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SayakaQuest Thread 10: Glory To The Death

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[X] Keep holding her.
-[X] You're here for her. For as long as she needs.

WELCOME TO THE HERD CLUB, PERFECTSILENCE! PREPARE TO WEEP LIKE A LITTLE BOY!
 
Shironi said:
Not much to do here other than cry and hug Kyouko. Kyouko ain't buying what Sayaka's selling, and I doubt more talking will accomplish anything worthwhile. I mean, Sayaka can talk all she wants, but she's so far shown the opposite with her actions. Kyouko knows this and it hurt her to say it out loud.

Keep this conversation in mind in future combat though. That's where/how we'll be able to work this problem, if we can at all. Worry more about Sayaka in combat. Start running witch fights with a kite shield. Train up basic rolls to prevent the dice from fucking us over in combat as much as possible. Pray to the dice gods that Kyouko doesn't get shit rolls.
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And when do you suggest we do that?
The problem is that the inherent structure of this quest means that we have way too little time and far too many serious issues to deal with. On top of that, training requires us to spend more time away from training and get lucky with the random witch difficulties (which we have NOT been, at ALL) that we get an efficient profit in grief seeds. Unfortunately, half the time we or one of Sayaka's friends gets more trauma piled on them as a result of hunting, which requires some social/psychological fu, which further takes time away from training but is absolutely necessary. This is a setting where a freak out can cause someone to turn into a witch in a matter of seconds or minutes. And there was never avoiding the lichbomb, witchbomb, or the angst of the first kill(s), or Kyouko's dark period in her history, or Homura's spectacularly tragic story, or dealing with bringing the normals into the masquerade or isolating them to the point where it really hurt everyone involved. And Miho finding out was for the better, but still. The protagonists here are young teenage girls that are fighting for their lives every day against horrific abominations, other such girls that compete for the same prey to survive, and the colossal angst that comes from the lichbomb, witchbomb, and trying to cope with having a life outside of this insanity at all. There was plenty of angst in AsukaQuest, but here even the very setting is worse on an entirely different level. And we have nowhere near enough time to deal with it and the physical threats we face. More training means more hunting, which means more trauma, stress, and the possibility of gaining little profit in the way of grief seeds in comparison to accumulated corruption. And since it's a daily struggle to work out of despair and horror, and we need to be in a fairly good state of mind to effectively train...

Moid making Walpurgisnacht apparently two orders of magnitude more difficult than Skadi at minimum also bogs things down. I get the impression that in canon, Homura was just a plain bad match-up for Walpurgisnacht--her firepower being limited in scale to what she could procure from modern weapons, and her mobility being limited so as to prevent any boarding attempts and make outmaneuvering it extremely difficult. Not that it wouldn't have been very hard even with help, but in this quest she has a lot more than just some help--she's got experienced, coordinated, and powerful allies that have a good idea of what they're up against.
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On a separate note:
Shouldn't we plan on trying to intercept Walpurgisnacht outside the city? I mean, as far as I can tell, waiting until it reaches the city just gives the witch more ammunition (skyscrapers, metric fucktons of shrapnel), limits us somewhat with the constant threat of collateral damage, and ensures that civilian casualties will be enormous. Similarly to Pacific Rim, the idea should be to intercept and kill the kaiju before the kaiju reaches the city, so as to prevent the city from getting wrecked as the big brawl occurs. We should be able to combine Homura's timestop with Sayaka's boosting/pseudo-flight (and Kyouko's chains if need be) to get everyone aboard the giant gear platform without getting shot, and from there any differences in lacking cover would be rendered moot. So, if this is at all possible, we should explicitly make this our plan going forward--so that we can at least avoid angsting about Mitakihara inevitably getting utterly destroyed along with everyone in it.

EDIT: Finally caught up myself, now. And holy hell, aren't Sayaka and Kyouko just a mountain of angst right now. Walpurgisnacht's impending arrival pretty much means that any attempts to deal with that are going to be band-aids to hold things together long enough to make it to that fight intact, at best.

[X] Keep holding her.
-[X] You're here for her. For as long as she needs.

What was Kyouko talking about when she said she just got plowed over or whatnot? Was it just her nightmare, or was she referring to her lackluster performance in one fight or another recently?
 
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SaltyWaffles said:
On a separate note:
Shouldn't we plan on trying to intercept Walpurgisnacht outside the city? I mean, as far as I can tell, waiting until it reaches the city just gives the witch more ammunition (skyscrapers, metric fucktons of shrapnel), limits us somewhat with the constant threat of collateral damage, and ensures that civilian casualties will be enormous. Similarly to Pacific Rim, the idea should be to intercept and kill the kaiju before the kaiju reaches the city, so as to prevent the city from getting wrecked as the big brawl occurs. We should be able to combine Homura's timestop with Sayaka's boosting/pseudo-flight (and Kyouko's chains if need be) to get everyone aboard the giant gear platform without getting shot, and from there any differences in lacking cover would be rendered moot. So, if this is at all possible, we should explicitly make this our plan going forward--so that we can at least avoid angsting about Mitakihara inevitably getting utterly destroyed along with everyone in it.
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Pretty sure something like that was discussed with homura way back, and she more or less said that trying to find or intercept WN beforehand dosent work. Although that may just have been about long beforehand.

On the otehr hand, once everyones standing on top of the thing (or not) how are you going to stop it from moving? It always seemed to move like it wanted and only halfheartedly follow the battle.
 
SaltyWaffles said:
And when do you suggest we do that?
The problem is that the inherent structure of this quest means that we have way too little time and far too many serious issues to deal with. On top of that, training requires us to spend more time away from training and get lucky with the random witch difficulties (which we have NOT been, at ALL) that we get an efficient profit in grief seeds. Unfortunately, half the time we or one of Sayaka's friends gets more trauma piled on them as a result of hunting, which requires some social/psychological fu, which further takes time away from training but is absolutely necessary. This is a setting where a freak out can cause someone to turn into a witch in a matter of seconds or minutes. And there was never avoiding the lichbomb, witchbomb, or the angst of the first kill(s), or Kyouko's dark period in her history, or Homura's spectacularly tragic story, or dealing with bringing the normals into the masquerade or isolating them to the point where it really hurt everyone involved. And Miho finding out was for the better, but still. The protagonists here are young teenage girls that are fighting for their lives every day against horrific abominations, other such girls that compete for the same prey to survive, and the colossal angst that comes from the lichbomb, witchbomb, and trying to cope with having a life outside of this insanity at all. There was plenty of angst in AsukaQuest, but here even the very setting is worse on an entirely different level. And we have nowhere near enough time to deal with it and the physical threats we face.

Moid making Walpurgisnacht apparently two orders of magnitude more difficult than Skadi at minimum also bogs things down. I get the impression that in canon, Homura was just a plain bad match-up for Walpurgisnacht--her firepower being limited in scale to what she could procure from modern weapons, and her mobility being limited so as to prevent any boarding attempts and make outmaneuvering it extremely difficult. Not that it wouldn't have been very hard even with help, but in this quest she has a lot more than just some help--she's got experienced, coordinated, and powerful allies that have a good idea of what they're up against.
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SaltyWaffles said:
On a separate note:
Shouldn't we plan on trying to intercept Walpurgisnacht outside the city? I mean, as far as I can tell, waiting until it reaches the city just gives the witch more ammunition (skyscrapers, metric fucktons of shrapnel), limits us somewhat with the constant threat of collateral damage, and ensures that civilian casualties will be enormous. Similarly to Pacific Rim, the idea should be to intercept and kill the kaiju before the kaiju reaches the city, so as to prevent the city from getting wrecked as the big brawl occurs. We should be able to combine Homura's timestop with Sayaka's boosting/pseudo-flight (and Kyouko's chains if need be) to get everyone aboard the giant gear platform without getting shot, and from there any differences in lacking cover would be rendered moot. So, if this is at all possible, we should explicitly make this our plan going forward--so that we can at least avoid angsting about Mitakihara inevitably getting utterly destroyed along with everyone in it.
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Last night, I wrote over two thousand five hundred words about the protagonist of another quest creating a giant hat out of spent Grief and headbutting the antagonist with it. I say this to put in perspective that this is the most inane thing I've read in the last twenty-four hours.

It appears right next to the shoreline. The very first thing it does is lift up a dozen skyscrapers to make an entrance. And fighting this thing outside the city would entail fighting it in the open ocean. For potentially hours. While not all of us can actually fly. Against familiars, and Walpurgisnacht itself, which can. It's debatable that we can kill this thing at all, without dealing with unfavorable terrain and a time limit. Oh yeah, and since you apparently watched the Homubattle, you might have noticed that she relies a lot on mortars, prepared explosives, and the buildings to support her in combat... which, if you're still paying attention, generally don't float.

In short, yes, it would be lovely to not worry about the city being destroyed because we'll just kill Walpy or force it away before it can traverse the tiny distance between where it first appears in the series and the city's outskirts. It would also be lovely if we could summon up a giant mecha powered by justice and lesbians and use it to suplex Walpurgisnacht into the Marianas Trench, but that ain't gonna happen. If we try to stymie Walpurgisnacht, it will more than likely just keep going. Because, you know, it's Walpurgisnacht.
 
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SaltyWaffles said:
-snip-
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Typically I know better than to get into the whole "Someone is WRONG on the internet debates". However, you quoted me, so I'm kinda obilgated now.

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Ok. Your first sentence has some merit, Not enough time to do stuff. Sure, fine. 6 days left in quest and all that. 100% correct. Your second sentence, on the other hand, is where things start going wrong.
..."On top of that, training requires us to spend more time away from training and get lucky with the random witch difficulties"
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I'll assume you mean 'Combat' instead of 'Training' because 'Training takes time away from training' makes very little sense otherwise, while "Combat takes time away from training" makes a ton more sense. It's not quite correct mind you, for reasons listed below, but it's at least on the right track.

'...that we get an efficient profit in grief seeds.'
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If you'd noticed the Grief Seed Tally I posted a while back, you'll notice that we have been getting an efficient profit of grief seeds, for the record Sayaka has 11 seeds worth of clenses right now. It's why Sayaka gets hurt on 'average' witch hunts. She could just armor the fuck up for every fight, but she's placing efficiency over safety. Building a stock for Walpurgis and all that.

snip of Trauma unrelated to hunting
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I'm not sure why you have this here. This is unrelated to either hunting or training. If you're pointing out that the majority of clenses comes from Emotional Truama Bombs rather than hunting or training, well, congrats captain obvious, that's what makes the MG system so deadly even for the veterans.

'More training means more hunting, which means more trauma, stress, and the possibility of gaining little profit in the way of grief seeds in comparison to accumulated corruption. And since it's a daily struggle to work out of despair and horror, and we need to be in a fairly good state of mind to effectively train...'
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False. Training =/= hunting. We've had days earlier in the quest where we train, but don't hunt. It's not, in fact, a daily struggle to work through despair and horror, because Sayaka has her defense mechanisim of FLUFFY TIMEZ with Kyouko to hold most of it at bay. Yes, FLUFFY TIMES are in fact a coping mechanisim for Kyo/Saya. Enjoy reading the fluff knowing that from now on.

To go into detail about training efficiency, Sayaka can spend 300 magic before personality damage starts to happen. At that point it's advisable to clense. Sayaka can't rack up 300c in a training session unless she's doing something really intensive/stupid. What normally happens is that Sayaka burns ~100c training, fights a witch and then clenses, or she does the Witch fight first, trains, then clenses.

Homu Wank
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Did you somehow miss the 3 fucking meetings we've had with Homu about Waply? Once as just Sayaka, once with Kyouko and Akane, and once just recently with the newbies, Madoka and Hitomi? Because I'm pretty sure we've had 3 meetings with Homu already about this IC. Then again, I only index the entire quest, so I could very well be wrong about this.

Walpy Plan
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Ok, I'll admit that if you're just breezing through the quest you might not have gotten the memo yet but I'll give it to you here: Walpy appears in the goddamn city and we cannot 'intercept it outside' that's impossible.

And don't even suggest 'evacuating the entire city' either. That's also impossible because lol-14 year old girl. No, we're not going to frame a parent as a terrorist and do bomb threats. No, Homu doesn't have a nuke to use either.

'EDIT: Finally caught up myself, now. And holy hell, aren't Sayaka and Kyouko just a mountain of angst right now. Walpurgisnacht's impending arrival pretty much means that any attempts to deal with that are going to be band-aids to hold things together long enough to make it to that fight intact, at best.'
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Yes. This is exactly fucking why I said "There's not much we can do here other than hug Kyouko and cry."
 
Dalek Ix said:
There's a distinct possibility that we won't.

We need to either make some progress on the mental stability front or get a baddie to occupy our time, because otherwise, were fucked.
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Well, we have six days left.

There has to be something, though the latter is more likely to happen within this short time.

Sightedjt said:
Current SQ plan for dealing with morning emotional trauma.
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Shironi already said it, there's nothing else to do for now.
 
[X] Keep holding her.
-[X] You're here for her. For as long as she needs.

Once we've both recovered a bit,
[x] Offer to make breakfast.


There's yet another potential landmine no one's brought up. Yoko and Sukoyo both made contracts directly as a result of devastation we caused. I'd love to never see them figure this out, and yet I'm almost advocating telling them. Because, well, Kyubey.
 
Kifaya said:
There's yet another potential landmine no one's brought up. Yoko and Sukoyo both made contracts directly as a result of devastation we caused. I'd love to never see them figure this out, and yet I'm almost advocating telling them. Because, well, Kyubey.
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They've got Akane as a mentor figure for if we get burned, they have bigger problems, and they know about the bunnycat. If we weren't in the endgame and they weren't likely to evacuate anyway, maybe. As it is, let's not.
 
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Actually, if the witches get harder with higher rolls and easier with lower one, would a natural 1 give us a witch that actually makez us permanently stronger just for fighting it?
 
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