Game 27: Morning Star Observatory

Ishild says that before they can perform the ceremony turning Aeris into a lich, Aeris needs to choose a phylactery. He says that his own phylactery, the silver ring, dates from when he became a lich almost 500 years ago. He says his ring is effective, allowing him to reappear after being destroyed, but the ring itself could be destroyed. So since becoming a lich, he's been researching a way to make an indestructible phylactery to make himself truly immortal, so he can suggest a way to make an indestructible phylactery for Aeris.

Ishild says that while a few indestructible materials are mentioned in legend, none has ever been found. Further, even if an indestructible material could be found, they would probably have no way to craft it into a phylactery.

Instead, he suggests that they build an indestructible phylactery using a theory of space-time that he has developed over the last few hundred years. He says that in this theory, mass bends space-time to attract other objects - an effect that we know as gravity. In theory some objects could be so massive that they bend space-time back on itself, so that nothing - not even light - could escape the objects' gravity. But imagine if we could do the opposite - bend space-time so severely that it deflects any object rather than trapping it. Literally nothing would be able to penetrate the object's space-time shell.

He says that Harlan Volker had developed his own theory of space-time, which he used against the party to bend space-time, create a space-time bubble, and create a space-time boundary. To create these effects, he had some material that could bend space-time out of proportion to its mass.

Ishild believes that a perfectly spherical piece of this material would create an impenetrable space-time shell like he described. Unfortunately, there's no way to craft a sphere to the required precision. Instead, Ishild proposes that they get the small piece of the material, then make it spin and precess at extreme high speed - effectively creating a sphere that way. Once the shell forms, the piece will spin forever inside the frictionless shell.

So, Ishild says Aeris should find out what this material was that the Volkers had and get some.

Gerholt tells Aeris he'd like to talk to him as a scientist. He says that Aeris's experiments raising and controlling the dead, and Alaric's experiments controlling the dead with brain probes, are closely related. But, Aeris's work is superior because Alaric's raised dead didn't have souls like Aeris's - Alaric's raised dead were just puppets.

He says that although Aeris's raised dead have souls, Aeris hasn't actually created a new being. He says that obviously a newly married couple can create a new human being, and inexpensively too, but has Aeris ever thought about creating a new soul from the nothing, how fascinating that would be? At this Gerholt becomes excited, and reaches for his knapsacks. Fumbling a little, he takes out two jars. The first has an apparent embryo in it, and Gerholt awkwardly explains that this embryo isn't a new soul. Rather it's an intermediate experiment - a gestating baby without a soul. He puts it aside without interest. Instead he holds up the second jar. It has thick copper caps and electrical leads on each end, and is full of fluid with a few sparkling particles in it. He says this is a new soul he created in the lab, using a recipe of alchemy ingredients and electricity that he devised.

Gerholt considers the jar and the soul inside for a moment, then says that once he'd created a new soul, it occurred to him that a god - meaning a real god - is really a kind of soul. Would it be possible to create a god in a jar? He reaches into a second knapsack and pulls out another jar. This jar also has copper caps and electrical leads, but the copper caps have been ravaged by electrical burns and partially melted. Inside there's a cloudy green liquid with a fleshy, malformed thing inside. It smells like burns, ammonia, and most of all Greencake. Gerholt says that after many sleepless, frustrating nights, he succeeded in creating a god in this jar. At first the god was incorporeal like the soul in the other jar, but within a few hours the god soul had created this disturbing globster as a material form to inhabit in this world.

He wonders aloud about the god. It's created out of nothing, so even existence is alien to it. It's blind and deaf, so it knows nothing except its own consciousness - does it dream? But it already has immense power.

He puts the god-in-a-jar down on a table carefully. He says the god has grown well, but he absorbs power from the environment around him, and its growth will soon be limited by that. The god in the jar needs more power to grow to its full potential. So, he's planning to retake the Oracle, where the power of High Hill is most concentrated. He says he believes that Aeris wants to attack the Oracle as well, and he proposes they work together.

Gerholt says that Harlan's space-time material was a piece of the meteor Noreste, which Ammiral brought back from Hilde. Harlan attacked Ammiral at his home and took part of Noreste, and Ammiral moved the rest of the meteor to an undisclosed location under guard. Between Harlan's attack and the Admiralty civil war, he expects the rest of Noreste is guarded very well indeed.