GOD JAMMER

is the busted gate to the cemetery enough metal to fix Junk?(yes I capitalized the J it's their nickname now.)

>Continue cleaning efforts


You take a moment to sort everything out in this room, straightening the rug at the entrance, piling up the smaller rugs in the corner, standing back up anything knocked over, rebuilding the slashed apart podium, and fixing this poor painting that had a corner falling out of its frame.

Phew!

>See if you can add a fountain somewhere. Everyone loves a good fountain.

That sounds lovely, though it might take a bit more time to sort out, so you'll leave that for later when you don't have someone you should be checking up on.

>is the busted gate to the cemetery enough metal to fix Junk?

Probably not, the gate's pretty big but seemed thin, it wouldn't provide much mass, you might need to inventory all the metal in the realm to see how far off you'd be if you used it all.

>check the painting


Ah! Its beautiful. You can tell from the energy that this painting gives out, that it was made with a devotional love. You aren't quite sure who this depicts though. You stowed away a book in the podium that said something about "Tome of Pyres" and had this same symbol that she's holding on its cover. Maybe that has something to do with the painting?

To supplement your look for something to AWAKEN, you read into the spirit in this painting, it seems to have a strongly devoted personality, you get the feeling that the painter's feelings really came through with the spirit inside, such lovingly crafted things seem to be gifted with some of the power and love of the artisan who made them.

>meet with the guest


After satisfying your desire for orderliness, you hurry upstairs to a much taller room to find your guest looking over an ornate harp. Even without specifically trying to focus on it, the harp gives off an awfully confronting amount of power, it has the sensation of standing too close to a campfire.

You decide to greet the guest.

=>


Fin: H-Hello! I'm Fin, God of Closure! Who are you?
???: WAH! [She jumps a foot and spins around producing a concealed blade] Don't sneak up on someone like that!
Fin: Sorry! I um... Don't have feet?
???: I guess you don't... Uh, Deity right?
Fin: Fin!
???: Fin. I'm Trick, Alchemist of Lanterns.
Fin: Welcome to... I haven't named this place yet, I'm still pretty new to this Godhood thing but this is my place so you're a guest here!
Trick: Oh! Your place huh? Its... nice?
Fin: Its still pretty messy! Please excuse it... But um, what brings you here? And what's with that harp?
Trick: [She steps in front of the harp] What harp?

What do you do? >_

"The one you're standing in front of. I can tell it's there even without looking at it."

I mean, I guess try to discern the harp? It's clearly something powerful, but does it have any importance to you aside from that?

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terrible idea i'm going to pitch before anyone else pitches it seriously: awaken the harp before they can take it

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> Discern Trick
> What are you doing?
> Stealing a harp?
> Good, because that'd be bad.

immediately blurt out that we're basically the god of death and we're really excited to start ending things soon

> Ask what an Alchemist of Lanterns is.

Im not a fan of how sneaky they are being, remind them that while we may be a young one we are still a god, and that harp is part of our domain, so they should explain what there interest in it is
also uh back up a little in case they are hostile, we don't know how tough our new body is and now is not the best time to test to see if we are knife proof

>Really? 'No harp here, ignore the pedestal in the center of this otherwise grey building. '
>Sculpt a cage over the harp. Keep talking while doing this to keep the intruders attention.

Im not a fan of how sneaky they are being, remind them that while we may be a young one we are still a god, and that harp is part of our domain, so they should explain what there interest in it is
also uh back up a little in case they are hostile, we don't know how tough our new body is and now is not the best time to test to see if we are knife proof

Seconding.

Ask them how they even got here.

is that nia from xenoblade chronicles 2?

>hey, heey. we could do this the easy way or the hard way. easy is you explain your tragic backstory and what lead you on this quest for the harp, perhaps taking a chapter of our time to go off on this tangent before catching up to the present. or the hard way where we fight to keep what is ours since this you're on divine property bub. of course we'll ultimatly lose, you'll get the harp and we gain a love/hate relationship where it turns out that you were never so bad despite stealing the harp.

>or we could talk this out like normal people with no drama(a god can only hope)

>note to self, acquire legs.

is that nia from xenoblade chronicles 2?

*PUNCHES WALL*

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I was hoping nobody would realize I accidentally made Nia.

We should make small-talk about similarities to Anubis, whose domains are pretty close to your own. #afterlifegoals

e:

>note to self, acquire legs

Good idea, but maybe we should first >retrieve arms

Discern lamp!

>The one you're standing in front of. I can tell it's there even without looking at it.
>Ask them how they even got here.
>Ask what an Alchemist of Lanterns is.


Fin: The one you're standing in front of? What's an Alchemist of Lanterns? How did you even get in here anyways?
Trick: I used the front gate? And ugh, look lets not make this weird kid. I'm an Alchemist, I learned like Song stuff from the college of Alchemy and now I work for the God of Lanterns, WICK. He put me on a big long multi-month long quest to find this harp, and considering you're still small, blobby, and had to ask what an Alchemist was, I assume I've been on this job for longer than you've been alive.

>Im not a fan of how sneaky they are being, remind them that while we may be a young one we are still a god, and that harp is part of our domain.


Fin: Even so, that's in our Realm so its technically ours! [Fin backs up a little after asserting themselves because that blade looks awfully sharp]
Trick: I really can't leave without that thing, and I don't want to hurt anyone, especially a baby deity over a harp. How about something that'll help us both out here? I take this back to my boss Wick and I tell him that I talked you into offering this as a gift to him. You get a friend in the pantheon, and I sound really competent and get a promotion or something! We both win.
Fin: Well um...
Trick: I know what you're probably thinking, "How can I trust a girl named Trick? This is like an obvious cautionary children's tale in the making right?" Well that'd be an awfully rude assumption since like, what if your name was Crimes? And everyone is like "Oh man, here comes that God Crimes, I wonder how many Crimes they've committed today?" I have a good relationship with my sister who's name pairs with mine is all.
Fin: What's your sister's name?
Trick: Treat!

>discern the harp


While you think over that offer, you Discern the harp despite its radiant presence. It seems to be a powerful weapon, an instrument that vibrates with the power of Song and has a vivacious spirit welling up inside of it. You can feel a great amount of history that this item has seen, which seems to have only fed into the power of its spirit.

The personality of the spirit seems to be primarily what you'd call "intense" like someone who's stare you could feel on the back of your head if they were behind you.

You briefly had the thought before of awakening it, and you could, but you consider Trick's offer a bit before taking any action. Maybe you could sculpt a cage real fast while talking? But then what? You're sort of alone with your blobby body against this girl and her blade without any backup here. You consider having legs to run away from this confrontation, then you consider arms as well so you don't look like a cryptid. You'll take these into consideration if you don't get popped like a balloon before you get a chance to form your body more.

What do you do? >_

>listen, if you've been on this job months then a few hours or even days won't make much of a difference. so could you explain why your god needs the harp and what it is?

hrm. Probably too experienced for a sculpted cage to hold em back for long...
>Awaken harp. Yes, really. There is some justification in this allowing us to ask the harp what it wants to do, but really I'm just curious. For what opinions an old harp stuck in a crypt for who knows how long has, for example.

> Explain why the God of Lanterns needs the harp, and why they sent someone to--and this is probably the rude way to say it but, uh--steal it.

see if she would be willing to answer some questions before you decide, we are new to this whole "Existence" thing and it would be good to get a basic sense of the world, and she works for a god so perhaps she might know a bit about how gods work to

of particular interest, does she know where gods come from? is it random chance? are we formed from the beliefs and thoughts of mortals? because if its the latter,it might be a coincidence but we are a god of the end and closure, formed right on the spot where Trick's month long quest is about to come to an end which she probably has some strong feelings about

the important question im getting at is, is Trick our mom?

The more we hear of her lifestory, the more we learn.

> Keep her talking. It seems she's a little touchy about her name. Is she used to getting a hostile response? What's all this Realm business too? How does someone like you end up in the service of a Lantern God?

We know the harp is a weapon, possibly more powerful than that knife Trick's holding. We can float and a sword is of minimal utility against a floating target, especially if we take a few other precautions.

>> Use the distraction of the conversation to determine what sources of light exist (DISCERN the Lantern first!!!) and perform SWANSONG to 'end' them. We can SCULPT the windows shut as well if necessary.

Once we're in the dark we should be safer from that weapon and can reason more.

>>> Explain that as a God of Closure, we want the Harp to be where it belongs, not to the first person to show up. Besides, as a younger God, it would be irresponsible of us to act without knowing the consequences. If you make a good case, maybe we can part with the harp BUT if we're going to give the harp to them, it would be more meaningful if we did it in person rather than play along with this deceit. We could even put a good word in for you at the same time.

>>>> Coming in here, taking without asking and being cheeky enough to take something of immense value from a God that has so little? They saw what the place looked like when she arrived. That isn't exactly the actions of a trustworthy person, no matter what your name is.

Use the distraction of the conversation to determine what sources of light exist (DISCERN the Lantern first!!!) and perform SWANSONG to 'end' them.

uh keep that idea on the back burner in case things get stabby but definitely don't do it unless we need to, shes a servant of the god of lanterns, snuffing out said lanterns probably a pretty big offense

>ask for something in return

>listen, if you've been on this job months then a few hours or even days won't make much of a difference. so could you explain why your god needs the harp and what it is?
> Explain why the God of Lanterns needs the harp, and why they sent someone to--and this is probably the rude way to say it but, uh--steal it.


Fin: Why would your deity need this harp though? I can't just hand it to you without knowing at least that.
Trick: Oh fine, alright, I guess it doesn't sound like a good deal if you don't even know anything about Wick. Alright, so Wick, God of Lanterns really likes lanterns as you might imagine, and his main deal is that the flames from his lanterns grant protection to travelers on the road. I don't know if you've stepped foot outside of this place yet, but its rough out there. Monsters, man eating deities, Orators ready to swoop in and tell you about the history of a tree stump, people are in all sorts of danger if they can't handle a blade.
Now, he used to have a modest operation out of an atelier, providing lanterns to travelers and merchants, but as he gained more followers he saw that just his lanterns weren't enough and needed to stop bad stuff from happening before it got too powerful.
This is why I'm here! To grab that harp because it's too powerful to leave around here. If you haven't caught on yet, you're a squatter on another deity's church. She put the essence of one of her Songs in that harp before she passed. That probably sounds useful to an up-and-comer like yourself but um... no offense... from my perspective you'd be super easy to beat up and steal that harp from.
But! That's why you might want to get on his good side. He knows some good humans and good deities and will offer some protection on your little operation here.

>see if she would be willing to answer some questions before you decide, we are new to this whole "Existence" thing and it would be good to get a basic sense of the world, and she works for a god so perhaps she might know a bit about how gods work too... the important question im getting at is, is Trick our mom?

Trick: Uuuuuuh, I guess I'm the right person to ask that since I did say I went to Alchemy college. Like, I don't want to start a theological discussion here but people think that Gods are born from the emotions of humans, and others thing Gods are the awoken creators come to reassess their creations. Either way maybe me being here caused you to wake up, but don't be weird about it.

>DISCERN Lantern

True to what Trick said, the lantern she's holding definitely has a lot of Song energy inside of it. The energy is radiant and fills a lot of the room wherever the light touches actually, but you're not sure how it works if it's really a protective barrier as she says. You're standing in its glow but don't feel it doing anything in particular.

Trick: Are you happy now? Do we have a deal?

>_

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Patch Notes: Added a tail to all instances of Trick to add to her appeal ~☆

>you can have the harp, in exchange for teaching us the ropes. We're new to existence and you just said it's rather dangerous out there. stick around for a couple of days and help us get a handle on living in this world. You can even have the harp as advance payment.

Patch Notes: Added a tail to all instances of Trick to add to her appeal ~☆

and to make her look less like Nia from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 ~☆ ;P

seems like a fair deal, the harp would likely attract attention we cant deal with right now, before she leaves ask if she knows anything about the god this church belonged to, it might be our turf now but we should at least know enough to be able to pay proper respects to our predecessor, and thank her for her help

oh also

>be weird about it.