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Shards of a Broken Sun [Deprecated; see link in final post for remake]

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Highwind said:
If we can find a way to get rid of him that doesn't involve irrevocably altering the fundaments of the human psyche or destroying the process of self-realization of which he embodies one aspect, then fine. But this isn't the sort of thing to go for without examining every aspect involved and how they relate to each other.
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Baughn said:
"It could not be otherwise. Humanity is polarised, split through whether or not it wishes to accept the status quo. Every spiteful act of cruelty is also rebellion against the nature of humanity itself, every happy thought implicitly an acceptance of that nature. There is a light to my darkness, but it does not wish for change. Fear is justified, for I am evil, but that is not all which I am; every scientist seeking to bend Kagutsuchi to their whims, every justified rebel, they are also me."
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Baughn said:
"I am not separate from humanity. What I do, I do out of human desire. If I have attempted to destroy humanity, it is because humanity is suicidal; if I have failed, it is because enough of it is not. Even a trapped animal will eventually tear itself to pieces trying to escape, though it will not deliberately commit suicide, but humanity is far more than a mere animal. I will not claim that humanity's demise would sadden me, while it remains the sole escape. It does not. You have little true choice, for if Kagutsuchi creates a new world you will be destroyed, and I will eventually be reborn. One day, if humanity remains locked up, my other purpose will succeed."
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Nyarlathotep is the part of humanity that wants something, anything, but the status quo. Pretty much by definition, we don't want to keep that around. Even if you want humanity to escape its cage, Nyarlathotep would be destroyed in the process. The only way to keep Nyarlathotep intact in the long run is to keep humanity imprisoned, and also ensure they never loose the desire to escape.

Highwind said:
Just because he asked to not exist anymore doesn't mean getting rid of him is a good idea. He's Nyarlathotep. He's as much of a trickster and a troll as The Ebon Dragon, and that's the sort of thing I expect TED might ask an Exalt to do if he though it would definitely fuck everyone else over more than inexistence would fuck him over, and if he thought the Exalt were stupid enough to fall for it.
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Nyarlathotep is not actually The Ebon Dragon. He doesn't particularly get anything out of fucking people over, its just that the obvious way for him to fulfill his purpose is by killing everyone.
 
mastigos said:
@Baughn since you're restarting this and all, I think it's worth pointing out my biggest problem with the way the quest was previously written: it assumes the quest-players know and have a good understanding of four separate franchises, without really making any concession to those who don't. Even with wiki-walking the Shugo-Chara stuff, for instance, is a maze of tangled references and half finished thoughts.

I'm certainly not advocating general re-writes or dumbing things down, just ... requesting that when you write a chapter you examine it through the lens of "what does this mean to someone who has never heard of Exalted/Shugo-Chara/SMT/Black Rock Shooter before this quest?"
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This quest is told from three positions:
Exa: who knows only Exalted
Amu: who knew only Shugo Chara side
M/BR: who know only BR side

It's written from the position of ignorant FOR REASON. All action on OOC knowledge is bonus for players who know that stuff. Yes, it does make decisionmaking hard, but, well, it's pretty IC
 
Skelm said:
Nyarlathotep is the part of humanity that wants something, anything, but the status quo. Pretty much by definition, we don't want to keep that around. Even if you want humanity to escape its cage, Nyarlathotep would be destroyed in the process. The only way to keep Nyarlathotep intact in the long run is to keep humanity imprisoned, and also ensure they never loose the desire to escape.
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Unending Chaos is bad, yes, but so is an unchanging Status Quo. The drive to change, as well as to destroy, is intrinsic to human nature and without it we wouldn't have nearly an advanced culture and technology as we have now.

What I am defending is not the preservation of Nyarlathotep himself, but of what he embodies. I don't mind if we get rid of the side-effect, as long as the process continues to exist.

Skelm said:
Nyarlathotep is not actually The Ebon Dragon. He doesn't particularly get anything out of fucking people over, its just that the obvious way for him to fulfill his purpose is by killing everyone.
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What I meant with that, was to say that we can't trust what Nyarly says at face value. Just because he asks us to do it (please kill me utterly so that I cannot reform) and that doing it sounds like a good idea (killing Nyarlathotep for good means he can't prod humanity down the path of self-destruction anymore), it doesn't mean that doing so actually is a good idea (because getting rid of him for good can cause permanent harm to the human psyche).

Not having what Nyarlathotep embodies is probably bad for Humanity's spirit.

"...Fear is justified, for I am evil, but that is not all which I am; every scientist seeking to bend Kagutsuchi to their whims, every justified rebel, they are also me."

If we can keep what he represents without having him, that's fine. If keeping that inevitably means having to deal with him... well, he's been active for a long time and Humanity hasn't self-destructed yet. And now we have a High Compassion Solar Exalt to help guide us.

But before we commit to destroying Nyarly for good, may I suggest actually understanding what he is, how he is and why he is? We can at least make an informed choice once we can answer those questions.
 
Highwind said:
What I meant with that, was to say that we can't trust what Nyarly says at face value. Just because he asks us to do it (please kill me utterly so that I cannot reform) and that doing it sounds like a good idea (killing Nyarlathotep for good means he can't prod humanity down the path of self-destruction anymore), it doesn't mean that doing so actually is a good idea (because getting rid of him for good can cause permanent harm to the human psyche).
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There's a pretty big difference between not caring about the damage his death would cause, and actively preferring to cause damage like you were suggesting. So far we don't have any reason to think that escaping (or controlling) Kagutsuchi's prison would be damaging at all.

Changing the subject a bit, does anyone remember the issues we face in replacing or hijacking Kagutsuchi completely?

EDIT: Also found this quote:
Baughn said:
This means that, while Nyarly indeed is humanity's negativity et.al., there's a reason for that. He isn't just.. conceptually our negativity. Well, he kind of is, because he's part of humanity - that is, a mind, and minds can do that sort of stuff - but there are potential configurations of humanity where he doesn't exist. By and large, they're the ones where humanity hasn't been run through a cheese grater by Kagutsuchi in order to form "humans".
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I'm still unclear on what Kagutsuchi actually did to humanity.
 
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al103 said:
This quest is told from three positions:
Exa: who knows only Exalted
Amu: who knew only Shugo Chara side
M/BR: who know only BR side

It's written from the position of ignorant FOR REASON. All action on OOC knowledge is bonus for players who know that stuff. Yes, it does make decisionmaking hard, but, well, it's pretty IC
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For what it's worth, I'm nominally a fan of Shugo Chara and have played a few SMT games but only know Exalted by way of pop cultural osmosis and have pretty much zero interest in any BR material.
At its basis, I'm enjoying this as a Shugo Chara quest, basically. Take a teenager with the attendant issues in finding yourself and getting the world to understand said 'self' and give her phenomenal cosmic power based on that principle, which makes things easier in some ways but also a lot harder in others.

The Exalted / SMT elements slot into that really nicely, I think. It's just that at this point Amu's basic journey to understand herself is getting into some really fundamental questions of human nature, and her quest to get the world to understand what defines her may well in turn end up redefining the fundamental nature of the world. No pressure. ;)
 
al103 said:
This quest is told from three positions:
Exa: who knows only Exalted
Amu: who knew only Shugo Chara side
M/BR: who know only BR side

It's written from the position of ignorant FOR REASON. All action on OOC knowledge is bonus for players who know that stuff. Yes, it does make decisionmaking hard, but, well, it's pretty IC
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except that problem bits are an inverse of that: Characters who DON'T know about setting X and and are learning about it the hard way put "what the hell is going on and what does this all mean?" at front and center and thus explain the situation most clearly.

Viewpoint characters dealing with the setting they are already familiar with, on the other hand, can start getting as clear as mud. Thats when we start running into (to exaggerate a little) "Boy this sure reminds me of that thing. The one that happened a few years ago with those people. And if it is similar then if you take into consideration what happened when my friends went to that one place .... wow that certainly has some important implications about what really happened back when ..."
 
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ShadowAngelBeta said:
Maybe each iteration of humanity is rewritten to lose some things? Like next time around they won't be able to form/summon Personas or something.
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That doesn't sound right, Nyarlathotep talks about Personas (and Charas) as extensions of the self that Kagutsuchi is forced to allow as it's cycle comes to an end. I don't think people could have either of those until Kagutsuchi got weaker recently. Presumably they go away at the start of each cycle and re-emerge near the end.
 
Skelm said:
That doesn't sound right, Nyarlathotep talks about Personas (and Charas) as extensions of the self that Kagutsuchi is forced to allow as it's cycle comes to an end. I don't think people could have either of those until Kagutsuchi got weaker recently. Presumably they go away at the start of each cycle and re-emerge near the end.
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Carl Jung is noted to have been a Persona user canonically. So the cycle started ending rather sooner than we think.

Carl Jung Persona Game when?
 
Though this does imply that humans naturally will tend to gain extra attributes and abilities if not suppressed. Which would similarly imply that the original humanity probably had a lot of those...
 
ShadowAngelBeta said:
Maybe each iteration of humanity is rewritten to lose some things? Like next time around they won't be able to form/summon Personas or something.
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Humans losing the thing that separates and mediates between the rest of their mind and the world at large seems like it would be rather detrimental in a rather immediate and terminal way.
 
ShadowAngelBeta said:
As in they'll be remade in a way that disallows/circumvents it. *facepalm* C'mon people.
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...

Y'know, being dismissive and repeating yourself isn't that good a distraction from the fact that you're still proposing that they will somehow arbitrarily lose the ability to form the mind's equivalent to a cell wall and somehow arbitrarily continue to exist as distinct entities.

Personas aren't just magical punch ghost summons, in case you had somehow not been paying attention throughout the entire series.
 
ShadowAngelBeta said:
Well excuse me for not knowing that.

Didn't we just fucking have a conversation on people not being familiar with some of the settings here? All I knew about Personas was that they were important and that everyone had one.
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You're excused for your lack of knowledge.

You're not excused for presuming that your ignorance granted you immunity to having your suggestions examined critically, nor presuming that if someone disagreed with you then obviously they were stupid or malicious rather than having meaningful observations. You're not excused for being dismissive and assholish about it when someone had the temerity to do so, non-rudely albeit not actively politely. You're not excused for believing that, once you started shit-flinging, nobody would take offense or respond in kind.
 
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ShadowAngelBeta said:
Well excuse me for not knowing that.

Didn't we just fucking have a conversation on people not being familiar with some of the settings here? All I knew about Personas was that they were important and that everyone had one.

Fuck off.
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There is absolutely no reason to not watch or read things about the core settings. Megaten is an old old franchise with plenty of break downs and summaries, tvtropes/wikis abound, and lps even more. By now everyone here has had plenty of accumulated time to read up, and I've always considered it common sense or plain manners to at least have tertiary knowledge of a quest's source material.

Totally not being bias fill or nudging an anime episode of Shugo Chara or Desu2 or p3/4 towards ya.

Totally
 
Lilithium said:
There is absolutely no reason to not watch or read things about the core settings. Megaten is an old old franchise with plenty of break downs and summaries, tvtropes/wikis abound, and lps even more. By now everyone here has had plenty of accumulated time to read up, and I've always considered it common sense or plain manners to at least have tertiary knowledge of a quest's source material.

Totally not being bias fill or nudging an anime episode of Shugo Chara or Desu2 or p3/4 towards ya.

Totally
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I need to rewatch Desu2 but i just finished marathoning Macross 7 and am still marveling at the fact that Nasuverses Mountain Hobo Logic applies to space rockers, too
 
Quantumboost said:
Humans losing the thing that separates and mediates between the rest of their mind and the world at large seems like it would be rather detrimental in a rather immediate and terminal way.
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Quantumboost said:
...

Y'know, being dismissive and repeating yourself isn't that good a distraction from the fact that you're still proposing that they will somehow arbitrarily lose the ability to form the mind's equivalent to a cell wall and somehow arbitrarily continue to exist as distinct entities.

Personas aren't just magical punch ghost summons, in case you had somehow not been paying attention throughout the entire series.
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Uh, most people don't have Personas. You have to integrate with your Shadow and stuff first.
 
Skelm said:
Uh, most people don't have Personas. You have to integrate with your Shadow and stuff first.
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Depends on the Persona game and franchise. One, Two, and Three never needed to meet their shadows. Five had some freaky super condensed awakening where the mcs said fuck it this is my true self! Unless you're referring purely to Jung.

But yeah most people don't have the potential.
 
Skelm said:
Uh, most people don't have Personas. You have to integrate with your Shadow and stuff first.
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More accurately, most people don't have the ability to consciously direct their Persona as the whole guardian spirit thing that you see in the series. They still have one, it's essentially the social 'face' aspect of the psyche used to interact with society as a whole (and thus, the Collective Unconscious) and protect the ego. The Shadow-integration and other methods don't create the Persona (normally), they enable a Persona-user to harness it.

In other words, everyone has a mask - or masks - but most people don't know how or aren't able to use their mask to light other peoples' repressed personality traits on fire.
 
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Reminder, experiments involving personas lead to bad shit. Please do not attempt to poke the sea of one's soul or collective unconscious. Side affects include but are not limited to; demons eating your butler, mass death, huge towers, parallel worlds, not being canon, Persona Revalations, evil little girls in dream lands, the Moon having eyeballs, only being able to date the guys in two games, your ultimate self being your dead butler, and getting smack talked by the cooler Yosuke.
 
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