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She doesn't know where she is, except it's certainly not anywhere home. The last thing she remembers is that they were trecking through Forbidden Lands, to a spot where Miquella chose to build his haven, and now, she's somewhere else entirely.
Miquella is here too... and it looks like he is wounded and in a lot of pain. There seems to be a city nearby, maybe someone there can help. She picks him up, and walks towards the city.
The guards will see a large red-haired woman approach, helmet covering her face, one of her arms and both her legs replaced with golden prostheses, carrying a smaller blonde person in white cloth in her hands.
The Malformed Twins in wotr
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"You are welcome! But I fear that your wound is not fully healed, and may yet reopen," she cautions. "Your sister said she did not know how you came to be wounded; do you?"
She frowns. "Come back to the temple tomorrow," she offers, "when the festival is concluded, and perhaps I or Nestrin Alodae will be able to do something more for it."
Terendelev smiles, and departs.
Just then, another man walks up to Malenia. He is short, barely five feet tall, but wide and stout out of all proportion; he does not seem deformed so much as of a different race. He wears elaborately decorated plate armor, a big beard, and an even bigger smile.
"Greetings! I am Joran Vane, of Torag's, and I couldn't help but notice the exquisite work on your prostheses, if that is what they are. Would you mind telling me a little about them? I have a craftsman's interest in enchanted smith-work turned to healing and not merely wounding."
somebody-has-to
"Greetings, I'm Miquella, and this is my sister Malenia. I can probably tell you about it, what did you want to know?"
Did Miquella make it? Joran is very impressed!
What spells or rituals was it based on? Did it use a special substrate, or could any metal be enchanted that way? Are the prostheses controlled telepathically, as separate objects you can command to move, or directly with one's body? Do they count as parts of her sister's body, which would have some exciting implications (and applications), or are they still objects which can be separately targeted by magic? Do they convey pressure, texture, temperature, and all the other senses, to the same or better resolution as one's birth body? Can the arm be used to form the gestures for a spell, something which is not possible with mundane prosthetics regardless of their quality? Do they have moving parts inside? Are they just better than the original, such that Malenia does not prefer a simple regenerate spell?
Joran can go on in this vein for a long while, eventually delving into the minutiae of enchanted metal-work, but stops himself apologetically to clarify that he doesn't want to unduly infringe on their time and also that he would be happy to trade his own craft-knowledge or work (or spells cast, if they need any of those) in return for theirs, and that while people sharing is good (and Good) they're not at all expected to do so unrewarded.
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They're made from unalloyed gold, other metals could likely work with only slighly more crude resulsts, but the gold is very important to an additional protective enchantment on them. He developed the enchantments himself, and can probably teach at least the basics of them, but it's going to take a while.
They are part of Malenia's body when attached, have limited but nonzero senses. Malenia doesn't use spells, but it should be possible to make a prosthesis that works for it, he hasn't looked in detail. No mechanical parts, all actuation done via enchantment. Malenia's condition is very hard to heal, all methods of regeneration he tried didn't take.
What can his spells do? The spellcasting he observed here is familiar, but slighly different to the one he knows.
Joran himself is a cleric as well a smith, and he can request a very long list of spells from his god Torag (but only so many a day), including a few that most clerics of other gods can't which deal with creating, shaping, and transforming matter. Is there a particular subject they're interested in?
He is also an expert in enchanting metalwork, of which arms and armor are sadly the best-studied kind, but that's exactly why new applications should be explored more!
Joran's excited (and hopefully exciting) overview of the applications of divine magic to smithying is abruptly interrupted by a vast shadow falling on half the square.
A silver dragon slumps to the ground, its head cut off, besides an even more gigantic monstrosity. It has a grasshopper's body and six legs, a human torso with two arms, and a mess of eyes and sharp spikes for a head. Buzzing insects swarm all around it, resolving briefly into shapes, wings and other less familiar appendages that merge into the thinner clouds suddenly descending on the entire square from the sky.
In its human arms it wields a scythe, large enough to shatter buildings, dripping with the dragon's silver life-blood.
It emanates an unnatural aura of magical fear, entirely unnecessary besides the quite natural fear it inspires.
Behold, Iomedae. Behold, the death I sow.
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The square fills with panicked screams that redouble as variously-misshapen people fade into visibility all around it and attack the fleeing bystanders with tooth and glaive and spell. Some of the humans appear to be fighting on their side while others try to defend the civilians, and complete chaos takes over.
"Deskari!" Joran looks stunned. "This shouldn't be possible... If he doesn't leave quickly, there may not be a city left!"
He runs towards the great monster, but diverts to save some children who are trying to reach the temple while being harried by a red-skinned, horned, skeletally thin man with a spear.
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Her reaction speed is unparalleled, and within moments of hearing Deskari appear, she reveals a carefully hidden giant slab of gold sword, in one fluid motion attaches it to the brace on her prosthesis, and leaps towards Deskari, ready to slash at him.
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Miquella's reaction is less swift, but he rushes after Joran, and tries to protect them with an incantation. His first attempt fails to produce any effect.
Deskari can only stay here for a few rounds after taunting Iomedae, so he positively welcomes mortals who rush into melee range.
Can he kill them in one round like he did Terendelev?
If she's the strongest human in the world and buffed by the best clerics, sure. Not like a hit or two from a sword is going to affect him.
Did she know that anyone hit by Deskari is poisoned and rapidly withers away? Oh, and is also infested with tiny demonic locust eggs? Those should be bursting out of Malenia's stomach in a fully-fledged demonic locust swarm and dealing a lot of damage in the process, right about - a second or two after he hit her, actually?
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Her sword is
1) Large
2) Enchanted
3) Enchanted specifically to ward away any and all gods and adjacent beings, which probably includes outsiders
Did he know that she is already diseased and… rapidly… withers away. Been her whole life actually. And the locust eggs are better be good at surviving the rotting disease within her body, Miquella's vast array of protections isn't going to cover them.
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Meanwhile, he tries a different approach to casting, weaving the fundamentals of order with his own power into a disc of holy light, launching it at the closest demon. This time it works.
Annoying. But he can still kill her the normal way next turn, right?
Since she's unusually powerful for a human, he'll even take her body back together with Terendelev's, it might prove useful.
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At this point, someone in the crowd shoots Deskari with a crossbow bolt that, against all sense and sensibility, actually draws blood.
He can accept people committing suicide by him, but shooting him and daring to hurt him and then (probably) planning on running away? That, Deskari will not abide.
A little gnat snaps its jaws at the Lord of Locusts, he rumbles as he raises his giant scythe high overhead, Malenia momentarily forgotten.
The only nice thing about having to leave soon is not having to save any of his power for later.
A strike with all his might behind it opens a great fissure in the ground, a hundred feet deep at least. It splits the square in two and keeps going right on through the city, outpacing the refugees escaping the square and even their screams, the ground shaking and buildings crumbling in its wake.
Iomedae's cathedral collapses on itself like so much rubble.
The gnat that dared to shoot him is well and buried, now.
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When Deskari is distracted, she attempts to get a few more hits in, but then she senses…