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[NSFW] - Celestial Hymn (Celestial Forge/asoIaF SI)

Celestial Hymn
Chapter 31
-VB-
Time passed.
I used the expected court and street intrigues. A "gift" here and a gift there. My men and women, my acolytes, walking out on the streets with guards but there to hand out soup and bread to the poor. The Gold Cloaks tried but failed to muscle in when faced with magic capable of intimately telling one's intent.
And then it happened.
Stannis Baratheon came to King's Landing with his retinue, and the first person he sought out was me.
It was …
The city already knew that I was powerful. I was the betrothed to the only princess of the kingdom. I was the head of the only known magical army in all of the world. I was wealthy, though not as wealthy as the Lions.
But when a royalty like Stannis comes to see me first and not his extended family? Not the crown prince. Not the queen. Not the court. But me?
It signaled to everyone playing the Game of Thrones that I was now a significant player. I was no longer a pawn for others like Renly had tried to make me become but hadn't expected to see me rise so quickly up the social ladders of the nobility.
So I greeted the man who unwittingly heralded my entrance to the Game of Thrones, and greeted him as warmly as one should for their in-laws.
Because this in-law was about to owe me a huge favor.
"Prince Baratheon!" I greeted the stoic and stiff man with a hug. The man had just walked in with his retinue into my workshop manor/institute, which was where I told him that I had everything ready to help Shireen.
The awkward and standoffish lord stiffened under my sudden friendly assault but let it pass. We were to become family, after all, and was in a private setting as well.
"Lord Marris," he greeted me with a simple pat before I let him part from me.
I then knelt and looked at the girl who'd come in with him, dressed from head to toe in concealing garment.
"And you must be Shireen," I spoke softly, gently taking one of her gloved hands in mine and placing a kiss on her knuckles. "It's a pleasure to meet you," I claimed with a big grin.
"I-It's a pleasure to meet you as well, Lord Marris," she shyly greeted me with a hurried curtsy.
I stood back up.
"Yeah, it's bad."
Stannis stiffened and looked around; my acolytes walked about, doing whatever it was that they did for their own studies and experiments (study material provided by yours truly).
"Do not worry," I chuckled before intentionally flexing the barrier around me. The soundproof barrier I'd erected the moment I met them shimmered before visually dissolving back into the background. "It allows sounds in but not out."
Shireen looked awed, if her body language was to go by. Stannis, on the other hand, looked alarmed. I supposed he had the right to be. Magic was performed within his vicinity without him even noticing.
"But I'm sure you want me to to look at her before I cure her. Come, come!"
I knew that I was being rude and out of order. Prince Stannis was still a prince and deserved the respect his station was owed, but at the same time, he was the one coming to me metaphorically groveling for his daughter's health and safety. Formalities had been dismissed by both of us independently or was done so when I approached them so physically.
I dropped the barrier and watched as Stannis carefully told his guard retinue to stay before following me with Shireen in tow.
I led them a door that looked like any other door in this manor: a well-maintained but plain wooden door with a handle. When I opened that door and led them in, I saw their wonder.
A simple diagnostics lab will look like wonder to someone from the medieval world. Or look alien. Either or.
I closed the door, locked it, pulled up another soundproof barrier, and then led them to a desk at the corner of the room.
"Please, have a seat," I gestured and they sat down with me. "First off, I'm going to have to scrap a sample of her scarred skin for me to know exactly what I am dealing with."
"Scarred?" Stannis frowned.
"Yes, scarred."
"She is still infected."
I shook my head. "No. Greyscale is not alive. What we will be doing is 'fixing' her appearance."
He stared at me for a second. "What does that entail?"
"Diagnostics and removal of scar tissue in a manner that won't disfigure her."
He nodded hesitantly.
"Good. First off, greyscale is considered infectious and 'alive' only when it continues to spread. Otherwise, you can safely say that it is cured, even if the person may be scarred. However, I need a sample of the disease to know whether or not it is a completely mundane disease or one made by magic."
He froze stiffly.
"Prince Garin's Curse." That was the greyscale's other name.
I nodded. "In this world, magic can come about in many ways. If you take into account that ritual sacrifices are a thing, then allowing even slightly magical person with some authority over his people curse you after having them watch the death of his entire people… sounds kind of dangerous, yes? What if there is a trigger that causes some other illness? We do not know, so I need to check for it."
Stannis grimaced.
"Is that truly how the greyscale came to be?"
"It is a speculation, but there are no other alternative narrative for its origin."
"I see. So if it is a magical illness…"
"If it is a magical illness, then I must treat it with magic. If it is mundane, then I can treat it with magic and mundane means. I'll probably go with magical means anyway because it makes healing and recovery easier. However, I won't know what I encounter until I have a sample to test it," I said and then gestured to the glass flasks filled with various clear liquids.
And then I reached out and brought out … three cotton swaps.
"One for the mouth lining, one for the unaffected skin and cut, and the last one for the affected skin and cut."
Two quick cuts and three swaps later, I dunked them into the liquids.
The first two remained clear; not magic and not bacterial.
The last one turned pink.
Viral.
"Good news!" I said as I turned around. "It's not magical."
Stannis let out a sigh of relief.
Shireen fidgetted.
"Okay then, let me see exactly how we will approach this," I mumbled as I brought out a different staff from my usual and lightly tapped it on her forehead. The staff glowed green, telling me that the disease was no longer in progress. The staff then dimmed to a dim orange.
I frowned.
"It seems that there are some greyscale still within her. Probably inside isolated pockets among the scar tissues as cysts…" I hummed as I pulled back.
Stannis and Shireen both froze.
"Which means very little, actually," I added with a grin.
I thumped the staff against the ground, and a dimly glowing green ring spread out from me.
Stannis looked ready to attack in surprise but held back. "What is this?"
"Cleansing field: viral mode. It eliminates specific diseases." Having a lot of time as a noble coupled with magical and mundane knowledge led to a lot of advancements!
For me and my allies, of course.
I tapped Shireen again, and this time, it came back negative.
"Wonderful! We can now get to healing her scar! Please lay down on the table there."
She did.
"D-Do I have to ake my clothes off?" she asked me.
"No, not really," I replied. "Since I will be using magic and not mundane means to excise your scar tissues."
She laid down as ordered.
I stood up and brought the staff down onto the ground before extending my hands.
I grimaced as I let the magic of the staff's crystal flow through me. The foreign mana felt spiky within me. It didn't hurt but did make me feel uncomfortable. Compared to what Shireen went through, it's probably nothing.
I took a deep breath in and forced the mana forward.
Find the soul.
Mana chimed.
Find the body.
Mana chimed.
Find the differences.
Mana… chimed.
Interpose the soul onto the body.
Mana screeched.
Interpose the soul onto the body.
Mana screeched again but after a while chimed.
Execute.
I took deep breaths and sweated as I forced myself to stay still while draining the crystal of its mana. I saw even underneath her clothes how she was changing.
The light died down and I staggered backward. To my surprise, one of my acolytes caught me.
Oh, when did he - she - come in?
Stannis quickly reached Shireen's side as the girl sat up.
She pulled her hood and scraf down.
Stannis's eyes grew wet with tears.
"It worked…!"
I looked tiredly at Shireen and saw that the greyscale scars were indeed gone.
"Wooo~...!" I cheered despite my exhaustion. "Sorry, but please come back later. I do not believe I am strong enough to continue for now. We'll see how she is next… time…" I mumbled as the acolyte bowed in my stead and dragged me out.
As my consciousness drifted away and the door closed, I briefly saw Stannis hugging Shireen.
I didn't cure her of anything, not really aside from small pockets of surviving greyscale virus, but appearance broke or made someone, and I made Shireen's future happiness and quality of life, things her father, a prince of the realm, could not give her.
For this and this alone, Stannis was now in my pocket.
I was sure of it.
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Gusfes, Vagabond replied to a thread you are watching at Questionable Questing.
[NSFW] - Celestial Hymn (Celestial Forge/asoIaF SI)

Celestial Hymn
Chapter 32
-VB-
"... Seven be Blessed."
Robert did not like to call upon the Sevens. He thought that the Faith was "bullshit useless" and merely a decorative tool used by the lords and Faith's own leadership for-profit and vainglory.
Never let it be said that Robert was stupid or uneducated. His brother simply did not care enough to use his brain because his brawn was bigger, but even that brawn was useless when the heart of that brawn could not have its desire.
For Robert to call upon the Seven in a positive light showed just how shocked the man was.
Stannis stood off to the side as Robert nearly manhandled Shireen to see that she truly was cured of her scars.
"So it's not just flashy magic he does," Robert muttered as he stood up and turned to look at him in the eyes. "Well, I guess I really did well in betrothing him to Myrcella. I just have to worry about him assassinating Joffrey and taking over."
Stannis froze. "Robert, he has -."
"Done us all, every single Baratheon, a favor. I know. He made the Stormlands prosperous, gave us a bunch of trinkets and capes, and healed your daughter of the scars of Greyscales. This doesn't change the fact that he's also consulted Tywin nor the way he has earned favors in the past week or so with half a dozen Crownlands lords."
He frowned. Would Lord Marris go for such ambition?
Stannis gestured for Davos, who'd been waiting stoically to the side, and the Onion Knight took Shireen to her room in the Red Keep.
"Even if he doesn't want the crown, he sure as hell isn't obedient like a Labnister dog," Robert continued after the door closed. "And Joffrey is not smart enough to not antagonize Alan, and you heard what he did when he got pissed!"
"Murdered a member of the Faith in summary execution."
It wasn't just but it was within Lord Marris's rights to execute someone for trying to blackmail him. In fact, Stannis would have kept the septon around for a little longer to make an example out of him.
"Exactly! If you think the gold shit that I have to call my firstborn and heir is going to be calm and calculating beyond his latest shit show, then I'm overestimating your intelligence, be abuse Joffrey sure as hell will fuck himself over!"
"... why not just change who the heir is?"
"What?"
"Why not make Tommen your heir if you think Joffrey will cause so much issue?" he suggested. "You did give Renly Storm's End and not me. That's a precedent you can use."
Robert grimaced. "I get it. I fucked you over. I was just trying to show you that you were my heir by giving you Dragonstone!"
Stannis snorted. "If you say so."
Robert grumbled. "If you hate Dragonstone that much, why not exchange it for some other land my Crown holds?"
"It's not Storm's End, which is my right as the second born."
"Well, I can't just remove Renly from being the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands, now can I?!"
Then he grumbled and then sighed. "Tywin probably doesn't care who gets to be on the throne. Ned won't care. The Vale won't care. The Reach won't care. The Dorne fucking hates us so they don't care."
"But the Stormlands and the Crownlands will."
"They sure as fuck will! Maybe if Tommen was only a year younger, I could set up a sparring match. Joffrey is horrible at swordsmanship, so even half as dedicated Tommen, with all of his gentleness, could still win. I could use that as an excuse to make Tommen, a strong heir, as the heir, but their ages are too fucking far apart and Tommen too young for that."
"Is Joffrey truly that bad?"
"If I didn't fuck Cersei, then I would be sure that ship's not mine, but I fucked the bitch. So no, that shit is mine! I don't even know what's wrong with him, just that he's not right as a person! What kid splits open a pregnant cat's stomach to 'show dad the baby kittens'?"
Stannis silently agreed with his older brother for the first time in a long time. Even the few times he's seen Joffrey was enough to tell him that there was something wrong with the crown prince. Spoiled didn't cut it.l, and none of the Baratheon brothers ever acted like Joffrey. It was an issue deeper than that which surrounded the crown prince.
Lord Marris also avoided the crown prince. Why?
Lord Arryn also died in his sleep, yet he had actually called up on him, which was why he managed to come to King's Landing within days of Lord Marris's arrival instead of weeks. Why did the deceased Lord Arryn call him?
Something was amiss in King's Landing.
He intended to find out what that was. He would have to enlist the help of Lord Marris and his magic on occasion.
"I will try my best to dissuade him," Stannis grunted as he turned to leave. "He is not a Baratheon anyway; he does not have the right to sit upon the Iron Throne."
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Gusfes, Vagabond replied to a thread you are watching at Questionable Questing.
[NSFW] - Celestial Hymn (Celestial Forge/asoIaF SI)

Celestial Hymn
Chapter 34
-VB-
Construction began within the week with the spare iron I had squirreled away in between all of the experimentations, resourcing, and arming myself, my acolytes, and then the people.
I would have surely focused on improving the lives of the people when I first took power, and I did, but the people have shown me that to be a mistake. I wouldn't make that kind of mistake again.
As for what the construction was about, it was not about building another iron tower, unlike what I told Wilhelm, my steward. Yes, it would be used to construct something but that something was much more sublime than a mere iron tower meant to extend the barrier around my tower.
When I made the plan, I thought about making a floating fortress. It would have been a pretty good gig, too. In this world where dragons provided the best air superiority because they were the only air troop possible, a flying fortress would dominate everything and anything. The problem, I quickly realized, was the cost involved.
I was rich.
But I wasn't rich enough to build a flying fortress. From what my powers told me, building a flying fortress will require at minimum one million gold dragon's worth of materials. It would be like building an actual fortress on top of all of the magical and advanced technologies!
Unfortunately, I did not have that much money. Even if I saved up, I wouldn't have the time to build it before the next big crisis struck Westeros (Ironborn Rebellions never count).
On the other hand, building myself a pseudo-Mass Effect frigate would cost me only 100,000 gold dragons!
Yeah, that was still a lot, but it was a tenth of the cost of the flying fortress. On top of that, a flying frigate would be much more maneuverable, and its mass effect-powered spinal cannon would obliterate nearly everything up to and including the flying fortress I would have built.
Mass Effect was bullshit like that. 40 kilotons of TNT per shot!
I could almost see the meme in my head.
'Everyone in Westeros: No, you can't just make a weapon that can obliterate everything! It goes the rules of chivalry!
'Me: Ha ha. Mass Effect go Brrrrrr.'
… Yeah, overwhelming firepower was always nice. Just imagine how quickly and irrelevant I could make all "evil" magical things with each shot from the frigate!
Iron Islands? Boom!
True North? Boom!
Asshai? Boom!
And if all else failed, then I could just nab a thousand or so people, grab all of the materials that could fit into my frigate, fly out to space, and make a colony on a nearby planet or something. Once I got the power to make a portal to some other dimension, because it was going to happen at this rate, then I would just do just that and leave.
Of course, all of this was far away. I just started on the construction.
The construction itself required a lot of input from me. Sure, the Mass Effect Andromeda database had made designing the ship easy. However, all of those designs were made with the proliferation of Mass Effect universe's technology in mind. I did not have a zero-G shipyard nor the tools and equipment of that verse.
But I did have something close to it.
The One-Stop Workbench. It could make anything I wanted, though the size was limited. I needed to put everything together, so that's what I had the servitors do while I unloaded the materials onto the workbench.
It was an all-hands-on kind of work for me because only I could use the Workbench, and only my servitors had the necessary tools inside their grotesque bodies.
I also needed to alter how the ship was shaped because there was no way in hell I could make SS Normandy or something like that with how it was shaped. I didn't want to have to make the infrastructure to keep the pieces in place.
… I was actually very tempted to just make a rectangular box and call it over, but I wasn't that lazy.
And that was exactly what I was doing, working in my workshop at Brownspear Barony, when the Celestial Forge made for another reach. And … got nothing.
I shrugged and went back to work.
This time, I was making the element zero drive that would enable the ship to reduce its mass. Of course, the drive itself was too big for me to make it on the workbench in one-go and as such I needed to manufacture its components one by one.
I paused and looked at the ME R&D database before sighing.
I needed to make at least eighty parts, ten of which were the casing.
"Okay. Bring in the iron and the exotic rocks, boys!"
One of the funny things I found out about the Workbench was that, yes, it used the materials it needed (it didn't have to be processed, I learned before) but it didn't even touch the materials that it didn't need.
So if I needed uranium or the like…?
Well, I just told the Workbench's computer to substitute it with Thorium and poured a bunch of sand on top of it until the material requirement was met. I would have clean the unused sand afterward, but the entire process was entertaining enough at times.
Besides, I had acolytes. They did the cleaning.
Element Zero was something I couldn't make.
So.
I did my best to substitute it with magic.
Boom!
I winced.
"I guess something in the matrix was off," I mumbled as I stopped the current manufacturing process and went outside to see what had blown up this time.
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Gusfes, Vagabond replied to a thread you are watching at Questionable Questing.
[NSFW] - Celestial Hymn (Celestial Forge/asoIaF SI)

Celestial Hymn
Chapter 33
-VB-
I winced as the Celestial Forge reached out and pulled down two separate motes of power onto my soul.
The first of the two was Pale Ore. It was a physical ore of … not quite mythical properties but certainly magical ones. Any weapon or armor I made from it would possess edge and strength would only be matched by other magical tools.
Clunk.
I also got a shipment of it every week that would just magically appear, but it was a small box of only a few handfuls of the stuff.
'Actually, Forge, can you hear me?'
I heard nothing back.
'Is it possible for me to designate a location where all of the new things you pull will appear at? I don't want to sound ungrateful, but it would be awful to wake up if I get married and a box slams into my wife's face in the morning.'
I got no response back.
I'll know the answer when next week came around.
The second gift, Antimatter Manipulation Principle, came in two parts: one part direct gravitonic manipulation and one part knowledge on how to make technology that emulates the ability. The first was the ability to manipulate gravity in such a way that I would never ever take fall damage as long as I was awake and lucid enough to handle the power. The second part was the knowledge necessary to make hovering platforms or giant planetoids within Earth's atmosphere if I really wanted to.
I got up on my bed and then jumped forward.
It took me three seconds to gently glide down, and by the end of it, I was giggling like a little kid.
Ideas formed within my head. Building a floating city would be hard, but using AMP would actually help me with making a Mass Effect warship and vice versa.
… I needed to start building. I have all of this political and financial capital now. I didn't need to dilly dally any longer. I was ready. I have been ready for some time: a base of operation, a will, and required manpower and resources.
Why was I delaying?
I stood up from where I landed after my brief gliding and sat back down on the bed.
Why did I hesitate?
I hesitated because … I was unsure about the process. I had the bare basics of an organization, but my trust in that organization was not as complete as I liked. Building what I wanted would also require such a large quantity of resources that bottleneck becomes a real possibility for iron and and and -.
I'm just delaying. I just don't want to commit because I'm scared that … I'll fail.
Because building a warship of that scale will be the first true challenge I would have.
My arms, which had risen up to grasp my hair in frustration in my inner tirade, fell away and slumped by my side.
I hesitated because the prospect of failure scared me. That's why, even after months of being in Kings Landing, I busied myself with politics, intrigue, and charity work because … because they were easy.
I WAS STILL HESITATING! STILL NARRATING INSIDE MY HEAD ABOUT MYSELF!
I shot up. My heart pounded, I felt sick, and I wanted to stop.
Instead of following my body, I surged forward, grabbing whatever clothes I could throw on without looking shameful, and burst out of my room in the Red Keep.
"Steward!"
-VB-
"Milord?" Wilhelm spoke up after entering his lord's office in Kings Landing.
Thanks to the portal Lord Marris made between his Kings Landing manor and Brownspear, Wilhelm could travel back and forth Stormlands and Crownlands with ease. It was a wonderful method of transportation, only marred by its uniqueness and the milord's unwillingness to open it to maesters and other nobles, not even the king.
"Come take a seat, Wilhelm," the young lord greeted him with a smile.
He closed the door behind him and sat as his lord instructed.
"Here is your new order," Lord Marris said as he handed him a parchment. Wilhelm took the order and skimmed it.
His eyes nearly popped out, and looked up in shock. "Milord-!"
"It's just a statue," he shrugged as if he hadn't just ordered one thousand tons worth of iron to be imported and for his own foundry to mass produce another thousand tons. "We have the money and resources for it."
"It is frivolous!"
"It'll serve as a defensive measure."
Wilhelm paused when his lord said that. "... Will it be another one of your tower, milord?"
He nodded. "It will be a stationary tower on the other side of the town," he replied. "Iron is necessary for the magic I am considering."
"Very well, milord," Wilhelm sighed. He trusted the young man. If he said it was needed, then it really was (to an extent). "Do you have preference as to where the iron is imported from?"
"I do," he replied. "The Vale is known for its mountains, and I am sure that the number of knights and soldiers the Vale's knightly houses and lords employe surely mean that they must have some source they get their iron from. If it is possible, I want you to buy iron ore from them. If it is not possible, then put us in contact with Braavos. I'm sure many of their rich and powerful will appreciate fine art. I want this project within the year if possible."
Oh.
Oh, that's gonna be hard.
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