There were CYOA powers.
And then there was Power Manipulation from Worm CYOA v1.
The king of broken powers.
Of course, wasn’t without flaws. Nothing ever was.
Power Manipulation was far from ideal in universes like Warhammer 40k, Sailor Moon, Doctor Who, Touhou, and other settings populated by near-omniscient entities.
For worlds where raw potential meant nothing if you couldn’t survive the first picoseconds after transmigration. Even for Worm universe, Power Manipulation without Blank wasn’t so much a powerful opportunity as a suicidal liability.
And yet.
Even outside of Worm universe, even without access to sensing, nullifying, enhancing, modifying, copying, stealing, or transferring powers. Main function of Power Manipulation — five charges per day for any moderate but permanent powers or on their upgrades — was effectively an “I win” button. Just distributed in small pieces.
”But if that’s the case…
THEN WHY DID I RECEIVE A POWER MANIPULATION CATALOG IN THE WORLD OF GAME OF THRONES?!"
That was what occupied Max’s thoughts in the first minutes after transmigration.
Not the fact that he had lost part of his personal memories.
Not that he had awakened in a cold bed occupying 1/5 of a dim small wooden hut, inside the body of an eighteen-year-old stranger with barely any memories worth inheriting.
Not even the proximity of ice-zombie hordes and divination-capable gods.
But who would focus on any of that when they’d just been handed what looked like a universal master key to every conceivable problem?
Or was it?
Although his Power Manipulation catalog contained superpowers of every imaginable scale, with each passing minute Max uncovered increasingly more related limitations.
The first red flag came in the form of a second interface tab labeled Modifiers. It contained only a handful of lines:
Direct damage to non-human magical factions results in a charge-reduction penalty.
Only one superpower can be active at a time.
?
?
?
?
?
“A penalty for direct damage to White Walkers? That’s... Reasonable?” Max thought.
“In the show, humanity won very quickly and easily. In the books, it was still supposed to win, just with much more spilled blood. Probably falling back to the Neck or beyond. Yet, they won.
What to say about the same with, say, a single person who can only fly, and therefore of dropping barrels of wildfire from above. Or someone with an Gamer-type of Inventory, great optimizer of army logistics.
Meanwhile, I am not limited to just flight or inventory, but am theoretically able to choose anything I want!" he reasoned.
“Single active superpower restriction far more troubling.
The inability to stack multiple defensive powers, or to combine powers at all, stripping me of the main advantage of Power Manipulation.
This flaw was also especially dangerous without knowing whether I possessed an equivalent of Blank or not.
If I don’t have Blank, there are such risks as sudden warging into me by Brynden Rivers. Therefore, I need to acquire Blank as quickly as possible and constantly keep it in one and only active slot.
But if I do have Blank, the situation isn’t much better - Brynden Rivers, Old Gods, R’hllor, Faceless Men, and other pro-human magical factions will know that I interfere in ”A Song of Ice and Fire”, but not whether for better or for worse, and therefore will treat me as an enemy.
“To resolve that,” Max mused, “I’d also need some superpower. For my one and only active slot.”
”And all of this just 2 out of 7 items of the Modifiers list..." He grimaced.
”The statistical chance that the remaining five question marks hide nothing problematic was laughably low. What is even more worrying than the first two points combined is that such flaws can be anything. Including such multiverse madness as Mass Effect Reaper slumbering beneath the Iron Islands or Super Saiyan Others.”
Soon, while studying the contents of the Power Manipulation catalog, Max noticed yet another limitation.
“Fuck! Why isn’t this mentioned in the Modifiers? Entire Power Manipulation categories are missing!
Magic and its various schools, from pyromancy to divination? Unavailable.
Biomanipulation? Unavailable. Only indirect control over nature, healing, and such, are present.
Master-type powers? Completely unavailable.
Powers with conceptual anti-zombie and anti-ice effects? Unavailable!
Powers that allow to change weaker powers? Nope.
Fuuuuuck!!! Not a single Tinker specialization! Of course, it would not be that simple!
Alright. Calm down. I still can buy general mental boosts, and many related superpowers like internal chemical reactor, items copying, phantom limbs, resource generation, and so on” Max told himself.
The third limitation turned out to be the strength and cost of the powers.
In the original Power Manipulation, the first charge granted powers with 4–5 threat-level. And second charge upgraded them to a 6–7 threat-level.
In the case of Max’s catalog such numbers were roughly 2–3 threat-level (like flight, or slow-motion invisibility) for 1st charge. And threat-level 4 for second charge.
After that, with each new tier, the cost of upgrade doubled.
1 charge - 2-3TL;
2 charges - 4TL;
4 charges - 5TL;
8 charges - 6TL;
16 charges - 7-8TL;
32 charges - 9-10TL.
64 charges - ≥12TL.
Seeing that power prices were shown only for upgrades, Max inferred that superpowers couldn't be purchased without buying out of all preceding tiers. Which raised the total cost of sweet tier 7 Kaleidoscope from 64 charges to 127 charges.
Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Max quietly muttered, “At least this confirms the existence of progression.”
Such words were not just an observation, but also preparation for the last and perhaps biggest nerf of his Power Manipulation capabilities.
“The original Power Manipulation had five charges. I only have one.
If I gain one charge per day, that’s still very good. No, excellent.
One per week also isn’t bad. Sure, such progression is worse than in the case of Celestial Things, Inspired Inventor, or Chaos Gacha, but it’s better than in the case of most thematic CYOAs.
Even one charge per month is… manageable. Before White Walkers there are at least 2 years, therefore 24 charges. Basic flight, superstrength, and Imp-like "notice-me-not" powers for express delivery of a wight will cost only 1+1+4 charges.
The remaining 18 charges should be more than enough for negotiation with magical factions, debuffs of bad incestuous duo, and buffs of good incestuous duo and their armies.
Yes, it's still like in that Worm short: 'I bought time acceleration, auto-invest, and won', just much slower.”
Then an unwelcome but persistent thought crept back into his mind: “What if that single point is all I’ll ever have?”
“But something like this contradicts the very existence of a Power Manipulation catalog and the mentioned Modifiers!” he argued with himself.
“Don’t you remember how multiversal entities are portrayed in those stupid introductory chapters?
Like naïve children who can simply forget to add a necessary mechanic. Like sadists who are capable of even crueler jokes for the sake for their entertainment. Like fifty-dimensional chess players, whose logic and deeds can be anything at all.
A Power Manipulation catalog? Modifiers? Pfft. Until you’re sure you can actually gain more points, you’d better assume that one point is all you have. If it can even be spent at all. Or indeed spent on something useful, only for the superpower to vanish just as mysteriously as it appeared." His most rational side scolded all the others.
Feeling an oncoming headache from stress, emotional rollercoaster, and sheer mental strain, Max finally shifted his attention to something more definite, and at last took a look around.
Guided by inherited memories, he explored a deeply familiar scene, but now layered with entirely new emotions, interpretations, and questions.
He was in a damp, dilapidated, yet once very sturdily built, small wooden hut.
Inside there was only a bed, a simple low wooden table, three log-carved stools, two old wooden chests without even a gram of iron, and a stone stove. That was it.
"Despite such extreme poverty of the hut, I didn't even own it, just a tenant." Max remembered.
”No, not me... He. Max Northson. If he even existed. As a person. A real one.” Max amended his thoughts several times.
And there were reasons for this.
The original owner of the body, Max Northson, was a complicated case.
On one hand, Max’s namesake did exist.
All his life he lived in Winter Town, a settlement just outside the East Gate of Winterfell.
Until his fourteenth nameday - in a city orphanage.
Later, with four other orphans of the same age, he was hired by a local carpenter to cut wood. A job he’d done for the next four years, up to his current age of eighteen.
On the other hand, Max Northson was… strange.
According to the inherited memories, until fourteen he did nothing but help with home care, eat, and sleep. After? Cut wood, eat, and sleep. Literally.
In his life, Max Northson had no hobbies, no interests, no friends, no enemies, no adventures. Nothing that could be called life.
Even his opinions of the four woodcutters he’d spent the last four years with consisted of barely a few practical sentences and nothing more.
“Either the memories of Max Northson that I inherited were cleaned,” Max thought, “or he existed only as a soulless puppet created for the purpose of my transmigration.”
”Mine? But who am I?” The thought began to form, but Max quickly cut off and suppressed it, turning instead to far more urgent questions.
While the idea that Max Northson had been a soulless puppet eased Max’s conscience, it also created a very actual problem.
“Fuck. Because of his absolute ignorance, I have no idea where I am on the timeline! All the historical knowledge I inherited boils down to: ‘King Robert Baratheon rules everything, and the Stark lords, who live in the biggest castle, serve their king the same way anyone nearby serves the Starks.’”
Technically, there’s no way Max Northson didn’t hear ANY rumors at all. Even considering that the other orphans knew very little themselves and avoided talking while working for fear of catching pneumonia.
And, yes, occasionally Max Northson indeed HAD heard things.
He just never remembered them...
“Aggrrr… from what I know, it’s entirely possible that Winterfell is already occupied by Theon Greyjoy’s warbands,” Max thought.
“No. Optimism. Optimism. If Lord St... — Eddard — Ned were dead, even someone like Max Northson would have known,” he reassured himself.
“Still, I need to learn more as soon as possible. But how?
Questioning the other orphan woodcutters was out of the question. Any sudden curiosity, especially with a slightly different mannerism, would be wildly out of Max Northson character. The same applied to the matron.”
From what little Max knew of Winter Town’s social ladder, the orphanage matron sat surprisingly high - thanks to some connections with Winterfell, and her sharp mind.
“The matron definitely knows that the Faceless Men aren’t rumors or fairy tales, but a very real threat. So if the quietest, most withdrawn child she raised suddenly starts asking questions about local lords… I doubt she’d just shrug and answer. At least not without a lot of leading questions.” Max concluded.
“So where does that leave me?
Buying information? Doubtful. While, thanks to having no hobbies, Max Northson had saved a little money, I shouldn’t waste it on something that can be obtained for free.
But how exactly free?”
After a few minutes of thought, Max finally dragged himself out of what he’d thought was a 'cold bed.'
Only to meet real cold.
Max hurried to throw on the only clothes he owned — two woolen trousers, two woolen shirts, an ancient leather jacket with a worn away fur lining, socks, leather boots, and a leather cap — only to now be assaulted not only by the cold, but also by prickly fabric and a powerful stench.
“Why Westeros?! Why a medieval shithole?!” he screamed in his head.
“Why not...”
Afterward Max tried to find arguments for transmigrating into a more convenient world, only to recall one reason after another why other popular franchises weren’t much better.
After remembering about "not-funny" organized crime, functional gods, time-travels, and a cataclysmic meteoroid from the manga version of Pokémon, he admitted that shitty problems, global threats, and overall Death‑Worldness are major hooks that draw audiences to popular settings, and ended the search for a better world with the reassuring thought ”at least it’s not Waifu Catalog related.”
Even as a popular fiction idea, the concept of multiversal slavery always felt fundamentally wrong to Max. As if it directly opposed the core principles of human progress and humanity itself. The idea that it might not be just a fiction, that the terminal phase of civilizational progress is be devouring by factions like the Waifu Catalog, or by something without even the smallest shades of gray, for some reason scared him far more than any dangers of his new world. Whether known or not.
Once fully dressed, he again looked around the room. Even if he wanted to forget something, Max didn’t think he could.
After weighing the pros and cons, from a chest he took a pouch with all his coins, in total numbering somewhere around 18 silver stags (1008 copper pennies, 336 loaves of bread, 4-18 iron tools or clothes, overall equivalent of 1000-1500$) and slipped it into his trouser pocket. From another chest he pulled out a kitchen knife, wrapped it in rags, and tucked the makeshift bundle under his belt and jacket.
Twisting his torso to ensure that carrying the knife this way was safe, Max again noticed the great responsiveness of his fit body.
Trying to get to the window to study his face, Max suddenly realized that there was no glass, and laughed aloud.
“Of course not; why would there be glass in such a shack?
But if there’s no glass, where does the light come from?” he pondered, glancing about.
Almost immediately, near the ceiling, he spied small wooden shutters with circular yellow stoppers that transmitted a faint, scattered light.
Max ran his fingers over one stopper and felt a rigid yet slightly pliant oily substance. He sniffed his finger but didn't feel any distinct scent.
”Waxed cloth or parchment? Some fat? Guts? Interesting, but let’s leave it for later.”
Soon his gaze fell on the next very interesting thing - a bulky wooden lock assembled from at least five parts... and Max had to kick himself once more for procrastinating.
After a long, deep breath, he finally unlatched the door and stepped outside.
Blinding light and a sharp cold wind with occasional snowflakes hit his face. His eyes immediately watered and everything became blurry.
Despite such treatment, instead of looking away, Max kept staring forward, into the distance. Toward Winterfell. Toward massive gray walls dominating the horizon. Toward enormous, partly hidden by bluish fog, conical granite towers.
60-meter-tall ones.
Author's Note:
Happy New Year!