At least part of the voting logic here seems to be about the likely (?) character of the person who is binding this nightmare, so maybe a preview/sneak peek would help break the deadlock if you are ok with that?
The fact that you do not know at this juncture why he is doing what he is doing -- whether he wants the Sicarius in order to hurt someone in the waking world via nightmares for bad reasons, or hurt someone for good reasons, or to defend himself in the dream, or to attack people in the dream, or just to test himself as a magician, or just because he thinks having a predatory spirit made out of knives in his service would be cool as hell -- is a feature, not a bug. Even if he were currently able to speak to tell you his story, would you be able to trust his answer? What you know from observation is that he is a young man who is performing this binding and is doing so clumsily, so he will probably be able to succeed without getting hurt*. Is that enough information to justify action, either to help or to interfere? Is that enough information to justify nonaction?
*For calibration purposes, because your character would know this, the likely consequence for him of fucking it up would be a notable but not permanent spiritual injury. Think, analogously, to "you see a late teen with a combat knife" -- if he hurts himself with it because he only mostly knows how to use it, he will probably give himself a flesh wound that requires stitches, rather than some sort of more severe injury.
I'm pretty surprised to see that the 'moving on' option is tied for the top spot. The two interaction options being tied would make sense to me, for both narrative and mechanical reasons. Do we spend Willpower for another resource or conserve Willpower but gain no new resource? Do we help the binding or disrupt it? But instead, there's a lot of support for just washing our hands of this whole thing. Not what I would expect. Perhaps the ambiguity of the situation makes people prefer not to interfere.
[X] Spend one Supernal Connection or Aura of the suit of Cups, dismissing and banishing the spirit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Gain one Supernal Connection.
I'm pretty surprised to see that the 'moving on' option is tied for the top spot. The two interaction options being tied would make sense to me, for both narrative and mechanical reasons. Do we spend Willpower for another resource or conserve Willpower but gain no new resource? Do we help the binding or disrupt it? But instead, there's a lot of support for just washing our hands of this whole thing. Not what I would expect. Perhaps the ambiguity of the situation makes people prefer not to interfere.
My motivation is, mechanically, "get card as an aura for zero expenditure, so we can use it later in the Night", and narratively "don't interfere with someone who looks like he has the situation handled, if by a hair."
Now, it may be that this was a bad call in terms of not adding it to Ash's Pneuma, but we don't really know enough about what the Pneuma actually does/means yet to say that.
My motivation is, mechanically, "get card as an aura for zero expenditure, so we can use it later in the Night", and narratively "don't interfere with someone who looks like he has the situation handled, if by a hair."
Now, it may be that this was a bad call in terms of not adding it to Ash's Pneuma, but we don't really know enough about what the Pneuma actually does/means yet to say that.
A sword aura is not a particularly good get. Of the Minor Arcana, the only cards that offered the opportunity to use auras seem to be Fives, Sixes, and Face Cards. Of the face Cards we've already seen the two face cards that can use Aura of Swords (Idra and Frank), and the Five of Swords was Lost in the first night. That leaves just the Sixes, of which there are three in the deck, and which can use any aura. Maybe some Major Arcana cards can use this aura, but otherwise this isn't any more useful than any other aura, and with the exception of Threes (of which there are two remaining in the deck) all Minor Arcana cards offer the possibility of passing on them for an aura for free.
And I think we more or less know what it means to add something to the Pneuma - it means experiencing something that shapes Ash as a person. In the case of face cards specifically it's probably more straightforward than other cards, it just means interacting with another person in a meaningful fashion. As one example that came up just before this night, adding Idra to our Penuma meant that we got her email address which is why we got an email from her warning us of the Dream Mugger. Maybe this would-be demon-binder is a huge jerk and we're better off never getting to know him, but we've met four different occultists so far and I think we were better off for it every time.
My motivation is partially mechanical - it's beneficial to pick up Auras during the first part of the night - and partially because, in the characterization in the original game text (which, to be clear, is never going to be identical to picklepikkl's spin on the quest) he reminded me too much of myself at a certain age where the right answer would definitely have been Leave Me Alone.
You dither for what seems like a long time, though in truth it must only be a few seconds. There is a fellow occultist before you, struggling to accomplish something dangerous, possibly for bad reasons and possibly for good reasons. Should you trust that he's got this? Should you help him succeed? Should you banish the spirit whose only use is to do harm? Do you have the right to interfere? If you help him bind it and he hurts someone with it, or if you banish it and someone hurts him because he doesn't have it, that's partially on you. But inaction is not morally privileged: do you have the right not to interfere? If he fails at binding it and gets hurt when you could have definitely averted that outcome, that's also partially on you.
And he's young, that's another thing which adds a wrinkle to it. You have never forgotten how unhappy you felt when you were young and powerless, and how much better you felt once you started having resources you could call your own, ways you could fight back against those who would do you harm. Living in scarcity and fear hollows you out; safety is a basic need. But you don't know that's what he wants it for: you could just be projecting. And just because you were a scared child does not mean that any responsible adult would have let you play with knives: feeling safer is not the same as being safer.
You stand there. You watch. You think. And, in the end, you elect to do nothing. This young man, and what he does or does not do with the Sicarius he does or does not bind, will not be part of your story. You go back, and find another corridor, and walk on.
You wish you knew whether to wish him well.
FIVE OF WANDS
After navigating a maze of corridors, you ascend a staircase into a guard-house and depart through the rear gates of the stronghold, following the path up the hill. However, your hopes of a nice clean ascent are dashed, as instead of leading to another hill to climb, or a way up the larger mountains, it leads straight down the other side of the hill and veers into yet another cave. Wonderful. You know that progress along the Ascent is not literally tied to how high you appear to get during the climb before -- it scarcely could be, given that location is inconsistent and you don't appear one night where you left off the previous -- but it still feels bad to be directed down when you want to go up.
Your bad feeling intensifies when, after a few minutes of walking, you enter an enormous cavern lit by thousands upon thousands of candles floating atop the massive pool of water that dominates the space. Near the banks of the lake is a shrine, the altar of which stands proudly, illuminated by the sacred radiance of the chamber, unmixed with the light of the sky.
The Shrine of the Word Unveiled. A place of veneration for the blessed powers who know certain hidden words, which contain within them the highest truths of the supernal. Some dreamers have names for some of those powers: Thoth, Odin, St. Jerome. Perhaps there is truth in one of those names, or more. Perhaps they are all just myths covering over the mysteries of the dream.
[*] Take a breath, and move on: Gain this card as an Aura. [] Spend one Willpower and one Supernal Insight or Aura of the suit of Wands: Add this card to your Pneuma. Search the Unseen for any one of the following cards -- II The High Priestess, V The Hierophant, IX The Hermit -- and shuffle it into the Ascent Deck.You cannot pay the costs associated with this option!
You know it as soon as you look upon it, without needing to find the gilt letters etched into the wood. You sigh heavily. Your previous night, in the cartographers' hall, you had specifically sought to avoid this place, once you deciphered that it lay in your path. You didn't possess a suitable offering with which to honor the powers of divine understanding, nothing that demonstrated your commitment to the course of wisdom. You had hoped to find one, but you haven't, and fate, or the hidden machinations of whatever wills are at work in the dreaming-realm, or sheer bad luck, has conspired to put the Shrine in your path again, and so you must continue on your journey, leaving it behind.
You take a moment, first, to bow your head and contemplate it anyway. You do want to understand. It's why you started climbing in the first place. And some Socratic part of you thinks that your awareness of your own ignorance is the sort of offering worthy of being made in this place, even if it isn't adequate temptation with which to draw a greater power of the dream closer to you.
Then, without a backwards look, you move on.
SIX OF CUPS
When you finally emerge from the tunnel through the mountain, you're at sea level, white-capped breakers crashing in. You sigh and start walking along the shoreline, keeping an eye out for the first mountain or hill or even ridgeline that looks at all climbable. Even if this place is weird and works by weird rules and maybe there can be seas high up above the lowlands, it still feels wrong.
As a result of your focus on matters on the land, it takes a while before you notice the mermaids.
In fairness, even if you had been watching the sea more avidly, they're not easy to spot. From a distance, their fins and tails above the surface just look like sharks or dolphins. They're singing, of course, but it's hard to hear over the sound of the waves unless you know what to listen for, and even then it's muffled and distorted. But a momentary climb atop a sand dune gives you a better view out to the horizon, and you notice a peculiar color to the water, and then a number of things click in your mind in rapid succession. Once you've recognized the Silver Sea, it does not take much more work to recognize its most famous denizens for what they are.
The sirens of the Silver Sea offer knowledge of the future. And they have knowledge of the future. They can prophesy truly, if they want, if they like you enough. It is within their power to grant wisdom rather than death. That's how they get you. But you could make an efficacious appeal to them for mercy and knowledge, you think. You could bargain with them, if you spent the time and energy to do so.
You hear the mermaids singing, each to each. You wonder if they will sing to you.
[] Take a breath, and move on: Gain this card as an Aura.
[] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[] Write-in what Aura or Supernal resource to expend
[][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
[][ASCENT] Wake up, ending the Night.
Decks and Resources: Character Sheet Night-specific information: 4/max 6 Explorations, Swords Aura, Wands Aura
Technically I should have stopped and called for a vote after the Five of Wands for whether you wanted to keep exploring, but I elected not to because the previous update's vote had been pretty decisive in favor of continuing and nothing has really changed: you didn't spend any resources, you just gained an Aura which if anything makes continuing more appealing. So in the interest of having better pacing, I fiated; if you really wish I hadn't done so, please let me know so I can adjust my future behavior.
Just like last time, if there's consensus in favor of the "scry 2" option, I'll close the vote earlier than I normally would, look at the next two cards, and start a new vote to resolve the effect, in the interest of keeping things moving. That new vote will also have the keep going/wake up vote so you can make an informed choice about it, per @Wiadi's excellent suggestion last time.
[] Spend one Supernal Connection or Aura of the suit of Cups, dismissing and banishing the spirit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Gain one Supernal Connection.
I missed this vote, but. Mechanically, we'd be spending our Supernal Connection to gain another Supernal Connection and adding the card to our Pneuma. Basically, we could've added the card for free, right?
[] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[] Write-in what Aura or Supernal resource to expend
We have two Auras to spend, so I think this is the right play. I'm just not sure which Aura we'd want to use, since we'd want to keep whichever one we're more likely to be able to spend in the next two turns.
Mechanically, we'd be spending our Supernal Connection to gain another Supernal Connection and adding the card to our Pneuma. Basically, we could've added the card for free, right?
Yes, same as with Frank (the Knight of Pentacles) and Supernal Force, which we also collectively chose not to do. The more exciting (to my eyes) interaction is the possibility of converting Auras, which are temporary, into Supernals, which are not. Alas, we haven't had the correct Auras for either case.
Drat on missing out on the shrine, but that's the will of the RNG.
I'm going to go for this, because we have a Supernal Force, and no Supernal Insight, which corresponds to our Aura of Wands:
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Aura of Swords
[X][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
I missed this vote, but. Mechanically, we'd be spending our Supernal Connection to gain another Supernal Connection and adding the card to our Pneuma. Basically, we could've added the card for free, right?
Yes, same as with Frank (the Knight of Pentacles) and Supernal Force, which we also collectively chose not to do. The more exciting (to my eyes) interaction is the possibility of converting Auras, which are temporary, into Supernals, which are not. Alas, we haven't had the correct Auras for either case.
@mathymancer gave some great analysis about the uses of Auras earlier on this page, which might help with your thinking. You don't know what you don't know, of course, but for what you have seen so far it's all correct.
Hm. Okay, this is maybe inadvisably hasty, but honestly I want to keep building our picture of what we're dealing with here. At this point there's a pretty good chance that the top four cards of our deck contain a Trump, so if we just dig as hard as we can we've got a good shot at hitting one before the night is out. And with at least one of every Supernal or Aura on hand, we're about as well-prepared as we can realistically be. So I say let's dig.
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Aura of Swords
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Aura of Swords
[X][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Aura of Swords
Darn. Shame about losing the Five of Wands. It feels like the deck is really trying to tell us to go Cups rather than Wands.
It's also a damn shame we passed on the Page of Swords, not just because I wanted to interact with the card but also because now we have an Aura of Swords burning a hole in our pocket. If we didn't then this card would be an easy skip for me, as the small chance of getting to use the Aura of Wands is still a better deal than getting to look and maybe move our top two cards. As it is, I feel like taking this card into our Pneuma would be throwing good money after bad. There are exactly 2 cards in the deck which I'll be happy to see if we peek at the top - the Threes of Wands and Cups. Sending them to the bottom will be useful. Any other card - literally any whatsoever - I would rather we draw and either pass on or interact with as needed, which will happen if we do nothing since those are the cards at the top of the deck.
[X] Take a breath, and move on: Gain this card as an Aura.
[X][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
We should be more conservative with our Willpower. Looking back there's almost no card in our Pneuma that I don't like, excepting the Threes which were forced on us. The one exception to this is the Six of Pentacles - "Ash looked at a bunch of maps one time" is the least meaningful part in Ash's journey to me by a pretty wide margin. This Six seems a lot more interesting to be honest, but I could still do without it.
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Aura of Swords
The vote is close enough that I don't feel comfortable calling it for the scry 2 option at this point; I'd prefer a larger margin than 2. So vote remains open for now; lurkers, weigh in!
(And, of course, if you want to move on and take the Aura, that's valid; if that's the winning option in about ten hours, that's the winning option. The scry 2 option triggers a subvote, though, which is why we can end early if there's clear consensus for it.)
My reasoning for "why now" is basically that I want to have an Aura of Wands or a Supernal Insight available when we find our first Trump, to maximize our probable options for how to interact with it, whereas once we've met one we'll hopefully be at least closer to understanding how the rest will operate & consequently be able to strategize around them. Since we currently have an Aura of Wands and have no way to guarantee getting another on the next night, now seems like an optimal time to try and force a Trump.
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Aura of Swords
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Aura of Swords
Your top two cards are: III The Empress
The Three of Wands
[] Write-in an arrangement where either or both are on the top or bottom of the deck. If both go to the top or bottom, make sure their relative order is clear.
[][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
[][ASCENT] Wake up, ending the Night.
Decks and Resources: Character Sheet, Wands Aura Night-specific information: 4/max 6 Explorations
Well, given that the Three of Swords had the options of "spend a supernal resource to add the card as an Aura" or "spend Willpower to add to Pneuma", I'm going to nope out of that one. And we have an Aura for Wands and Supernal Resources for every other suit, so may as well see what the Empress is like.
[X] Empress on the top of the deck, Three of Wands on the bottom.
[X][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
My reasoning for "why now" is basically that I want to have an Aura of Wands or a Supernal Insight available when we find our first Trump, to maximize our probable options for how to interact with it, whereas once we've met one we'll hopefully be at least closer to understanding how the rest will operate & consequently be able to strategize around them. Since we currently have an Aura of Wands and have no way to guarantee getting another on the next night, now seems like an optimal time to try and force a Trump.
