The 'luck' thing. 

And the law of big numbers, yes - the number of guests here seemed sufficiently high, and the appeal of this sort of place for those looking to start relatively fresh is sufficiently up there that there could naively be a decent variety of worthwhile candidates.

True true...

So. 

Someone trans? 

I feel like that could be a bit more comfortable that way! 

Or femme or playful! Lot we can do with that eve nif you girsl really like going with the more somber stuff.

It's not especially clear what exactly the rest of the guests would be getting, but it seems plausible that a number of them are going to be doing similar augmentations? 

We should check that.

Is there some basic description of the trip experience and expectations for those who aren't the guests of honor...? 

There is! Would you like the generic one for this tier of experience or the one on this trip specifically?

...Both?

The typical experience is a cruise ranging from about a subjective half-year to four times that, with a wide variety of destinations - usually somewhat less distinct but more numerous ones in a more compact region, since the theming of this trip is related to 'across the span of the year and cosmos alike, see the star sea!', according to some of the promotional material. 

There's less ontomediation budget for the rest of the guests, and the journeys and powers they have tend to be more limited, due to the practical limitations of how much they can end up on optimized trips for their own affinities and development - analysis was available in advance to ensure some compatibility with the light for this trip, for example, though nearly everyone else will need to be using the house's facilities to mediate the experience into something that they can eventually comprehend. It's also relatively common for additional difficulties around the scheduling of empowerments and the arrangement of it through local organizations in places that tend to have less capacity - often the main attraction for the guest of honor is something that's simply not scaleable or replicable, so other activities are provided in their stead, often more typical tourist attractions aside the empowerments, or simply similar services offered at lower qualities by less experienced practitioners.

There's a disclaimer on one of the pamphlets noting that the specific abilities involved precluded an exact match of abilities and experiences, though it seems like it doesn't make that large a difference to the quality available - especially since a decent chunk of them come for the in-ship entertainment and mixing or have other abilities that facilitate a wide variety of growth opportunities. 

Myth and light will be our most central power aspects, I expect? The rest will be things that we can likely point in a wide variety of directions with a bit of work - the magic of the Summer Empire should be broad enough for anything, and the classic is a resource enough for having that covered. Even beyond that, the rest are more a part of us. I'd reccomend looking into someone most aligned with those, especially considering that will be coming quite soon, it seems. 

Eh. 

't's kinda unclear how much it'd be something that'd be a "You have to see it for yourself" type-shtick? Prob. depends a lot on details in us, and it'd be cool if we chould get more gen stuff that we can interact w/ - there's the cool stuff w/ illusions and shit? Heck, we prob. count as basically ontologically compatible w/ all of the sys's listed, and there's a non-neglible chance that we could pick somma that up just by asking 'round - seems p. plaus. that three-arts-er would want t' come back to the big ass place that practices it to share pointers, or some spirit-augment's here, or somethin'. 

Suppose that's a reasonable enough alternative perspective - though I'd also want to throw in the possibility of something to help with black city socialization? 

There's plenty of options there - including simply trying for someone with their own route twoards building something a bit more proper. 

The question is how much these are especially relevant, when there's other things to balance.

Well.

This is going to be pretty hard anyways, so. 

My thought is that mostly we want to get someone comfortable talking with us regularly? Hell, I bet that we're not exactly the easiest people to get along with, and even the powers that we're starting with will be a perfectly adequate method of empowerment regardless of the starting point. 

- We could just go meet someone now! 

It's not like there's any requirement that we sit here and think this through! The systems already work fine, and it's not like we've already gotten any of those things that could even potentially interfere. 

I mean. 

Yes? 

I stroke my chin, and think. 

Still feels important though. 

There's a few reasons we could conjure. 

For one, setting expectations tends to be a generally productive affair psychologically, aside other concerns. 

I'd also hazard a guess that part of this is also a precommitment mechanism of a sorts? Get the thoughts in place for arrangements to be made from it before there's the additional complications involved. 

It's also just a decent frame for reading onwards and figuring something out for other candidates, perhaps, or just taking the time to have an extra way to appreciate this all. 

And it is reading time.

I stretch out a bit, and yawn softly, then go and drink up some nice lemonade and eat through a few juicy apples. 

No need to keep us hungry for the meet up...

I read through a bit - it's all very interesting reading through case studies of cool mythic empowerment stories and enlightenment things and the nested disambiguation pages of the magic of that the Summer empire uses, but it's not super helpful, though there's definitely some usable information. Mythos can definitely work to pass on things, even things that work a little differently to how you do it - part of how the air-dancers work is the bond of legend with the saremites and their students, as something engraved upon the world that they ought to be able to do, because Sun and Sky trained them right, which seems at least a little encouraging. The evidence for the more mundane stuff is... less clear, though it's rare enough that people stay ordinary around figures of myth in these things that it seems tentatively like there might not be a need for it?

It probably also works best with a narrow descent of a specific magic system, especially if you don't try to overload any sort of inheritance with too many filters, which seems obvious enough, and it's maybe a bit more complicated to keep on doing distinct empowerment chains, though it's kinda unclear how much that's just that people want to make the first things they create the proper solution, or even just that people don't keep track of immortals projects too well, especially if those don't end up being immortal themselves. 

It's... kinda sad, how set the circles of concern can get, for these people. 

I hope we don't end up like that...

Empowerment through the knowledge of the light is obviously a thing, though it seems like the transmission of the protection and the connection is a lot of it, and it's a less controlled thing? A lot of that's kinda unclear, when so much of the efforts are built around some ethereal intrusion of something higher. 

Beyond that...

There'll be a bunch of neat things to do on whatever augmentation direction we choose once we get the classic and get the ability to actually start up the whole construction chain, not to mention whatever will end up being on the market that day in the black city or theoretical things that could be accomplished with abuse of the mechanics of the perfecting elixir.

Getting some blood sisters will be fun~! 

Also also there's probably some cool morality empowerment things! The refinement of function thing probably works on regeneration, too, if we could figure out a way to get past how indestructible it is. 

I ruffle Topaz's hair and drink myself, trying to clear my head with a rush of sugar. 

Yeah. 

So... 

Let's grab someone, shall we?

I leaf through the documentation the computer provides - their basically dossiers on their general life story and a couple of basic analytical feature summaries that are almost styled as if they were trading card game characters - mostly stuff already compiled like their affinity for the Light, 'mystical' and 'physical' 'potential' and current attainments, some sort of g-loaded factor that the translator seems stubbornly disinclined to simplify into anything more specific, and some more approximate indicators of personality traits and levels of 'resources' backing them. The 'reasonable friends candidates' thing is apparently a prelim filter, which is fair enough - don't want to invest too much in someone who wouldn't be that, anyways.