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[Devastator]

"Can you track down this central source, or block it in some way?"

Also, I think we should kill our captive at the final transformation, so that he dies as himself.

[Egan_BW]

Seems like the virus itself isn't too dangerous, so if the infectee manages to stay away from the recently increased background magic, they'll be able to recover, possibly even become immune.

Are large-scale anti-magic fields possible? It may be best to placed those infected under quarantine with the magic field suppressed, and just treat the virus's symptoms. After some time the body should deal with the virus itself, and the connection to mutating magic should be severed so they can just return to their lives, now immune.

It may also be possible to create a vaccine without the magical component altogether.

Of course, these methods become a bit riskier if you consider that the dragon may have built the virus to show deadly symptoms only if the target remains un-transformed, as a backup.

[MoonyTheHuman]

I... Is this seriously still going. How long has it been now? NEARLY 2 YEARS
Wow.
Spleen, you are one dedicated GM.

[omada]

Ask if when they manage a cure they might be able to or reverse the transformation or just make those infected stop infecting others, offer for us to implant our egg in one of these creatures, in the condition that if it doesn't breed a raging beast to keep the tests on our spiders simple and safe, as we will be probably entering in a tantrum if one of our kids died on their tests

the spiderling probably won't come turned, because the virus don't infect non humanoids, but also there is a probability that it will come with characteristics related that can be studied, worst case scenario we will be creating a new strain of the virus that can infect us

how much is the immunity cloth? we should get the reward (I bet there was a reward for killing that bandit/plague camp) and buy one to Sucy

[Devastator]

Do we have enough security to try the spiderlings?  I'm okay with that.  Kill the guy and then do the spiderlings.  They might be very useful, and probably won't be infectuous.. but might be influenced or controlled in some way.  It's weird.

[omada]

Put in his leg right now, this won't kill him
and THEN tomorrow put it in his other leg AFTER transformation

we will have both stages

[Devastator]

I think we can stab a dead body, so that would be he transforms and then we kill him?

[omada]

I think we can stab a dead body, so that would be he transforms and then we kill him?

I didn't understood what you said here, I blame my alcohol, we can stab things that are alive, we used this to screw the neck of the orc, and stab things that are dead, we did this before somewhere

what I am suggesting is to stab him in mid transformation and have samplechild1

and then stab him after transformation (alive or dead, probably dead because it will try to kill us) and have samplechild2

[birdy51]

I think scientists are a bad influence on us.

[Liquefied Spleens]

I... Is this seriously still going. How long has it been now? NEARLY 2 YEARS
Wow.
Spleen, you are one dedicated GM.

Yep

Can we track down where its coming from?
Not at this stage. All we can say is a general direction. There's less magic if you head east, so we suppose it's somewhere out west. But that would be about the entire continent, and that's assuming it's not intentionally obscuring a direction. Whatever this is, it's definitely clever.
Hm. So that's a bust. So, here's this idea: what if we place infectees in a place with nearly no magic. I know anti-magic fields are possible.
Yes, but they are VERY finicky. You're much better off redirecting magic, but with the ambient magic being out of whack, and the nature of the curse being too 'stubborn' to be redirected, we just don't quite have the means to create a real anti-magic field without some experts in the field. Sorry to say, they are not present out here.
My assumption is that it hasn't been tried yet, as well... It SHOULD work, provided the disease passes before the field gives out.
I doubt that would be possible. a monotone voice says from behind you. Turning around, you see Sucy is standing here, in blatant disregard of the quarantine, though nobody is stopping her. When you look over at the victim, you see that he is both unconscious and covered with a tarp of sorts.
Ah, good. You're here.
Sucy nods once, and then starts talking in her usual whispery, monotone voice. A curse/virus combination requires an insane amount of precision and magic. The power needed to add a randomization element would place the powers needed to a cabal of exceptionally powerful mages with a high understanding of all manner of diseases. In case you don't remember, not a lot of people even understand RNA, let alone mixing in curse beacons. So, my guess is: it's a very, very large organisation with a few important figures guiding the energy.... Say, you driders are giving me an idea. What if its worshipping power? This curse is a clear attack on humanity, as it stands. The three biggest sentient presences are specifically attacked to turn into something else entirely. It's hatred of something.
Not hard to guess who would want everything dead or ineffective... The gestating god?
The what?
Ahh, that must be the energy signature I found those years ago. Yes, quite a bit out west. In the Deadlands, if my instruments were properly calibrated.
Right. Big eldritch god that just made its first claim on the world. But it had to have gotten free from somewhere.
Correct. Something like this should have an original vector of infection, that allowed for the randomization to spread. If I had to guess, something very large and very inherently magical.
Mayhaps the dragon the specimen was talking about?
That would fit, if they're the fairy tale type. Big lizards that fly and breathe fire?
Reports indicate that very thing, yes. Did this... Gestating God create a dragon?
Impossible. The tests I did show that it has a hard time creating something out of nothing. Its footsoldiers were much to ineffective and had the remains of a clearly human element. Most likely, our dragon used to be a person before the infection took hold and the magic began pumping into her. With that initial connection, it should work.
We are making a few jumps in logic, here. But I can't deny that this sounds like something old Gesty would do. Regardless, I have a proposition, if I may.

You turn a few heads in interest. You quickly explain that you intent to inject the infectee with an egg, that will cause a spiderling to burst out of him nonlethally (probably). That baby will have taken on traits of the infectee, which can be used for... something. Probably research, provided they don't hurt your new baby. They can be careful, right? OH, and you'll do it again when the transformation is complete, preferably when the target is dead for your own safety.
The reactions are less than stellar. Or, to be more precise, Sucy and Francine are looking at eachother with massive, surprised smiles. You even hear a breathy sort of laugh coming from the both of them. The main lady from the Order, however, is less impressed. Somehow, you feel the eyes of a woman who is rather professional at scolding bore through the mask and into your soul.
Even if I was willing to look past this blatant disregard for human life in our patient, I can't possibly allow the risk of a mutated version of the disease. Not to mention, I strongly doubt that we have ANY sort of lasting research that wouldn't involve killing your planned abominations. So, no. This patient is under OUR care, and you will not apply this kind of horrifying treatment to him.
IS.
THAT.
CLEAR? She says, with the type of voice that could make a troll look away in shame. It sort of works on you, too. Your companions, while still smiling, don't seem to object to the demands of the lady in front of you. If you really want to try this, you'll have to do it outside of their watchful eyes.

Try to convince her.
She seems pretty set on saying no, but maybe you can reach a compromise?

Leave it be and go turn in the bounty.
With some luck, you might be able to buy Sucy a suit.

Start reading your books
While you're at it, you'll write what you see in the Tome of Eternal Darkness.

Other


Basic Stats

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Level: 13
Health: 60/60
Sanity: 34/70
Poison stings: 1/1
Restraint 3/3
Mana: 50/50
Corruption: 5/10
Thirst: Sated

Children
Adam 8/8
Alice 9/9
Cactus 10/10

Items and equipment

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Items:
10 gold coins
14 outfits
1 fancy outfit
Magic Cookbook.
5 rations
Equipment:
Ram Dao
Scimitar
Bone scimitar
First Tome of Eternal Darkness
D-VA armor

Skills and spells

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Magic:
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(invests 2 of your max mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect average beast: Allows you to resurrect creatures such as dogs, cats and other similar-sized creatures.(invests 7 mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect Humanoid: Allows you to resurrect humanoid creatures. (Invests 10 mana) (Costs 14 mana)
Reshape minion plus!: Allows you to majorly change the appearance of your resurrected minions.
Control Undead: Allows you to attempt to control an undead that doesn't belong to you. (mana cost of 2 per second, unmastered)
Minion Vision: Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Disintegrate undead: Delete a corpse you currently control.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (Drains 0 mana)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (1 per second) (average limb takes around 20 seconds to properly graft)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You could try putting it in a flame of some sort to keep it around. (9 mana)
Soul battery: Allows you to use a soul-infused flame as a small mana-boost. This snuffs it out, however
Undead flashbang: Allows you to blow up a minion for a flash-bang effect. (9 mana)
Stitch: allows you to close a wound and stop bleeding as fast as you can stitch. Costs zero mana, but requires something to stitch with.
Siphoning Cloud: Breathe out a cloud that drains the life from victims and gives it to you. Adds a LOT to intimidation (4 mana)
Smoke Cloud: Breathe out harmless but thick smoke. (1 mana)
Deathbolt: A bolt that hurts the body's connection with it's soul. Causes minor wounds to appear over the body as it attempts to compensate (1 mana)
Doombolt: A more powerful version of the above (4 Mana)
Pinworks: You can apply spells into a bone spike, relative to the size of the victim. You can also make traps if you use an offensive spell.

Companions
Tom(cat) (hunting)
Tarrare (Pigeon)

Skills:
Claws: Your arm has been replaced with a powerful claw. This is BOUND to you, and cannot be removed.
Pride: You have a mind-controlling leech in your arm. This is so mindblowingly unethical/illegal it would put you in "kill on sight" status with a lot of organisations/people.
Broodmother: Once per day, you can sting something to create spiderlings, which are large, clever spiders that adore you by default. Your instincts cause you to be VERY protective of them.
Crossbow usage: Novice
Adaptation: You regenerate mana faster than most
Gun usage: Novice
Oral Fixation: Can cast spells spells from the mouth.
Draining: Can drain blood using fangs.
Major experience in blocking and swordplay.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: Excellent 
Corpse Cutting: Quite Decent. 
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge
Soul Sniffer

I know the updates have been (relatively) short, but I'll be straight with you when I say I love writing this plague-virus stuff. I always liked diseases in fiction.

[Devastator]

No need to push it.  I hate to say it, but there's likely to be no shortage of subjects.

[omada]

"That's clear miss sargeant, if it might kill my children I won't object because my psyche won't stand it, and I agree that the risk of mutation might not be worth it, but before care to explain to me where is the clear disregard to human life in my idea? I thought that it was the modus operandi between you scientists, I may have missed something about regard about human life or care between your order creating a mind-controlling clone of me, two or three scientists trying to force me into becoming a bunch of creatures and your cooperation and blind eye with a likely product of constant-rape or forced artificial insemination, damn, if pain is your fear we could had used anesthetics, but damn"

Give this small show of bitterness and go to the bounty, give before the book to hal and for him to show her later the kind of pages that might be related to his curse (or be useful for us to use later)

it will make we don't lose too much time at least

[Devastator]

I think we need something to help us find the dragon, and some idea if killing the dragon will disrupt the curse or if it's going to end the world regardless.

I'm also annoyed that we went in exactly the wrong direction, too..  When we do head off to bash heads in, I say we go straight through as many mutants as we can, as we'll probably need a couple more mutations to win that fight.  May want to accumulate spiderlings too.

We're not the experts at investigating here.  Lets let the experts do their work, leave the books and the Tome with Hal, collect the bounty and see what we can do to get ready for a fight.  Learn some new spells, maybe, now that our relatively limited supply of mana is now quickly refilling?  Some exercising to build core strength to help us with our larger size and unbalanced arm?

[Liquefied Spleens]

Really... The disregard for human life is your problem? I've had enough shit from you folks to know that is hardly an issue with you.
I... I know what happened during our first encounter. They were harshly punished for their carelessness. You must understand, most are not allowed to speak. I am exceptional, as a grand master of the order. The others will not speak unless needed, it's a vow.
Right. And the blind eye to all the driders? It's just constant rape or insemination, that's not immoral. This seems to set her off. She leaves her defensive posture and starts walking up to you, stabbing you in the ribs with her pointing finger as she speaks.
Do NOT blame us for the actions of the people of the east! We are a neutral organisation, and even if we weren't currently fighting against a plague that seems tailor-made to bring us to extinction, we CANNOT afford to do anything. If you care so much, go fix it yourself!
Fine. You were right on the other parts. I can't allow harm to come my children, and the risk of mutation is too high, fine. But the pain? You could have anesthesised him.
And for what!? So you get to see what happens!? And you blame us for immorality... Get out of my sight!
Fine! Fine... You throw up your hands and walk away. As you go, you throw the book on curses to Hal.
Get looking, I'm going to get a bounty paid.

Getting paid wasn't that hard, as it turns out. Turns out all bounties get paid at the guard barracks, which would be a good way to deter thieves. The Order of the bLighted Beak already sent word that you did your work, so there was no proof needed. Though you're kind of lucky in that regard. You didn't really have any sort of proof on you, though it wasn't on the bounty board. Mistakes on both sides, to be honest. The payment is 400 base, and another 300 extra for capturing a live specimen. 700 coins... Quite the step up, really. Of course, considering the nature of the plague, it makes sense that they had to ramp up the money. You just happened to be immune, so you're a little overpaid as a single contractor. Of course, most bounty hunters don't send in two people to kill an entire camp, but hey. More money.
You start thinking about what would be best to do next. The researchers will continue their researching, and you figure fiding a dragon isn't THAT hard. It's not exactly common to find one. Of course, you can't forget about your current problems...
Hal is still terminal, your mother is somewhere in these lands, you have at least one crazy scientist with you... It's a lot on your plate.

You'd better come to a decision on your next action. Moving West to kill a dragon sounds pretty damned tough.



Basic Stats

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Level: 13
Health: 60/60
Sanity: 34/70
Poison stings: 1/1
Restraint 3/3
Mana: 50/50
Corruption: 5/10
Thirst: Sated

Children
Adam 8/8
Alice 9/9
Cactus 10/10

Items and equipment

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Items:
10 gold coins
14 outfits
1 fancy outfit
Magic Cookbook.
5 rations
Equipment:
Ram Dao
Scimitar
Bone scimitar
First Tome of Eternal Darkness
D-VA armor

Skills and spells

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Magic:
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(invests 2 of your max mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect average beast: Allows you to resurrect creatures such as dogs, cats and other similar-sized creatures.(invests 7 mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect Humanoid: Allows you to resurrect humanoid creatures. (Invests 10 mana) (Costs 14 mana)
Reshape minion plus!: Allows you to majorly change the appearance of your resurrected minions.
Control Undead: Allows you to attempt to control an undead that doesn't belong to you. (mana cost of 2 per second, unmastered)
Minion Vision: Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Disintegrate undead: Delete a corpse you currently control.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (Drains 0 mana)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (1 per second) (average limb takes around 20 seconds to properly graft)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You could try putting it in a flame of some sort to keep it around. (9 mana)
Soul battery: Allows you to use a soul-infused flame as a small mana-boost. This snuffs it out, however
Undead flashbang: Allows you to blow up a minion for a flash-bang effect. (9 mana)
Stitch: allows you to close a wound and stop bleeding as fast as you can stitch. Costs zero mana, but requires something to stitch with.
Siphoning Cloud: Breathe out a cloud that drains the life from victims and gives it to you. Adds a LOT to intimidation (4 mana)
Smoke Cloud: Breathe out harmless but thick smoke. (1 mana)
Deathbolt: A bolt that hurts the body's connection with it's soul. Causes minor wounds to appear over the body as it attempts to compensate (1 mana)
Doombolt: A more powerful version of the above (4 Mana)
Pinworks: You can apply spells into a bone spike, relative to the size of the victim. You can also make traps if you use an offensive spell.

Companions
Tom(cat) (hunting)
Tarrare (Pigeon)

Skills:
Claws: Your arm has been replaced with a powerful claw. This is BOUND to you, and cannot be removed.
Pride: You have a mind-controlling leech in your arm. This is so mindblowingly unethical/illegal it would put you in "kill on sight" status with a lot of organisations/people.
Broodmother: Once per day, you can sting something to create spiderlings, which are large, clever spiders that adore you by default. Your instincts cause you to be VERY protective of them.
Crossbow usage: Novice
Adaptation: You regenerate mana faster than most
Gun usage: Novice
Oral Fixation: Can cast spells spells from the mouth.
Draining: Can drain blood using fangs.
Major experience in blocking and swordplay.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: Excellent 
Corpse Cutting: Quite Decent. 
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge
Soul Sniffer

[Devastator]

We'll need some stuff to help us kill that dragon.  Probably something offensive and something defensive.  Defensive can probably be covered with a custom shield for our big hand and some fireproof clothing/cloak.  Offensive, maybe add an oversized spear to keep the dragon from just charging in and crushing us, and a few custom bombs would do.  Lets get that stuff together.


An army or something would be nice, but extra magic should mean a lot more possible zombitude, so we can gather one en-route.  Does the extra mana perk reduce our cost per zombie minion?

Also, pride minions.