heroine would not, and that constraint tends to imply you would end up serving mostly good people."

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"That sounds reasonable. Is the duration per-lifetime or based on experienced time or some third option, and if the first, could it be shortened with a bullet or lengthened with the peaches of immortality?"

Which exist (Thank you, Andrew), though 'immortality' is an overstatement. (He should know.)

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"The duration of... your entanglement with your Fate? Based on some combination of lifetimes, experienced time, and narrative concerns, I believe. Exiting your reincarnations early won't tend to improve it."

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