Productive and fun

As we reach the stairs, Alice recovers from her surprise long enough to ask a pertinent question: “If you can shapeshift, why don't you just turn back?”

“Tried, can't,” I shake my head as we climb, “when…” ugh, can't use the given name, “...did this to me…” I can't even use pronouns? Double ugh, “...made sure of that, apparently. Any form I take has four huge hooters and a baby bakery. I can't even make this body look less feminine.”

“But you can add wings?” Tina scrunched up her face, and pauses as we pass the second floor, “Wait, can I…?” she looks down at herself.

“You should be able to look like just about anything you want within the limits of the feats involved,” I sigh, shaking my head as we reach the third floor, “so a humanoid creature, with or without functional wings. Your control won't be fine enough to mimic a specific person, but you can add makeup to take care of that, and can be anywhere from four feet to eight feet tall and sixty to five hundred pounds, in case you wanted to be a sumo wrestler or something.” Alice climbs the ladder first, and I get a nice view of her rump as she opens the roof hatch and climbs onto the roof.

“But I could, say, try the other side of the gender fence?” Tina climbs onto the roof as well.

You don't have to rub it in… “I'm not interested in men, Adam can't currently shapeshift, and it'd feel like cheating with anyone else,” I give a practical objection as I climb up myself, and look around… nice view of the property: A big open field… I wonder why none of the trees seem to survive past about ten feet tall? If this place has been here since the fifties… huh.

“I can probably fix that, if he's willing,” Alice pipes up, as we get ready to fly, “I have that flexible talent, and the… exploit, you called it?... to change it out quickly.”

“You'd need to sit there and concentrate for the entire time they went at it,” I consider, “but you wouldn't need to be in the room, I suppose.”

“Great! I'll talk to him when we get back. For now…” Tina takes a deep breath to steel her nerves, then runs and jumps over the low wall around the roof. I follow.

Flying. Is. Awesome.

Unlike Tina, my Alteration effect is running at a caster level of twenty-one: Which means not only can I gain altitude, but I can turn better and fly faster. I do loop de loops, climb, enjoy the sun, and dive. When I finally land, Tina is waiting for me in the grass in human form, tapping her foot, and dresses. She also brought Alice and Adam. They're all looking at me.

Tina starts, “Okay, why are you so much better at that?” It's a reasonable question.

I shrug, deciding there's little point in being deceptive, “I have a LOT more options for my build, and am using cheese that would never fly at a gaming table,” as Alice and Tina both groan while Adam snickers, I realize the pun, but continue anyway, “I have an option of granting people Mythic ranks if they worship me as a deity. I gave myself the high priest position, and used those nine Mythic ranks to give myself Many Forms…which is what I used for this.”

Alice and Tina scrunch their faces, but Adam looks thoughtful, “So… if you give me the High Priest position, and I take Mythic Paragon and Divine Source all three times, my high priestess could be rank ten. If she does the same, her high priestess could also be rank ten, and so on. If we do this in a circle, we can all be rank ten… except whoever worships you directly.”

“What's a Mythic rank?” Tina raises an eyebrow.

“A variant type of campaign where you have some advancement that runs separately from the levels, but comes with a lot of fun stuff,” I answer idly, “like my shapeshifting. I'll need to drop it for a day to reassign it, and there's the trust issue…” I'm seriously considering this.

Alice's turn to ask, “What's the trust issue?”

Adam cringes, “Okay, so… you know the Greek legends of Medusa, Charybdis, Scylla, and others?” As Tina and Alice nod, the man continues, “well… as deities, we would have a very open-ended ability to apply punishments for ‘wrongdoing’ onto our worshippers, and yes, it could absolutely hit that scale… and what counts as ‘wrong’ is up to the ‘deity’.”

“We'd have a circle of accountability there,” I rub my chin, “like, if I punish Adam, Adam can talk to Tina, and Tina can talk to Alice, and Alice can punish me. And there's also the escape clause: If Alice is punishing me, and I switch to worshipping Tina, and Tina accepts me, my punishment immediately ends… but I wouldn't be a High Priest anymore unless Tina reassigned her position to me, which would take a day.”

“So we would have a set of checks and balances already built into the rules,” Adam agrees.

…and I'd end up with something like veto power, as I'd be the keystone: If I revoke the high priest position, everyone is out of that game until I assign it again… and if I take it, I'm no worse off than I am now, other than the lost day. “I think I'm sold,” I smile, “and I can give everyone a single Mythic rank directly and immediately if, well….”

Adam is the first to kneel, closed fist to his heart, head down, eyes closed, “My goddess, I will follow you.” Alice and Tina join, a little more hesitantly.

I nod, and set them all to ‘favored worshipper’ status as I revoke my own position and give myself the same state, “then arise my children, with my blessing,” I smile, “Now come on, let's go plan the cheddar… I mean, the blessings we'll be giving each other.”