"At this time, yes." 

"We are almost at the end of the selection process. The next step is to grant you several Aspect Emblems. These do not come with a cost."

"Before we learned to forge Icons, Aspect Emblems were the path to power. Some even followed it all the way to immortality. North King Zhal is still kicking around. Despite this, it has never fallen out of favor - if anything, Icons have made the art flourish more as more tools became available to forge them."

"Aspect Emblems allow people to collectively format Potential into aspect, and allow magic, technique, and glamour to be leveraged into tuning and empowering those Aspects. In this way, out-of-icon Aspects can be forged with precision and intention, and don't depend on the vulgarities of chance."

"While it's not exactly a drawback, there is a limit on Aspect Emblems. While integrating one is fast, and you can start using the Aspect gained immediately, 'digesting' it is slow, and there isn't 'space' in the spirit for a second Aspect Emblem until the first is digested. The time to digest an emblem is a function of its effective Ascension, and one's one level of existence. It takes around a year to digest an emblem mimicking an aspect at an Ascension one-fourth of your level of existence, with it taking exponentially more time as your Level drops below that, and logarithmically less as it rises above that rank."

"Many clans will start feeding Emblems to their child - it's one of the reasons children of clans with icons oft bond icons themselves. We can feed them to you as part of the final stage of templating, and the templating will digest them for you rather than forcing you to wait to integrate each one."

"There are some Emblems that we can't rightfully leave you without. They're Ascension 0 aspects, so they aren't hard to make, the aspects they carry weak - they're mostly intermediaries, letting us share skills with you. You don't have to take any of these, and they have neither costs nor rewards; they're just here to make your life easier."

"Integrating the first Emblem will grant you knowledge of the five most common tongues of the area you'll start out in. More, it will grant a minor aspect of 'Language' that will help make learning new ones easier."

"The second emblem is for cultural adaptation. Minor Aspects of 'Social Graces', 'Social Poise', and'Social Insight' will help you navigate unfamiliar cultures and spot pitfalls, while 'Personal Presentation' will help you understand how your overall behavior, dress, and the like is shaping others' opinion of you."

"The third emblem is similar to the second, but specifically for competence in the area of romance."

"The fourth emblem contains a 'Survival' Aspect, as well as minor 'Outdoorsmanship', 'Hunting', 'Gathering', 'Camping' and 'Traveling' aspects."

"The fifth emblem will give you basic skills to cover everything you need to care for children, from the time they are newborns till they become young teens."

Ooooh. 

"Will I know right off how to make them? How to feed them to my children?"

"Not automatically. But there are many people in Adastra who will be able to teach you such things, and the Artificer Icon will ensure you master them well and quickly if you choose to study them."

"Excellent." 

"The next set of available Emblems cost 1 Gift each. You can choose from elemental skills, combat skills, magical skills, alchemy skills, psionic skills, enchantment skills, artistic-magical skills, druidic skills, athletic skills, an Orgone-enhancing elixir field, or sexual skill. Many of those can be taken more than once, if you desire multiple abilities in a given category."

"How many sexual skills are there?"

"Only one. We have offered many blessing to help with this part of your life, enough so that this offer feels a little like gilding the lily, but we can offer you an emblem of sexual mastery. Even before your pinnacle aspects come into play, you'll be one of the greatest masters of the erotic arts around, with a four ascension aspect of 'Sexuality' bending the very rules of the world to enable your exploits."

"Even the most decedent nobles would balk at spending the investment of a fourth tier Emblem for something like this. But the decision was made to offer it, so it isn't my choice. I will say I think you can do better."

"Aha, gotcha. No, I won't be taking that one. What does 'Orgone-enhancing elixir field' mean?"

"A potent foundation for internal Orgone Arts, this will establish your internal Elixir Field as a fourth level Aspect. The Elixir Field essentially acts as a 'weight' on top of any internal Orgone manipulations you perform and increases the rate and power of the flow through you. You can also drain it as a power source, though after doing so it's hard work to restore it."

"As so much of the body is empowered by the flow of life-force, this is a great Emblem for anyone who isn't actually going to devote significant energy to the art, or a starting point for someone who is."

"Which of the skills on offer go best with artificing?"

"I would suggest Magical Skills in divination or ritual magic, or an Artistic Integration of whatever art form you plan to use for your devices. Jewelry-making, metalworking, and woodworking are all popular options for the latter."

"...Artistic-magical skill for...glassworking," she decides. She knows some things about glass already and it's really, really cool. Plus, if metalworking is popular, glassworking gives her a comparative advantage. 

"Very well. Your current selections leave you with eight Gifts. Is that all the aspect emblems you wish to select at this time? If so we can discuss the option of binding a chained spirit next."

"Binding...a chained...spirit...right, that came up when I was asking about Resurrection, didn't it." 

"Yes."

"Spiritual entities exist in a different balance of the powers than material beings. Many people on our world make the mistake of labeling every being native to a different plane a Spirit, but that's wrong. The Devils of the Iron Hells are not spirits. The Iron Hells were places of law, and that law created a consistent enough reality to be 'material.' As such, the Devils are not spirits. On the flip side, a Native Outsider like yourself is a spirit. You are a drifting piece of self-contained reality - you could walk into deep Arcadia and not be dissolved, because your laws and rules are internal to your own existence. It's merely the case that those laws and rules are the same laws and rules as those of the material plane."

"With a few exceptions, like Native Outsiders and Gods, spirits are easier to move through magic, and easier to bind through it. It's possible to subvert the balance of the power that makes them up, and through doing this take control of them by seizing the root of their existence. Technically, it's possible to do that to mortal beings as well - the fae are infamous for their soul eating - but spiritual existence tends to create vulnerabilities. At the same time, these vulnerabilities can be a source of power. A dryad's root of being is sunk deep within her tree, and through it she can draw strength and power from the land. An angel's will and Law blend together, such that they may command Order itself."

"The circle of your own existence is not closed yet. It's closing as the templating completes, but there is still a little time. In it, I may sink the root of a spirit's existence inside you. Such a being would become an extension of you. Not in mind, but in purpose: your purpose would flow down the link and command their will. Such beings would have to have a lower level of existence than you do, and will always have a lower one. As you rise, so shall they, and over time they will Ascend their icons and forge their aspects in service to their root."

"But more profoundly, your Living Nexus Aspect will strongly pour your will and power into them. They will be as priests to you, channeling your aspects, invoking your exceptions, extending your reach. Wherever they go, you in some sense are. With practice, you'll be able to extend your senses through them."

"This is a... messy way of command. They will have their own natures, and while they will be loyal to you, but as a... principle to uphold first, your living will second, and your words third. They'll be loyal to your goals, but not how you wish to go about them. There are more legalistic ways of binding spirits, but they allow legal loopholes. There are no loopholes here, they can not turn on you so long as you exist, and would have trouble doing so even after. Just remember that their nature defines how they express that loyalty."

"So long as you live, their root of existence will live, and so they cannot die. They may be destroyed, but you can reassert their existence and restore them without much trouble. You also anchor them: most anti-spirit measures will fail, and they cannot be bound by another."

"The reverse is also true, but to a lesser extent. So long as they live, they can call the root of their existence back to them, but the process is much harder, and they would need to use external resources and time. And during that time, they could be bound and subverted, breaking their connection to you until you return. If all your bound spirits are subverted or killed, and you are dead, you won't be coming back this way."

"This is... new. People won't expect you to have this. It's a tool that only became possible through the longer, slower templating process we invented."

"I see...I honestly find this idea fairly disturbing, and am only considering it at all because of the potential Resurrection hack." 

"Would you prefer to proceed directly to discussing the option of a personal Arcadia?"

"What's a personal Arcadia?"

"An Arcadia is a place, an event, and Nothing. It's an expression of glamour, divorced from Existence. As it does not exist, it is defined. As it is not limited or bound by the absurd flow of the natural world, it can take on infinite variations. Fairylands are a kind of Arcadia, but not the only one. Arcadias are infinite, but not real, and that void of reality forms a kind of... negative pressure upon reality, draining reality to solidify parts of that Arcadia. Becoming real, the rest of Arcadia drains the reality of the solidifying parts, and so what is real is finite, but fungible."

"One form of existence can more firmly tie Glamour to reality, enough so that it becomes able to endure even iron. Spirit. And so the fae steal souls to pin down their world and give it consistency, and feed on our world it fill it with variety."

"Still, while some may find it disturbing, this kind of fluid reality to has many uses, the most general of which is forging 'Personal Arcadias.' Using enchantment to define the 'story' of a piece of Arcadia, pinning down that fragment with definition and boundaries, giving it rules and principles through magic, snapping it off from the greater Arcadia with degenerate Orgone. It's a bardic art, and not a trivial one."

"Once you're fully a Pinnacle, touching your spirit in the ways needed to attach an Arcadia is impossible for anyone else - it's something you would have to do yourself. Most summoned heroes instead use their nature as a living world to achieve similar effects through the Outsider Icon, but the options are not mutually exclusive. As part of your spirit, a Bound Arcadia is part of your inner world, and can support and be supported by your Outsider Aspects."

"The stability and completeness of existence of a bound Arcadia is usually tied to how much spirit you've fed it. As you possess a Chthonic Will, your spirit will be able to feed them to a state of perfect reality. This won't be instant - it will have to feed on the overflowing 'excess' of your spirit, and that will take months. You'll be able to invoke it before then; it just won't be 'perfectly' real."

"Your level of existence will define how much can be real at any given time - even though you can create perfect reality, you can't create unlimited amounts of it. You'll have a fungible amount of 'real' in each piece of Arcadia you carry with you, based upon your own level of existence."

"The overall profundity of what you can make will be defined by your aspects, but your Outsider aspect will serve you well, as you can call upon all the permutations of the natural world. Other aspects may grant you stranger methods. And as I said, there are multiple ways to cultivate your inner world. Your personal Arcadia will make a good foundation to work into your inner world as you build it into something greater."

"Well, that sounds like it won't substitute for a bound spirit for the resurrection hack, so we'd better go back and look at those."

Your options are:

A demon of Law and Tyranny, born of the Iron Hells,

A demon of the Astral Depths, who will seek to exalt you at others' expense,

A Feral Thing, a being of violence and fear born of the Lightless Forest,

A succubus, embodying the triumph of physical want over principles,

A Wheel, one of the angels that rule over motion and the movement of energy and force,

An angel of the Astral Depths, who will seek to exalt you by exalting others,

A Justice, an angel who helps those who have been wronged,

An Elysian, one of the kindest of angels, pacifistic and dedicated to joy,

A Fairy Handmaiden, flexible in nature and goals,

An Iron Fae, tenacious and resilient but lacking somewhat in intelligence,

An Elemental of any of the four basic elements, a force of destruction,

Or A Horror, intelligent yet incomprehensible, of a race far older than the language-using beings of Adastra.

"...Tell me more about the angels?"

"Wheels are Angels that rule over motion and the movement of energy and force. Like all angels, they are of Law, but they rule over the necessary chaotic emissions needed to keep things from solidifying."

"Wheels wish to keep things moving and dynamic, but that's mostly in a physical, concrete sense. They are living tools for managing energy and motion on the ecologies of some deep astral planes."

"This one will wish to move anything that impedes you away. Usually in a physical sense."

"Hmm, angels believe in law, and so it might sound like they're easier to lead as you're the law they will follow. But... ones this primal tend to be straightforward in an inhuman manner, and absolute in their judgement. She may evolve into something more sophisticated, but for now think of her as the bluntest tool in this toolbox, though also the strongest."