[X] Negotiation
[X] Rain
-[X] Go Even Further Beyond [10 BPs]
There's a risk that the bi-directional loyalty will make it harder to negotiate, but I suspect coming from a position of greater strength wins out, and Rain doesn't have any of the corrupting effects of Might. Apparently an Elven administration would be better for the humans then super-powered vampire elves, so on that front Rain still wins over
We'll be in a significantly less precarious position if we threaten/bribe the Necromancer into developing some of his powers. With just a +0.25 bonus, Suizhen would be Stage 17 and comfortably capable of dealing with Kong while we deal with the Fates.
The lack of the Ring also allows us to give Aurelia the Battlesuit and thus maximise our chances of persuading him. With both the Ring and Distillation, if we give Aurelia the Battlesuit, we'd have to fight him personally if negotiations broke down. If we have the Ring on, this is going to warp his personality in uniquely unpleasant ways. With Distillation, we can engage him for a short period of time until Aurelia can transfer the suit to a Stage 15 Suizhen.
The fact that we can negotiate with him personally if he deems Aurelia a memetic hazard, TIM style, is also a nice bonus.
Yeah, a credible ultimatum might work. We could also deploy Aurelia against the Extrusion or offer bribes equal to its greed, contingent on actually winning and achieving our goals. If it doesn't buck up, we could be forced to confront Tribulation for lack of power, die to Zang, fail because Suizhen isn't strong to defeat the Fates, or any number of potential pitfalls. The 'work now and slack off forever' argument failed previously, but now we're staring down the barrel of the apocalypse. Even the most degenerate procrastinator might feel the pressure when a literal deadline looms. Hopefully the Extrusion will appreciate the urgency of the situation. Nameless has given his utmost effort. He forged a Magnum Opus, went Even Further Beyond once more. You're right, with even a quarter-Stage more, Distillation would be less of a gamble.
I still can't bloody settle contentedly on an option, everything's just too cool, but until the next round of devil's advocacy upends this decision:
It hurts, because the High Hand would be such a fitting - and more importantly, sure - way to win. Absorbing Reality Effects offers ridiculous utility. But unless we have a good plan for using them to rescue Zang's denizens, letting us kill him after all, long-term coexistence would be tricky at best. Absent a binding Artifact (would be nice to know if Nameless thinks he can still craft a non-lobotomy one), making Zang into a Pawn is the only route I see that doesn't end with one of us dead.
So, Distillation it is. No armies of nigh-omnipotent vampire elves, please. I can only imagine how strange that sentence would sound to the participants at the beginning of the quest. Let's just stick with Suizhen, Aurelia, and Xiaoling, unless Nameless thinks they'd be the deciding factor.
I still think that Plan Split Three Ways is the better option. Think about it. One camp wants Distillation because they want to keep Forge and try the Battlesuit with other Daos than Suizhen's. Another camp wants Rain because they want to avoid a future of sparkly vampire xianxia vassals. Think about it! You can both get what you want!* *if "what you want" is defined as "getting some of what you want and avoiding the thing you really don't want."
I still think that Plan Split Three Ways is the better option. Think about it. One camp wants Distillation because they want to keep Forge and try the Battlesuit with other Daos than Suizhen's. Another camp wants Rain because they want to avoid a future of sparkly vampire xianxia vassals. Think about it! You can both get what you want!* *if "what you want" is defined as "getting some of what you want and avoiding the thing you really don't want."
By default, this Emanation has no maximum range, instead it can and must fill all possible points of space accessible through physical movement in dimensions the user can perceive, starting from the location of the Titan and spreading instantly.
Inside that range, all magics not aligned with Saline essense are affected by an elevated version of A Good Pain. The works of Solipsist and sage alike are inevitably worn away by the waves of the Dead Sea; only effects with conceptual potency equal or superior to the powers of a Ringbearer or a powerful Titan may resist this degradation.
The erosion effect flows from the Titan in pulses that he may modulate, from low frequency waves abrading like silk rubbing a stone or high frequency wave shaking apart whatever meagre arts heaven and earth can bring to bear against the user's power.
*Barely noticeable at minimum power, relevant in combat at maximum power
*Does not weaken with distance
*Destroys more or less all foreign magic in the user's plane of existence
Extrusion of the Dead Sea - Dissatisfaction
Sabbe saṅkhārā dukkhā
To be dissatisfied is to see yourself and the universe out of alignment in some unpleasant way. To be salty is to respond to that fact with mounting and disproportionate fury. In the face of salt, logic, emotion, authority and even the words of God himself mean nothing.
Compared to the all consuming hate that pervades every aspect of their being, temporal considerations seem distant at best. It's in the throes of this madness that the Titan's true power is unleashed, his obsession called forth from his internal realm and reified into the supreme caustic substance, Salt.
Their control of Salt is absolute, with the power to understand, magnify and materialise any dissatisfaction within range of their Emanation, killing those targeted. The user may also lash out with this Salt, causing horrific damage with even grazing blows as the target's metaphysical foundation is eroded to dust with contact.
*Mastery over Salt grants 3(!) effective Stages of power for the purposes of combat
*Those who have been corrupted through A Way of Life have their wills suborned to the purposes of the Cultivator, allowing him to command them as though he were in their physical presence, so long as they remain within the range of his Emanation.
*All of the user's previous Reality Effects can be channeled through this Salt.
*Extended combat can lower opponent's Stages as salt infiltrates their Cultivation base
Incarnation of the Dead Sea - No Self
Sabbe dhammā anattā
There is no self.
And yet here you are.
Knowing this, you are free.
*Power enough to war with the ideals of the world.
-
The Incarnation is basically just CHIM and can only be resisted by "Act as" techniques.
You reinforce my point. I understand that they are ostensibly trying to be fair, but why would the Fates give us double the Orbs (or equivalent) than what they gave to one of their former allies, when we are starting off in opposition to them, and are primed to have that oppositional thinking reinforced over and over again?
They were probably scared shitless of Kong and needed someone who they thought can be convinced to ally with them against him. Sadly for them, Skele-dad fucked it all up. Without him things might have turned out every different. He was the one who completely poisoned the idea of allying with the Fates for Nameless.
Indeed, Baenlixnaire accomplished what no other magus of his Age could: one man with no divine orbs to speak of was able to, via relentless hate and careful maneuver, tip the scales of destiny so that The Fated Overlord would never reach an accommodation with the Fates. For eons he raged futility, but always persisted, hate undying and unending, ceaselessly seeking that one opportunity, like a shark scenting blood, to strike at the heart of his true enemy.
Give me but a place to stand and with a lever I will move the world entire.
[X] Rain - Many months ago, a boy who was the Nameless Scion of Yong considered the construction a weapon for his bodyguard, a girl with eyes of blue whose sword-strokes fell like rain. Victim to indolence, it was never begun, nothing more than an idle daydream. The boy became a man, the dream became a memory, the memory became an ideal, and the ideal became a sword.
-[X] Go Even Further Beyond [10 BPs] - A smith puts down his hammer at the conclusion of his greatest work because he knows he will never again attain the heights he once reached. This option will permanently sunder the Grand Diagram, Forge of the Nameless One, and prevent its erasure or occupation by any other Diagram. Nor will Nameless' Artifice ever again be able to produce another weapon, or even a blade made in jest. Neither Truth nor All Paths can overcome this deficit, for he who wanders All Paths must be free to sacrifice permanently, and some sacrifices are irrevocably True.
[X] Annihilation
27 for Negotiation, 30 for Annihilation, 27 for Tyranshal's Distillation, 11 for High Hand of the Norns, 28 for Rain and 5 for Split Three Ways, I think.
EDIT: @Rihaku, it's actually 29 for Negotiation and 33 for Annihilation, some people didn't revote past The Curtain Rises.
I think based on what Rihaku said, they should be equal in theoretical potential power. I figure maybe it gives access to Logos/Truth/Diagram? OTOH I am not sure if even a Diagram-Only Magus with hypothetical maxed out EFB Truespells can match Thrice Great. Probably I suppose.
The problem is that we're currently capped right before triggering Immortal Awakening and can't grow further unless we do something like invent an entirely different Stage, discarding the Path of the Immortal, which would take too much time. So whether it'd work for essence-farming is irrelevant, at least for now.
I know (and I assume there's some reason we can't just grow Stagelessly --- presumably it would break our Ascension for some reason?), but if one of the paths offers a way to hit a combat Stage equal to the Accursed's level, then I can't not support it, just on principle. Plus I honestly want to see what Immortality entails, and not actually having it happen on screen would be something of a disappointment, so I'm not too averse to a path which offers massive (utterly massive) power, sufficient power to trivialize anything else in the setting, if only we take that leap. (If we jump to stage 15 from our current stage, that would be +14-16 combat stages if we did it all Stageless. Assuming the difficulty of Immortality corresponds to some level of actual gain, we should be punching around stage 30 if we do that. That's, well, a very large number.) It also offers the most effective Stages-for-Tribulation of any of the options, if (and this is definitely a pair of assumptions) Suizhen's power level can't help us there (seems to make sense, and I expect Tribulation has stronger conceptual supremacy than even an EFB Rain, so perfect bodyguard probably won't get around that) and the Ring of Might would, in fact, make IA more difficult, or at least not help it, as some people seem to think.
...Notably, if Might does fully work against Tribulation, then its super-Heavy-Counter effect might make it doable. Maybe. I don't know what power level the force that set up Heavenly Tribulation was, and it probably was higher than 17, but if not we can just ignore the everything and devour the reality effects, whatever they turn out to be.
...And again I fail to do a full analysis of options. Oh well. Have my best attempt at a tally to make up for it. (Annihilation/Negotiation may be inaccurate, because some people have both the votes as a block and I value dealing with the more recent right now. Pretty sure there's just one more vote for Annihilation than this would suggest, but I haven't done a full check.)
Adhoc vote count started by UDwarf on Aug 1, 2019 at 12:22 PM, finished with 383 posts and 72 votes.
[X] Rain - Many months ago, a boy who was the Nameless Scion of Yong considered the construction a weapon for his bodyguard, a girl with eyes of blue whose sword-strokes fell like rain. Victim to indolence, it was never begun, nothing more than an idle daydream. The boy became a man, the dream became a memory, the memory became an ideal, and the ideal became a sword. -[X] Go Even Further Beyond[10 BPs] - A smith puts down his hammer at the conclusion of his greatest work because he knows he will never again attain the heights he once reached. This option will permanently sunder the Grand Diagram, Forge of the Nameless One, and prevent its erasure or occupation by any other Diagram. Nor will Nameless' Artifice ever again be able to produce another weapon, or even a blade made in jest. Neither Truth nor All Paths can overcome this deficit, for he who wanders All Paths must be free to sacrifice permanently, and some sacrifices are irrevocably True.
[x] Plan Split Three Ways
-[x]Tyranshal's Distillation
--[x]Go Further Beyond [3 BPs]
-[x]Rain
-[x] Save the rest of our BP for the Tribulation and Immortal Awakening
Hmm. I wonder what the heroine would have done, if she won. At that point she would have been more powerful than the rest of the fates or well, anything. She might have been unwilling to return to the former status quo, since the current situation might have suited her better.
Hmm. I wonder what the heroine would have done, if she won. At that point she would have been more powerful than the rest of the fates or well, anything. She might have been unwilling to return to the former status quo, since the current situation might have suited her better.
