She nods softly.

"Right...what else needs deciding, still?"

"The last thing to decide is which Perks and Drawbacks you want for yourselves.  I can go through that list when you're ready?

"And also, I suppose, any other notes you want to give the worldbuilding team."

"We never did hammer out the neighboring polities.  Perks and Drawbacks, though?"

Lila nods.  "We can go back if we want to."

"Perks and Drawbacks!  The Perks will be in green; the Drawbacks in red..."

A flock of semitransparent magical poster-squares, red to the left of the girls and green to the right, comes down around the walls of their courtyard.

Up front, right ahead of each of them, there're three green squares already shimmering - "Off The Rails", "Magic User", and "Silk Hiding Steel" - and one red - "Save The World."

"Since you're Off The Rails, you both get to pick on Normal Difficulty.  For Elves, that's one more Perk than Drawback - not counting 'Magic User' and 'Silk Hiding Steel'; you both get that for free since you picked high-magic and hime-cut hair.  And Alicia, you get two more Perks because you picked Death for your canonical fate.  As long as they total up to that, pick as many as you want.  You can pick separately, as long as it makes sense - if it's something that needs to be true for both of you, you'll need to agree on it.

"... and oh, I'm sorry.  I just got a note that the worldbuilding team threatens to go on strike if you pick 'Anything You Can Do She Can Do Better'."

Lila eagerly pours over the cards.  "Good Ending is going to be useless now without Fate... Bad For You Good For Her would probably be useless too...  Ooh, Dark Secret and In-Character would be fun..."

Alicia lets out a strained, but amused, wheeze of laughter, at the notice of the worldbuilding team threatening to go on strike.  "I know my limits, and they don't extend to writing someone that's smarter than me; let them know they won't need the strike placards, alright?  ...Hang on, are they Writers Guild?  Am I Writers Guild?  Am I supposed to be on strike right now?

"...I'm gonna guess that I'm not, or that if I was it would not have been observable, so - let's see what we have here..."

"-- hang on, did we say we were going to have Elves?  As distinct from just elves."

"...Oh right, Nether-touched, I forgot we made that -"

The angel nods.  "Yes, and you said you'd both be them."

"So we did."  She nods, sharp like the knife of her attention that is focused upon the choices at hand.

"You're not going to wipe my memories of the worldbuilding we've been doing if I pick 'Not a Fan', right?"

"No - you just wouldn't get any knowledge aside from this, and what the person you're reincarnating into would have."

She nods.  "I'm very tempted to do something like insert the fantasy equivalent of the Helm Cache, which is probably exactly why I should not be allowed to escape 'Not A Fan', for fairness's sake..."

"The... equivalent of the what?"

"A precursor civilization's 'oh shit everything is fucked here's all our blueprints and some hidden materiel'."

"Is that there in the Azeroth you're taking inspiration from?  Perhaps that could not be there here?"

"Or if you want, that could be how you explain the Scientific Revolution perk... but yes, probably better not."

"No, it's not an Azeroth thing.  I mean there are, like, rampant magical libraries and old Titan stuff lying around, Azeroth-canonically, but the Helm Cache is from a space wargame; nothing to do with Azeroth.  It was just a convenient metonymy for 'things that a), are easy to find if you know the keywords, and b), give your tech and asskicking levels major boosts if you successfully grab them'."

"Really, I should get more flak for 'the Royal Palace' - er, well, actually, it was a wholeass capital city, on Azeroth, but like, replicating Azeroth one to one is pretty silly even if this is one of the things I vaguely want to replicate - 'is or was built upon a crashed spaceship'; I do hope I can sneak that through, though, because really, the Exodar was always my favorite aesthetic, ever since it...well, existed.  Drapey cloth and soft cushions, cool metal, shiny gems, holograms, magenta, blue, silver and Light..."

"Ooh, maybe that can be our royal palace in Villarosa!"

She looks down the list again.  "... As the Canonical Heroine, I definitely want Magical Prodigy, and I also want Unearthly Insight and Surprisingly Useful Skill.  Maybe Lady of Battle as well, but I think I'd prefer to rely on magic."

(She wasn't bad at swords in her last life, but she never liked them.)

"Against those, I definitely want Dark Secret and In-Character."

(She makes a face at Patriarchy.)

"You know, that actually balances out."

Maybe it can be the Villarosan Royal Palace, she says?  "That was, indeed, the thought."

"Anywho..."

"Actually, quick question, Equal Enemy and its interactions with what we're pulling?"

"That would be one of the things where you both need to agree.  It would count as 'Equal Enemy' for you, and 'Equal Friend' for Lila.  'Equal Friend' would work similarly."

"...Any objections to equal Equal Friends and Enemies?"