1??????????Soul Bound
1.2????????Taking Control
1.2.3??????An Enchanting Original
1.2.3.7????Pizza diversion
They were saved from violence by the appearance of Renarda, carrying a pizza that was nearly as big as she was.
Kafana explained what she wanted and drew the others into a gestalt, careful to share only skills and sight, not memories. They poured many colours of mana into the pizza, while Alderney concentrated on visualising the desired effect. It was the first time she’d set up a gestalt, but then handed off control to somebody else, and she couldn’t tell whether or not it had worked, just that some of her mana have been used up. Was this normally what it was like to support others in a casting? Alderney’s eyes were glittering brightly, however, so that was a good sign. Alderney took the pizza knife and passed it to Tomsk on her right, telling him to take what he wanted then pass the knife on.
Tomsk and Bungo had just taken a little under a sixth each, when Bulgaria turned up with Carlo in tow. Bulgaria took a bit less than Tomsk and gave more than two thirds of his slice to Carlo. Then Bungo suddenly realised they’d not saved any for the monks, and removed an exact half circle, and added it next to his plate. Wellington, who was next around the table looked carefully at the slices by each plate and then solemnly took two thirds of the remainder, leaving Kafana and Alderney with just a 4cm by 5cm scrap of pizza left to share between them.
Alderney: “Wellington, why did you do that? Here, Kafana, you have mine. I’m not sure I want to share a table with these pigs.”
Wellington ignored her, jotted something down in a shared document and then turned to Bulgaria, asking “Do you recognise these numbers?”
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
76 % Bungo (if we assume Carlo is his debt slave)
16 % Tomsk
4 % Bulgaria
2 % Wellington
1 % Kafana
0.4% Monk (Assume Bungo gives them 1% not 50%)
0.3% Monk
0.2% Monk
0.1% Monk
0.0% Monk
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Bungo sounded outraged. “Hey! What do you mean, assuming I’m a slave holder and won’t give the monks their fair share?”
Tomsk: “Obviously this is unfair. We forgot some people existed because they were out of sight. We need to redistribute.”
Bulgaria: “Ah, but that will just encourage the undeserving poor to be lazy. Bungo put in the most mana, he deserves the most pizza. What we need to do is grow the pizza. Rewarding the hard working will encourage them to create more.”
Kafana: “You’ve both gone insane. Was it the mushrooms? You want me to cast a magic that will expand the pizza? What about the food already inside people’s stomachs? By your numbers I’d have to make the pizza a hundred times larger than it is now, for the monk with 0.1% to get a slice large enough to live off. We’d get pushed off the balcony in a gooey avalanche of tomato and cheese.”
Alderney looked interested, despite herself. “Is that possible? It would make a wicked weapon. Feed half a pizza to a troll, then use resonance to turn both halves into poison, or make the troll blow up. Kablooie!” she made a wild gesture with her hands, miming an exploding troll, sending Tomsk’s goblet of red wine flying everywhere.
It was at that moment, with Bungo covered in wine, most of the pizza on his plate, and Carlo (getting into the spirit of things) trying to push yet more pizza onto him, that the elegant Columbina entered her treasured private eating balcony and took in the scene.
<hr>
The mess took a while to sort out. Kafana cast a cleaning charm and Wellington asked Renarda to send an extra large pizza from the kitchen out to the monks where they were practising in the Plaza (and had even gathered a small audience, with a couple of kids trying to copy their moves). But they also did some redistribution too. Not everybody ended up with the same amount, but everyone got some, even Columbina who’d just come up to check how Kafana’s cooking had turned out.
They briefly discussed their mornings while eating. Alderney and Bulgaria seemed confident they’d worked out a good schedule for the next day, thanks to help from Carlo, but wouldn’t give details in case that spoiled the surprise for Kafana.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
Kafana told them how pleased Isabella was over her speech at the gelato launch. Apparently Fra Nerone was now hopping mad due to several important figures making it clear to him that they had taken to heart the message about the possibility of funding for the orphanage being cut off, and would be most displeased if this were to happen.
Bungo revealed that he’d cracked the mystery of his unique profession, Guru, that didn’t have a level attached. He’d asked online, and found two other players, both on Morob, who also had unique professions. It meant there were no NPCs he could learn from or be compared to. The skills under it were not gated, meaning they could keep rising, limited only by his character level, no skill points required, but he’d have to work them out himself.
Wellington briefed them on the in-game aspects of the Basso Renewal project. Lady Pia Trinci had sent word that a masked ball was going to be held soon, to celebrate the start of a new Season; Count Pazzi would be attending, and she’d make sure the Wombles received invites.
Most of the meal, though, was spent in a discussion that started with Tomsk’s report.
Tomsk: “I spoke with the Hunters Guild, and a good thing too. When fighting armies of Covadan, you use large groups of foot soldiers wearing as much armour as they can afford, fighting in close formation. Skirmishers and archers don’t fight in the line and tend to have higher DEX than STR, so they use lighter less restrictive armour that gives them the freedom of movement to dodge and evade, rather than relying upon soaking, blocking and mitigation. Healers and other mages tend to have low STR and DEX, so they have to rely upon whatever protection can be worked into runes on their clothing, which usually focus upon intelligent anticipation of blows and selective hardening and movement of cloth.”
Bulgaria: “But fighting monsters differs?”
Tomsk: “Very much so. Mobility is much more important, once you start facing the possibility of larger than man-sized creatures with slow attacks that do unblockable crushing damage over a wide area. Close formation fighting becomes suicide at that point. You need to use fewer fighters (so they don’t get in each other’s way) and make up for that by having them be higher level. The types of attacks vary more, so things like alwyte armour that cover the entire body, and can be spelled to keep out acid or even poison gas, are useful. The terrain type varies more - you might find yourself battling in the treetops, on a cliff or under the water. And you may not be able to choose your time or location of battle. If your target is hunting you, or is surrounded by thousands of lower level mobs, big clanking shiny metal armour suddenly becomes a disadvantage when you are trying to sneak around.”
Alderney: “So it is a trade off? Jacks and aketons are lightest, but are easy to slash to bits. Mail will protect against slashing but is a bit more restrictive and won’t help much with crushing. Plate gives the best overall protection, but is weak to piercing damage that hits dead on or at the joints, and it harms both stealth and mobility.”
Carlo: “That’s why accurate archers are so deadly. Using plate well is a skill by itself. You need to anticipate blows, alter the angle so they are glancing and preferably rotate at the last moment so the point of impact is moving away from the blow. Archers don’t give you time to react unless your DEX and INT are high enough, and too many tanks ignore them. Inexperienced monster fighters may be better off with mail and relying upon a hooded cloak covered in runes to ward off things like poison and acid.”
Kafana: “So why not just load a cloak with lots of runes, protecting against everything?”
Wellington: “You remember what happened when you cast too many buffs on Alderney? Well, if the amount of magic is too much for the quality of the armour to bear, the armour explodes. Or worse. When runic patterns get too close to each other, they get treated as a single design, but there are stages before that. It is a bit like interference fringes that need to be tuned to be in harmony with each other.”
He shook his head in frustration. “You really need to see the maths; I have an equation that captures it perfectly. Anyway, the larger the runes, the more mana you can store and pass through them, but the bigger the gap needed between them. Rune mages can substitute a collection of small runes for a big rune, but the pattern becomes more complex, almost like a programming language, and the time to design and inscribe it goes up.”
Kafana: “Thus your fractal pizza. Was that original to you?”
Wellington looked pleased. “I wasn’t entirely sure it would work. You did a good job implementing it.”
Bungo turned pale. “You mean that pizza might have exploded?”
Wellington replied calmly: “Or might have been possessed by a devil then tried to eat you. Unlikely; but if it had, we’d have learned something interesting.”
Carlo laughed. “Signora will love you. All creativity starts with curiosity, but to nurture that seed requires a willingness to face rejection for discarding the normal conventions. Indeed, I have never met a group such as yours. Did you know there are musicians nearly coming to blows over Kafana’s second duet on stage three days ago? You didn’t both sing the same melody, and yet it worked!”
Tomsk: “Free the minds and you change the world!“
Alderney proceeded to show Carlo some of her original designs, by scratching them on a flat piece of wood from her stash with her Knife of the Patterner, and Carlo replied with variations sketched on a table napkin. Wellington looked on a bit enviously, then weighed his athame in his hand before going blank faced while he made orglife notes on something.
Finally, the event queue reminded them to set off for their appointment in Mercato and they passed Columbina on the way out.
Tomsk: “Any advice for us, when shopping at Signora Moda?”
Columbina: “Trust nothing she says, and everything she does.”
Returning to the kitchen, she paused and added over her shoulder in a serious voice. “But don’t sleep with her, no matter what she offers. She likes bed partners, especially ones who don’t bore her, but she doesn’t care for them.”
With that strange warning ringing in their ears, they left.