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Mar 22, 2023 9:04 AM
Daémon Fleet characters dropped on The Untamed
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He can keep wondering, because Jiang Cheng is still the one asking questions of them.  

"How much do you know of where you landed?"

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"We - my research team, not these random interlopers - have been aware of you for a few weeks.  'You' in general, not you specifically.  The machine had been calibrated to reliably get your world, but the exact destination of each viewing portal could be as far as a hundred miles apart.  We know that you are a pre-industrial society."

One of his associates had been in charge of figuring out their culture.  He hadn't bothered.  Whatever fumbling attempt they'd managed was going to be corrected once they figured out how to give everyone daemons and technology.

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"We're not random interlopers.  We broke in because you had hostages in your illegal lab and we're arresting you," Azure snaps.  He is going to make sure that the local - whatever a sect leader is - doesn't think that Kerul represents them.  

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"And what about him.  Does he always look like that?"  He nods towards the aforementioned hostage.  

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What's that supposed to mean?

Is he being insulted?  Is he having an allergic reaction to the lotuses that's making his face break out?

Emerimis twists his head around and looks at his human.  "Your eyes are a bit red, but you don't have anything on your face."

To Sect Leader Jiang, Iarlaith says, "I look normal.  Why?"

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"Never mind.

"Can you get back to wherever you came from?"

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"I doubt the machine is usable after being dropped in a lake."

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What other questions stand out.  He should probably figure out their organization.  

"What is a 'Legendary?'"

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Multiple people start answering at once, each starting with different topics. 

"If anyone's the expert on this, I am," Verity reminds them.  

"About one in a hundred-thousand people have daemons which settle as one of seventy unusually powerful forms.  Suicune, the name of the form that Araeneve is, is one of those.  In addition to having a much stronger Barrier and being able to use Moves with more force than non-legendaries can, I can purify water, walk on it, and run unusually fast."

She is tempted to remark on how these are stupid qualifications for who gets to be in charge of the judiciary branch of government, but holds off.  Verity would rather keep this conversation about the provable facts.

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He had in fact been more curious about the political rank that went along with it.  That she is ignoring it means that he probably can too.

"Barriers?  Moves?"

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Alizara can explain!

"There are about a thousand known magical techniques, called Moves.  All daemons have the ability to know and use four moves at any given time.  Different daemons have the potential to learn different subsets of the full list, which mostly correlates to their shape.  They are learned through devices called TMs, but can be done much more slowly through meditation and training.  Each Move does something different.  Some examples... Sunny day creates a long-lasting ball of bright light.  Fire Blast creates a burst of intense flame.  Hypnosis causes whoever is targeted to fall asleep.  Most are useful in combat.  A few can create matter out of nothing.  Others have other useful effects.

"Daemons who are attacked or otherwise should be hurt don't immediately get injured the way that a human would.  They have an energy within them that protects them, at the cost of getting depleted.  We call that a barrier, though it's less of a kind of armor and more built into their physiology. 

"There's also other things which are more inherent and unchanging than Moves, and specific to a given shape.  Salanaya is a Metang, which means she is able to levitate and has a natural immunity to certain kinds of weakening phenomena."

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That is impressive.  He tries to keep this off of his face.  It might make Lotus Pier look weak.  He only partially succeeds - Jiang Cheng has an unusually expressive face.

"That doesn't sound like what we have here.

"Where does the energy they use come from?"

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"That is a very good question!  We only have theories.  It isn't the world around us - we would be able to tell if there was a pool somewhere that got lower whenever someone used Surf to create water.  It also can't be energy from what we eat, because we don't eat nearly enough for that.  The best answer anyone can come up with is that our souls generate it."

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"But it doesn't come from built up resentful energy, the stolen life force of others, or the displaced spirits of the dead?"

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"No.  There are a few techniques that'll leech out energy from an opponent as a form of attack, or let a daemon heal another with their own energy, but they're pretty uncommon.

"I don't know what you mean by resentful energy or displaced spirits."

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It doesn't sound like demonic cultivation, whatever it is. 

"Do you have any of those techniques?"

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The others shake their heads.  None are grass or bug types, so that isn't surprising.  

While they do, Azure considers what to say.  Jiang Cheng is afraid of such moves, though Azure doesn't know why.  Perhaps there's a cultural equivalent he's missing?  Still, it's better to have it be known, if they're going to be stuck here.  

"Florentho knows the move Life Dew, that allows us to give energy to those around us to restore their barrier."

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He relaxes, though this can mostly only be detected through empathy.  That hadn't been the direction he was concerned with. 

"Transferring energy to heal others is something well known and within the canon of proper cultivation techniques."

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"What are cultivation techniques?"

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"Cultivation is the use of spiritual energy, which comes from living things.  We train from childhood to generate and collect this energy and form it into a golden core within ourselves which allows us to better sense and control it as well as giving us access to a regenerating pool of it.  

"Yunmeng Jiang sect is a cultivation sect.  Our primary duties are to train disciples in cultivation and organize night hunts for our cultivators.  Night hunts being the hunting of hostile supernatural entities such as fierce corpses and monsters."

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"We don't have anything like that.  We also don't have fierce corpses or monsters."

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"I wonder if it's possible for our kind of human."

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"If you can gather the energy at all, a skilled cultivator will be able to sense it within a few hours.  You likely won't be very powerful - the later a golden core is formed, the weaker it is."  Though, they wouldn't need to be if their daemons are already useful. 

"Before that, we should deal with him," he gestures towards the captive.  Jiang Cheng also looks suspiciously towards the not-Nie Huaisang.  He's been listening quietly from behind the others, but Jiang Cheng hadn't forgotten about him.  That continues to be unexplained.

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"I don't know what you normally do with criminals here," Azure says.  Or even how that's going to work.  The Fleet hasn't had a foreign nation to have jurisdiction disputes with in 200 years, and his education assumed that it would be more than his entire lifespan before they'd reach their destination.

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"I have dungeons that can hold cultivators."  Most notably demonic cultivators, though not always.  Even those who walk the traditional path can be thieves or murderers.

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