"See, that sounds like it might also be a problem with, say, the plan where I devour you for power. Which sounds pretty hubristic to me. Also, there's evil cosmic weather that's specifically offended by hubris??? Is someone going to fix that??"

"It's opinions are complex and poorly documented. Also for the record, the existence of the Wind or discussion of it's existence is a lethal infohazard outside universes designed specifically for that purpose; your NDA is designed to protect you, by preventing the fact you know from being communicated in any way to the Wind. I will be having words with whichever of my apprentices prepared this documentation." 

"...I know you know this, but this world has a lot of problems. Worlds. Local multiverse. The general state of nearby existence."

"We are working on the most urgent problems. We can work on foes we can simply not antagonise afterwards."

"Well, sure, potentially, but if we do manage to verify my collateral damage avoidance power, I can't help noticing that it seems like it would be really useful for all our other endeavors if there wasn't an evil cosmic wind that's offended by hubris." She's not sure quite when this became an 'our' situation.

"It is unfortunately also still stronger than almost anything else that exists. There is always a higher power; the world is like this, return obvious derivation about the character of the higher powers." 

"Hmm," she says, hubristically.

"I suspect you are now approaching the logic which unites the senior leadership of the alliance, despite our other differences." 

"Is the senior leadership by any chance united in the belief that this situation sucks and somebody had better fix it?"

"Indeed it is. And by a painful awareness of the many problems involved in doing this in a more than haphazard manner." 

"I find that a lot of problems can be solved with supportive allies, a can-do attitude, and meticulous planning. Ultimate cosmic power probably also helps."

"You'll be glad to know that we have three of those things and are hard at work on the fourth." 

"I very much am! All right. Let me have another, more avaricious look at this list..."

She pores over the text.

"You said you can offer me a Greater Bestowal for free? Which of the other Remittance-level gifts can be offered that way, and would I still be inviting punishment for hubris if I tried to claim more than one at once?"

"We don't have anything on the level of the remittances but we have numerous other magic systems. Leaving aside the minor arts with little long-term impact - we might come back to them if there's a specific capacity you dearly want - there's Leycraft, Fortification, Viscerality, the Labyrinthian, and the Strains?" 

[ ] Labyrinthian (1 orb) - The glory of this art is long gone. The palace-planes and stelae that listed the names of the sovereigns who resided within have crumbled beneath the weight of countless centuries. Gloom and ruin rule the fractally-nested warrens that once housed their citizenry; the ever-vernal fields that fed them lie fallow. Dunes of dust choke the Liminal Catacombs, those who fled from death into their depths delivered to the embrace of a darker eternity. Nevertheless, for the price of an orb the talent of the Shaper-Kings of old will arise within you.

Labyrinth magic deals with creating and configuring planes perpendicular to reality. Though it provides no immediate power, with dedication you can carve out a world of your own. At first, an airless space no larger than a closet that must be accessed from the spot where it was created; eventually, a paradisiacal pleasure-garden never more than a quiet moment and a few gestures away. Almost all attributes of the resulting realm are amenable to alteration, if the Shaper's skill and resolve are sufficient: size, habitability, splendor, safety, even physical laws and the passage of time.

Nor is there a limit on the number of planes that can be crafted save that imposed by your patience. Invest in improving one shining citadel or specialize, creating a training area that focuses its occupants, a restorative hot spring that amplifies the qualia of pleasure, and so on. Needless to say, the potential comfiness is immense. Realms can be arranged into networks; spatial moats and mires of decelerated time girding a fortress dimension where the Shaper prepares to greet uninvited guests. Contesting an adept in their sanctum is risky, as a realm that knows its master's touch can be compelled to rise in their defense.

This magic's weaknesses are twofold: the time and toil needed to mold worlds and the Labyrinthian's powerlessness beyond their domain. Months will be required to begin to realize its potential, and even a grandmaster would struggle to open portals at speeds relevant in superhuman combat.

Travel between worlds is possible by slowly kneading the fabric of space into a passage, but this function is inferior in all respects to the Voyager's Authority. The Shaper's Art lacks the strength to alter the metrics of full realities directly, but on entering other sequestered spaces you may attempt to bend them to your will. If you can locate the Labyrinth of your predecessors, what remains of their works will be yours for the taking. Be careful that you do not court the doom that befell them as well.

[ ] Self-Fortification (1 ember) - To pour an ocean into a cup: that is Fortification.

An option that's as prosaic as it is powerful. Pleroma is a vibrant realm, every river and stone infused with a heady density of essence. Sunlight like molten gold; each lake an expanse of pellucid azure. Inevitably, that power bleeds over into its people. Equally inevitably, Pleromians have devised all manner of techniques and rituals to expedite the process.

The Fortified gain swiftness and strength, resistance to all manner of attacks, and the ability to attenuate the effects of external forces or amplify their own impact on the world. Even an initiate could shrug off sniper fire if forewarned. Gravity held in abeyance by their will, adepts soar through the air and descend with meteoric force. The greatest masters are likened to the avatars of gods; singularities of might whose passage warps creation, capable of altering the geography with a gesture.

Advancement is rapid, so long as reagents or places of power are available. Fortification demands ever-greater concentrations of essence to fuel the spiritual osmosis, making each titan an investment.

The Fortified develop secondary powers based on the mechanism of their empowerment. Heathen nomads who drink starksward teas or inhale its smoke are imbued with vast resilience and a preternatural affinity for violence. Sailors who bathe in leviathan blood breathe water and sleep comfortably on the seabed. Sects of salt-eaters with brined flesh wield elemental powers. Holy warriors undertake pilgrimages and consume ambrosia to awaken abilities reflecting their patrons. There are a thousand paths, replete with breathing techniques and meditative mantras and secret formulae. 

[ ] Viscerality (2 embers) - The incarnadine craft molds flesh like clay, unraveling tapestries of sinew to spin them into glorious new configurations. At the artist's caress, the plodding march of evolution becomes a heedless sprint toward the realization of genetic destiny.

Viscerality has two components: a tactile magic by which the body of any being can be altered, and a facility for manipulating the passions that rule the body. The first allows for regeneration, shapeshifting, creating custom organisms, and gradual alteration of ecosystems are possible. The latter starts with a sense for the most primal emotions: fear, anger, ardor. Discernment blossoms into the ability to evoke such feelings with increasing intensity and subtlety. Stoking is always easier than suppressing; Viscerality is not a magic of restraint.

A novice can alter their complexion and apparent age at will, or arrange a rendezvous between compatible targets. An adept could send a foe into a rage precluding all possibility of retreat, or erupt into a war-form bristling with poisonous spines and claws, bone plating and no vital organs except the brain.

Warping others is more difficult, as physical influence diminishes with distance from the body. Many combatants favor tentacles, volleys of supersonic spikes, or hemokinesis to project their power. Preexisting biomass and biological knowledge are helpful, but one's own passion can be substituted for either in a pinch. Visceralists gain instincts corresponding with their emotional investment. The fear of letting a loved one die grants the insight to save them; hate for an enemy feeds a transformation. The resulting cycle may not be virtuous, but the results are formidable.

Progress in the art's rapid as long as you pursue your own interests. The synergies with Self-Fortification are considerable, attacking the problem of augmentation from two angles for multiplicative results. A laborious combination of gene therapy and implanting symbiotes can initiate others into Viscerality, proliferating the magic. Any children you have will be natural users unless you desire otherwise.

Despite its utility in improving crop yields and as a source of atheistic healing, the art has a troubled reputation and is traditionally associated with hemophages. Trustworthy Visceralists are highly valued, yet who but another wielder can check their work?

Lastly, Viscerality originates from the Ring of Lust. In the event of its destruction, the magic will be weakened; should a Ringbearer arise, users may fall under their thrall.

"... while Leycraft is a relatively minor art of geomancy noteworty mainly for the way it allows us to convert natural forces in labyrinth-realms into fungible magical power suitable for Fortification and other purposes, and the Strains are a powerful magic I've heard described as, essentially, disney princess singing - it allows you to enforce a mood or a genre on the universe around you with strength proportional to the quality of your singing. The lack of it is one of the things I miss most about, you know." 

He gestures at his lack of a throat. 

Absently, while reading over the new entries, she says, "If nothing else, after the dust settles on the major issues, I can grab a whole stack of dooms off of you, keel over, and then eventually be fine again."

She scans through the Labyrinthian. "I've been keeping that 'synergize two powers together' option in the back of my mind, and at a glance the Labyrinthian seems ripe for it, but maybe I'm missing something? What do you think?"

"There is a throughput issue on my ability to pass my injuries off on someone - if I could just pass them all off on someone else the I'd have paid a civillian or something to endure them for me. As it stands, the damage is so deep that a fraction of a percent of the damage removed from me is enough to completely destroy someone else's equivalent faculty, and that's assuming they've been non-trivially enhanced above human baseline to begin with. We'll get there eventually, but finding willing candidates and compensating them appropriately is slow going." 

"I see no reason why you could not include the Labyrinthian in a fusion; what would you be fusing it with, and why?" 

"Well, I mean, it's the ability to create arbitrary pocket dimensions. Lots of very cool things become cooler if you can create arbitrary pocket dimensions about them. —actually, another good question: how many fusions can I get? Just one? As many as the Patron involved will put up with?"

"Fair enough. I suspect many things do not actually require Fusion to be effectively synergised with the Labyrinthian; I was able to create a dimension that constantly produced essential salts with which to fuel my Essentialism without such a fusion. Your limit on fusions is more like the latter than the former, but I'm not sure how many that will be, not having consulted with her about it." 

"Okay, so I should be prioritizing pretty hard but not Literally Only Ever One Fusion hard. Next question, can you stack fusions? Fuse one thing with another, and then the result with a third thing?"

"It's perfectly possible to fuse more than two things together, or to fuse a fused system, yes. I expect it might increase the expected rate of errors or anomalies, but by how much would depend on the complexity of what is being fused." 

"Tell me more about errors and anomalies. What should I look out for to avoid running into those while I'm creating alarming edifices of interwoven magic systems?"

"Minor effects or capabilities being lost, resources not being perfectly efficently interchangeable, synergies being missed. Small glitches, essentially, in the idealised synergy of the fusion, cause primarily by the fact that Penelope will be working with an increasing number of moving parts that need to be kept from interfering with each other. She does need to actually design the fusion framework herself; nobody else has been able to even comprehend what she's doing when she does it, Demarcation shouldn't work like that." 

"Hmm. So I would need buy-in from my mysterious cosmic powers to fuse them with other things, since they'd have to let her rummage around in their details. But I pretty much knew that already."