Man, this vote would be way easier if not for the implications of the Empire destabilizing; The very existence of Strategic Complexion implies that interfering would be at least a relatively worthwhile development, and given the dissolution of all known empires is our most vulnerable weakness thus far, stopping this from becoming a general failure cascade is worthwhile. However, doing this is going to necessarily delay at least some of our Goals; I prefer combining it with Extra Diligence for it still allows us to exploit the Overgrowth and it is at least some action against Spoiled. I'll Face Myself would leave us with neither the necromantic mastery nor True Diagrams when voted in combination, so it's the worst in a strategical sense. I understand voting for it even despite this though.
While I'm here, let me shill Amplification too. People have very liberal interpretations on what constitutes a "bodily action", and I legitimately don't know why it is being chosen. We certainly have enough combat power, and Scepter training has been shown as mostly meditative in this update, and any Diagram research would be as well. Is it just to look even prettier? I'm sure Aurelia loves us just the way we are.
Comparatively, Amplification is either a good future investment thanks to Chronoreactor, and/or may allow us to supercharge our stages, with may be relevant both in combat and outside of it; depending on how the bonus manifests itself, it may either a numerical boost or an enhancement to the benefits of the stages, like more casting power or more blood potency. It also saves us BP, something quite scarce at the moment and something we should not take for granted. It's our most economical option by far.
I feel like the easy option, at least in character, is to not change. It's presumably easier to keep doing what you're doing, and ignore the fact that you should be reworking how you think, even if it's not the right thing to do. On the other hand, people could easily disagree with me here.
I mean, only one of the options has no effort on Nameless's part whatsoever. It may be the best option in a long term sense even, just not one of internal victory, which I think is important. Do we need Aurelia besides us to police our every vice and mode of thought, or can we actually gain some self-control and learn to restrain ourselves independently? It sets a bad precedent, especially because she doesn't even want this. We can't put Aurelia over our shoulder forever.
I wanted independence back when it was an option. Now that it really isn't, and we're bound to Aurelia forever, I want to take advantage of that. We know she's loyal to us, we invested our Oath artifact (plus a BP which we would have gotten otherwise) and a significant bonus — one which would have been worth a BP wherever it was applied, at least roughly — in making our relationship as strong as it can be. We've invested quite a lot in it, let's at least reap some of the reward from that investment.
Aurelia's competency and the mastery of her Ring are already quite the reward for me, annoyed as I am at the Oath winning, trusting her with our very cognition is something I find unnecessary. This kind of seems sunk-cost fallacy to me.
We didn't since her loyalty was 5, not 8 iirc.
Goddammit, I am now positively miffed.
