Fiat-backing; the Todd Howard "It Just Works" approach to dealing with logistical things. I walk up to the front door of a beautiful mansion, "My" beautiful mansion, as I think about fiat-backing.
I reach into my soul and I feel a key, the key to the mansion, as I step to the front door. Fiat-backing is on my mind because after my conversation with Amber I am left wondering about the fact that the mansion I'm about to enter is gonna be immaculately maintained despite me not being here for 18 months according to Amber. It'll be fully staffed by a bevy of smoking hot professionals; at least having maids and chefs in addition to the stable hand I've already met, who have all been getting paid somehow, despite me being in prison. And perhaps most strangely; no one will question it unless I myself point out how weird it is. I won't do that, I'm not a dumbass and I just wouldn't benefit from getting people to question the weirdness of my mansion, at least not right now.
I open the door to my mansion and hear a surprised, and delighted shout from somewhere past the foyer I step into. I can smell many different smells and note the range of different emotions and the fact that some of the people I smell are virgins. My sense of smell remains… weird. Multiple voices shout a warm welcome, and some apologetically tell me they're not ready to see me yet. I am told to wait where I am, and amused by the demanding tone of the people who work for me I decide to wait.
It takes about five minutes for the bevy of busty beauties to begin to appear. Four women, all of whom are wearing maid's outfits, enter the foyer from a hallway located at the far end of the space. The layout of this particular room is curiously similar to the mansion Arsinoe and I lived in. All four women, each of whom has a distinctive hair color and hair style, curtsey at me and greet me in one voice, welcoming me back to my home. A not small part of me powerfully visualizes the maids beneath me, and it takes me deliberately, intensely focusing to stay present and to keep myself from turning on my PtV, but for sex, power. I do want sex, lots of it, but I also want to stay focused.
"Ah… It is good to be back." I state as I look out at the assembled maids. The women study me and I can see faint glimmers of surprise in their eyes as they take in my appearance.
One of them is a beautiful, and tall, redhead: aesthetically my exact weakness. She's also not as tall as me, though she's taller than my human form. Another is a slender blonde, dressed in a personalized maid outfit that isn't the same color as the uniforms of the other three. The third maid has green hair and is the shortest of the maids. The fourth has jet black hair and her hair is the longest of the maids. She's also the most mature of the lot at a glance, possibly in her 30s at a glance, and smiles at me confidently.
Rowena, the maid with jet black hair, steps up to me and asks if I want a hot chocolate or some other beverage, or even a meal. I smile at her and shake my head, thanking her for the offer and for her hard work.
"I have missed all of you. My travels took me far and in the days to come I will fill you all, and Amber, in on the adventures I went on. But for now my needs are simple. I have traveled a long time. I wish to rest." I tell the maids, even as a part of me stirs. They nod in understanding and move so I can walk past them.
I move, guided by artificial memories, and head up the stairs to the suite of rooms I have claimed for myself including the master bedroom of the mansion and in minutes I am seated atop a fine bed. Truthfully I'm not sleepy, and as soon as I'm shirtless Sapphire cheerfully flies out of the upper part of my chest. She eagerly kisses me and I don't bother casting a spell to silence what happens next: a frenzied flurry of adult activity.
I could try and excuse my lust by saying it's the consequences of a drawback. In fairness to me that's not wrong, the "Lay the Dragon" drawback is a doozy, but in all honesty I also just like sex. If I were to say to my mysterious benefactor "Oh this isn't me!" I'd be lying. This is doubly true now that I have a reason to indulge a baser part of me beyond self-satisfaction: the benefits that the Ultimate Chad essence gives me are such that it'd be foolish of me to not use it.
However I justify it to myself, Sapphire remains a constant bedmate of mine. I enjoy the sight of her blissed out face, and the sounds she makes when she manages to wring a climax out of me. The training this counts as is also nice, and as a secondary benefit having someone I can mate with like this does seem to help offset some of the Lay the Dragon drawback.
Poor little Sapphire gets played with for hours and ends the night with hearts for eyes once more before passing out back in my soul. She is active during the day and is constantly by me, but she's also invisible and no one knows that I've become friends with a fey, not even Gloria. Though Sapphire's only invisible, she's perceivable by other senses, and she was moaning quite loudly…
I devote the rest of the night to working on my Amara figurine. This is a small thing but at this point it's actually quite nice. I finish the object and carve a small rune of protection, which is thankfully a nice looking symbol to anyone with the power to see such objects.
My first day in Warnerberg passes by almost peacefully. I get to see Lilly: the green-haired maid, cook. My maids, Amber, and I eat a delicious breakfast made by her and I help them clean, something which somewhat understandably annoys them. After that I go to what is known, informally, as the "Temple District" of Warnerberg: the part of town where all of the major, local gods and goddesses have chapels. I visit the temple to Amara which isn't the biggest temple to Amara in Obon and when I first step into it no new voice greets me. I introduce myself to a priest named Thomas and give him the figurine as an offering. He graciously accepts and offers to loan me a text about Amara which I accept and add to my grimoire. I spend the day in the temple, and when the priest blesses the figurine I sense it sharpen my connection to Amara though very faintly.
On my way back home after spending the day in the temple district I am called into an alleyway by a shady looking figure. When I hear the man calling out to me I initially assume this is an instance of "Interesting Times" a drawback meant to fill my life with sidequests. I oblige the man and step into the alleyway only for him to pull a knife on me.
I realize that he's an unlucky assassin as the song that emanates from his soul becomes louder and darker and before he can leap at me I blast him with telekinesis and hurl him to the ground. He grunts and makes little angry noises, trying helplessly to break the hold I have on him. I feel him struggling against the beam's grip and move over to him before kneeling beside his almost frozen form.
"Huh. That was a little strange." I remark and am about to interrogate him when he suddenly convulses and dies on the spot. I roll my eyes at this and reanimate the man using my true undeath ability and ask him to tell me what just happened.
"I'm a spy for a consortium of men and women determined to suppress art. You were a target and I thought I'd take a chance and put you down. My dagger is poisoned, and I had poison capsules on me if I messed up." The reanimated man confesses as I release him from telekinesis. I nod as I process what he's just told me.
One of the drawbacks that is affecting me is "Art Suppressors", which is a drawback that creates an organization that loathes art and the like in this world. My iteration of the drawback is the less expensive tier which means I'm not a prime target. This guy recognized me, tried his luck, and failed. And in fairness to him he had no way of knowing what he was signing up for when he decided to shoot his shot.
I'm… very possibly the worst person to try and assassinate; not only am I immune to poisons, I have a healing factor, a danger sense, I can kill with a look or perhaps worse yet: stop someone from trying to murder me with a pointed stare and a clever ray, and even if you successfully put me down I'd just come back a moment later and almost certainly kill you. Perhaps worst of all is my ability to take those who tried to kill me and then use them to advance my own ends.
Truthfully I could be killed, even in a fully mundane jump, if enough people committed themselves to it but it'd take people ready to risk it all and who strike me knowing and fully intending to take themselves down with me. I still can't do much against explosive weapons and my only defense against bullets that have already been fired is if I am using a cone of disintegration or telekinesis and they catch the bullet. Someone armed with perks could probably kill me in a way that matters, or someone just beyond my weight class like a lower-tier deity or superhero, but I'd make them work for it.
Funnily enough this kind of situation is exactly the sort of thing that one of my favorite essences ever: the Essence of the Dollmaker would be perfect for, as it's an incredible powerhouse when it comes to subtle guerilla and asymmetrical warfare, but true undeath is almost as good. I release my telekinetic grip on the man and tell him a secret since he felt like trying to murder me.
"I'm immune to poisons. Your knife would have annoyed me more than anything else." I reveal, and watch the reanimated corpse frown in annoyance.
"I… didn't know you were immune to poisons." He admits and I let out a quiet laugh. I pull him into my grimoire and take in the fact that I have just gained my first tool to use in battle against a foe that promises to be annoying the entire time I'll be in this jump.
I make my way home and kick off a stint of jumper time. On my second day in Warnerberg I opt to go and register as an adventurer, as well as get a more meaningful job as a musician at the adventurer's guild. I had thought to avoid doing music this jump, to try and see if I could avoid the art suppressors drawback, but if I'm supernaturally/fiat-back-edly on a hit list I was avoiding music to avoid being on there's no reason to not take advantage of my skills.
At dinner on my second day in Warnerberg I mention that I'll be going to Orchestraville in a few months. This intrigues my maids but none of them immediately ask me about it. After dinner I retire to my suite of rooms and enjoy using my fey friend. Being alive is interesting, though thankfully with "Adult Conveniences" a lot of the less pleasant facets of being alive are done away with thanks to sex. Each night Sapphire gets a little bit better at enduring the sex we have, and she becomes more of a wildcat in the sack. When the sprite passes out once more I go ahead and use Chameleon to give myself the skills and knowledge of a healer who uses magic and medicine to treat people, swapping out the cleric backstory I had invented to help Gloria.
My new job as a musician gets its meaningful start on my third day in Warnerberg. I occupy a corner of a well-equipped lounge, and deploy my would-be assassin to serve as a hidden bodyguard. The day passes by peacefully aside from a few manifestations of my drawbacks; the ones that say that people accuse me of being a bard (derogatory), which I pacify by using genuine charisma. I have Rowena go and return the Amaran text that I was loaned by the priest to the temple.
For several weeks the only events of note that occur are linked to drawbacks. Every week or so I get roped into small quests, sometimes with normal adventurers and other times with people who get involved unknowingly like helping a kid escape a would-be kidnapper. I use my grab bag of powers, including handy new ones like psychometry and my danger sense, and my teamwork skills, to help others. I try, sometimes unsuccessfully, to not dominate adventures with the silly versatility of my abilities. Even just my beholder abilities are such a diverse slate that they can handle many situations though I do deliberately try to make sure others feel included and valuable until the moment that me holding back would endanger somebody. I do little things for the Amarans, and I subtly use dwarven sorcery on my furniture in the mansion, discovering that fiat-backed things count as stuff "I made" for the the purposes of the little lifehacks for dwarven sorcery.
In time, friends I make begin to visit my mansion, some of whom are surprised to learn that I'm rich while others, usually those who have adventured with me, find it fitting. After a while people even start to occasionally spend the night, though none in my master suite. Typically this occurs after I help with some quest or something like that late at night and have some people with me, who I like enough to invite to my home.
Sometimes my adventures have endpoints that are as simple as me fighting a group of enemies. I like the simplicity of that and in some ways prefer those kinds of adventures to the more complex ones.
On a Saturday afternoon just over three months into my stay in this world I find myself in a battlefield. Ahead of me my undead beholders are having fun assaulting the fortress of bandits previously engaged in the sort of stereotypical villany one might find in a campy historical novel. Meanwhile I'm preventing reinforcements from reaching the den of the thieves, alongside a number of slain and reanimated bandits.
An arrow whizzes by me, and I laugh lightly before another one successfully thuds into my chest, hitting my armor but still landing an alright blow on me. A distant bandit smugly loads his crossbow. I am not feeling pain at the moment and I turn my gaze on the bandit.
The sounds of distant combat fill the air while I charge towards the bandit with the crossbow. He fires another arrow which I deflect with a telekinetic glare, and I reach him, crossing a nasty distance in moments thanks to the raw power of an orc's build. I destroy his crossbow with a heated look and a disintegration ray, while my hands snake forward and grab the bandit by the neck.
"Nice job hitting me. It won't do anything," I tell the bandit right before the arrow is pushed out of me by my powerful regeneration. "But to nail me in this high pressure situation? Not bad." He struggles against my grip, and I can smell his fear, but I point at him and fire a paralysis ray which causes him to freeze in my grip. I drop the man to the floor even as the sounds of distant combat begin to slow, as more and more bandits succumb to the forces under my command. I look at the man quietly and reflect on how I tend to handle combat.
I've been a lot more physical this jump than I have been in the past. The Hentai Orc essence gives me a pleasant buff to my strength and to my speed, making me much more formidable than I'd otherwise be. This contrasts with how I handled combat in my first jump, wherein I was exclusively magical, and with my approach in jump #2, where I used magic to control and disable opponents and used some physical attacks when convenient. Now magic is my backup and I enjoy being up close and personal. And despite it all I still haven't really used one powerful bit in my repertoire: a miasmic, entropic ability I can call upon as a lich.
I close my eyes and wreath my fist in a dark cloud of pure entropy. It doesn't harm me, though my flesh does begin to age. The effect is cosmetic, or rather temporary, and my healing factor will address it when I stop channeling this power. I open my eyes and behold my entropy-covered fist.
"I guess I might as well start to actually master this huh?" I say to myself before telekinetically hoisting the bandit into the air and pulling him towards me. When the bandit is sucked within arm's reach I reach out and touch his face. I hear his skin start to decay, and sense the exact moment he dies, but when he dies I unintentionally feel his soul get pulled into my hand. Knowledge of who he is, or was anyway, flows into me as I process his soul and feel it being pulled into my core.
"Whoa…" I say, as I feel… Him. I understand the bandit, and feel his knowledge, skills, and talents, slowly becoming a part of me. I stop channeling the miasmic mist and feel my hand begin to regenerate slowly but immediately. I continue to hold his soft head and I use my true undeath spell on the figure, instantly causing his body to begin to recover from the damage that was dealt to it. As the slain bandit is reanimated I feel my power subtly, faintly, growing.
"A lich. The real deal. Got it." I tell myself as I am reminded of the true, and horrifying, power at my disposal. My lich powers are, at their best, full-blown Sung Jin-Woo, Solo-Leveling level necromancy, but in some ways worse because my ability to resurrect stuff isn't chance based. If I came across a dead dragon I could resurrect it no matter little things like how long it'd been dead or what killed it. I quietly commit to mastering this foul entropic ability, knowing that I ought to have it in my tool kit if I ever need it.
I end up spending almost a year in Warnerberg before I decide to head to Orchestraville. I commit to this decision ten months into my stay in my mansion, long after I've done things like clear out local bandit groups, begun working to better understand my entropic miasma, and added a good deal of knowledge to my grimoire. As I commit to my choice I am quietly eating a dinner made by Lilly, alongside the maids. My friends are chatting amongst themselves, and I listen as they share gossip with a soft smile. When the room goes quiet for a beat I decide to interrupt things.
"So I'm going to Orchestraville tomorrow. I've been thinking about it for a minute now and I know there's really no good time to do it, but I might as well indulge Amara's interest in me." I tell my friends. They turn and look at me annoyedly and I laugh before Rowena speaks.
"Master… You're leaving us again?!" She asks, and I'm a bit surprised by the emotion in her voice. The others share her annoyance and as I look out at them I wonder what to do. After a moment's hesitation I decide the best route forward is to not leave them.
"I'm a bit surprised at this reaction, ladies. I'd have thought that a group of maids would enjoy having to do minimal maidly duties, but I'm also touched. Instead of me leaving, alone, would you like to come with me instead?" I ask, surprising them again but this time more pleasantly. They don't hesitate to tell me that they'll happily come with me, which is nice. I always treat them well and make sure they get everything they need, which is only fitting given how many day-to-day inconveniences they regularly handle for me.
"Okay in that case I may need some time to get stuff ready." I state, more to myself than anyone else. This proves to be true, as it turns out that I have to spend a few days creating golems, and making use of my undead to create a small group that can maintain the mansion in the stead of my maids and myself. During this time Amber also tells me she'll join me, and begins to plot out a route to Orchestraville, which is even by carriage about a week and a half away. I also make a sarcophagus and leave it in a part of the basement I dig out using my beholder rays and hide with magic. I don't bother telling anyone about this, though if need be I can tell my maids. Contingency plans are always nice to have and I might as well take this chance to embrace a more diverse slate of my powers than I typically do.
The day of our departure my maids head down to the stable and greet me early in the morning when I make my way down there as well. Everyone is dressed in normal, traveler's clothes, and my maids look at me curiously, with all of their gear in the part of the stable where my horse lives. I step near the horse and retrieve my Traveling Stage. The item materializes next to me and my friends approach it and touch it.
"It's… real." Lilly says, amazed by the sight of it.
"Of course it's real. I was planning to travel across the kingdom. How'd you… think I was gonna do it?" I reply with a laugh. My friends approach the back of the wagon and Rowena is the first to reach the door tucked away at the far end of the space. She doesn't expect much but when she opens the door she gasps.
"Master, this is amazing!" She exclaims with a start, looking inside and seeing a full-blown restaurant interior.
"There's more. Head inside would you?" I inform her, which causes her to happily step into the wagon. Inside of it she is able to look around and see the pleasant amenities it offers. I am the last person to enter, even after Amber, and as we step into the space I note that the six of us take up almost half of the place's capacity for permanent travelers, which is a little annoying but it's not terrible.
I guide the women to the private rooms at the back of the wagon's internal, dimensionally expanded space. Each of the rooms is elegant, large, has a private and modern bathroom, has windows that can't be perceived by people outside of the wagon, and very importantly they're all equally designed in terms of space and decor. I claim a room right in the middle of the hallway where the rooms are located while my maids get rooms next to me. We spend an hour decorating our spaces, and moving the supplies we gathered for the trip into the wagon, and then when we're all ready we go ahead and leave the city, leaving the mansion to the care of golems and "Servants" I hired. It's probably too soon for me to try and explain everything to my maids.
Our cross-country road trip begins on a pleasant Sunday with clear skies and good moods.