"I hardly think," she snarks because snark is what is left to her in the total upending of everything she thought she knew and she is also completely out of brain to mouth filter, "that my first life was worth a story of its own - was it, really?  I didn't do anything!"

"I'm sure you..."  She glances down at a pad of paper suddenly appearing in her hand.  "Why yes, I have that you did survive infancy - thanks in part to good luck being born where and when you were - so in fact you did have a story.  How interesting the story was..."  She shrugs; she wouldn't dispute Alicia's opinion even if she did know.  "But that's something we can fix in your next one."

"...Okay, actually, yes, I have several stories about surviving infancy, as it happens, but damn, we are really pushing the limits of Sturgeon's Law to call the rest of it a story and not some loose tropes.  Anyway!  How's this...work, mysterious vaguely angelic figure?"

"How it works for you is..."

She throws out her wings and says cheerily, "You have been selected by the Will of the Multiverse in Council to reincarnate into a new world.  It will have a specific sort of story, and you have a specific role in the story, but you get to choose (within limits) what that new world will be like and many of the properties of the story.  If you wish, you will recover your memories once you're there, as a teenager - both of this conversation, and of your previous life."

She pauses and folds in her wings a little.

"Specifically, the story is... in terms that would be familiar to you... essentially, an otome game.  And your role will be as the villainess."

"...I am not actually familiar with the genre of otome games, dating sims being not really my forte whatsoever, but I am more familiar with the literary genre of 'oh no I reincarnated as a villainess in an "otome game"!!!!!!'; it's my understanding that actually most of the games proper don't have villains whatsoever - but I follow your meaning.  What...sort of world, though?"

"Whether the story will actually have a villain is up to you.  Well, mostly.  But you will have the role of the villain.  At least, you will start out with that role, and by default Fate will arrange to keep you in that role... and it will arrange to keep you the antagonist.

"As for the world, it will have a kingdom and nobility and marriage, and... there's always the chance that you'll pick something the Will of the Multiverse will veto, but essentially everything else is for you to arrange."

"...I'm sorry, what?"

"Arranging a universe?"  She grins and spreads out her wings again.  "Yes, we can do that!  As I said, congratulations!"

"...No, that was bloody obvious, what do you mean I have to be the designated antagonist."

"The story you're being sent in will have... retroactively had... a canonical version in which the person you're reincarnating into will have been the villain of the otome.  The Will of the Multiverse has decided this will probably make for a more interesting story."

She pauses.

"Fate will, by default, nudge things along that 'canonical' path.  And, by default, you'll remember reading or playing the 'canonical' path when you wake up with your current memories."

"...and if I...would rather not be on rails?"

"Oh, but they're loose and fun rails!  But you can choose to have Fate much more loose, if you take that perk."

"Well, jot that down, because really, I'm going to put in all this effort to build a world and then get locked on rails as a solo boss?  Nuh-uh.  Not doing that.  Running off to build a magic laboratory or death.  ...Okay I would also prefer not death.  Death is bad.  But anyway.  Let's get the building process started, I guess?  How detailed can I get with the worldbuilding?  If I have any input whatsoever."

Another pad of paper appears in her hands.

"You will be reincarnating into the Kingdom of Villarosa, soon to have been the setting of the famous otome Roses of Villarosa.  But you can define most anything about Villarosa you want...

"You won't have to relive being a baby or toddler; you'll recover your memories as a teenager..."

She pauses and flips through some pages.  "I suppose you'd rather leave your hair color till later...

"Ah, here.  All versions of Villarosa will be monarchies where the royalty holds real power, and have strong class distinctions.  Fortunately for you, you'll be starting on the winning side of the divide.  But what tech level would you want?  The options are Faux Medieval, Actual Pre-Modern, Early Modern, Industrial, Contemporary, Steampunk, Cyberpunk, or Space Opera.

"... and yes, unlike some people, 'contemporary' is actually contemporary for you.  Though we can of course vary it a few decades if you'd rather."

"...The answer to that depends on how much magic I can cram into her.  But really, who picks the setting they're from?  I guess if you're actually content with it, but...no."

"Some people do like it.  There was someone last week..."

flip, flip

"But yes, magic!  You can pick how much magic to have in any setting:  None, like your old world - in case you were wondering, I'm sorry, it didn't have any secret magic; Low, where it exists but it's exceedingly rare; Medium, where maybe several hundred people have it in the country; or High, where just about everyone has it and it's woven into the fabric of life."

"Absolutely high magic please and thank you."

"...You're secret magic that affected my old homeworld, magic reincarnation lady; that I have a continuity with whatever unknown substrate I'm running on right now is a surprise to me!  Unless I'm a fork.  I could be a fork.  Am I a fork?  Did I actually even, like, die?  Actually maybe you shouldn't tell me that, I will spend much longer than I should thinking about it.  Anyway.  Magic.  Magic, magic, magic.  How able are you to pluck things from my head?  Because I have some thoughts.  And I want to play with this system dammit I have been jonesing for a good opportunity for years and years!"

She doesn't actually know whether Alicia's forked or actually dead in her original world; that's not her department.  And she's rather happy she doesn't need to say it; that would spoil the effect.

"I know exactly what you mean there; I was wishing for the opportunity for ages myself... but generally it works better if you put it into words."

"Give me something better to do it with than spoken fucking word, I am bad at those.  Please."

She gestures, and a simple plain desk appears.  Then she thinks for a moment, and the desk shifts into a sturdier desk with ornate carved flowers over the legs and a brass lion's head on the drawer knob.  A loose-leaf sheaf of paper appears on top of the desk, with both an inkwell and a thoroughly modern pen.

"Here, and I can give you more if you ask.  How do you want to design your magic system?"

She has diagrams!

...She has frustrated whining at the human form for not allowing her to render what she wants to render at the level of detail she wants to render it, but she starts writing something down anyway.

There are six schools of magic.

This is a lie, however; there are twelve schools of magic.

This is a lie, too.

There's magics, and they are all - vectors of difference from the state the world is presently in.  There are also elements, and these are the building blocks of the world.

Except that that's not quite right either.

Eventually, a request is made for isometric graph paper.  This starts to produce something that might, at some point, start to make sense, if you squint.

Then she realizes that there's something she had not previously noticed about the nature of the magic she's trying to implement - which is, roughly, that it isn't just Life and Death as forces that are in some sense cyclical - and she just groans.  "I might need to use magic to design this magic.  I doubt that you have a holotank or whatever sitting around that works if I try to use it to design diagrams without having prior experience, and I really need at least three whole dimensions for this."

That said, she's still going to give it a try on paper.  Oddly enough, she picks up normal paper this time.

"Alright.  Let's start with the - I'm going to call them principles.  And I'm going to call them by the names you might see a human use, to start off with, but I feel like that's not actually an accurate summation.  So we've got -"

Six boxes.

ARCANE

FEL

LIGHT

VOID

LIFE

DEATH

She adds another, "virtual", 'arcane', because now that she's thinking about it, there's a pattern with how that's lined up too.

Next up.  The conceptual associations, and their - action words, she supposes.  This might be more complicated than she really wants it to be, but dammit, she's going to make this work.

Going down the chart in order...

ARCANE - ORDER - IMPOSE

Is shattered by | Resolves into a new

FEL - CHAOS - INVEIGLE

(FEL) Is directed to an end by:

LIGHT - PURPOSE - CONVINCE

Fulfils, but destroys | Provides, but corrodes

VOID - POSSIBILITY - ACCEPT

(VOID) Inspires new forms of:

LIFE - GROWTH - ADAPT

Survives, but causes | Fuels, being overgrown by

DEATH - STILLNESS - CONSUME

(DEATH) Is the natural end of: (ARCANE)

"Huh.  Wasn't expecting some of that, really.  Guess my subconscious is better at this than my conscious mind working alone.  ...I should see if there's something going the other direction..."

(LIFE|GROWTH) perpetuates (LIGHT|PURPOSE)

(LIGHT|PURPOSE) inspires (ARCANE|ORDER)

(ARCANE|ORDER) structures (LIFE|GROWTH)

"...And, hm, that's not the only combinations, so we also need..."

(FEL|CHAOS) invites (the) (VOID|POSSIBILITY)

(VOID|POSSIBILITY) awaits in (DEATH|STILLNESS)'s shadow

(DEATH|STILLNESS) cannot contain (FEL|CHAOS)

"...and the other ascending/descending pairs..."

(LIFE|GROWTH) surmounts (FEL|CHAOS),

(ARCANE|ORDER) constrains (VOID|POSSIBILITY)

(LIGHT|PURPOSE) survives even in (DEATH|STILLNESS).

"...Incidentally, I'm going to call Arcane, Life, and Light the 'ascending' magics, and Fel, Death, and Void the 'descending' magics, because - hmm.  Thinking of it from a physics and entropy perspective, it just...feels right?  That things where p is approaching 1 are 'ascending', versus, the opposite being not-that.  But I don't think that's necessarily a thing that holds universally.  Only the...text of the rules should, as contrasted with my developer commentary I'm telling you right now."

She pauses for a moment.

"I haven't even gotten into the elements, yet.  This is bloody difficult."

"...And really, Death should technically be an 'ascending' magic because it accumulates while Life spreads out, but I bet that's a raging debate!"

"Anyway.  New sheet of paper, check, some idea of what I'm doing, some amount of check...Let's think about elements."

"...Man, we are going to get into some Opus Magnum shit, here.  Alright.  Let's try it anyway."

"Let's start with the primitives..."

SPIRIT

DECAY

FIRE

WATER

EARTH

AIR

"...and see where I can go from here.  I feel like...there ought to be primary correspondences, of some sort...and possibly some other...Oh.  Right.  Can't forget..."

RADIANCE

SHADOW

TIME?

"These aren't...really quite as-written in the original work that I'm cribbing from.  I think they had time magic just stuffed under Arcane.  But they're pretty important concepts to have!

"And I'd say that time is something - uniquely of the Material Plane, and - to some extent sustaining it and sustained by it.  The more you start messing with time, the closer you drag yourself to the - it's not, really, a membrane, but it's...well honestly for all I know it might be an endoplasmic reticulum - anyway.  Time to talk about the Twisting Nether.

"So you recall Light and Void from the principles diagram, right?  Those interact 'explosively'.  But they're also - the fundamental creative forces, from which all else sprung.  And that's a hell of a circle to square, ne?  So you square it by - zooming out a bit.  Looking at what the intersection of purpose and possibility is or ought to be.

"And what you get isn't exactly the flames that surround Nobilis's World Ash...but it's kind of close, really, on a cosmic scale.  The Twisting Nether, or - let's call it the Nethersea - is - sort of this...singular, infinite place, beneath what you'd normally think of as 'stable reality'.  The formless chaos of creation unending, the moment of the Big Bang infinitely preserved.

"...Well, not quite the Big Bang, because it's not a nigh-infinitely hot burst of energy that turns into all the matter and energy in the universe, but it's still...

"That sort of cosmic importance.

"Anyway as you may be able to imagine it's pretty Fel-heavy.  It's this - constant churn of time and space and place and stuff; you can hold yourself together in there with enough Light, or really good Order, but it takes effort, and the world is changing around you as you do.

"Sort of like 40K's Warp if the Warp was only amoral and not immoral.  I mean it's not like there aren't demons or whatever, but it's mostly just - weird shit.

"And on that sea, float the various worlds.  Or the world, if we're - thinking small-scale.  To start off with.

"...I think I want to have there be proper interstellar space, though.  It would be really cool.

"...Anyway.  It's sort of a fourth dimension, how stable your local region of space is.  ana and kata.  Towards the timeless singular origin, or towards the empty infinite order.

"...Did you get all that down?  I'm pretty sure I'd forget half the good bits if I tried to transcribe it now.

"Um.  Where was I.  Light, Void, Nether...  Realness.  Important fact about the Void: Everything is vacuously true, from its perspective, especially things like 'P And ~P'.  Meanwhile there's this singular perspective of the Light but it's really totalizing.  Because its purpose is - being the Light, and not, actually, anything else.  It's infinitely real, but meaninglessly so.  ...and how did I get here from talking about elements?"

"Oh, right.  I was trying to figure out if I could make them arise from the principles directly or if they needed to be handwaved.

"...Alright, let's...

"Alright.  So let's think about...

"Bloody hell I'm about to bring subatomic physics into this."

"I think, though, that - there's something useful there.

"The distinction between fields and objects is that fields have massless carrier particles, or something?  It's something about bosons.

"And there's a few fields, on this list of elements, I think.

"Now some of this shit I am just making up, but...hmm."

"Let's separate these out into bosons and - what was the other thing, fermions? - fermions, actually."

BOSON: Force carrier, field, defines an interaction?

Spirit/Decay: ""Building-up""/""Breaking-apart"" force, respectively.

Shadow: carrier for "thing-is-possible" interaction??? (cf rogue stealth!)  Mass?  Higgs?  Also mind control because...uh....good question?

Arcane?  Mana?: Motion???  Where is lightning.

Mana: force of 'reorganize things'?; Nether-related?

?????

Light?: carrier for "thing-is-probable"?  Something is really off about this.  I just wanted to have some forces.  And there's magic that touches elements, but - this seems off.

"...Though, right, that's why Life is ascending and Death is descending, because of the forces tied to their principles - Spirit is a Lifey thing, Decay is a Deathy thing, and you don't really have much...ability to use pure Life or Death for helpful things, I would think.  Only...well...Growing things or killing them."

FERMION: Object-ness, interacting with things, exclusionary principle (see also: elementals don't naturally like not-their-type elementals.)

Fire:

Water:

Earth:

Air:

"...That's more straightforward, at least...but I'm not sure how much it's going to work.  Fuck, designing a half-decent physics is really bloody difficult."

"And sure, I could just slap magic on top of Earth's physics and call it a day, but I don't want to, that's boring."

...New sheet of paper?  New sheet of paper.

Right.  So.  There's...Something she wasn't quite approaching right, in the original formulations of this.

It's probably that fire isn't really a fucking element, Aristotle.  Even more than the rest of these aren't!

So what is she going to do about that...

...She likes the light/shadow - measure of available doingness vs. measure of things that can be done - line, she's keeping that.

But she needs to figure out a bunch of other stuff that goes into this, and she's not really sure what.

Onto the paper go notes:

Earth -> ++Light, Crystal?, --Shadow, Metal?

...Crystals (gemstones) have fire.

 

...Think abt. Decay: polluted water?  Particle of fire: ash.

...Oh, there's an idea.

Fire: Emits Light, Emits Shadow

Earth: Absorbs Light, Absorbs Shadow

Water: Absorbs Light, Emits Shadow

Air: Emits Light, Absorbs Shadow

"...Yeah, that ought to do nicely.  For a first pass.  Now let's see if this extends..."

"...Gotta figure out what the atomic and molecular and whatnot, structures, look like, too...How much do I care about...Oh, that's just supercritical air, okay - well actually no - hmm.  There needs to be - something else."

"Or maybe I have the way it goes the wrong way around, but I do still have to figure out the mana bar regardless..."

"...Oh!  That's it!  Mana has a spin!  Hah!"

"...Wait, no - well, maybe...If Life and Death are the plus-minus vectors...rassafrassing why am I trying this hard..."

"...Well, actually, if I'm thinking about gluons, there's three colors of those...I mean I probably want to be thinking of quarks, but yeah, hmm...."

The angel watches with growing interest.  Several times, she almost interrupts to give Alicia the something-like-a-holotank she's asked for, but she's doing such a good job with paper and pen.

She wishes she'd paid more attention to Alicia's world.  If she's cribbing from an existing system... a system invented as a story, obviously, since her world doesn't have any magic or inter-world travel.  But it's certainly none the worse for that.

"Three dimensions..." she muses aloud, perfectly sincerely.  "Interesting scope; much more than the two dimensions I'm more familiar with.  And a different flavor for your story - pushing it away from good-evil might be helpful if Fate is setting you as the antagonist.  Or it might close off some handy avenues.  But that's why the Will of the Multiverse is setting up stories for people like you."

"And don't worry about the molecular structure and... sub-atomic physics.  We have a team to do the detail work like that, if you want to work on other more interesting things."

What is "sub-atomic," even?  Dividing the things that are indivisible?  And then "gluons" would be... things that try to glue them back together again?  Is Alicia trying to give an origin-story for this new universe by analogy?

(But the angel's not going to ask; that would spoil the image she's given herself.)

(But she's really curious...)

"Oh but these are interesting things!  Even if they're also frustrating to attempt to understand things!  Or, rather, generate from observed principles, things?  I suppose?  It's, hmm - I'm not going to get into the specifics like what sort of ratio of base elemental earth plus fire plus water would make - I think there was cobalt - but, having an idea of the framework means I can play with it more readily when I get there."

Oh, if the angel is looking for the origin story, she wants to take a look at the bit where Alicia was talking about primordial Light and Void, not about atoms.

"I think I'll give it one more go before I just rough out the elemental magics and leave the underlying physics to y'all."

"And - hm - as for good and evil -

"Those were never things you are; they're things you do.  The Scarlet Crusade convinced themselves that cleansing the world of all nonhuman life was righteous, and despite its aesthetic, the Light didn't leave them whatsoever."

That's at least a little more like the sort of worldbuilding they're supposed to be doing here.  "What is this Scarlet Crusade?  And - you want to play with magic in this world, aside from being entangled in the otome story?"

She'll try one more time to bring Alicia back to this, before... she doesn't know what.

"In a minute, I need to write this down -"

SPIN

Three mparticles, <-1, +1> spin along i, j, k axes.

Positive: Life, Light, Order

Negative: Death, Void, Chaos

Null?: Nether-energy?

Stable elements have +1 or -1 spin

Forces have +-3

Elements:

FIRE: Life Light Chaos (+1)

EARTH: Death Void Order (-1)

WATER: Death Light Chaos (-1)

AIR: Life Void Order (+1) (Sound as Order?)

Entangle particles to build composites?  Crystal earth+air by this logic...floating rocks for a reason?

...Crystal: Earth Air Fire.  (++-) (--+) (+-+).

Crystal: Fire Earth Air (++-) (--+) (+-+) (we're keeping this)

Metal: Fire Earth Water (++-) (--+) (-+-)

Process of consumption powered by air-earth mana entanglement, destabilization?  Explains why food works.

Missing:

+-- Life Void Chaos (-1)

-++ Death Light Order (+1)

Wood/Flesh?  Crystal?  Spirit?  ...Not spirit, but - soul?  Soul sounds right.

FLESH: Life Void Chaos (-1)

SOUL: Death Light Order (+1)

Spontaneous regeneration...

!

Soul is seat of magic by virtue of ability to maintain nonspin environment?  ...Doesn't sound right.  Does sound right that soul is why magic but does not sound right why.  Oh.  Fel sieve theory!

"Ooh, and this theory of soul even explains why fel fucks it up and the Emerald Dream, although it's not like we're necessarily keeping Ysera...Or the Titans who charged her with its maintenance, for that matter.  The Titans were a horrible idea, honestly, because - where did they come from?"

Floating rocks.  She likes the picture of floating rocks.  And souls being made in some way of wood and flesh is an interesting idea... maybe; that could imply interesting things about magic in forests if they want to go that way... and all food being in some way magical...

... but magical in this way?  It's on a totally different level, and... but... why does food work... and...

The angel's eyes brighten, and her hair suddenly frizzes up with a crackling.

She's interested now.

"How do different sorts of food work differently, then?  And do you mean that all rocks are going to be floating?"

"Well I certainly haven't yet otherwise implemented gravity!  But I do think that I'm going to be a little bit boring and keep spacetime broadly like Earth does it, at least as far as mass and gravity and whatnot go?  There's just, some things have inherent counterforces, sort of?"

"That'd probably help keep it understandable to us... but are those things even more inherent than the sub-atomic things you were changing up?"

"I mean, yes and no?  You can still model a lot of things as - working the same way, on the macro scale - just with different stuff?  Like, I don't know which of the strong and weak nuclear forces does what, but I think I've described a way in which something that looks like them still exists?

"Actually, I think it's harder to find electromagnetism."

"Maybe... fire and air can attract like magnets?"

"I don't think that's quite right, but maybe you're on to something.  I just...can't figure out what the carrier of lightning ought to be."

"...Actually let me just see what happens if I try -"

LIGHT+VOID: Photons (cf. double-slit experiment)

LIGHT+FEL: Electrons?

LIGHT+DEATH: Entropic carrier force?  No, that's DECAY.  ...Gravitons?

VOID+LIFE: ??? is this DNA?

VOID+ORDER: ??? probability-mass?

"...Fuck, I might need to rework something here, because - if Fire is Life-Chaos-Light, that suggests associating electricity with fire and it's not, that's an air thing in canon - unless - but I should probably shuffle a bit anyway, Fire isn't actually lifey -

"- maybe I should cross-compare this with -"

FIRE: Life Light Chaos || Death Light Chaos?

WATER: Death Light Chaos || Life Light Chaos?

EARTH: Death Void Order

AIR: Life Void Order || Life Void Chaos?

FLESH: Life Void Chaos || Life Void Order?

SOUL: Death Light Order

"- and I do need to figure out how this ought to - work - how it goes from micro to macro-scale...

"Because it's not actually clear to me how it ought to, is mostly the thing, not yet, there's - models of a sort but they're - unrefined -

"...Let's see..."

"...Yeah, I think let's go with..."

"Yeah that does make sense of all the known Decayed elementals, to do that swap - Fire into ash, Air into smog, Water into - poison or pollution, Earth into - this weird crumblyness, apparently - and those play counter to the Life-Light-Order of the usual sort -"

"I think it also explains why it's mostly Decay magic that you have people drawing on for zombies, actually.  It's a lot different from grasping deathly certainty - which is also a lot different from grasping utter conviction that you would draw upon the Light with.  ...I imagine you don't know what a Green Lantern is."

"Perhaps fire could combine with different things to form either life or death?" she offers lightly.

"And crumbling Earth... yes, either slag or dead spent ground that doesn't grow anything.  I saw too much of that in my first life..."

She hasn't remembered those memories for a while, actually.

"Deathly certainty sounds to me more like a ghost or vampire-in-some-forms, who stays in a frozen instant and doesn't change.  Deathly decay would be staying in the world without that fixture to keep you in that certainty - and yes, there would certainly be ways to do both.  Maybe a magical green lantern, though I don't catch the 'green' part?"

(Magical lanterns are also bringing back very old memories she hasn't thought of for ages.)

"I mean, 'fire combining with things to form either life or death' is kind of - backwards?  The elements arise from the principles, they don't give birth to them - though Fire in particular tended to inspire some very fucked-up druids in the game's canon, I tell you what."

"Still, --

"Hang on, your first life?

"Like I've still got some - places where you're not following that I want to circle back to - but did you reincarnate here?"

"Yes, and it's wonderful!  I had a good first life, and then that story ended... or, well, passed on to other people... and now I can see so many other stories and even help put them together!"

"That does sound fun."

"Yes! ...   So fire comes from light and Chaos and either death or life?  That makes sense too...  What would it look like to invoke this sort of magic?"

"...Here, let me get all this down properly."

The angel steps back, running her hands over a quill pen that's suddenly floating in the air in front of her.

And Alicia finally renders a proper diagram of her cosmology!  Well.  It's kind of not her own cosmology, it's just something that's been heavily remixed by her hand.  But it's still a cosmology she put in some serious work on!

The diagram looks something like this: (Large image within)

Something's shifted back with the angel now.  Just like it was at first, her hair is now straight, and her wings are held as steady as rock, and her eyes are... muted, perhaps, or shielded.

"This's going to select for a specific sort of universe-building team... but once the right people are on this, they're going to enjoy it.  You've put in so many details and so many relationships!

"Do you know what the magic is going to feel like to the users?  Or should that be a surprise?"

"I mean, it's - it would have to be kind of - primordial, I think?  There's -"

"It's...Every sort of magic, is touching upon something fundamental to the universe, in a way - and there's going to be differences between the clicking, whirring gears and memorized equations of Arcane magic, or the livewire rodeo that's touching primeval Chaos and bending its course commonly known as Fel, or the terrible, grasping certainty of Death magic, when you feel it and not the sickening ease of Decay...or the communion of purpose in Spirit magic, whether with another or yourself!

"The only answer I have to 'what magic should feel like' is 'unique and thematic', you know?  And I feel like I can hardly describe it any more than they should be able to, to the people who've never reached out to sieve order and reason from the Twisting Nether, to the people who've never seen the manifest λ-possibilities of the Void - to the people who have never felt the higher purpose of the Light deign to align with theirs.  And it's - that's important.  There must never be a time when the wonder truly dies, when - when magic becomes boring.  Safe, maybe, but boring, never!"

"And if you want something that's more actionable than an impassioned speech I bet I can get you something, eh?  Just give me a minute."

Nota bene: λ is often also spelled "𝒩ot", which is often rendered into a human-pronounceable form as "Not".  This is, of course, not to be confused with a mere "not"; what is Not is not some mere negation.

She bows her head and wings...

... and remembers something that might be similar.  "Yes, the touch of something bigger... but also the touch of something foreign...  I'd say you don't know what you're letting yourself in for, but you said it yourself.  And I don't know either what they would both feel like together, let alone filtered in these interesting new ways."

"Well then!  What about the rest of the world?  At a more human-scale?"

"...You know, I have absolutely no idea how to construct a - human-seeming, for a value of 'human' that mostly means 'includes the petty and/or greedy dumbasses' - polity?  I am, if anything, too idealistic when it comes to my expectations of social behavior invented de novo, especialy when I'm thinking about it from a perspective of authorial fiat, rather than dealing with what Earth actually practiced.

"Then again, I suppose I could make this a world where people within it Do Just.  If I really felt it necessary.  All the same - it would feel alien to...

"Hah.  Maybe that's the culture of the metaphorical blue-skinned alien space goats.

"Which are a literal reference, to be clear, so probably they should not be blue-skinned alien space goats, if they show up, y'know?

"Anyway - where was I...

"...Hey, do you have experience with high-magic but feudal-ish societies?"

She notes down the metaphorically-blue-skinned goats, with a note that they should have pink skin and blue fur.  At least.

And then she blinks.

"We didn't really have high-magic in my first life - just Medium, by this standard.  I had magic, and some of my friends wanted to give everyone magic, but we couldn't.  I've watched some high-magic worlds, but  --"

"But?"

"... but that wasn't what you were asking, and anyway, the Will of the Multiverse wouldn't let anyone help you at this stage.  Only people on the universe-building team, or people who're actually going to be reincarnated in Villarosa."

...Would the angel like a hug?

"Well, are there any of those we can sneak you through?"

She tenses for a moment, but then leans into the hug.

And then she has an idea.

"Yes!  I don't think I mentioned, but even without reincarnations, sometimes there're slightly-different versions of the same person in different universes.  We call them 'alts.'  I can get one of my own alts here and send her to Villarosa with you!"

"Oh, yeah, mhm?  That'd be nice, I think; you seem a good person to have around - but, um, how would the mechanics work?  Being as this is the Villainess CYOA I'm in, and - I wouldn't want to subject her to bad insert-life."

Meanwhile: Hugging the angel!  She's a very good angel and richly deserving of hugs.

She likes the hug, and (if Alicia will accept it?) hugs back with her wings.

"Oh, there're a couple options.  I'm sure any alt of me would love any one of them.  We could double up Villarosa and make there be two villainesses, both you and her - the most complete way would need more resources from the Will of the Multiverse, but there're other ways.  Or, we could put her in as another character... for the most independence, perhaps the original Heroine?

"And I'll try to find one who is from a high-magic feudal world..."

Meanwhile, she's trying to think when would be best to grab her alt.  If she came from before the first arc of her story was finished - while still fighting the invader - she'd have the freshest attitude in some ways and perhaps play best in the story.  But then, she thinks she'd accept it, but she probably wouldn't actually welcome being whisked out of her world with that arc still incomplete and Barvid still ruling.

Alicia absolutely would like to be hugged back with wings.  "I think I'd place her as the Heroine, if she's amenable; being able to co-ordinate with my opposite number on how we're going to handle the otome elements - or rather, the light novel otome parody elements - would be pretty useful."

"Sure!  I'll try to find her."

She pokes with her finger at the air, querying a daemon-spell to search (if the Will of the Multiverse allows) for a high-magic universe where her alt has recently finished repelling Barvid (or analogous situation).

Yes!  Here she is!  With a crown on her head!  Riding a unicorn in the mountains!

... and also with a large wildfire crackling behind her and on both sides and jumping into the gap she's trying to gallop out through.

It might be relevant there're two dragons overhead.

Nnnnnh come on come on come on come onnnnn you can do itttttt alternate magical angel lady she believes in you!

The unicorn jumps over a new swath of flames, into the gap.

It lands in the gap -

Fire sweeps down from the dragons in the sky.

The young woman yells something in an unintelligible language, and presses her hand on the unicorn's head.

The unicorn jumps again, ahead and left - but fire is already ahead of them -

It tosses back its head mid-air, its horn glowing, the crown on the woman's head also glowing -

Then she nods.

A moment later, both she and the unicorn vanish.

And then she falls out of a suddenly-opened door into the courtyard next to Alicia and the angel.

"W-where am I?"

"...Possibly a little bit dead, and, uh, definitely not in Kansas anymore, not that you'd know what I mean by that.  Sorry?  You'd - have to ask the angel who's apparently your alternate universe self, if whatever you just did won - I know I'd want to know - but...mostly the thing is that for reasons random and inscrutable, I'm being set up as a romance's 'villainess' and getting drafted to do all the worldbuilding of a - fictional-twice-over world, where it's being designed as, like, a fictional work of fiction that the random omnipotent being is going to have reified - and I've finished a magic and physics-ish system and not much else; your angel self is an absolutely lovely person who'd like to be able to help me with the parts where I have to deal with people, but needs a loophole to do so, and - well, she can sneak her worldbuilding assistance through if you look like you're playing at one of the other roles available, apparently?  I figure it would be useful to have a Heroine who actually knows I'm not evil but I'm not going to force you into that position?  It would be really rude to do that!"

She collects herself off the floor (the cobblestones obligingly turn back to something less yielding and more stonelike than they had been a moment ago) and smooths her yellow velvet skirt.  She feels on her head for a crown, but it isn't there.

"This isn't anywhere in... the human world, is it?  Is it where unicorns normally go when they vanish?

"And... it sounds like I'm not getting back?"

"No, no, and no," the angel answers.  "I'm -"

A simple "sorry" wouldn't fit, wouldn't be really truthful considering she summoned her alt here, and knowing herself wouldn't be received as a good introduction to a new life anyway.

"- sorry we met under these circumstances.  Do you go by 'Arianna' or 'Lila'?  I believe your crown is back home; it's not alive - even if it is magical, like mine was? - so the unicorn should be able to bring it back perfectly fine."

"Good.  The Crown isn't that magical anymore since we scattered the Gem, but dear Efliel and dear little Rifner will need it for symbolism.  And it's good I didn't vanish any earlier - the kingdom should be stable enough now to stay stable even with a baby King.  Teppin's gone, and Eldred and Merace and Kestar should all be supporting the king, and dear Efliel and Merace will of course both insist the other one should be Regent...

"...And between them someone should be able to bring the dragons to sense pretty soon."

"... you were married already?"

"Of course - I didn't want another disputed succession if anything happened to me, what with all the other candidates except Teppin having just publicly refused the crown.  Besides, Efliel was an excellent man.  And a good thing I wasn't any slower about it, too.

"... you're another me, right?  Was something different in your world?"

"Apparently so."

She'd had a cousin who hadn't disclaimed the crown, and it worked better to hint at foreign alliances for several years... ah, the memories.  But then, she didn't have dragons either.

"Well."

There has to be some magic muting the shock of her... disappearance..., she muses to herself.  And she's glad.  It wouldn't do to set up a new life still consumed with the old one - like she'd been when she was so young when Fraddir first stole her to safety.

She feels at the absence-of-crown around her hair again, stands up, and curtseys.

"I'll go by 'Lila' here, then, since I'm no longer a queen.  And," she turns to Alicia and curtseys again, "what might your name be, and where were we?"

"You can call me Alicia, Alicia Thorn, I think - being as it is a name I just pulled out of a hat, for reasons that mostly only make sense if you're me - and, ah, please do forgive my lack of manners; my world basically doesn't have - nobility, anymore.  Some people hold on to the pomp, but most power they have is petty; the last - Queen that was even an internationally recognizeable state figurehead - died recently, and I grew up in a country that flipped hers off a few hundred years back and decided it was not having with lords and it wanted to try this newfangled democracy thing.  ...Then we invented CEOs, who're basically the mercantile equivalent of lords with even less noblesse oblige, but that's another story."

"No trouble about the manners.  I'm not a queen here, and I didn't spend long enough in a palace to get used to it anyway.  Fraddir made sure I learned the pomp, but with our disguises, there wasn't so much chance to use it.

"It might be interesting to hear about democracy some other time - dear Efliel used to muse occasionally about whether it could work well.  Are you planning to put it in the new story-world you're building?  And what state is the building in?"

"I'm afraid we can't put in democracy," the angel comments.  "At least not in the country you'll be in - that's one of the constraints on the story; the Will of the Multiverse requires that Villarosa be a monarchy where the monarch and nobles have actual power."

"...Rome had Senators, a socially stratified democracy is not sociologically impossible along Earth's psychological bell-curve.  But at the same time I would actually like to do Good Nobility."

"Yes, I'd like that too!  I wouldn't say anywhere near all my nobles are good, but - we got rid of most of the bad ones when Barvid invaded or when we defeated him.

"What else have you designed so far?"

"Mostly the magic system, like I said!  Um, there's also elementals to go with the magic system having classical elements, but I haven't gotten much further than that?  ...Actually now that I think about it I should probably write down what's up with those a bit, at least.  There's, like, metaphysical stuff involved and whatnot."

"Wow, that's much more versatile and organized than the system of magic I'm used to.  I'm used to every variety of rock or plant having its own peculiarities, and then also the spirits from Elsewhere.

"... You haven't done anything about the country?  At least, this's going to make powerful magic much more common, and maybe reward study a lot less..."

"Oh I mean I'm sure they will, it's just going to be, like, magical peculiarity.  And - hm?  How do you mean?  I'm not seeing how - the existence of elementals and these magics - makes studying be less rewarding; understanding the rules in order to enforce your own is Arcane's hat."

"... Maybe I'm just not thinking about this system the right way, but it seems like you can understand things better faster, given there is a system?  You wouldn't need to learn all the details of different plants separately."

"Let me just...wave directly at the Void-and-Life interaction.  There's infinite and even self-contradicting possibilities that can be given realness.  You're absolutely going to need to study individual plant species, given that?"

"Oh!  So we'll have all the lodeflowers and heartweed and more!"

"... and what sort of story are we supposed to tell in this new world?  What's this romance story you mentioned?"

"Oh, that.  I almost forgot about that!  That's - going to be complicated to explain!  It's - built off of a very different cultural context than I imagine you have?"

She looks at Lila quickly - she's nodding along, alright.  "So!  You obviously have a fondness for stories.  I'm going to start from 'storybooks exist' and try to walk you through some literary and technological developments that happened on my planet."

"Fiction as written in your time, if it was anything like my planet's analogue, was not interactive at all, no?"

"... well, people sometimes heckle storytellers, and sometimes that gets them to change their stories up."  She used to do it herself sometimes.  "And then there's theater."

"But the stories themselves weren't written with that in mind, is the thing I am - pointing at, there.

"That's the first thing that's necessary context.

"Because when it got a lot easier to make books, when paper wasn't so absurdly precious anymore - people started writing single books that had multiple stories.  Not, like, in the sense of a collection of disparate things, but - actually, let me just backtrack - it's not...one book with multiple stories, so much as one story with multiple potential plotlines.  You picked one up, started at the beginning, read until you reached a point of choice and followed the instructions on where to go next depending upon the choice you wanted to make.  That make sense?"

She nods eagerly.

"The next piece of the puzzle is - well, you already mentioned plays.  And I imagine you have your fair share of romantic plays, where people get swept up off their feet and the audience swoons and so on, and have ever wished you were in the actor or actress's position."

"Yes... and if you have different paths with those, then the... audience? sort of is.  But reading is so much different from seeing a play."

"It is!  Until you find ways to record or generate sequences of images - and often corresponding sounds - on specific cues, and get that cheap enough that people can just have a Thing That Does That in their houses.  And data storage, but that's a whole 'nother thing and I could explain the Internet but I'd be here all day to just get through what I know of the math."

She likes this.  A lot.

"How would you do this?  With magic?  Is this something you're thinking of for our new world?  We should absolutely have it there!"

"My homeworld did it with entirely nonmagical - for at least my value of 'magic' - manipulation of lightning.  Well, mostly lightning, there was also light, but like...making a thing glow was by far the least hard bit at that point, just trial and error of specific mixes of materials.  ...Actually excuse me that's not even how computer pixels on rasterized monitors worked, it's just tiny bulbs with colored filters.  Anyway, magical Internet...is definitely a possibility, I guess?  Angel-Lila, um, thoughts on this as far as the rules go, considering that - I don't know if you have Space Fantasy as an option, setting-wise, and that's probably where it would rapidly go?"

"We do have that, if you want it.  But it would be very different from either of your home worlds, and the whole society would reflect that."

"But, Lila, as Alicia was saying - the Will of the Multiverse is modeling the story in this new world as something like the sort of romance story that would be in an interactive computer-play.  But it wants you to select the details.  And of course, you can fight the "fate" of the original story and send it off in a different direction... which is convenient for Alicia especially, since she's going to take the part that was "originally" the villainess."

"And who'll I be?"

"The Heroine, the nominal 'protagonist' of this romantic novel turned game parodied back into a genre of novel that actually most often centers my role.  You're the young woman with a desperate past who makes something amazing of herself and steals the love interest out from under me, in the nonexistent 'canon' route of the game.

"...Fun fact, actually: the otome romance villainess doesn't...exist...in the original genre, the otome game; it's entirely a literary invention after the fact, branching from - well, the genre of stories like this one."

"So Fate will be saying I'll overcome you and... win the man we're both in love with?  Is that what the story is?"

She's remembering that she preferred the romance stories that weren't just romances.

(And somewhere in the background she's feeling something about Efliel.  She doesn't bother asking herself what before reminding herself their vows said "till death", and she's dead now.)

"By default, that is the plot of the game.

"I hardly believe it need stay so default, if I'm reading my tropes right, angel Lila?"

Oh good; more storybuilding already!

"Yes, but you can mix it up by adding various Perks and Flaws.  I think you'll be most interested in Save The World:  You face grave danger and save the Kingdom of Villarosa from some threat.  It could be an invasion by a neighboring nation, or the Demon Lord rising again to destroy the world. "

"Great!  How do I get that Perk?"

"... it's actually listed as a Drawback, so you get it for free.

"Speaking of Drawbacks, either of you can also have a Dark Secret that will be devastating to you and your family if revealed, or an Equal Enemy.  Or in Perks, you can have an Equal Friend, you can launch a Scientific Revolution - that's inventing new technology.  There're also lots of other character traits to pick from, though I recommend first picking your social standing and background."

"Hmm.  If we both pick that - it does not give us two world-ending threats, right?"

"No; you're designing one world together."  She flips through her pad of paper for a moment.  "...Well, you are allowed to double up on the flaws where it makes sense to double up on them.  So if you want, you could have two Abhorrant Admirers, two Equal Enemies, or two apocalyptic threats.

"But before you go further, I should say - By default, since Fate is helping the Heroine" (she nods at Lila) "then she needs to take three more Flaws than Perks, and the Villainess" (she nods at Alicia) "can take two more Perks than Flaws.

"However, if you take the 'Off the Rails' perk, Fate doesn't exist in your world anymore once you 'wake up' with your memories, except to push you into some sort of conflict with each other.  If you choose that, you can both take two more Perks than Flaws."

"...I'm inclined to take that, just for - fairness, in general?  Let the dice fall where they may, and no-one meddle.  ...Though I might like a helping of plot armor when it comes to specifically the apocalypsen."

"I want to keep the rails of Fate.  We're going to be in a story; don't you want it to make sense as a story?"

"I think there's plenty of story to be had just from our initial circumstances, is the thing.  That, and exploring the world we build!"

"Yes, there could be - but I'd want to know there is!"

"But aren't we already sure we're having it?  I don't want to fight you for stupid reasons!"

"Oh - is it that you don't want to be Fated to lose?  Even if you could overcome it?"

"I want the world to actually respect my choices - not merely pretend to do so - and I want to choose to not get dragged into status-seeking games and instead do the best I can by my people and my kingdom."

That last point hits home with Lila.  She'd been hoping to do that.  She'd been planning to.  And then -

- well, some of the dragons decided they were mad about Barvid after all, a few years after they'd promised they weren't, and she insisted on going herself, and then she got thrust into another story.

The angel comments, "You would be able to evade Fate anyway; it would just be harder.  And even if you don't have it in general, it is going to put the two of you in some sort of conflict."

"I'm not willing to commit to - to facing stupid bullshit nonchoices, at any volume.  If the Will of the Multiverse thinks it needs those to create narrative tension and conflict, it's a hack.  'Fate' can damn well sod off, it's not part of the cosmology.  Just create the right initial conditions and there will be something."

"... All right.  Let's do it that way and do the best we can."

"I do hope to be entertaining and narratively coherent, don't get me wrong.  I just want my hand on the wheel."

"... yes, of course.  In a good way.  For us and everyone."

She's realizing - too late - that "rule your kingdom for the people's good" isn't the same thing as "rule your kingdom and arrange interesting stories."  Usually it'd lined up (she hadn't arranged Barvid's invasion, of course, and as the protagonist she knew what she should be trying for)... but sometimes it doesn't.  She probably should've sent someone else after the dragons after all.

And the same things apply when setting up a world.

"Who are we going to be in this world anyway?"

The angel has a good idea what concept her alt realized, but not about the circumstances.  A hug would help... but probably not a hug from her, in her role.

She flips back to the start of her pad of paper.

"The first question is - your hair, which has meta-magical significance for your personality here.  For both of you, do you want curly drill hair which is associated with the stereotypical rich-villainess personality (and a magical laugh perk); hime cut which comes with a more serious and dangerous personality (and the "Silk Hiding Steel" personality perk); or elaborate hair which gets you an extra maid?"

...Alicia is absolutely willing to offer Lila a supportive gesture.

"Serious and dangerous, if you please."

She accepts the hug gladly.

"Same for me, though I might change it when I know more about who I'll be."

"In that case, I'll skip over hair color for the moment - it's got just as much effect on personality - and..."

She skips over several pages, actually.  She knows what her alt is thinking about here.

"Your social role in Villarosa.  At the start, both of you will be teenagers in the exclusive Royal Academy of Villarosa.

"Lila, as the Heroine, you can be:  an Extraordinary Commoner who won admission on sheer merit; a Poor Princess who can be either a princess of Villarosa or another kingdom; or a Hero's Daughter whose heroic parent died but won admission to nobility.

"Alicia, as the Villainess, you can be:  the Royal Princess of Villarosa; the Duke's Daughter, daughter of the highest-ranking duke in the realm; or a Rich Heiress, daughter of the wealthiest merchant but not nobility.

"And yes, for both of you, being nobility or not will matter.  That's not Fate; that's how the world will be set up."

"I'm not sure whether I'd rather be the Duke's Daughter or the Princess, but I certainly don't wish to be the Heiress.  Capitalism was bad enough when I wasn't its preferred agent."

"Ah yes; as the original story's Heroine, I get to be the underdog in social status."

She pauses a moment to consider being a Princess again.  But she'd be a Poor Princess, so either this wouldn't be her kingdom or it would mean some uncomfortable things about her father.

"I'll be the Hero's Daughter."

"...I'd like your advice on - the likely default realities I'd be working with, should I pick these, honestly.  In terms of - how entangled I'd be, by default, I suppose?  I don't have good models of that."

“Entangled with… society?”

"I'm not sure what I'm trying to ask, really, except - 'what's the probability that my propensity to focus on doing cool things with magic to the exclusion of social-status-seeking will bite me in the butt'?"

"...Your family's expectations and reaction will depend a lot on whether you've got brothers and sisters.  If they can carry on the family name and social standing, they won't have such high social expectations for you.  Assuming you stay honorable, of course.

"Socially..."

She wasn't in high society herself between being a little girl and being crowned queen.  But she's been a lot closer to it than Alicia, if her guesses about Alicia's home are right?

"Socially, it'll be easier as a Princess than a Duke's Daughter.  A Duke's family is still... playing the social game.  They're still on the same field as everyone else; they can still lose.  Unless they're a very unusual family who doesn't care to play it - I knew one of those; they stayed home and just accepted that everyone else thought they'd lost.  Wonderful people, most of them.

"...But anyway, a Princess doesn't have any equals except her brothers and sisters; she comes in with her own social standing on a different field and stays that way even if she's a wild sorceress or something."

"Alright, then.  Let's lock in Princess, Isekai Angel Lila.  ...So I'm...going to want to have family.  Huh.  Never had any siblings before.  At least not any that I've met; theoretically my mother gave birth to someone else before me but - well, he came out even earlier than I did and consequently didn't make it.  Had a lot more cousins, but they weren't around."

"And at least one of my parents is going to be dead... again.  I guess I won't have any family.  Except maybe a little brother or sister?  That could be interesting..."

"And I'll be sure to give you at least two older siblings, Alicia, so nobody will be expecting you to be ready to inherit.

"Let's go on to your Fiance.  the Prince Charming, the Dark Rival, and the Noble Prodigy.  The Prince Charming, you'll both recognize as the standard fairy-tale prince archetype - though as Alicia is the Princess, he'll by default be the son of the highest-ranking duke instead; or he could be a distant cousin.  The Dark Rival is the rival of the Prince Charming, less optimistic and sincere; the archatypical cynical rival.  The Noble Prodigy is a member of the lowest rank of the nobility, but has already made a name for himself--by default as a warrior and commander, driven by some tragedy in his past.

"By default, the Prince Charming or Dark Rival would be the same age as you, and your classmate in the Royal Academy; the Noble Prodigy would be older and have already graduated the Academy."

"There's no reason the Prince Charming has to be from the same country as us, although that does lead directly into the 'required to politick' trap I just dodged...wait a minute, is the assumption here that Villarosa is the Kingdom?  Like, there's only one?  That won't do, just on a logistics and specialization basis!  You gotta have some diversity!"

"Of course not; it's just that the story's set up to be in Villarosa.  But we could say he's from another kingdom and going to the Royal Academy of Villarosa anyway, right?"

"Of course, but then your marriage would be significant for international politics..."

"That's what I just said..."

"Mmmm.

"...Okay, actually, though, I think I want the primogeniture to be a lot more elective than 'oldest sibling first', that's a horrible way to organize a government.  Dunno how much you can twiddle that, but.  I don't want to just watch someone do something stupid with my kingdom just because I'm not the oldest kid either, even if that does mean having to worry about inheritance...  I guess actually the question is - 'what can we call a monarch before the worldbuilding's not to spec?'."

"A good question!  Elective monarchies certainly count if they're elected by the nobility from within the royal house.  If they're elected by the nobility from among themselves, I'm pretty sure they count.  If they're elected by all the people... that would be much more dubious, and I'm not sure whether the Will would count that.

"Or you can go more wild and say the monarch's chosen by prophecy or lot, or appointed by the previous monarch... and as long as it's within the royal family, with maybe a few exceptions, I'm sure it'd count."

"I think allowing the previous monarch to select whosoever they wish, with perhaps the lords having a three-quarters veto or vote of no confidence, at which point...hmm.  Something ought to happen.  Maybe then it's prophecy's turn.  Anyway I think Queen Padmé Amidala would have words for the Will if it didn't count her.  And I wouldn't put it past her to win that argument.  ...But actually, let me just..."

It's time for more diagrams!

"Something like that would give a lot of interesting angles, and I think it'd work well at giving the kingdom good kings - better than simple inheritance or election.  Maybe let the monarch select any of his or her children or anyone in the family, subject to veto; or let him or her select other people if the lords actually agree...?

"And then various traditions and encrustments and rights of individual noblemen around that such as could naturally develop over the generations."

"Sounds reasonable to me; my brain is spitting out a constitutional monarchy in far more detail than I'm able to easily render but if you want it I suppose that's quite fine."

"Which leaves who the Prince Charming is going to be, if we're going to have him.  I'm fine with either him or a Noble Prodigy who's still in school... and if we do have a Prince Charming who's a prince from another country, there is going to be some political interest in your marriage, though less so given this succession style."

"I'm not...entirely against...having things that interact with the political situation; I just don't want that to be a day-to-day element of my life."

"Then a Prince Charming from another country," says the angel, who's in favor of figuratively bouncing political situations off Alicia.  "Any ideas on what that country should be, or should that be left up to the worldbuilding team?""

"Hmm, I'm not sure...Maybe they should have a complementary skill in magic to us two?  Also I definitely have aesthetic opinions about Prince design, but I imagine you have a better idea than I do what will work there."

"Anyway, I'd like there to be a Senate of some form, for the common people to have a say.  Back on the question of governance, rather than Princes."

"That wouldn't be a proper Senate, but we could have some sort of Assembly like that...  At least for the different shires?  And maybe those assemblies could send delegates to for an all-kingdom Assembly every so often...  I didn't have one of those, but it could be a good thing sometimes."

Maybe, she thinks, kings or queens who haven't been spending a lot of time among the common people might need that.  From what she's heard, her great-grandfather really badly needed one of those.

The angel nods, noting down the plan for the indirectly-elected Assemblies.

"And don't worry, we'll make sure the Prince's aesthetics match up with yours."

"Is the Prince necessarily male, incidentally?  I don't normally..."  She waves a hand, vaguely.  "Though I suppose I've ever done."

"I - I sure hope he is, if I'm going to - in any version of the story -"

She swallows.  "I've heard of women" - she waves her hand vaguely - "- together, but I've never wanted to try it."

The angel makes another note on her pad.  "Then we can make sure he meets both your... criteria."

"Right.  I'm, not going to get into that."

She... won't try to get more into that if Alicia doesn't either.

"I am very sorry that that brought up a squick and also very glad we caught it beforehand.  I do not want to know what else could've gone wrong there."

Flip, flip back more on her pad...

"One more question while we're designing the country:  Should Villarosa - or should the world - be peopled by humans, or other races as well?  Unfortunately we can only provide two standard sapient races; we tend to call them 'Humans' and 'Elves', but you can make them whatever you want."

"Would we be Elves?"

"Typically yes; however, you would need to take one more Flaw to balance that out - since presumably Elves are better in many ways than humans."

"...Oh, come on now, that's boring more speciation-alike or bust - but.  If we can make the 'Elves' dragons...I'd be for it; dragons are traditional.  Erm.  They can shapeshift, too.  Can't forget to have that."

"Not dragons, please.

"Maybe something like... unicorns?  Birds?"

"...y'know, Valdemaran unicorns of a sort would be interesting...Does Elf-ness have to be heritable?"

“Yes, maybe it’s magically contagious somehow to people who’re young enough!”

Pff.  "I was thinking it's more - Elf-status is, hm, alignment with a powerful Spirit or something, such that you become - More Powerful but also - Having A Specific Duty before your other obligations?"

Lila nods thoughtfully, trying to imagine what that might look like.

"Good idea - and I think I could get that through without its counting as a 'race', so you could have both if you wanted?  And more than one of those alignments."

She nods.  "Sounds good to me!  What do we want Elves to be like, if we still want Elves, Lila?"

"Ooh...  Wings and... something visibly weird about the face, but not unpleasant?  And something with the hair..."  She twirls her own hair a moment.  "Maybe they can move it by itself?  And it's a weird color, maybe."

"You'll all have strange colors of hair," the angel says with a smile, "but Elven hair can definitely be weirder than that even."

"...maybe we should have the blue alien space goats just directly pasted in as our Elves; they've certainly got fancy hair...well it's not exactly hair very much, but, like, filling the hairlike space even though it's a lot more like - tendrils...hmm...I'm not sure I want wings to be a Specifically Elf thing, really?"

"You want... wings to be a more magic thing than an elf thing?"

"A - like, I see no reason the way this world works doesn't support - bird-people and cat-people and all sorts of other people that have kind of not-really-human-but-still-humanoid bodies -"

"Yes!  Let's have that instead of just one sort of Elves!"

"If anything I'm tempted to have 'Elves' qua the CYOA - as distinct from elves qua pointy-eared humans - be this sort of...Nether-touched Destined For Great And Terrible Things type, maybe with a little bit of ability to have their own rules they carry around.  Sort of.  Not a thing they're really in charge of, but like...in really fateful moments they can argue with the universe and win, y'know?  And they have cool glowy eyes."

She's distracted from the strange reference to a "CYOA" by the idea.

"Ooh, a sort of alignment that's meta-aligned, and able to argue with the universe on your own cause with all the force of magic behind you...

"And of course as the protagonists, we'll be Elves - would we even know that necessarily?  Well, yeah, the eyes."

"I suppose we could be Elves, yeah.  Seems fair."

The angel (who does recognize what a "CYOA" is, and thinks it's a fair description of what the Will has set up here) nods and flips back one more page.

"All right then, next up is your hair color."

Half-transparent images of hime-cut hair in the respective colors start floating in the air.

"By the magic that we'll place in Villarosa, hair color will actually be associated with personality here - and, Alicia, I think you'll find the associations familiar.

"Blonde hair is associated with being rich and pretty.

"Red hair means you're vibrant, fiery, passionate, and filled with powerful emotions - and also a little physically stronger and more potential as a warrior.

"Silver hair means you're a bit weaker and smarter, and more creativity or magical potential.

"Brunette hair means you're... more common.  More down-to-earth, less assertive, less proactive.

"And then other more unusual colors - or rainbows of colors - will..."  She purses her lips.  "Drag more of what you might know as 'anime tropes' into Villarosa.  I assume that's because the other universe design teams don't like working with rainbow hair."

"Silver," she instantly says.

"Twinsies!  Silver as well please."

"Two silver-haired hime cuts, coming right up."  She snaps her fingers, and the other images disappear.

"Last up, tech level.  That's separate from magic level, even though some people would call technology and magic the same thing...  Anyway...  Actual Pre-Modern is ruled out for a high-magic world, so the choices are Faux-Medieval - that's what your world is, Lila -, Early Modern, Industrial, Steampunk, Contemporary - that's contemporary for you, Alicia - Cyberpunk, and Space Opera."

More pictures appear around the walls:  a knight outside a tavern, a group of travelers trekking alongside a wagon, a steam engine with something that looks like a Difference Engine, a skyscraper, some sort of cyborg, and a spaceship.

"I don't mind where my world was... Alicia?  You know this better than me?"

"I do, yeah...Hmm..."

"I have to admit that I'm half-tempted to ask if we could - sort of schmear out a bunch of genres?  And then paint most of them magic.  But it seems like that might be a pain to worldbuild, let alone how it'd be a lot for the world builders.  On the other hand if they want to go full Spelljammer or Pathfinder-Starfinder-crossover...I probably have some ideas for that!"

"Huh?"

"... That would be magical spaceflight and things like that, Lila.

"... I'm afraid doing that well would be putting a lot of work on our worldbuilding team, Alicia.  I could put it out there, but I think it would be better if they didn't get upset at us and did a good job of the worldbuilding.  How about I make sure to note that they should do a decent naturalistic job on the stars and planets, and if you survive this story in good shape, you can bring about magical spaceflight yourself?"

She allows herself a small 'snrk' at the idea.  "Maybe; I feel like the problem with that thought is that it's not very symmetrical?  Like, statistically speaking, why should it be us that invent all the spaceflight?  But yeah I feel like I - hm -"

"Ah, damn, I'm attached to the blue alien space goats and their magic spaceship escape pod that crashlanded on Planet One Of Two Now-Playable Zones."

"Okay, how about we have the alien space goats inspire us to make spaceflight!"

The angel nods.   "I think I can get in something like that.  Maybe they can be tied in with the Demon Lord..."

"That sure is how the Plot of WoW goes!  Er, well, mostly that they're running - well, fighting a holding action across spacetime - from this guy, and then Azeroth, mostly in practice via adventurer and bosstier intermediaries but like, heck if I know what the planet's spirit was up to for sure, punches him in the balls - but yeah uh, that is definitely sort of the hook around the whole, introduction of spacegoatpeople.  Also orcs were 'his fault', but let's not do fantasy racism.  That's, like.  Really fucking sucky to experience.  Honestly it fucking sucked to witness; Orgrimmar deserved better design than 'slap some hides on some logs and call it a day', they could've done adobe at least, I mean, really, --

"You didn't sign up for that rant!"

"Oh good; then we know the story can work?"

"Next up will be your Bad Ending in the canonical story, Alicia, after you lose your love interest to the protagonist... which might not be quite so relevant since you've already decided to be off the wheels of Fate, but it will still help with the worldbuilding.

"The options are:  an unmourned Death (which will give you one more Perk for free); being forced into vows at a Nunnery serving the poor; Servitude to the heroine which might be magically enforced; being Impoverished; being Exiled and forced into a political marriage; or simply being Disgraced and never quite recovering (which will give you one more drawback)."

"...I have to admit that since we're taking the rails off, my minmaxer brain thinks it's relatively safe to take 'Death', but I don't know -"

"Death for - for losing your betrothal to a foreign prince?  If we're in a kingdom where that even could happen, that'd be pretty uncomfortable... especially for you, since it'd be your own parents the king and queen who must've given the sentence!

"Best case I can imagine is that your... canonical counterpart?... was a really horrible person and lost her betrothal by killing someone or betraying the kingdom, but even then I'd be reluctant to get into her place."

"I mean I figure that the 'canonical' route is that she does some Stupid Bullshit like pledge herself to the Demon Lord and die horribly."

She nods slightly.

"Dying from the fallout of your schemes is very acceptable.  And don't worry; I'm sure your parents will be more lenient than Lila feared.

"Next up:  your Minions.  Alicia, pick two options - a Maid who's guaranteed to be highly competent and almost unquestioningly loyal; two female Classmates of slightly lower social status who're in tune with the Academy gossip; an Admirer who's a male student who has an obvious crush on you that you can use to manipulate him; an Animal Companion you've bonded with; or a Butler or other old friend or ally employed by your father.  Or, for the cost of an extra Flaw, you can also select another Admirer.

"Lila - your Minion is already set - one of the Royal Academy's faculty was a former companion of your heroic parent."

"I think I should probably have at least one Maid because gods know I won't get anything done otherwise...

"...And probably I want a Butler?  But I don't know what sort of - specialty - would be good..."

"Your father's the king; you can get in just about any official or teacher you want there.  What would be useful... well, you want to be working with magic more than school gossip, and you'll have a Demon Lord to face, so how about a royal magician?"

"That sounds - about right, yeah.  Hmm.  But what specialties should they have..."

"And for my sponsor... who would've been a companion of my heroic... father, let's say?  Well, he would've been some sort of heroic magician... or maybe merchant or traveler, but I don't think they would've gotten him made nobility... oh yes, and he would've worked with someone who was more in tune with the politics.  So I'll know someone who's a nobleman in touch with the royal court, who used to go adventuring... and thus might know something about the Demon Lord."

"Honestly though, hm, I feel like I'm going to pick Magical Prodigy as one of mine, which is...

"I can guarantee I'll be able to learn lots of magic!  I cannot guarantee other useful training-slash-trainers?"

"Yes - I'll have magic classes at school; I'm not sure I'll get good politics tutoring as a brand new noble's daughter.  What else do you want to pick up, that your parents wouldn't have already given you as a princess?"

"....Sneak attack dice."

"Um.  In the sense of - being not necessarily a strong fighter, but - still having the ability to absolutely fuck someone up, should I need to - especially if they let their guard down around the 'harmless' princess?"

"Except, everyone would already know you could do that with your magic."

"Well, yes, but there's plenty of options for anti- and counter-magic, so.  Probably best to have a trump card, y'know?"

She nods.  "Are you planning to walk around with a sword everyone thinks is just for show?  Or learn fistfighting or something?"

"Or something."

Knives in the dark, and counterintelligence...

Just in case.

(Besides, who doesn't want to be Bond, Jane Bond?)

"Anyway.  Did we ever settle on the overall aesthetic?  I'm kind of thinking - 

"Well, the thing is that there wasn't one coherent vibe of all Azeroth.  Even before the alien space goats you had Gnomeregan.  And the Ironforge Air Force.  And those playing alongside, or against, people still using wooden boats, whose airforce was, like, bats.  Giant bats, but, like, not extra-magical ones.  And not having insurmountable advantages therefrom!  But I think that's a lot more trending steampunk than anything else?"

"I thought I knew what you meant by aesthetic... until you were talking about advantages?  Do you mean like the difference between the knights in the palace and the hedge-witches in the villages and the rovers in the mountains?"

"Something like that, or - the difference between a dragon and a peasant."

"Well, the dragons will just burn the peasants unless someone's really good and really lucky with a bow.  That's different - with knights and hedge-witches, they'll usually defeat any hedge-witch, unless she's set a trap - but there're so many of them, so there's a balance usually."

"Yes, that's the point.  That - normally you would expect a polity with even crude - command of techne, to steal a word several generations backwards from the whole 'tech level' thing - to have a sort of dragon-vs.-let-me-just-specify-unarmed-peasant, advantage, when in practice it'd been shown as - working out oddly evenly?"

"And in this Azaroth story... game?... they weren't?  And you want to choose one 'tech level' for everyone?  That sounds easy, unless there's something specific about the other tech levels you want to keep?  And we can say that any higher-tech-level things are really recent - maybe the alien space goats brought them - and they haven't had time to get organized to sweep over everywhere yet.  Maybe that's what's going on with the Demon Lord!"

"...No I'm saying that the situation we're in wants me to choose a single tech level and I don't think that that necessarily makes sense if I'm trying to - replicate the results of a bunch of writers throwing cool shit at the wall and hoping it stuck.

"So I'm very confused at - how my impression of your impression of what I just said, is pretty much the exact opposite?"

"Oh, you want to keep a lot about how Azaroth looked!  I'm afraid, well, I haven't seen Azaroth so I'm not sure how to help."

"Az-er-oth, but, yeah.  Part of the really - enchanting quality of it - was that you really had distinct zonal and factional identities in terms of...just the sort of stuff you found there?"

"So have really different countries in terms of their... types of crafts and objects?  And maybe the different sorts of animal-people too?  And what sort of magic they tend to use?"

"Yeah.  But at the same time - I'm trying to reconcile why on earth wood-hulled boats still existed, and not only that but as the primary non-portal-based means of intercontinental travel - given that dwarves absolutely had the tech for ironclads and gnomes - working out of Ironforge for reasons - had even installed a whole entire underground tram line between the dwarven and human capitals, so it wasn't just an access problem!"

"Do you want something like that in the world of Villarosa?  Could the dwarves-by-whatever-name perhaps have just recently developed things like that?"

"I guess?  But - hmm.  Let me think about this, actually.

"...thinking about the failure modes of gnomish tech, I bet I know why its analogue wouldn't spread very far - it's too full of chaos for all but the dedicated engineers.

"And Ironforge's equivalent taking a very 'slow and steady wins the race' position in counterpoint, almost more like Warhammer's Dawi...I could see it."

"Yes, magical technology can add any number of complications."

"And since the technology is fundamentally built atop the magic instead of - having baseline Earthling physics -

"And of course there's applied thaumaturgy, from the pure-magic side of things, for your floating cities and whatnot...or shadow magic, for the daring - or desperate."

"So where is Villarosa... where are we... amid all this?  I think I need to know some more about it to finish designing it."

"Yeah, that's the question, isn't it?  Angel darling, can you give us a world map of some sort or tools to make one?  Or just a big honking bowl of dice and a big sheet of paper, that'd probably do...Ugh, I'm not a climatologist.  Let alone someone who studies climate genesis.  I know there were bands of circulating air current on Earth...enough to yeet Saharan dust across an entire ocean, come to think of it.  If I recall correctly.  But I'm not immediately sure why that came about..."

"Oh, don't worry about that, Alicia - just tell them the climate you want, and the worldbuilding team will take care of that."

Still, with a smile, she manifests a large pad of paper and a sand tray.

"It's not the climate I'm worrying about specifically, so much as - politics arises from geographic concerns."

"... Say what politics you want, and the worldbuilding team will figure out a geography to generate them."

"I am not actually good at open-ended questions like that!"

"All right!  I'm thinking let's have three main concentrations of power - the king's from one, and the other ones can be powerful noblemen who're also of course mages.  Things have been stable, but -"

"- Sorry, Alicia, you want me to go on, or you want to draw a map or something?"

"I - want to have something that doesn't feel like I'm worldbuilding in an empty void?"

"All right..." Lila slowly says, confused.

Lila picks up a pen and draws on the top sheet of paper a roughly-Y-shaped river, with hills in-between the two stems of the "Y", and a small picture of a castle on the right stem.

She holds out another pen to Alicia.

Alicia makes a vaguely frustrated noise, taking the pen as she does.  "That's not - sufficient - that's the step after the step we're on right now -"

"I'm not even sure how gravity works in this universe.  If it does.  I suppose we have Newtonian mechanics...Wait, but portals.  Therefore we have something like spacetime, which can be bent, warped...Unless it's some coordinate-system fuckery that violates conservation of angular momentum, which, sure, why not...Okay.  Okay.  That isn't immediately relevant anyway."

"Let's say gravity works the same way it does where we're from - wait, it does work the same way where you're from and where I'm from, right?"

(The angel nods at that question.)

"Sure, but why does it work like that, is the real question.  One that ought to have better answers than 'because somebody said so'.  And, I know, this is the worldbuilding team's job, but - somebody has to figure it out, and if it's me, I can use the information we develop.  Probably."

"Anyway, spacetime exists, sure.  ...Could probably play it like the infinite inflation hypothesis, actually, where what happens is that - you have ever-expanding infinite hyperenergetic space that collapses into bubbles of recognizable reality."

The angel nods tentatively.  "Or perhaps it is encouraged to do so by some entity - which would be us."

"I don't like 'a god did it' as an answer for 'why do things exist' even when it's true, honestly.  It's...The fundamental possibility of caprice upon the part of a creator, is...it has unpleasant onto-epistemical consequences.  Even if eventually something has to come down to 'because'."

"Huh.  So... it collapses into the sort of world we're all familiar with."

Lila thinks she understands what consequences Alicia's talking about.  If so, she doesn't mind them at all.  She's liked being in a story, and she's sure she'll like it inside Villarosa when she'll be even more sure of it.

But she doesn't want to delay the world-creation even more.

She doesn't mind being in a narrative; she just doesn't want to create a universe that stops existing when gods stop paying attention to it!

"I think so, if I understand what you mean by that.

"This isn't to say that there can't be meddling gods and grand plans and whatnot - just that...no fundament of the universe should rely upon ongoing divine intervention to continue functioning.  To analogize from Azeroth, the Titans weren't greater ontologies, they were just big fucking robots.  Elune was a goddess, but she was not a lynchpin of existence.

"Which reminds me, tell the worldbuilders that if they're consulting the source material to inform our stories that they should basically ignore - anything after Legion, really; the plot really started jumping sharks around then, and it just.  Wasn't any good, especially with the gacha mechanics gameplay-side.  And the slander of Sylvanas, who really deserved better than being some deathgod's fucked-up puppet for several expansions in a row.  Like fucking hell, she already broke free from Arthas, she should have actually won!  Not - kept descending into horribleness!

"Ahem.

"My opinions on the Forsaken's lore aside, and really I have no room to talk since I mained Alliance pretty much exclusively -

"Is there -

"Angel Lila, is there an ideal number of geopolitical forces for this sort of thing?  If you can give me a number of slots to fill I might do better at generation."

There isn't, except in the sense that Alicia wants a number, and it should be small enough to keep good track of.

"Let's have Villarosa itself, and five slots figuratively closer by, and five more in the background."

"...Hmm."

"That feels kind of too 'down pat', but I do like the framework of having near-neighbors and 'those guys way over there'...

"Should probably consider whether Villarosa is a world-scale polity or a region-scale polity, too.

"Thoughts, Princess Lila?"

"You mean something that's active and visible all over the world?  The world's large... though I guess if we had more communication-focused magic it could be smaller; I didn't really have that.

"Or maybe if our Villarosa is going to be a seagoing power, maybe like the Rodinites?  I know something about how their king runs things, but I'd hardly say I'm familiar with it."

(With the help of the unicorns' magic, while Lila was growing up in hiding, she ended up exchanging regular letters with Queen Jethelia of the Rodinite Isles.  She was rather too fond of lecturing, but it helped Lila so much to talk with a queen who cared.  Even if she was most of a continent away.)

"I mean...hm.

"How to explain...

"So on the one hand, yes, that's not wrong.  On the other hand, that's...

"It's missing something?

"A regional power is an area on a map; a world power is something you make a map of.  This is entirely wrong, but - still useful."

Lila's first thought is "but of course every kingdom makes a map of itself."

But then she tries to look through the eyes of someone from a smaller-through-communications world, or maybe a Rodinite; what sort of country would she make a map of?

"I think Villarosa would need to be that sort of... world-important... country if we want to win against the Dark Lord without Fate clearly helping us."

"Hmm.  It depends; I'm pretty sure you wouldn't make a map of Dalaran, City of Mages - but it sure packed one heck of a punch in a fight.  A small country that produces big damn heroes has a strength that could rival an Empire, if it's aimed appropriately.  That, and there's always mutual-defense treaties and 'cultists plotting to unseal the Demon Lord' and whatnot, that would allow a regional power to affect world events directly."

"Treaties are a lot more complicated - I'd rather defeat the Demon Lord ourselves, not just be the fulcrum pushing treaties around."

"I mean.  We wouldn't be the fulcrum in that analogy so much as the lever.  Being as we'd both be...pretty good adventurers, I think.  But I was thinking more along the lines of 'the plot prior to our arrival - and derailment thereof - is set up like "the Heroine derails a plot to unleash the Demon Lord that the Villainess was a co-conspirator of."'."

"Oh - before the Demon Lord is actually released?  That makes things... less fun in some ways, but a lot safer when we're outside the hands of Fate.

"All right - you want a smaller country with lots of good mages?  I'm fine with that."

"Demon Lords are pretty big threats for even, like, college students to go punch out on their own, so, yeah, I'd rather not be facing one at full power right out of the gate, you know?"

She shivers, remembering when she was suddenly unexpectedly facing Barvid at his full power.

"H-how's the cult trying to release him - should we decide that ourselves?"

"Presumably with some sort of ritual, possibly - tied to a royal artifact?"

She nods.  "A royal artifact; that'd get you squarely involved.  And something from my Heroic father, to get me involved - maybe another artifact, or maybe some notes about important information.  Or both."

"Notes about important information, I think; something he investigated and busted that got him elevated to the peerage, but now that he is or was a peer he found something more - corruption in the ranks."

"Yes!  And he wasn't able to expose these corrupt peers before dying - I don't think they killed him, but they might've helped nudge things toward his death - and now the demon lord's cultists are going to use these corrupt peers to help release the demon lord!

"And in the original story, of course, I would've unwisely mentioned them to you or your friends, and you would've stolen them."

"Or you simply would have been dismissed, with it being a matter of your word against the peers - who promptly cultivated my romantic acrimony in your general direction into 'my' own treason, in exchange for 'dealing with that impudent slattern', or whatever."

"If it was literally my word against theirs with no evidence...

"... all right, I wouldn't do it myself, but the other me who hasn't had good politics tutoring might!

"But let's keep it that way; if I did have evidence - and I'm sure my father would've kept it somewhere - then someone would've listened to me if Villarosa is run anywhere near as well as our angel has been saying."

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?"

It would be fun, but...

"That'd complicate things since we're the only ones with this meta-knowledge, and I don't want to go spreading it around even if anyone would believe us.  But it would be fun..."

"...Yeah.  It seems like it would lead to - interpersonal drama - when we turn on a dime, and...no unnecessary interpersonal drama."

"Oh, but I am still going to be In-Character.  It'd be fun if you are too..."  Lila pauses a moment, but without any hope of Alicia agreeing.  "But I suppose we'll just need to content ourselves with the fun of everyone's reaction when you suddenly aren't."

"I - expect that I will be somewhat in character no matter whether I take the compulsion which I'm not - but mmhmm.  ...What sort of things...are, In Character, for you...?"

"Well, I like to think I'm friendly, and everyone says I'm daring and kind when I'm not being stern - but it's not really what'll be In Character for me; it's what'll be In Character for the other me in this Villarosa story.  They say a bit about your character" (she points at the tag for "Spoiled Rotten") "but not much about mine.  Except she's the Heroine, so she's probably got something good about her."

The angel knows there's a lot more Lila isn't saying about herself - but she won't mention it now, either.

"Yes, that would be what is In Character for the canonical character you're reincarnating into.  I don't know what the worldbuilding team will come up with, but she'll be very different from you.  And also, she will have the No Compromise flaw."  The angel taps that tag.  "I believe you can work around that eventually, but it'll take some finesse, and I've never actually seen anyone do it."

"I am quite happy pushing the frontiers of magical research and leaving star-crossed romances to the Heroine, no matter the contrivances of Fate.

"Then again, it seems that that is more likely to invite Fate to take my reluctance as a challenge.  Regardless...

"I'd like to discuss 'Early Start'."

"What're you thinking about it?  It would give us more time to figure out the demon-summoning conspiracy, and manage social expectations... but then it'd be several years of having to put up with those social expectations before things start."

Lila meant to be saying that last line just for Alicia, but as she's saying it, she wonders what she herself would think of the social expectations around her just-barely-noble status.  She's heard the stories about Lady Charlotte back in her grandfather's time - it wouldn't be quite the same, but those stories aren't promising.

"No reason we couldn't root out some of the rot before it starts growing, you know.  Certainly I do not wish to judge others for pre-crime, but I think I'd also prefer to not compress my plot-relevance into a single season.  We're not showing on Netflix.

"...Excuse me.  Injoke."

"Anyway.  I'm - thinking that I want to give you an ally.  If I might.  If you'll observe 'Oh No, There's Two Of Them'..."

"Oh?  Sounds fun, if she would... be willing to work with me In-Character, but work together." 

"Are you thinking of a particular someone for us to reincarnate?"

"I - you could say that."

The angel nods.  "We can do that.  Who would it be?"

"...It's easier for me to show you, than to tell you."

The angel pokes with her finger in the air, once again readying a daemon-spell to search the multiverse for...

She looks questioningly at Alicia.  The Will of the Multiverse could read her mind, but she's not going to ask for that unless Alicia wants.

...She's going to reach out for the spell, no matter whether that action is legal or not, and steer it herself.  If that's alright.

(Given she's obviously trying, the angel launches the daemon-spell with a lemma to read Alicia's mind for what she's trying to indicate to it.  After all, the multiverse is too big for simple hand-gestures to search it.)

What Alicia is searching for, though, is both quite simple to specify, and nonetheless exceedingly complex.

There is a pattern that you can find, in both an Alicia sufficiently dedicated to its assembly, and elsewhere in the multiverse.

It is shaped like a shining sword.  It is shaped like Meti ten Ryo, who despises the sword-nature.  It is shaped like a craftswoman, who lavishes attention upon simple, well-used tools.

When Alicia named it, she named it Diana Pallas, and that is for whom she searches, in the great transfinite multiverse.

And —

— she —

— finds —

— her.

She's fighting demons, in what looks like it may as well be hell.

She is thrown into a galaxy far, far away, and picks herself up from the dust to try and make it better.

She builds strong bonds with even her enemies, offering them a chance and an open hand.

She holds even a hopeless line, because she can and so she must.

But it is the Outland adventurer that draws Alicia's attention the most.  She recognizes those demons.

"... --oh, well, and there she goes, even.  Did she just derive ana-kata Blink on the fly?"

"Wow, I wish I'd had her back when we were fighting Barvid!  Yes, if we want someone to help bring down a demon-summoning cult without the hands of Fate, she sounds like a good friend."

The angel does get enough feedback from the search-spell to notice that there's some connection between this pattern of alts and Alicia's own head.  But she's not going to mention anything - the multiverse considers this Diana a separate person, and Alicia apparently wants her to be treated that way too, so she's not going to point that out to the Will of the Multiverse or anyone else who isn't noticing.

There's most definitely a connection, but - in the aspirational sense.  In the authorial sense, even.  Not so much a connection between souls.  (Though perhaps there is a connection between the two souls in the 'sufficiently modeled character' sense; this author has not gone so far as to check this particular instantiation of a [TEMPLATE TRUENAME REDACTED] for a co-occurring Ophelia Vaudelle or Mondegreen - yet - though in truth she expects one to show up on the other side of the coin shortly.  (It's the villaingender; it's absolutely catnip for Opheliae.))

"...Other shenanigans I find myself thinking of, to silver some of these Drawbacks...

"...I have the option to give you a memory of a Bad Timeline, one that's...probably worth the capital letters... in addition to what 'canon' knowledge we will apparently be getting.  Something like a worst case scenario; the canonical villainess kills the prince rather than losing gracefully and letting you have them, and I've no doubt that - she would be very cruel.

"You'd...have to do a lot to me to drive me to that; I have no idea what the villainess would be driven to such lengths by - but it's also a way to steal 'dangerous super moves' and suchlike.

"I -

"...if anyone should try and bear up under that it ought to be me, you've already done - more than enough, and at least I'd - have a reason - but I don't know if you have the option.  Seems - unheroic.  But I've already had enough...nightmares of futile struggle...that...if I can make something of them...I'd rather.  ...Fuck, why did I admit that.  On national television.  ...Not literally, I fucking hope."

"I don't care for more bad memories, unless there's a point to them.  And you haven't been talking about the point of the story being overcoming our bad impressions of each other.  And I don't want you to have them either."

It could be a good story.  But it could be bad for Villarosa.

"...I don't want either of us having bad memories of a lying future.  I just...

"Have somehow argued myself into the corner that obtaining the strategic intelligence of who might bend the knee to an overlady, with what leverage...

"...If it outweighs the cost, for the gains in truth...I can't apply deontology to a world hanging in the balance, and the best lies...they need little bits of truth.  Little seeds.

"It's not...a narrative impression, if I recall correctly."

That... would help, if Lila could get a play-by-play version of her winning.  It'd be sort of boring to just step through it, but it'd work.

"But wait a minute - I'm the heroine; I win in the canonical version!  So couldn't we get that knowledge from just knowing how the canonical Roses of Villarosa goes, without having to have memories of living through it?"

"...we're Off The Rails, though.  And knowledge of canon...

"Canon knowledge is all well and good, but it's not going to tell you the things you come to know by living with someone for several years.  They're different knowledgebases.

"The lens of a visual novel or an anime has very specific things it focuses upon."

"Does it have to use that lens?  I knew a wizard who could give people the knowledge they'd get from having lived through things without feeling fully like they'd lived through them.  Can we do it that way so it doesn't feel so horrible for you?"

"I have had some ideas about 'knowing shadow or Void magic' as a Dark Secret, and those are certainly that sort of bad-end divinatory, uncontrolled..."

"That'd help with your canonically helping helping release the demon lord...  That reminds me, what Dark Secret should I have?  Maybe something I did back when my father was Heroically questing... I suppose that would mean he died rather recently..."

"You could be adopted.

"...Wait, no, Villarosa almost prefers adopted heirs.  They show that they've shown enough value to be worth expending effort upon promoting."

"...Anyway, hmm.  I dunno, really."

"If I'm looking for Demon-Lord–releasing magic, I probably want to go with my other Weird Magical Experiment of alloying Light with Chaos, though, in like, a more distinct way than smiting it really hard."

"... That just gave me an idea.  Let's say, when I was five or so, I caused one of the problems my father fixed up.  Maybe I even released a minor demon."

"Yeah, that could do it.  I - hmm.  Demons in the mold of Sargeras...I'm not sure what a 'minor' demon looks like from a physics standpoint unless...

"Ooh, yeah, that'd work.

"You accidentally - invoked one of the standard battle-summons of chaos mages, maybe - and the - maybe an imp, the smallest possible metastable unit of chaos, sets things on fire - kind of set fire to something important before you had any idea what you'd even done?

"Um.  Let me lay out what I'm imagining a demon to even look like, physically.  They're not exactly - the same sort of creatures as us.  So we have..."

She'll just...fetch some paper, and start drafting.

The most important thing to know about demons is that they do not have souls.  They cannot have souls.  Souls are ordered and demons are not.  Demons can only be metastable patterns of half-ordered chaos; if a soul is a stable region of a Game Of Life board, a demon is a glider.  It doesn't have identity as humans recognize it, only known response patterns.

Summoning demons is fairly straightforward to do with Arcane magic.  Summoning demons that do what you want them to do, and nothing else, is something equivalent in effort to a weapon of mass destruction program.  Imps, for example, can't be stopped from eventually fireballing anything that moves, not even their summoners; the key factor in imp development is maximizing the friendly delay.

 

A Demon Lord is someone or something that looked at the above paragraphs and laughed, because it is powerful enough to have a soul or something like it, despite running off of a chaos heart for power, despite consistent, soul-burning, immersion in the Twisting Nether Between All Worlds And Realms.

This gives them opportunities to accomplish great and terrible things by use of power overwhelming - but also presents the unique vulnerability that having a soul allows soul-related magics to work upon them, for better or for worse.  Demons cannot be killed, but Demon Lords can die.