Act as if you know what some of the stuff on the wall does and point towards one of the swords, then grab the sword and point to various things on it that could be magical while saying how cool it is, after showing him it point to another thing on the wall and when he turns around to look at it stab him in the back.
Our hero problem will be solved.
Or it'll be a sword that turns its wielder into a newt unless they utter the correct pass-phrase, a flaming blade that also lights you on fire, or a sword of healing.
Plus, he's definitely distracted, but you don't think he fully trusts you, and you think you've already mentioned how many of your cunning sneak attacks have failed miserably.
If we're going to do that, why not suggest he try out the cursed longsword of fatal self-mutiliation specially enchanted to prominently glow that we save for just such occasions?
This is a hilarious idea. You should totally do that sometime.
Trouble is, finding them out in the first place- you don't want to hand some random magic item to anybody expendable because they might become dangerous, but you don't want to hand it to someone not-expendable because it might be dangerous to them.
Plus, most cursed items tend to not be entirely bad like that. A cursed longsword of fatal self-mutilation might be freaking
sharp, for instance, allowing it to hew through things you don't want hewn prior to getting around to the wielder.
Ask permission to go looking for a sword in your guards armory, and to get a bandage of some sorts. If he refuses because we could betray him, say that he has already defeated us while we used our best gear. If he asks why we don't take from the magical inventory, say that you have got enough of magical items after being possesed by the demon.
Then go get gear from our private stock, and a bandage.
He says uh yeah sure. You're pretty sure he's not paying total attention to you.
This gives you time to consider all the horrible things that you hope happen to him on your way there.
Lets hope he gets the crown of change alignment. Or of turn into a god damned undead monster thing under your control.
Or at least something that does not fuck you over. Make sure to tally what he finds out is safe. See if you can get some of it for yourself.
A crown of change alignment would be
horrible. He might become competent and stop sucking and, like, feed you to your own crocodiles or something funny, instead of... not killing you because some imaginary cult is going to fuck up the world or something? Really? Who
cares.Unless you own that part of the world or want to fuck it up yourself or something, obviously.
Undead monster would probably suck also. Undead monster under your control could be fricking
awesome, but that's probably more than you can hope for. "Enslaved to last person you defeated" doesn't sound like a very common enchantment.
You'll make sure to tally the things when you get back; he'll probably still be going at it. You've already tallied some of the stuff, you just don't remember any of it.
Girdle of gender bending.
Not only would it be amusing, girls arms tend to be shorter, their elbow joints have a different angle and their overall center of balance is different. It will throw off his sword fighting.
Hilarious
and effective?
C'mon genderbending girdle!
It would make any further time spent around him more entertaining if he found an item of grandiose delusions.
Maybe. Or maybe it'd cancel out some of his suck and he'd realize he's too good at slashing things to care about peasants or who burned down which of his parents' houses or something.
You suppose that last one might be handy, til he decides your castle is his or something. Deciding he's already got a better one would be funny, though.
So, mixed bag, depending on how it'd turn out.
He needs the red crown and the disco boots.
To make him stylish or funny-looking? You're not sure you like either option while you're traveling with him and he can beat you.
Anyway, you arrive at your precious, precious personal armory.
Inside you have a wide range of stylish and effective masterpieces, many imported at great expense. There's a little of everything, but the selection definitely displays the preferences of its collector.
Specifically, a fair portion of it is solid but swift one-handed slashing weapons, allowing you to move quickly but strike solidly as you reave through unarmored opponents. Such weapons tend to do worse against proper armor, perhaps not surprisingly. They're not especially good at blocking shots either, now that you think about it, which might explain some things back in the throne room.
Naturally, this makes your first instinct to pick out another one of those, but perhaps it's worth considering alternatives. You're not fond of two-handers because they're unwieldy, and you dislike axes and mauls for the same reason. Daggers and similar are too quick and light for your tastes, not giving you those heavy, satisfying hits against slow, unarmored targets.
You've also got a handful of elegant pieces of armor in here. To be honest you don't usually care much for armor- it slows you down, which causes all sorts of problems- but again, perhaps it's worth considering. Your selection is considerably less abundant than of weapons, as armor usually just isn't as classy-looking hanging on a wall, but you do have some exceptional pieces here and there.
You've also got one final ace in the hole. See, none of these weapons are magic- you don't want to deal with possibly-cursed spew-flame-at-odd-times type stuff- but there's a way to make them a little magic.
Augments.
See, a "normal" magic item is totally imbued with magical essence. That's nice. But, it's also possible to design a weapon to channel essence- from, for instance, a gem set into the hilt. Some magic items actually function this way normally, but the more intriguing application is to create a mundane item with a slot that can be filled with just about any enchantment later on. It's quite brilliant.
Of course, you tend not to use them, because you never know when you might get an
even more awesome enchant and/or weapon and have to junk your old ones, and of course because slotted weapons are far rarer and more expensive, but now might be the time to cut loose and use everything you've got. If so, you'd just have to...
You don't remember what any of these do.
Okay, okay, you can fix this. Or just abandon the idea, but if you need to you can fix this. You know they're usually color-coded, yellow means gold or fear or sun or light or gods damn it this is so stupid. You knew what they did when you put them in here, but you already knew what they did so why label or write it down? And then of course you never really cared what they did so you didn't remind yourself or realize you were forgetting completely so AUGH.
Alright, so you've got a variety of colors, styles, shapes, and apparent materials or surface patterns or something. They also vary somewhat in size but not severely. Most are either round-ish or like specific gem cuts, but you've got a wide variety of how many facets or whatever.
You're guessing the augment's outward properties imply its function, like with the color thing, but there's no way to guess what the creator was thinking and you're not sure whether all properties are meaningful or if some are just stylistic choices or how they happened to turn out.
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Topic: Emerald Overlord: Decisiveness and Gumballs (Read 14673 times)