a few hours after the jaunt pause

[reallymean]

Is there anyone who is entirely themself on the Jaunt who remembers how to pilot a mech and doesn't have a better way of fighting the Nation Eater? I think I can keep it from being able to use those waves of dread to knock us out of the fight, but I need to be on the ground to do so.

[Metaphorically. It actually works best if she's a few dozen feet above the ground, but she can't wield Shacklebreaker and fly her mech at the same time.]

My Cataphract may be invaluable in the fight against a creature that size. If one of you can pilot her, I would be willing to lend her out for the duration of the battle.

Comments

[neverfeltthatway]

You have a way to deal with the dread too? Will it stop it entirely, or only mitigate it?

[reallymean]

Stop it entirely.

[neverfeltthatway]

...Shacklebreaker? [He was trapped and not quite able to touch questing country for that jaunt, a little too deeply frozen - but much of the time he was close enough to watch, and their overlays had been close, before.]

That's a relief - that will probably work a lot better than suppressing emotions in everyone fighting that thing.

[reallymean]

Yes. It's instilling the terror by binding everyone to it, like that world's kything done on an unimaginable scale.

[Or like the diabolin on that same scale.]

[neverfeltthatway]

[An elven slave for over a century, he understands the unspoken parallel without being told.]

Does it just work by you wielding it? Do we all have to see you? And... forgive me, but what would happen to the effect if you were killed?

[reallymean]

You recall the Champion of Liberation's ability to manifest metaphorical shackles as physical ones in Questing Country? I inherited that ability, though outside of the dreamscape they won't be visible to anyone else. If I break that manifestation at the source, the link breaks with it. You don't have to see me. You don't even have to know I'm there.

The effect will outlast me if I'm killed in the fight - I have definitive proof of that. But I won't be able to keep it from forging a new link if I'm dead, if it has the presence of mind to try. We'll need the other solutions as a fallback, just in case.

[neverfeltthatway]

The details are a bit vague, but I remember. [He nods seriously.]

All right. I'll keep emotion dampening as the backup, then, if I can. [Assuming he's still alive himself, as he might end up being the primary target of the behemoth's ire, in his titan form.]

[reallymean]

If you can't, I'm sure some of our allies will push through out of sheer stubbornness.

[neverfeltthatway]

[That briefly brings a small, tired smile to his face.] That certainly sounds like them.