Summon More Ziggurats? No, it's Familiars again. (ZnT Familiar Idea thread 14)

Well, it'd probably pretty hard to explain to your raised-in-modern-age child that her mother's actually a princess from a medieval fantasy world which his father was unwittingly pulled into by a random summoning spell.

(And they've gotta explain that when the kid's old enough to know how to keep a secret, after all)


If Louise died, wouldn't one of her sisters have priority over Henrietta in the Void Mage inheritance chain, though?

The only canon known information on family inheriting void magic is clone-Tabitha, that was *unable* to cast any magic until Joseph was killed. So the only two facts we get are blood-related and someone that can't cast magic normally.

Eclipse Phase characters are more than capable of taking their society and infrastructure with them. In fact, you could pack everything you need to build and repopulate an O'Neill cylinder in a large backpack--most of the room is needed for the minimal population.

Besides, half the fun of Eclipse Phase as a setting is finding out that nothing is as it seems, and that doesn't need their infrastructure.

I just listened to The Ballad of Mike Haggar, and at first I thought he would be one of the most epic and manly familiars EVER, considering that he has beat up and suplexed anyone in his path, including physical gods, he wouldn't stand for it. He knows that he is needed to keep order in his city (or entire country, if you count his ending in MvC3), and Haggar will do whatever it takes to get back to his homeland.

This? Made me think/hope for The Heroic Spirit from Twilight Princess, UndeadLink.

Welp, you got a skeleton instead... A skeleton who misses his ghost girlfriend. It's just the way things go.

Once again, I bring a snippet born from too much free time on my hands.

I present to you, Company of Zeroes.

----------------

BOOM

If there was any word Louise would use to describe her latest summoning attempt, that would be it. She watched the smoke clear with bated breath, and nearly fell down in shock when someone started shouting. From inside the cloud, no less.

"STOP BOMBING US, GODDAMNIT!"

Now that the smoke had cleared out a bit more, Louise could make out just what she'd summoned. Or, rather, who. Six whos, to be specific, all in matching tan uniforms, lying face-down on the ground and, for lack of a better word, cowering. One of them looked up, making direct eye-contact with her.

She was taken aback by just how young he looked.

"Uh, Sarge?" He said, looking over at a different man in the group. "I don't think that one was from Gerry."

"The fuck are you talkin' about, Williams?" was the reply.

"Look up, Sarge."

'Sarge', Louise guessed, followed that suggestion along with the rest of the men.

"Boys," Sarge said, his eyes wide. "I don't think we're in France anymore."

Louise was fairly sure she heard one of the men in the back go "Is, is that pink fuckin' hair?", but she definitely saw someone else elbow him in the gut.

She came to an important realization at this point.

She'd summoned a sextet of foreign soldiers.

"E-enough!" She stammered, gaining the attention of the men. "My name is Louise Francoise de la Valliere! You've been summoned to be my familiar!"

Louise paused for a moment, thinking the situation over. "Er, familiars!" She corrected.

"Goddamn frenchies." One of the men muttered underneath his breath.

Despite their discontent murmuring, the group had formed up into a line, looking around the clearing, the crowd (who were beginning to crack up at the absurdity of the situation), Professor Colbert (who looked as lost as Louise felt), and finally Louise herself. Sarge stepped forward.

"Look, little missy, I don't know what the hell you're talkin' about, but-" He began, pausing to look back at the men behind him. Whatever else he was about to say was apparently put on hold as he turned around and glared at one soldier in particular.

"Oh, Jesus Christ, Conrad, tie yer fuckin' laces!"

"Yessir." Conrad replied, immediately kneeling down and tending to his boots.

"Goddamn bunch of idiots." Sarge muttered, turning back to face Louise, steadfastedly ignoring that the snickering in the crowd had burst into full laughter. "Kid, look. Whatever the fuck this summon bullshit is, you still got us out of a jam, so thanks. But we've got a war to fight, and pissin' time away here's not gonna help anyone. Send us back."

"I'm afraid that's impossible, sir." Colbert responded, having apparently gotten a grasp of the situation.

"Whaddya mean, it's impossible?" One of the other men piped in.

"Exactly as I said, sir." Colbert replied apologetically. "Once a familiar has been summoned, there is no way to return them."

"Well, ain't that just fuckin' dandy?" Sarge growled.

While all that was going on, Louise was busy muttering the rest of the summoning ritual underneath her breath. These six men may not have been the dragon or gryphon or whatever she was hoping for, but they were a sight better than absolutely nothing. While the group's leader was distracted by arguing with Colbert, she marched straight up to him, leaned up on her tip-toes, and kissed him straight on the lips.

The stream of swearing that came from the man was not entirely unexpected, along with the familiar runes that engraved themselves upon his left hand. What was unexpected was that it happened to everyone else in his group.

"FUCK!" "Shit!" "Aaaaaargh!" "Goddamn it!" And various other expletives soared freely from their mouths.

Louise started to question just how wise this plan of hers was. Even more so when Sarge recovered, stormed up to her, and grabbed her by her shirt's collar.

"What the FUCK was that, kid?" He snarled.

"I-I-I bound you as my familiar!" Louise stammered back.

'Oh Founder please don't hit me.' She prayed.

"Sir." Colbert stated, very firmly. Sarge glared at him.

"What?" He spat.

"Let Miss Valliere go, if you please." Colbert replied, staring the man down.

After a moment's pause, the soldier reluctantly complied. Louise immediately took advantage of her new-found mobility to take a step away from the man who had just threatened her. Speaking of Sarge, he stalked over to Colbert and began arguing with him again.

While the rest of the strange soldier's group milled around aimlessly, one of their number walked over to Louise and looked at her appraisingly. Then, to her surprise, he offered her a hand, which she tentatively accepted. In response, she got a vigorous handshake.

"Welcome to Able Company, kid." He said. "Try not to fuck up."

----------------

Yes, this is a Company of Heroes crossover.

Hmm. While a fun read, when I saw Sarge I hoped against hope that Team Red from Red vs Blue had been summoned.

'Is, is that fucking pink hair' totally made me think of Grif.

I'm aware that there were plenty of signs to the contrary, and like I said, I enjoyed reading a solid snippet, but damn. The entirety of Team Red would have been hilarious.

I love that game, and the fact someone made a crossover of it brings me great joy.

Breaks SoD honestly. The first thing they should have done would be to start shooting all the students. Tunnel vision and the adrenalin rush that comes from combat/being targeted by mortars would have had them spraying as soon as they realised they were surrounded by people that weren't wearing army greens. I also find it extremely hard to believe that Sarge, a combat veteran of most likely Caratain (sp) and possibly Bastogne could have possibly missed Louise, a girl with vibrant pink hair, "sneaking" up on him.

If they were taking arty fire, I'd say the squad was Suppressed when they were summoned. >.> <.<

A while back I was thinking about the various things that mad Familiar of Zero such a good series for a crossover, when this rather weird idea occurred to me -- that is, how someone might decide to capitalize on it...



***

"Welcome to Edsil Entertainment, where our Extra-Dimensional Simulated Inserted Living Units can use the existence of parallel universess to bring you the most realistic gaming experience in the world!

"Each EDSIL Unit creates a false but biologically accurate copy of the player, and then connects it with the player so that all experiences are shared, with no risk to the player. This clone is then inserted into the Extra-Dimensional slipstream where our EDNA Units guide it to a designated drop-off point in a universe that matches the parameters of a campaign selected by you, the player!

"Each campaign is carefully selected from universes in our catalogue. Once one that meets our high standards of entertainment is discovered, we find and mark universes that are identical save for minor differences, such as a single person's hairstyle or the color of a pen. However, the immense complexity of the scenarios allows for the gaming experience to be different every time!

"Sign up for a lifetime membership today, and you will get a discount on the usage of our GIGA-EDSIL Units! These Genetically Integrated God-mode Apparatus EDSIL Units use advanced gene therapy to grant super-powers of your choice to your cloned avatar! Use it to play our GIGA exclusive platinum campaigns, or to spice up older campaigns!

"Anything's possible with the help of Edsil Entertainment!"

***

"Halkeginia?"

"That's only the Campaign's working title, sir. The name of the land it takes place in. We're working on a better one, but that's a low priority. For obvious reasons."

"Right... from the looks of it, there isn't much that sets this one apart from some of our other campaigns. It's a fairly generic fantasy world... It's not a carbon copy of any of our previous campaigns, but we only have so much budget."

"Yes... But it does have some things going for it. Ease of insertion, for one."

"How so?"

"Well, in a lot of our other campaigns, it's always taken a lot of work to figure out how to insert the player into the scenario in such a way that the NPCs don't question their presence so much as to disrupt the gaming experience. However, this scenario has a preset explanation for us to use. There are mages who use the 'void' element -- that's on page seven -- who summon human familiars. Normally we can't interfere with the summoning -- insertion would mean that both the player and the one being summoned would arrive simultaneously -- but there's one void mage who always has several misfires before successfully summoning. We merely need to insert the Player in coincident with one of the failed attempts so that it looks successful. And since the summoning can potentially summon from other universes in some cases, that could handily explain any discrepancies. It would allow the role-players to have their fun, too.

"The best part, though, is the Familiar Runes -- the ones described on page twelve. The mental effects act as a built in mechanism to help keep the player on a more linear path, making the scenario functionally less complex, thus requiring less play-testing on our part. Mister Hiraga was able to get preliminary testing out of the way in only twenty-six rounds. Overall, it's very cost-effective."

"Yes, I see. Very well, I'm approving it for beta-testing. Get a test group together for the normal Units, and do preliminary testing with the GIGA Units to see how much they throw off the scenario. We might need to make this another baseline only campaign, and you know how much the big suits hate that."

"Yes sir."

*******




I'm not really going anywhere with this. The idea that all of the protagonists of these crossovers are just enthusiastic role-players is an amusing one, though.

Well that explains the hell out of everything...

I'd like to mention it's not impossible to set up Void magic constructs and activates it centuries later by anyone, not even necessarily a Void mage.

Vol16 had Saito accidently activate a Void portal in his mansion's basement that led directly to the Tristain monarch's bedroom - much to Henrietta's surprise. It was hidden behind thick stone walls (which had a hidden, non-magical mechanism to open up) so detect magic won't find the inactive portal if anyone tries to search for magic in the bedroom. One of Tristain's monarchs at least a few hundred years ago set up this portal so he/she can meet up with lovers secretly.

So with a precedent in canon (Void portals hidden away), my Suspension of Disbelief won't be broken should someone pull out another 'World Gate' hidden away somewhere in a fic.

Not quite, just that Yosette (aka 'Tabi-clone' in SB) didn't know she's a mage and never tried casting magic before Julio told her to try (since she was isolated in a monastery on a island). We don't know she's unable to cast magic, even if it was probably the case.

Was thinking more of Bad Company actually.

Too bad you're not going anywhere with that Ark, I'd fund the hell out of it

Ever play Star Ocean 3? Kinda reminds me of that with the eternal sphere and all.

I too wish to throw money at you to continue writing. The fact that Saito was a test player makes me laugh, how did he survive twenty-six rounds living with Lousie?

Hm... Star Ocean... Forget Rena, I'm gonna make Claude game break Halkeginia

*gets to writing*

I'm wondering if Saito has Derf hidden in his basement... And when they eventually go and track their son down.. Two Derfs meet...

Ark that is amazing.

You know, if Brimir's Gate has been summoning things like a Soviet sub loaded with nukes several hundred(?) years before Saito's arrival in Halkeginia, imagine what else could have been drawn in from the future.

-------

"What is that thing?" Louise asked, staring at the giant mass covered in moss. It sort of looked like a statue of... well, something vaguely human, but it was just so massive and boxy, there couldn't have been a man. A deity of some sort, maybe? Heretical, but possible. Besides, what person would make a statue of a person sitting down in such an ungainly manner?

Saito scraped away part of the moss with his fingers and blinked.

The Gandalfr Runes began glowing on his left hand. The illumination drew Louise's dismissive eyes towards her familiar, blinking back surprise.

"A weapon?" she asked.

Saito didn't move as the runes continued to shine brightly. His face, once crooked in mystery, grew slack. His eyes just stared at the top of the moss-covered thing unnblinking the entire time.

"Saito?" Louise asked, slightly worried. "Saito!"

He still didn't answer her, which ground at Louise's pride and patience.

"Stupid d--"

Louise's mouth cut off as tears began flowing down the young man's face, and she panicked.

"Wh-what! I didn't--"

"Oh my God," Saito breathed, an awestruck look on his face.

Louise squelched her panic. "Huh?"

"Oh my God," he repeated, completely oblivious of his surroundings, save for the giant thing he was touching. "Oh my God oh my God omigodomigodohmigodgodgodgod!"

"What! What! What!" Frightened beyond her wits, she grabbed a handful of Saito's jacket and shook him violently. "What! what! What!"

"Ack! St-stop shaking m-me!"

"Then stop scaring me!"

"S-sorry!"

Slightly more composed, the two broke off. Louise was first to question. "Just what is it? That thing you were touching."

Saito's eyes turned glassy as a huge grin broke out on his face. "A dream come true..."

"Th-that doesn't tell me anything!" the girl snapped.

"Oh, yeah, sorry. Just..." Saito looked at the mass of moss and beamed. "Just that people seemed to have been getting extremely creative with weapons in my future." He grinned and cracked his knuckles. "It may not be powered by Protoculture or anything that wild, but someone did it. Someone really did it."

Louise's patience wore even thinner than usual. "Did. What?"

"Make a working Veritech prototype model." Saito's grin grew even wider, almost maniacal. "And I know how to make it transform and fly again."

Thats an interesting thought, though did you have to use the americanized version?

Goldenarms, that snip was pure GOLD!

Ok, I have reached my pun quota for the day.

I need reminding.
Veritech?

Yes. Yeeeeessssss. Fund it.

How often have giant mecha series been involved with ZnT? Not often. And this one is two-hundred-proof in quality. More!

Macross. Or Robotech, depending on continuity.