No Need for a Core?

While Moriko was being wined and dined by the princesses, Mordecai mulled over the information he’d learned from ‘eavesdropping’ on her thoughts. And if he understood everything correctly, the spymaster Lady Yuriko was also a princess, albeit from a few generations ago or more. She would have joined the clan in much the same way as Orchid had, and probably returned as an advisor only after the pain of loss had faded from her closest family being claimed by the passage of time.

Long life amongst the long-lived was easy. Long life mingled with those who were not so long-lived was hard. He suspected the royal family was slightly longer lived than most pure-blooded humans, especially those who showed signs of other bloodlines such as young princess Bridgette, but given what he learned of the Azeria clan almost all of the ‘converted’ princesses could expect to live several centuries, depending on how powerful they grew and thus how many tails they gained.

One of the more interesting things to learn also brought him a bit of relief. While it wasn’t enough to complete the picture of what was going on with Kuiccihan, seeing how they had combined shopping with counter-espionage and probably a little bit of propaganda helped normalize the kingdom a bit from his point of view.

While hardly utopian, the country as a whole had struck him as being almost too serene and egalitarian. This minor bit of political maneuvering showed that a lot of thought and work went into keeping it that way, which fit with what Aia had told him about his daughter having taken some effort in designing the country she helped found. And he was pretty certain that the princesses were sincere, rather than just putting up a good cover. He might be wrong, but it seemed rather unlikely. False paradises tended to be a touch too rigid in weird places, and so far he’d not gotten any signs of that, and there was no attempt to mask it as an actual paradise.

Mordecai was torn about his decision to tuck away so many specific memories. It seemed so logical at the time, it had been so very long and the attack on the village had been thorough, and honestly, it made focusing on the life he had here now easier, but he also regretted not knowing the names of all his children. And though he knew the names of some of his children thanks to the genealogy book, he sort of dreaded the idea of learning the way they would be pronounced now and then having them clash with his memories of them when he did finally retrieve them.

Perhaps not his most rational choice ever, but even if his primary brain was made of crystal instead of the messy goop that made up his avatar’s brain, emotions were not exactly rational. Especially where family was concerned. And the thought of family turned his mind back to the princesses. They were quite the array for a single generation, but given the number of nonhuman and possibly empowered bloodlines supposedly present, this was not as much of a surprise as it might have been. Mordecai really hoped that when the dungeon had greater capacity, either Orchid or one of the other royals would be willing to be thoroughly examined, he wanted to see what was going on for their heritage paths.

All biological life used a physical pattern to carry information from the parents, mingling to create a new pattern. While this was not well known outside of people who had reason and methods to research it in depth, what was less well known was that there were more carriers than the physical.

The next most common was spiritual patterns, energy waveforms that imprint from a strong individual onto one whose spirit and soul were just beginning to form. Between sympathetic magic and literally surrounding the embryo, mothers had the strongest imprinting of spiritual patterns onto their offspring. Typically fathers had the second largest impact. However, sufficiently powerful entities could leave imprints upon those who lived near them for long periods of time, which is why tribes or villages of more mortal races who served a single dragon for many generations tended to take on draconic traits, despite no actual mingling of bloodlines.

Then there were the bloodline travelers, the blessings and curses specifically tied to an individual and all their progeny. While normal spiritual patterns mingled and could change and fade, these acted more like symbionts or parasites, exactly duplicating themselves and attaching to each descendant during conception. Upon occasion a particularly powerful yet poorly constructed curse acted like a disease, infecting all future progeny of anyone the actual carrier had sex with, even if that other person did not conceive a child with the curse bearer. Blessings being so poorly constructed were even rarer, but it was with good reason that most people preferred being ignored by the sidhe over gaining even their blessing.

Beings that did not innately have a physical form generally did not have a physical carrier or pattern and relied entirely upon spiritual waveform patterns.

Constructed entities were all over the place, assuming that they could pass on heritable information rather than just manually constructing a new entity.

As for dungeons… come to think of it, he didn’t know if there was a way to pass on dungeon-specific heritage information. They didn’t have parents. His avatars could pass on physical information based on the form he constructed, and he was pretty sure he made at least a small imprint in the way of spiritual energy, but he had no idea about passing on heritable information for his core. Could that be done?

For that matter, with his new avatar form: if he fathered a child with this avatar, what information would be passed on? What would be the default ‘true’ form for the child? He had no idea, that had not been part of his considerations when making this pattern.

While Mordecai continued to muse over this thought via his avatar, his core was focused mostly on Moriko, while occasionally checking in on Kazue. Moriko seemed to be handling things better now that she’d adjusted and most of her fears laid to rest. He was somewhat curious about how she’d come to have such a high level of concern about interacting with the court. To be fair, her worries were not entirely unfounded, but she was also getting the chance to learn a lesson about power, whether it be political or fiscal. The more power one held and the more securely one held it, the less one had to worry about all the minor proprieties. A well-established monarchy was much like an ‘old money’ family, they did not have fear or envy or need eating at them.

Moriko’s concerns about such games would more likely come into play around minor nobility who cared about raising their rank and standing. From what he’d seen through Moriko’s experiences, that seemed most likely to be second or third-generation new nobility, as the first-generation folk seemed to be people like that champion, Bellona.

The night waned on, and eventually, a well fed Moriko made her way back to the temple intending to fall asleep, only to find her room filled with boxes she had to figure out how to handle.

As for Kazue, well, he had the attention of her core at least, but her avatar was having a little ‘adventure’ for the night, and neither party had ventured into the library yet. Instead, they had set up in their respective rest areas, and Kazue was having a little ‘camp out’ with her friends.

For the shrine maidens, Kazue had asked them to have this little party with her after they had finished the plays. It had been early enough they probably could have pushed through the library if they had focused on just solving normal puzzles, but this was a chance for these friends to reconnect. Plus he suspected that she had some special plans for the library the next day.

As for the explorers, they’d had a slightly rough time. It seems his wife had been feeding the laganthros all the information about the tactics that the party had been using, and the rabbit folk had put together teams to stress and test the explorers, taking advantage of numbers and foreknowledge to make up for the lack in raw power.

Running through five different groups of coordinated combatants who had prepared themselves for exactly the party’s anticipated tactics had worn their patience thin. The harassing attacks and traps of the third floor’s boss room had then pushed them to their breaking point, and they stopped trying to conserve their resources, unleashing their strongest spells and straining flesh and bone to their limits to finish Betty and Umbrowl off as fast as they could. Which wasn’t as fast as they would have liked, as the pair had taken notes and did their best to play keep away while throwing out ranged attacks and triggering traps. Neither of the bosses were quite strong enough to solo any of the kitsune with great odds of success, but in this home environment and with the advantage of the redesigned traps they were able to push the kitsune to their limits before Kazue had called the fight in the visitor’s favor.

So now they were resting and healing up as they prepared to challenge the fourth floor’s library the next day.