Since there was no arm or body behind me swinging a sword with TK, no Strength bonus, just damage dice. Total damage dice possible was d6/Caster Level, so 12d6. Even if I could manipulate thirty swords, the total amount of force was spread out among all of them, so I couldn’t do more damage than that, spread out between all of them. Likewise, this was wielding something with TK, not a hand, so, oh, my swordmastery bonuses didn’t apply. TK fighting was TK fighting, had nothing to do with weapon technique.

Magic rules are magic rules. I didn’t have to agree with them, I just had to acknowledge them.

However, when you have unlimited use of telekinesis, which the Ring gave me, you can get in a LOT of practice time.

For now, I was being very subtle with the effects. TK has the wonderful effect of being mostly invisible, unless you can actually see or sense psionic energy flows/magic, etc. Pushing attacks up or down, tripping people, fetching things from here and there, grabbing things at a distance. If I started tossing people around, that would be a bit obvious... if the glowing Ring on my finger wasn’t a dead giveaway.

Basically, I started using it to rifle through all the dead drow sprawled over the ground, removing the equivalent of money and weapons, any techno-toys that looked interesting, and throwing them on the Disks behind me and the girls. Also, all those wandering, riderless hoverboards were worth money, no reason not to reach out and grab those, too, right?

The girls had been watching me playing with pebbles for some time, and they were all naturally very, very eager to get their own Rings. I had to get mine Empowered before I could make one for them, of course, and there was a lot of nexals, precious metals, or gemstones they had to gather up to get the thing fully done. Happily, Me Smart Artificer, and I made the Empowerment Pattern on a graduated scale, so they could start small and practice with fewer objects and low weight, gradually building up the Valence Level and Caster Level of the effect until it reached full strength.

Our uninhibited looting as we walked across the fight zone garnered unwelcoming gazes. Naturally, being black of hair and landbound, we were below the lowest of the low, fit only for being killed or used by our racial masters, and so some enterprising souls decided to deal with us and how we were looting their spoils right in front of them.

They had an annoying time trying to hit us, as somehow we were shifting positions without changing our strides or footing. Oh, and we were shooting back, too.

They never really got close enough to do anything, and given the weapons they were using, we weren’t really in any danger as long as we didn’t just stand there waiting to be cut down by a monomolecular-edged reaper-glaive, or somesuch. Tats making Hands as Weapons let us finger-flick Shards from our Sword Foci, in addition to popping them with our Autobows, and so anyone that took a shot or run at us was sniped out of the air, stripped of goodies, and their boards joined our growing collections.

Eventually they wised up, and the airspace for a hundred yards around us was vacated while they returned to their regularly scheduled butchering of one another, and everyone was happy. Being the polite battlefield looters that we were, we enthusiastically cheered some of the gorier hits, unashamedly looted the dead, and if the killers were aced in turn, we cheered the new champions with unabashed fickleness.

The walls and gate to the outer town were not that high, more a formality than anything, as the cannons and point defenses mounted on the walls could probably take care of any natural or unnatural attackers in less than horde numbers rather effectively, and Shadow creatures were like beacons of power to the drow, heartily encouraged to come and attack so they could be captured and ritually sacrificed to stave off the Warp Gods.

Since Gloom creatures weren’t totally dumb, they didn’t come near the walls now, and generally tried to avoid the pale-haired, dark-skinned drow, and munch on the not-so-dark-skinned, brighter-haired pointy-eared gits outside the walls instead.

The guards were about what you’d expect of such a fine, upstanding location. Since we didn’t fly in, we were obviously rubes, and poor. We’d just shot a few dozen gutter-boarders out of the sky without blinking an eye, and were toting purloined belongings behind us. It was a great time to collect bribes and look for an excuse to arrest us and then sell us for more money.

“Halt!” one of the drow said, a hatchet-faced idiot with jet-black skin, stepping forwards with what was probably supposed to be an imposing manner, as the chakram-spitters of his friends cycled up threateningly. “What is your business in Gloomheart?”

Keva sold it so well, blinking at him. “Mom! A guard actually dared to speak to us?” she protested in affront.

I waved my fingers, there was a chok, and the guard blinked, now possessing a third eye in his forehead. His astounded fellows watched him fall as I replied, “Now, dear, remember they are just gate guards. They are stupid and need to be taught lessons frequently. You don’t think they got posted here for their intelligence, do you?”

None of us even broke stride. The other guards got out of the way quickly. Jensa sort of looked past them with her blue eyes, and sighed almost perfunctorily, “Matron Glayia merchant caravan,” she muttered under her breath to the closest soldier, sniffing as she did so, and we all continued on.

They didn’t dare shoot us in the back, and the poor sot who’d got in our way was just stripped and sent off to become hound-chow. We were dutifully logged as a merchant caravan with battle spoils entering town, and life went on in Drow-ville.

----------

Purloining memories does make going around in new places a whole lot easier.

Yeah, we still had to invest the Ranks for the knowledge of the dead drow battle-bikini-babes to be retained and easily accessible, instead of something we had to stop and sift through whenever we wanted to learn something. It was cool enough, that was what Karma was for; pawing through the remnant memories of barmy sensualist sadomasochists with a blood fetish was right up the alley of a Hag. They probably would have thought our own attitude towards them was pretty admirable.

Currently we looked like half-breeds, called breshkt. This was a very uncomplimentary term, as mixing races was a complete taboo, and the fact that elvar could interbreed with humans was a terribly scandalous fact all on its own. Conservative elements on both sides of the board considered that sort of mingling of races heresy, blasphemy, treachery, treason, rebellion, decadent, corrupt, perverted, filthy, unclean, immoral... and there were other terms they were happy to invent on the spot if they were ever confronted with such abominations of nature.

Naturally, the drow didn’t give a damn, and if they wanted to experiment on/with humans to see what it was like, they went ahead and did so. If children came out of it, they were a disposable asset that could be used, or discarded if not useful. They were only marginally more important than a good slave, and basically were just treated like slaves themselves, the blood tie only something that assured more control, not something that actually indicated fondness, love, or even loyalty or duty. The drow didn’t have that for their own pure-born, let alone for half-breed accidents.

And yet, the breshkt learned to survive, they endured, and they even met one another, found something in common, and had children of their own, much to the amusement of the watching drow. In short order, an underclass of the breshkt popped up, finding their own uses as a race that was not so susceptible to extremes of behavior as the drow, yet not as unacceptable as callow humans, and still completely disposable for the slightest of reasons.

For whatever it was worth, the breshkt were actually moderate and dependable flunkies, of a sort!

Naturally, that didn’t mean the breshkt were nice people. This was drow-town, it wasn’t a hive of scum and villainy, it was a cesspool of filth and wickedness that birthed those little hives and sent them running away from mommy. Warp demons would have been quite at home here, if the drow souls didn’t look so scrumptious they couldn’t stop themselves from harvesting them. Perils of being total bastards and all...

Psionics and magic use were Not Permitted here, or anywhere in the Gloom. Drow actively using psionics became great shining beacons to the Warp, and it quickly started coming for them. Drow using psionics started Warp Events here like clockwork, and for some reason those in power didn’t really like demons spawning in their territories.

Since the drow couldn’t use psionics, nobody was allowed to use psionics. There were all sorts of sensors around to track psionic and magic use, and a whole lot of energetic drow would start hunting the guilty party. If they were lucky, they’d just be killed. If they were not lucky, they’d be packaged up and sent off to the arena to die for entertainment. If they were unlucky, they were sent off to the Pain Parlors for a duly-broadcasted torture session that could last anywhere from days to years. If the drow actually got mad, after the torture session they’d be made into a mindless slave and put to use while suffering in torment until someone put them down violently, probably while they were killing their old friends and neighbors, or eating their own children or something.

Thus, nothing more active than a mindblade was permitted, and most drow wouldn’t even dare use one of those. It seems there were many tales about drow cutting into Warp demons or other psychic entities, and getting a spike of pure extremist nihilist inspiration, and blowing apart as they started a nasty Warp Event.

So, drow basically used their psychic/magical potential to resist psychic energies and influence, i.e. stave off the Warp thirsting for their souls. They focused on maximizing their physical and mental potential in other ways, delving into science weird and unnatural, biotech, strange matter technology, and other non-psionic areas of endeavor, without restraint, heading right towards the edge of sanity, and if it was worth it, headlong over the edge into cuckoo-land, with spikes on.

They never got the cyborg fetish that so many humans seemed to. A drow was more likely to mutate into some spiked, over-muscled, scaled, tentacled combat horror than turn themselves into a brain in a steel shell, because at least then they’d still have all their senses and sensation. Now, sticking a rival into a cold metal shell bereft of all sensation, doomed to fight and battle without being able to feel anything, that was classic entertainment!

They did get grandly and obsessively into traditional combat methods, and so drow tended to focus heavily on non-Caster combat, in all the worst ways. Their penchant for artistry and showing off while fighting was part of their barmy mindset, and it was fine, just punish them for having it.

Drow actually could use psionics on the mortal plane, if they were careful... buuuut there was a problem there. The mortal plane was ALIVE to drow, so full of color and light and smells and sounds and sensations that the Gloom tamped on down and drew away to sustain itself, that the addleheaded gits were like they were on stims. Drow were giggling kill-crazy slaughter-bots on the mortal plane because they were so amped up just breathing it in. Combine that with psionics, and yeah, probably not good for drow to use psi on the mortal plane, either.

Having a set of drow memories to page through gave us all the personal first-person references we could want for their society, and we were more than happy to compare our coven of combat-crazy bikini-babes’ experiences to one another to broaden our experience. A whole lot of my girls got in on this as well, and a lot of Skill Ranks went into retaining the elvar language and Local History (drow) as key points for just this sort of situation.

That group of drow women had been a combat coterie nominally displaying their skills and skin in arena combat for others to admire, and enough prize money to pay for their various drug and sadomasochist sessions of pain and pleasure; pushing, always pushing themselves to extremes of experience to assuage the hunger clawing at their souls. They were all free-born, not Vatters, so they’d fought their way up to where they were at with lots of pain and pleasure given and inflicted, navigating the perilous paths of a nutcase society where death was always a step away, and individual lives were not worth grains of sand.

And here we were, walking into this society, because they had something we wanted... Portals with passages to the other side of the Rift.

While we didn’t intend to invade the Gloom and claim it for ourselves, we were sure as shooting going to exploit this grand piece of elvar magitech for everything we could... and if we could shoot these headcases in the eye while we were at it, the universe would be a better place for it.