"I also expect the latter in a lot of cases, but of course if there are really sparse neighborhoods where a certain set of starting conditions produces only a handful of histories those may be harder to find for exactly that reason. Not that I'm trying to argue for any particular model, here; I'm just sort of tossing possibilities around recreationally."

"Anyway I feel, I think, reasonably unconfused at the end of the day about all of this as it relates to what it means to take actions. Do you still have thoughts about it? —also could you look away for a second? I want to deanime."

"Oh, sure. And, same, actually." She turns her back and, assuming he also turns his, de-animes.

He also goes into his more masculine face. "Done."

"Likewise. Did you want to Dragon Fairy Elf Witch me, by the way? It'll be a bit of a lottery, I've got a dozen different things in here."

"...mildly concerned about the arms."

"So was at least one friend of mine; I love them but I'll admit they're not for everybody. My understanding of the metanarrative is that if you don't want the arms you won't get the arms."

"I guess the power does say no drawbacks, hmm. What-all do you have?"

"Silver dragon, which gives me the face scales and some sorcery and I can turn my hands into claws and back. Alpina herself, which lets me read with my skin and write on it. I have the eyes of a hawk, the sense of smell of a dog, and the ears of a cat." She flicks the latter. "Got the four arms off a demon and resistance to fire and electricity from some other demons. The aeon was the planar anomaly detection and telepathy with anything else that's set up for telepathy. The angel is why my hair glows a bit, and also made me slightly wiser and able to see in pitch darkness. I age like an elf and have elf ears." She pushes some hair aside to reveal that she has four total ears, all nonhuman. "And the dwarf heritage is better balance and being a little harder to injure even on top of Inner Strength."

"...I wonder how it would work if, ah, looking at all inhuman were a drawback? Which in my current world it really is."

"I can ask Alpina if you can dodge the cosmetic stuff altogether, if you want. I think it's doable? None of me looks like a dwarf or a dog, and if I ever had visible hawk eyes Emerald Orbs did something else with them before I looked in a mirror."

(Brenda's eyes are currently almost human-passing, bright green with a hint of gold glitter.)

"Ask her for me, please? Like now that I think about it I expect it'd be fine given that looking nonhuman would in fact be a huge drawback but."

She puts one hand on a page and gives a thumbs up with another. "Yup! If you want to keep looking human, you will."

"Cool! Okay, let me try to," discover previously unknown heritage... "Oh the enhanced senses are cool. And," <testing one two three, is this telepathy thing working?> And he can also write on his skin, does that work—oh it does, he can get a tattooed Oni mask and then get rid of it and write his name on his forehead and get rid of it and then finally get the dragon tattoo he's always wanted, although that one is completely covered by his clothes. And also claws? Claws! "I should look into what-all silver dragon sorcery does, Bar could I get another copy of the Pathfinder core book, on my tab? Thank you, you're a gem. —you could read what's in a book by just touching it couldn't you, oh your powers are really exciting, sorry I'm blabbing I do that if I'm not paying attention."

"No no this is great, this is exactly how I felt about getting all of these except all piled up at once! I'm glad you like them!" Bounce bounce. <Telepathy is super handy even though most of my friends don't have it!> "I have to touch each page but yeah it's way faster than using my eyes."

<Being a Mary Sue is awesome.> And with the Pathfinder book here he's going to look for the section on sorcerers to figure out what he gets from being part dragon. This is going to be completely useless in his current world but gosh it's really shiny.

<It really is.> And Brenda settles in with her own set of sourcebooks to figure out exactly how she's going to close the Worldwound.