Uh guys.
The whole magic proliferation argument is missing one key factor: The uplift is not random. Please stop treating it like it is being given out to everyone.
Good thing law enforcement has them first eh?
Its pretty much standard capital ship armament for the TSAB. Its there because a dimensional rupture cannon is known to stop most Lost Logia, and as such theres no scenario for knowing you need it ahead of time on an explorer.
Actually, we were discussing a player's comments that giving magic to
everybody, with no restrictions or vetting, would inevitably lead to a more stable Earth Bet.
As for the AEC, a big deal was made in the second series of equipping the weapon on the flagship of the TSAB(per the original Nanoha, at least in the translation I found) specifically because they knew they were going up against a planet killer class 1 lost logia that needed that level of firepower to temporarily shut down the book.
Again, there's a big problem with this, and that is that throwing the Endbringers into orbit isn't nowhere as easy as it sounds.
To use as a baseline, look how much it took to throw NachtWal into the Arc-en-Ciel's range: first Chrono had to froze her, then Yuuno and Shamal had to bind her, then Signum used Sturmfalken on her, then Hayate turned her into stone, they then launched three Breaker spells at her at once and then Shamal managed to lock onto her core and send her into orbit.
All of this required a very specific set of skill to be present to pull off, skills that the TSAB alone as-is may not be able to provide. Help? Of fucking course, but I don't think the characters will be able to defeat the next Endbringer as thing currently are.
Since SW has confirmed we can choose to put force teleport on boost devices, we could have a couple dozen mages in a few weeks with the spell, which also serves as a great way to send crooks directly to jail. The Book of Darkness was also not just a magical device, it was an incredibly powerful computer library that had been studying every spell it could and all magical knowledge for a very long time. How much of that knowledge was lost on resets is unclear, as filling the pages of the book seemed to add more spells than could be justified as what the cores they were draining knew. If anything could disrupt attempts to teleport it, the BoD was it.
Endbringers, on the other hand, are the creations of life forms that cannot manipulate mana. We may still need a team casting struggle bind, a team powering the teleport, and us casting mistiltein to do it, but that doesn't mean we won't be able to.
Well, of course it won't be easy.
However, NachtWal was defeated by what, ten extremely powerful and/or experienced fighters? Ten!
We will have Enforcers team + Taylor and Sam + like, a hundred of capes, lead by quite powerful and very experienced capes of the Protectorate and the Guild. I don't believe we'll have enough firepower to outright kill the Endbringer, but I do believe that we'll have enough to damage it and pin it in place long enough for the TSAB teleporters.
And, as I said, if we lose, that's fine too. We'll just continue to look for new mages, build new weapon and produce new template mages, so next time we would have enough dakka to just kill it without any tricks.
As long as Taylor alive, the Endbringers are doomed, and we know already that Taylor won't die if she's killed.
I expect the next Endbringer to be before we've done more than start the build up(arc ends in two weeks, after all), but yeah, if/when we fail, we learn from it and try again.
So next time Tim gets a build vote we can use some/all of them to help the Enforcers which will mainly be providing material and perhaps a set of extra hands? I don't see Dimensional Transfer on his sheet so will Taylor have to play taxi?
The enforcers can readily teleport cross dimensionally, but Tim's about to be able to buy skills at normal price again, so dimensional transfer may get bought very soon.
I presume yes, for the first visit, but after that the Enforcers will be able to arrange transportation themselves.
...Actually, considering Tim will be an official employee of DragonTech, won't accepting his help and teaching him anything violate the Prime Directive? No talking with disunited worlds, no trading, no anything?
While DragnoTech works with the Canadian and American governments, they are a private industry. That we'll be helping them without anything official saying what we're doing would certainly help alleviate some of the TSAB's qualms about accepting their assistance.
I doubt we have so much firepower, even with the TSAB help. On the other hand we definitely will have such a firepower in a year.
So, I can see only two way to actually kill Levi when it attacks:
1. If the Enforcers have enough support specialists with forced teleportation spell and if the Sojourner will be repaired in time, we need to immobilize the Endbringer and throw it on orbit to kill it with Arc-en-Ciel.
2. Recruit capes like Breakdown, Flechette and Phantasm in hope to bypass the Endbringer durability. And for that we need the Triumvirate, they know such capes and have an authority to assign them to us in the battle.
And if both plans fail, we just continue to proliferate magic to blow the Endbringers up next time.
Now that we have numbers for how many hits it would take to kill one, I agree that we're unlikely to have adequate firepower any time soon. Back to "Nuke it
from in orbit", after teleporting them up there.
