Meta Essence CYOA 53

Essence of the Pocket Dimensional Farm

●This essence links a pocket dimension housing a farm to your soul, granting you control over it and ability to travel to and from this pocket dimension as easy as you could walk through a doorway to another room.

●There is some open fields tilled and ready for planting, as well as fenced meadows for the farm animals. The farm contains a nice-sized farmhouse, a good sized barn, a chicken coop, a silo, a windmill, a covered well, as well as a good sized greenhouse.

●The pocket dimension is bordered by a tall fence, leading to looming forest, the border here can be crossed, but anyone that does, will quickly fall asleep and awaken back in either the farmhouse, or the outside world, depending on their preference at the time.

●The farmhouse contains chests that can hold a lot more inside than should fit in the space they occupy inside the house. There are tools for tilling the fields, watering them, cutting things down, and for building new additions. There is also a replenishing stock of different seasonal seeds in large bags, allowing you to pick and choose what you want to grow.

●The work with these tools is surprisingly light and easy, tilling several rows in just a single blow, or spreading a bag of seeds evenly to a tilled area with as little effort as tossing a handful of seeds out. Watering them comes just as easily, though placing down sprinklers onto the farm will remove the need to do this.

●The farm's produce tends to mature and be ready for harvesting in a very short time, from 4 to 7 days on average, with even longest plants taking just 14 days to reach full maturity. These will be initially of decent quality, but higher quality goods do pop up now and then, and as you gain experience farming, you'll quickly begin to pick up little things that improve the odds to get a better harvest, and will be able to aim for higher quality crops easily, or lower the quality on purpose to get a slightly lower quality harvest if you so desire.

●The barn and the chicken-coop will provide shelter and automated feeding for the animals there, initially presenting you with two cows, and four chickens. There is no need for bull or rooster to visit the farm, as new animals can be born periodically, if the animals are particularly happy, and there is still room. These animals will also grow to full maturity remarkably fast, one month being about the upper end of time it may take.

●You can store an impressive amount of produce indefinitely in stasis in the farmhouse, stored away in large chests, or stored in a fridge ready to be turned into a meal.

●You can import new seeds for new plants, or different animals onto the farm. The plants will initially grow slower than the farm's own produce, but still mature within 2 months time at most. Seeds gained from these harvests will contain the farm's power and mature as fast as seeds native to the farm would.

●Similarly, the animals placed onto the farm will take some time to adjust to the farm's conditions, but will eventually begin to produce goods in a similar manner to the initial cows and chickens.

●The farm will expand on its own over time if the Pocket Dimension Farm's owner wishes it was bigger, holding steady at the size the owner wants unless they feel they need a bigger farm, or end up feeling they can't take care of it all any more, at which point it can adjust to suit their wishes better.

●The Greenhouse on the farm is able to provide ideal growth environment for even rare exotic plants, allowing them to be grown in controlled manner. This will take the initial adjustment period for plants put in place in the greenhouse, but after that, they will produce faster, and more bountiful harvests for their owner. Even magical plants thrive in this environment, unless there's a divine-level interference, such as flowers only supposed to once in a century at some distant mountain top, because the Goddess of the world will it.

●Any plants or animal produce from the farm that is brought out will retain its quality, but any seeds will fail to grow as fast outside the farm as they would inside the said farm. They will retain a high resilience against spoiling, lasting a lot longer than usual goods, but any testing will prove them entirely natural, just particularly healthy examples.

●No tools can be removed from the farm, always left behind on the farm and stored away in a chest if the owner or any of their guests tries to leave with any of said tools still in their possession.

○There is no such restriction for containers to hold the products in however, and the farm can produce wooden crates or glass jars and bottles to store things in. These containers can be taken from the chests for this purpose and there will always be more as long as there's produce for them.

●While the farmhouse can be used as a place to stay, it is rather utilitarian, with a fair bit of space meant for storage, cooking meals for day's work, and resting for a time before getting back to work. It has running water and electricity, but no internet or television channels by default.

●The Pocket Dimensional Farm also comes with a shipping crate, which can be used to store things in a manner similar to the chests, holding a lot more inside than it would be apparent on the outside. Things placed into the shipping crate will be 'sold' once the lid is closed once more, and the owner will receive a sum of points, that can be conjured with a thought and a word in physical form, forming metal coins that can be used to acquire some goods and materials.

○Once the shipping crate has created enough points, usually enough food to feed at least 10 people properly, once, a catalogue of various materials and goods will appear in the farmhouse, that comes together with relatively simple order-forms to fill in to purchase these materials and goods. Once placed into the shipping crate and left there, the point total of the purchases will be deducted from the owner's account, and the goods will appear within an hour on a wooden pallet close to the shipping crate.

○It is also possible to add small tags found in a container strapped to the lid of the shipping crate to the products placed into it, to mark them waiting for delivery to the world outside the farm. The owner can use a second, delivery tag in the outside world, to have the goods appear at a designated location close to him by ripping the delivery tag in two, and stepping away from the spot. The goods tagged for delivery will appear at the location the tag was torn at on top of wooden pallets after the space is clear, or 10 seconds have passed.

○(Optionally) Once enough goods have been shipped and some purchases made, it is possible to construct some additional structures to house farm-hands or maids to help out around the farm. Once such a building has been set up, another magazine will appear, with a few possible options changing practically daily, allowing the farmer to look for a suitable farm-hand or maid to help out with the tasks on the farm.

■These workers will be hard-working and loyal, but respond to the way they are treated, and if feeling abused and mistreated are capable of quitting and leaving, though new ones can still be hired. Workers improve over time and practice however, so losing a well-trained one can set back productivity a fair bit.

■These workers do expect to get paid, as well as fed and housed, so they require a place of their own, some food from the production or bought with points, and an occasional bit of points paid to them. This amount is rather small by comparison to what the farm can produce, but it can add up.

●The Pocket Dimensional Farm can be changed with some effort and the materials to do so. Constructing new buildings like sheds larger on the inside than the outside, additional barns, or chicken-coops, or small houses for visitors or workers for the fields can be made, with the farm providing tools necessary to carry out the tasks, but the materials need to be acquired either from outside, or through the shipping crate.

○Simply digging up a large pond and letting some heavy rains fill it will not take much in terms of materials, just tools and some effort. Constructing proper structures requires wood, metals, bricks and mortar, or whatever else materials are going to be used in the construction. Some materials can be substituted easily by a small consumption of points, providing things like wiring, better insulation, missing glass panels for windows, and so on.

Essence of the Proof and Paperwork

●This essence tastes of stale coffee, headache medicine, and tears.

●You gain an uncanny ability to produce any necessary paperwork or evidence to argue your case if someone attempts to accuse you of something you have not done. It also allows you to provide body-cam footage as if you were wearing a device the entire time, said device appearing on you under a subtle 'notice me not' effect that wears out as soon as you point at it.

●This allows you to confront any accusations of wrong-doing on your part, someone trying to claim any of your property as theirs in a fraudulent manner, or attempting to defraud your account, or anything such. It will also help dealing with irate people who yell for police and then proceed to make accusations without giving you a chance to defend yourself normally.

●This essence will NOT help you if you are actually guilty of the crime you are accused of, if you steal a car, it will not create false paperwork or falsified records of you owning it, or any sort of body-camera footage of a trade that did not take place. It only helps you when you are innocent, and defending yourself.

●This will also help you quote exact bits of law as necessary, and know what you need to do in order to defend yourself, what not to do, and how you can slap a counter-suit against anyone who would try and sue you for something you never did actually do.

●It is particularly effective on slapping down troublesome HOAs, crazy Karens, and Identity Theft matters, as well as proving your ownership of various properties/vehicles, etc.

●The paperwork created this way are real copies of the original documents, if the real documents are demanded, you can produce them as well, but doing so is more risky than producing the copies as it cannot replace lost original documents if you have handed them away.

●This essence is only as reliable as the local law enforcement, it will provide you with all the proof you may need to slap down on accusations, but it cannot protect you if the police force is corrupt, if you are slandered on social media you have proof to prove it a lie, but there may still be people that distrust such proof, and a judge or jury unwilling to believe mountain of evidence against the accuser may still lay down a guilty judgment despite innocence.

○Optionally, you may invoke an 'Act of God' once a year with this essence, that will slap karmic revenge against any accusers and those enabling and supporting them, according to their efforts, cause the evidence to release out in the wild, and ruin their reputation and lives instead, while possibly leading to another judge declaring previous sentence invalid on the spot.

Essence of the Tactical Squad

●This essence carries the taste of gunpowder, blood, and a jolt of adrenaline a moment after consumption.

●You gain the ability to get an aerial overhead view of an area, along with an ability to see down at individual levels of a building, an overhead view as if the roof and any above floors were missing when you focus on a particular level. You can quickly perceive neutral, friendly, and hostile actors present in a square area roughly 2 miles by 2 miles in size, rising up as high as necessary to reach the tallest rooftop in that area if needed.

○You must be within this same area, though you can remain at the very edge of said area and retain connection. Removing yourself from the area will cause this awareness to collapse immediately.

○Once you've had some practice, you will be able to step outside of the viewed zone, but will still need to remain relatively close to its border. This distance can be expanded further along over time, but it will take at least 1 week of active use to activate this from within half a mile outside of the zone, and will increase by roughly half a mile every 2 weeks since, reaching a limit of 10 miles away, leaving your maximum range a zone 10 to 12 miles away from your location. This is a soft-cap, and you may find a way to overcome it, eventually, but it will not be fast, nor easy.

●You gain the ability to summon a small squad of vat-grown soldiers, completely loyal and following your commands. They start off with basic training and instincts, but as they survive longer they will get better at it, and learn to improvise to carry out your orders better.

○Any soldiers of yours that are killed are replaced by fresh vat-grown soldiers the next day, but they start fresh and need to learn the ropes. Thankfully any surviving experienced soldiers can help accelerate their growth up to roughly three-quarters their own level of expertise, after which they will have to catch up at a normal pace.

●You begin with being able to summon up to 3 such soldiers at once, and can hold a total of '12' of them in your mental barracks, rotating between them as you see fit. With practice and using this ability more often, you will eventually be able to increase squad size, one by one, for a soft cap of 10 squad members after a year of frequent use, or 2-4 years of occasional use of this power. You barracks will likewise improve over time to hold a total of 40 soldiers at ready.

○Each of these soldiers can be assigned the particular weapon type they specialize in during creation, or at the latest when they are first summoned. They cannot change this weapon type without undergoing a return to the vat, and this process will take 72 hours, and will wipe away any experience they have at handling their old weapon type, but will not grant anything beyond the basics with a new weapon type, so it is generally ill-advised to try and re-specialize a vat-grown soldier afterwards.

○Optionally, you can choose how each of your vat-grown soldiers looks when they are first created. You can alter these looks later by assigning a soldier to undergo such a change, which will return them to a vat to alter said looks, but this will make them unavailable for 48 hours, and may result in small temporary deterioration in their skills, needing to relearn muscle memory and adjust to changes in physique.

●When summoned, you can issue your soldiers commands using the mental map you have of the area, the overhead view, and run simulations of possible outcomes, including estimations of how enemy forces might react, up to 5 seconds into the future. When you are satisfied, you can issue mental orders that will be immediately carried out. While planning your moves and doing simulations to test these possibilities, time stands still to everyone else, allowing you to plan your moves carefully. You can also allow the squads to move with rough outline of a plan and only focus to issue specific orders when they are close to their enemies.

○These soldiers can arrive close to you (roughly 30 meters or 100 feet away at most), or alternatively at your chosen spot at the edge of said zone, within 100 feet of the said edge.

■Optionally, you can summon the squad to deploy from a transport helicopter which will rapidly approach the deployment area from the edge of the zone, seemingly appearing as a mirage that quickly gains color and tangibility before becoming fully real just seconds later. Deploying the squad this way allows you to drop them down at any designated position outside, but is liable to draw attention to them. The helicopter is unarmed and will not stay around, only dropping off the squad and then quickly departing once more, fading away on reaching the edge of the zone.

●These soldiers are trained with a specific weapon, in addition to a combat knife and a pistol as a side-arm, and are most efficient with their own weapon. They always appear in full tactical gear including body-armor, and sufficient ammunition for active combat.

○These options include assault rifle, combat shotgun, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, and tactical shield bearers who often carry their sidearm in their other hand at the ready.

●Optionally, these soldiers will also receive basic training in one additional field besides their weapons. Reconnaissance, assault training (including an optional switch from their combat knife to a large machete, fire-ax, or similar close-quarters weapon of choice. Optionally, a combat shovel), demolitions, engineering, first-aid, or vehicle operator training.

○These start off relatively mundane, but can increase with experience to special-forces level, and potentially even borderline supernatural level. They will receive any additional gear that they may require to carry out related duties, though with limited supplies replenished upon being summoned from the barracks.

●Any injuries that are not lethal as long as a soldier received first aid within a few minutes time, and could survive if they reached hospital within half an hour will be treated at the barracks, and soldiers so injured will remain inactive in recovery for a period of time up to 24 hours, depending on the severity of the injury. Any lost limbs or similar injuries that can be survived from will require 48 hours of recovery, but the soldier will be restored in a vat during their recovery period.

○Lethal damage, in particular damage to the brain will likely result in a vat-grown soldier dying and passing on, freeing a spot in the barracks that can be filled in by a fresh vat-grown soldier soon after.

■Optionally, if you possess any means of resurrection at your disposal, you can temporarily sacrifice this ability to revive a fallen Soldier this way, regaining full control and access to said resurrection ability within 36 hours, but once this option has been used on a squad member once, they cannot be brought back this way again.

■You may, optionally, allow such soldiers to transfer from active duty to training and drill-sergeant position at the barracks, no longer possible to summon for combat duty, but possible to call upon to provide their insight and experience on matters. They will gain officer uniform, and retain their side-arm and close-quarters weapon.

●You remain in mental contact with all squad members and can direct them at ease, either giving exact, specific orders that are conveyed and understood immediately through mental connection, or issuing commands in a mental voice as if speaking to them normally albeit unheard by others and at any distance, leaving exact details to them.

○Your vat-grown soldiers will likewise remain in mental contact with one another, if one of them gets attacked, the others will immediately know, and can coordinate silently and swiftly to execute flanking attacks or plan an execute new maneuvers on the fly. They will give priority to your directions and orders, but in absence of more exact orders, they will act according to what they know and what their training teaches them.

■This means that more experienced veterans and elite soldiers will have a much higher chance of surviving and success at their mission than fresh rookies would, and that heroic or epic soldiers could achieve action-movie level bullshit with their tricks and surprises with the right circumstances and guidance from your oversight on the area. They still benefit greatly from the awareness that your overhead view of things will grant to them.

Essence of the Vending Machines

●This essence tastes of cold soda and cheap snacks, with a light aftertaste of rust.

●You gain an ability to summon a variety of vending machines, both real and fictional, as well as a wallet containing the exact currency the vending machine takes to function. You can only use this wallet to pay for purchases from these vending machines, money removed from it for other purposes vanishes before you can hand it over to anyone else.

●The vending machines will work without any external connections, and will always appear fully stocked, as well as restocking every 2 hours. They are highly damage resistant, and cannot be moved from their place easily.

●Optionally, you can have a vending machine accept local currency and leave it in place to be used by anyone else. You can initially have a maximum of 3 vending machines out at once, but you can increase this cap to 4 in a month, 5 in 2 additional months for a total of 3 months, and to 6 in 3 additional months, at 6 month mark. This can increase up to a soft cap of 20 vending machines total after 153 months, or 12 years and 9 months.

○Optionally, you can gain a slice of the profit produced by said vending machines, total to roughly one half the sell-price of any goods the vending machine moves.

●These vending machines can offer any products you have seen offered by vending machines in real life, or even seen pictures of real vending machines around the world offering in other countries.

●These vending machines can additionally offer things that are out of this world, from various Gene-Tonics and Plasmids and Vigors (be careful of addiction here!) right out of Bioshock series, to various future snacks and boosters from Cyberpunk 2077, to various crafting materials, foods, drinks, and weapons from Dungeons of Dredmor, to others.

○Some vending machines may include the option to sell stuff to them, or dump things into them. These will store such goods into an pocket-dimension and sell it for some additional currency, or keep it safe and waiting for you to retrieve it at a later time as you may prefer.

●You can summon these vending machines within a roughly 30 feet radius of yourself, into open, unoccupied space, and cannot set them to block any door or other access point. You can unsummon these vending machines from any distance. Unless you place a vending machine with the intent to make it last, it will remain until you've finished your business at it plus 30 minutes or so afterwards, before vanishing off.

○You may set a vending machine to only work for certain people, certain groups of people, or offer limited inventory to some, and a more full list of options to another.

■Example given: Vending machine set up at a police station, only allowing police officers to access full list of options, and allowing the best stuff only into the hands of local SWAT team members. Provides guns and ammunition out of this world, including non-lethal stun rounds, homing bullets, and more. Example loosely based on Cyberpunk 2077 weapons.

●Your summoned wallet will contain roughly equivalent amount of money you could earn in the setting the vending machine is from, working a well-paying job for a full day, each time it is brought up. The wallet replenishes any spent funds within a day, but the sum it can hold is capped.

○Optionally, this cap can be set to increase by 1 additional day's pay every week, until at 30 week mark it offers a month's pay, after which each additional 2 months increases the total by 1 more month's pay, to a maximum limit of 1 year's pay after a little shy of three years time.

Note that this is a cap, not daily income, meaning you will still need to save up and let the money build in the wallet for that particular vending machine's funds. Purchasing goods from another setting's vending machines does not affect the total built up for another setting's vending machines. Any real life vending machines share a pool of real world currency, shifting between locations, but calculated based on your current country of residence.

■For some settings, such as a Post-Apocalyptic world where 'regular work' is rather non-existent, consider the sum that would represent a good haul by a talented scavenger or skilled worker with a patron paying for their day's work. Use your own judgment.