#I'm pretty sure that in this scenario I am a mad wizard scientist who is being sentenced to death either for my research

[savrenim]

okay so the writing prompts You have been sentenced to death in a magical court. The court allows all prisoners to pick how they die and they will carry it out immediately. You have it all figured out until the prisoner before you picks old age and is instantly transformed into a dying old man. Your turn approaches. and subsequent story reply passed my dash again and my problem is I have some Real Answers that are living rent-free in my head but I did not want to write several hundred words in tags of clog up the post so guess I’m doing the tumblr thing of ‘make your own post’

but here we go, answers to this question that my brain has thought up and their rankings:

1. ‘Immolated standing right here right now in this timeline and universe by a 12km planet-killer class asteroid traveling at 30km/s as it vaporizes upon contact with the planet, alongside everything else in a ~200km impact crater’  : 3.5/10

So this one gets points for being the classic ‘Taking You Down With Me Syndrome’ in as far as I can come up with in a minute with my fictional life on the line. Also points for: as unavoidable as I think possible to come up? I have specified here and now, so they can’t teleport me to a different planet or time, or similarly to a different multiverse, which really makes no easy escape for anyone else around me. Furthermore, the specification of being a part of the impact crater makes it less likely that it’ll just happen to me in a magical bubble that is killed without it affecting everyone around me; even if it transports everyone else outside of the crater and just kills me in the impact, enough of the planet’s crust will be ejected into the atmosphere from the ‘crater’ part of the request to heat it up upon friction of re-entry enough to bake everything on the planet’s surface, not to mention the superheated rock around that is basically acting like a nuke causing thermal radiation to destroy everything within 1000km, massive shockwave winds, a magnitude 11 earthquake, etc. Explosions like that happen so fast that 1000% this just flat-out Would Not Hurt, I’d be dead before I realized I was dead. All in all, nice generally spiteful way to go, fun wording to deliver, satisfying thing to stare someone in the eyes at their growing horror and describe.

Points taken away for the facts that (a) I do still die, (b) it is possible that the reason that other people have not done this or something like this already is because it’s built into the death curse that it won’t kill other people for you too and I did not word this carefully enough to allow for killing everyone else in the aftermath in which case I’ve just wasted the wish, (c.) this does kill the entire planet and end possible almost every living species and probably every intelligent living species in I’m guessing the known universe unless there are stuff like fae realms that might be safe but destruction on that scale is kind of petty and I’m not totally sure I would want to do it, I do kind of like humanity and all that jazz. seems like a bit of a waste to take everyone down with me in my grand revenge, unfortunately, I’m too flashy to ask for an asteroid just big enough to take out the village, if I’m going to go down it’s going to be in planet-destroying style.

specs for this description are taken from the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs on Earth, which has the advantage that depending on what angle the thing actually hits at, potentially leaving the planet habitable in a couple of hundred thousand years again.

2. ‘By our sun going supernova (at the end of its lifespan)’ : 2.5-6.5/10

So this one gets potentially slightly more points than 1. because it’s just....... interesting. in that there are a lot of options and any of the options are really cool? but also less points bc there are so many options that are SO much more unpleasant. (and yes this is somewhat inspired by Dr Who that was a fucking Iconic episode, moisturize me). but so far as I see it, there are four ways this can go:

(a) The sun just magically goes supernova right now, guess it’s the end of its lifespan because a death curse said so. Takes about eight minutes to hit us, everyone gets killed just like the planet-killing asteroid but tbh in a 10000x cooler manner, all of the advantages and disadvantages of 1 working.

(b) I get teleported into the future to watch the sun go supernova, die very quickly because the sun kills me not the vacuum of space or atmosphere being unbreathable again etc etc, but mostly this begets the question of: assuming that the fantasy planet that I’m on is fairly similar to our own, we are around a G-type main sequence star! Those things don’t go supernova! they don’t have enough mass! which means that I get to watch as a magical death curse attempts to somehow figure out how to make the entire fucking sun go supernova at the end of its lifetime think about what cool science that is!!!!!!! I might die but think of how much data future astromagiphysicists are going to get from this!!!!!

(c.) The Magical Death Curse Does Not Have Enough Energy To Make The Sun Go Supernova And Fizzles Out In Trying, which while it sounds good actually is pretty boring bc they’re likely to just, like, stab me with their swords if it happens. rip me.

(d) answer (b), but instead of teleporting me to the future, I am made immortal until the sun reaches the end of its lifespan and proceeds to go supernova which means that I (6.5) get functional immortality for at least a couple of billion years which is more than long enough to do some interesting shit and probably get tired of being alive and then die in the coolest fireworks display the planet will ever see. points taken away tho (2.5) for not specifying that, like, if I’m surviving until then it’s in a fine preserved manner rather than a fate-worse-than-death manner (rotting like a zombie, frozen in time unable to move but watching everything happen around me, etc).

general points for no matter what happens it’ll be REALLY FUCKING COOL to watch, general points taken away for the lack of control and real range of how shitty the possible outcome might be and that I still die in every scenario here no matter what.

3. ‘In a lich-creation ceremony that turns me into an undead immortal lich’ 6.8-8.2/10

Nice, simple, to the point. Points for: surviving the encounter, it being very difficult for the magic to misinterpret it. Points range for: depending on the rules governing liches in this magical world, it might not actually be that fun to be a lich. Points taken away for: if liches are an established element of this world, they probably know how to kill them, so I’m not out of hot water yet. And also there might be elements of lichhood that are not a completely optimal existence that obviously I would experiment to improve over the course of my new immortality but who knows how easy that would be to do.

4. ‘In a super-special custom lich-creation ceremony powered by my soul and my death that will create a whirlpool of necrotic energy gathering up the life force and magic of everything in its path to power the creation of an indestructible magical object that houses a magical projection of my consciousness that contains continuity of consciousness, memory, personality, the ability to grow and change, allows it to project itself outside of its container as a simulacrum to affect the world, and the ability to gather magic around itself and use said magic, that can sustain itself through any form of energy manipulation either with respect to mundane or magical thermodynamics-slash-entropy-theory, and--’ 10/10

This is the supervillain origin story shit that I’m talking about. Survive the encounter? check. Using a word that the magic recognizes so you have a base for what you’re turned into but customizing for what you actually want? check. Revenge on everyone? check. Easy ability to murder everyone who knows what happened so that it’s that much harder to hunt you down and kill you? check. Avoiding the potential of there being a built-in rule about no directly stating that your death will kill other people here too? check, I never state the whirlpool of magic kills everyone I just make it I can use it to kill them after and tie up all the loose ends to further my own power growth immediately. Ability to watch the sun go supernova? also check; I’m an immortal magical lich now babey I 1000% will use the several billion years that I have to develop our planet’s magical spaceprogram, colonize some other exoplanets, set up a galactic civilization, and then when our sun is dying yeet it into another star so that I get to enjoy the cool fireworks show.

5. ‘By giving up my mortal form and ascending to godhood, bitches’ 115/10

I’m torn bc on the one hand 3-4 are basically just doing this in a more and more specific manner, but on the other hand, oh my god the STYLE, the SNAPPINESS, -100pts for being So Much More Likely To Kill Me but +216 for Okay But Imagine If If It Doesn’t It’s Way Less Stupidly Nerdy Than Very Carefully Describing My Brand New Phylactery As I Try To Come Up With All Of My Ideal Circumstances Of Lichhood

like. I’d probably go for 4. bc I’m careful and want to survive this thing. but I think in my supervillain origin story I will tell everyone that I said 5. better to not give away my weaknesses that way too.

6. ‘By teleporting me 1ft to the left in a completely standard teleportation, retroactively establishing that teleportation in this setting does not in fact move you but actually kills you via disassembling your atoms and creates a perfect copy of you with continuity of consciousness where you ‘appear’’ 7.5/10

Points for: I basically survive the at least implementation of the spell, and I enact abso-fucking-lutely hilarious revenge on everyone but especially all the wizards who have ever teleported by establishing the Existential Beam Me Up Crisis as canon, and probably cause immense socioeconomic damage as suddenly teleportation can no longer be used for people as a quick means of transportation and there are probably a lot of stuffy rich people who will no longer want it used on their goods. Points off for: I am 1 ft to the left and there are soldiers with swords here, while I will get to see the looks on everyone’s faces as this sinks in I will probably still be stabbed and die.

7. ‘By teleporting me to an unknown untrackable safe friendly location outside of the country in a completely standard teleportation, retroactively establishing that teleportation in this setting does not in fact move you but actually kills you via disassembling your atoms and creates a perfect copy of you with continuity of consciousness where you ‘appear’’ 9.5/10

Points for doing everything 6 does while actually saving my life. Points off for not getting to see their faces. Also points off for not giving me free immortal lichhood from it, but not too many points off as I am now free to research and do a lichhood ceremony myself without worrying about a death curse misinterpreting what I want.

bonus: my mutual-slash-housemate’s answer: ‘in the same time, place, and manner that you do’ 6.3/10

sorry it’s good and snappy and points for: combination of either revenge or actually surviving the thing at least for a while, and sheer delivery impact, but points off for not turning a death curse into immortality, zero destruction of planets or stars involved, zero rewriting of the rules of magic, possible body count for your revenge is only one other person, forces you to encounter this person again and die with them which really is something quite intimate for a random imperial sorcerer that you ought to hate the guts of, potentially traps you into an enemy-to-lovers fanfic in which rip now this sorcerer insists on keeping you alive so that they can achieve immortality but that might just be unpleasant locking you in a pocket dimension and not fun tragic star-crossed lovers narrative that you deserve out of it but will lock you in tragic star-crossed lovers narrative otherwise, gives you zero control over time, place, and painfulness of death, and all in all not nearly as flashy or evil as it could have been. and did I mention no immortal lichhood. like come on, if you’re not getting immortal lichhood out of this what are you even doing it for.

#long post #writing #I guess #sorry this was just living rent-free in my head and I needed to vent #I'm pretty sure that in this scenario I am a mad wizard scientist who is being sentenced to death either for my research #into blowing up the sun or into immortal lichhood necromancy