It's like winning the lottery, they said. Smart people don't play the lottery, they said. Focus on other things, on the life you are almost guaranteed to have without ever getting your hands on powers other than wordchains, they said, neither you nor anybody you know will ever -

When Elisabel was in elementary school she read the whole contract, a children's annotated version but the whole thing. It seemed pretty reasonable to her at the time. If she were a rich powerful magical interstellar civilization that was nonetheless not completely past the need for imported labor she'd probably do something more or less along the same lines, with, like, slightly more optionality but she can think of some arguments a reasonable person might construe as justification for doing it this way instead and for all she knows they have those arguments on various Artonas. It's a sweet deal, it screws some people over but even if there's no good reason to screw them over and it's just what made all the rest of the aid package politically realistic for the Artonans back home it maths out pretty well, and if she hadn't decided it was stupid to dwell on wanting powers, she'd, yeah, have absolutely fucking wanted powers with all her heart, and here they are! Apparently! She has won the lottery after spending her whole life responsibly never trying to buy a ticket since they don't even sell those!!!!

It's a good deal. She'll take it.

YES

Thank you for your agreement and welcome to the Contract.

To complete your affixation, please review each of these categories. Any choices may be freely revised until you finalize your affixation. If you do not finalize your affixation within 90 days, it will be finalized automatically.

Skills

Spells

Foundation

Privileges

Finalize Affixation

If she's a Unique there's not going to be much Internet research to do, but it's nice to have the time flexibility. What are her options for Skills?

A winter coat versus moonbouncing. She'll take moonbouncing.

Spells?

She can pick either one D or two F rank spells. There's a pretty expansive list. F rank spells are decidedly unimpressive, like Light Candle. Ds are a lot better, but far from world breaking and many of them consume expensive components.

She wanted would have, if she had been thinking about it, preferred Adjuster. They get better spells. Or at least more of them, you could maybe build up a decent synergy out of these. Are the spells ones other people have gotten before, can she find suggested packages to iterate from if she looks for the more googleable names online?

She seems to have most of the common spells in her list. Adjusters typically get offered more specific, powerful, and synergistic spells based on one's they've previously selected. There are tons of build trees posted for everything from cryomancy to cooking. Only one D or two Fs puts her far behind any Adjuster except F ranks though.

No shit, but if Light Candle and Dry Flower are actually best friends for some reason she wants to know that. Any joy?

Refreshing Mist and Chill Object can ice something over? Glimpse Afar and Mark Stone can give you a way to peek at places you can throw a pebble to? Dry Flower and Light Candle can actually be useful in camping. Apparently wet tinder counts as both flower and candle.

Mark Stone plus Glimpse Afar looks promising, actually! What are their actual textual descriptions?

Mark Stone: A stone you are touching becomes linked to you for several minutes. It is as though you are still touching it.

Glimpse Afar: You receive a brief glimpse of the surroundings of an object you are touching. You remember this glimpse more easily.

Apparently Glimpse Afar was used with long rods or wires before the pebble trick was noticed.

She likes Glimpse Afar, and actually still likes it without Mark Stone. Anything else surprisingly handy like that? Minor teekay? First aid type healing spells? Anything else that affects what she's touching? Notetaking-related utilities?

Slow Bleeding is a D-rank spell impression. Unfold Paper is F. Dry Ink is also F, and is apparently different from Dry Flower. Lots of spells have the 'you are touching' modifier, she may have to be more specific.

She's hoping for something that makes her "touching" a thing she's not touching, like Mark Stone, though she'll just grab Mark Stone if she can't find anything for text search.

Nothing for text search at F or D rank, at least. And she might be out of luck on the touching thing too.

Okay. Tentatively Mark Stone and Glimpse Afar, disappointing though it is to not immediately happen upon an exploit that lets her teleport through walls or something. Foundation is all stat points, she knows how those work and they're not as conceptually exciting though she will certainly appreciate them - Privileges?

Signing Bonus (pick one):

Eight Foundation points

Privilege - 10x Unrestricted Summons Refusal (emergency summons cannot be refused)

Item - Any single item costing 100,000 argold or less from the System Catalogue.

Item - 50,000 argold

Privilege - Improved Fragile Atmosphere - A single-use life-saving spell. Provides a stable and safe environment in which to await rescue for up to one hour.

That's not bad. Or, actually, she has the vague sense that she might be getting lowballed, but they're rich as fuck, so it's not bad.

Can she see the System Catalogue before she affixes?

Sure! There's a LOT of stuff on it. All kinds of enchanted items, from toys to industrial machines to defenses to mobile homes to weapons to enchanted clothing that does stat boosts or activated powers. 100,000 argold will get a Very Fancy car or a hoverbike (with some asterisks on it) or superhero armor with enhanced toughness and stat boosts or magic maid-outfits that are always clean and give different stat boosts or a spear that teleports back to her when thrown (up to twice a day) (and weapons have their own asterisks) or a very very fancy all-in-one kitchen setup or some kind of robot-rigged workbench or magic rings that give her better grip or-

Well, a lot of Stuff is in the catalog. All of it is magic in some way.

Shiny, but there are all those asterisks and life is supposedly pretty cushy on Anesidora even without extra swag. Probably she wants the points. She can earn money the old fashioned way(s).

Now it's time to go fuck with her foundation points till she can cure her dyspraxia and all that good stuff.

Oh, also she should probably tell her parents. She goes and tells Reena before she goes and fucks with her foundation points.

The Foundation Points are pretty standard. She already has a few pre-selected, as all Avowed do. There is plenty of online material about them- You can specialize and apply dexterity specifically to your hands and processing specifically to your proprioception to get better at wordchains, for example. You can opt out of the empathy-enhancing side of Appeal if you like too, and just be prettier.

She has 10 points to distribute, and her presets are:

Sympathy for Magic +0

Processing +0

Appeal +0.5

Agility +1

Dexterity +0.5

Speed +0

Stamina +2

Strength +1

She likes how she looks fine but she will go in and fuck with the details on her already-assigned half-point of Appeal. Does the internet know what Sympathy for Magic actually does? It's obviously not the same thing as being able to learn spells like a wizard, but it's right there.

The internet is pretty sure it mostly makes magic items and tools easier to see and use. It might help you read other people's powers. The exact details are unclear.

Not amazing. Maybe she'll bump it up some if she winds up with magic tools and other people's powers that she's having trouble with.

How many points till her dyspraxia has fucked off forever?