PSTH: Chapter Twenty-Five (Patreon)

Thank you, thank you, you’re too kind. Well. I suppose since John gave the announcement of what I’m here for, I can jump right into it: the synthesis of essence based items, like essence stones, essence hearts, and mystic jewels. If you look on screen, you can see we’ve managed to successfully increase the percentage of essence compaction, and were able to overcome the first plateau, creating a liquid essence. While that was not our goal, our liquid essence seemed to have some interesting effects on the researchers who imbibed it. While it’s not as effective as a true, naturally formed essence stone, we believe that this deserves further research and study. As you can see here…

-

Start of a speech given by Doctor Hargrove at the Oceanseed Research and Discovery Conference, 445 Modern-Era

-

The next morning, I woke to the sound of Gawain’s voice, though oddly muffled, and cracked my eyes open. I slid out of bed and down the ladder, then blinked, staring in confusion at what I saw. Gawain’s bed had been stripped entirely, like he was about to take it to the laundry and check out. That, in and of itself, wasn’t totally abnormal. What was abnormal was the fact that his voice was coming from the common room, his pack was still on the bed, and the sheets were nowhere to be seen. Had he absconded with them to the common room? 

I paced as quietly as I could through the door, sliding it open gently, then peered through the gap and into the common room. Gawain had moved both of the chairs to the far end of the room, and wrapped the blankets off of his bed around the table, creating some sort of strange blanket fort-esque thing. I caught a snippet of what he was saying, and then everything clicked into place. 

“…was that. Now, the interesting thing about this particular challenge – at least to me – is the fact that not everything is quite what it seems. If you look at the shifting patterns of radiance and shade anima…” 

He had created a miniature recording studio using the small table, the blankets, and his augpad in order to get the audio for his voiceover. Knowing Gawain, there was probably some fancy recording microphone in there too, since simple augpad standard quality wouldn’t be good enough for him – as if anyone who wasn’t an audiophile with impressive headphones would even be able to tell the difference. Still, it was a good idea, and I figured that I could do something similar with the blankets and my stuff when I recorded my breakdown videos. 

I shut the door and headed down to get breakfast, avoiding the pancake flour today – it was barley, but it came from a farm that processed walnuts on the same machinery. While I’d probably be fine, it was better to be safe than sorry. While I munched on the toast and fruit, I pulled out my augpad and began to look for trains headed out to Arkose Nature Preserve, as well as some general details on the site itself. Some of the pictures people had posted of the region in the autumn were absolutely stunning, and they got me excited to actually explore the area. 

The trains to the area didn’t drop people off right at Arkose Nature Preserve, naturally, but they did stop at a smaller town near the base of the mountains, apparently also named Arkose, which I was sure wasn’t going to be confusing at all. The town was where lots of people who camped and hiked in the region lived or came back to stay. That was officially where the Tamer Consortium was located, though apparently Councillor Lisa Ruth was known to spend more time in Arkose than outside. 

Looking at some of the maps and pictures of Arkose, I couldn’t blame her. Large portions of the park were entirely closed to any humans who didn’t have explicit permits, in order to help foster the natural environment and wilderness. I did a brief look into seeing what kind of permits those were and if I could get one, but quickly gave up – the kinds of people who they wanted in those areas were people who had vast amounts of knowledge and training of some sort for balancing the natural ecosystems, ensuring that populations of elk, wolves, deer, otters, and the thousands of other animals and Primals that called the area home were balanced and able to manage any extreme shifts due to natural disasters and weather patterns. It was fascinating stuff, and if being a Tamer didn’t pan out on a professional level, getting in on the essence management side of things with Arkose actually seemed quite interesting. I’d need to do a lot of work to even land a job, but it would at least be interesting work. 

With the largest and most wild sections of Arkose barred to me, I turned to some of the things that weren’t quite so difficult for me to get to. There were multiple trails and paths within the area, of varying degrees of accessibility and difficulty, and I glanced through their descriptions, picking out a few that I thought looked especially interesting. Honestly, with the close to thousand miles of different trails that ran through the mountainous region, there was no way that I’d be able to see everything, but I wasn’t in an especially large rush either, so I had time to go along some trails. 

A handful of those trails intersected with a section of the park that was designated as semi-wilderness. It was open to wilderness camping, something that I was extremely familiar with, as well as Primal searching, fishing, and hunting in specific seasons of the year via a lottery system. The thought of fish made my mouth water – while they didn’t have the same ocean fish as back home, I was certain that trout would taste good. 

Though I spent a few minutes distracted by looking up fish types, stream fishing, and restaurants that served fish, I eventually pulled back to my real focus: Primals. If I was to pick up a third Primal, this would likely be the place to do it. The area was rich with essence hearts, and so was teeming with Primals of all sorts. There were common ones, certainly, but there were also plenty of uncommon ones, a solid number of rare, and a handful of epic. Vince had found his Serest at Arkose, presumably in the semi-wilderness area. 

I leaned back as I thought things over. Getting a Serest of my own would be a coup for my team’s power, helping skyrocket me up, but it wasn’t inherently the best choice. For all that a Serest would pair well with Scales’ heavy defenses, there would be a lot of overlap with Hex’s powers. Sure, the Serest was a different type, and had a bit more offensive magical power, but not so much that the gap was uncloseable, and the Serest’s natural proclivity toward status effects could be matched by the toxic and shade spells that Hex could learn. 

That wasn’t to say I’d turn down a Serest if I found one and it was interested in bonding, training, and fighting. Just that it wasn’t as perfect of a choice as it would have once been. 

There were still lots of powerful Primals in the park, though, and frankly I’d be happy with any that had the drive to be the best. Strategy, tactics, and synergies were absolutely important, but they were also able to be learned through trial and error. But there was no point if you didn’t have the baseline desire for the goal, and the willingness to put in the work to get there. 

Still, it didn’t stop me from daydreaming. Though they were extremely hard to find, the park had a few Lupurubrum wandering about, massive wolf-like epic Primals that were both fire and ice aspected. They had a near perfect split between their anima and pneuma, letting them either serve as either a mage standing beside Scales, or as a mix of tank and offense when working with Hex. 

Though not Primals, there was a nonzero chance of finding essence beasts in the park. Bond Primal didn’t quite work on essence beasts, but they were tournament legal within the context of the Tamer’s Consortium, and they would be fascinating to work with, especially if they hadn’t already aspected their essence to something specific. Almost like having a human magian fighting alongside me.

There were also the far less unusual Cuprums, small and agile serpentine Primals. They had a metal element, and were fairly focused on the spell side of things, allocating most of their pneuma to physical speed, letting them dive in and out, leaving powerful magical attacks. With Hex, they’d be annoying to fight, as both dashed around the battlefield, layering weakening spells and dealing damage, while with Scales it could serve as a magical damage dealer while Scales took hits. 

If I got lucky beyond the point of reason, I might even find a legendary Ursaroar. The air and lightning aligned bear Primals were absurdly powerful. They devoted nearly every scrap of their essence into their pnuema, granting them immense physical strength, shocking speed, and incredible toughness. Normally, that would be all for a Primal, but thanks to the gift of Ursaroars, any essence devoted to pneuma also empowered their anima, albeit at only half the rate. It essentially gave them as much anima as if they were an even split between the two, letting them use magic with surprising capacity. With Scales and an Ursaroar, I’d be unstoppable! Well, not literally, but I’d be good. 

Of course, with Hex around, I wasn’t sure that would carry over. She didn’t de-aspect magians, because the process of aspecting a core was a one-time thing. Doing that wouldn’t make sense – it would be like shutting off an oven, and expecting it to un-bake a cake. Depending on how the gift of the Ursaroar worked, Hex might instantly remove her magical abilities, or she might have no effect whatsoever. 

Of course, all this was hypothetical and a pipe dream, and I knew that, but it was still fun to speculate. I flicked through a dozen different entries on Primals that could be found throughout the park, before eventually pulling away with a sigh and looking back at train tickets. There was a weekly lightning railway that headed back and forth to Arkose Town, leaving in two days, as well as a slow train that left along a more scenic route, which left in a week. Technically, I had saved enough that I could have purchased either ticket, but I was trying to be somewhat frugal, so I grabbed the lightning railway tickets for eighteen credits, rather than spending almost fifty times as much on a luxury slow train ride. 

While I was looking through sites, I spotted some tours of Arkose, given by the Arkose Preservationists. At first I skipped past them, not really thinking much of it, but after a moment, I doubled back and checked what they offered. In the end, I noticed that there was something called the ‘Tamer’s Tour’, which was for groups of up to ten, and would bring along a path to see several of the park’s essence hearts, hit up a few spots where Primals were known to gather, along some of the more interesting trails, and then end near the rear of the larger free-roaming areas where people would search for Primals. 

The tour was fifty credits per person, so it was a little pricey, but well within my budget, and any of the money would go directly to Arkose, and in my opinion, giving money to public natural works was always a good thing. I bought the tickets, then sent the link to Laurel and River, asking if they’d be interested in joining me, before putting my augpad away and starting to clean up, while wondering what exactly I was going to do with the next two days in the city. The answer was probably editing.