A forest that was not there yesterday

[unprophesied_of_ages]

The Lord Ruler is in his palace, when he sees a sight he hasn't seen in centuries. Trees, sunlight...is he hallucinating? The fact that there's a forest in his living room isn't the surprising part. The fact that there's a forest on his planet is. As soon as he walks through the door to where his living room isn't, it's definitely not a hallucination.

His stores of Allomantic metals abruptly disappear. They're still physically there, but the power is completely gone. He immediately turns to go back, only to see more forest.

At least his Feruchemy still works—he can tell because he's still alive—but that won't last him forever. He only has so much stored youth, and without both sets of abilities he can't replenish it. He hasn't been in so much danger since the beheading that one time. Returning to Scadrial is the highest and currently only priority. If spontaneous forests are a thing, he needs to find someone who can explain them and more importantly how to get back.

The next few hours are spent walking in an essentially randomly chosen direction, with the sun to his right. He's quite certain that suns are supposed to be moving across the sky, but that's not a pressing emergency. He already knew he wasn't on his own planet when he saw proper trees and plants instead of ash-covered monstrosities. Whenever he calls out, nobody responds. If it's an empty spontaneous forest, he's probably doomed.

After some time, he hears his stomach growl. He hasn't seen much that looks edible, but possibly that's just because he's not used to real plants. Berries. Berries used to exist. Those berries look tasty, and if they're poisonous it's not like he needs to worry about it. As always, he has a truly ridiculous amount of stored health in his gold jewelry. Tapping gold just in case, he eats a handful.

Comments

[imeanforever]

"It varies widely with kind and I don't know all the kinds. I would be - a little surprised if any fairies could fly more than five times as fast as I can, without magical help, but not astonished; in terms of moving around not in the air I think there's less variance. I'm on the large side for fairies in general but I know they can be up to half again as tall as me, some kinds, and correspondingly or moreso strong. I think if you throw enough magic at the problem you aren't going to be physically outclassed, but you might not be able to positively curbstomp every fairy you meet."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"I have kind of absurd quantities of most relevant magic.

Verve mentioned that sorcerers have to worry about air currents, and that they're sensitive enough to notice an invisible person breathing from across the room. Would it disrupt casters if there were suddenly, say, a gigantic gust of wind?"

[imeanforever]

"It depends on how good they are. Sorcerous spells depend heavily on the conditions under and targets on which they're cast. A very good sorcerer will be able to correct for multiple sudden disruptive factors at once, especially if all they're casting on is themselves and the disrupted place is one they otherwise know well, because they'll be very familiar with themselves and their turf. A middle-range sorcerer will have to spend time recalibrating to get anything significant done."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"And we can assume the Queen has the best. If you transmute me some cadmium first, I'll be able to do heat and wind any time I don't mind being seen. Having that probably wouldn't hurt.

Would you be able to affect the Queen's court with sorcery from a distance if you were familiar with it?"

[imeanforever]

"I can transmute whatever would be useful. And - line of sight is almost essential at my level of experience. I'm very good for the amount of time that I've been practicing but not on an absolute scale. I might be able to get excellent range if I enhanced my vision, though, and had a good vantage point. Possibly a tiny gate, that would throw anyone off when they wouldn't expect sorcery to be possible in the mortal world. How sharp can my vision get, given how long I have to store it?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"If you made yourself blind for a week, you'd be able to double it for the next week or spend five minutes at," zinc "two thousand times as sharp. Or if you'd rather not blind yourself, you could pass one of those spikes to me, let me store vision with it, and then take it back. Since the down side doesn't apply to me.

Alternatively, I could do the spying since being seen there is more dangerous for you, and then pass you the memories the same way."

[imeanforever]

"Blinding myself would come at a cost of being less familiar with this turf, and we might still find ourselves obliged to stage something here, so if you have a better method of getting me ridiculous vision that would be useful. I could benefit from other improved senses too, but none of them range as well in the first place as vision does - if I can hear things ten miles away that will presumably operate in all directions, which might just distract me. Other things that will improve my sorcery would be anything that speeds up my thought processes or otherwise boosts reaction time so I don't waste a few seconds recalculating every spell every time something twitches."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"You need zinc. It does both, and I'll find an available spike as soon as I can.

Speaking of which, it's worth considering introducing you to the Canton of Inquisition and the rest of my forces. Since we might well be fighting a war against all fairies soon, it'd be useful for people to know it's not actually all fairies. The downside is that as soon as they find out why fairies are dangerous anyone with a brain and a half might suspect something."

[imeanforever]

"And how many of these people both have considerable brainpower and would be motivated to do anything about it?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Probably not many. I can head off the suspicion by introducing you as my vassal, and the motivation will go down in eight days. And it will be pretty obvious that you aren't enslaving the entire Empire or anything nefarious like that.

Until you do, of course."

[imeanforever]

"I'm certainly not going to run the empire like a standard court, anyway, even if we do wind up implementing a plan that involves mass vassalization."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"No one here has a frame of reference for a standard court; they'd just know whether or not they've been being forced to do things.

If you want to stay secret, that's also an option. I'd estimate that going public in advance is worth it if it's likely to come to an actual invasion and not if Thorn's people are going to be attacking in secret."

[imeanforever]

"I've had no chance to observe Thorn orchestrating something like this... I don't think he has the population to want to sacrifice subterfuge."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Secrecy it is, then.
Once they're looking, you might be spotted by an Inquisitor who notices they can sense your emotions and not your blood. But I can cover for that with copper any time you're close by me."

[imeanforever]

"I might just be able to counter that sense the same way I countered the emotion bubble's attempt to affect me, if you tell me more about how it works. But I don't know if it would be worth the time it'd take."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"I can't really explain it very well. When burning zinc or brass, I sense other people's minds. Their emotions feel like a, a ball of clay or something, but rough and with some parts raised and others pressed down. And I can raise or press those parts to affect how strongly they're feeling different things. Whatever you did gave you a resistance to changes, but I can still sense that there's a ball of emotion there."

[imeanforever]

Promise shivers. "Later we are going to have to have a conversation about that but right now it is only tactically important and probably not very much that."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

Maybe Alendi should have considered not volunteering that information. "It will let me or most Inquisitors reliably check an area for fairies.

But you're right. If we can capture the Queen at all, we can probably do it in less than eight days. And then us versus Thorn here doesn't come up."

[imeanforever]

"Right. She can just casually absorb his court. She and hers have had long practice at that sort of thing."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"So you'll need zinc, tin, and a portal to get you familiar with her court. And steel if you need physical speed to match the mental.

Can you use sorcery to suddenly change the scene to something you know and they don't? Like, say, this room. You wouldn't even have to do it fast, if you have a portal and the element of surprise."

[imeanforever]

"That would require more familiarity than I can probably acquire in eight days. And it would only help until whoever was in the changed room left it."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Even if you're acquiring familiarity at hundreds of times the normal rate? Once you have zinc and some charged metalminds, the limiting factor on mental speed is how much you can learn without getting bored.

And if you can change the room into a locked cell, the time until they leave might be a lot."

[imeanforever]

"I can walk through walls, that's how I got Yellow," says Promise.

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Right.

That's also similar to one of Thorn's protections, the one I was most worried about. He can make himself pass through solid objects at will, which would include me. And I imagine it's probably harder to capture one of the Queen's top sorcerers to make them revoke it."

[imeanforever]

Promise nods. "I'm sure she has something like that, and probably more comparable things too. But that sort of thing does always need to be activated at will. If you can catch her by total surprise with a dart or something, and then manage to speak an order before whoever she's with kill you, it won't come into play."