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dream of a greener tomorrow
Feather has a dream from the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed
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The dream starts perhaps not as usual but at least unremarkably with Feather following a narrow trail through the underbrush in a thick part of her forest, branches and leaves brushing against her at the sides of the path as she travels. And then abruptly the path opens up into a large open glade that does not fit for being in her forest. The forest floor is covered with soft moss and the edges of the glade bloom with brightly colored berries, vibrant flowers in a variety of shapes and even leaves in shapes she hasn't seen before. There are more unfamiliar plants in this one glade than Feather has seen in the past year. And in the center of the glade is a pink squirrel gently crouching on the mossy surface with three miniature trees only a few feet high arrayed around it. One looks like a the sort of tree she would see around the forest normally, one with a fluffy crown of white leaves that almost resembles a cloud and the last is covered in small flowers in a rainbow of colors.

"Hello Feather," says the squirrel.

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Why a pink squirrel, self? Well, why not?

Her dreams are allowed to be weird and silly, she's just here to enjoy it! Moss in sunlight, tiny trees, wrong leaves, anything goes. She just has to make sure not to accidentally mix the weird dream-plants with her knowledge of what's real. Good thing how she feels so certain this is a dream.

"Hello. What should I call you?"

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"You can call me whatever you'd like. I'm here for you. If you want a name you can just call me Squirrel."

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"I guess the whole dream is here just for me in a sense!"

So, the pink squirrel is... just there for her to look at, not to - talk to her about anything interesting? Ah well, no dream is perfect. She's going to admire the tiny trees up close, they're so pretty in the sun.

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Looking closely at the rainbow tree somehow a strange name comes into her mind: Other-World Gambling-Wheel

She also gets the sense of a bit of a description. Trust to the will of the Spirit and let it take you where you need to go. It will look at far more options than you could ever know about, and pick something that's likely to be even better for you than whatever you would have chosen on your own.

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Um? This is rapidly becoming less of a normal-feeling lucid dream and more of a nonsense stream of consciousness? What Spirit? What gambling wheel? She just wants to look at the pretty colors!

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"Oh, you're looking at powers. I think I should explain. I and this whole dream, were sent to you by the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed in order to offer you part of its power. The plants in this glade represent various options the Spirit usually offers to people in your position but if they don't appeal I can try to make up new ones that fit you better."

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Sentences in dreams are often like that: they seem to make sense when you look at them, they have all their internal bits arranged properly, but when you try to connect them to the rest of the world they don't fit. (Usually this only happens after she wakes up.) And so: a pink squirrel dream messenger offering spiritual powers.

But it could be fun to play along with it! Alright, Ms. Pink Squirrel, you have my attention.

"What's - the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed? I don't think my... femininity... is very leashed?" She certainly has had her share of dreams about laying eggs. "Is that why the Spirit wants to, um - cleric me? And the rainbow tree stands for letting Her choose the spells - er, powers?"

This is just a tiny little bit credible. Maybe there's some lesser Chaotic-and-Good god working with Desna who likes... Femininity? But Feather doesn't want to be a dual-alignment cleric!

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"The Spirit can see when people would like to become powerful and beautiful and special in a feminine way, and it wants to help those people achieve those desires so it send avatars like me to offer them power that will help them do that."

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"I'm not sure what you mean that doesn't include everyone. All women, anyway. Most people want to be powerful and beautiful and everyone is special to themselves!"

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"Maybe that's true. I don't know how The Spirit picks who specifically to offer its power to. I just know that I was sent here to offer power to you."

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Hmm. She doesn't mind dreaming this, she just doesn't want to accidentally agree to be clericed by Someone she'd rather not. Not that she really thinks it likely, but it's the principle of the thing, even if she's only dealing fairly with a figment of her own thoughts.

"Is the spirit Chaotic and Good, or just Good?" She can't be Evil, and this definitely doesn't have a Lawful vibe. The only Neutral god she'd accept would be Gozrehn but They wouldn't get all the plants wrong, this definitely has the style of Elysium.

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"I don't think I understand the question. The Spirit cares about the people it empowers living their best lives in whatever way is truest to them. So in the context of offering you power the Spirit is exactly as good and chaotic as you are."

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That sounds like either Good or maybe Neutral, but also. Um. Why did her mind make up a pink squirrel who made up a Spirit of Femininity who grants powers but doesn't know about the alignments?

"I just want to make sure I don't wake up clericed by Someone I don't want to be tied to. Or otherwise empowered, I guess. If you're Good you won't do that against my will, even if you're Chaotic." If a really weird True Neutral god clerics her that will probably be - alright? And she's safe from Evil ones, so. "Can we just agree that won't happen and go back to the fun dream bit?"

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"You'll only get powers if you freely and clearly tell me you want one specific set of powers. And there's no obligations on you after getting the Spirit's power you can use them however you want to use them."

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That's - probably close enough? Anyway, clerics can renounce their gods, so this is a silly worry. Clericing someone against their will isn't really a thing... she thinks, anyway.

And she really wants to stop complaining and go back to the fun bits before she wakes up or the dream changes.

"Alright. So what powers can I get if I don't ask the Spirit to choose for me?"

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"The usual powers are all around you. If you can't find what you want though I can try to make a custom power for you. Oh, I should tell you the general principles though. These powers are offered under an aegis of metanarrative protection. Anytime you might expect a power to have obvious negative side effects, like glowing eyes making it harder to see, it simply won't—you'll be able to see just fine anytime it actually matters, while having dramatically hazy vision at cool, narratively appropriate moments.

"This doesn't apply to your own preferences about the explicitly described effects of the power; if you don't want to be Well Endowed, the metanarrative cannot protect you from choosing that option and having to live with it.

"These three trees around me are the destination options. You need to pick one of them as part of your final choices."

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Why would having glowing eyes make it harder to see??

But: this means she doesn't need to obsess over the details, and the dream will sort itself out and end up being about Having Fun With Power and not at all about a warning about Living With Her Foolish Choices!

She looks back at the trees. What do the other two have to say for themselves?

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The familiar tree is named Stay Put and described as You're just going to take these powers and keep on keeping on right where you are.

The cloud tree is named Somewhere in Mind and described as You have a specific destination you want to go to. You can choose any place, real, historical, fictional, or made up in your own head right now, and the Spirit will take you there. After that, you're on your own as far as further interdimensional travel.

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She can stay in her forest (plus Glade of Empowering Plants and Ms. Pink Squirrel) or go anywhere at all. What a convenient dream! Feather lucid dreams occasionally but she still has to do the hard work of, you know, making the dream show her stuff. She's never been told to just ask for something before.

What about the other plant-powers?

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There are quite a few, they fall into as mentioned the three groups the first time she touches a power in each group there's an additional bit of description about the whole category.

There's the Berries that seem to represent powers about her.

Yourself

These powers affect your own self and nature, without direct effects on other people. Some of them are prerequisites for powers in the later Power of Friendship section.

Name: A Thousand Ships - Cost: 1
Your face is simply exquisite, an ideal of feminine beauty. There are many possible ideals of feminine beauty, and yours is whichever one speaks most deeply to your soul. Others may match your beauty in their own way, but never exceed it.

Name: A Hundred Ships - Cost: 1
(Replaces A Thousand Ships) Your face is simply exquisite, an ideal of feminine beauty. There are many possible ideals of feminine beauty, and yours is whichever one speaks most deeply to your soul. Instead of prioritizing pure beauty, this power prioritizes what feels right to you.

Name: What's In A Name - Cost: 1
Magic to divine true names will accept whatever alias you choose to think of as your true name. Magic to use your true name against you will fail.

Name: Angelic Tones - Cost: 2
Your voice is supernaturally beautiful and you can sing in any vocal range.

Name: Emerald Orbs - Cost: 2
At all times, your eyes are exactly the right colour. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. Your eyes can be ANY colour this way. Lightless black voids? Brilliant white stars? Limpid pools of endless sapphire? They will look exactly the way you'd want them to look if you were writing a self-insert fanfic about this exact moment of your life.

Name: Perfect Hair - Cost: 2
At all times, you have exactly the right hairstyle. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. It is not limited to physically or logistically plausible hairstyles.

Name: Size Difference - Cost: 2
At all times, you are exactly the right height. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. It will usually keep any height changes fairly subtle, but at dramatic moments you might discover yourself able to shrink to the size of a bee or grow to the size of a giant.

Name: Dressing Room - Cost: 3
No matter how ridiculous your outfit, it will stay pristine and perfect, unless it would be more dramatic for you to be artfully bedraggled. You can use any quiet moment to yourself to quick-change your clothes, shoes, nails, and hairstyle into a completely new look. (You cannot change your hair length or colour this way without Perfect Hair, but you can braid or style it.)

Name: Pocket Dimension - Cost: 1
(Requires Dressing Room) You can reach into your pocket, purse, backpack, or other storage accessory and pull out anything that can fit through its opening, even if it obviously could not fit in the pocket and even if you've never carried that object in that pocket before. In order to summon a specific object this way, it needs to belong to you; in order to duplicate an existing object this way, you need to have held or examined it at least once; in order to invent a new object this way, you need to be familiar enough with what you want that you could tell the real thing apart from a fake made with the same materials. So jewelry you make will be real gold or silver or platinum, but if you want to pull a refrigerator out of your backpack, you need to have a reasonably good idea of how a refrigerator works.

Name: Undressing Room - Cost: 3
(Requires Dressing Room) The question of what clothes you are wearing no longer has a specific well-defined answer, but depends on the interactions you're having and how you prefer to be clothed for the purpose of those interactions. You could walk into a room and sit down in a chair, and be naked to all the people in the room but wearing underwear from the perspective of the chair; you could attend a fancy ball and be wearing a fancy ballgown to most people, but let your friends see you in a banana costume instead; you could let someone's hands pass through clothing that their eyes can still see. It may take some practice to become well-attuned to your new sense of how each person and object you interact with is perceiving your state of dress, but you'll always be able to tell if you take a moment to wonder.

Name: Personal Hygiene - Cost: 1
You are always clean and fresh, never needing to use a bath or toilet.

Name: Like Roses - Cost: 1
(Requires Personal Hygiene) You smell lovely. Your scent is unique to you, and may involve any combination of warm spices, floral notes, petrichor, or other things you think smell good. You do not need any justification for why you smell like this.

Name: Just A Little Longer - Cost: 1
If you push yourself, you can keep doing any task or working on any project indefinitely, visibly strained but never impaired by injury or fatigue. As soon as you stop, you'll collapse with exhaustion and sleep for up to a full day to regain your strength. This only works when what you're doing is personally important to you.

Name: Immunity System - Cost: 3
You can't get sick or poisoned. You can still use recreational drugs and alcohol normally, but can't overdose.

Name: Breathe Easy - Cost: 1
(Requires Personal Hygiene and Immunity System) Eating, breathing, and other forms of environmental exchange are no longer necessary for you. You cannot be harmed by denying your body resources, or by supplying the wrong ones. You can still benefit from positive effects of things you breathe or eat.

Name: My Ears Are Burning - Cost: 6
You always know exactly what people are thinking, as long as it's about you. This effect is not telepathy and is not blocked by effects that block telepathy. It applies even to people you can't perceive normally. You are never impaired by the flood of information.

Name: Well Endowed - Cost: 1
You have a generous figure, whether that's a classic hourglass or more of a well-rounded look; you can choose the details. Your endowments maintain a state of perfect grace and beauty at all times, never troubling you with uncomfortable bounces or uninvited jiggles.

Name: Hollow Leg - Cost: 1
(Requires Well Endowed) Regardless of your diet and exercise habits, your body maintains the physique and silhouette you prefer. Lack of visible muscle never impairs your strength or endurance. As your preferences change, so will your body; you are no longer bound to the generous figure stipulated by Well Endowed.

Name: Inner Strength - Cost: 3
(Requires Hollow Leg) You are implausibly, superhumanly strong, with endurance and toughness to match. You might have to strain a little to lift and carry at the same level as construction equipment, or deal with lightly scraped knuckles if you punch as hard as a battering ram.

Name: Lightfoot - Cost: 3
(Requires Hollow Leg) You are perfectly, superhumanly graceful, with reflexes and agility to match. You can cross a field of snow without leaving a footprint, or stand on a slender branch without bending it, or jump so lightly that you soar through the air instead of falling.

Name: Battle Angel - Cost: 1
Somehow, you never get significantly injured in a fight, unless it's a very dramatic and plot-relevant fight in which case you might be glamorously wounded and pick up a cool new scar.

Name: Battle Demon - Cost: 1
You have an unerring intuition for gaps in an opponent's defenses, though it may be beyond your power to exploit them.

Name: Battle Maiden - Cost: 3
(Requires Battle Angel and Battle Demon) No matter what kind of fight you're getting in, you're always a match for even the most skilled opponent.

Name: Gloryseeker - Cost: 1
Somehow, you never get significantly injured when doing cool stunts like skydiving or parkour. At especially dramatic moments, you might pick up a cool new scar.

Name: Pacifist - Cost: 6
Fights don't happen to you. Any violent conflict you might otherwise get into is either avoided by coincidence, or replaced with a yelling match, game, contest, race, or dance battle, whichever is most appropriate to the situation. Powers you have that give you advantages in fights also apply to fight replacements.

Name: Making Ends Meet - Cost: 1
You have enough money to sustain a comfortable lifestyle. It comes from a source you don't have to pay much attention to, like a job with almost no responsibilities, a large inheritance, or a noble title.

Name: Motherlode - Cost: 2
(Requires Making Ends Meet) You have enough money to sustain a fairly extravagant lifestyle. It doesn't come from anywhere, you just have it.

Name: Four Star Daydream - Cost: 4
(Requires Motherlode) The answer to 'can I afford that' is 'yes'.

Name: Five Star Daydream - Cost: 4
(Replaces Four Star Daydream) In any world you visit, you will quickly find opportunities to generate enough value to effectively afford anything that's up for sale anywhere in the local economy.

Name: Omniglot - Cost: 3
You learn languages insanely, ludicrously fast. You know exactly what any word said to you means, and you make strangely accurate guesses about how to phrase things you're trying to say. You never forget any grammar or vocabulary you learn.

Name: Anything You Can Do - Cost: 6
You learn implausibly quickly from friends, rivals, and love interests. If you have a personal connection to someone with a certain skill, talent, or expertise, you'll learn it five times faster than they did, or twenty times faster if they're actively trying to teach you. This applies even to forms of magic that you ordinarily shouldn't be able to learn.

Name: Dragon Fairy Elf Witch - Cost: 5
You can at any time discover previously unknown heritage from any type of being you encounter, even if this makes no sense or contradicts previously established descriptions of your family tree. You always get their powers without their drawbacks, unless the drawbacks are cool and dramatic. Any visible features of this heritage will appear at narratively appropriate moments and be cute, pretty, beautiful, or striking rather than awkward, weird, gross, or scary. This ability works even if the beings in question cannot reproduce with humans, or at all.

Name: Snowglobe - Cost: 4
In worlds where people can have individual special powers, such as powered superheroes or personality-based magic, you find that you can pick up a power of your own even if you don't meet the local requirements. Drawbacks of these powers, such as uncontrollable power manifestations or a tendency to attract unwanted supernatural attention, will only apply if they are cool and dramatic.

Name: Unleash The Magic - Cost: 3
(Requires Anything You Can Do, Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, and Snowglobe) Any form of magic or other special ability you encounter can be yours, regardless of prerequisites, as long as you see it in action at least once. Your various powers and attributes will never conflict with each other or come with annoying drawbacks, and will often synergize in cool and interesting ways.

Name: Soulbound - Cost: 8
If something feels instinctively like a part of you, then it is. A necklace you always wear will be impossible to lose. A vehicle you care for deeply will be impossible to steal. A tool or power you rely on like part of your body will become as hard to misplace as your own hands. Tools, devices, and powers that you absorb this way will be translated into the form of Spirit-granted powers, granting them the flexibility to Just Work despite pesky details like network protocols, service providers, and laws of physics, and will be fully as well protected as your own mind and body are by all of your potentially applicable powers.

Name: Personal Space - Cost: 3
No one can touch you intimately if you don't want them to. You can still be struck in a fight or bumped into in crowds, but things like hugs and kisses and sex only happen if you're okay with them.

Name: Closed Book - Cost: 1
You're immune to any supernatural, pharmaceutical, or other effect that would let people directly read your thoughts or feelings.

Name: Indelible - Cost: 1
You're immune to any supernatural, pharmaceutical, or other effect that would let people directly alter your thoughts or feelings.

Name: Iron Will - Cost: 2
(Requires Closed Book and Indelible) You are immune to all forms of mental illusion, alteration, interference, or control. Even extreme torture, extended solitary confinement, advanced brainwashing techniques, and so on cannot touch you. You can be lonely but not cripplingly lonely. You can be upset but not traumatized. (You can choose to allow specific effects like communicative telepathy on a case-by-case basis.)

Name: It Gets Better - Cost: 5
You're going to be okay. Your mind and body may never be perfect, but they are yours, and cannot permanently be taken from you. In time you will heal from any injury, escape any imprisonment, and recover from any trauma; maybe not in exactly the ways you hoped, but always in ways you're okay with.

Name: The Great Equalizer - Cost: 8
Where you go, Fate shatters. Forms of prophecy that were once perfectly reliable stop working, or show a broad array of possibilities instead of a single coherent future. Imbalances of magical luck wash out, leaving everyone lucky and no one able to leverage their luck against an opponent. If you stay in the same world for a year and a day, this effect will be permanent even after you leave and even if someone tries to constrain the future anew in your absence.

Name: Star-Straightened - Cost: 8
(Replaces The Great Equalizer) By default you are invisible to all forms of future-sight and invincible to all forms of fate- or luck-related curse, prophecy, or doom, including indirect effects such as your enemies' luckiness making your plans go awry. However, whenever such a divination or manipulation is something you would choose to allow if you had full information about its nature, intent, and likely effects, then it works fine. In ambiguous cases, the default holds.

The Flowers that seem to represent powers about how she relates to other people.

Power of Friendship

These powers affect how others see you and how you interact with them.

In general, effects that describe others' reactions (like their attention being drawn to you by Mysterious Allure, or their sympathy being provoked by Tragic Backstory) operate on a metanarrative rather than a causal level. They are not mind control, and are not blocked by effects that block mind control.

Your true love is anyone you're pursuing a serious romantic relationship with. You can have as many of these as you like, but your feelings for all of them must be genuine.

Name: Mysterious Allure - Cost: 5
There's just something about you. People are drawn to you, fascinated by you. You tend to be the most interesting person in the room unless something really unusual is going on.

Name: Captive Audience - Cost: 3
As long as you have genuine interest in what you're talking about, no one will ever get bored of listening to you talk about it.

Name: Blackout Binge - Cost: 2
(Requires Immunity System) Heavy use of recreational intoxicants puts you in a carefree, uninhibited state in which it will be universally agreed afterward that you were not responsible for your actions.

Name: Disney Princess - Cost: 2
Animals are always friendly to you, especially the small cute ones. You can effectively tame any animal by feeding it and speaking gently to it.

Name: Where The Heart Is - Cost: 1
(Requires Disney Princess) When you make a place your home for long enough, it will begin to respond by animating itself, including furniture and loose articles, for your convenience. Over time it may develop a personality; if so, that personality will be tailored to complement yours.

Name: Cotton Candy - Cost: 3
(Requires Disney Princess) The sharp edges of the world are blunted around you. That's not to say that nothing bad can happen, but that the worst things happen a lot less often, and happy endings large and small are much easier to come by. This effect can ripple outward to improve the lives of people you've never met.

Name: Musical Number - Cost: 5
(Requires Disney Princess) At dramatic moments, you and those around you may spontaneously burst into song. The lyrics and choreography will be flawlessly coordinated.

Name: Best Friend - Cost: 3
You have an animal companion, like a horse or a cat or a raven. They have a cool name and maybe a few nifty cosmetic quirks, like glowing purple eyes. Their loyalty is infinite and they often hold the key to solving whatever situation you're up against. You can understand them perfectly even though they can't speak, and they always know exactly what you mean even if all you do is glance at them meaningfully.

Name: Bestest Friend - Cost: 5
(Requires Best Friend) Your animal companion is a fully magical creature, like a dragon or unicorn. They have magnificent supernatural powers ready to be used at your command. They can speak every language you can, but can still communicate with you on a deeper level of mutual love and understanding.

Name: Ascended Friend - Cost: 5
(Requires Bestest Friend) Your animal companion is now a minor deity. If you encounter any magic system in your travels that involves gods or other beings empowering their followers, your Friend will discover the ability to empower you the same way.

Name: Transformer - Cost: 1
(Requires Best Friend) Instead of (or in addition to) being an animal companion, your Friend takes the form of a tool, weapon, or vehicle.

Name: Generosity - Cost: 3
Your friends love to get you presents. They'll try to pick out things you'll like, but their success depends on how well they know you.

Name: Helpfulness - Cost: 4
Your friends love to do you favours. They'll volunteer eagerly whenever you need help with small tasks.

Name: Cuddle Buddies - Cost: 2
Your friends love to hug and cuddle you. Even someone who ordinarily isn't into that sort of thing will make an exception for you.

Name: Flattery - Cost: 1
Your friends love to compliment you and tell you all about how much they like you and why.

Name: Quality Time - Cost: 2
Your friends love to hang out with you and spend time together, even if you're not doing anything interesting or important.

Name: Agree to Agree - Cost: 4
You can always convince your friends to see your point of view about things like politics and philosophy. They might have a few quibbles here and there, but they'll see how right you are once you explain where you're coming from in enough detail.

Name: Backchannel - Cost: 4
When you're talking to someone and you think you might not be getting through to each other, you can take a step back, look deep into your heart, and really try to understand where they're coming from, and it will just work and you'll know what they're trying to say and how sincere they are about it and have a good idea of what you should say if you want them to understand you right back.

Name: You Can Teach Better - Cost: 8
(Requires Anything You Can Do) If you have a personal connection to someone, you can teach them anything you know; depending how motivated and engaged they are, they could learn it up to 110% as fast as you could have learned it using Anything You Can Do. If you consider them a good friend or otherwise especially close, this applies even to forms of magic that they ordinarily shouldn't be able to learn.

Name: Not Like Other Girls - Cost: 2
People will understand that you're different. They won't make assumptions about you based on prejudice or stereotype, they won't apply legal or societal limitations to you based on what kind of person you are, and they won't take you as a representative of your demographics.

Name: Love Interest - Cost: 1
(Requires A Thousand Ships and Mysterious Allure) Anyone you fall for will inevitably like you back. They may not necessarily act on their feelings, but the potential will be there.

Name: Love Triangle - Cost: 2
(Requires Love Interest) People you fall for will be open to dating you even if they already have another serious relationship, or other circumstances that would ordinarily interfere, like a demanding career or a vow of chastity. This may cause drama, but it'll blow over quickly and there won't be any serious problems.

Name: Love Dodecahedron - Cost: 5
(Requires Love Triangle) When you fall for someone who is already seriously dating or even married, your romantic rival will be open to allowing their partner to date you, and may even want to date you themselves.

Name: Time Enough For Love - Cost: 5
No matter how many people you want to date or be close friends with, you will somehow find the time to hang out with all of them and express your love and care. This power can only be used for relationship activities and not for anything else you might want to use the ability to be in two places at once for.

Name: Safe at Home - Cost: 4
No one will hurt your loved ones to get at you, or vice versa.

Name: Opting In - Cost: 4
(replaces Safe at Home) When you make yourself vulnerable to dangerous people, they will focus their danger on you and whoever else has chosen to involve themselves, leaving innocent bystanders and your uninvolved loved ones alone.

Name: I Can Fix Them - Cost: 5
Regardless of how morally despicable someone is, your love can and will reform them into a genuinely good, kind, upstanding person who regrets their evil deeds.

Name: I Can Help Them - Cost: 5
(Replaces I Can Fix Them) Regardless of how lost to darkness someone is, your love can save them, if they're willing to accept it. This power will not directly alter someone's mind except to allow them to believe a true thing they couldn't have believed otherwise, or to change something that their pre-alteration and post-alteration selves would hypothetically be able to agree was good if they talked it over honestly with full access to each other's perspectives. In cases where the outcome of the hypothetical is uncertain, it will default to not making the change.

Name: Inspirational - Cost: 5
Just meeting you makes people want to be better. Those who hurt you, or hurt someone you care about, will always come to understand your point of view and regret what they've done. In trade, you might sometimes come to understand more of their point of view than you'd like.

Name: True Love's Kiss - Cost: 1
By kissing your true love, you can break any curse, heal any injury, and cure any illness. The same works in reverse.

Name: Eternal Love - Cost: 2
(Requires True Love's Kiss) Those you love cannot be parted from you by anything short of their own uncoerced decision to leave. Anything else—war, politics, death, interdimensional travel—you will find a way to overcome and be reunited.

Name: The Rescuer - Cost: 5
(Requires Eternal Love) If someone is dead who would want to be alive again, and you set your heart on returning them, you will find a way. It may have costs or difficulties or take a long time, but you will find it, and it will work.

Name: Planned Parenthood - Cost: 1
You can only have children if you actively and specifically want to. Your partners will instinctively believe you about this, and won't be concerned that you might be wrong or fibbing.

Name: Providential Parenthood - Cost: 1
(Replaces Planned Parenthood) You can only have children when you're really ready for it, or if you actively and specifically decide to.

Name: Two Become One - Cost: 1
(Requires Planned Parenthood) When you have sex, it is always special and wonderful and beautiful. No one ever elbows anyone in the face or makes undignified noises.

Name: Laugh Together - Cost: 1
(Replaces Two Become One) When you have sex, you find it easy to free yourself from expectations and anxieties and immerse yourself in the experience of the moment. Your partners get the same benefits.

Name: Here For A Good Time - Cost: 1
(Replaces Two Become One) When you have sex, the world gets out of your way. Pillows don't fall off the bed; blankets don't end up scrunched in uncomfortable places. You are exactly as graceful as you want to be, and have excellent luck evading misaimed elbows.

Name: Bop It - Cost: 1
(Requires Two Become One) The mysteries of another's body are an open book to you, and you always know exactly how to move and touch in order to please someone in bed.

Name: The Princess And The Dragon - Cost: 3
No matter who or what you're trying to sleep with, the logistics will all work out, somehow. Arbitrary differences in size, biology, temperature, substrate, and underlying physics can be gotten around with sufficient creativity and determination.

Name: GGG - Cost: 4
Your true love will be willing to try just about anything you suggest in bed, and if you really enjoy it, they'll really enjoy it too.

Name: Opening Up - Cost: 4
(Replaces GGG) Being with you gives your true love more capacity to be adventurous, in or out of the bedroom. Although these adventures might have consequences, those consequences will never be devastating, and it will always turn out that finding out what these things are like is worth the consequences of trying them.

Name: Before Your Eyes - Cost: 4
In your presence, people become willing to experiment sexually in ways they normally wouldn't. For some reason this applies especially well to boys kissing each other.

Name: Reaching Out - Cost: 4
(Replaces Before Your Eyes) Your presence is a catalyst that encourages people to let go of preconceptions and constraints and have the courage to try things that they might like even if they're new or unfamiliar or scary. However that turns out, it will ultimately help those people understand themselves and their desires, and won't do lasting damage physically, emotionally, or socially to anyone involved.

Name: Fated Lovers - Cost: 3
You will meet someone who will go on to become your true love. If you enter a specific universe with a specific target in mind, you'll meet that person under favourable circumstances, and if it doesn't work out with them, this power will keep introducing you to new possibilities until you find someone who's right for you. If you're the sort of person who can have multiple true loves, you'll keep meeting new ones until you have enough.

Name: Fated Friends - Cost: 4
Wherever you go, you will be steered into meeting people you'd do well to befriend. It's up to you to recognize and appreciate them.

Name: Sorry About That - Cost: 3
Your true love will be extremely forgiving. Even if you make mistakes or act thoughtlessly toward them, a simple apology will mend things between you. They may expect you to try to improve, but they'll be infinitely patient about how fast that improvement takes place.

Name: Excuse Me - Cost: 5
(Requires Sorry About That) All your friends will be just as forgiving as your true love.

Name: Tragic Backstory - Cost: 8
(Requires Excuse Me) Something terrible happened to you in your past. Anyone who hears about it immediately forgives you for any and all bad behaviour in the present. They will not expect you to grow or change, and will continue sympathetically excusing whatever you do indefinitely.

Name: Sense of Style - Cost: 4
People who are romantically interested in you will start dressing more to your taste. The more romantically compatible they are, the better they'll be able to guess exactly what to wear to catch your eye.

Name: Bonus Style Points - Cost: 3
(Requires Sense of Style) Luck will shine on anyone trying to dress up for you. They'll get their hands on outfits they couldn't normally afford, their clothes will fit better, and in extreme cases they might even find themselves able to change shape, sex, or species—though only in ways that make them more, not less, comfortable in their own skin.

Name: Like a Mirror - Cost: 3
An underlying fact of the multiverse is that the same person can exist in multiple places, either as an alternate timeline where something went differently, or as the same essence of identity expressed under different circumstances. This power will steer you toward the local version of you, if they exist, in each world you visit. Your alternate selves will be happy to meet you, get along with you smoothly, and be inclined to cooperate with you.

Name: Self-Reflection - Cost: 5
Whenever you meet someone who is you, or was you, or could have been you, or will be you, a special bond is formed, allowing you to keep in touch with them no matter how far you travel. You can speak out loud to someone who is you, and they'll hear you as though you were standing right next to them; you can write notes to someone who is you, and the note will appear near them; you can send messages to someone who is you, and they'll receive them even if there's more than a world between you. The person on the other end of the bond can contact you in just the same way. This lasts as long as each of you considers the other a reflection of themselves and each of you wants to stay in touch with the other.

Name: Chaser Six When - Cost: 4
(Requires Time Enough For Love and Self-Reflection) Two of you who are near each other can decide to merge, becoming a conjoined double consciousness sharing two bodies. One of you can decide to fragment, adding a body and a conjoined consciousness to drive it. You can share with yourselves not only messages but direct mind-to-mind transmission of thoughts and memories across any distance. Your fragments can narrow themselves down to focus on embodying specific mental states or orienting themselves to specific tasks, in a way that's fully reversible and doesn't make them any less you; they can also split off into discrete forks just as easily as discrete forks can conjoin themselves with each other. Fully merging conjoined selves into a completely unified being with only one you's worth of mind is also possible, but takes more time and effort and can't be done as fluidly.

Name: Severance - Cost: 2
Identities that you gravely and deliberately cast aside no longer describe you or refer to you. You cannot be traced by them or identified with them. No one will ever know that you are the same person you were once known as, unless you choose to personally tell them.

Name: Popular - Cost: 3
Wherever you go, you develop a reputation fast. The sort of people who you'd like to have as fans tend to hear about you and be impressed. You may not make an impression on mainstream society at large, but you'll develop a following among the people who best resonate with your style.

Name: Famous - Cost: 3
(Requires Popular) Wherever you go, people really take to you. You're the subject of constant gossip and most people have heard of you before you meet them. People you've never met will get crushes on you.

Name: Undiplomatic Immunity - Cost: 6
You are above the law. Any crimes you commit will be overlooked by the authorities. Note that, if you do enough crime that you start looking more like an invading army, local governments will still feel free to declare war.

Name: Friends In Low Places - Cost: 3
You make friends easily among the lowest echelons of society, the underdogs and underworlders. Moving and acting in these circles is intuitive and natural for you.

Name: Friends In High Places - Cost: 3
You make friends easily at the highest echelons of society, among the rich and powerful. Moving and acting in these circles is intuitive and natural for you.

Name: Friends in Strange Places - Cost: 3
You make friends easily in small isolated communities, among those who may be scorned by mainstream society for their differences or may just be so obscure that mainstream society mostly hasn't heard of them. Moving and acting in these circles is intuitive and natural for you.

Name: Vending Machine - Cost: 12
You can instantiate any person (real, fictional, or made up in your head) in any world you're in. Instantiating a real person will not pull them from their original world; it will create either a copy with their memories or the version of that person who would exist had they been born in that world. Instantiation can be retroactive: that is, you can use the power, and then meet the person you instantiated and find that they were already here and have lived in this world all their life.

And the Leaves that represent downsides or limitations on other powers.

Drawbacks

These options grant points rather than costing them. They represent inconveniences or mitigations of existing advantages.

Name: Decorative - Grants: +1
You are unfailingly cute and pretty and feminine at all times, in all circumstances. You cannot wear insufficiently pretty clothes. You cannot make insufficiently pretty noises. You cannot ugly cry.

Name: Beauty Is A Curse - Grants: +1
(Requires A Thousand Ships) No, you don't understand. Beauty IS a curse. People will NOT stop bringing it up. Everyone you meet just has to point out how pretty you are. This will never stop happening. Even the most tactful people find it slipping out subtly, as remarks about the luster of your hair or the depth of your eyes.

Name: Plain Jane - Grants: +2
No matter what you look like, nor how many times people tell you you're beautiful, when you look in the mirror all you see is imperfections. You will never be fully satisfied with your appearance on an instinctive level.

Name: Style of Sisyphus - Grants: +1
Anytime you settle on a personal style that works well for you, soon afterward you'll encounter inspiration for another style that you like even better. You might end up cycling between different fashions, or trying to incorporate them all into a single outfit (and then finding another inspiration and having to start all over again).

Name: There's Another One - Grants: +3
You are not the only vessel of the Spirit. You might meet someone else with similar powers to yours; you might even meet more than one. Your susceptibility to one another's powers will be governed by the narrative.

Name: Incomplete - Grants: +5
About half of people you encounter will be immune to all mind-affecting aspects of your powers, and about half of those who remain will see reduced effects. You can do nothing to change this.

Name: Nullified - Grants: +1
(Requires Incomplete) Any aspects of your powers that would affect the minds of others in ways they might not like will instead not do that. This can make many of your powers less effective.

Name: Grimm's Fairy Tales - Grants: +1
(Requires Cotton Candy) Bad things can and will still happen to you in particular.

Name: Funhouse - Grants: +2
(Requires Like a Mirror) This removes the restriction that all your alternate selves must get along with you. Now they can relate to you in all the ways you might potentially relate to another version of yourself. If you get along well with yourself, this might not be so bad.

Name: Great Responsibility - Grants: +4
When someone calls out to you for help, you can hear it no matter how far away you are, and you know exactly how they feel.

Name: Helpline - Grants: +3
(Requires Great Responsibility) People whose problems you could potentially solve will sometimes instinctively know to pray to you about them. They won't necessarily know anything else about you, or recognize you as the same being they prayed to. You won't necessarily know what their problem is or how to solve it.

Name: Divine Mantle - Grants: +6
(Requires Helpline and at least one of: Very Distinctive, They'll Know) For every prayer you answer, it becomes permanently more apparent to everyone who perceives you that you are a power beyond reckoning, limitless in potential, greater than any god whose domain is bounded by a single knot of worlds. You cannot turn this off. At higher levels, this ability begins to broadcast more and more detail regarding how you feel about answering prayers and how the attributes of the prayer and the petitioner affect those feelings.

Name: Mood Ring - Grants: +2
(Requires at least two of: A Thousand Ships, Angelic Tones, Emerald Orbs, Perfect Hair, Size Difference, Dressing Room, Like Roses, Well Endowed) Your appearance powers will advertise your feelings and reactions. You might shrink in fear; your eyes might glow red with anger; your laughter might be literally musical. You cannot turn this off or adjust it.

Name: Very Distinctive - Grants: +3
(Requires at least three of: A Thousand Ships, Angelic Tones, Emerald Orbs, Perfect Hair, Size Difference, Dressing Room, Like Roses, Well Endowed) You cannot successfully disguise yourself to anyone who has met you in your normal identity. Even someone who has only seen you at a distance or heard about your style might notice similarities.

Name: Flashy - Grants: +2
(Requires Very Distinctive and at least five of: A Thousand Ships, Angelic Tones, Emerald Orbs, Perfect Hair, Size Difference, Dressing Room, Like Roses, Well Endowed, Mysterious Allure) Stealth just doesn't work for you. If someone has any opportunity to notice your presence, they will.

Name: Moodier Ring - Grants: +2
(Requires Mood Ring, A Thousand Ships, Angelic Tones, Emerald Orbs, Perfect Hair, Size Difference, Dressing Room, Like Roses, and Hollow Leg) Your appearance powers will work together to advertise your feelings and reactions. Some of these effects might be subtle; many will be the opposite. Anime sweatdrops are not out of the question.

Name: Secret Identity - Grants: +2
When you're at home, in your world of origin, your powers are fully concealed. Unfair advantages are withdrawn and inhuman features are hidden. Powers of safety and convenience still work, as long as they can remain plausibly deniable, but to all outward appearances you're back to being your ordinary self with no magic to speak of. (If you take this with They'll Know, the standards for plausible deniability will be much more restrictive and fewer powers will be able to work with them, but safety powers will still work and still conceal themselves.)

Name: Selective Memory - Grants: +3
Pick between three and ten of your chosen powers and drawbacks. You forget that they were ever offered to you, and all evidence that you took them is erased. You still have them, but you no longer remember what they are. It is possible to rediscover them later by observing them in action, but it might take a while to pin down exactly what they were. It's up to you whether or not to list this drawback among them.

Name: The Veil - Grants: +5
(Requires Selective Memory) You forget that these powers were ever offered to you, and all evidence that you chose them is erased. You still proceed to your Destination as normal, but without any explanation for why you were suddenly transported to another world, if you chose to travel to one. It is still possible to discover your powers by observation, but pinning down the details could turn out to be quite the project.

Name: Dramatic Damsel - Grants: +3
When (and only when) an opportunity for a really great story arises, powers that ordinarily protect you from things like getting hurt, being drugged, or losing fights will slip just enough to facilitate someone getting the better of you. The power may reassert itself right away for a dramatic escape, or keep a loophole open or a handicap in place long enough to make your escape more difficult and elaborate. (Combining this with Realism is not recommended.)

Name: Love Is A Battlefield - Grants: +5
(Requires Dramatic Damsel) You can never have a perfect defense against your love interests. Though your defensive powers may hinder them, they can always find a way through. This applies to anyone you're romantically interested in, and to anyone chosen for you by Fated Lovers. As your relationship with them intensifies, your defenses lower further where they're concerned. Breaking up with them has no effect on your vulnerability.

Name: Seen With The Heart - Grants: +3
(Requires Love Is A Battlefield and Selective Memory) To the extent that you're vulnerable to someone through Love Is A Battlefield, they also have unusual insight into powers you possess that you may not be aware of. Taking They'll Know strengthens this effect.

Name: Green With Envy - Grants: +6
People are so eager to be your friend that they become bitter and vindictive when denied the opportunity. You can tear apart long-established friend groups if you aren't careful to give everyone equal attention, and sometimes even then. This effect is particularly harsh around people you're dating.

Name: You Ruin Them - Grants: +3
Once someone has dated, slept with, or even shared a deep and longing glance across a room with you, their heart is never fully satisfied with anyone else. Other relationships pale in comparison to what they could have, or imagine they could have, with you.

Name: Jilted Lovers - Grants: +4
When you break up with someone, they become monomaniacally obsessed with getting back together. If you take Realism, this will absolutely escalate to violent stalking.

Name: The Crazy Train - Grants: +6
Powers that you should be able to control directly or influence by your mood and preferences (like Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, Emerald Orbs, or What's In A Name) instead answer only to the narrative, which is still using your aesthetics but might not necessarily have your best interests in mind. Combines... interestingly... with Realism.

Name: That's How It Goes - Grants: +3
(Requires Secret Identity and The Crazy Train) Rather than being confined to when you're in a specific universe, the power suppression from Secret Identity operates on the same narrative sensibility that drives your voluntary powers: some or all of your powers may be suppressed whenever the story demands it, and return later at an appropriate time. This can synergize with Dramatic Damsel to make your interludes as a damsel significantly more dramatic.

Name: Live The Role - Grants: +4
(Requires That's How It Goes and Selective Memory) Your memories, including but not limited to memories of your own powers, may be altered or suppressed at the discretion of the narrative. In general, the story will usually let you have your memories back eventually; if you take It Gets Better, you can be sure that you will someday recover anything you've lost that you would want to regain.

Name: Marionette - Grants: +3
(Requires The Crazy Train and Love Is A Battlefield) To the extent that you're vulnerable to someone through Love Is A Battlefield, they also gain direct influence over the use of your powers.

Name: They'll Know - Grants: +8
This drawback lifts the veil that discourages people from realizing how your powers affect the world around them and their own minds. Warning: this knowledge can cause a lot of trouble.

Name: Realism - Grants: +20
Give up your metanarrative protection. Although your individually selected powers still work as described, the invisible synergies that protect you from, say, gaining violent stalkers through Mysterious Allure or being genuinely traumatized by your Tragic Backstory are removed. Additionally, though effects like I Can Fix Them still operate, they may take considerably more effort, care, thought, and narrative investment on your part.

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That's a lot of power plants!

...She doesn't like what it implies about her, that her dreaming mind came up with these ideas. Some are just nonsensical, dream logic or completely lack of logic, but some make her imagine real people who would want them, or at least would enjoy dreaming of having them. Feather doesn't want to be those people.

But she shouldn't waste the dream on complaining! She'll just dismiss those quickly.

 

Ships. Nobody else can ever be more beautiful than you? You are an ideal that can't be improved on?! She doesn't ever want for other people not to be better than they are! If they're better than her then so much the better for everyone!!

Emerald orb, Perfect hair, Size difference, (un)Dressing room. Perfect eyes, hair, height... clothes? Lack of clothes? What kind of person seeks epic magic power so they don't have to get dressed in the morning? Anyway she thinks feathers are superior to clothes and she takes professional pride in getting her eyes and height just right all by herself, she's not going to magic it right like some wizard.

Breathe easy, ugh, no. She does not want to stop being a living, breathing creature like, like some horrible undead! Who would want that?!

Pacifist. Fights that never happen to you probably happen to someone else instead. She has a duty to protect the Forest and she's not going to shirk it.

Making ends meet / Motherlode / Daydream. Money is really an Outsider thing and anyway she can pull arbitrary items from her pocket including gold, so she doesn't need this.

Dragon Fairy Elf Witch. You can be(come) a descendant of anyone? Even if it makes no sense??? (This part indeed makes no sense, but that's what it says!)

Is that, like, finding out you were adopted, because Feather does not want to find out she's adopted.

Anyway she wants no part of becoming a dragon-fairy-elf-witch-slug-tree-owl hybrid aberration. It's unnatural! Says so right there! Why would anyone sane want to find out they're unnatural (and make no sense)! Witches aren't even a species!

Snowglobe. She can... become a sorcerer? Or something? Why is there a power that gives you some other power later without knowing in advance what it will be? She'll stick to the powers that say what they will actually do.

Unleash the Magic. It sounds like it would be fun; it says any power 'can be yours', not 'will be yours', she double-checked. But it has horrible prerequisites. And she wants to keep learning new things, and gaining abilities the normal way, and always having the option to skip that in the back of her mind sounds like it would be terribly stressful to anyone who isn't perfectly virtuous.

The Great Equalizer, Star-Straightened. She lives on Golarion already! Also the last time Fate shattered was really terrible for everyone and the last thing she wants is to repeat it everywhere she goes.

My ears are burning: it sounds like she'd have to become some very strange kind of creature that she can't even imagine yet and she's very much not ready for it!

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"There's lots of kinds of people so it makes sense that some of the powers don't work for you.

"As for Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, what that power actually does is that it lets you gain any sorts of abilities or features that other beings have for yourself, in some worlds the ability to be a witch is something people inherit. It isn't much like finding out you're adopted it's just discovering new ways you can be and new things you can do.

"Snowglobe is really for people who expect to visit a bunch of different worlds or a lot of different places and keep setting new abilities as they go.

"If you think a power would be an unpleasant temptation it sounds like a good choice not to take it.

"My Ears Are Burning is only good for certain very specific people I'm not surprised you're not one of them."

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"...obviously there's lots of kinds of people? You do realize I'm a druid?" Feather is nonplussed enough to forget for a moment the squirrel is a weird figment of her imagination.

"If the powers were really made for all the different kinds of people, I'd be lucky to find just one or two that worked for me! They seem like they were mostly made for humanoid people. Who wear clothes. I haven't looked at most of them yet, though, just the berries."

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"I don't really know specifically what you mean when you say you're a druid. I can guess based on the shape of this dream that it might mean you're particularly attached to nature somehow but I don't know much else unless you tell me.

"As for the powers being best suited to humanoid people who wear clothes; I think that's very true of the appearance powers. Most of the powers aren't appearance powers though."

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A promising fun-powers dream became a weirder dream about trying to imagine people who'd want some very weird powers, and is now becoming an explanation of druidism (to a pink squirrel). By the time she's done the berries will probably be gone and something entirely new will be happening instead.

This is objectively a very silly complaint because even lucid dreams aren't really controllable or predictable in the long term, and don't have very consistent stories, and she should just enjoy it in the moment.

Which suggests she should ignore the squirrel and eat the berries quickly before they disappear! Or maybe casting Goodberry would help preserve them. But Feather feels strangely reluctant to be that... impolite? Uncooperative?

"Being a druid means caring equally for all of nature, even silly pink squirrel figments of my own imagination. It also means learning to understand other people so well I can become like them." Behold: she is an owl! (And can still speak, even though she hasn't mastered that in real life yet, because this is her dream and she knows it, and the dream had better remember it too.)

"I don't need powers that change what I look like. I'd rather take the time to do it right, myself."

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"Oh wow, that's cool, what a neat thing to be able to do. It also sounds like a very cool sort of person to be."

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It is!!!

Berries: still there. Back to work! Looking at them feels almost soothing, like learning about new varietals.

 

Some of the powers are definitely great, she'll pick those.

Just a little longer. Everyone gets so tired sometimes that they can't carry on and would be letting down their friends in the fighting-line if they weren't quite so nice or understanding about it. Well no more.

Immunity system. Appropriate druid powers, yes please!

Battle angel/demon/maiden. Feather doesn't have any stupid misconceptions that would ever make her not want to survive and win a fight she's in. Maybe people in Nirvana don't need these powers, or little children who haven't had to fight for their lives yet.

Omniglot. Doesn't that mean 'all-eating', from omni + glottis, like in the word 'glutton'? If she takes this power she'll find out!

Anything You Can Do. Become Wiser quicker! Learn everything Old Oak can teach her in a human lifetime! Finally figure out Old Hoot's hardest riddles!!!

Indelible. Nobody likes magical fear effects.

It Gets Better. Maybe there are people out there who'd choose It Can Get Worse as an expression of their ultimate feminine self but Feather definitely isn't one of them.

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The squirrel makes small noises of agreement. "I'm glad some of the powers make you excited."

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Others are also tempting, but a bit problematic:

Pocket dimension. Pull arbitrary objects out of her pocket! No more hunting blameless people she can't even eat because their body provides a vital spell reagent! Except it apparently requires her to become unable to ever get dirty or wet or - a real part of the world and not an illusion painted on top - she's really conflicted about this one.

Personal hygiene. Always be clean? Not very natural, but being clean is a natural state, so... fine, she doesn't need to dream of going to the toilet while regretting her choices.

Like roses - alright, no, that's overdoing it a bit? She can get smells the normal way, by becoming a creature that smells like that. Skip that one.

Angelic tones. She doesn't want an unnatural vocal range! But she does want a beautiful voice, just - a realistically beautiful one. 'Supernaturally' beautiful doesn't mean un-natural, right, it's only as beautiful as a nymph? She'll take it.

Hollow Leg, Inner Strength. Uh, sure? They sound like constant enhancement spells, if not as powerful as the real Bull's. (Feather does not have a reference for 'construction equipment' other than a mage casting stone shape, but she can already become as strong as a ram and doesn't scrape her knuckles when punching something, and she hasn't even practised punching!)

Lightfoot. Hello, Feather's subconscious mind? Have you been asleep for the last two years? She already knows how to cross a field of snow without leaving a claw print, and soar through the air instead of falling! Standing on a slender branch without bending it will be a nice trick for when she learns to become a giant owl, though. She takes it.

Closed Book. Yes, unless it blocks telepathy, in which case absolutely no way. She'll ask about that.

Iron Will. It's technically a kind of putting herself outside of Nature, just like never getting dirty, but also she doesn't want to be traumatized! This might be better if it was a bit more selective, but it's definitely net good already.

 

"You said you could design custom powers. Can I get the magical component pouch but without the part where I can't get dirty anymore? I don't think being unable to get dirty or dishevelled is very aesthetic, it's like pretending you're not really there. And can I have Closed Book but allowing telepathy, like Iron Will does?"

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"Dressing Room doesn't mean you can't get dirty it only applies to what you're wearing. Also when a power says dramatic it kinda means at any moment when you'd strongly want the power to work another way.

"Angelic Tones won't make your voice sound a way you wouldn't want it to. It just means you have more options.

"Inner Strength is pretty strong. It also means you mostly don't get physically tired regardless of what you're doing.

"If you specifically don't want Dressing Room to keep your outfits intact and looking good I can remove that part. Like I said before though it isn't as absolute as it sounds.

"Iron Will's bit about allowing specific exemptions also applies to Closed Book if you take it. If you want the exemptions without Iron Will though I can do that though."

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"...I want my clothes to be able to get dirty too, not just me. When I'm wearing clothes. Or my pouch to be wet, or whatever. I don't want to go around having to - strongly want to be dirty, I just want to be normal. So yes, please remove that. And then I can just - not use Dressing Room."

The not getting tired is nice but she already has Lesser Restorations to spare. Still, a useful minor power.

"And I do want to take Iron Will, but if I run out of points and don't then I'll want the exception to Closed Book."

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Name: Dressing Room - Cost: 
You can use any quiet moment to yourself to quick-change your clothes, shoes, nails, and hairstyle into a completely new look. (You cannot change your hair length or colour this way without Perfect Hair, but you can braid or style it.)

Name: Closed Book - Cost: 1 ☐
You're immune to any supernatural, pharmaceutical, or other effect that would let people directly read your thoughts or feelings. (You can choose to allow specific effects like communicative telepathy on a case-by-case basis.)

"I changed the two powers like you asked. I removed the entire outfit protection effect from Dressing Room. If you wanted some of it I can change it again."

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"That's great, thanks!"

 

And finally, there's a grab bag of things Feather doesn't particularly want but seem good, so she'll take them instead of overthinking it as long as she doesn't run out of points.

What's in a name. She doesn't know any true name magic but she has heard of the concept; it's a fae thing, right?

Gloryseeker. Skydiving is more of a falcon thing? And she'd rather heal herself than get dramatic scars. Still, it can't hurt.

Soulbound. She doesn't really have tools she relies on like that? It would be nice, probably, but it's very expensive and she'll only take it if she has points left.

Personal space. Isn't winning in fights enough? If someone 'touches' her and she doesn't want them to she can... fight them about it? Why are unwanted hugs and rape in the same category? Whatever, this one probably isn't that important.

Well endowed: the right figure is definitely 'well-rounded'! It doesn't bounce so much as it hops, and it's covered in feathers. She imagines an hourglass owl, and laughs. Well, she can become any figure she wants already (*), but being elegant and graceful is always good!

 

And all that was just the berries - she still has all the flowers to go through! (If she picks a flower-power does she have to literally pick it? She doesn't want to pick all the pretty flowers!)

How many points was all that, anyway? Counting them is going to be such a chore. Why is she dreaming about laboriously adding up berries like in math class.

...actually, wait a minute. This is her dream. Who says she has to do anything? Feather waves a hand, and vines arrange themselves into neat numbers.

Great: 24. Problematic Merely Good: 7. Grab-bag: 6.

 

(*) Within the range of natural variation. Novel human(oid) figures not included. Yet.

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"Personal space operates on your understanding of intimate touch. If hugs aren't intimate for you then it won't stop people from hugging you and if for example touching another part of you is intimate then that would be covered."

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"Alright." On to flower power!

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In general, effects that describe others' reactions (like their attention being drawn to you by Mysterious Allure, or their sympathy being provoked by Tragic Backstory) operate on a metanarrative rather than a causal level. They are not mind control, and are not blocked by effects that block mind control.

In other words, they're not mind control, they just happen anyway, don't worry your pretty little head about it.

Frankly, that doesn't sound like someone worried about using mind control. It sounds more like something someone would say who wanted to bypass mind-control protections, so they made up a new name for what they were doing that was totally not mind control, honest!

Feather's not some kind of radical who thinks excessive Charisma is really the same as enchantment, but. BUT. People are fascinated by you? They cannot be bored of you? They always see how right you are about philosophy (i.e. what is Good and Evil)? They are always friendly, regardless of anything you do, maybe even if you hurt them?

Evil people would probably take these, and maaaaaybe some Chaotic ones who were sufficiently thoughtless about it, but Feather is going to stay far far away from any flower that even smells funny. Mind control is something you use on enemies, not friends, and she's already getting powers that let her beat any enemies in a straight fight.

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And so, some flowers she can dismiss in short order:

Mysterious Allure, Captive Audience. Mind control bad.

Blackout Binge. She is not a Caydenite and does not think 'responsible' is swearword.

Disney Princess. What kind of person thinks it's fine to mind-control animals but only if they're Small? Who even wants a universal mind-control effect that can't be turned off, even if you're trying to hunt and eat the cute little animal in question? Even normal Evil people like alraunes don't do that!

Where The Heart Is, Cotton Candy, Musical Number. All of these are various amounts of cool, but they require mind control, so: hard pass. (She wonders if they work through the mind control, making everyone sing and have a 'happy', mind-controlled ending?)

Generosity, Helpfulness, Cuddle Buddies, Flattery, Quality Time. If you can't make the kinds of friends you want, that is sad and tragic and does not entitle you to mind control your friends into being 'better'. Honestly!

...alright, she's being unfair. All alignments are equally valid, it only makes sense for a fifth of the powers to be blatantly Evil ones. The squirrel already told her the powers weren't personalized for her. She'll just move on, and not get all worked up and indignant about it.

An awful lot of the flowers seems inclined to Evil, though. Just look at these:

Agree to Agree. You can always convince your 'friends' that something is Good or Evil because you say so! 

Inspirational. People who hurt you always come to realize they were wrong. Because you are a selfish bastard moral paragon of perfect virtue, and it is definitionally impossible for hurting you to ever be justified, and so it is vital that in addition to being guaranteed to lose the actual fight where they try to hurt you, they will really, really regret it.

Before Your Eyes. Alright, that's a more normal kind of Evil mind control, but she'll still pass.

Sorry About That. Truly loving you means being extremely forgiving. (Imagine being the kind of person who anticipates needing this.)

Tragic Backstory. You become literally irreedemable. Which is apparently a good desirable thing, if some people are willing to pay eight points and have a tragic past to get it. Ugh.

...some people just don't understand what Good is, do they?

Famous. People who you never met (and probably never will) develop presumably unrequited crushes on you! Poor people? No, lucky you, apparently! Ick.

Whew. That's finally over and she can start picking over the non-Evil flowers.

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"If mind control isn't something you want there are Leaves that prevent any of your powers from working by directly changing people's minds."

Two leaves break off from their normal place and float in front of her.

Name: Incomplete - Grants: +5 ☐
About half of people you encounter will be immune to all mind-affecting aspects of your powers, and about half of those who remain will see reduced effects. You can do nothing to change this.

Name: Nullified - Grants: +1 ☐
(Requires Incomplete) Any aspects of your powers that would affect the minds of others in ways they might not like will instead not do that. This can make many of your powers less effective.

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Oh right, there are also the leaves, she hasn't looked at those yet.

"If I take both of those, then... I'll still be mind-controlling people, but only in ways they don't mind? And if someone objects to mind control on principle, they won't be controlled at all? I don't like that either, to be honest, especially almost all of these are constant effects and not something I can choose when to use. Maybe somewhere out there someone wants to - become more comfortable with cuddles - but it sounds pretty niche."

"There may be other reasons I haven't thought of not to do it. I don't like putting so much weight on - the way the powers work outside my control, the 'metanarrative' thing - there could be a philosophical argument or someone's personal preference I'm not accounting for."

"But - I think my most fundamental objection is - mind control is what you use on enemies. Not friends. It's silly to have complicated arguments about consensual, beneficial mind control, when you can instead just not do any of it. We have a lot of complicated arguments in my ethics classes," because it's so much fun, honestly, "but the first lesson is that you shouldn't do that in real life." And it wouldn't really be fun even in a dream.

"And I'm sure there's better ways to get what we want - or, what I want - some of the other flower powers look really good, actually! I'm just going to pass on this bunch, instead of trying to fine-tune it." She nods decisively.

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"The powers you're talking about aren't just changing people's minds they also manipulate coincidence so you find yourself in certain situations more or less often and so things happen in the right ways to make their outcomes more likely. It's fine if that isn't the sort of power you want but I do want to make sure you understand how the powers actually work."

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"So if I took Nullified, all these things would still happen a lot of the time, but by - coincidence? I don't really understand how... well, no, I suppose I do, if you think lots of things can happen, they're just very unlikely. It's more likely that - people won't expect me to ever grow or change because I'm traumatized - than that I will literally never losing a fight. I just - "

Feather tries to figure out why she seems to be so invested in arguing against it. Why is it even a matter of arguing? As if there's an objectively right choice to be made, and not simply - what she wants?

"I'd feel like I'm making excuses," she decides. "That if I take any of these, I have to defend my choice, because it's a useful power or because I don't understand something or it's fine actually if we modify it a bit. I don't want powers that I have to make excuses for, even if they're just to myself. You said the powers were for - being my best self. So I don't want these ones. I want to make real friends, not to have a power for it."

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"That makes sense. And yes these powers are to help you live your best life."

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Here's another bunch of flowers!

 

Best(est) Friend. She has one of those already!!!

Ascended Being. Does she want Greystripe to give her cleric spells? Uh... maybe? Since cleric spells are generally useful, and stuff?

Would Greystripe want to be a god, though? It's certainly not a decision she's going to make without talking to him. 

Anyway, it sounds like it would only apply to a new companion created by taking the previous powers, and she is not going to, what, call someone she never even met yet her new best friend? Ugh, no.

Transformer. Huh. Can she - use this to make a... tool... which is also a demigod granting her spells... that is not a person - if it's possible for a god not to be a person - or at least not one who tries to be her friend and replace Greystripe? Worth asking about.

"Ms Squirrel? Can you tell me more about how Transformer works? Do I get to choose? I don't really have a tool or weapon that I'm already very attached to." She has her staff, because every druid has a staff or club as a kind of badge of office, but she doesn't actually use it that much. Maybe she can make it into a super-spellstaff.

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"Yes, you get to choose with Transformer. If you choose to have it just have a tool or vehicle form it still has all the other parts of the Best Friend perk and if you choose Bestest friend it gets all the parts of that too. For a tool or vehicle that would mean it would have special abilities a normal one wouldn't have and you could choose what those are."

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"But would it have to be a person, and not just a - magical tool?" That is indeed the text's plain reading, but she is holding out hope.

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"It would yes."

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Sigh. "Obviously I'm not going to create a new person magically bound to be my friend and to love me unconditionally. I can't even commit to being their friend since I haven't met them yet!" 

More discarded flowers.

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Backchannel: when you're talking to someone and you think you might not be getting through to each other, you can take a step back, look deep into your heart, and really try to understand where they're coming from, and it will just work

On the one hand, this sounds wonderful. Understanding other people is core to druidism. Having them also understand you is - possibly beyond the power of all but the greatest archdruids.

On the other hand, having it 'just work' sounds... cheap? Instead of years of hard work, studying at the feet of the masters, proving herself worthy -

Feather is aware that this is very silly. Understanding is the goal, the rest is just the price that she pays. If everyone could truly understand each other, the world would be enormously better. Sharing the end result of understanding is not at all the same as sharing the secret teachings the druids used to gain it.

But at the same time, it feels wrong somehow. Not against Good, or druidism, but against her own sense of aesthetics. 

It's silly to want important things to be hard to get. But she likes being rewarded for her hard work and talent. She likes having a sense of pride and accomplishment, and she can't have it if everything just happens by magic.

She doesn't feel that way about pulling arbitrary things out of her pocket, or never losing fights. Fighting people and finding spell components are unpleasant but necessary tasks. Maybe if she was a craftsman she'd hate Pocket Dimension. But she's a druid, and so what she thinks she might hate is - being useful to the world, to her community, only because she a convenient unique magic power, and not because of any personal talent or commitment or hard work.

(Could she even keep leveling as a druid if learning to understand other people isn't hard work anymore?)

 

Feather tries to explain all this to the Squirrel.

"I'm not sure what I want changed about the power, exactly. But - I do want it to be possible to understand others. I don't mind being better at it. But it shouldn't 'just work', it should be - more difficult, or require more work, or a lot of time, or be able to fail, I shouldn't get to just - snap my fingers and understand anyone." Because if I do that, what am I even for?

"...maybe I'm worried too much and the power already does that. I could interpret the text to mean it already does that, it says 'really try' and so on. But - this is really important to me" apparently! "so I wanted to be very sure."

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"In this case you're right the power does just work. I'll have to think about how to change it. If you do have more specific ideas let me know otherwise I'll just try to use my best judgement based on what you've already said."

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Everything she can think of sounds like 'my power makes doing this twice as easy and fast as it was yesterday' and this still feels like fundamentally the wrong kind of thing.

Maybe - "what if it helps me explain myself to other people, like it already does, and then I can sort of explain to them how to explain themselves to me?"

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"The way the power shows you how to explain yourself is based on understanding their perspective. I don't think I can really untangle those parts. I did have an idea though."

A flower blooms in midair in front of Feather.

Name: The Path to Understanding - Cost: 3 ☐
When you're trying to understand another person or make yourself understood, you can always make progress towards understanding them and how sincere they're being towards you if you keep trying and keep communicating with them. The same is true of working towards finding a way to say what you want to say that they'll understand. This process goes faster if they want to understand you and be understood by you.

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Oh, she likes this one! It doesn't say anything about how long it takes or how hard she has to work or even how obvious it is what she has to do. It just promises she will, eventually, reach understanding.

Maybe she won't keep at it long enough because the world is full of other things she could be doing and other people she could be trying to understand. Maybe the person she's trying to understand is busy or doesn't like her and simply won't stick around long enough, or won't talk to her, making her task too hard and drawn-out to be practical. But it will at least be possible, and easier if it's mutual, and - that's all she really wants.

"I'll take that. And - thank you. I think this is a really good power. Or - I guess I'm trying to say it's a very important power to me, and I'm glad I'll have it."

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"Yay! I'm glad it's really good when powers help with the things that are important to you in ways that feel right."

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Onward!

You Can Teach Better. On the one hand, of course she wants to be a better teacher. On the other hand, someone being able to learn twenty times faster than normal is fairly absurd. Also, what if someone has the same hangups about learning too quickly and easily as she does?

She expects she can get the speedup reduced if she asks for it, but - it also feels a bit silly not to speed up someone's learning as much as you could, when you're actively teaching them something and they want to learn faster.

She could ask to be able to control the speed, but it feels - like an ongoing obligation and a tiny moral hazard, having to adjust the speed of her teaching to her own understanding of how quickly the student would want to learn, which might not even be the same as what the student would choose if it were up to them, because they might not want to be able to choose. Also, what if she's teaching several people at once?

Hmm. 

 

She's reminded of a lesson new druids are taught. On relating to people, and keeping up ordinary relationships - friendships, family ties, even just saying hi to her neighbours - across a power gap that's only likely to grow. It can be unhealthy and harmful, if you feel you're so much more than most other people that you retreat into impersonality. Druids do need to be impersonal at times, to be proper druids, but they're also still people.

She finally learned to become an owl, but she's not an ordinary owl. She has magic and abilities, and even knowledge and understanding, that even Great Hoot doesn't. She's on track to grow in power and the people closest to her are unlikely to keep up. And so -

 

Some people withdraw into themselves, or keep the company of other druids, or seek out powerful creatures for companionship. Feather thinks of that as - giving up, frankly. She's not going to leave her friends and family behind.

Others try to just - ignore the issue. And this can work, especially if one also makes a clean separation between their lives as druids and their home-life. Feather's vaguely worried this won't work out for her, that she'll end up living in two worlds and half a stranger in each.

Here is a power for teaching her friends anything she has mastered, faster than she learned it so they never fall behind. Put that way, it sounds great. Except she can't (she shouldn't) teach most people to be druids, and she can't teach anyone to have Spirit-granted powers. The people who most directly gain power from knowledge are wizards, and there are no great wizards in the forest. Feather never expected or wanted to become a wizard, it sounds even more distracting for a druid than being a cleric.

Actually...

If you consider them a good friend or otherwise especially close, this applies even to forms of magic that they ordinarily shouldn't be able to learn.

"Squirrel? Could I use You Can Teach Better to teach someone these powers?"

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"That's a good question. The answer isn't a clear yes or no though. The powers I can give you are at a deeper level than magic and so you can't teach people in a way that gives them those powers but with time and effort you would be able to teach people to do something like what your powers let you do. It won't be easy though."

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That is indeed a very unclear answer! 

"What do you mean by 'deeper than magic'? For example, giant owls are telepathic - they're born that way. Could my giant owl friend teach me that and could I teach that to someone else? Or does it only work on normal magic, like, I could learn wizard spells very quickly even if I'm not as cunning as a real wizard?"

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"If how the universe normally works and your powers conflict your powers will always win that argument.

"As for your specific question Anything You Can Do works on things that can be taught. If there's a way for people to learn how to be telepathic you could learn it though it might be harder to learn it from your friend since they didn't learn it themselves. If it can't be taught then you would need a different power to copy that ability."

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There are several ways she can parse that. The most obvious one is - this is a dream, it doesn't work like the real world, why worry? 

And all the other ways to understand that sentence are indeed incredibly worrying, but they're also just impossible. She's not going to - what - be clericed in a way that breaks how the Creation normally works, that's just a contradiction. (And if she were, she wouldn't do anything to break the world. Obviously.) So she'll ignore the dream-logic.

She doesn't know anyone who learned to be telepathic, it's not a druid spell that she ever heard of. So it's probably impossible. But it works on learning, and teaching, anything people can learn, and that's still a lot of things.

She'll take the power. Despite her misgivings, it's too useful to pass up on, even if she's not at all sure yet how she'll end up using it.

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Here are some more weird flowers! They don't seem to be doing mind-control, but they're definitely doing something and it's not something Feather likes the shape of.

Not Like Other Girls. Feather works hard on becoming just like other people! (In certain respects.) And it's nice not to be subject to prejudice, but it seems to be saying she'd be above the law? If somewhere has a law against druids then they'll keep other druids out but mysteriously not her? This is weird and troubling and she's going to pass.

Love Interest / Triangle / Dodeca...something...? People she loves will inevitably like her back? What, even if she tries to prevent it? - that is not the problem here, but. And then, they will leave their existing partner, or break vows of chastity? And there will be 'no serious problems', like, say, someone losing their Lawful alignment? 

Time Enough For Love. Wait, this actually seems... acceptable? You will mysteriously always have time for all your friends? It applies to you, not to them, so it's not mind control at all. She'll take it. (Carefully, and while frowning suspiciously at the 'love' part. These flowers seem to have a very Evil idea of love.)

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Safe at Home. Yes please! Even if it's mind control, it's applied to people who are trying to hurt her through her family, which makes them acceptable targets.

Opting In. Wait, who counts as 'dangerous people'?

 

"Squirrel? What exactly does Opting In do? It says 'dangerous people', not - enemies, or people who want to harm me like Safe at Home protects from. I'm a dangerous people, when I fight someone. And what does 'making myself vulnerable to them' mean, is it about me - choosing to trust someone who's dangerous but not an enemy?"

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"Opting In covers a lot of different situations. Dangerous people could mean enemies but it could also mean friends who are careless or people you care about but don't have good intentions. Making yourself vulnerable can mean trusting them but it can also mean bringing yourself to their attention or trying to fight them secretly without a guarantee you'll stay secret. At the core it means that if anyone reacts in a dangerous way to the things you do the consequences will focus on you and other people who similarly decided to take those risks."

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"So if... my friend is careless and I have metaphorically chosen to make myself vulnerable by being their friend... their carelessness won't hurt other people who are not their friends?" That is so weird.

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"A better way of putting it would be that if you brought your careless friend somewhere they wouldn't have otherwise gone the consequences of that will avoid people there who don't make a similar choice to risk that carelessness."

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"I don't really understand how you could make that happen, though? I guess it's like the fighting powers, they also promise some things will definitely not happen. Does that mean the Spirit will be... sort of following me and intervening if my careless friend is about to hurt someone? I can imagine how someone could interfere to help me in a fight but I don't really understand it for the more - general powers."

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"I can't say exactly how it'll work because it depends on the situation and a bunch of other factors. I already mentioned that your powers will manipulate coincidences and little things around you. And if you don't take nullified your powers will have the option of directly changing people's minds to make it happen."

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Feather looks dubiously at the two leaves the squirrel indicates.

Incomplete: about half of people you encounter will be immune to all mind-affecting aspects of your powers, and about half of those who remain will see reduced effects. You can do nothing to change this.

Nullified (requires Incomplete): any aspects of your powers that would affect the minds of others in ways they might not like will instead not do that. This can make many of your powers less effective.

"So the only way not to mind control my friends is not to mind control my enemies either? Would that affect any of the powers I already chose?" She discarded all the mind control ones she could find, but she could have missed something. The most obvious things that might rely on mind control are the fighting powers where it's fine, and... probably Personal Space? Unless -

"Do all the powers that make me immune to something use mind control? Like Indelible - does it make my thoughts impossible to affect, or does it mind control other people into not affecting my thoughts? Does Path to Understanding mind-control people into understanding me better?"

Looking for a way everything can be done with mind control is weird. Maybe that's how people who actually use mind control think all the time.

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"Indelible doesn't use mind control and neither does Path to Understanding, unless you count helping to guide your thoughts in the right direction as mind control. Certain berry powers like Personal Space might use mind control if coincidence manipulation would have to be exceptionally blatant to prevent something but under most circumstances coincidence manipulation is enough. The main exception there is Pacifist it should really have been represented by a flower, sometimes it needs to change the world in very dramatic ways to work and that can mean changing people. The flower powers tend to rely more on mind control but to differing degrees." 

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"So I can avoid all powers that sometimes mind control people and not take Personal Space or Opting In. Or I could take Nullified, and then they would mostly work but fail occasionally. And they might still do mind control... a quarter of the time, if the target 'wouldn't mind it', which sounds fine if a bit suspicious."

"...are there 'mind-affecting powers' that aren't mind control? Like - an aura of fear or something? Is this about the powers where people think you're pretty or fall in love with you?"

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"Personal Space and Opting In are meant as guarantees so they'll still work even if you take Nullified. They just might work in stranger ways. The way Nullified chooses whether to allow mind control is that it checks whether someone would, upon being told the complete and accurate truth about a power without being under the effects of mind control would agree to have that power change their mind. I could also make a version of Nullified and Incomplete that didn't include people you consider enemies but it wouldn't give you as many points. As for distinctions between mind control powers and mind effecting powers you didn't seem to be making a distinction like that so I'm not either. If there is a distinction like that you want to make I can try to explain where any given power lies."

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This is frankly becoming too complex to keep track of, but Feather gamefully tries to re-summarize her options.

1. Don't take Personal Space, Opting In, or Nullified. 

2. Take all of them, but then there's a bit of mind control.

3. Take them with a modified version of Nullified, so there's straightforward mind control of enemies and rare, sneaky, counterfactually-consensual mind control of non-enemies.

This is once again starting to feel like an advanced Ethics class she hasn't taken yet and doesn't trust herself to answer in, but she has the rule from Ethics 101 to guide her, namely: err on the safe and simple side! 

So, option 1 it is. Unless - 

4. Don't take Personal Space or Opting In, but do take the modified version of Nullified, just in case there's some sneaky mind-control somewhere else that she misses.

This is more complex but arguably safer, so maybe she should take it?

 

"...I think I'll come back after I look over all the powers. In case there's something else that I really want to take with Nullified."

(This is the other rule from Ethics 101: answer all the simple exam questions before circling back to the hard ones!)

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...actually the very next two flowers are about dubiously helpful mind control! Why did she think she could escape the mind control, clearly that was silly of her. Maybe she should start discarding powers more quickly instead of overthinking so much.

 

I Can Fix Them. Definitely mind control, and even more importantly, she doesn't love or want to love morally despicable people!! Who would ever want something like that - oh right, Shelynites.

Moving right along to -

I Can Help Them. This looks like someone was offered I Can Fix Them and said, that's great, except can you please take the mind control and explicit moral despicableness out of it? And now it's all safe and consensual except for the 'lost to darkness' bit being irritatingly vague. 

Feather considers asking the Squirrel what it means, but then she realizes - being able to redeem people by loving them would be a moral obligation to love them. And she does not want to love people who are 'lost to darkness,' or whatever other euphemism someone comes up with. She can be friends with them, maybe. But she loves admirable people, not - bad people who can only become admirable because of her.

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Skipping Inspirational (blatant mind control), the next three raise a similar concern.

True Love's Kiss, Eternal Love, The Rescuer. On the one hand these are awesome. On the other hand they're kinda pressuring her into loving (or True Loving) people again? If her best friend - if Greystripe dies, would she feel obliged to develop romantic feelings for him to bring him back? What if he's 'only' cursed? 

"Squirrel? Is there a way to make some of these powers work for close friends and not only - romantic love interests? Like family love, say. I would take I Can Help Them or the Rescuer if it would work on friends but if it's only for romantic love it makes me feel - pressured to romantically love more people. I think I wouldn't be pressured to be friends with more people, because if I'm not already friends with them, I probably don't care that much about helping them."

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"I Can Help Them is one of the Spirit's Favorite powers so it works pretty broadly. Generally when a power refers to love unless it specifically says True Love it means anyone you deeply care about, not just people you're pursuing a romance with. So I Can Help Them and Eternal Love already work on friends. The Rescuer is even broader than that. It works on anyone you want to return to life, as long as they would be okay with that, no matter how you feel about them. If you're only concerned with friends and family Eternal Love does everything the Rescuer does. True Love's kiss only applies to people who count as your True Love though, since it specifically says that.

"Going back to I Can Help Them, the phrase lost to darkness is also really broad. It can apply to people who are doing awful things but it can also apply to people who have gotten trapped in their sadness or in bad habits that are hurting them that they can't seem to break."

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That makes all of them very tempting! She'd still have to - Truely Love someone to break curses, but - Feather thinks having it restricted to that power will make the, um, moral obligation manageable. She wouldn't take it on its own but it's a prerequisite and one she can live with.

The Rescuer having no target restrictions sounds - uncomplicatedly great? It has costs and takes a long time, so it's not as if she's going to be able to wish everyone out of the Evil afterlives and into Nirvana, and really if she can pull stuff out of her pocket that wasn't there she can just go find a powerful cleric and pay them to raise someone, but it's nice to have the guarantee that she'll succeed in - any more complicated cases. (Feather has no idea if anyone is so complicatedly dead that no cleric can raise them. Maybe someone who died very long ago? But she doesn't know anyone like that...)

She takes all four.

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Providential Parenthood seems fine. (Whyyyy does it have a mind-controlling variant. Why does anyone want it for this.)

Next are four different sex powers. And it makes sense some people would want sex powers! She's not sure it's the most important thing to her, but maybe she'll change her mind after having amazing power-enhanced sex! (*)

"Squirrel? Can I take the sex powers if I have Providential Parenthood and not Planned Parenthood?"

 

(*) Druid society becomes very sexually permissive once people get their first Wild Shape.

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"Yes, when a power says it replaces another power it means it counts as it for the purposes of prerequisites."

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Oh good. Feather deliberates for a bit on the sex powers she has to choose one from. Laugh Together sounds like it's maybe for more anxious people? But some of her partners might be anxious? 

In the end she decides to take it over Here For a Good Time. (The other option, Two Become One and Bop It, sounds like a great way to become over-fixated on having sex. Not that she judges people for doing that! But she has a Mission.)

 

The next batch of sex powers is a little more worrying.

The Princess And The Dragon. She appreciates the good intentions, but she's a druid. (Also, have you heard the good news about dragons becoming human-shaped?) She'd rather not cause any... unnatural happenings... in the course of loving someone of another species.

GGG, Before Your Eyes, Reaching Out. Bleh, sex mind control.

Opening Up. What??? Also, no way. She will find a true love (probably) and she will want to do nice things for them and help them become who they want to be and she will not make it so nothing they do can have real consequences.

Fated Lovers, Fated Friends. She will - definitely have a true love eventually? And keep meeting people who'd be good friends? This sounds like a good thing except that it also sounds like endless matchmaking. What if she doesn't want to meet any prospective true loves for the next year. What if she's tired of meeting people who are wonderful and attractive and interested in her and also she is busy fighting a dire weed infestation.

"Squirrel? Can Fated Lovers and Friends be - turned off for a while, or dialed down or something? I don't want it to feel - pushy." It sounds a bit silly but it's a power meant for her to be happy, so she's allowed to be silly if she wants to.

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"Fated Lovers already turns itself off if you're satisfied with your current partners and Fated Friends tends to be subtle. I could still make versions of them that are more controllable though."

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That might work, but Feather doesn't want to make herself - feel temporarily satisfied with her current lack of a romantic partner - to avoid meeting her future soulmate for the first time in a situation where that's deeply inappropriate or distracting or something. 

"Please make the more controllable versions."

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"Alright how about like this?"

Name: Fated Lovers - Cost: 3 ☐

You will meet someone who will go on to become your true love at a time that works for you. If you enter a specific universe with a specific target in mind, you'll meet that person under favourable circumstances, and if it doesn't work out with them, this power will keep introducing you to new possibilities until you find someone who's right for you. If you're the sort of person who can have multiple true loves, you'll keep meeting new ones when the time is right for you until you have enough.

Name: Fated Friends - Cost: 4 ☐

Wherever you go, if you're looking to invite more people into your life, you will be steered into meeting people you'd do well to befriend. It's up to you to recognize and appreciate them.

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"Thank you! That seems much better."

She's actually out of points! There were so many bad powers earlier that she half-expected to reach the end with lots of points left over. Well, she has some low-priority picks she can discard.

 

Sorry About That, Excuse Me, Tragic Backstory. These two are so bad!! She already commented on them earlier but it's really - impressive, how Nature accommodates many different sorts of minds including some that want this and helps them come together into a greater whole.

Sense of Style, Bonus Style Points. Not at all attractive, even ignoring the usual issues of mind-control and so on. Twist the very fate of the universe so that people - who are sexually attracted to her despite being a different species - will spontaneously change species! And 'get their hands on' stuff they can't afford! This is beyond 'that would be wrong' and well into 'that would be silly'.

Like a Mirror. Vaguely interesting, but she's not planning to visit other worlds.

Self-Reflection. Ditto, except -

"Squirrel? Is Self-Reflection only about people from other worlds, like the Mirror power, or does it mean there could be - other mes on Golarion? I'm not sure I want it even then, but it's a - weird idea that I'd like to hear more about."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sometimes there's more than one of the same person on the same world but it's a lot less common."

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"What does it... mean? Just that there's someone who is extremely similar to me, like a twin separately at birth? Or is it somehow more than that?"

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"Two people being the same isn't very much like being twins. Sometimes different versions of the same person are very different on the outside like how you're the same person whether you're shaped like you are now and when you're shaped like an owl. Sometimes the different versions of a person all grow towards thinking the same way and believing the same kinds of things but other times it means people start out that way and then grow in different directions. There's always a point in your life where you match to some point in the other you's life."

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"That's less similar than being twins. At some point in our lives, not necessarily at the same time, we were extremely similar? I guess it would be interesting to meet someone who is or was very like me, but it doesn't feel at all - important." She won't be spending points on that.

Chaser Six When. Feather can maybe imagine herself one day learning to be a group consciousness, but getting it via a power sounds like it would be very confusing. She might have taken it out of sheer curiosity, to play with it a little and see what it was like, but for a high cost - no.

Severance. Wait, that's not about 'other hers', it's about identities in general. She could - uh - gravely and deliberately abandon her life, everything she's ever done, everyone she knows, and become untraceable?

That's probably good for people who have someone really terrible in their life that they want to escape. Feather definitely doesn't want to ever give up on her life.

Popular. Famous. More horrible powers for making 'fans' (not even friends) and giving strangers unrequited crushes.

Undiplomatic Immunity. Lawful is a fine alignment! Feather doesn't want to be the mortal enemy of all the Lawful people in the world! It would be horribly evil for even a Chaotic person to have such a power!

Friends in Low/High Places. Something about powerful and weak people? People with many versus few circles? Anyway, it's about everything being 'natural and intuitive' instead of being learned or requiring Wisdom, so no.

Friends in Strange Places. Reaching out to isolated communities is very important to being a druid! But, again, she doesn't want it to be intuitive, which is a word that means the opposite of understanding something.

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And finally, Vending Machine.

She can... create any person???!!! Including (multiple?) (clones??) of ones who already exist? And anyone she can imagine? And then they can have existed all along???

This is so far beyond not making any sense that it wraps around into making its own weird sort of sense. To wit: someone with this power, and no other, can trivially take over the world and rewrite it in their image.

('I create my imagined god-of-doing-what-I-want, who makes me an arch-cleric! And a million arch-druids, whose fondest dream is to obey me! Who are also ancient dragons! And a race of superpredators specialized in those pesky enemies of mine, because believe me I can imagine some much scarier things than elder dragons! And that's just in the first hour!')

So... why doesn't she want to take this again? Creating new people is morally fraught, and going outside long-tested traditions (laying eggs, awakening animals, with strict guidelines for both cases) is extremely dangerous, and so one shouldn't do that. But normally one doesn't have an opportunity to do that. The temptation beckons, because - she can just... choose to create a person who'd be OK with it and whose existence would be an uncomplicated good, by both their values?

She suspects she is really going to regret asking this, but: "Squirrel? How does Vending Machine work? I can't actually... know, or invent, everything about a person, or anywhere near that really. Realistically speaking, I would only have some general idea. Who would actually - be created?"

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"The Spirit can see a lot of worlds. I don't think it's actually an infinite number but it's a big enough number that it would be hard to talk about. So, if you want a specific kind of person the Spirit can find a person who already exists and matches what you want and use them as the template for creating a new person, maybe with some small changes around the edges."

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"Right, but if I don't actually know most of the details - I don't think I can consciously know most of the details, not even about myself  - how does the Spirit choose?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It chooses based on your preferences and also what shape of person fits in with the narrative that is the story of your life."

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"I'm not sure what that means, but does it mean I can't really choose or - predict it?"

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"I'm not sure what you mean by really choose. The power will only make the people you choose to make and the people the power makes are based on your choices the power is working based on what you want it isn't trying to turn your choices against you or anything.

"As for whether you can predict the outcome of the power, it depends on how much detail you mean. If you don't specify whether the person you're creating likes a particular food you might not be able to predict that detail. The power makes people and people are complicated so I expect you would be able to predict the people the power creates about as well as people you meet that you have similar amounts of information about, probably a little better since the power works in part on your preferences."

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"I suppose there's no other way it could work. I can't know everything about a person - even a real one, never mind someone I just made up - so the power has to make some choices. And making arbitrary people is - morally very complex so I shouldn't do it." 

The Big Oak of her imagination points out that the problem isn't making people who are - bad in some way, or suffering - there are no absolute guarantees against that with children either. The problem is being responsible for anything that goes wrong. If you do everything you can to raise your children right, and they turn out to be shitty adults after all, you can at least part ways. If you create shitty adult people ex nihilo, what then? The lack of strong tradition matters. Do not experiment with morally complex activities.

"I think," she concludes, "there's no ethical way for me to use this to create new people. But I could duplicate existing people - who agree to it - because the power doesn't need to choose anything about them, and it can be their responsibility." She could even duplicate herself, although she still doesn't particularly want to. "Could you make - a version of the power that can only duplicate real, existing people, that I've met, and only when there's no doubt which person I mean? Having a power that can do - tempting but unethical stuff - is a burden and I don't want that aspect of it."

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"I can do that."

A new flower appears in front of her.

Name: Duplicator - Cost: 8 ☐

You can create identical copies of people you've met, including yourself, with all their memories.

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"Nice, thank you!" She can still misuse it horribly but - she can also misuse the power of 'killing people by hitting them on the head'. Feather thinks she can use this new power responsibly.

Aaaaand that's finally it. Except that she doesn't have enough points, so she should probably look over the point-granting leaves before discarding some of her previous picks.

 

...most of them really are curses, whether straightforward ones like Plain Jane or weirder ones like Great Responsibility and Helpline, which gives you the knowledge and attention span of a god but uses it only to make you miserable. Others literally make your life a tragedy - the kind told to an audience - and Feather doesn't like tragedies even as a stories all that much.

Ignoring all those, and the horrible mind-control ones, and the ones where she'd gain points at other people's expense... And the ones with prerequisites she didn't pick... And the ones that belong to some incomprehensible genre that's not even a tragedy... There are a few drawbacks she could live with:

Style of Sisyphus. Not too terrible? But also, not worth it to get a permanent debuff to gain just one point.

Selective Memory. That might be worth it for some passive protection powers! The real downside is that she'd have to go over all her picks again.

The Veil. ...no, it would be far too confusing to live that way. Also, some of her powers need deliberate activation, there won't be any point in having The Duplicator if she takes The Veil to offset its price.

 

They'll Know. She'd actually pay for that if it were a power! She doesn't want to - become something that other people fundamentally cannot comprehend or anticipate, like some Wisdom-eating aberration! She didn't realize it was even an option!!

"Squirrel? I am upset about the fact that my powers would apparently, by default, discourage people from realizing that I have them. That is not something one should do except to enemies." Understanding other people is a good! Feather doesn't want to prevent others from understanding her, let alone from - modeling the world correctly because of it! "If I had enough points and never even looked at these 'drawbacks' I could have ended up like that unexpectedly, and I think I would be justifiably very angry about it."

Giving someone a 'power' like that without their knowledge is, in fact, pretty much enemy action. She'd be angrier if the powers on offer hadn't made it clear that the selection was not in any way optimized for Feather or anyone remotely like her; it makes it possible that this was an honest mistake, but having unexpected broad side effects is the kind of mistake she really really doesn't want.

"Is there anything else like - that, that I should know about these powers? Anything else they do, or that having any of these powers at all does, that's not stated explicitly? I don't want any powers if they might come with side effects I don't even know about."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The veil that discourages people from noticing your powers is part of how your powers protect you from any obvious downsides they might have. Since people being upset about you having strange and incredible abilities is one kind of downside. I understand you being upset though. I will say that I always encourage people to look at the leaf powers even if they're under budget because things that are downsides for one person might be a positive change for another kind of person. Also even without they'll know you can specifically tell people about your powers and then the veil will stop trying to hide those powers from those specific people."

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"I did not at all expect that would happen! I think I need a very complete explanation of what's going to happen that's not part of any specific power. And any part of a power I picked that I may not have noticed. And then maybe I'll ask you to turn some of those things off."

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"The most important thing to remember is that these powers will be yours so they'll only try to protect you from things that you would see or experience as a downside. I also don't know all your thinking about the powers you've taken so I can't tell you what you haven't thought of. If people knowing about your powers wouldn't be a downside then They'll Know won't have much effect it'll just mean some of your powers are showier."