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--- sessions:worldbuilding:2025-05-24 [2025/09/13 18:34] – shyriath
+++ sessions:worldbuilding:2025-05-24 [2026/01/17 18:32] (current) – shyriath
@@ Line 118: / Line 118: @@
 "Thank you," she said, as the blood stopped flowing; there was still some unsteadiness in her voice, but it was firmer than before. "The last time I had this much trouble with a subject was that creature I tried bringing in from outside on this world, but it relied more on agility than biting."}}
+{{wst>pinkgothic|"Do you need a break?" Einriss asked. It would mean leaving Shyriath in a highly uncomfortable posture, but given that he had brought that upon himself, Einriss's already highly selective empathy hardly even took note. "We do need you for the muscle enhancement, if you spend energy you don't have..." he trailed off.}}
+{{wst>shyriath|Puugwol stopped leaning on the table and took a few deep breaths. Perhaps she //should//- ah, but no, this might actually be better.
+"I will need very badly to eat once we are done," she said thoughtfully, "but some slight deficit of energy may prove helpful later. The first of the //bilaak-tesh// is ready for consumption, so I shall be seeking counsel from my gods." She turned back toward the cage, and carefully felt Shyriath's arm, his futile struggling against the ropes notwithstanding. "Some shamans say that mild exhaustion makes the process more efficacious."}}
+{{wst>pinkgothic|Einriss visibly took a moment to process the proffered rationale, but ultimately offered no commentary on it. Instead, he nodded, and turned his attention toward their captive again, awkwardly tied to the bars as he was. The posture looked ridiculous, but the arm was well-exposed.
+From what Einriss imagined the process would be like on the receiving end, it would simply tickle intensely as the flesh restructured itself. Of course, Shyriath wouldn't be able to scratch that itch, but presumably it would fade quickly. Either way, he would find out in the one way he trusted: By sensing the process as it happened. It wasn't as though Shyriath was likely to give an honest answer about what the sensation was like, if indeed he wanted to answer at all.
+//Then let's do this// didn't need saying, and so he didn't say it. Instead, he walked back to Shyriath and gave his neck a soft pat that was, presumably, meant to be at least vaguely reassuring.}}
+{{wst>shyriath|Shyriath did not appear to be reassured at all. In fact, his writhing increased as he felt his arm being reshaped, the muscle fibers increasing in thickeness or converting from one type to another; he whined pitifully. "This will not help you in the end," he whispered desperately. "You cannot trust the Oracle with your work, she will bring only ruin-"
+"Hush," Puugwol interrupted. "I am trying to concentrate." She was taking long, slow breaths. While the changes being made were not in themselves intense, she was making the change in a far more smooth and controlled way than she usually did, so that Einriss' observations at the biochemical level would be easier; the control it required was slightly taxing.}}
+{{wst>pinkgothic|Einriss had settled two fingers against the back of Shyriath's hand, partly pressing down on a knuckle as his muscles underwent the reshaping. His own concentration didn't mind the talking - the analysis used very different parts of his mind than the verbal exchange, which he was ignoring and likely would continue to ignore until his name was spoken or an interesting keyword made it past his filters.
+The changes formed a confusing flurry of chemical signals, but it was confusing in the same way the shape of a fractal was confusing - there was a self-similarity to the instructions, and Einriss had spent a lifetime learning to untangle the information and retaining it as a minimal biochemical information package. Indeed, he was already on the next step: Where the necessary proteins would come from during crucial development phases before the answer became 'food'.
+The information, he reckoned, should generalise to almost any hexapod, so they could experiment on one of the more fast-lived ones to see if they could affect their musculature from birth that way.
+Verbally, he finally said: "Hmm, I think I see a few ways this kind of growth can be applied early in an organism's life. It's less clear if it will work on Chosen, but the easiest trade-off to accept would be to allow a higher resting metabolic rate, and an earlier emergence from eggs, which we should be able to support. That said, since we'll have similar trade-offs to make in future, we may want to keep that one as a last resort. Let's explore this further, shall we?"}}
+{{wst>shyriath|Puugwol nodded, but paused her work to rest for a moment and to examine Shyriath's arm. "But before we proceed, we may want to get more rope," she suggested. "His arm is getting thicker, and the rope will affect his circulation if it is not loosened during the process - but I would rather not do so without much more of it to prevent him from causing further mischief."}}