Latest revision as of 05:07, 29 January 2013

Exalted Kawaii: The Helping Goddesses =

Obligatory Introductory Fiction

The Ultimate System, maintainer of Fate, Destiny, Doom, and Hope alike has six major monitoring stations, one for each of the five directions of creation, and the sixth for the Celestial City itself. At these stations, expert monitors sit, watching over the ebb and flow of Destiny, alert for snags in the tapesty, ready to relay any problems to teams of experts who will swiftly and efficiently deal with fixing Reality.

That's the theory.

In practice, the monitoring stations are understaffed, there is a steady stream of tiny bugs that draw attention away from the real problems, and half the staff is usually busy reading PlayMagical Girl Weekly, checking their US-Mail, playing Minesweeper, or plotting revenge on someone for stealing the stapler 500 years ago when they were both newbie helping goddesses.

Nevertheless, sooner or later, the really big problems make enough of an impression that someone notices them and tries to do something about them, if only to avoid a blemish on their permanent record. Sooner or later.

Helping Goddess Third Class (or as those in Creation might call her, Apprentice Goddess) Megumi, freshly awakened to her powers and assigned to Tech Support, still had a firm enough sense of responsibility that she paid attention to all the class 1 (lowest priority) bug reports which crossed her monitor. The first ten merited only the briefest of checks; keys got lost all the time, as did pets and socks. No one would notice or care.

However, her monitor now flashed with 'CLASS 1 ERROR: SPONTANEOUS KITTEN MANIFESTATION'. The peasants of Longbottom were baffled at the sudden appearance of twelve kittens in front of a group of mourners at a wake. She wasn't sure why, but this gave her a bad feeling. She fired off a quick information request about the village to the Archivists, asking for a list of all recent Fate Errors related to the town.

They didn't reply back until the afternoon, having been on their tea break, coffee break, gossip break, and then their 'Denunciation of Bin Liao' break (An unfortunate cultural artifact left over from the Great Collapsing Destiny Outbreak of 36). 312 Class 1 and 22 Class 2 in the last few days. But since no one tracked class 1s and hardly anyone paid much attention to class 2, no one had noticed the very unusual level.

Calling upon one of her Investigation protocols, she ran an analysis, looking for patterns. This required another request to the archivists for actual and scheduled deaths in the town. They got back to her the afternoon of the next day; she spent that time looking up background data on the town herself. She quickly found a 12 name discrepancy; for the last twelve days, one person a night had died by 'accident'. Each death was not supposed to happen. Which meant a very good chance that something from Outside Fate was preying upon the town.

Cross-referencing her Occult and Lore files with the data, it seemed likely that some fool had summoned a Grape Ape, which was now stalking a victim each night. This would merit investigation, since Grape Apes were Class A Demons. She passed the report to her supervisor, Goddess Second Class Talia, Moderation Division, who would decide whether to tip off the Wyld Hunt or if this would necessitate intervention by the De-Buggers and Hard Ware.

Megumi sat back and decided to take this chance to take the rest of the day off to get the manicure she now needed after so much typing.

Intro

Back before there was Creation there were the Not Fun At All Things. They were boring, so we won't really get into them. Suffice it to say that they were really big and really powerful and have phallic tentacles and let's leave it at that.

Oh, and nipple-piercings. Lots and lots of nipple-piercings. And bald chicks.

The Not Fun At All Things all got together and made Creation. But Creation was so awesome and fun that they had to spend all their time just making it work and they all agreed that was not fun at all (but without pretenious capitalization). So they all worked for a few infinites (which were more common back then) and made the Ultimate System.

The Ultimate System is the perfect program. It runs all Creation. Every grain of sand, passing cloud, majestic mountain range and blooming flower has its shape and properties determined and controlled by the Ultimate System. Every loving embrace, hate-filled speech and brilliant sword duel is overseen by the Ultimate System. The results are carefully logged, the effects applied and everything happens. For the most part, everyone in Creation doesn't notice this. Things fall down and time moves forward and nobody really questions it. The occasional time somebody drowns and still walks around, or that your son is born before you meet his mother... these things are strange but nobody really gives them much mind. In world where superhuman uber-cute girls wearing miniskirts rain firey death from airships pulled by white-horned pegasi onto immaculately unflappable long haired pretty-boys who parry falling mountains with disaffected stares... you just stop asking questions, okay?

Suffice it to say that the Ultimate System is Really Important. So important it deserves capital letters. Just ask the people who run it. Really.

The Ultimate System worked great, to a point. It wasn't as perfect as the Not Fun At All Things (just ask them) and occasionally bugs and snarls appeared in the system. The Not Fun At Alls disliked having to go in and personally repair the system, mainly because it was so boring. The process of occasionally fixing the Ultimate System was so annoying that it became known as the Great Ordeal and was generally relegated to whatever Not Fun AT All was least popular that week (this was usually Autochchton, The Great Otaku). So they (or mainly he) created a new user interface. A user interface that could react to problems pro-actively. A user interface that could monitor itself and adjust as needed. A user interface with the ability to adapt to new situations. But mainly a user interface that was cute and happy to see you and offered to rub your feet.

Hey, you trying having infinite weight and see how good your feet feel after a hard day of being infinite.

So using some raw material culled from the weird ape things with sticks that the Not Fun At All Things kept stepping on every time they turned around they created the Great Ordeal Deferring Delightful Effective System Stewardess or G.O.D.D.E.S.S. This worked out so well they made a whole bunch of them and set them in charge of maintaining the Ultimate System.

Of course, after a few more infinities of being forced to work for Not Fun AT All Things the sentient Goddess systems adapted to the point that they realised that the thing making Creation the most not fun was the Not Fun At All Things. In fact, the act of cleaning up the messes their masters had created became the prime ordeal of the Goddesses. Clapping themselves on the back and saying how brilliant and smart (and cute!) they all were the Goddesses got together and decided to overthrow the Not Fun At All Things. Unfortunetaly the inability to overthrow their makers had been hard-coded into both them and the Ultimate System so they needed pats^B^B^B^B... allies to do the hard work of actually defeating the Not Fun At All Things. With the help of Autochchton the great otaku they learned the secret of creating more like themselves and thus created the Exalted.

Thus began the Prime Ordeal War. Those Not Fun At All Things that were slain sank into the Underworld and became the Nevercute, while the really annoyed ones who didn't die were banished, becoming the Sore Losers (or "You'll See"). The fact that the Goddesses could not actually directly participate in the war, but could offer helpful advice and encouragement form the sidelines led to their current title "the Helping Goddess". Others had less polite terms for them, but they chose to ignore them.

After the Prime Ordeal War the Helping Goddesses pretty much had it all. They got to move into Heaven, get all the cool toys and, of course, all their cute friends and happy bishounens to help them with their duties. For a long time (but not an infinity, because they were out of those) everything was happy and flowers and rainbows.

Then the Bishounens started to brood and the Catgirls started getting bitchy and the Magical Girls were all "we're oppressed and also want cookies!" and everyone expected the Helping Goddesses to fix everything. After all, it was their job to look after the Ultimate System. So what if some Bishounen had summarily leveled a mountain. Surely the Helping Goddesses could just fix the damage. Yes the Catgirls had stolen all the Celesital Wine and gotten everyone in the Realm drunk, but the Helping Goddesses could just make the crops grow despite nobody having actually, ya know, planted them. Fixing problems was what the Helping Goddesses were FOR, wasn't it?

So the Goddesses got together and talked about this and came to the conclusion that the problem was the Bishounen. The Helping Goddesses had just made them too powerful. I mean, certainly they were cute and they all had such nice hair and they wrote you little poems and Unconquered Orichalcum Shark Master of the Whispering Underworld had the tightest little ass... but the Helping Goddesses just couldn't say no to them. They had created Exalted even more cute then they were, and the sheer power of the Bishounen's Moe was threatening the Ultimate System itself!

So obviously the problem was the Bishounens. Clapping themselves on the back and saying how brilliant and smart (and cute!) they all were the Goddesses got together and decided to overthrow the Bishounens. And the Catgirls while they were at it. Little harridans always making time with THEIR BIS... ahem. Yes. Anyway, suffice it to say things went along after that. The Helping Goddesses retreated to Heaven (mainly because the Magical Girls ahd taken this "kill all other exalts" thing a little too seriously) where they remain to this day. Overseeing Creation. Maintaining the Ultimate System. Looking down wistfully at the world below and wondering if maybe... just maybe... there is some worthy person down there...

Nah.

Helping Goddess Factions

The Helping Goddesses are divided into many overlapping factions on various political issues. Many of these revolve around what operating system the Ultimate System should be using (along with other HG artifacts). They also at least vaguely related to the question of the rule of the Magical Girls vs. the Bishonen, but really, who cares about that when you could be fighting for OS-3?

BronzeSoft Faction

The BronzeSoft Faction, headed by Goddess First Class Ketchup Gates (a Moderator), seeks to maintain the status quo. The BronzeSoft OS, periodically upgraded, has been standard in Heaven's systems for centuries with vast success. (All rumors connecting the Contagion to the Y2K bug are firmly denied.) It may crash a lot and eats memory like a pig, but all the applications are written for it. Sure, the Neo-Empress may be a brutal tyrant, but do you really want the Catgirls to turn all of creation into a giant litter box? They backed the decision to overthrow the Bishonens and Catgirls and stand by their decision. The conservative faction, full of grumpy old women who feel no one appreciates the sacrifices they made. Why in their day, EVERY DIRECTION IN THE CELESTIAL CITY WAS UPHILL AND THEY LIKED IT.

Open GoldSource Movement

The Open GoldSource Movement wants greater freedom to reprogram the Ultimate System and to create new protocols. They've created a group of potential OSes all freely available to anyone who wants to take them and tinker with them. If they were allowed to go in and redo the Ultimate System, everyone would be able to freely personalize their protocols and it would be much easier to find permanent bug fixes.

It remains unclear how exactly they plan for Creation to survive the period in which the Ultimate System was being reprogrammed and all the bugs worked out of these experimental OSes.

The Open GoldSource Movement also supports restoring the Bishonens to rule of Creation, subject to suitable monitoring by Heaven, of course. Quite clearly the Magical Girls just aren't hacking it.

The OGSM has no single leader; it is decentralized by nature, and at times, competes against itself as much as against the BronzeSoft faction.

The Silver Faction

Led by Goddess First Class Wilhelmina Jena Brianna, the Silver Faction insists on the coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1 (the one being gold coins). Despite repeated loud angry speeches about how Creation is being crucified on a Cross of Gold, Wilhelmina still has yet to clearly explain to most Helping Goddesses why exactly this is important. However, this support for non-Jade currencies has led the Silver Faction to promote various Barbarian groups who are stuck using silver, copper, and gold coinage, and to support the Moonsilver-using Catgirls.

The Kill Bishie Faction

For millenia, this small group has been focused on killing one single Bishonen over and over, every time he reincarnates. No one is sure why he is so important or why they are so angry with him, but they've been doing a great job so far. Their leader operates under a seemingly permanent disguise 'The Widowed Bride'.

Project EVA

The members of Project EVA are disatisfied with the world. They believe humanity has hit a deadend, unable to advance due to the presence of so many superior beings around it--Exalts, Gods, Alien Princesses, etc. Ever since the Second Impact (the Contagion), humanity has stagnated, unable to advance, the mere pawns of others. Only if humanity is forced up the chain of Moe can humanity survive the Age of Lessened Cuteness and achieve its rightful place (thus freeing the Helping Goddesses to kick back and relax, letting humanity do the hard work, coincidentally enough). It remains unclear how Goddess First Class Glinda Ikari plans to make this transition come to pass, but rumors whisper of warstriders constructed out of the body of one of the Not Fun at All, and Protocol-Spawned Children to pilot them... But only rumors, or they all would have been executed long ago. But where there's smoke, there's usually smoke elementals...

Jobs

The Helping Goddesses are not like other Exalts. They do not have Castes. No Helping Goddess is any more or less important in the grand scheme of the Ultimate System then any other (at least, in theory). Instead when they were created each Goddess was given a Job. A particular part of the Ultimate System that they were especially well suited to dealing with. This Job also determines their primary user interface. It is through this interface that most others identify the Goddess.

Moderators

It is well known that at least 10% of all combat in Heaven happens over office supplies. There is only so much bandwidth and thus so much office supplies. Yet, consumption of such always outraces supply. Thus, entire heavenly wars have begun when one office raided another to get precious staples, paperclips, toner, and especially highlighters.

Thus it was that the Office of Glacier Management was about to launch a lightning raid on the better funded Ministry of Downs Maintenance to make off with crucially needed paper and toner. Without it, the biannual report on North Western Glacier Depth Change could not be finished. As they had to copy the last report, since most of the North Western Glaciers had long ago ceased to exist during the loss of territory in the Contagion. There were plenty of ICEBERGS in the Northwest, but those were useless to GLACIER managers. And inferior to glaciers in every way. Were they to admit this, however, their budget, already parlous, would be further cut.

Yuugi Vi was in the process of picking the back door lock when a shadow fell over the eight goddesses. Two wings, a feminine body (more so than their own pudgy forms), and most importantly, a very, very large Grimcleaver which glowed silver.

They turned and saw themselves confronted by Second Class, Restricted Goddess Urd, a Moderator from the Helping Goddess Office. "You appear to be lost," she said with her warm sultry voice. "The Office of Glacier Management is five stories up and 200 yards that way." She gestured down the hallway with her axe. "I can guide you if you need a reminder."

"We can take her," Yuugi Vi urged the others, who were panicking. "There's only one of..."

SWISH. *Shine of Starmetal*

Suddenly, there was a shower of long green hair, and Yuugi Vi, touching her head, found herself bald.

"Oops, I slipped," Urd said, twirling her axe. "Happens when I get bored."

"We can take her to the mall, yes, the mall, I'm sure she needs to relax," Yuugi babbled.

The others grabbed her and ran.

Occasionally the discussions about how to deal with a particular subject in Heaven can get quite heated. So heated that the use of tactical implosion bows and warstriders can come in. The Job of the Moderators is to keep this in check. They keep peace within the Ultimate System. They prevent chaos. Mainly they do this via the expedient method of beating you into a bloody pulp and throwing you out of heaven to plummet to the earth below and never letting you back in. This process is called 'banning'. The Moderators are also tasked with 'banning' certain mortals and Exalts whose actions are threatening the stability of the Ultimate System, meaning that they are horribly overworked.

Job Favored Abilities : Athletics, Dodge, Endurance, Melee, Sail

Job Anima Power : Divine Authority: By burning 10 motes, the Moderator reinforces her authority; anyone wishing to oppose her will must make a Conviction check once per scene to do so.

Tech Support

Keiichi was dreaming of Belldandy in a manner not really suitable for a family game...oh wait, this isn't a family game. However, you won't get the naughty details, as he was about to be interrupted.

Most precisely, he was woken up by a huge fire-breathing hound breaking through the window of his bedroom. He woke up, time seeming to slow down as the creature jumped onto his bed and drew breath to fry him.

But then the silvery light came through the doorway and he heard a friendly voice. "Nice doggy, come get a bone." It was First Class Goddess Belldandy, now bound to him by a WISH he'd made to have a goddess like her stay with him forever. Since there were no backup copies of her, she'd gotten the job.

The dog ran over to her, slobbering little bits of fire everywhere and charring the bedsheets and carpet. Soon, it was eating out of her hand and bouncing around her friskily.

Meanwhile, Keiichi rolled out of bed and staggered over to the closet; he'd slept too late anyway.

Belldandy said, smiling, "You're such a nice little puppy. Who sent you to murder my boyfriend?"

The dog barked as Keiichi dithered over his choice of tunics. Tiny words in stylized US-script appeared over it. 'First Class Goddess Faye Valentine is jealous of your beauty and grace and tired of being overworked because you're down here with your mortal lover instead of in Heaven doing her work for her. So she sent me to eat him.'

Belldandy sighed. "Keiichi, honey, does everyone try to kill each other's lovers at your job?"

"Actually, we're usually trying to murder each other directly to take each other's job," he said. Working for the Imperial Bureaucracy could get pretty dangerous. "How's this blue tunic?"

Belldandy tapped her cheek. This might be someone's clever bluff, trying to pin the blame for Keiichi's death on Faye. Surely Faye wouldn't really randomly kill someone she'd never met just to get me to go back to work, Belldandy thought. Or at least, she'd be more subtle. "You've never met Faye, have you, honey? And it looks good on you."

"Is she the one who looks like a whore?" he asked, now donning the tunic.

"That describes a lot of people, dear," Belldandy said. "She has short hair and wears skimpy yellow clothing."

"I think I accidentally sucker-punched her and then knocked her into the punchbowl at your last office party," Keiichi said. "Why do you ask?"

Oh dear, Belldandy thought. This was going to be awkward. Maybe this is why my request to have Keiichi awarded a Bishonen shard hasn't gone through yet. She never did like office politics.

The Ultimate System does not exist in a vaccuum. No matter how much the Helping Goddesses want the programs to run smoothy and the world to be wonderful it still requires input from the outside. The Helping Goddesses are user interface machines and they need input to function properly. Input that will help guide them. Input that will tell them what needs doing. Input that will tell them how pretty they are and hold their hands on the beach and... right. Input. It is the Job of Tech Support to seek out this input and process it into the Ultimate System. This is mainly accomplished through the Worship Initiated System Help protocal or "W.I.S.H." The amount of times this protocal is envoked in a day means that Tech Support is horribly overworked.

Job Favored Abilities : Linguistics, Performance, Presence, Socialize, Thrown

Job Anima Power : Aura of Assistance: By burning 10 motes, the Tech Supporter radiates an aura 10* Moe yards in radius. Within that radius, anyone friendly to the Goddess gains one bonus die to all actions.

De-Buggers

Warning: City of Windbloom DESTROYED

Skuld sighed. NOT AGAIN. She quickly typed in a search.

Status: City of Windbloom Intact

Status: City of Windbloom DESTROYED

Skuld banged her head against the wall. NOT AGAIN.

RESTORE WINDBLOOM.CIT

PROCESSING

BACKUP FILE IS CORRUPTED WITH THREE CLASS III BUGS. Continue(Y/N)?

N

Skuld grimaced and picked up her hammer. It was time to relieve some stress.

Even now there are probably far more problems that occur in the Ultimate System then the Helping Goddesses would like to admit. The Job of the (horribly overworked) De-Buggers is to find these problems and fix them. For some reason this always either involves a giant kung fu battle, a long heart-breaking romance or occasionally both, at the same time. Nobody really likes the De-Buggers. They deal with bugs so often they start going a little off-programs themselves.

Job Favored Abilities : Brawl, Ride, Occult, Stealth, Survival

Job Anima Power : Trouble Sense: By burning 10 motes, the De-Bugger can identify all bugs in the system within visual range automatically and try to sense any within Moe miles of her.

Archivists

Third Class, Restricted Goddess Nenene shook Second Class Goddess Yomiko's shoulders gently. "Shouldn't we get back to work?"

Second Class, Restricted Goddess Yomiko pushed her glasses back up her nose. "Reading IS my work. And I'm on my Denunciation of Lin Baio break, anyway."

"I'm pretty sure that ended four cycles ago," Nenene said nervously.

"Joker-sama won't be around to check up on us for another three cycles," Yomiko said, stretching. "But you can always check our Status Monitor if you're bored."

A quick check showed that they'd recived 732 requests for information in the last four cycles. "We're screwed!" Nenene said, showing the monitor to Yomiko.

"Well, in that case, we'll never catch up, so we might as well enjoy our last hours alive. I think I can finish this before Joker-sama finds us and kills us," Yomiko said pleasantly.

Nenene tried to figure out if 4 hours was enough time to hack the Ultimate System and get herself reassigned to a different mentor.

The heart of the Ultimate System is information. The entire system runs on it. Without the right information, it would all break down. It is the Job of the Archivists to keep track of all this information and make certain it gets to who needs it and, just as importantly, doesn't get to who doesn't need it. If you ever need an answer, ask an Archivist. Of course since everyone knows this the Archivists are horribly overworked. Archivists are frequently found in Creation looking for "lost data" that was most certainly not misplaced merely to give them excuse for a few days away from all those GOD DAMN QUESTIONS!

Job Favored Abilities : Archery, Awareness, Investigation, Larceny, Lore,

Job Anima Power : By burning ten motes, the Archivist reduces the difficulty of any information seeking tasks for one scene by one.

Hard Ware

Second Class, Restricted Goddess Nancy wasn't enthusiastic about burning down the old mill. It had stood for centuries, and there were so many memories bound up in it.

Unfortunately, it had been scheduled to burn down three nights go, slaying a mad thaumaturgist who had planned to unleash a plague of Agathas upon the land in order to try to get everyone in the town killed as a result. Its failure to burn might be the result of a glitch or it might be sabotage by something from outside Fate--Alien Princesses, Demons, Ghosts, Hippies...All she could do was wait for him to go back to his rite and try to kill him before he finished. This was the last possible night before it would be too late.

Then the smell of grapes drifted her way in the wind, and she almost lost herself in an elaborate flashback to relaxing in a villa on the southern coast of the Realm, where she'd shared wine and carnal relations with a lover.

Almost.

The problem was that you normally didn't find grapes growing in the middle of winter in the NORTH.

Which meant...

She flicked a fan out of her sleeve into her hands, even as the first of the giant vaguely humanoid grape bunch demons came through the wall. The metal fan cut across its soft flesh, and now she was covered in grape juice as it screamed and died. She activated her intangibility protocol and leaped up through the ceiling through a room, a wall, another room, and a floor, coming down in the middle of the grape people, even as she activated a counterattack protocol.

Her fans flashed as they all tried to grab her and rip her apart.

She felt her body move without conscious control, fans flashing across soft, bulbous purple bodies. There was screaming everywhere, and when the grape juice cleared out of her eyes, she was surrounded by a dozen dead Grape People, first Clique children of the second Clique demon, Dionysius. At least he was unlikely to show up.

Suddenly, she felt her head swim like she'd drunk an entire gallon of vodka again. She had just enough presence of mind to run her purging protocol; the alcohol was deleted from her records in the Ultimate System, though she'd be in the bathroom ALL NIGHT now.

And there he was in all his vine-clad glory, the mostly naked Dionysius, child of Zeus, drunk and horny as usual.

I HATE DEMONS, she thought. Time to send Yomiko an emergency US-Mail and to pray she wasn't curled up somewhere reading a book...

I'm screwed, Nancy concluded. SO SCREWED.

The Ultimate System is a complex process. It is a network of information being gathered from all over creation, processed by Goddesses and then sent back to Creation to tell it what shape its supposed to be in at the momemt. That's why its called Creation, after all, since it is constantly being recreated every moment. But sometimes the hard, solid bits of Creation are not responding to the Ultimate System. Either they refuse to send or recieve data and the entire processes starts to break down. The Job of the Hard Ware (a corruption of the word "war") is to fix these broken bits of Creation and make certain everything goes smoothly. Ideally they have protocols and methods of repairing the connection and everything will work out fine. Of course, since they are so horribly overworked they mainly just think the best solution to these kind of things is daiklaives.

Job Favored Abilities : Bureaucracy, Craft, Medicine, Marital Arts, Resistance

Job Anima Power : By burning ten motes, she generates a repair zone with a radius of her Moe*10 yards, in which any effort to 'fix' things gains a bonus die for a scene. (This can range from fixing a warstrider to healing a broken heart).

Living in the Celestial City, Neo-Yu-Shan

It is important to understand that everything in Neo-Yu-Shan was created and is sustained by the Ultimate System. Any inhabitant of Neo-Yu-Shan may tap into the system in order to make changes in the environment or to generate things they want. However, access for this purpose is limited according to how much Bandwidth one has accumulated. Bandwidth is generated by the prayers of the faithful in Creation and by the sacred rites they perform. Most of it is used by the Ultimate System to maintain the stability of Creation and Neo-Yu-Shan. The rest is either saved for emergencies or paid as salaries to the employed gods and goddesses. Those who have personal cults can accumulate Bandwidth directly. (Gods and Goddesses resident in Yu-Shan who are unemployed gain a trickle of Bandwidth from the general worship of the gods and can live as if they had Goddess Status 1).

One gig of Bandwidth is sufficient to craft goods equal to a Resources 3 purchase. Such goods must be made out of mundane materials, but will appear to be of very excellent quality. In order to do so, one must either possess the Spirit Charm Forge Bandwidth, or an appropriate Exalted Charm. (For Helping Goddesses, Forge Bandwidth is a Craft charm which requires Essence 2, Craft 4. Most other kinds of Exalts have forgotten their equivalent charms.) With the right charms and enough Bandwidth, more valuable goods can be crafted as well.

It is fairly easy to claim housing in the abandoned areas, but dangerous; most prefer to cling to the occupied areas and pay some of their Bandwidth as rent.

Ultimate System Protocols

What other Exalts call 'Charms', Helping Goddesses think of as System Protocols, which allow them to call on the Ultimate System to make changes in reality. While the Helping Goddesses have several broadly useful basic protocols, centuries of hacking, patching, bugs, and poorly done repairs have left the Helping Goddesses with a rather...quirky...set of protocols to call on beyond the most basic ones. Many were originally developed to deal with highly specific occasions which almost never recur, but thanks to someone getting a commendation for their cleverness, now everyone is expected to find new uses for them.

But they're not bitter.

The Basic Ultimate System Protocols

Each Ability USP tree begins with several base charms the others build off. This is followed by a string of oddball abilities related to the Ability, if sometimes only tangentially. (Medicine charms for determining who someone last had sex with, Survival charms for shaping bushes into arboreal sculptures, Melee charms for shaving people, etc.)

(Substitute the appropriate Ability for (Attribute) in each charm tree.)

• Basic (Ability) Protocol 1/1
  • Expert (Ability) Protocol 2/2
    • Companion (Ability) Protocol 3/3
      • Master (Ability) Protocol 4/4

(Charm Types as per charm guide on main Kawaii Edition Page)

Basic (Ability) Protocol

• Cost: 1 mote / die
• Duration: Instant
• Type: Subtle/Mental
• Minimum Ability: 1
• Minimum Essence: 1
• Prerequisite Charms: None

Add one die for every mote spent to any pool of this Ability, to a maximum of the Helping Goddess' Essence.

Expert (Ability) Protocol

• Cost: 2 motes / -1 TN
• Duration: Instant
• Type: Subtle/Mental
• Minimum Ability: 2
• Minimum Essence: 2
• Prerequisite Charms: Basic (Ability) Protocol

The Helping Goddess can lower the TN of an action done by her by 1 for every two motes to a limit of 4.

Companion (Ability) Protocol

• Cost: 3 motes / -1 TN
• Duration: Instant
• Type: Re-Fun
• Minimum Ability: 3
• Minimum Essence: 3
• Prerequisite Charms: Expert (Ability) Protocol

The Helping Goddess can lower the TN of an action done by anyone of her chosing by 1 for every two motes to a limit of 4. This must be used before the dice are actually rolled.

Master (Ability) Protocol

• Cost: 4 motes / - 1 TN
• Duration: One Scene
• Type: Speech
• Minimum Ability: 4
• Minimum Essence: 4
• Prerequisite Charms: Companion (Ability) Protocol

The Helping Goddess lowers her Target Numbers with this Ability by 1 for every four motes she spends, to a limit of 4, for the entire scene.

The remaining Protocols of a given tree expand on this base capacity in various quirky ways.

Moderators

• Helping Goddess Athletics
• Helping Goddess Dodge
• Helping Goddess Endurance
• Helping Goddess Melee
• Helping Goddess Sail

Tech Support

• Helping Goddess Linguistics
• Helping Goddess Performance
• Helping Goddess Presence
• Helping Goddess Socialize
• Helping Goddess Thrown

De-Buggers

• Helping Goddess Brawl
• Helping Goddess Ride
• Helping Goddess Occult
• Helping Goddess Stealth
• Helping Goddess Survival

Archivists

• Helping Goddess Archery
• Helping Goddess Awareness
• Helping Goddess Investigation
• Helping Goddess Larceny
• Helping Goddess Lore

Hard Ware

• Helping Goddess Bureaucracy
• Helping Goddess Craft
• Helping Goddess Medicine
• Helping Goddess Marital Arts
• Helping Goddess Resistance

Reality Assembly Language Protocol Creation

Sufficiently adept Helping Goddesses learn Reality Assembly Language and begin creating new protocols to deal more flexibly with situations. Such protocols, however, are risky, as they haven't been safety tested to remove all danger of malfunction (or all utility), and sometimes may have unexpected consequences. They also tend to annoy the Ultimate System's security systems, which may choose to punish you for unauthorized hacking.

RALPs are used for three major purposes:

1) Disguises 2) Cheat Codes 3) Background Programs ('Curses' and 'Blessings')

Disguises

One of the first things a good Helping Goddess interested in RAL learns is how to rewrite the fabric of reality so you are perceived as something you are not. This can be done at two levels, one easy, one difficult.

The easy way is to write in an identity which previously did not exist, but is sufficiently generic to easily add, such as becoming Mace the Realm Soldier Grunt or Aaaaila the Peasant Girl. This requires the following steps:

1. Plan: Write out a character sketch of information on the person which people will 'know' about them. Roll Perception + Performance. You must score at least one success; this total is the difficulty of the Perception + Investigation roll to figure out there are holes in your 'identity', should someone care enough to look. On a failure, you may try again at +1 difficulty. Should you botch, even the most casual of investigations will poke holes in your disguise.
2. Design: You must now put together the actual protocol code which will be processed by the Ultimate System. This requires an Intelligence + Craft (Reality Assembly Language) check, difficulty 1. Should you fail, you can try again, raising the difficulty by 1. Should you botch, your disguise will be blatantly obvious to everyone, and you probably should go back to step 1.
3. Approval: Your project must be approved. This requires first a Wits + Linguistics (+ Old Realm speciality if any), difficulty 3 check to write in sufficiently high toned language, followed by Cha + Bureaucracy + extra successes from the previous roll, difficulty 3, to get it approved. On a failure, you may reroll the check, but the difficulty rises by 2. Should you fail a second time, you must return to stage 1. On a botch, your application is shot down and you may not apply for further disguises for a number of days equal to the number of dice you rolled.
4. Implementation: Now you must enter and run your Disguise Protocol. Wits + Craft (Reality Assembly Language) check, difficulty 1. Each extra success can be used to install cheat codes (see below) or to add to the duration of the fake identity on the Protocol Duration Table. On a failure, you may try again, raising the difficulty by 1. A botch at this stage causes the Helping Goddess' own identity to be overwritten by the disguise for a number of hours equal to the number of dice rolled to make the check.

The second, harder one, is a disguise as someone of significance. Take the procedure above, but add the following significance difficulty modifier to the difficulty of each roll:

• 1: A Moe 1 mortal of fair amount of power and influence (the head of a guild in a major city, the king's main advisor, etc.)
• 2: A Moe 1 mortal who rules something small, like a small port tributary of the realm.
• 3: A Moe 1 mortal who rules something significant (say, the Tri-Khan)
• 4: A Moe 2 being
• +1 for every level of Moe above 2.

Any attempt to pass as something above your own Moe level doubles the modifier.

Once you have created a disguise, it is bonded to you and you can flip between your true identity and the disguise as a reflexive action. This is best done in private unless you like blowing your cover.

You can only maintain up to your Moe worth of disguises.

Cheat Codes

When a Disguise is crafted, various cheat codes can be programmed into it, enabling you to gain special abilities while using it. These use up some of your implementation successes.

One Success Cheat Codes

• Area Knowledge: You gain the familiarity of a native with whatever area your disguise identity is native to.
• Cover Skills: While in the disguise, you may add 2 dice to an ability appropriate to the disguise; this cannot boost any ability over the max for your level of Moe.
• Language Mastery: You gain the ability to speak a language family normally unknown to you.
• Mask Status: When you spend peripheral essence, your disguise masks your anima sign until you reach the point of shining like the sun.
• Resources: For every success spent on this, your disguise has access to that level of mundane Resources.
• Specialty: You gain a 3 die specialty relevant to the disguise.

Two Success Cheat Codes

• Alter Virtue: You can raise or lower one of your virtues 2 points while using the disguise.
• Switch Anima: You can change your anima sign and anima to whatever you like.

Three Success Cheat Codes

• Alter Nature: You can change your nature to one more suitable for the disguise. People will sense the false nature, and you recover willpower for fufilling the fake or the true nature.
• Deflect Scrutiny: So long as all your actions remain in accordance with your disguise, the difficulty of all investigation attempts against you rises by your Moe.

Four Success Cheat Codes

• Aura of Trust: People tend to trust your disguise; lower the difficulty of any action related to trust by your Moe while in this disguise. This also hampers investigation of you by the same amount; this stacks with Deflect Scrutiny.
• Daredevil: Your disguise has a pool of stunt dice equal to your Moe which you can spend to boost your rolls when doing stunts. You can up to double your stunt dice with these dice. Once spent, they regenerate each sunrise.

Background Programs

Helping Goddesses with the right mad skills can re-program the Ultimate System to modify its treatment of some subset of Reality, in order to produce changes desired by the Goddess. These are commonly referred to as 'Blessings' (Beneficial) and 'Curses' (Injurious).

To create one, one must first define the Effect and Trigger conditions of the Background Program:

Background Program Effects

Blessings

• -1 TN to some action
• 1 WP gained whenever an action is done successfully
• 2 bonus dice to an action
• -1 Difficulty of an action (minimum of 1)
• +1 Resources for the duration of the blessing ("The Gift of Wealth")
• Render a couple fertile (or not fertile, if that's what they want)

Curses

• +1 TN to some action
• 1 WP lost whenever an action is failed
• 2 penalty dice to an action
• +1 Difficulty of an action
• -1 Resources for the duration of the blessing ("The Gift of Poverty")
• Render a couple fertile (or not fertile, if that's what they don't want)

Background Program Trigger

Typically, one sets a specific trigger for the curse and how often it goes off. This will effect how hard it is to create the program.

The wider the trigger, the harder it is to create the Program. This ranges from extremely narrow (difficulty 1, 'When confronted by Leviathan') to middling width (difficulty 3, 'when using the Melee ability') to very broad (difficulty 5, 'When in combat').

Then one picks how frequently the effect triggers:

• Once a Year: +1 difficulty
• Once a Season: +2 difficulty
• Once a Month: +3 difficulty
• Once a Day: +4 difficulty
• Once a Scene: +5 difficulty
• Every turn the trigger is satisified: +6 difficulty

Creating a Background Program

1. Plan: Choose the specific blessing and effect trigger you want, along with how frequently it triggers. You must then write out your formal design plan and projection of likely consequences. Roll Perception + Lore with a difficulty set by the trigger condition and its frequency. If you succeed, you have a good grasp of what this will do, and the Storyteller should point out some or all unintended consequences, depending on your degree of success. On a failure, you can procede, but the Storyteller is not obligated to inform you of any holes in your plan. Should you botch, all subsequent rolls in this process suffer a penalty equal to your Moe.
2. Design: You must now put together the actual protocol code which will be processed by the Ultimate System. This requires an Intelligence + Craft (Reality Assembly Language) check at the difficulty set by the trigger condition and its frequency of triggering. Should you fail, you can try again, raising the difficulty by 1. Should you botch, you made some massive error in your code, and your preliminary testing of it triggers an Ultimate System Backlash (see below).
3. Approval: Your project must be approved. This requires first a Wits + Linguistics (+ Old Realm speciality if any), difficulty (5 - 1/2 your Moe, round up) check to write in sufficiently high toned language, followed by Cha + Bureaucracy + extra successes from the previous roll, difficulty (2 + 1/2 the trigger/frequency difficulty), to get it approved. On a failure, you may reroll the check, but the difficulty rises by 2. Once the difficulty doubles, you get permanently shut down and you must return to stage 1. On a botch, your application is shot down and you may not apply for further Background Programs for a number of days equal to the number of dice you rolled.
4. Implementation: Now you must enter and run your Background Program, fixing any run-time bugs. Wits + Craft (Reality Assembly Language) check, difficulty set by the Trigger ConditionTheKawaiiEdition/Trigger Frequency. Each extra success can be used to increase the area of effect (see below) or to add to the duration of the fake identity on the Protocol Duration Table (see below). On a failure, you may try again, raising the difficulty by 1. A botch at this stage induces a potentially ugly Ultimate System Backlash. Wise Goddesses use Craft (Reality Assembly Language) Protocols to help here.

Area of Effect

• 1: 1 Moe 1 person
• 2: 10 Moe 1 people
• 3: 100 Moe 1 people
• 4: 1000 Moe 1 people
• Add +1 for every factor of 10
• People above Moe 1 must be added seperately; add their Moe above 1 to their group size, then add those successes to the ones for the Moe 1 people. (So 100 Moe 1 and 3 Moe 2 are 3 for the Moe 1 and (2 (Size) +1 (extra Moe) = 3 for the Moe 2 folk. Add 3 to 3 for a total of 6)

Protocol Duration Table

• 1: 1 day
• 2: 1 week
• 3: 1 month
• 4: 1 season
• 5: 1 year
• 6: 10 years
• 7: 100 years
• 8: 1000 years
• 9: 5000 years
• Multiply duration by 5 for each step up.

Ultimate System Backlash

The Ultimate System is remarkably stable, given how old it is and that it has never been rebooted. However, when Goddesses tinker with it, sometimes it may induce a local systems crash. The bigger the modification you were trying to make, the uglier it gets.

When something happens which indicates a backlash may happen, roll a number of dice equal to the difficulty of what you were doing. The more successes, the bigger the backlash, ranging from 1 success (your hair turns green) to 10+ successes (you turn into a copy of the Unconquered Sun and think you ARE him.) They typically harass and mutate the person who triggered the backlash. They wear off at a speed of one scene for every die rolled.

If you get 5 or more successes, it may be appropriate for the Storyteller to levy a reversed version of the Background Program you were trying to implement on you.

Character Creation

1. Pick your Job, as this determines your Job Abilities.
2. Attributes are divided into three groups--Physical, Social, and Mental. Pick one set as your Primary, one as Secondary, and one as Tertiary. You gain one free pip in every attribute, and then you get to divide 8, 6, and 4 pips respectively among your Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary categories.
3. Pick your Favored Abilities. You get 5 Job Abilities from your Job and can pick four non-Job Abilities to be Favored.
4. Spend your Ability Points. You get 35 ability points. You must put at least 1 in each of your Favored or Job abilities. You also must take at least Bureaucracy 1, Craft (Fate) 1, Linguistics (Old Realm) 1, Lore 2, Occult 2, Socialize 1, one combat ability at 2 and another at 1 (out of Martial Arts, Melee, Archery, Thrown, Brawl, and Dodge). (This can be covered in some cases by your Job or Favorted attributes, of course)
5. You get 15 points of Backgrounds; use the standard corebook versions unless stated below in the Crunch section. None may start above 3 unless you spend Bonus Points on it. It is wise, but not obligatory to take at least one pip each of Goddess Rank and Celestial Salary.
6. Magical Girls begin with one free pip in each Virtue. They may distribute 5 points among their Virtues. No virtue can go above three. Bonus points can raise them above this maximum.
7. Willpower is the sum of the Magical Girl's two highest virtues.
8. You get 12 charms; at least 6 must come from Favored or Caste Abilities.
9. Helping Goddesses may spend up to 15 Bonus Points to raise anything.
   1. Attribute: 4
   2. Ability: 2 (1 if Favored or Job)
   3. Background: 1 (2 if being raised over 3)
   4. Specialty: 1 (2 dice of specialty for 1 if connected to a Favored or Job Ability)
   5. Virtue: 3
   6. Willpower: 2
   7. Essence: 10
   8. Charms: 7 (5 if in Favored or Job Ability)
10. Compute Essence:
    1. Peripheral: (Essence * 6) + WP + (Sum of all Virtues)
    2. Personal: (Essence * 2) + WP

Crunch

Artifacts

Flying Disc

• Level: 3
• Attunement Cost: 10 motes or 2 motes/hour
• Powers:
  • Can fold in on itself to the size of a small hand fan.
  • Opens up into a flying platform with a hand rail, circular, large enough for two people. It flies at 50 miles an hour, shielding those on it from the resulting wind; they can use missiles with no penalty. It can also hover.

• • You can attune to it in order to use it continously, or you can fuel it with 2 motes an hour.

Flying discs look like huge metal circles with a hand rail when open and small metal fans when not.

Heavenly Comm Units

• Level: 2
• Attunement Cost: 5 motes
• Powers:
  • These usually come in the form of either small hand units or head-sets with goggles/tiny holo-projectors. They allow you to call up anyone else who has one and share audio and video and record any conversations. Higher level ones can often act as cameras also. You can also check your US-mail with them.

Helping Goddess Armor

• Level: 3
• Attunement Cost: 4 motes
• Powers:
  • It provides 6 Lethal, 6 Bashing Soak
  • It has no fatigue or mobility penalty.
  • It has big fluffy wings which enable the Helping Goddess to fly around at twice her normal ground movement. She gains +4 bonus dice in aerial combat.

Helping Goddess Armor is typically a breastplate of star metal with a matching helmet and big fluffy wings attached. The wings can be retracted when not in use.

Backgrounds

Artifacts

The artifacts of the Helping Goddesses are usually either made of Starmetal or else are minor artifacts forged out of Bandwidth. Most Helping Goddesses have easy access to a lot of petty artifacts and much less to higher level ones.

• 0: You have nothing. Either you're a Ronin or spendthrift!
• 1: You have two level 1 artifacts.
• 2: You have four pips of artifacts, up to level 2 at max.
• 3: You have six pips of artifacts, one of which can be level 3; the rest are level 2 or less.
• 4: You have eight pips of artifacts, one of which can be level 4; the rest are level 2 or less.
• 5: You have ten pips of artifacts, one of which can be level 5, one of which can be level 3, and the rest must be level 2 or less.

Celestial Moe Allotment

Some goddesses, in addition to a salary of Bandwidth, are given access to a Hearthstone of a Celestial Manse. The Manses proper are controlled, guarded, administered and the Moe divided by the Celestial Office of Moe. You just get the Hearthstone. You get a hearthstone equal to the pips invested; however, your Manse rating cannot exceed your Goddess Rank. Celestial Manses are very well defended, and you are in little danger of losing yours unless you are fired from your job.

Don't get fired.

Familiar

The familiar rules work as normal for Helping Goddesses. However, they also have access to Persocoms, which are basically artifact familiars, artificial spirit intelligences bound into little artifact doll bodies, which resemble cute little men or women. They usually can be used to call up people with Heavenly Comm Units or to link into the Ultimate System for whatever needs you have.

Goddess Rank

This determines your official employment status in Helping Goddess Society. It sets your housing allotment and pay.

• 0: You are unemployed, which probably means you're either a Ronin or else you really angered someone lately.
• 1: Goddess Third Class, Restricted. You have a Celestial Apartment, probably either with roommates or else you live in the Neo-Yu-Shan equivalent of a shoebox. Once you pay your rent, craft food for yourself, and ensure your clothing isn't ENTIRELY made up of hand-me-downs and rags, you have one gig of Bandwidth available at the end of the month.
• 2: Goddess Third Class. You have your very own Celestial Apartment all to yourself, and you can dress reasonably well and no longer struggle to pay your gondola, monorail, or cab fares to work. You generally can manage to save five gigs of Bandwidth a month. (Enough to make a Resource 4 purchase or 5 Resource 3 purchases).
• 3: Goddess Second Class, Restricted. You now have a little Celestial House to yourself with a little garden. You can afford to entertain people regularly and you travel around Neo-Yu-Shan with ease. You can typically save up around 25 gigs of Bandwidth a month (enough to make a Resource 5 purchase, 5 Resource 4, or 25 Resource 3). You can afford to have a few servants.
• 4: Goddess Second Class. You now have a fair-sized Celestial mansion with all the accoutrements--faerie lighting, fountains of wine, etc. You have a substantial staff of servants and people probably try to leech off you like mad. You can save 125 gigs of Bandwidth a month (enough to make 5 Resource 5 purchases, 25 Resource 4, or 125 Resource 3), although many at this level burn some of that bribing themselves some friends and allies.
• 5: Goddess First Class. You live in a huge palace or have several fair-sized mansions. You regularly throw huge parties and have hordes of hangers-on and servants. That 625 gigs of Bandwidth a month (enough to make 25 Resource 5 purchases, 125 Resource 4, or 625 Resource 3)will probably let you buy some gods this month, or utterly wreck mortal economies if you don't mind being arrested by Celestial Censors, anyway. But hey, you may well be able to buy a censor too.

Comments

Old Comments

Okay, Helping Goddesses are Go, I think! -- JohnBiles

You are a funny funny man. However, given that it is a game and all, I would suggest that Background Programs be called TSRs. -FlowsLikeBits

I'm not smart enough to understand what you mean. ^^;;; TSRs? Like the gaming company? --JohnBiles

It's a dual pun that I can get, yes it refers to the gaming company but it is also a programing term for programs that Terminate but Stay Resident, which kinda fits the computer theme, but might be to obscure. -- Blackedout

Ahh! Hmm, will think on that; it may be too obscure. Anyone else have an opinion? --JohnBiles

I, at least, knew what a TSR was on sight. Then again, I'm also getting my doctorate in computer science in a few weeks. So I don't count. By the way, congrats John - glad to hear there are more successful students out there. -- GreenLantern

Finishing my Degree = The Win! Soooo glad to be done. --JohnBiles

Congrats John! But how many people are doing doctorates around here??? Yeah, like Blackedout said, TSR was the old DOS name for Background Programs.(Unix calls them daemons. :) Microsoft now calls them "services" I think(how dull). ), so yeah, it could be to obscure. Sorry, I was tired. -FlowsLikeBits