094: Babies
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Enchanting The Brute and The Rustbucket will take take a couple of months.  Pathfinder has two sets rules for turning an object into an Animated Object by way of the Craft Construct feat; one gives them a market price of a thousand gold pieces per hit die, plus a thousand gold pieces per Construction Point (CP: a measure of the special abilities of an animated object), plus the cost of the base object; the other set gives them a market price of the construct’s CR squared times five hundred GP.  The Rustbucket is Colossal, the Brute one size category above that… and Spheres of Power added stats for Animated Objects up to three steps larger than Colossal, so we’re covered there in terms of game statistics… but a Colossal Animated Object is CR 11, and a Colossal+ Animated Object is CR 12 (so 60,500 crowns to enchant The Rustbucket, 72,000 for The Brute if we go by CR).  The other calculation method is faster (a Colossal Animated Object has thirteen hit dice and generally six construction points by default, so just nineteen thousand crowns, while a Colossal+ has sixteen hit dice and seven construction points by default for twenty-three thousand crowns... and crafting time is based on the price)... and until they’re creatures, I can’t move them to my crafting plane, so I need to do this in real space in real time.  I end up going with the cheaper calculation method (my DM wasn’t cruel), partly because that lets me add a lot of construction points (Starship hulls are about as tough as Adamantine [6 CP], naturally fly [1 CP], and fly very quickly at that [1 CP per ten foot increment to speed]), mostly because it’s faster… I do use the “Improving Constructs” rules as well to give them more hit dice (it translates to a better attack bonus, better saves, and more hit points: Why wouldn’t I?  As a result, the Rustbucket will get twenty hit dice total, the Brute, twenty four) and Crafter’s Eyes (it allows me to use Scrying or its Greater big brother to see from the ships’ perspectives).  I can Fabricate the materials for free… but I still have to take the time to enchant them, and it specifically needs to be me doing it.  

So I take the couple of months to do it, of course: It’s the only way we’re going to be able to fly them from system to system until after we can get folks to stop hunting us when they’re getting Divine intelligence on our locations.  And as a bonus, after I’m done turning them into constructs… they’re creatures, which means I can cast spells on them: Regular buffs, Enable Function to give them feats (like Bonded Mind), and Attuned Mysticism to give them type-specific spell effects.  They’re also mostly metal, so I can even give them Regeneration thanks to Spheres of Power: The Nature sphere has Eternal Steel (which is natively permanent), which I can get via my flexible talents.  I keep them for over a day (I’m spending a lot of time working on the ships anyway, well away from anyone due to currently-justified paranoia about Drift travel) so that the talents involved don’t qualify as temporary, and I can even apply them before I’ve converted them over into creatures.  Energy Immunity will prevent Acid attacks from suppressing their regeneration, so as long as they aren’t subject to attacks that specifically work by causing rust, they should recover from simple damage eventually without intervention… and native construct immunities will stop most other effects available in Starfinder.  

I also up my game on my buffs for the ships: I add Winding Key (it grants an extra standard action each round), Mythic Haste (it grants an extra move action, in addition to the normal effects), Borrowed Time (an extra Swift or Immediate action each round… at the cost of some damage), which means they get two full rounds’ worth of actions in each round… and I do give them One Step Beyond as well.  I do the same for everyone else too, of course, including the Summoned crewmembers: Twice the actions is a good thing, as it's almost as good as having twice as many people most of the time… and when we're limited on how many people we can field (like in starship combat, where you can only fit so many people into active control consoles), having people who can do double the work is better.  Of course, as One Step Beyond beats True Seeing, I also need to go through and equip everyone with a specific Psionic Power (Touchsight) because Superior Invisibility doesn't stop touch from finding the so-warded creature or object.

So next time, those True Seeing sensors won't work: I learn and adapt, and have QUITE a library of tricks to pull from… not that anyone remembers us falling for the ambushes… time travel both rocks and sucks.

Other than a brief visit to Trillidiem to get Ocean back to Ta’s new normal (so Star can keep pumping out babies after this one’s done cooking), I spend my days working on the two ships I’m enchanting, inspecting the rest to make sure the summons are maintaining them well, building a nursery on a demiplane (and painting it anything other than pink), checking up on the babies’ progress, and ‘entertaining’ my companions (they’re all insatiable, and I’m getting there too…).  

When I’m finally done, everyone is quite heavy with child… so we hang out in space until the kids are born… and of course, almost everyone goes into labor at the same time.  But that’s okay: Summoned creatures with added skills can cover just fine: Everyone has their own team of doctors and nurses.

Patricia's baby comes out looking like a perfectly plain baby girl… until I apply the scanner, and see she has not an ounce of organic matter in her: She's a crystal mounted in the middle of a baby-shaped robot.  She takes to her mother's milk just fine, and has a healthy set of lungs, crying and acting like any human baby would.

The baby from Stephanie's little body unfolds into a suit of power armor (specifically a Spacer Carapace)… sized for a baby. It's fully functional, but… kind of pointless, except for maybe keeping a baby safe in no-atmosphere conditions… but we'll probably put Environmental Field Collars on them to handle that, as those don't need adjustment nearly as often (they are intended for pets, but they're essential specialized wearable force field generators that produce breathable air and will last over a week on a single charge).

The baby in Stephanie's big body is a nice, solid Explorer… a biomechanical starship like Stephanie, but I am absolutely going to refit this sucker, as the choices of equipment are rather random.  Seriously, why would anyone put melee weapons on a starship?  That's just begging for trouble.  I'm also going to buff it up and hand it over to Cowbird, mind: She could use some responsibility.

Ocean’s child does a repeat of what Ocean pulled off: A swarm of little ants that bring milk back to the main body, building up until ta reaches adult size… but this time, the little one starts out as a full fledged hermaphrodite… with a chest like Cowbird's and a rod that goes all the way up to Ta’s mouth. Overcompensating much?  At least everyone here can take that.

Star’s births of her daughter go well (and do strange things with the singular and plural in language); the small-scale body forms a hologram of a simple brunette with a tiny little E-cup chest… well tiny for here.  Her fighter frame is sensible: Twin coilguns on a turret, an array magic torpedo unit on the bow (presumably for dealing with mines), maximum sensors, shields, and thrusters… a Data Net, and a Holographic Mantle. The only slight nonsense in her build is that she has luxury quarters… but I don't blame her for that; I like being comfortable too.

Cowbird's daughter comes out as a baby with wings, built of the little hexagons like her presumed father, Ocean… but she acts like a normal baby, crying, and nursing like any other infant.  Linda's baby looks perfectly normal baby boy… but doesn't cry, instead simply gesturing with his tiny little arms, waving Linda over, and starts guzzling on her milk... adult thought in a baby body sounds horrible, honestly.  Euler's daughter forms a Hardlight body of an adult woman; I can still kind of see the baby at her core.

I'm a bit distracted when I'm reviewing all the kids… I'm afraid I don't really catch the names of the “instant adults” in the mix when the introduce themselves… or quite catch the babies' names when the mothers give them.  I have got just the worst indigestion… wait… I haven't eaten in months, how could I have… oh, right.

I disconnect from my body, shove two (scaled) ten inch diameter flesh orbs out of the way, and… okay, yes, there it is, amniotic fluid flooding out from between two legs.  Which means it's my turn.

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