Something bad happened

“I heard gunfire. Are you OK?” The lady in the other end of the line speaks up.

I mute the mic on my phone for a moment to talk to my party mates, “Ah… probably best if all'y'all are elsewhere soon…” then unmute myself and focus on the 911 operator, “Ah… I'm okay. I got caught, cooperated, locked in a room and chained to a desk… then things got really hectic for a bit… and the locks and door popped open? I don't get it, but I'm standing over the corpses of the two guys who arrested me… I think… they're actually… umm...” I make retching sounds and hear totally-deserved dice in my head. Good thing I actually invested in Bluff!

“Ah… where are you?” Hard to say if she's buying it.

“Oh… ummm…” I pull out my map app, and give her the address, “...there's fresh corpses here… I'll… go stand out by the front door and wait for a detective?”

“Sure, Dan, do that. Looks like I can have a uniformed officer on site in two minutes.”

I take a breath, and walk back to the door of the building, “Thank you.”

I wait until a uniformed officer shows up - this time, NOT an ambulatory side of beef in human shape - and feed him the same story I gave the 911 operator. He seems to buy it well enough. I renew my buffs regularly, fill out some paperwork, talk to a detective (who drives me home and makes me wait while the forensics team goes over my apartment) and I am eventually released… with a warning to stay in town for when they have further questions. And while they did find my computer, hairbrush, toothbrush, trash, discarded hair, and so on at the holding facility… I don't get to take it home: Apparently it's evidence now, right along with the physical paperwork the phony police officers left behind.

Which means I'm doing my level up paperwork by hand and on my phone: That is really annoying.

I can pull it off, though. Moogle Docs lets me free form from my phone, and that's where I store my base worksheet anyway. It's made worse by the little issue that I have two levels to do now. Still… knowing I actually get to have all these powers is something else. Of course, I optimize my build up the wazoo. Obscure sources? Absolutely. Combine things never intended to work with each other? Yup! Given that one of those monsters took out a full strength Solar in seconds, I'm going to NEED to be virtually all-powerful.

When I'm done with the sheet - including prepared spells and standard buffs - I focus on my final worksheet and say, “Okay Adam, here's the changes.”

‘Permanent undispellable everything from Technological Wonders is going to be… ah, that's why Fleeting Spell metamagic, I see…’ the Adam in my head mumbles, ‘...did a lot of book diving… all the spells of 2nd or lower now, huh?... all looks legal. OK. You can get it all after the next long rest.’

Smiling, I settle down for eight hours of… well… watching dull videos on a wrecked couch: I'll be able to fix that in the morning. When my timer goes off, I spend an hour preparing spells (holding still and concentrating) and then several minutes casting the ones I picked out for myself the night before: It's a long list, most of which are individually minor boosts… but they add up. Then big trick is getting Enable Function off the Vanguard list to go with Constructed (allowing me to give myself feats) and the notable Technological Wonders that makes everything permanent… of course, I also add Fleeting Spell into the mix so I can turn off things that turn out to be problematic.

Then - now armed with second level spells - I spam Make Whole to fix all the wrecked stuff, cast the spells from curated lists I can use thanks to the Legendary Medium’s very flexible mechanics that I borrowed, and then and then use Summon Monster II for some air elementals to help out, Tongues from the Medium list letting me give them orders. Little blobs of solid air, about the size of a decent dog and about as strong as a guy who occasionally works out… and about as bright as a three year old. Another spell fixes that to about the level of Joey from Friends, which is enough for cleaning up.

I spam Heroic Fortune to restore my list of poached spells, and text the gaming group, “I got some sweet stuff on level up fighting some goons while everyone else was captured; come on over, there's a lot I can share, we should discuss build plans.”

Adam: “You got enough XP to level up? Nice! How about I bring everyone to my new place to discuss?”

Charles: “Sounds good.”

Brian: “Yeah, your new place rocks.”

Me: “Sure.”

A few moments later, I'm on the beach again. The surviving angel is busy casting - and I'm boosted enough to recognize the spell: Greater Create Demiplane… and there's now six more of the stony giant women, which my boosted skills let me trivially recognize as Noble Earth Jinn, called Pashas. There's also a little foot-and a half tall creature made of fired clay (shaped as a nude female… Adam has his preferences, clearly) with a little hammer that I recognize as a Dedicated Wright (a construct from Eberron used to make crafting magic items take up less time) working on another clay statue of the same kind, next to a giant pile of fifty pound bags of salt… looks like he bought out a couple big box stores?

Adam frowns when he sees me, “What happened to the angel I made for you, my goddess?”

I take a slow breath, “She died while I was fighting the two ‘modified flesh golems' pretending to be cops that captured Brian and Charles,” I shake my head, “sorry.”

Adam shakes his head, “Don't be; better her than you. I can replace her in another eight hours, now that the maintainer has changed the day.”

I raise an eyebrow, and he continues, “Ah, well… a day is now eight hours here. This is for crafting efficiency: The rules forbid more than eight hours of progress on an item in a day… but on a created Demiplane, we can change what a day means. What she's doing NOW is changing time, so two minutes here is one minute on Earth… and with my skill boosting, working quickly means a twenty four hour period on earth works out to twelve thousand in progress on a magic item… per Dedicated Wright. They all have to be on different projects, and I can't make potions, wands, staves, scrolls, and certain other items without the actual spells… but in a couple of weeks real time we can all be decked out in some awesome magic bling.”

“Why the salt?” Brian asks.

“Ah, that,” Adam chuckles, “Okay, so… you how I do a lot of world building, and this is following our campaign rules, right?” We all nod, and he keeps going, “well, the lore for magic item crafting - and why trade goods have a fixed price - is that anything natural has some leftover divine spark from when the gods created the world. Trade goods are items from which it can be readily extracted, and used for making magic items. They're valued by item crafters based on the amount of that divine spark they can get. There's a lot of sources, so if one thing becomes cheaper due to an extra large supply, all the item crafters stop buying up the other items on the list and get that one item until the law of supply and demand evens things back out. Likewise, if there's a shortage of one thing and the price goes up, the item crafters just stop buying it, making the demand go down until the prices all even out again. Magically created things, or things heavily magically manipulated, don't have that same spark.”

Charles frowns, “So why salt?”

Adam laughs, “Because it's a trade good, and is dirt cheap in the real world. We can buy it by the ton, extract that divine spark, and make magic gear. Meanwhile, the wishmasters can make gold things via Fabricate, which I can sell for the money to buy the salt, even though they're not suitable for crafting.”

I nod, “Cool. In the meanwhile, I have some fun things to hand out myself… who wants to make with the magic?”

Everyone raises their hands, and I get to work buffing everyone up: All of the basic stat boosting spells, Air Bubble so they will be fine underwater, Monkey Fish so they can swim a bit, Spider Climb so they can go up walls, Heroism for numbers boosting, Energy Resistance (so they can deal with ‘normal’ burns, acid, freezing, and so on) and others.

“There…” I crack my knuckles, “...that should last until I get rid of it. It's as close as I can get you all to being immortal for now.”

“About that, my goddess…” Adam smiles, “I picked up Divine Source for the domains and spell-like abilities, but it does give me access to the same Churches and Powers of Faith rules you use to grant me your high priesthood… which means I can designate my own High Priest… and due to the Mythic Paragon feat, my high priest will be getting ten Mythic ranks. If said person does a similar build….”

“We can all be deities of each other, with ten Mythic ranks each,” Brian picks up what Adam's laying down.

“I'm stuck at nine,” Adam shrugs, “because one of us needs to be tied directly to Dan's Powers of Faith for the whole thing to work, and if anyone in the chain dies, anyone further down the chain loses their Mythic power until we can get them back… but yes. If Brian worships me and takes both divine Source three times as well as Mythic Paragon when I name him my high priest, and then Charles worships Brian and is designated a high priest, and so on… we can close the loop… of course, Dan won't need the Divine Source path ability.”

“I'm in,” Brian smiles, “my lord."

“Me too,” Charles grins.

I consider… eh, I'm the root of it all… “Let's do this.” We all focus and agree, and soon enough… something shifts a little in my head. Huh.

Adam then continues, “Also… I can make six new Pashas each day, and each can grant three wishes. It takes only five Wishes to get the maximum inherent bonus to a given stat, so… well, we can all power up all the way over a few days… and the days are short here… and I have a Wish of my own with a pitiful caster level, but good for that. Of course, we should start with my goddess.”

I smile, “Sure…” and wait as Adam walks his simulacrums through it. We then all depart for home to rest up and do the new portion of our character sheets… I do end up taking Divine Source three times for the exact same reason that Adam did: Spell-like abilities from the domains. 9th level spells, man, they’re addictive. The Trickery domain with the Espionage subdomain grants Mind Blank (anti-divination, an 8th) and Time Stop (extra time, a 9th level spell); the Envy domain grants Wish (can copy lots of other spells and do a few unique effects), Limited Wish (copies lots of other spells at low levels), and Simulacrum (copies creatures… although this is tied to caster level, so I won’t be getting much out of it yet); the Fate domain grants both Resurrection (bring people back from the dead) and Miracle (a Divine version of Wish, basically); while my last pick (the Artifice domain with the Construct subdomain) grants three spells that make mundane things (Minor Creation, Fabricate, and Major Creation), Limited Wish (a second time, yes, it’s worth it), Polymorph Any Object (turns almost anything into almost anything), and Prismatic Sphere (pretty much the last word in “nope” spells).

And yeah, I also go with Legendary Item three times to get a Major Artifact of my own design… and yes, make it Intelligent and give it Wish. Because free Wishes ROCK. I keep Metamagician and Undetectable from my prior Legendary item setup, but go with Eternal Bond (as a requirement) and Soul Vault (the thing I want, although I'm covered on **** for myself), also getting Flexible Bond (so I can apply Soul Vault to a dozen friends and family).

I then confirm the plan with the Adam in my head, and sit down for eight hours of rest in my apartment… followed by adding the new items into my buff list.