Mountain, meet Endbringer

[sturdycoldsteel]

The Fate who calls herself Mountain tried to convince some of her neighbors to allow the occasional mountain in their lands, for stability purposes.

"I meant no insult!" Dodge ball of lava. "I don't intend to interfere, you said no!" Dodge house-sized spear of ice. "I'm leaving peacefully, okay, so stop tearing up the tile!"

"You'll respawn at home. No permanent damage. You interrupted an important meeting, you need to learn a lesson about territory, mountain bitch." Dodge- no, fail to dodge a thrown tree, and then another ice ball. The next sphere of magma is what destroyed that form.




She wakes up, stripped of all her tools and enchantments and even clothes, and groans in pain.

Comments

[sturdycoldsteel]

She pushed her influence to as much of Japan as possible at once, so 'a third of Kyushu' is probably a good guess for the maximum range of her power. But that was sheer brute force, for detail work she'd want to either see the target or at least land and put her hands on the earth.

[peterxy]

...wow. A third of Kyushu? Wow.

But yeah, if she needs that much contact it might be more efficient to just focus on helping rebuild Japan.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Well, it did exhaust her pretty badly. She's not in a hurry to do that again.

How do tinkers work? It's probably not just 'being more intelligent,' it's focused on technology somehow right?

[peterxy]

Right!

...and it's difficult to explain. Especially with the language barrier. It's mostly like... an instinct? Of what to do to create something?

[sturdycoldsteel]

Instinct, huh. Is it a 'knowing it by heart' sort of way or more like 'para-inspiration'?

[peterxy]

Yes.

[sturdycoldsteel]

She'll probably never understand fully, not being a tinker.

[peterxy]

Probably not, but Jetpack thinks he could do a better job explaining it if they shared more words.

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I'll listen, sure. You don't have to keep trying if it gets... Words. Hard, unpleasant."

[peterxy]

"Okay, so, it's like seeing a... have you been introduced to Lego blocks?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"No. Have seen blocks as children's toy, though. Make things, then smash them."

[peterxy]

"Right! It's sort of like seeing a building made of children toy blocks. After looking at one, you have more-or-less an idea of how to build it and what pieces you'll need for it and maybe you won't reproduce it exactly so when you build it it will look somewhat different than what you originally saw, but you don't necessarily need an instructions manual to do it. Tinkering feels a bit like that, like you see a toy blocks building in your head and you can reproduce it but you can't really explain to anyone else because it's this bizarre four-dimensional toy blocks building. But you know where every block goes."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"My power is not like that. I see the pieces some. Granite, basalt, shale, sandstone. But I could draw a map and show you exactly what's under our feet if I wanted. I wonder where the knowledge comes from. Something must make it."

[peterxy]

Shrug. "No one knows. It just starts appearing. Tinkers just... know things. It's like a stroke of inspiration. And while we're working on them, it's one of the best feelings in the world."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I understand feeling happy to create, at least. Being in a place I made makes me feel at peace."

[peterxy]

"Yeah, at peace is not quite it. It's more of a rush, like... do you know flow? When you're doing something you enjoy so much that you forget time passes and you can't stop doing it and forget to eat and to sleep and everything else disappears?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

She looks distant. "...I think yes. That has caused... Problems, in the past."

[peterxy]

He raises his eyebrows. "Problems?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"If you get too focused, you ignore danger things."

[peterxy]

"Oh. Yeah I can see that. Well, Tinkers have that thing, except times one thousand. We usually have to have alarms or other people to remind us we should drink water or eat food."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Hm. I would find that state of mind distressing."

[peterxy]

Shrug. "It's relaxing, in a... not-relaxing kind of way. Well, very rewarding in any case. And we're very productive in those states."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"People are different than each other."

[peterxy]

Nod. "That's true. Maybe only people who would enjoy this state become Tinkers."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I would not hope the world is so kind, like a child."