Bring her to the rune triad.

The rune triad feels like the place to go, and so you lead the halfling to the site of power. She follows eager to get a closer look at the feature and so wanders around it restlessly while you consider the stones. You focus on them and a menu appears.

Pact Site Options:

Favor Options

Break Pact

You select favor options, a sub-menu appearing as you do.

Favor Options:

Current Favor: 1/10

Bless Supplicant

Lair Upgrade Tree (New Upgrades Available)

Minion Upgrade Tree (New Upgrades Available)

Divine Crafting

“Hey, get over here. I think I’ve got this now.” You call to the halfling, casting a glance her way as she’s about to touch the stones herself. You’re not sure if anything might happen if she does touch the feature herself and instinctively a soft growl rumbles in your throat. Her hand jerks away and she gives you a sheepish grin before hurrying to you.

“I wasn’t gonna do anything.” She tells you defensively and you remain silent, selecting the ‘bless supplicant’ option in the menu before you.

Blessing a supplicant will allow them to harvest materials specific to the blessing’s deity as well as grant them various bonuses relative to the pact bearer’s favor level. Blessing a supplicant that is already involved with a deity can result in unintended consequences.

State the name of the supplicant you wish to bless.

You read the informational blurb quickly and wonder what those unintended consequences might be. Best to avoid finding out and you decide that it would be best to only bless those that have no prior contact with the divine. Still, for a mage this shouldn’t be an issue. “Ciani.” You state her name and the dialogue vanishes.

“Yea?” She asks, confused at first by your calling of her name. A light green glow suffuses the air around her and she looks around and down at her hands in surprise. “Oh whoa, what the….” The glow fades before she can even finish speaking. “Was that it?” She asks you, and you glance at her unsure yourself. You nod decisively before too much time passes.

“Yea, that’s it. Now you can harvest the essence yourself. Though it means killing your fellow players, or monsters that have had some time to develop beyond their default. I slew most of a goblin village and didn’t get the option to harvest a single one.” You enlighten the mage more on how to acquire the material you are coming to realize is going to be very important for your continued success and growth.

“Ohhh? Well that ought to be fun. I’d been thinking about PKing more on this character and that just cements it. Easier that than trying to find monsters that haven’t been farmed. In fact… There’s already more players looking for you. I bet I could hang out in this area and they’d come to me.”

That was another angle you hadn’t had time to consider. The three heroes you’d dealt with recently were only the first of others. How many had accepted the quest by now and would be hunting for you? You thought back to the warrior Sheila’s excitement over the whole encounter. For the first time you realize that this could snowball out of your control quickly if you didn’t keep moving forward.

“That’s fine with me. In fact, you’re free to use this glade as a base to prepare between your hunting expeditions. In return for your assistance dealing with other heroes, and providing me with the materials I need, I’ll give you an item unique to Nire’s followers.” You speak while thinking of the Divine crafting option at the rune triad and you’re sure that you can find something suitable there. If not you’d have to figure something out and hope that it would do the job.

“Deal!” Ciani accepts without a moment’s thought and grins at you, a spark of mischief in her gaze. “Maybe I can help you again with some other things, too.” Her gaze flicked to your waist and then back up. You could see more trouble between Sylvana and her in the future but bringing her here was seeming more and more to have been the right choice.

“We’ll see.” You flash a snarl-like grin at her, non-committal in your tone and body language. It was enough for her it seemed because she eagerly left to go explore the glade just in time for Sylvana to once more join you.

“I can’t believe you’ve done this.” She glares at you for a moment but then sighs, defeated. “Still, I guess if Nire truly didn’t want this she would have prevented you from doing it. Maybe I still have some things to learn about my mistress. I still don’t like her.” Sylvanna watches the mage in the distance as she goes to each of the buildings that sparsely dotted the glade.

“I’ll need her and others like her to protect this place. That’s important to you, right? With her help I’ll be able to build the glade up faster. Be patient, little rabbit.” You fall back to your pet name for her to both soothe her temper and remind her that you were in control here. You take a breath and take a moment to finally really appraise your situation. The events of the day felt as if they had taken much longer than they had. You were tired, but the sun still hung high in the sky. It wasn’t much past mid-day. You had much to think about, information to gather and plans to make. Being a mini-boss was proving to be much more work than you would have guessed.

That work was proving to be worth it. While still in the early stages of development you had a place of your own, several minions, and even a hero on your side. What would the coming days bring; and how would your growing presence change the game?