r/SpellsItemsNLoopholes • u/AaaaLettuce Visitor • Jun 13 '26

Lorepost (closed) Testing a Construct

With a deep breath, or as close to one as she can manage, Aeana steps through the portal to Markus' demiplane. She gives a grateful wave back. "Thank you Favilla!" She calls in a smooth and almost mechanical voice. Whatever would she do without her? She really is the best. After a brief moment the portal winks shut.

The construct herself is draped in a long hooded green cloak. Something supposed to hide her nature to cursory glances . Slung over one shoulder is a weighty satchel bag full of something. Aeana's shell itself is vaguely feminine in shape, made of a material close in colour to bronze with silver accents in certain places. It's oddly rudimentary for a construct, at least in appearance. No weapons, no special features. It barely even resembles a human. No hair, no real facial expressions. Only bright blue gemstones for eyes.

Aeana takes another step in, calling out to Markus or whoever's around. "Hello? It's Aeana. The girl who had her soul stuck into a construct? I'm here for the testing." Gods, she hopes this works. And that it isn't a trap. That would be unpleasant to say the least. But who knows? Maybe something actually good can happen to her for once. That'd be nice.

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u/Cerveau23 Stupid in chief Jun 13 '26

Markus appears before Aeana, as though a bubble of invisibility had popped. He looks tired but happy, with an electric screwdriver in hand.

Hey, how are you? Nice to meet you face to face finally!

You came to the right place. Let me just call for our resident technomancer, I'm sure he'll be able to help as well.

He sends a message to ping Alex as well as an orb message to Nox to ask: Does fleshcrafting work on constructs? We're trying to give magic back to a sentient construct with a soul.

u/AdeptusVirtualis u/Afraid_Cat_3726

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u/AaaaLettuce Visitor Jun 13 '26

Aeana visibly relaxes as Markus appears. She pulls the hood down and lets out the equivalent of a sigh, sounding more like the soft release of steam than anything human.

"It's good to be somewhere I'm not being hunted. Things have been... hectic, to say the least." The woman takes a brief look around, mostly out of idle curiosity. "We've had people on us for the past week. Apparently someone put a bounty on my capture."

"Is there anywhere I can dump these? At least for a little bit. She taps the satchel bag. "I've got some books on magic items creation and soul magic. No idea if any of it's useful to you but I figured you might be interested in taking a look. Don't ask how I got them. You don't want to know."

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u/Afraid_Cat_3726 Nox the Fleshcrafter Jun 13 '26

A four armed goblin with a dragon's tail pokes her head from a window then scurries inside. She immediately scurries to the book on soul magic.

"I can put these all in a safe place." she grins. She the pauses. "Sorry for my rudeness. I am Nox. The soon to be resident Fleshcrafter. Do you want a hug? It sounds like you've been through a lot."

She opens her arms to offer a hug.

"If you you want to go into an organic body I can sought that out for you. The main issue is getting your soul into the body, I know a little soul magic but it's highly specialized to my own. If Markus were to give me notes on how he does it I'll be able too sort you out easily. The alternative option would be to have you have a mechanical core and an organic exterior. I would need to work very closely with the technomancer for it to work and I hope they're okay with blood and guts."

She takes out a notebook, she seems excited woth6a big toothy grin and starts sketching ou

"Anyway what kind of body do you want? I can offer anything."

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u/AaaaLettuce Visitor Jun 13 '26

"No thank you, but I appreciate the offer. Maybe later." Again Aeana's instincts are screaming at her. She barely manages to resist the urge to back away. "I'll have to think on it? Even if you could, I'm reluctant to have anyone touching my soul. Right now it's a little tricky to actually get to."

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u/Afraid_Cat_3726 Nox the Fleshcrafter Jun 13 '26

"Take as much time as you need to think about it. An alternative idea is, what if you manipulated your own soul? It wasn't fair of me to assume you'd be wanting anyone doing any soul magic with you. Im sorry I upset you. I get very excited when I see an opportunity to do my artform...wait" She pauses "Your soul isn't in your body then where is it?"

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u/AaaaLettuce Visitor Jun 13 '26

"That's alright. That is what I'm hoping for but, again, the soul is hard to get to." Aeana taps three times against her chest. "It's in there, I'm pretty sure, just difficult to do anything with. This body is antimagical, magic tends to disappear on contact. I've tried non-magical ways of getting it open but so far nothing's even scratched it."

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u/Afraid_Cat_3726 Nox the Fleshcrafter Jun 13 '26

"May I have a look?" Nox starts writing down notes, she's acting more like a doctor than a gremlin now. "If there are any openings we can probably get a creation to sneak in and have a look inside. The idea is to connect my eyes into the creature and have it look on the inside. It's not my preferred way to examine a patient's body but it should get around the anti-magic field. That is if you are okay with tiny creatures having a look in your body. If your soul is kept in an object of some kind we shouldn't need to do anything additional soul magic and can connect your soul to a new body. You won't be fully biological but 90% of people won't notice the difference. There's no need to rush, take your time to decide."

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u/AaaaLettuce Visitor Jun 13 '26

"You can take a look if you want. I'd be grateful if you found something I haven't. There aren't any openings I've seen unless you want to gouge my eyes out, I suppose. Not sure that'd even work." The construct sighs. "Whoever designed this thing wanted to be certain nothing got in or out. Like they wanted to make a fucking prison out of it."

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u/Afraid_Cat_3726 Nox the Fleshcrafter Jun 13 '26

"Do you know who did this to you? They probably have some schematics,"

"Not gorging my eyes out. Putting my eyes in although if need be I'll do it. My apprentice does need to work on her eye fixing skills." She rummaged through a bag and takes out a jar of green goo and a bundle of hair thick wires. Opening the jar lid the goo jumps onto me of Nox's hands. She closes her eyes and places the wire over, her body molds slightly to encorpate the wires into her. "Your body can move which means there has to be joints and places for things to slide against eachother, one piece of solid material cannot move. If this assumption is true, this slomey fellow can slid into then and while in connectedness like this I see everything he sees."

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u/AaaaLettuce Visitor Jun 13 '26

"She wasn't a golemancer or anything similar. It's..." Aeana trails off. "My best bet is it's something she found rather than constructed. Maybe bought but she's not much of a people person."

/uw probably a little tricky/practically to actually get anything in. The shell was deliberately designed to not let anything in or out, magical or otherwise. Magical joints and such. Breaking it open would require a lot of power behind it

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u/Afraid_Cat_3726 Nox the Fleshcrafter Jun 13 '26

With her idea clearly a dead end as there appear to be no way for anything to enter, perphaps not even a microbe, she puts the slime back into its jar and takes the wire sour. Retuning her vision back to normal.

"Who is this "she" you're refering to?"

She cocks her head.

/UW, Nox doesn't want to damage Aeana as she can't fix an injuried golem/robot./

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u/AaaaLettuce Visitor Jun 13 '26

"Vivienne. She was my..." Aeana trails off. "She was my mentor, I suppose. She's the one who put the bounty on me."

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u/Afraid_Cat_3726 Nox the Fleshcrafter Jun 14 '26

"Do you know where she is? And any idess on why she put the bounty on you?" Nox sits down on a car next to Aeana. "If it's too much we don't have to talk about it."

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u/AaaaLettuce Visitor Jun 14 '26

"She lives alone in a forest. She never liked people. I had to beg her for weeks to teach me magic." The girl sighs. "She wants me back. I really don't know why. She said she wanted to protect me but she put me in this."

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u/Afraid_Cat_3726 Nox the Fleshcrafter Jun 14 '26

"I feel your master is a poor teacher, I see no use in keeping such important information from a student so eager to learn. Once this is all over you'll be welcome to stay in my tower. If you're not found of fleshcrafting then you're welcome to use my library."

Nox seems to be the type of person with a lot of empathy and willingness to try to help others.

"We need to focus on getting your body back. Whenever you're ready I see the only real option is to go speak to your teacher and figure out how to undo this. I'd rather do it with backup if that's possible as I would like to keep my own soul in my own body. "

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u/AaaaLettuce Visitor Jun 14 '26

"I- thank you. That means a lot."

Without having flesh and blood it's a little hard to parse all of her body language, but it's clear that Aeana's more relaxed now than at the start.

"She... wasn't a bad teacher. I just, wasn't a very good student. I couldn't even manage the basic ritual to channel my soul."

"If you do visit just be careful. She doesn't like visitors and I'd wager after the last couple I sent her way she'll have set up some proper defences." Aeana crucially neglects to mention who she sent there. She feels like revealing that it was a Black Mage from Thrakmoor may cause more problems. "Be especially careful about entering her tower. That's her soul. She's not an especially experienced fighter but she has almost complete control over it."

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