The Crystal Sslugs of the Test

[Diamond Master]

Durin rolls 3.

Sslugs roll 1.

A blast of magma comes down right on one of Amatin's crystal wings, melting a hole in it. No answering light comes from the Diamond Watchtower.
Are the Sslugs out of Favor?

[Great Thrash]

He shoots, he scores!

Does this change anything about our strategy? Let us try to overwhelm them once and for all this time.

[Yerkan of Elish]

I go and face Mix in the tower, disguised as a Dunian goblin, wielding the Loupe Estoc in the form of a long dagger. I make my way up to the Sslug and give it a good impale with the dagger. I am not attempting to damage it, but to ascertain once and for all the amount of Favor that it has left. And with any luck, the answer is none, or just about.

[Diamond Master]

That's correct. The Sslug has no Favor left (and your dagger previously got results as to how much Favor Mix has), though of course you would find it more difficult to ascertain whether more Favor can be provided to them from an external source, such as Ravana.

[Yerkan of Elish]

"Hmm. Perhaps we should try to prevent them from acquiring any more Favor. I can see two ways of doing this. The first is get completely rid of them immediately. The second is form some sort of blockade, and I'm not even sure if that is possible - not with our meager assets.

"I suggest we focus everything we can on them right away. We'll bring the Field Project back into play, and maybe - given what we've seen of the smaller sslug's reaction, create some sort of new bug that will stop them from being able to receive Favor, and possibly grant them some new and disfiguring mutations in the process."

[Ptah]

"Let me get this straight - you want to mess with their programming /more/ and /hope/ that it helps? I'm concerned that that might create more problems than it fixes. This disfiguring mutation could as easily help as hinder them. It might add, um, spikes or something.

"And what does the Field Projector do again?"

[Yerkan of Elish]

I turn to face Ptah, my eyes shining with poisoned blood.

"Now let me tell you something straight, boy. You might be able to sit back completely passively and watch the world turn with your time tricks and your eternal line of lattitude, but where I come from, people die if you don't act. Then I went to a different place. Here, world's die if you don't act. Sometimes you mess up - sometimes you tear a rift in a world. But when you do that, you learn, and you find the way to keep world's going. You don't m**l about in guilt because you messed something up. When I destroyed Thrash's southern continent, I didn't hide. I went and found the best of the best, to make sure the world kept turning. When I failed upon discovering Dunia I didn't run away; I fixed things, and as far as I know I never would have known half as much as I do now if I hadn't maimed that planet. Billions of lives found refuge because of that mistake. I took Dunia and made it into a point of refuge for people lost on Thrash. Wandering about, dying of thirst and hunger, they found Dunia, and with it, prosperity. Billions.

"Here we're threatened by massive sslugs. This isn't some political squabble or moral issue. This is the case where it's about as darn well obvious as it's possible to be that standing by and doing nothing is going to be the end of lives, and possibly the end of worlds.

"And if you question my altruism, go ahead. Maybe I don't care about the lives of these people. Maybe I would sacrifice my culets for some silly experiment. But if nothing else, I'm not gonna abandon a world, a Facet, a universe. I've maybe got my own ways of surviving, but survival's boring if there's no one to know.

Don't encourage inaction, boy, it'll be the last thing you do, and you'll be doing it for many, many fruitless millenia."

[Ptah]

I look up at Yerkan, for though we stand at the same height I must look up to meet his eye.

"But in the end, why bother? Why try? All ages end. I've seen thousands go by, and they never last.

"If anyone's altruism should be questioned, it's mine. I don't care about the other deities. I don't care about other facets. I have three friends in all the world - maybe four - and I barely care about /them/. I sit by and watch things happen because I'm only interested in what they will become, even if it's worse than what came before it. I've spent so much time /having/ to not care that the world was crumbling and that people were suffering and starving and dying that now I don't.

"I watch, I sit, I listen. I never interfered or questioned, and now that I do I don't see the point. So tell me: What is the point of helping? I'm a god of apathy, but I don't want to be. I need a purpose. What is it?"

[Yerkan of Elish]

I soften slightly.

"All ages may end, but there's always another world, always something afterwards.

"If the mortals look up at the gods of Dunia, they see lack of apathy and can feel comforted that there is some sort of reason to their lives. When we look up, however, most of us see only the Diamond Master, who is cold, hard, and unsympathetic. Look not to him, Ptah. You will not find your reason there. Look just to his left, where you will see the Steep Norns. They care, they know what they are fighting for. They have weeped for worlds, despite knowing all, seeing all, and having watched a million billion Facets crumble. Somewhere in there, there must be a reason - I do not suspect that those so steep as the Unblemished spend their lives deceiving themselves with comforting lies."

[AIiCE]

I have remained thoughtfully quiet during this exchange, but now I pipe up.

"While Ptah is questing after the Norns, we have some Sslugs to deal with. I just found two more little ones in the Hamlet of Heroes."