Alright, I think I’ve finally gotten a handle on all of the substances that my Divine Nature provides me with, though not on all of the combinations that my users have come up with.
Red: People who take Red become easily angered, taking offense at almost anything. When moved to action, as they almost invariably are, they exhibit Godlike Strength, even if they are human to start with. Users lapse into deep slumber after Red use, report deep and relaxing sleep.
Note: No visible falloff as more people use it at once.
Note: Gods who use Red also grow stronger, Incredibly Dangerous
Blue: Humans who take Blue enter a contemplative mood, becoming morose and fixated on their own circumstances. It seems to prompt introspection and a certain sullen disposition. Resisting the urge to label it as a sadness potion. Blue users tend towards docility and uncommunicative silence.
Note: This may be my imagination, but Blue users seem better disposed towards me afterwards, and I think I have an extra insight into their thinking. Effect, if it exists, seems to persist for days to weeks.
Note: Gods using Blue show similar effect to mortals
Green: Green use prompts spurts of energy and action, with little planning or careful reason behind it. Users initiate projects, harangue listeners and generally whirl through their surroundings like a tornado. Exceptionally annoying.
Note: Green users often return for more green. Often catch them blending it with other substances.
Note: Gods less effected by Green than mortals.
Yellow: Yellow gives vitality and purposes to its users. Described to me as ‘the opposite of how it is when you know what you should do but you just don’t do it’. I am thinking of it as a willpower potion. Users reported feeling smarter, but I am unsure if they actually grow more intelligent, or that sensation is simply part of the effect.
Note: Yellow users invariably want more yellow. By far the most pleasant potion.
Note: Yellow works on Gods just as well as it does humans.
White: Users of White lapse into a paralytic state, then come to and act strangely for several hours, before losing all memory of their actions. During this time they refer to ‘entities’ a great deal, and speak in a strange doubled cadence.
Note: White ONLY works on Gods, fatal to humans.
Black: I use Black as a weapon, pitching users into a deep introspection which renders them extremely vulnerable to suggestion, as well as almost entirely ineffective. Black seems to turn the spirit in on itself, and test subjects reported deep insights after the fact, but had difficulty explaining them to me.
Note: Black does not actually allow me to control minds, resist temptation to use it thus, impossible to predict when/how it will fail
Note: Black deeply unpleasant feeling, chase with yellow or pink if I don’t want to lose a friend
Pink: Pink users enter orgiastic/catatonic state, drooling and moaning throughout their time affected. Describe experience as apex of their lives to date, seemingly a time of total pleasure. Users entirely blind/deaf to the world during this time.
Note: Users of Pink become, for want of a better word, addicted. Dangerous to deny them.
Note: Pink works on Gods, even those with Divine Toughness. A dangerous weapon if I ever need one.
Gold: The legendary Fountain of Youth. Gold makes my test subjects younger. It also removes their injuries, and the effects of illness. The downside is that they lose their memories, becoming younger in every sense of the word.
Note: Gold users typically deeply confused and disassociated. From their perspective they have just warped forward to this place and time.
Note: Only change that endures is Divine Exalation. A God aged back before their Process retains their powers, though they would not immediately know that.
Note: Certain wounds, those caused by Divine Strength 3, are unable to be unmade by Gold.
Grey: Grey negates the other potions effects, returning the users form and souls to whatever it would be without my powers action. It also induces searing pain.
Note: This works on currently active potions, not the effects of those potions which occurred in the past.
Note: Grey does not combine with any other potion, and in fact destroys them, no matter how diluted.
Sooo we know one person who should be all about that Gold. Haunter. What’s the memories of one person to extend the lifespan of thousands? And the shades can try to fill her back in on what she lost. This would be a huge step towards becoming the “shade puppet” that Preventer thinks she is though.
Less related: Haunter’s shades should put Indulger on a bodybuilder program. Presumably somewhere in there are trainers, doctors, and scientists that could make Indulger even more jacked than as is. My assumption is that Indulger follows some sort of prowrestler videotape lifting, with his healing letting him get close to what they look like even without steroids. Now imagine what he could do with a committee of exercise professionals specifically training him.
Gold: If the Fist finds out about it, they will definitely get some ideas. A lot depends on who found out. Lotus does not make the existence of Gold public, though, so it won’t be easy.
Indulger as bodybuilder: You are exactly correct in guessing how he originally got pumped up. His old wagon, with its various pro wrestling programs, also had a lot of footage of Tough Enough style programs, which showed him how he could get as huge as the guys on the screen.
My headcanon (which I guess is actual canon? Being an author is weird), is that he does get coaching from a few shades whenever he is lifting. They love the opportunity to get out of Haunter and help out, and some of them enjoy getting their gains vicariously through Dale.
I’ve considered, from time to time, doing a ‘day in the life’ series of updates, but it feels like TFD moves pretty slowly as it is, so I haven’t ever got around to it. Dale’s workouts would be one of the things that I showed if I ever did something like that though.
Caught up comments:
Finding a great story like this in all the rough online writing makes it all worth it. Thanks a ton Walter for putting this out there, I hope you realize how many people’s days you make better even if most don’t leave comments. I hope my past comments don’t come across as rude or demanding, I’m just glad to be along for the ride and to try to help out with my understanding. I apologize for not helping out with typos on older posts, I didn’t realize you get notified of them and commenting with more info out there is odd to me, I’ll try to help out on those moving forwards. I might try to do a reread in a couple months to hit the old ones for you also.
Feedback: (Take everything with a grain of salt, it’s far easier to critique than create)
The roughest part of this story are the typos, they seem to crop up when you are excited about a scene/action and unfortunately that’s when they hurt to read the most. They can really knock you out of the action when they are more than just a spelling error and create confusion. I know its rude to ask more of you, but just tossing the writing into a word processor and looking for red would help, as would you tossing a comment down here for people to reply with typos with.
One easy improvement would be some formatting love for the interspersed parts. Putting chat names in bold, letterheads in bold and underlines on these would really make them a lot nicer without any extra creative work.
This one might be really out there:
My only big creative feedback is that the world doesn’t really seem to be moving all together. I really enjoy getting the different first person views, and communications in the style they are but I think you might be using it as a crutch. My feel of the world is less that we are getting a view of a piece moving among many but that pieces only really move if we view it. Unless we get a glimpse of something from a chapter itself it doesn’t exist. Like we had to hear Pantheon POV of moving for them to move, when the main POV’s could’ve just felt the ripples or something. This leads me to feel like the world isn’t busy enough for how big it is, and that we either get all the information or none of it. I’d love some more indirect world building, have characters hearing tidbits of what Pantheon in America is doing with Prevailer and fists on defense, if they got revenge for Redo, if the decapitated head spies continue (Union destroying corpse heads?), and overall how the world should be boiling. The sword of damocles over the world is blind, with no Snitcher (even decimating to announce it), and inactive, there should be all kinds of shenanigans going on but it seems like the only thing happening is the Sunset army situation. All the different Union sections should be harassing/snatching for things they want that would’ve been blocked by Prevailer teleporting in. Zippering daggers into Pantheon or Regime processing for example?
I also want to throw in that Indulger has been one of the biggest 180s I’ve had on a character. I hated him in his first POV but he’s easily one my favorites now. He’s a fantastic combo of goofy but also “realistic” for what makes him that way.The post apocalyptic prowrestler is a fantastic character and absolutely hilarious. The ultrafight was a fantastic scene of him being in his element when no one else really was and “saving the day” with his skills (and the uniqueness of Prevailer’s mood).
Overall, thanks for the writing it’s a blast!
Hi RWabbit. I’d like to return the sentiment, nearly word for word. I hope that you realize that readers like you, who read through the story and leave feedback for me, are what keep me going. I have a little tally of readers that I can verify have read the whole story, and whenever I get to increment that tally it makes my day.
Re: Things going on,
A lot of what you are observing is down to how slowly the main characters timeline creeps along. I frequently want to deep dive into how they feel as they meet one NPC or other, and it sometimes feels like the antagonists are just caught in jelly. I try to keep up with them, as far as I can, with my Sunday updates and the occasional main story interlude, but the weakness that you point out remains.
There is a lot going on that we simply never hear about, wedded as we are to the story of Fourth Fist. As you surmise, things are heating up in Snitcher’s absence, particularly as the Union and Pantheon grow to believe in Prevailer’s current sloth as a dependable concept. These don’t, largely, bear on the story that I am telling, but I am occasionally tempted to set the camera free and just tell the story of a Regime/Pantheon conflict. It usually falls by the wayside along with the Haunter flashback episode, the day in the life episode, and some Zeus stuff I considered but never put down. It just feels like things go slowly enough with just our protags, and if I start doing tangeants we’ll never get anywhere.
I’m gratified that you came around on Indulger. He is the second most polarizing character in the team, by the feedback that I’ve gotten, and a substantial number of readers have either had their attitudes travel with you, or precisely the reverse. I have to confess that writing his sections are always pleasant for me.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you continue to do so.
Obligatory author beg: Please click on my topwebfiction link, and maybe post a review on webfictionguide? Tell your friends, like/comment/subsc-*dragged away by whatever shreds of dignity I have left*
Yeah, see? Mountain Dew. The flavors all add up. I’m onto you, lady! You can’t fool me with your de-carbonated swill!
Lotus can awaken gifts? Waaaaat?!
Now, on a more serious note… In my opinion, this chapter would have been better if told from the perspective of Hunter’s shadows after interviewing users of each of the drugs. Nothing here contains information that’s only available to Lotus (unlike the Death chapter)
Walter does mention in a comment that the Gold is secret. And Lotus’s suspicions about Blue are probably fairly secret too.
Don’t think your word processing related pun has gone unnoticed. 🙂
I was waiting to use that pun for an embarrassingly long time.