Fire and volcanoes are cool and all… but what if she wants to live somewhere else.

An intact multiverse sounds important! She lives here! Nope!

Hestia is real? That’s neat, but uhhh maybe she doesn’t want to be a stove salesperson… even if the perks seem kinda nice.

You know what, rule of thumb of not selling your soul is a VERY GOOD RULE. The key demon summoning sound kinda cool… but also she wants the rights to her own soul thanks!

Andrea backs out of warlock options and tentatively chooses Academic. “Since Academic was closest… is that what I would have awoken as normally?”

"That seems likely, but I'm not actually certain, it's not one of the more studied aspects of this."

“Is there a way to tell what I would have been normally? Not that I need to let nature dictate what I am, but it’d be neat to know…”

"Atropos might know? I can ask her, it's not as though anyone would object to her telling us."

“Who's that?” Theres so much background magic stuff she knows nothing about! This is like growing up knowing none of the pop culture touchstones everyone else did but much worse!

"My patron, the Thread-Cutter, the Eldest Fate, the Inflexible. She's a goddess of death and fate. A lot of my quests involve guarding the flow of dead souls, but she's also a fan of general stability, so doing awakenings is also a decent quest source."

… this is all so unreal. Gods of fate and death. Just mentioned like thats normal. “Sure uhmm…if it’s safe. I’d like to know…”

"It's a counterfactual of no strategic relevance in a domain that she's reasonably familiar with, and I think she appreciates me? Don't worry about it."

"It looks like the most likely natural awakening path involved you dying of cancer, being buried, and then awakening as an oread-mimi hybrid – oreads return to life after being buried, it can take up to a month depending on the damage level, I think for your cancer it would have been about a week. And I think you would have been an Academic with Hexes and Witchery and the Silly Goose complication, but a quick look isn't getting Atropos as good a sense of the rest of your build, it was apparently more variable."

“Cancer?” Shit… does she need to be worried about cancer now? Was it breast cancer? It would be just her luck that transitioning gave her breast cancer. “Thats… rough. At least it wasn’t dementia but cancer sucks pretty bad. Whats an Oread? Or a mimi? Or silly goose?” None of these words mean anything to her!

"Don't worry, you're going to finish this process with a fully healthy body for your species unless you take complications indicating otherwise. Oreads and Mimis are both species, and apparently you would have been a hybrid. Silly Goose is a complication which makes your form look like a child – the 6-14 age range, for humans – and makes you cute enough that people have trouble taking you seriously."

“I’d have been a kid again? Oof… I mean… not that I haven't wished to go back in time before… are you stuck like that? God nobody took me seriously until I was like 22 and it was the fucking worst. But if it explicitly comes with being cute….” Gosh all she wants is to be cute. Her gender would be being cute if she could pull it off, instead she’s bordering on milf as she gets older. But fuuuuuck being young sucked legally and socially. And then something catches up with her.

”I’d be a different species???”

"Oh, if you take the full version of Silly Goose you will definitely be very cute. And you'd mostly be still humanlike in appearance, just with a bit of fur and somewhat foxlike ears and a secondary canine form. Could be a different animal if you like, since this is a guided awakening, but it would have been foxlike if you'd done it yourself."

“Hah! I knew I wasn’t actually a catgirl. Sorry it’s just something friends tease me about.” Get to be a cute magical foxgirl and all she’d have had to die is die of cancer? That… sounded like an okay deal. “Honestly even with the alternate timeline where I awoke by dying of cancer, this sounds pretty good? What’s next after picking a magic class?”

"Most people look at race next but you can also look at complications." Or relics, but using power points to encounter non-soulbound relics is generally inefficient and most well-advised non-warlocks don't spend points on relics, and she gets the feeling that this witch isn't interested in unproductive technicalities right now.

“Uh sure, races. Of wich foxgirl is apparently one.” Being a foxgirl didn’t sound bad but she should look at the other options first before deciding.

She could stay 'neutral', which is the witch counterpart to 'human'. Neutrals have an affinity for the body and soul elements, average storage capacities and mana charge rates, and recharge by sleep. Enhanced neutrals, which she could be, also gain some hostile magic resistance and a second power development method.

She could be a 'siren', a humanoid with some feathers and the ability to transform partially or fully into a bird. Sirens have beautiful voices, can de-age in cocoons of feathers, and can return to life if their basically intact corpse gets breathed into. Siren witches have an affinity for the wind and beast elements, high storage capacities and charge, and recharge by taking away someone's breath (not generally fatal, stunning someone with beautiful artwork counts.)

She could be a 'naiad', essentially a mermaid but with the ability to have legs. Naiads de-age and resurrect when submerged in water. Naiad witches have an affinity for the water and beast elements, high storage capacities and charge, and recharge by submersion in water.

She could be an oread, as previously mentioned. Oreads have a bit of fur, can morph partially or fully into their animal forms, can burrow through the earth with extreme ease, and de-age and resurrect when buried. Oread witches have an affinity for the earth and beast elements, high storage capacity and charge, and recharge with physical closeness to loved ones in low-stress environments.

She could be a 'sprite'. Sprites are an inch tall, with wings and other features from a specific insect. They can produce silk and honey, and use stingers to inject paralytic venom (which causes their honey to form a wax). They de-age and resurrect with immersion in sprite honey. Sprite witches have an affinity for the nature and life elements, medium storage capacity and charge, and charge by fermenting honey into personal mana potions.

She could be a mimi, as previously mentioned. Mimis have an associated animal, and gain two 'traits' culturally associated with that animal of moderate power – a bat mimi might be stealthier or have better hearing, but wouldn't be able to fly without assistance. Mimis have a bimodal height distribution and she'd be on the short side. Mimis stop aging at some point between 18 and 35 apparent years (lower for shorter mimis, generally) and can be resurrected if a tear is shed at a shrine to them. Mimi witches have an affinity for the beast and life elements, low storage capacity and high charge, and can charge from affectionate physical contact such as headpats from another. (Or, more slowly, from themselves, which tends to make them sad.)

She could be a 'lar', sometimes known as a 'brownie'. Lares are the protector spirits of old families, and their lineages often originate with old Neutral families. Lares bonded to families and homes passively maintain these homes by their presence and develop a danger-sense for these. Lares return to life when many fires are lit in their families' hearths. Lar witches have an affinity for the blood and life elements, medium storage capacity and high charge, and charge from caring for their family and its home, more slowly when observed.

“How does being a hybrid work? You said my naturally awakened self would have been a oread-mimi.”

lar seems… inconvenient. Being human and needing to sleep to recharge sounds sucky, sleep sucks, also sounds slow. How would you even interact with the rest of the world as a tiny sprite, big nope. Naiad? Maybe, taking a bath to recharge doesn't sound bad. Siren just… isn’t her vibe mostly. 

Oread and being able to shape-shift seems cool, but she would have to have a loved one to recharge… Mimi just looks like it was invented by an anime fan, animal girl that recharges from headpats? Seriously? Though that seems a pretty easy charge method… especially if it’s fast.

Winnowing down the list to her ‘natural’ races she would have been anyway, and naiad. 

"Being a hybrid is a wild magic. Six points by default, but discounted for sorceresses and for beast-affinity witches, which both oreads and mimis are. You have a primary race as well as a secondary race, and maybe a tertiary if you take it twice. You still have the elemental affinities just of your primary race, but you have the highest mana capacity of either race, and you get both charge methods and otherwise get features from both races. If you're eligible to be an enhanced member of both races, you can pursue that for both."

“Six points! But I only have ten! That would cost most of my budget.” Though if you had both charge methods of oread and mimi that works out pretty well, tentatively she will go for that if nothing else is tempting to spend points on. Plus there’s something about being the same kind of witch she would have naturally been anyway.

"It's only four with the beast-affinity discount."

“That’s still a significant chunk of points… can I look at the other stuff I can spend points on first?”

"Definitely. And just to be clear: Ten points doesn't sound like a lot to start with, but it's a bit above average, and the potential to hit 150 points is way above average."

“Oh” So she’s a special witch? That’s cool. If it’s potential that means it can be filled right? “So I somehow I can get 150 points later then?”

"Yes. If you continue as an academic, you'll earn power points through days of study. You can further increase that potential with complications, or get more power up-front at the expense of reduced future development."