She is now somewhere else! Sort of a formless vortex, really. Is that a place? Maybe.

"Welcome! My apologies for that: you have activated the Hero Summoning Spell we are using. I'm the representation of the spell matrix that will help guide you through your new choices. Don't worry about your body: you will have a new one soon enough. And what an exciting one it will be! We're summoning tens of people a day to our world to help out, and you've been selected as one of them. You will gain many benefits for your aid!"

"What," she says, or at least attempts to say.

It's not *quite* her voice, distinctly failing to echo through the formless vortex, but it's what she thinks her voice sounds like, and that's close enough.

"Well, first of all, you will receive the Hero Icon. Sometimes people call it a class? It means you're capable of mingling with the upper-class, counts and such, so I suppose that's close enough. But you're not just any Hero, you're a Summoned Hero! That means that you bond to the Outsider Icon, as a Native Outsider. That's not quite as powerful as the Hero Icon, but the only equal of Hero is Demigod, and you're not related to any gods, at least not the local ones. The point is, Outsider is very powerful, and as a Native Outsider you're able to ignore some of the usual drawbacks. But on top of those two, you also get to start with a third Icon! We'll talk more about that later."

"In addition to those Icons, you will, through the summoning process in the void, gain some Exceptions, that let you act outside the usual rules of reality. It seems that" and the figure pauses for a moment, completely still, before resuming its odd motion "you will be able to take three Exceptions!"

"Finally, I am able to create for you a panoply formed from nature and forged here. That will include some useful items to get you started! We'll cover what you want, specifically, later, but for now just remember that you get five Gifts."

"Does that cover everything you wanted to know?"

"N....o. What."

She should really be reacting faster than this, figuring out all the implications of everything the strange figure is saying, but it's all a blur of context-free details that she can't hang together into a structure. She grabs into a question almost at random, just to have something more intelligent to say than "what".

"What are you summoning people to help out with?"

"Oh, many things! Once you're summoned you are under no obligations whatsoever, unless you choose to make a commitment to a god during the course of the summoning. Even those are only for 20 years, just long enough to help you get started. That said, if you want to help the world by creating powerful heroes, exploring new kinds of magic, repairing infrastructure and trade networks, bringing peace to the land, exploring, or many more options, I can help support you with a few gifts to get you started. The world could use more Heroes."

"...some of those sound like okay things to do," she says, though she carefully doesn't say which ones. It seems unwise to make commitments before she has a clearer picture.

Relatedly, "Is there any way I can get back where I came from?" Not that she relishes the thought of resuming her encounter with the imps, but imps are a known quantity even when that quantity is Too Many, and this nonsense is very much the opposite.

"Yes, though it would be difficult and might require a great deal of time and effort. The multiverse is very large. For now, you will hopefully be satisfied with the fulfillment of your desire to be somewhere else and incredible power and freedom." The entity expects that forty or so ascensions with the right Icons would be sufficient, with the addition of a great deal of time, to identify the multiverse that Summoned Heroes came from individually and return them to that location, and by that point they would be able to manipulate time on the scale of a single person relatively easily, assuming that it can safely extrapolate past the point around 17 ascensions or so that people start to leave Adastra after.

...well, it's not like she was that attached to the specific world she came from, except in terms of its familiarity. Fine.

"Then, can you explain these 'choices' you say you're giving me, and their implications? Like what an Icon is?"

"Absolutely! Icons are primordial archetypes that the mortal races have learned how to make and tap into. As you act in the world, you will acquire Potential, that you can push into your local version of the Icon: some people call them instances, depending on the world. When you push enough Potential into an Icon, you're able to improve what you have access to, and this is called 'ascending'. As you ascend, your Level of Existence, your sort of weight and impact on the world, will also increase."

The figure pauses for exactly two seconds, completely still, before resuming its animated explanation. "You will be able to pick any of twenty-nine Icons that we have been able to include in this spell, in addition to your two base archetypes of Hero and Outsider. About a fifth of people are able to bind an Icon, and it's impressive if they can bind another by their seventh ascension, so starting with three is a big advantage."

There is another exactly two second pause. "Icons display their power through two mechanisms: Attributes and Aspects. Attributes are sort of like your inherent nature, improved. A Warrior is Fast, Strong, and Tough, though the ratio of your investment of potential in those can be shifted, within limits and with some diminishing returns even before then. When you ascend, those improvements get locked in. Aspects can seem like attributes: 'Beauty' and 'physical solidity' are both aspects. However, Aspects are more focused, and grow very differently."

Two seconds. "All Icons have a broad 'Aspect of Themselves', which gives an affinity for doing anything that fits the Icon. For example, a Bard will naturally display skill in music; understanding their audience; creative solutions; and manipulation of Magic, Glamour, and Orgone. Icons naturally have four other reflections, and they gain another reflection each Ascension. Most Icons freely develop abilities appropriate to the Icon within these slots, with the slots being 'reset' on ascension. However, some potent Icons lack this freedom, possessing a 'fixed' nature. Both Hero and Outsider[Native] are Fixed."

Two seconds. "It is also possible to absorb potential directly into one's Level of Existence, and 'format' it into Aspects. This was a pre-Icon method of raising Level of Existence. Done this way, the Aspects belong to the individual rather than the Icon, and can even be weakly reflected into lineage. This is hard work, and can take years or great risks, but this allows one to develop aspects outside one's Icons. Notably though, most personal Aspects are still derived from one's Icons. Having an Icon helps, because you can pull pre-formatted potential from an Icon into one's self. That potential then is used to develop an Aspect that resonates with that Icon. This is much faster, and usually stronger, than trying to format it oneself, but the Icons resist this, and the more times you've done it, the more they resist."

Two seconds. "The first aspect gained this way usually takes weeks, the second around a year, the third years, and past the fifth it takes decades at a minimum. That resistance goes away when the Icon is broken and reformed at Ascension. There technically isn't a hard limit to the number of times you can pull an Aspect from an Icon per Ascension, but for normal Icons few bother after three. Even for Hero and Demigod, Icons that can grant impossible Aspects, most stop trying after five. Though considering how powerful Aspects that draw upon the Hero Icon are, some people do spend decades of bitter effort doing so and find it worthwhile."

Two seconds. "Do you have any questions?"

Those two-second pauses are unsettling all out of proportion to how weird it should logically be for someone to briefly stop talking between points. It's the precision, she thinks, it's messing with her. Ah well.

She's not fully sure she understands the relationship between Icons and Aspects and Ascensions and Levels, but she's reluctant to keep pestering the creature indefinitely. Maybe more will become clear with time.

"I'm... not sure I got all that, but I think I at least have a basic idea," she says hesitantly. "So what next? You said my base archetypes will be Hero and Outsider; what implications do those have?"

It answers immediately, without having to "think". "The Pinnacle, the True Name and Nature of the Hero Icon,  represents the impossible peak that can never be reached. As such, one can only arrive at it via Miracle. It was the Icon given to the greatest champions of the gods, and to rare beings born under impossible paradoxical circumstances, until wizards figured out a way to cheat someone inside it through the Hero Summoning Ritual."

Two seconds. "Feeding Potential into the Pinnacle Icon tends to cause overall growth in all areas, mentally, physically, and spiritually, but potential fed to the Pinnacle Icon can not be focused. If the Pinnacle has a weakness, it's their inability to focus. Pinnacles have trouble focusing their potential into focused, limited abilities. That said, there's a synergistic unity to their diffuse investment, and a Pinnacle tends to hover a bit over 60% of the ability of a specialist. In everything. As all Pinnacles have at least a second Icon (and sometimes more, like Summoned Heroes), this rapidly becomes terrifying. The Aspects you develop as a Pinnacle will tend to be broad and flexible masteries: it is incompatible with tightly focused abilities. The four fixed Aspects of the Icon will be broader than the ones that you develop in time, but they help give a sense."

Two seconds. "The first is Input Idealization. Any input you give is moved closer to the Pinnacle. Energy you invest into a spell is both higher quality and more energy, because you invested it. Food you eat feeds you more and is better because you ate it. Leverage you use is better leverage because you're leveraging it. Force you apply is greater and more magical because you're swinging the weapon. This might sound like a subtle but all pervasive effect, but it's not. It's all pervasive, yes, but it is in no way subtle, unless you're trying to be subtle. In which case, it's overwhelmingly subtle."

Two seconds. "The second is Outcome Enforcement. The outcomes a Hero creates are not the outcomes you would expect, being more extreme, more favorable, and more long lasting than they should be. A wound a Hero causes isn't only deeper than it should have been, more serious than you would expect given where they hit, but it will also resist healing, and even healing magic or regeneration. A hero is unlikely to need fire to kill a Troll, or silver to kill a werewolf. Heroes charm people with poor social skills, fashion precise machinery with only vague engineering skills, and out-scheme masterminds with off-the-cuff choices. This works together with your Input Idealization: you will rapidly find your feet in any situation, and you will learn incredibly quickly."

Two seconds. "The third is Chthonic Will. This one is a bit hard to understand, but it goes back to the difference between an Icon and the person who bound it. The Icon itself is a force of not merely unbending will, but reality bending will. An unbending nature that will shred mind-control, illusions, even the very forces of fate and destiny. A Hero can choose to never bend before torture, to have no breaking point. The person attached to that Icon may be more flexible than this - the difference between being an Icon and wielding one. It gets a bit technical, but you can think of it as having the best part of infinite stubbornness, without any of the downsides and be mostly right. And no, this doesn't interfere with Templating. We templated you as part of summoning you, so it happened first. Even there, if there was anything to resist you could resist it. We were working with things that happen before conscious decision-making. Even that work-around would fail after you're Icon-Bound." 

Two seconds. "The fourth is Becoming Light. Pinnacles don't only break destiny in the present, but in the future, or maybe in the past, depending on perception. The chain of 'input' and the chain of 'outcome' is a chain of causality, with the Hero changing the future. On some level, then, they exist both in the Now, and in the Yet. And the Yet can push back on the now. Essentially, Heroes push themselves away from choices and outcomes they regret or disdain, and pull themselves towards ones they like or enjoy. A Hero will sit down next to the only decent guy in a bar, pick up the powerful artifact hidden in a box of knickknacks, and spare an enemy who could one day become a friend. The shorter term the consequences, the less pressure this applies, with death, destruction, and defilement putting massive pressure. Heroes can seem to effortlessly weave their way past obstacles to reach their golden outcome. This is very powerful, and it's not something that runs out or has arbitrary limitations. It will never stop, weaken, or become strained. It is perhaps a Hero's second greatest inherent Aspect. But isn't all powerful. Sometimes there is no way out or through, and sometimes the only way out would require you to betray yourself. A Hero's Will is greater than their destiny manipulation, and I saw several knowingly walk to their death in The War."

Two seconds. "That should be enough on being a Hero. Shall I continue on to Outsider?"

She's trying her best to follow along and see how all the pieces fit together, understand the system that underlies the facts.

So it takes her until after the end of the whole recital to realize how the pieces fit together with what she already knows.

...should she ask? Dare she ask? Will the creature even understand enough about her world for her to explain the premises of the question?

She stifles the mad laughter that wants to bubble up out of her, and tells herself firmly that, regardless of what she hears here, she should not assume that the Chthonic Will makes her soul effectively impervious to death. Even though, if she were at home, it absolutely would. One who can choose to have no breaking point can never be killed or soul-stripped, in the paradigm she's familiar with. One who can choose to have no breaking point is totally free from all permanent consequences, except for the psychological consequences of suffering.

Calm down, Ell. Ask reasonable and not excessively revealing questions. Like, say...

"Um—first, can I ask what you mean by 'templating'?"

A second. "Oh, my apologies. Templating is the process of adapting you to your new world and existence. The templating process includes deciding what you want to look like, any needed modifications, your Icons, your Exceptions, and which Gifts you recieve."

That sounds concerningly like she might not come out the end of this process with something she would recognize as a soul. Well, she can imagine crossing her currently nonexistent fingers, and move on.

"Thank you. So, the Outsider?"

Not a pause, not a moment to think, just an outpouring of thought. "Outsiders are a type of spirit, like Elementals, Fae, Horrors, and many others. Outsider isn't the strongest, but it's up there. Angels and Devils are particularly famous types of Outsiders, but they're far from alone. What is unique about outsiders is that they aren't a part of our reality, or any of the other ones we've found. Rather, they're their own  self-contained reality. An Angel in Elysium isn't truly within Elysium, but is its own Angel sized realm full of Angel, and their physical position is the dimensional nexus between their reality, and the reality of Elysium. They can be formed when a plane overlaps on itself in strange ways, but more frequently they are deliberate creations."

Two seconds. "The Templating that shifts a Summoned Heroes from 'native to a non-magical universe' to 'native of a magical universe' give them this self-contained nature, and so they become Outsiders. More specifically, they are Native Outsiders, outsiders whose 'inner rules' are those of a material plane. This is an advantage, because the Material can go anywhere. Anti-Outsider effects, banishment magic, wards, and more all fail when used against a Native Outsider."

Two seconds. "More importantly for you, Outsiders can focus their potential into any Attribute, though they have trouble focusing it on fewer than three, or more than ten. Their Aspects tend to focus on further exploiting their nature, or the nature of reality.As a being of the material plane, your natural inner laws are the rhythms of nature, along the lines of druidic or seasonal magic. Alternatively, mortals strive to break those rhythms, which could develop in a number of positive or negative directions. Alternatively, you could develop influence over the direct substance of material reality - something like Time or Space would be impossible before your fifth Ascension, but many Summoned Heroes become master Alchemists or Artificers. But that's all pretty vague, so I'll talk about your fixed aspects as a native outsider."

Two seconds. "The first is Null Presence. It makes divinations, curses, even physical attacks tend to pass through you, because you aren't entirely where you are. Someone two ascensions stronger than you can ignore it, but a peer will lose about a third of their efficacy, more if they don't know that they're targeting an Outsider and take appropriate measures. Just about everybody knows what those are, after the Iron Hells, but if you want to try to deceive people you will get a bit more out of it. Against people substantially weaker than you, this effect will be even stronger."

Two seconds. "The second is Solipsistic Integrity. This one is priceless in a way you're unlikely to ever understand, simply because the moment you reach our world you'll have it. An Outsider's Potential is that Outsider's Potential. Their Energy is their Energy. Normally, potential you harvest would be... flavored. You generate it either through rare opportunities, by expensive magical treatments, through treasures, or by acting in accord with one of your Icons. And that potential will be flavored, limited, by how you harvested it. You don't have to worry about this - any potential you gain can be used towards anything you could use it for - it's not 'earmarked' or 'limited' the way mine, or anyone else born of Adastra, would be. You could win a fight and use that potential to develop an Aspect that helps you cook better food. This also applies to any magic you develop. Your magical energies will be 'you' energies, perfectly and ideally aligned for doing your will. You won't have Fire energy, and Ice energy, and Healing energy, like a normal wizard might. You are complete within yourself, and anything you express from yourself is yourself."

Two seconds. "The third is Bolstering Influence. You're familiar with how a sacred ground may promote healing spells, while a defiled graveyard may do the same for necromancy. Being in a place that is aligned with what you're trying to do through magic makes that magic better. With Bolstering Influence, you are a place, and by definition you're aligned with that which is aligned with you. As a Native Outsider, and a Pinnacle, you don't inherently oppose anything you approve of, and are aligned with anything you do approve of. This mildly bolsters any magic used by anyone near you who you want to succeed, and greatly bolsters magic used by you or anyone touching you that you approve of. You always count as a prepared space for forces, rituals, and spells that require one, if you wish. Finally, you are much easier to affect when you want to be, reality itself supporting these effects. Teleportation, time stop, and other difficult magics find you easy to work with, much less a more common spell like simple healing. But only if it is in accordance with your desires."

Two seconds. "The fourth is Living Nexus. You'll find taking advantage of connections, forming connection, and controlling them is easy. Things tied to you will naturally create connection you can control. But that's just to start. Powerful Outsiders can hear prayers directed at them, and direct their influence back through those channels. They can mark a place or person or object with their symbol, and channel influence to that symbol. They can hear whenever their name is spoken, and in a single step arrive before the one who invoked them. Best of all, because of your Chthonic Will, the normal vulnerability to summoning spells that you don't allow is completely negated."

Two seconds. "I am told that Native Outsider is more counterintuitive than Pinnacle. Do you have any questions?"

It seems all... surprisingly in keeping with her image of an undefeatable soul. Wrapped up in yourself, made of yourself, inseparable from yourself, extending your self and your will outward into the world. Probably that image is very flawed, and she focuses as well as she can on the differences between that tidy theory and the information actually being presented to her... but it's a useful package in which to tie it all together.

"I... think I understand," she says slowly. "What next?"

"So far, there has only been explanation of the universals that apply to every Summoned Hero: now there will be discussion of traits that will be relatively rare. I have calculated that you will have three Exceptions out of twenty-three options, ways that you can ignore the normal rules of our realities, in ways that even a very powerful Outsider might only hope to match. They fall into five broad categories that prior Summoned Heroes have found useful.

Two seconds. "The first category is karmic manipulation. Karma is a subtle force, mostly used by the gods to gently nudge the direction of nations more in line with their vision. It's an immaterial, invisible force that barely exists on the level of the individual, despite the words of priests and mystics. But for you, it could be something more, something different. There are seven of these."

Two seconds. "The second category is enhanced aspects. These are useful for immediate power, giving you incredibly enhanced talent in one area. They will eventually fade in relative importance, though they never become pointless. There are six of these different Aspects."

Two seconds. "The third category modifies how your Icons and Aspects work. You could have an additional class, one per exception. You could improve one of your non-Pinnacle Icons, take additional Icons, grow in your ability to take aspects, or make new aspects and Icons match your current ones in power. There are also six of these."

Two seconds. "The fourth category makes unusual use of your Pinnacle aspects. You can make others obsessed with you or help those who help you: those are your two choices. The fifth category modifies time itself. You can live multiple lives simultaneously, or declare that something will happen and watch the universe bend it into existence."

Two seconds. "I can instead divide exceptions into front-loaded power boosts, long-run loaded power boosts, or mixed boosts, if you have a preference in one direction or another."

"Do you have any questions?"

"...I think I'd like to hear about the details organized by category, but I definitely also want to hear whether each one is front-loaded, long-run-loaded, or mixed," she says. "That seems like important information to have."

"All of your Karmic options are what I would call mixed, scaling in power as you do.

Half a second. "The first is Resonance fate  With it, your karma acts on other karma like a... a meta-magic maximizer focus does on spells, and it also is aligned and directed towards your interests. Basically, you make karma a more powerful force, mediated through the consequences of your own actions, and much like a god, you give it a... ethical framework. That framework is 'you.' This is frightening enough on its own, but when the consequences of your actions meet other consequences of your actions, they'll enter a feedback loop. There is a limit here, and the ceiling of that limit is defined by your Level of Existence. Still, this is literally a godlike power - it's reminiscent of the powers of the gods."

Two seconds. "The second is Retribution Incurment. Harm against you has a kind of... negative karmic pressure, the world trying to defray and unmake that harm. Injuries you take are less serious than they should be, losses smaller, and generally harm is reduced, and also recovers faster than it should as the world tries to 'equalize.' But that's the lesser effect. This Negative Karmic Pressure pushes against whatever harmed you. That blunting effect doesn't just apply to the harm you suffered, it applies to a lesser extent to everything they do, while at the same time magnifying anything done against them. Not intensely, generally speaking, but it's an omnipresent universal malice. A dangerous ally is more dangerous, a safe street less safe. Everything bad will be a little worse, everything good will be blunted, until the harm against you has vanished."

Two seconds. "The third is Ignus Fatuus Fate. This strange Exception takes advantage of the diffuse nature of Karma in a two step process to protect you from causal consequence. The first 'stage' is that your own Karma has a natural 'flow' to it that 'washes' it. Like running water washes away the influence of Undeath, this flow will wash away the influence of negative karma. The second part pollutes your own karma intentionally. When you generate negative consequence, this exception will redirect some of that consequence into negative karma. For example, rather than being caught stealing, your Karma will be slightly soured. Karma is normally a slow, ponderous, and poorly directed force. You could commit constant atrocities, and only suffer minor bad luck, and not even that if you space it out a bit. The Summon Hero Spell mostly targets decent people, but we are stretching it to the breaking point. The Exceptions offered to you were not made deliberately, but my role is to help you, not my makers."

Two seconds. "The fourth is Resurrection. It is a horrifying corruption of the natural flow of Karma, reversing cause and effect. It seems that you harvest the Karmic Weight of those you destroy, forging them into Life Threads - the very threads of Destiny and Karma that inform the universe that someone is alive and exists. By granting someone a thread, you assert that they are alive and still exist. You can bring back the dead and command them to live! You must 'stretch' these forged lifelines backwards from the moment of someone's death to the present, and this appears to follow the square cubed law. The more recently someone died, the easier they are to restore. It also seems that targeting can create inefficiencies - without a strong link (like a body), it becomes much more expensive to restore someone." There is a brief and total pause. "You will auto-restore yourself if you die. You don't have to resurrect yourself where you fell, either, but may take advantage of your Living Nexus nature to reappear anywhere you have a strong connection."

Two seconds. "The fifth is Reciprocity Error. When you improve other people's lives, you harvest a kind of 'positive vibes'. But these vibes aren't something you use to nudge fate or destiny. Instead, you can incarnate them to improve your own life. Materially. Helping fix someone's home, and you could ask the world to fix something for you - not an unlimited amount, but something. Build a man a home, and you could ask the world to provide you a home. Teach a man swordsmanship, and you could ask the world for a sword. Generally, these will all be material things, and material things are generally transitory. You could ask for things with self repair enchantments, or similar, but things gained purely through this Exception are... objects, with all the limitations that implies. Though note that things like Aspect Emblems are objects. As for things not purely of this Exception... it is probable that you could mix harvested vibes with your own Potential when forging aspects, to create some interesting effects. The rate of return is approximately e squared seven-fold."

Two seconds. "The sixth is Frozen World. This strange Exception doesn't so much change what happens as when it happens. Karma near you is 'alivened', and that aliveness spreads into the world, vivifying it. More things get done, and events progress faster. People travel faster, further. It's like there are more hours in the day. But while you do generate some 'karmic' vitality, your vitality is vampiric. When people conflict with you or the things you're working on and become entangled with your karma, your karma will start to suck the 'life' from your enemies karma and feed it to yours. It's like they have a little less time every day, and those around you have more. If you continue to conflict with them, more and more threads will gather, and they'll knot together at the heart of your enemies most important operations. It will be as if their world drags, held still till you arrive to break them. This isn't limitless, of course. These strands will break eventually and events will start moving forward as normal. So long as you continue to work against your foes, you'll always have extra time to deal with them and their plots."

Two seconds. "The seventh is Coin of Friendship. When you improve the social aggregate, you harvest a kind of 'positive vibes'. But these vibes aren't something you use to nudge fate or destiny. Instead, you can incarnate them to improve your own life. Socially. There's almost a recursive nature to this Exception. We summoned you to improve our society, become part of our social contract, and by improving society you can incarnate 'Friends' to help you. Remove corruption from a town, and you'll build up 'law and order' vibes. Help teachers move to a small community, and you might develop 'community' vibes, or maybe 'learning' vibes. And so on. You can forge these Vibes into Aspects in line with their source, but not ones you wield. Instead, you can invest your own potential into a daydream, forming an Outsider from your own dreamscape, and grant that Outsider some of the aspects you've forged. Such a being will be limited by your own Ascensions, but anything they do will contribute Potential to you. They are fundamentally loyal, born from your will and so unable to betray it. While their Avatar can be destroyed, their true self will always remain in your dreams. It might cost some energy, but you'll always be able to incarnate them again, so long as you live."

"Do you have any questions?"

She tentatively thinks she does not want any of these, though she's hardly about to say so while she's still working with limited information, and Coin of Friendship is... not untempting, depending on implementation details. The longer she can put off making any overt decisions about anything, the better, though; she needs to know what she's choosing before she risks choosing it prematurely.

"Thank you," she says. "What's next?"

"The enhanced Aspects are all front-loaded. They never become worthless, scaling with you to stay individual Aspects stronger than any other you have, but that will mean more when you have ten Aspects than when you have 100."

"The first is Echoes of Time.  It's the power to call forth temporal shadows, draw forth alternatives, trap people in illusionary 'could have beens.' Not real or unreal, but a confusing hybrid whose boundary you alone manipulate. Something this complex probably would usually only be available by your sixth Ascension with the Outsider Icon. It will grow stronger when your Level of Existence grows, and so it will always be a stronger aspect than you could have developed at whatever your current Level is."

"The second is Fluid Space. It's the power to shatter paths between two points, pinch distances, open portals, control gravity, or rip apart the very world. It is otherwise similar to Echoes of Time in when you can develop it and how it grows."

"The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth are all very classic powers. They are common among Divine Champions, though a bit...uninspired, for a Summoned Hero. They are effectively additional Pinnacle Aspects, several Ascensions more advanced than it should be, and capable of chaining into other Aspects like a more specialized Aspect. Chaining is the use of multiple broad Aspects to make something at the intersection and then using that intersection with a third aspect, which as you should understand is particularly useful for people with Aspects as broad as Pinnacle's. You may take these impossible Aspects in Defense, Magic, Body, or Glamour (and perhaps also psychic power, the relationship is...unclear)." 

"Do you have any questions?"

"Hmm, I think I understand those," she says. She's not really tempted by any of them. Some are worth investigating further—Magic, Body, maybe Glamour, and she should keep the rest in mind in case they synergize with something—but none are really grabbing her.

"What's the next set?"

"The modifications are the first category to vary internally in the time-scale of the power that they grant.

Half a second. "The first is Flexible. If you choose it, it will take the place of your third Icon. Your third Icon will be able to become anything you want or need it to be, developing and discarding Aspects, and helping you develop Aspects of any nature you wish. This is an excellent example of a front-loaded Exception. It will help you hit the ground running. Long term, your developed Aspects will be a bigger part of your power than your Icon Aspects, but the ability to always have a focused relevant Aspect will still be useful."

Two seconds. "The second is Exultant. While Flexible replaces your third Icon, Exultant improves it. Weaknesses mitigated, dependencies solved, strengths broadened, and Aspects directly supported by your Pinnacle Icon. Lastly, one Aspect you develop from it each Ascension will bind to your life and spirit. Every five steps your Level of Existence improves will improve that Aspect's Ascension by one step. Such growth is not backlogged of course, and... I don't think you could push it more than three steps ahead of your own Ascension even if you managed such excessive growth in your Level of Existence. This is a middle of the road aspect, helping you now and scaling with you somewhat."

Two seconds. "The third is True Outsider. It is Exultant, but applied to your Outsider Icon rather than your third Icon. Your fixed aspects go from being strong to at the power level of an Ascension above your own."

Half a second, a start, a quarter of a second, and then it says "The fourth is Classy." The gestures are somehow less animated, for a moment. "It enables you to select an additional normal Icon. You will be instructed as to what options those are later: for now simply understand that Pinnacle is generally thought to be at a power level two ascensions above average, and unusually flexible even by that standard, while Outsider has the power of an additional Ascension above where its wielder is, and unusual at that. These will be more normal icons. But instead of having one, you will have two. Or more: if you want to make all of your Exceptions be Classy, you may do that. It will not delay when you get new icons, normally around the 11th ascension for a summoned hero, and most people who bind an Icon can only get their second by ninth ascension, if they make it that far. Nothing special. Heroes have a high standard."

Three seconds. "The fifth is Aspected. Eventually, much of your power will be in Aspects that you have pulled from your Icons into yourself. This process of pulling Aspects into yourself permanently modifies your life-scroll and potentially lineage. Normally, you would gain five at each level of Ascension, because the difficulty of pulling an Aspect out of your Icon rises each time. But this exception will allow you to lower the resistance, doubling the number of Aspects you will be able to bring into yourself. This is a long-run power, and a very strong one at that. Power like this could enable you to be the one who kills my maker, if by some chance they are still alive. I would say that I prefer that you did not, but I will not know either way, most likely."

Two seconds. "The sixth is the Tree of Possibility. This exception creates a mark on your soul, like the rings of a tree. You can find the 'you' at the first Ascension, and help them develop an aspect. This won't change the world around you, but it will change you as though the world had been different from the point of that ascension. You can essentially go back and develop aspects you skipped over, 'filling in' what you didn't do. Interestingly enough, this 'backdating' lets you target individual icons in an interesting way. I think you'll be able to raise any future Icons you gain to your current ascension, rather than having them always lag behind. I know that doesn't seem like a big deal now, but long term it matters. This is very much an Exception that will show its value in the long run, even moreso than Aspected."

Two seconds. "Do you have any questions?"

She wants, very badly, to ask about being the one to kill this creature's maker. She also doesn't dare.

"I'm not sure I understand how Tree of Possibility functions," she says instead. "What exactly does it do for me? What would be the difference in trajectory, in concrete terms, between someone who took it and someone who didn't, holding all else equal?"

"You might expect to get your fourth Icon around your 11th ascension. At that point, that Icon would be 11 ascensions behind your others. With Tree of Possibility, you would instead reach into your past and insert the Icon among the others, such that it instantly becomes just as powerful as the others. For Aspects, a common problem of very new heroes is that they begin very weak, and would ordinarily rapidly ascend as many as three times in their first year, if they focused on it. However, the Icon-drawn Aspects that I discussed under the Aspected Exception build resistance to being drawn in at a given Ascension stage. As such, a new hero would ideally spend a few years at each stage of Ascension bringing in their Icon-drawn aspects. Tree of Possibility allows you to add Aspects at those earlier stages retroactively, so you don't need to worry about growing in power quickly, but still have the additional aspects of one who did. Furthermore, because Aspects increase in power as you do, ordinarily new Aspects would be relatively weak. With tree of possibility, you can make it so that all your aspects benefit from the full empowerment you give them, though doing so too much will slightly weaken your existing aspects as Potential is siphoned off to empower them."