Taylor and the Twisted Game Part 19 (Patreon)

Amy froze for a second when she finished her latest modification to the 'standard' symbiote shirt and noticed Skitter's grin. "Why do you look like a cat that just caught the canary?"

"Because one of my minions just killed the leader of a group of ogres in Alterac and he dropped a crown that makes you immune to mind control and possession," Taylor replied smugly.

"Seriously?" Amy sputtered. "You just happened to be clearing random monsters and you found something that blocks mind control?"

Taylor grinned at her friend's expression. "Nah, there's nothing random about it. I was looking up ogres because of Dire Maul and I ran across the leader's name as part of a quest. I was curious if the quest item actually worked so I sent a puppet to Undercity to start the quest chain so I could make sure it dropped."

"And it works?" Amy asked, surprised that the company had fleshed things out with the expansion.

"The item description says it makes you immune to mind control, I haven't tested it yet," Taylor replied as she opened a void portal to collect her puppet.

Amy watched one of Skitter's puppets walk through carrying a gleaming multicolored crown that was fashioned entirely of polished gemstones. "It's certainly noticeable. How are you going to test it?"

Taylor let the portal close then had her puppet put the crown on and wiggle its fingers. "Huh, I was expecting more of a reaction or less of one."

"Let me guess, it doesn't work?" Amy asked, disappointed.

Taylor read the description of the icon on her puppet's display. "My puppet has an icon for a mental shield that should block mind control, I'm not sure why it's not working."

"You could always try putting it on and I'll cast fear on you," Amy suggested.

"No thanks," Taylor replied and cast her Riding Hood spell on the puppet, turning her into a girl. "Go ahead and cast your fear spell."

Amy glanced around the tailoring workshop to make sure there wasn't anything exceptionally breakable around then cast her fear spell on the girl, a little surprised when the girl didn't even twitch from her spell. "Okay, it's apparently doing something."

Taylor wiggled the girl's fingers and had her stick out her tongue at Amy. "At least we know it works against fear."

Amy cast the mind control spell Skitter had taught her on the puppet and blinked when it failed completely. "Mind control doesn't work either, which leaves the question of how you're controlling your minions."

"No idea," Taylor admitted, curious how her ability worked but glad that she'd be able to include the protection from mind control in her puppet's gear.

Shaper set the symbiote she'd been working on crafting on the table then jumped down and walked over. "I want to test something." She reached out and touched Skitter's leg with her right hand and the minion's leg with her left hand. "Wiggle the girl's fingers."

"Sure." Skitter wiggled the girl's fingers.

"I think I just figured out what the weird bits in her brain are for," Shaper mused.

"Oh?" Amy asked.

"It's basically a telepathic receptor which explains why her link works despite the crown, it's not actually mind control, it's just sending and receiving information like controlling a robot," Shaper explained.

Amy stared at Shaper. "Isn't telepathy supposed to be impossible?"

Shaper shook her head. "It's not impossible, it's just extremely resource intensive or at least it should be."

Amy glanced at Taylor. "Does that mean she can read minds?"

"I'm pretty sure I would have noticed," Taylor offered, fairly sure hearing the shards talking didn't count though the strange communication with the void creatures might.

"No clue," Shaper admitted. "Her telepathy doesn't have a biological component or at least I haven't found anything."

"How many unique abilities do you have?" Amy asked, curious if it was something Taylor could share.

Taylor opened her character sheet and checked to make sure nothing had changed. "Just the pattern for my puppets and the void portals, unless you include my multitasking ability and the weird bit with being able to control my pets and mind control victims without losing control of my body but I can't teach those and they don't show up on my list of abilities or anything."

"You should probably avoid mentioning the mind control bit to the rest of the heroes," Amy warned her.

"I wasn't planning on it," Taylor replied as the girl changed back into a puppet. "Speaking of unique talents and puppets, can I talk you into upgrading a cloak symbiote with immunity to the various magic types so I can use it for cloth?"

Amy glanced at one of the child sized puppets that was creating puppets out of mageweave then focused on Taylor. "I reserve the right to say I told you so if they escape your control and flood the world with magic resistant puppets."

"Is that a yes?" Taylor asked hopefully as she pulled the Gilded Seaweave fabric Wings had left for her out of her bag.

"Science!" Shaper squealed enthusiastically as she skipped over to the table and jumped up so she could sit on the edge.

"Sure, I'm curious what you'll come up with and it would certainly make it easier for you to farm dungeons," Amy replied as she pulled her half finished shield symbiote out of her inventory and a fish that was still flopping around and got to work finishing the shield symbiote. "Have you considered modifying the recipe for spellthread to upgrade the thread you use for your minions?"

Taylor shook her head, trying not to feel uneasy as the fish sort of melted into the shield. "I haven't had a chance to experiment, the pattern I have requires a frozen orb, four eternal life crystals and iceweb spider silk, none of which I have."

"In other words, you'd need to start farming the Northrend dungeons," Amy mused as she worked on moving the bones in the fish to the outside. "This would be easier if I'd caught a couple giant crabs."

"Probably," Taylor agreed as she walked over to one of the workstations, having noticed Tats and Noelle heading their way thanks to one of her puppets. "At least we managed to get a better shadowform from Magister Kalendris, we'll have to come back with Noelle so we can pick up Prince Tortheldrin's spells. I want his arcane blast and summoning spells."

"That's because you're greedy," Amy replied with a grin, feeling the same way about the summoning spell that didn't require extra people and a ritual.

"Probably," Taylor admitted as she started turning the extremely durable cloth into a cloak, mostly by clamping a clasp to it and bunching the fabric up, "but having a spell that tosses people away from me and deals a decent amount of damage should be useful."

"Speaking of broken spells, have you considered including a magical power source so your puppets have more magic when they transform?" Amy asked, curious what she'd already tried.

"Like the golems?" Taylor asked, thinking about the bits and pieces of the arcane golems they'd found in Karazhan.

"Basically, it might give them a magical attack or a decent sized mana pool," Amy suggested as Noelle walked in with Tats following her. "Any luck with the flight trainer?"

"Yeah, there isn't a level requirement on the mount skills, just a requirement for them teaching you," Noelle replied then cast the training spell twice, teaching Skitter and Amy all of the riding skills. "That should let you use a flying mount anywhere in the game, at least in theory."

"Thanks," Taylor assured her as she used her transmogrification ability and changed the basic cloak she'd just finished creating into a symbiote, unlocking the basic cloak she'd just finished making in the process. "Are you done with the shield?" she asked as she held the cloak out towards Amy.

"Close enough," Amy replied as she swapped the cloak for the shield, knowing that it wouldn't matter what it looked like as long as it was close.

Taylor pulled the epic shield that Wings had left for her out of her inventory and transmogrified it to match the shield shaped symbiote, causing the original shield symbiote to vanish. "Nice, it didn't lose any stats or durability." She handed the shield to Noelle. "Can you copy this a couple of times?"

"Sure," Noelle replied as she started duplicating the symbiote, letting the copies drop to the floor.

Lisa reached down and picked up one of the shields and looked at its stats. "Do you even know the definition of overkill?"

"Hitting something hard enough that it splatters and causes an excessive amount of collateral damage when you could have destroyed it without the collateral damage," Taylor replied with a grin.

"Close enough," Lisa admitted. "There's probably a cap on the amount of armor you can have, 6,000 points of armor per piece seems like something that might flag a mod."

Amy grinned as she handed the finished symbiote to Lisa. "That's why we're testing things, see if you can boost the armor value before Skitter turns it back into cloth."

Taylor frowned when she considered the problems of working with something that durable. "Or you could hand it to Noelle and have her make a copy before we experiment on the cloak crafted from a limited resource that we don't have the gear to farm right now," she suggested.

"Probably a good idea," Lisa admitted as she handed Noelle the cloak.

Noelle stuck the shield in her inventory then copied the cloak twice, sticking the last copy in her inventory so she could duplicate it again if it proved useful. She handed the original cloak back to Lisa. "Go for it."

Lisa grinned as she moved the armor rating from the shield to the cloak, causing the shield to disintegrate and vanish. She handed Skitter the modified cloak. "Have fun."

Taylor transmogrified the symbiote back into a cloak then removed the clasps and tossed the fabric into her salvage box and hit the button, mildly surprised when she actually got a bolt of reinforced gilded seaweave that was immune to the various types of magic. "Between the magic immunity and the extra armor we're sticking on their gear, my puppets should be able to farm most of the Northrend dungeons without any trouble which means we'll have more resources for crafting."

"How are you going to account for needing stuns and silences?" Lisa asked.

Taylor smiled when one of the groups of puppets she had in Kara killed one of the animal bosses and picked up a pair of footwraps with bonus shadow damage. "You generally only need interrupts to stop bosses from blasting you with spells, they're not going to care. Besides, I can turn them into girls and teach them all of the various spells and tricks they'll need to be proper raiders of doom."

Lisa made a mental note to either give up crime or leave the area if they made it back to the Bay and Skitter kept her powers, on the off chance that the game company wasn't full of shit. "At least we know who to blame if a GM ever shows up."

"If a GM shows up, he'll probably be just as unhappy about getting stuck here as we are," Noelle pointed out as she handed Lisa the other cloak, not particularly worried about someone showing up to complain about them 'cheating'.

"Fair point," Lisa admitted as she picked up another shield. "What else did you need moved?" she asked as she upgraded the other cloak with the shield's armor rating.

Taylor gestured towards the crown on her puppet's head. "The crown prevents mind control."

Lisa nearly gave herself whiplash when she reflexively spun her head to look at the glittering crown. "Where did you find it?"

"On an ogre, it was a quest item," Taylor replied as she opened a portal in front of the minion carrying the footwraps and tossed the wraps through. She let the portal close and sent the group of minions in Karazhan to kill more monsters in the servant quarters until another boss spawned.

"We'll have to test it against Vicky's aura," Amy suggested, figuring that would be an easy and harmless test to see if it protected the user from parahuman abilities.

Lisa nodded. "You could practically name your price if that works in the real world. We should probably do some wiki-walking to check for more interesting quest items."

"I'll run some searches when I'm done," Taylor assured her.

Amy glanced at the ugly footwraps on the floor. "Where did you get those?"

"Off the animal bosses in Karazhan. They increase your shadow damage by 78 points which should stack with the bonus spell damage and the bonus to spellpower we already have," Taylor explained as she had her puppet hand her the crown and transmogrified it into a symbiote mask. She handed the mask to Lisa along with her hat. "You might as well add the shadow damage and the bonus spirit to the hat then duplicate it a couple dozen times."

"Sure," Lisa replied as she got to work moving the various bonuses to Skitter's hat.

Taylor blinked when one of her puppets managed to fish up a rather nice, if temporary fishing pole. "Huh, I'm going to need you to move a fishing bonus from a temporary fishing pole to something real."

"Where did you get a temporary fishing pole?" Noelle asked, wondering if she'd picked it up from a quest.

"From the pond in the garden, I have fifty puppets fishing to help increase my skill level," Taylor replied as she opened a portal and handed herself the temporary fishing pole and the puppet's normal darkwood fishing pole. "I also have a bunch of puppets cooking fish on Fenris Island to boost my cooking skill."

"You're going to do the same thing with the rest of the professions, aren't you?" Lisa asked with amusement as she continued moving the various bonuses to Skitter's hat.

"Wouldn't you?" Taylor asked with a grin as she opened a trade window with Lisa and tossed the fishing poles in so Lisa could move the bonus.

"If I had your level of multitasking, probably," Lisa admitted as she used her skill to move the +100 fishing to the fishing pole that wouldn't fade away after a day then hit the button to be done.

Taylor hit the accept button and smiled when she looked at her new fishing pole. "I don't suppose you can make a symbiote fishing pole?" she asked Amy hopefully.

Amy smiled as she pulled a still twitching fish out of her inventory and started working on making a symbiote fishing pole, fairly sure it was going to end up ugly as hell. "I'll see what I can come up with, I'm going to want a copy. You should try for the Stranglethorn fishing challenge tomorrow."

"What can you win?" Taylor asked as she grabbed her phone and started running a search for the fishing challenge.

"You get some boots with a teleportation ability and a boost to fishing skill and a replacement fishing line that increases your fishing bonus by five. If you're the first person that wins you can win a hook that turns you into a fish or a nice fishing pole," Amy explained, figuring they could move the bonus to the better fishing pole as she was fairly sure the damage was better on the Arcanite pole.

"In other words, I can win a pair of boots," Taylor mused, figuring the boots and the fishing line were worth sending some minions to Stranglethorn Jungle in the 'morning' to see if she could win before people got high enough level to compete.

"Did you get anything interesting out of Karazhan?" Lisa asked.

Taylor shook her head. "If you ignore the magical textbooks I got because of archeology, not really. I'll let you know when I reset the dungeon and make another run."

"Have you already beat the dungeon?" Amy asked in surprise.

"Not yet, I got distracted with the animal bosses and the library," Taylor admitted. "Mostly I just wanted to wait for better minions because I don't want to lose a bunch of them to the infernals, especially since as far as I know, he doesn't drop anything particularly useful compared to the gear we've already assembled."

Lisa raised an eyebrow at the fishing pole that Amy had created that looked like a cross between a tentacle monster and a tree branch. "Does it work?"

"Technically," Amy replied as she handed the makeshift fishing pole to Skitter. "It drops your fishing by 15 but it technically counts as a fishing pole."

Taylor transmogrified her fishing pole to look like Amy's alien abomination then handed it to Noelle to copy. "Close enough."

Noelle shook her head then started copying the alien fishing poles. "How many cloaks and poles do you want?"

"At least fifty of each if you don't mind, that would give me two raid groups and a small army of puppets that can work on fishing while I send a group to mine and pick herbs," Taylor replied as she walked over to start activating the mageweave puppets she'd created with her puppets, figuring she might as well use the easily available cloth for the low level zones, at least until she started running into groups of players.

"You still need to pick up my other host, he's wandering around killing undead, so it's probably a good time to open a portal and send a puppet to collect him," Shaper suggested.

Taylor glanced at the random pile of symbiotes on the ground. "I should probably summon him in the courtyard."

"Probably," Shaper agreed as she hopped down from the table, knowing he was a bit jumpy thanks to his extended stay in the birdcage.

Noelle copied Skitter's mask then tossed the original back to her and worked on making enough copies to spread the various traits to the rest of their gear. "Don't get yourself killed."

"That's why I have puppets," Taylor replied as she headed for the door, figuring one of her puppets could handle transmogrifying things.

0o0o0

Marquis stared at the pair of purple skinned elves that stepped out of the dark purple portal. "If you're going to attack me, I'll defend myself."

Shaper held her hands up. "We're not here to attack you, we're here to help."

"Why?" Marquis asked suspiciously.

"Because we know your daughter and you're combat effective," Shaper replied.

Marquis readied himself to grow his blades. "How do you know my daughter?"

"Because I'm her shard or power," Shaper replied.

Marquis glanced at Taylor's puppet. "Is your friend delusional?"

Taylor shrugged. "Probably not."

"Probably?" Marquis asked.

"One of the abilities I picked up when I got dropped into the game is the ability to make puppets, when capes use them they basically get animated by the shard or at least that's my best guess considering they're a lot less aware and intelligent when non-capes use them." Taylor gestured at Shaper. "Amelia used a puppet and Shaper is the result, so yeah, I'm reasonably sure she's Amelia's power."

"What power does my daughter have?" Marquis asked, figuring it was a trick or something.

"Biokinesis," Shaper replied as she reached over and touched Taylor's arm and turned part of her skin blue before changing it back. "I can also pull off a copy of your powers but it hurts like hell."

"Do you actually expect me to believe that?" Marquis asked, hiding his reaction to her knowing that his power hurt as best he could.

"Would talking with Armsmaster or Dragon help?" Shaper asked.

Marquis considered the girl's question then nodded. "If you're lying or if you've injured my daughter, you're going to regret it."

"Don't worry, Amy is a great host," Shaper replied, then turned and walked back through the portal.

"What's your power?" Marquis asked as he studied the young looking elf that hadn't left, finding that she looked less insane than her friend.

"I'm not a parahuman but I can control my puppets thanks to one of the skills I picked up in the simulation so I'd probably fall into the thinker/tinker category," Taylor admitted, figuring he'd figure it out really quick if he visited so she wasn't worried about telling him that part of it.

"Where does the portal lead?" Marquis asked.

"My mansion in Duskwood, Amelia helped me when I first got stuck in the game and things just sort of snowballed from there," Taylor admitted.

"Lead the way," Marquis ordered, figuring he'd just have to fight his way out if it was a trick.

0o0o0