Kelirapc
The Bright in your Night
- Location
- Kali-Forni
Also I would recommend his current story called Twig.
Wormwood (A Worm/Pact Quest)
- Thread starter Mithrandir
- Start date
- Location
- Wherever
Two points.
Firstly, what little definition Pact gives us on its magical system tells us that Pact is metaphysically operating on real physics logic, but even more depressing: you can't get something without giving something in exchange, and on the whole the world trends toward spiraling down the drain. As such, there's no reason to think Pact's magic is any kind of escape from entropy -in a lot of ways Pact seems to be a world where supernatural entropy is considerably faster than real-life physics entropy. So if the Entities know about magic, it wouldn't help them beat entropy.
Secondly, there's no reason to expect magic to be an out-of-context problem to Entities in terms of blocking precognition. An out-of-context problem in terms of Scion having no reason to think, on his own, that agreeing to give "something" in a backpack to a Fey in exchange for (whatever) is going to result in his name and therefore his identity stolen, certainly, but not out-of-context in terms of Entity precognition just failing to predict magical stuff. Worm precognition only seems to work when something foils it -so higher spirits in Pact might have the power and protections in place to ward off the Entities, but magic wouldn't be invisible by default. Even if the invisibility to their senses applied, that really ought to be directly overturned by plugging into human senses -that is, Scion himself might be 100% clueless to magic, but the shards plugged into humans really ought to be aware of magic just from hitting hosts that are aware of magic.
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Re: the Quest itself, I'm not a fan of how long the updates go on. I get that Blake is an established character, but I have trouble feeling invested in a Quest if it feels like I'm contributing only occasionally, and only a little, with most of what actually happens being about the Questmaster writing characters interacting and so on without any input from the audience. Like, Wormwood seems to me like it might be an interesting fanfic, but it's not grabbing me as a Quest.
I'm also skeptical of the idea that magic is "new" in Wormwood's setting. Pact's magical system is very reliant on precedent and history shaping perceptions that shape reality that shape perceptions. If you plugged in the basic idea into Worm and then had it grow organically, I have doubts you'd end up with Pact's magical system in anything but the most general of details, and it's my impression that Wormwood intends to cleave more closely to Pact's system as presented, not use it as a conceptual launching off point.
I like the idea of this Quest, but I find it sketchy so far, unfortunately.
Mithrandir
Endurance and victory!
- Location
- Lighting the Blue Beacons.
Thank you for this thoughtful review. I can always use constructive criticism, and I'll try to take your worries into account in the future.
There are two reasons that I decided to adhere so closely to Pact's system. First, the Adepts and Blake are basing their perceptions off of Pact (and their perceptions then, in part, shape the system). Second, because that would be a triple cross between Pact/Worm/Original Fiction, with Blake adapting to superheroes and a wildly different magic.
- Location
- Wherever
I get that, but I can't think of an actual reason to not just have this be a fusion of Worm/Pact (Which it basically already is) beyond the part where the Quest is already established and it would be a pain to re-do it with the concept rebooted appropriately. Earth Bet only deviates significantly from reality in the 1980s, and Pact's world is supposed to be one of those magical settings that could totally be the real world and you're just personally clueless of the magic happening right under your nose, so it would make perfect sense for Pactverse-gets-hit-by-Worm-canon to be reasonably recognizable as both settings intertwined -on the Pact end, there's literally thousands of years of history prior to the Entities showing up, so any effect on Pact magic would be new and minor (We see in Pact that beings from 200 years ago are considered to be kind of "new on the block", because Pact's timescale for supernatural stuff is just long) while Worm canon could proceed largely unaltered by virtue of magic being invisible to normies anyway. (Indeed, you can make it seamless -"differences caused by Pact" can literally mean stuff like "The ABB had five parahumans, and then demons ate three of them and everyone forgot about all but Lung and Oni Lee, the ones not yet eaten." because that's how Pact works)
The questions that would have to be answered would be interesting ones that would make the Quest more fun to explore, not less -questions like "Is Cauldron aware of magic? If so, what are they doing to account for it/take advantage of it? If they aren't, what are the implications of that?"
What's written so far seems to be sort of... halfway between an actual fusion and "Blake (and pals) fell into a wormhole to Worm and kept access to their own brand of magic". Either of those could be neat, but... being halfway between them doesn't seem at all interesting to me, and raises problematic questions -what I've already alluded to, and more besides. Like, okay, Blake and company's expectations are a big part of what's shaping things into being Pact-like -suddenly you've opened the way to the Questors gaming that to manipulate the magical system's foundations that are still forming, because you've given Blake and pals a disproportionate level of control/influence on the magical system's properties. If you close that avenue artificially, that's fake and aggravating. If you don't close it artificially, you risk it turning into the Worm/Pact/Original Setting that you're trying to avoid.
The questions that would have to be answered would be interesting ones that would make the Quest more fun to explore, not less -questions like "Is Cauldron aware of magic? If so, what are they doing to account for it/take advantage of it? If they aren't, what are the implications of that?"
What's written so far seems to be sort of... halfway between an actual fusion and "Blake (and pals) fell into a wormhole to Worm and kept access to their own brand of magic". Either of those could be neat, but... being halfway between them doesn't seem at all interesting to me, and raises problematic questions -what I've already alluded to, and more besides. Like, okay, Blake and company's expectations are a big part of what's shaping things into being Pact-like -suddenly you've opened the way to the Questors gaming that to manipulate the magical system's foundations that are still forming, because you've given Blake and pals a disproportionate level of control/influence on the magical system's properties. If you close that avenue artificially, that's fake and aggravating. If you don't close it artificially, you risk it turning into the Worm/Pact/Original Setting that you're trying to avoid.
Mithrandir
Endurance and victory!
- Location
- Lighting the Blue Beacons.
Good points, but I'm not sure what to do about it at this point.
Hopefully it's good enough to stand on its own merits.
Hopefully it's good enough to stand on its own merits.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh boy, a Worm/Pact quest.
This ought to be a barrel of laughs.
This ought to be a barrel of laughs.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You are now imagining Evan meeting up with Alec and Aisha, and hanging out with them.
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
This sort of length is actually pretty normal for the more story heavy quests.
We could certainly use more input though.
so...having been brought here by a banner i must say i love the idea of this quest but is it dead or just sleeping
Mithrandir
Endurance and victory!
- Location
- Lighting the Blue Beacons.
Just sleeping. Repeated computer issues have temporarily delayed the next update, but it should be up soon.