Dweezil was right. Pretty much the entire clan turns up to gawk at the zeppelin. And there's a circle of unaffiliated just behind the glade's perimeter. Three layers deep and several layers tall. And I suspect it wasn't even moreso simply because everyone who didn't have anything vitally important to do turned up to look and there were simply no more elves to thicken it even further. Bridgit, Lily-Anne and Roxolane disembark by the ramp. I've decided not to give out the fact that Bridgit can teleport. Just in case. Hopefully, this precaution is unnecessary, but... just in case, indeed. Moon Unit is explaining to them the current state of events, while I'm examining the dead tree they want me to remove. It's a pretty sizable specimen, but not a particularly old one, as far as I can tell. Ash, as it so happens. Which is a little... ominous, given that as far as I remember, nordic legends posited Yggdrasil to be ash as well. I can already feel this is going to be... odd.
Practically speaking, ash is one of the hardest woods available in this part of the world. So I'm not surprised elves put off the removal of this husk for so long. It's a lot of effort... For anyone else. For me, hmm well... Let's see... the roots are going here, and here and here, and... hmmm... HMMM... KINETIC ADJUSTMENTS HERE, HERE AND HERE... STRIP THE EARTH... TRIM, MULCH, MIX... HMMM... QUALITY TIMBER, SLICE IT UP.
"...Oh. Oh wow." - someone says behind me.
"Yes?" - I ask, turning around. It's Moon Unit... and the rest of my harem.
"Is that... the tree that was here just now?" - Lily-Anne pitches in, gesturing towards the stack of planks next to me - "Good grief, Alyssa, how are you a lumbermill all of a sudden?"
"Remember what I told you? Tool of Gods." - Moon Unit teases her - "Honestly, why are you even surprised?"
Lily-Anne just snorts at her. Then asks me - "Well, that is done then? All that's left is to plant the sapling and wait for it to grow into a tree? I'm sure it will be fine in a few decades or so."
I shake the handful of seeds I was able to salvage from the ash. I'm... getting ideas. Honestly, this is... well. Hm. So there's actually enough nutrients, and those seeds aren't that hard to control... Hrrrm... And into the ground those seeds go. Now, let's see here. ACCELERATE. CONTROL. TRANSMUTE. SHAPE. DEFINABLE REPLICATION. LOW-LEVEL INTERFACE. FRAMEWORK. AESTHETICS. ERGONOMIC DESIGN. PROVISIONS FOR ADDONS. BASIC NETWORK PROTOCOL... SCALABILITY ACCEPTABLE. TESTING. DIMENSIONALLY STABLE. LEAKS NOT FOUND. PHOTOSYNTHESIS QUICK TESTING... PASSED. SUSTAINABILITY... PASSED. OBSERVATION PENDING. STRUCTURIZE UPDATES... VARIANCE... HM. NEURAL NETWORK SORTING/LEARNING, SEED THE BASIS...
Ok, this should do the trick, it would scan in the tree types and find commonalities before trying to plug in... Wait. Just what the fuck did I... Oh. Oh fiddlesticks. Well... residence get? Who is knocking on me. And why. Oh, hey there, Moon Unit... Why I'm a tree?... Good question... Oh, I was testing the network protocol... Oh. Fudge. I did it again. It being... uh... Scalable programmable treestruction?... So... well, shit. I'll have to teach Moon Unit's siblings how to work this thing, won't I? I mean, I kind of... took over the whole glade? Not that they actually know yet. But they will... Hence it's best if I tell them. Bother bother bother bother.
"Yes?" - I try to say. Then I realize I'm a tree currently. So I change back to my "normal", and repeat - "Yes? Sorry, I got distracted."
"Distracted enough to turn into a tree?" - Moon Unit quips sardonically - "...Well. Let's go explore the, uh... what do we even call this? Living tree? Treehome? Unbelievable wonder of forest flavor?"
So... I have taken the idea of a treehouse and run with it... way the hell away. What we have is... superficially, huge ash. With rooms being grown into the bulk of the trunk. The bottom seems to be a fairly sizable salon, the middle level seems to be a number of small rooms encircling a bigger central one, and the top level is a big room and several smaller ones, arranged in a way that implies a luxury apartment to me. The big room is the bedroom, two bathrooms, one big for soaking, one small for quick necessities, a kitchen and... hm. This is sort of study, I guess? The stack of planks from behind me is gone, and I think it went into making furniture for this domicile. Along with a bunch of stuff I teleported from the storerooms in Parsee and Grand Forge, apparently.
Roxolane tugs my arm lightly. "I think you might have, um... befuddled the people around." - she proffers softly. This revelation prompts everyone to take a look around. Moon Unit facepalms slowly at the sight of the whole damn clan staring at the newly grown tree in openmouthed wonder. Mostly. The rest seem to stare at me with expressions I have no choice but to consider reverent. Bother bother bother bother. Totally didn't intend this, but, whatever...
___
I do my best NOT to react to the rather palpable reverence I'm being bombarded with. I'm not even exaggerating, here, the "holy shit, we just saw something incredible and probably sacred" is powerful enough combined to actually feel as a magical influence. Hopefully it will ease down to something less glaring over time... Or at the very least ramp itself into something reminiscent of dwarven reverence. Because they're doing this thing too, but... Hm. Maybe I'm just used to them?... Oh well. Fine. It's not like it's malicious or problematic, just... there, existing within my sphere of awareness. I guess I'll just get used to it.
Anyway. Showing my wives around the newly acquired house. Tree. Treehouse. Hometree. Bleh. Need to figure out the name for it, really. The bottom level is rather obviously a hall. Suitable for welcoming in parties. Because of course I made that thing with dimensional fuckery going on. Spatial compression at a nice 2.3 factor and steady. And an innate property of the tree itself. If something happens, it's going to peter out at about the same rate as the tree itself does. So less "suddenly squish" and more of "will get a little bit smaller each day once it's dead". Center features a column with some sort of vine forming the spiral stairs upwards. Bioluminescent, too, so no missing the stairway. Lights up the whole hall, actually. I left it empty for now. The next level is... hm.
"I think those are guest rooms." - I venture - "Or, hm... visitor rooms? Something like this. Anyway, they're all the same." We have just poked through the closest one. The area around the stairs is set up like a parlor. Plenty of simple poufs and little tables, doors studding the walls, each of them leading into a room. All of them so far look identical, with bed, light source, storage and botanical analog of a chamberpot. Which is an inspired piece of magical munchkinry as it takes pretty much all kind of refuse and transforms it into tree-suitable nutrients. The leftovers that aren't useful (mainly metals and some minerals) are being secreted as globules in a sort of "technical crawlspace" within the central column. Not really accessible to random joe. There is nothing more to see here, so up we go.
"I take it this level is our family space." - Lily-Anne sums up wryly for all of them, as they take in the luxurious environs. For our personal space, I have put in a lot more effort. Good big bed, basin big enough for all of us to stretch in and soak, veritable workshop and library and alchemy lab all clumped together into a "work area" of sorts. I'm just going to call it study. Kitchen. I wonder... oh. Ooh, this is nifty. Open flame is a bad idea within the tree for obvious reasons, so... The solution I went with was in equal measures obvious to me and unadulterated black magic to anyone else. Simply put, the stove is a selection of slices of superdense wood forming heating elements. Each of them has a spiral of nichrome within. Even better, since I did bother including metal separation and refining into the design, the coils are self-replenishing. No burnouts. Electricity plus nichrome equals electric stove.
"So convenient." - Bridgit approves, apparently. I was somewhat worried that she'd be upset I'm hijacking her maidly duties again by including surreptitious floor cleaning into the design, but apparently it's fine. Showing off the laundry section actually gives me a prompt to try and install something similar at all domiciles. Not a problem, I did already make an analog of washing machine for the airship, not that there was a reason to do laundry mid-flight yet.
While I did prepare a lot, there is still a bunch of things to unpack and prepare, and Bridgit takes charge on that. And... I've been exiled to go meet the visitors. Pointing out that if actual princess Lily-Anne is fine with doing those chores, than I definitely am good for it too was in vain... At least, Moon Unit is with me. But this is getting a little grating, and I make a mental note to do a lot of molestation tonight.
___
I have a feeling Dweezil is going to bruise his forehead with all the facepalming. And Ahmet might have dislocated his jaw. Maybe. Oh, nevermind, he can close his mouth, he just feels like keeping it open a whole lot. Oh, and here is the last of Zappa siblings. Diva, unlike the men of the clan, is not struck a case of speechlessness. Rather, she is talking mile a minute right now. It's funny how Moon Unit is the youngest, because Diva sports a serious case of babyface and probably could very well pass for Moon Unit's daughter, if she wanted to.
"...All interesting theories, but none of them are actually close to what I did." - I finally weigh in - "Grand spells have their place, but to handle a lot of detail with a single big spell, it has to be ridiculously complicated. So no, not one spell but rather an immense assortment of basics and cantrips."
"That is all well and good, but!" - Dweezil interrupts in exasperation - "What did just happen?"
"Well... You had a lot of dry ashwood there." - I begin - "I pulled it out, cut it into planks and dowels to put the most of it to good use, then mulched the rest and stuffed it back into the ground as fertilizer. I've been able to salvage a couple of viable seeds as well, so I planted them back and pushed their growth in desired direction. Treestructure is stable, will maintain itself and should last for a good long while. Then I used the planks and dowels to construct some basic furniture, pulled the rest of the needed materials from my warehouses in Parsee and in the estate and that's pretty much it. There is a provision for the treestructure to spread to other trees and convert them to domiciles as well, but they won't be as spacious or well-planned as this one. I'll leave that one up to you, here's the manual on the controls."
Dweezil looks at the stack of paper as if it was a live cobra. Ahmet just looks flabbergasted and pained. Diva, on the other hand, gleefully snatches the papers and immediately starts to read them.
"Just... one question." - Dweezil finally forces out - "Does this, uh... connection work only within our glade?"
I shake head - "Nah, it... wait, actually, let me check... Ah, good, the basic network had already propagated itself through the Evergreens. Ostensibly speaking, you can command any tree to convert itself to domicile or some kind of utility structure right now. I've put in some prefabs, so you can just convert trees to storages, workshops, kitchens or dormitories at a command. And back to regular tree, of course. There are subsections here to each archetype, for example storage can be for granulars like grain or sand, for liquids like water, stackables like timber or shingles or singulars like tools or glassware. Keep in mind that each tree has a capacity you can't really exceed, but you can grow younger trees quickly if you supply mulch or other fertilizer. Older trees probably won't grow much even if you try, but they should have a pretty good capacity as it is."
I think this is too much for them. Men rather synchronously cover their faces with palms and drop down onto the chairs, groaning. Diva does not even notice, she is far too busy scanning through the network protocol manual and muttering excitedly under her nose. Then she... tries something. Oh. Well... yes, that's not a bad idea, really. I was worried for a moment she'll try to alter the tree we're currently on top of, but she seems to understand it might be a foolhardy idea, so her target is lone beech over yonder. It's still growing, presumably, because there is no walkway connecting it to the perimeter. There WAS none, at least. At Diva's issued commands, beech converts into a... Oh. Welp, I guess I just figured out who the mad scientist in this family is. The bottom level is alchemical laboratory, or at least the setup for one. I think I'll do her a little favor, here... And added to prefabs and current construction. Fume hoods are an important thing. The top level is pretty spartan apartment. She'd have to supply her own furniture there, there was only enough tree resources for the counters downstairs. All in all, pretty respectable first effort.
"Did it work!? It did!" - she yelps and runs out of the room immediately. I can see her entering the newly made place and poke around. Her brothers, in the meanwhile, seem to be still struggling.
"Can I please just hand all of this over to Diva?" - Dweezil pleads with me for some reason. Moon Unit pats his head.
"Uh... yes?" - I hazard a guess - "I mean, if she wants to, than sure, she can be your dedicated tree shaper. Just make sure she takes an apprentice or two and keep the manuals somewhere safe. Here, have a few copies."
"I'm moving there!" - suddenly, a wild Diva appears in the window - "I'm moving to my new place!"
Dweezil just sighs. "Fine, fine." - he mutters - "Come on in for now, I'll get some people together to move your stuff after the dinner."
He pauses, waves his hand, then forges on - "Diva, do you want to take over this completely?"
"This? What do you mean, this?" - she blinks at him.
"You seem to be well suited to using this... tree network, given you've made someplace you actually want to move in to on the first try, no?" - Dweezil proffers reasonably - "So. Do you want to be clan's official Tree Shaper? We obviously want to shape a whole lot within our glades. We also might be selling the expertise to other clans later on a case by case basis. Figure out some impressive-looking rituals to go with it, let's have people think each tree has to be handled individually. Anyone finding out we can just alter any tree at will is going to cause a lot of panic and rash decisions, best keep that one under wraps."
I offer another book to Diva to go along with his suggestion. They all look at it. It's one of the things I have prepared in anticipation of future opportunities. The title is "Timber Industry and You: 101 Spell For Your Wood".
"A couple spells and alchemical know-hows I have put together for production purposes." - I explain - "You should be able to use this and design a couple trees to be dedicated woodwork shops to churn out furniture to specification. And some impressive-looking spells for planning out the place. Just visual illusions and telekinetics when you dig into the mathemagics of it, but looks impressive and sufficiently ritual. I think that would work out well with your ruse."
"Out of curiosity..." - Ahmet begins slowly - "Clan Zappa not being prosperous beyond imagination was never an option ever since Moon Unit caught your eye, was it?"
"Well... yes?" - I mean, what else did he expect? Of course I'd take care to make sure my extended family is wealthy and influential.
101 Spell For Your Wood
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now, 69 likes like it should be
From the purveyor of "i accidentally cat clergy" comes the newest line of shoggoth bullsh*t "i accidentally all your trees are belong to us" and it's likely future evolution "i accidentally world tree"
Oh, and let`s not forget the "I accidentally a confectionery" that started the ball. Oh, and "I accidentally dwarves" also happened, come to think of it. ^_^
@Cytotoxin Tl:DR „i accidentally“
@lolopatzocktHD If Alyssa ever write a biography that could literally be the title.. "I accidentally"
@Cytotoxin Wasn't the dwarf thing more or less on purpose? Even if the exact scale currently exceeds the initial expectations.
@Blanklines It was "whoops, I accidentally, so might as well push it on harder".
@Cytotoxin In the future it would also be possible for Alysa to cause incidents like "I accidentally created a dyad", "I accidentally created a new race of demihumans", "I accidentally created a new race of monster girls", "I accidentally lolified a crippled patient, but luckily she liked it" ?
@Gin0001 Probably not.
1) Dryads sort of exist already, but are horribly bad news and Inquisition tends to come down very hard on a forest that develops those. Thankfully, they don`t just happen spontaneously, someone has to kickstart the process. For reference, being caught doing that is automatic death sentence regardless of social status. Inquisition will not even try to arrest the culprit in that case, they`ll just shank`em on the spot.
If you want to get technical, dryads and treants are all assorted subtypes of golems. Dryads are considered to be particularly dangerous and inhumane to create because the usual way to make them happen is to kill a bunch of animals, harvest brains and use them as the magical loci. So what you get is vaguely human-shaped bodies that are driven by animalistic instincts. Ones based off herbivorous critters are less dangerous, but can and will trample people and buildings. Ones based off predators are a considerable danger to anything alive in the forest, because they have no digestion and therefore can not actually get to the "I am feeling full" conditions. Which, in turn, means that they`re relentless murder machines prowling around 24/7 until someone either incinerates/rots/shatters the wood they`re made from or until they`re hit with specific disruption magic. It is theoretically possible to harvest brains from sentients to make dryads, and doing so is a high crime for many good reasons.
2) Demihumans... Ostensibly speaking, orks and imps qualify. Elves sorta do, but not entirely. Dwarves sorta don`t. Antropomorphism is not gonna happen. In the current society, the closest one gets is chimerae, and those don`t really work for sentient races. The more advanced the brains of merging creatures are, the lower the chances that resulting chimera will not fall apart, go insane on the spot or tear itself up trying to move. Insects chimerise easily. Fish requires some diligence. Birds and mammals might, but it takes a lot of tries and effort to achieve a stable chimera that can survive for long enough to call it lifetime and possibly procreate. Achieving viable breeding pair is very hard. Any sentient races? For one, trying to chimerise someone without their explicit consent is a crime on par with rape and murder. For two, their chances to survive the process are somewhere in the thousandth fractions of a percent. Their chances of living on for more then a month after are about four orders of magnitude less.
To be entirely correct, though, there is a society that practices animism and totemism, and they have sort of kind of "become an animal-like" techniques, but they live in this world`s version of New World, so they`re gonna start appearing maybe in book 2 at the soonest.
3) No on monster girls. Just... no. One-off cases are one thing, creating a race is quite another.
4) Reversing age is very advanced kind of magic and Alyssa will get there after a while, but it will NOT be soon nor will it be anywhere near "I accidentally". It`s a discipline out of advanced biomancy, and essentially revolves around magical telomere manipulation. So, well... holy grail of genetics, more or less. It will not be easy to achieve.
@Cytotoxin ...from what you said, dryads and treants seem to me more like a kind of chimera made by combining animals and vegetables.
What is a magical loci? I'm sorry if this was explained before, but I ended up skipping some chapters when I got curious after I saw the title of this chapter.
Would the dryad still be so uncontrollable and dangerous if it used a homunculus brain?
You mean druids and shamans with partial animal morph techniques are the closest thing to beastkin in this world, right?
So if it were just a single rational monster girl Alyssa could accidentally do it, right?
Are there mandrakes in this world? If yes are they a herb or a kind of monster?
@Cytotoxin And how about incidents like "I accidentally made a minigirl instance, my wives saw it, found it cute, nicknamed her Minyssa and are spoiling her almost like a mascot" and "My Minyssa accidentally inspired new fetishes in one of my wives, now she wants to try things like unbirthing and to make matters worse the other wives were also curious after hearing it" ?
@Gin0001 Magical locus is something that had been subjected to specific enchantments to be the "brains" and power source of some magical construct, more or less. Gems are commonly used as simple loci, when enchantment is just a basic set of instructions, like "when receive magical force input, conjure x amount of poison over the blade".
For constructs that are expected to do some limited reasoning of their own, an animal is usually used in some way. It is not impossible to avoid this entirely and just figure out a learning system to etch on gems and metals, but this is pretty advanced mojo, and not everyone is born Ada Lovelace.
Homunculi are not suitable for mergers with anything plant-like, because they are originally mushrooms. Metaphysical connections like these are annoyingly hard to prevent. Insofar, all attempts at achieving this resulted in potential treant just taking roots and becoming a mushroom-studded log.
Totemism is complicated. Let`s just say that practitioners aren`t really druids, but rather more of an uneasy cross between shaman and haruspex. As in, less "meditate on the concept of rabbit, young one, if you wish to become more spry" and more "drink this cup of fresh rabbit blood and wear those severed ears on your head, but beware, for the beast is flighty and might abandon you unawares". The more complicated the binding, the longer the totem lasts, but the usual methods of improving longevity all revolve around increasing the number of sacrifices, in one way or another. Those people also practice splanchnomancy, so they are NOT really the folks you want at your teaparty.
Mandrakes exist, but... Well, they`re just plants. Medicinal plants. There IS a myth that mandrakes can scream or cry when you prepare them, but it is rooted in the fact that mandrake is actually hallucinogenic, and breathing in enough juice fume when you prepare them in bulk can cause aural hallucinations easily. Therefore, among bharatans, where mandrake is primarily found in the world, exists a tradition that one may not harvest more of mandrake than needed to treat the issue at hand.
Miniinstances were already tried and considered cute.
f*ck no on anything regarding unbirth. Just... no. Also kindly please don`t mention that particular kink anymore to me. Eeeeugh.
@Cytotoxin I really have to catch up on my reading to see the girls' reaction to the doll-sized miniinstance.
Have any of the girls ever tried to play dress up with miniinstance or at least thought about it?
I'm sorry for this. I think my level of hentai contamination must have gone up, if I came to think that people who like tentacles wouldn't find this kink extreme and disturbing. After all, there are also several fetishes that I myself find unpleasant and crazy.
@Gin0001 Generally speaking, I (and thus by extension Alyssa) would find anything to do with pregnancy to be less then enticing to mull over. There are reasons for this, and that`s all I`m saying on the matter.
@Cytotoxin ..."pregnancy"? The kind of unbirth you and I are referring to are different, right?
After all, what I'm referring to is pretty much the same as a custom deep tentacle insert and isn't even big enough to make the practitioner look like a pregnant woman.
@Gin0001 Does the word "birth" not ring any bells?...
Look. I really do NOT want to discuss this. I do not want to think on the topic too deeply, either. If it has "birth" in it, I really really really do not want to think too much on it. Please don`t make me explain. No one would be happy for it. Just leave this topic be and walk away if you know what`s good for you.
@Cytotoxin Okay. Sorry.
@Cytotoxin When was the mini form I might remember young form that they cuddled but that could have been a comment and only other I think of is the eye spider stuff and don’t remember her show them to the other then the maid when first made one
@Season The scene on the roof where she shows off how she can be more than one instance.
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/117113-isekaid-shoggoth/chapter/129695/