All was quiet.
It had been a couple days since I was formally Named and accepted by my mother. Those were some rather boring days, as being an adult mind inside a baby’s body doesn’t leave someone with a whole lot to do. Babies are also growing, and a lot of their energy goes to that, so a lot of sleeping, nursing, pooping, and sleeping some more.
It really helps to be a strong spellcaster, however.
From a realistic standpoint, a baby who is a powerful spellcaster has a whole lot of negatives, from the fact that they are laboring under major Casting handicaps to the fact they aren’t going to have a whole lot of hit points if things turn violent.
On the other hand, nobody expects a baby to be a strong spellcaster, so there’s that.
It also helps when there’s no per-day Leveling Limits, and I could just take Levels and go Deep and enjoy the results as the spellcasting powers I was familiar with, if not fully restored, began to return as I slowly and cautiously took the Masteries I needed to.
I had a whole complex Visual File going just related to doing this, and I was making allowances for the Skills I was going to be expected to know and be taught here. I was a bit dismayed that Intellect didn’t seem to be the power Stat in this world that it was on Terra-Luna, especially in the granting of lots and lots of skill points, but then I found out that you got new skills with every new Character Class automatically, and if those Classes advanced separately, you got the Class Advances with them separately, as well.
I was paying full Karma, so they’d better bloody overlap with their benefits!
I also found out that, like Einz, I actually could take three Racial Paragon Classes!
At least, that’s what they were called. They looked like Racial Classes, but instead of granting Health, which my main Racial Class did, they granted Soak. Otherwise, they seemed to operate just like a normal Power of Ten Racial Class, just reflected across the Health/Soak divide.
Halvyr was primary, Human and Elf secondary. They offered… some abusable options I was going to take major advantage of.
Concentrating intently, Arcane Focus in place, I first Cast a Phantasmal Servant, using it to unwrap myself from the blanket, and then it carefully lifted me down to the stone floor. Very nice and thoughtful, but I didn’t actually have to worry about staying warm like a normal babe.
Then I Cast Alter Self. Objective: myself as an older child.
The world spun as the spell added mass and my days-old flesh warped and grew slowly and smoothly. There were big limits on what Alter Self could do, and it hadn’t been made to Morph infants… but if it could make a halfling look like a fat human, it could make me look like my older self.
I suddenly had more weight against the cool stone of the ground, and I was longer and taller and stronger and had a higher perspective.
I actually felt like a small person, and not someone trapped inside an infant’s shell.
I was also completely nude, but that was to be expected.
Alter Self made the Caster an average member of whatever they were imitating, so I had turned into a young child with purely average strength and coordination and whatnot, which was still enough to let me stand up without effort… although it didn’t sub in reflexes I didn’t have, so I had to use the wall for balance since I didn’t have any muscle memory at all.
Clearly something only to be used in emergencies for now. I had so much conditioning to do. My base mentals were taken care of, so I was going to have to concentrate on my physicals, especially given my relative weakness.
Still, I looked down, and raised an eyebrow. A whispered Illusion I in front of me, forming a mirror, and I looked at myself.
Okay, if this waif in the mirror really was me, I was going to be spectacularly attractive when I grew up. I was definitely taller than my mother, with wavy black hair that was actually black, not dark brown… and the hair was back-length, because that was how I visualized it, and the tips of it had changed to bright crimson for some reason, like some kind of anime-fashion goth chick.
Very pale skin, very white, lips almost like blood, elven-slender in build. Heart-shaped face with the promise of great non-human beauty, incredible cheekbones, elegant pointed ears staying close to my head… and eyes with black sclera and bright, almost luminously liquid red irises in them.
I eyed the mirror, then added a hundred pounds of muscle and tone and height and years to the image, more my goal than the reality.
Aie, the men were going to be biting their knuckles when they saw me.
Okay, appearance as singular as this, I was either going to have to lean into it or go completely fruitcake. They had mentioned the red eyes, but not the black sclera. They were either a sign of extremely large pupils, or…
I eyed the red at the end of my very black hair. Definitely a Bloodline thing, and it appeared mixing things up into the Arcane Bloodline hadn’t changed that. Hair like this wasn’t natural, so it was a magical effect. A result of Casting recently, being under a magical effect, all of the above-?
My colors were going to be black and red, and there was no getting away from them. Mmm. Given how Mother’s people seemed to prefer whites, that was definitely going to be a bit jarring, but given my hair color, they might not complain much.
I eyed the nude reflection, and manipulated it for a basic magos campaign uniform, appropriately sized for a 4-year-old.
Mmm, made me look older than I was. All black, red trim. Mmm, no. I looked too naturally goth, I was going to have to lean into that too. Additional trim, black lace, ribbons… should probably add a skirt. Ruffles and layers would look nice but get in the way, but the appearance of said ruffles should be fine.
My magic was going to have to reflect said goth-ness, too, if I did it right. The personality I was going to display could be coldly distant and unperturbed, and my magic was going to be biased towards Blood and Souls in appearance… but there was no way in Hell I was going to be a necromancer.
But nobody had to know that. Necromancy had a White twin, and I could certainly be a Speaker for the Dead, that would be absolutely fine.
Mmm. Add a scarlet and black tiara, ribbon, or headband, and I should have the cold aloof death-loving goth girl down to a T.
A red rose motif was probably good, too.
Probably have to add some skull ornamentation as well, come to think of it. A Baneskull collection was going to fit right in, that was certain.
I didn’t know how the magic worked here, so I didn’t know if rep counts affected skill with magic here. I also needed Gear, which meant I needed goldweight, and I didn’t know if making magic items worked much the same here. Would I have to learn a whole new paradigm?
Whatever, it was all stuff I could do if I had time… and this time being a baby didn’t mean I had to be inactive at all.
All of this meant I was going to need a fake identity, probably something to sub for me during my down time, clothes… and I was going to need to start gridmapping a lived-line, gathering information, and generally being a secretive busybody while I grew up.
I couldn’t go parading around in my normal form, as that would generate questions, so I was going to have to come up with an alternate appearance I could go back to repeatedly. That wouldn’t be that difficult, but I’d first have to be able to blend in, speak the language, know the customs, and so forth.
So, I was going to be doing a lot of silently and invisibly observing things, learning as fast as a superhuman genius drawing on the experience of a really powerful Magos could do so. The world might be different, magic might be different, but the fun thing about Bloodlines is they compensated for all that with Sorcery.
It didn’t matter if magic changed, that was a Wizard’s problem, having to figure things out. A Sorcerer just wanted to do something, and magic did it for them. Then the Wizard came along and figured out what was actually being done.
If you were a Sorcerer-Wizard, that became even easier. Gain a spell, Write it to a Spellbook, and you could build a book of spells without even doing all the basic wizard-stuff of figuring it all out.
Which was exactly what Exemplar Surge was designed to do. I could go dumpster diving for any spells in my memory that Aelryinth knew of, and learn them temporarily as an Extra Spell Known. I could then use Write to put them into my spellbook, and start expanding my versatility that way.
My main problem right now is that I didn’t have a spellbook to DO that with, which made it rather difficult to fill up my Wizard Valences with, well, anything but the Sorcerer spells I already knew, and a few Cantrips.
Or, you know, I could fill them in one day at a time with Exemplar Surges after Renewal, and just copy the new spell to my Wizard Valences. I wouldn’t be able to change them until I had a spellbook… or a Witchbonded Ring which doubled as the same.
So, I needed a ring to get the ball rolling, too. Sustenance and Sustained Effort would do me nothing but good over time, basically perfectly balancing energy need and nutrition for growth.
Tomorrow. I could start on that tomorrow.
I took another glance at the curvaceous young woman in the mirror I was going to grow up into, and let the Alter Self fade. The Phantasmal Servant I decided to name Jeeves caught me as I shrank back down, trundled me back up into the crib, and rearranged my blanket over me.
Time passes…
The routine of the house settled in. Given I was a remarkably well-behaved baby, that settled things down rather quickly. I had Polyglot active very quickly, so once I understood the language easily, a high-pitched variant of Elven, I listened to everything in the area.
However, the fact I was favored by Blood and Souls was not something I was going to let go, and decided it would be good for everyone to keep in mind. So the first time Mother was late for nursing, I sent over a visible Phantasmal Servant, who happened to look like a black-boned elven skeleton with red roses blooming in its eyes, wearing a spotless tuxedo variant, to go fetch her.
She was a bit wide-eyed when she cautiously edged into my room after it returned, a Wand out and prepared to use. Jeeves drifted over next to my crib, waved in my direction as it bowed perfectly, and then discorporated in a swirl of black flames and falling rose petals. Mother just blinked at the sight, then at me.
I was going to be using a LOT of Thematic Spells throughout my life, probably hard-wiring it right into my Aura. I would have to concentrate to NOT stay to them, I decided, rather enjoying her expression as she picked me up and I gurgled happily to see her. Time for lunch, mom!