A Return

[Anastasia]

Lady Sanzha just chuckles as Amaryl turns a very, very, very bright shade of red.

"I won't say a thing," Lady Sanzha says, agreeably enough.

[Corwin]

"In other news," Seira says in blatant change of subject, "Alicia found a naked woman inside the massive shadow-spewing storm and managed to get through to her. That's one loss for Shar, and another entry to our library on Shar's minions."

[Anastasia]

'Antenora, Syala and now her. What is with Alicia and naked women?' Amaryl sends to you, voice curious. 'I certainly understand admiring beauty, though.'

"Good news," Lady Sanzha says as she reads, "Antenora did turn out well, after all. How promising is this one?"

[Corwin]

"No idea, but she'll fill me in eventually. Hey, now I wonder whether Ebony was naked when she met Alicia!"

[Anastasia]

Amaryl blushes anew while Sanzha looks up, "Did your line of thought regress?" she asks, curiously. "I don't see how that follows from that."

[Corwin]

"It's Amaryl's fault."

[Anastasia]

Amaryl manages a choking sputter and little else, Lady Sanzha chuckling anew.

Anything else to do here? We're in a spot of waiting on Elle's rescue mission here, so if you have any RP things to knock out that don't take a ton of time IC, now's a great time.

[Corwin]

I was actually hoping to gain insights into both elemental harmony and the positive energy/behemoth thing, and finally on possibility of merging the two. We already talked about it some, but I want more actionable details.

If that doesn't work, let's chat with Omni.

[Anastasia]

Reading on further, "I'm going to need time," Sanzha finally says, repeating herself. "I'm also going to need several dozen animals of various types, I'll write up a list. A shard of positive energy, small, as well, you should be able to create that yourself. Now, the elements and positive energy aren't directly linked. Life springs from the positive and death from the negative, they essentially balance out unless you're in a quasi-elemental plane. In theory, you could say Afina's already tilted to life, but if she died and was raised as a zombie, she'd be tilted to death then."

[Corwin]

Seira shudders at the prospects of zombie Afina. "They're unrelated, yes, but are they mutually exclusive the way positive and negative energy are? Like you said, positive energy coexisted with the elemental powers in Afina, and the sum was definitely greater than the whole. Perhaps she was simply that exceptional, but even accounting for that won't our forces benefit from this?"

[Anastasia]

"You misunderstand - positive energy is in every creature that lives, while every creature that lives while dead has negative energy, Lady Sanzha explains. "That's all. You can have one or the other." Clicking her tongue, "Directly imbuing creatures with positive energy is extremely difficult. We," A tap of her chest, "Hold more positive energy naturally because we're stronger and more than a typical creature. Likewise, a powerful lich holds more negative energy than a mere skeleton. The core reason why a behemoth creature is hard to make is because adding positive energy to a creature tends to quickly be explosive. It takes an unusual talent or quirk to be able to be productive that way."

[Corwin]

"Say you figure out the quirk, or manage to manufacture it under lab conditions," Seira muses. That's what all the animals are for, after all. "Could we augment our target animal with positive energy and elemental energy as well, either in parallel or afterwards?"

[Anastasia]

"Possibly," Sanzha says after some consideration, "I'd have to see if I got that far. This is unexplored territory."

[Corwin]

"Exactly!" Seira says cheerfully. "As for the purely elemental conversions, I'd really like to have a squad of others like Omni ready. Should we repeat our success, or will it be possible to work out a more reliable alternative? Thus far, the process is very volatile."

[Anastasia]

"Well, no time like the presents to start researching," Lady Sanzha says agreeably. "Omni's more likely, though even then, I imagine the process will take time to perfect."