It doesn't take me a lot of time to help Gloria. I openly use my magic, though nothing impressive, to help with small tasks like cleaning the space and making sure the door to the church is closed and locked. At the same time I curiously experiment with Amara's fascinating… heart-sense power, testing the waters to see if it's real mind-reading or not.
Amara has already detected some stuff about me and is the first goddess I'm having any semblance of an encounter with. I cautiously think various thoughts at the edge of the chapel while standing on the far end of it relative to her statue. As I draw closer to the statue my thoughts elicit subtle reactions from the quiet voice in the back of my mind. I am careful not to get overly disrespectful, though I do faintly plan to try and see what happens if I strategize to "Conquer" Amara when I'm not in the chapel.
Some of my thoughts excite stronger reactions from the goddess, and the thought of kneeling in front of the statue gets a pleasant reaction from her which causes me to speculate she doesn't know the connection is on, or that it's something that is more complex than a connection she can turn off. It could very well be that because she's blessed me we're tied in a heavier way than I anticipated.
When we finish she leads me to a small set of rooms past the nave; the part of the church where worshippers gather and where services are held. We enter a small kitchen and I decide to take the next step.
"Can I cook you something? I worked for years on a ship as a cook. I'm quite talented in the kitchen." I tell her and she studies me for a moment before deciding to say yes. I smile at her and look through the food available to me. Gloria begins to talk about her work as a cleric.
"I actually helped grow some of these plants myself." She tells me. I smile as I begin to prep the kitchen, laying out ingredients and the like. I visualize Gloria underneath me and listen for a reaction from Amara. When I hear nothing I theorize that the statue, not the chapel, is the focal point of her power but I know better than to operate under the assumption that this is true based on what little information I currently have.
"Ah you're a farmer?" I ask as I begin to slice up some vegetables. I allow fiat-backed artificial experience acquired via one of those "You get a few years of experience in a thing" perks in a generic class jump by Edrogrimshell named "Craftsman" to guide my hand. Gloria grins at my question.
"I'm more like a druid? Amara's not quite a goddess of nature but she bestows some of her followers with something akin to a druid's power." Gloria replies, and I nod. Amara is a goddess of life so I suppose it's not a big stretch to go from being a heal-type cleric to a druid-type cleric if you worship a life-goddess.
I fiddle with basic magitech, the sort of low-power stuff that allows middle-age type civilizations to have some modern amenities and watch as the water in a pot is brought to a boil. Gloria watches me curiously.
"So what's your story Lalo?" She asks. I smile and decide to tell some version of the truth. The jumper truth, not the truth relative to this jump and this jump alone.
"I was born far from here and I have spent much of my life traveling. I have property in the city of Warnerberg and I was gradually making my way back. Slowly." I tell my new friend. She laughs as she watches me cook, amused by my answer. She walks over to me and looks into the pot I'm cooking a pleasant vegetable stew in.
"That looks delicious." She says as I mix in some spices, identifying everything with a glance and a quiet sniff of the air. My time as a chef wasn't real, isn't real, but the instincts are still a part of me. They faithfully, skillfully guide me as I carefully monitor the food. I scoop up a small spoonful of the stew and give it to my friend. She blows on it before tasting it and smiling in delight.
The next few minutes are filled with casual banter and allow me to flex my social perks in a world that doesn't know me. I easily get along with the kindly priestess and when I'm done making the food we sit down and eat it. I also decide to put off my immediate desire to get laid, and instead let this play out a bit more naturally, though I still want to have fun so I make moves to remain here just without getting in the priestess's pants tonight.
"Do you live here alone?" I ask as we begin to finish our meal. She looks at me thoughtfully and I can see her weighing what sort of answer to give me.
"I do. A chapel this size really doesn't need anyone else." She tells me, deciding to trust me, and I flash her a sad smile. She returns it, suddenly acutely aware of her loneliness.
I get our plates and use my magic to clean our silverware. When I'm done I demonstrate a bit of my power with telekinesis, putting everything away and guiding the telekinesis with my fingertips, combining a beholder's telekinetic ray with "Magic Anatomy" to project the actual rays from my digits. After everything is neatly away I look at my friend and decide to ask her something.
"I enjoy doing odd jobs and getting by by helping people. This is a lonely, though lovely, chapel. Would it be a terrible bother if I stayed the night and maybe the next few days? I'll cook and clean, happily." I offer, and this time the look on Gloria's face is much more skeptical. It's not a bad instinct to have, though I am being genuine in my offer. She's quiet for a moment before deciding to offer me something in turn.
"What do you say you stay here for a week? It's Monday, I could use someone here to give me a hand with the thousand small tasks that I do every week. Stay here until next Monday and I'll pay you proportionate to the work you do." She offers. I flash her a happy smile and offer her my hand accepting her offer. She laughs quietly at the gesture and takes my hand, or tries to anyway. She's short for a human and I'm tall for an orc, and the sizes of our hands make sense.
She guides me to the building's main bathroom and teaches me how the shower works. Afterwards she takes me to a spare room and supplies me with a blanket and a pillow, before apologizing for the lack of bed or cot. I accept her apology and tell her that the inn wouldn't have suitable accommodations for me either due to my size which helps assuage some of her guilt. She bids me farewell, and goes to her own room.
I sit in a corner of the room and place the pillow she gave me against my back and cover my legs with the blanket. I'm perfectly comfortable like this, though it's a far cry from the luxury I lived in during Generic Monster School. A part of me wonders what my housing item is like and wants to go ahead and head over to Warnerberg, but another part of me wants me to slow down and enjoy these little moments.
I reach into myself when I'm nice and settled and summon my "Muse". The cute little sprite flies out of my chest and looks up at me joyfully.
"Hi master!" She says, and I study her quietly. She has a beautiful youthful face, one akin to a human woman's in her early twenties, with long blue hair. Fox-like furred ears jut from her head, and she smiles innocently at me. She is wearing a dress and as she flies around me I note that she's not wearing underwear, giving me an exciting sight. I'm delighted that she has an adult appearance, despite her size and as I study her I can tell that she is an adult being just from the way she smells, though I suspect that any backstory she has would probably be… installed knowledge like what "Loremaster" gives me: a pool of knowledge that is devoid of meaningful context or actual sources.
"Muses" are spirits of creativity and inspiration. There are a number of benefits to being attuned to one like I am, though the passive benefits are less impressive than the greater ones. Thanks to the cute sprite, I can see through things like magical trickery, my intuition is sharper, and I am more empathetic. The muse also passively generates a wellspring of creative and inspirational energy that it can share with me at will.
"Hi there. What's your name?" I ask, and she gives me a curious look.
"I don't have one. I think I'd like one." She tells me, and I smile at her. I offer her a finger, and she puts her head up against it. I watch her think and she studies me quietly. I look at her hair before I say anything else and take a moment to smile.
"How about 'Sapphire'?" I reply, to which she grins happily. She accepts the name with a blissful look on her face, and hugs my finger. She presses her lips against my digit gently and when she pulls her lips back a cute crimson has spread across her cheeks. I notice this and smirk devilishly. I lower the blanket and my pants and watch the muse quietly inhale. The blush on her face begins to deepen and she turns to face one of my most valuable appendages. She flits over to it and begins to sniff the air around it, getting exposed to a healthy dose of orcish pheromones. I lightly, gently, subtly move her closer and closer to it, until she's pressed up against it and is studying individual glans.
I can almost see the hearts in her eyes as she begins to experiment with a part of me that towers over her. She's small, small enough to fit in a human's palm, and I am much larger than a human. My equipment is also larger than a human. She demonstrates her mature mind and the ingenuity of a spirit of creativity and I get treated to a range of sensations as I allow the fey creature to have her fun.
The muse doesn't do anything tremendous at first. As she playfully rubs herself against me, sometimes kissing or licking me I wonder what it will take for the full power of my Ultimate Chad abilities to truly and fully manifest. I quietly moan in pleasure as she discovers the orbs beneath my rod and begins to play with them. I shudder a little bit more actively as she rubs her face against them and pants in ecstatic bliss. Annoyingly this still doesn't actually activate my more intriguing Ultimate Chad bits. I wonder if I should be a touch more direct, before momentarily worrying about the pint-sized fairy.
The spritely muse begins to slowly float up and leave a trail of light kisses up my rod as she moves closer to the tip of my manhood. I smile and shut my eyes right as she presses her lips against my rod before casting a neat spell. The muse freezes and opens her lips in ecstasy, before shuddering as a pleasant orgasm rips through her. I watch a small trickle of her sexual fluids drip out of her inelegantly as she orgasms in midair. There's nothing super complex about the spell, it's essentially a party trick that Zumurrud taught me long ago, but it's effective. The orgasm continues to surge through my muse before I raise my hand and shut it off as abruptly as I started it.
"Master… That was amazing!" She huffs, her face a cute, tomato-like shade. I laugh and run a finger through her hair, moving with much finer dexterity then someone might anticipate me being capable of given my appearance and my size. She flashes me an innocent smile and as I see it I don't resist the devious urge I feel.
"You know what would feel even better?" I ask. She shakes her head at me, before smiling in anticipation of my answer. "If you came and sat on this." I tell her, gesturing to my manhood. She looks at me curiously and skeptically for several moments and I almost wonder if I should utilize "Just this once" but she pleasantly surprises me by remembering the orgasm she just had and trusting me.
She flits up past my manhood and angles herself just right, which is not easy given her size and the fact that my appendage is larger than she is. Lust alights across Sapphire's face before she zips down, impaling her diminutive frame on my spear.
I lay back as the tiny fey creature slides down my manhood and before either of us can begin to really react I point at the door leading in and out of the room and cast a silencing spell. She lets out a loud moan and I feel a cool wave of creative energy surge into my veins and settle in both my heart and brain as pleasure assails my focus. The muse's stomach bulges out as she takes in the pleasure that is touching every part of her.
I have a curious understanding of the power that fucking my muse is giving me. I wrap my hand around her which causes her to wail in bliss before I take her and manhandle her with a small amount of unseemly brute force even as a deeper, more strong-willed part of me senses what I have gained. Her reactions to me taking and using her are overjoyed so I can tell she either had a fetish that makes us compatible or is developing one.
The ability that my muse has given me is, in keeping with what my essence's actual description states, keyed after her own power. Deep inside of me is a small pool of creative and inspirational energy that I can share with someone else with a touch and intent. I smirk at the blissed out muse as I continue to use her, and as I manhandle her I begin to really enjoy her stretchiness. This stretchiness is almost certainly more to do with me than with her, thanks to my heavy helping of porn biology.
The muse pants in bliss as she is repeatedly impaled and I enjoy the sight of her lustful face. My powers stir to life inside of me and as I have sex with the fairy-like creature I watch a small crest, an actual succubus womb-tattoo appear underneath her belly button. It glows, visible even through her dress, when she is stretched as much as she can be and is in the shape of a uterus. I grunt as I see it, and the sight of it coaxes me to have more fun with her. At the same time I willingly share the ability to train using sex with her, and I can faintly feel her power begin to grow.
The ability to grow stronger via sex is one of the secret reasons why Essence of the Ultimate Chad is so powerful. It's not just that it grants people who have and use to have sex new abilities, it's that it allows someone to replace something as potentially important as training with sex, as well as replaces other things with sex like eating or drinking. Beyond that some facets of power acquisition through sex are particularly nasty: the ability or abilities one gains this way is capable of unlimited growth and can be trained both sexually and normally. Right now I gained a spiritual power that allows me to fill others with creativity and inspiration, which is a nice little power but if I were to mate with an arch-sorceress, or a goddess, or a powerful psychic… Oh the potential of this nasty little essence is quite high.
The muse's tiny body challenges both of us. My inhuman anatomy, coupled with the fiat-backing of my sexual abilities, works hard to smooth over the differences in size between my small lover and I. The muse goes nonverbal as I drive her to the brink of release, and I delight in watching her slide down my shaft, seemingly vanishing inside of the living "Item". She becomes a shrieking mess when she climaxes for the first time and I listen to the magically musical noise as I make her come undone. Her walls squeeze me as she experiences a new kind of bliss and I grit my teeth and ride out the sudden tightening of her walls. I continue to use her for several minutes, riding out an entire orgasm and causing another, before I myself arrive at a spectacular destination.
She makes a cute noise as my essence fills her. It takes me holding onto her to keep her from being forced off of me by the force of my orgasm. I tighten my grip and actually force her all the way down which she tells me to do through blissed moans, so that every millimeter of me is properly absorbed. As I orgasm I feel my energy endure a surge of depletion, almost like someone is draining me of blood but a split second later "Adult Conveniences" activates and my energy rockets back up. I am delighted and renewed by this and so I continue to have fun with the bite-sized fey.
I spend hours inside of the fairy, only stopping when she is exhausted and asks me to stop. I pull her off of my manhood and watch as she smiles at me sleepily. Her stomach is inflated and she has a drunken look on her face. She sits on my chest and actually stains my shirt but before she can apologize she falls forward, already passed out and disappears, entering my soul to rest and recover. I'm actually impressed by her endurance so I don't say anything and simply clean my shirt with a spell.
Moments after she vanishes I look inward and am pleasantly surprised to see that the pool of creative and inspirational energy deep in my soul has grown a good deal as a result of the pleasant experience I was just having. I examine the rest of my abilities and find that they too have received a shade of the training and are stronger and more familiar to me but most of them only received a slight echo of the training compared to the training my creative power received.
Fittingly, some powers like Chameleon and other creative powers, received healthier doses of training so there appears to be an underlying logic here that can be tapped into though I do need to use this on more people before I can be sure that that's how it works. The part of my mind that is alive with thoughts regarding perks, combos, strategies, and builds begins to incorporate what I have just observed via direct experience and puts it seamlessly in place with my existing perks and the grand ocean of perks I know about in other jumps, ones I haven't visited yet.
There are synergies that can be achieved with what Ultimate Chad gives me in terms of training if I can just get to the right jumps. Training boosters, attainable in many different jumps but especially in Generic Gamer and Generic Worldwalker, would skyrocket the potency of the training bit of Ultimate Chad. I consider what I've observed about the nature of my chain and note that the biggest sticking point in terms of unpleasantness so far is the limited, if any, control I have over my next destination.
It's a bit like reading jumpchain fiction from my home reality; a lot of jumpers have no control over where they go next or their builds, though their benefactors are rarely actively hostile and seem intent on keeping things survivable. I SHOULD be able to keep going and if I'm doing a long chain then after a while I should be able to grab something like "Master of All"; an incredibly powerful perk that creates copies of the experience I gain via training and then spreads it all to everything else in me that can be trained such as taking the time I spend going on a run and using it to make me better at casting spells without actually taking the gains I earn from the run away.
I cleanse myself using magic before I silently turn on "Mixer" and mix my undead properties with those of my current form. "Mixer" is an incredibly handy perk and it was one I made healthy use of during my last jump. Now I get to use it more.
It is about 4 in the morning and I have time to kill. For a moment I consider using "Melting Pot" to make more minions, especially since I can use the pot to make minions I can sleep with, but I ultimately decide against it. I tame my libido and close my eyes.
From behind shut eyelids I can visualize some of my stranger abilities. A list of different odd perks appears in my mind's eye but there's only one that matters right now: Chameleon. I see a pool of yellow energy deep inside of myself, the mysterious and amorphous "Experience" that the perk describes. I study the energy and note that the pool is deepening though quite slowly.
Chameleon is one of the perks I'm… dabbling. It is constantly being honed, though at a slower rate than I would like due to the baseline effects of dabbler causing things to grow at a rate of 1/10 the speed they would if they were actually experiencing training. On a practical level it takes the minutes in a day: 1440 and divides them by 10; 144. That's almost two and a half hours. Each day things that are in a slot created by dabbler grow as though I practiced them for almost two and a half hours. And of course if I wanted to actually train them the training I independently did would also count. I haven't been in this world for a full day, but my time with Sapphire counted as training this ability so for all intents and purposes I've actually trained over 3 hours. Almost 6 in fact.
I consider where I'm at and what I'm planning to do tomorrow and for the next few days as I wonder what sort of background to turn my pool of experience towards. For the time being I can only construct a single background and I don't anticipate that changing anytime soon though Fine Tuning should allow me to overcome that limit eventually.
I open my eyes and decide that for now if I'm gonna be helping a cleric I might as well as give myself a pseudo holy background. I spend an hour fabricating a backstory alleging that I spent time in a distant church and learned the tenants of a god that doesn't actually exist. The more time I put into the backstory the more I realize that incredible specifics don't matter, and the more I feel new experiences and "Memories" flowing into me.
I sense my muscle memory and instincts being touched and changed by the perk and I feel rough knowledge of this world's cosmology entering my mind. I don't get specific knowledge of things like myths and legends but more a general understanding of feelings and base-level instincts that seem second-nature to people from this world but were not known to me.
When I finish using the perk I smile and relax as the knowledge, training, skills, and talents I have just artificially given myself settle into me. I begin to meditate and allow myself to rest and relax. It's about 5 in the morning and my new knowledge tells me Gloria will be getting up soon.
After half an hour of meditation I get up and go to the kitchen. I begin to silently work, cooking a small breakfast for Gloria and I even as cook I consider what sort of professions it'd be good for me to use Chameleon on. Some careers would benefit enormously from this kind of perk, such as being a hunter or soldier, as the headstart could mean the difference between life and death. I operate on instinct as I prepare two small meals, and as I cook something small for Amara herself as an offering while Gloria slowly stirs. I hear Gloria enter the room as I am finishing up breakfast. I slot "Accompaniment" into "Dabbler" and begin to train the perk passively as I work on the food.
"Accompaniment" is a good perk that allows me to imbue musical instruments with some degree of animation and get them to play themselves as skillfully as though I were playing them. The perk is innately trainable and as it gets stronger I can imbue more instruments with this quality and I can use it on stuff other than musical instruments, such as giving a cooking ladle animation and letting it tend to food I'm cooking by itself or even give a sword this quality and have it fight alongside me. At the same time I slot my singing ability into Dabbler, which uses up four of my five slots.
The decision to put my singing ability into Dabbler is because my singing ability is linked to all of my musical abilities. I'm not planning on being a singing type bard, but I picked up stuff for music with two of my three 100 point tier perks: "Artisanal" and "Virtuoso". Artisanal allows me to know how to make and repair musical instruments as well as I know how to play them, and Virtuoso spreads my talents with all things related to music equally, meaning that my skill with singing matches my skill with the guitar, the drums, the triangle, and all other instruments. At the very worst I can go and make a living doing stuff with music, and by passively training even one musical skill I am steadily improving my skill with all of them.
"Good morning sleepyhead. Come and have breakfast." I tell her with a smile. She sits down at a table behind me and smiles back at me. I put a small omelet on a plate for her with some veggies for energy, even as I make a small sandwich for Amara. When I'm done I grab my food and sit down. Gloria greets me sleepily and takes a slow bite of her food. She begins to stir more fully as she tastes the food and I watch wonder spread across her face.
"Ah breakfast. Truly the greatest thing the gods have given us." She tells me and I can hear both the tones of a joke and a real, sincere reverence in her words. She thanks me between bites of her omelet, and I laugh happily.
"I'm glad you like it." I reply, giving her a look that reflects the sincere and simple joy I feel in this moment. A quiet blush spreads across her cheeks and I remember the ways I've transformed since the start of my chain, particularly in terms of appearance and physique.
We finish our meal and I clean everything with magic once more before going and making my offering to Amara. I place the sandwich in front of the statue and watch it vanish, before I hear the faint sounds of someone distantly eating something and a series of happy, satisfied sounds. At the same time I quietly pray and thank the goddess, and this I do without some sort of secret agenda or ulterior motive. This is met with silence, but not the silence of someone not listening, rather a thoughtful silence. I can faintly feel Amara's curiosity with me deepening and her interest in me increasing as a result of what I'm doing.
As I contemplate my cooking skills I recall a very fun Edrogrimshell jump; Generic Culinary Warrior. It's a jump for chefs and those who like cooking and has a slate of powerful upper-end perks. One of them is the ability to feed any kind of food to any kind of being and have them grow as a result of being fed which is a perk I'd really, really like. I love cooking and if I could pick my next EGS jump then I'd either pick Culinary Warrior or Enchanter, with Enchanter being another support-heavy jump that buffs your crafting skills in general.
This marks the beginning of my first week in this world. My first day passes without a hitch, as I aid Gloria. I am a handy second and we explore the town for part of the day asking people what they need and offering spiritual guidance. No drawbacks meaningfully manifest, though I do notice people walking around barefoot a lot more which I suspect is related to the fetish drawback I took that makes something I'm not into more common. When night falls and Gloria and I go to bed in our separate rooms I further enjoy myself with Sapphire, again pushing her until she about passes out. Afterwards I take "Improvisation" for a test run and begin to try my hand at writing music, planning to try and write a song for Amara.
On my second day Gloria and I go to the farms outside of town and I help Gloria by doing healing while she tends to plants and the like. This is also Wednesday and so we have a service as this faith is one of those Wednesday night service faiths. I help Gloria with her more supernatural duties and I subtly show off the effects of "Chorus" a teamwork perk that is so powerful that it allows people who are using the same power to achieve a significant effect far more than either of them can do alone or if they use different supernatural abilities synchronize them to bolster each other.
The service proves to be interesting with Gloria telling a story during her sermon that I make more entertaining by using "Special Effects"; an illusory magic perk that allows me to use magic to create all sorts of audio and visual illusions and simple cantrip-level spells as the medium for illusions such as a spell that conjures a smoking firebolt. A person tries to interrupt the story but when I sense it about to happen I fire a ray at them and charm them into leaving.
After the service I teach Gloria how to use the illusion magic I used, and in exchange she "teaches" me how to use the magic she uses to bolster plants. I actually knew similar magic already and even learned what she did by observing her thanks to my archmage nature but I sense that it's a matter of pride for her.
Over the next few days I continue to learn more from Gloria and I help her out in various ways. We even get more donations than usual. Things don't proceed uniformly smoothly, despite their general chillness, and I do have to dispel a few rumors about me sleeping with people's wives. In one case I have to dispel a rumor about me sleeping with someone's husband, but things never come to blows and in fact I only have to use my rays once: to a charm a particularly angry housewife who stormed into the chapel. She turns out to be the wife of the guard I gave the rags I wore to over in Lyre's Prison. The casual reveal of queer people having marriage equality in this world, or at least this kingdom, is very nice. While these events disrupt Gloria and I's schedule my charisma is strong enough that these kinds of "You have a hostile encounter" drawbacks don't really meaningfully affect me all that much and if I don't like the direction an encounter is taking I can use my rays quite subtly to end them.
Amara remains interested in me throughout this time and before I know it a week has passed. I do depart from the chapel, and the town, without having sex with Gloria, but in exchange I leave it with a friend who gives me her address and has me promise to write to her when I get to Warnerberg. I get paid enough for a horse and I go buy one which I attach to my Traveling Stage item when I'm out of town.
I anticipate that my trip to Warnerberg will be easy and simple. I begin to craft a little figurine of Amara out of wood with my rays as I use my hands to steer my horse in the direction of the city.
It turns out not to be one nice, long, uninterrupted day of travel, as partway through my day I am accosted by bandits. This does not go well for them, as I immediately kill all but one with my beholder abilities and I charm the sole survivor into revealing where he and his friends store their spoils before he joins his friends as a true undead in my service. The bandits have a camp a few miles off the road which I pay a visit to. Outside of it I unleash my undead beholders and watch them raze the camp while leaving all of the goods intact. I reanimate the bandits and add them to my grimoire while also helping myself to their spoils.
After this little diversion I get back on the road and end up reaching Warnerberg, a place I have "Memories" of late in the night. I am welcomed into the city by guards who do not question me and are in fact excited to see me again, and I only stop my horse when I reach the enormous palatial mansion I am the owner of. It is a gated home and the gates open by themselves when they sense me approaching. My horse is easily guided into a building that combines a stable with a house, with the living area being on the second floor of the structure, and that happens to be larger than some houses back in my native reality are. As I dismount the carriage a pale woman with black hair steps out of the inside of the stable, walking towards me with a smile.
"Lalo! It's good to see you. You didn't write to us so we didn't know where you were, or when you'd come back, but your estate has been kept just how it was when you left a year and a half ago." She says, as she lightly strokes the horse. I smile at the woman and feel artificial memories enter my mind, including of her and of my estate: a wonderful mansion, an incredible inheritance (which is actually a different item altogether but manifests, in terms of its in-jump backstory, in a way that ties it to my mansion), and a loyal staff.
"Amber, it's good to see you. I was… indisposed but I have returned." I tell the woman; Amber, a stable hand who "My father" employed. Background details like this are fluff, flavor-text provided by my perks and items, especially "A Place In The World" which is an item designed to help mitigate some of the most dangerous parts of being a drop-in and are not meaningful, real facts in the same sense as, say, Amara's domain or the rituals she asks her worshippers to perform.
Amber smiles at me and gives me a look we both understand. It's the kind of look someone gives someone who has committed a "Youthful Indiscretion" and been caught. I get the sense that Amber has memories of me that are touched by the drawbacks that affect me and thus might view me as a philandering lecher, which… It's not offbase, though to my credit I've only had one formal relationship along my chain; my history with Arsinoe, though I've had sex with a larger number of people than that and was very decidedly in an informal though real relationship with Zumurrud. Amber tells me she'll take care of my horse and I ask her to name him for me, which causes her to smile.
I return my Traveling Stage to the depths of my soul, surprising but not frightening Amber, and turn towards the front door of my home.