Event Planning

Derek ignored the passage of time as he furiously recorded his ideas. To his surprise, the first time he paused to consider something, the translucent screen with words written in blood appeared, offering important instructions as to how to go about designing Paranormal Events. It included a list of minimum requirements to meet the definition of a "Paranormal Event," rules explaining how to use Paranormal Points to create Events, and a reminder that all Paranormal Events he designed had to be reasonably within the Domains his Savior could influence. He was grateful for the additional information.

As he worked, he discovered that if he wrote a question in his Brainstorming Log, the translucent screen would appear with an answer. It made the process a lot easier. There were things it wouldn't answer, though, such as, "What is the best Paranormal Event for my situation right now?" or "Does my contract with Deer Doctor Hyde have anything to do with my recent sense of unease?"

After several other unsuccessful questions, he concluded that it would only answer technical questions about the crafting of Paranormal Events. Still, that was plenty useful.

He ended up designing and scrapping a few different ideas for Paranormal Events. Some he liked enough that he planned to use them later -- for now, though, he didn't have enough Points to create them. 

His very limited Point budget made things difficult. Each event was defined by a series of rules that dictated what the event entailed, its range and the kill conditions. He could provide a synopsis describing the appearance of the Event's characters and motivations at the beginning for no cost, but if he wanted a specific detail to serve as anything more than flavor text, it needed to be included in one of the rules. The problem he ran into was the cost of each rule, as well as the extra fees for added details and range. It was far too easy to accidentally design an Event costing over 5,000 Points. 

What was worse, making an Event efficient in terms of soul and Point harvesting cost a lot of points. Extending the "range of a single instance of the kill condition" increased the cost more rapidly than anything else. He hadn't designed an Event like this, but if, for instance, he wanted to affect a whole town at the same time, it would cost 100,000 Points. It was ridiculously easy to design an event that accidentally had too wide of a range.

He decided to explore the definition of the "range of a single instance of the kill condition." What, exactly, would cause a kill condition to go beyond what the screen defined as affecting "one person at a time" to affecting "a room at a time," or more? As he fiddled with a few different Event ideas, he discovered that it was far more Point-efficient to create limited-range, traveling Events as opposed to stationary, wide-range ones. Of course, the two approaches could be combined, but that would be something to experiment with farther down the road. For now, his best bet would be to design a small- or negligible-range Event that could travel freely, would be difficult to undermine, and could harvest souls with maximum efficiency within its small range. 

Looking at his jotted-down ideas, he chose one that he rather liked and fleshed it out. He needed to keep it under 1,000 Points, but for this one, that shouldn't be too hard. The difficult part was the time left before his deadline. With only five and a half days until the end of his Apostleship's "trial period," he was anxious that he wouldn't be able to harvest enough souls in time.

With that in mind, he wrote a question in his Log, and the screen answered. He smiled. He wasn't limited to just one Paranormal Event in his first week. Assuming he could earn the Points quickly enough, he could set off a second, more powerful one and harvest souls from both in order to meet the minimum requirement. 

Still, demanding 1,000 souls in a week, when given only as many Points as starter funds? The test was absurd. Of course, he'd gone and made it more difficult for himself by taking too much time before getting into gear, and that hadn't helped at all. He was really wishing that he'd thought that through a little better to begin with. Instead of diligently fulfilling his duties the day before, he should have taken a sick day or something. Living up to his status as the Remington Heir meant nothing if he died before he could inherit anything.

Turning his attention back to the task at hand, he finalized the rules of his first Paranormal Event and took a deep breath, readying himself to submit it. Wait, how was he supposed to do that?

He asked about it in the Log.

Instead of a translucent screen appearing with an answer to his question, a swirl of black smoke with red sparks materialized in front of him and a new book emerged, hovering midair. It was much thinner than his Brainstorming Log. Oversized, bound in unshaven deerskin and splattered with chemical stains, this book had no title, yet it somehow exuded power. 

The front cover opened by itself, revealing a blank first page. 

He began to write.