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Even Further Beyond [Complete]

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That's also a good point. Rihaku, if we go Vengeance, but also convince Kong Zang to rework his Endless Sky into a proper, joyous Heaven, what would the balance between suffering and joy be in the universe?
 
So how about

[] Who cares?: Nameless has much better things to do in the next five thousands years than wasting his time and Essence on torturing bullies. It may be that at some point there is no more sky above the sky - but there will never be lack of people for Nameless to offload delegate his responsibilities onto
  • Resurrect Beanlixire, and enhance him with your endless power. Then, let him go to town with Fates
  • Provision Lich with tools he needs to carry out his Vengeance - powerful Artifacts, Diagram arrays, Reality Effects, whatever
  • Let Fates known greatest torments Luch can devise while you, like, roam the multiverse and fuck around
  • Really, who cares? Boys just wanna have fun and torture is a busy work
 
Wolfy said:
So how about

[] Who cares?: Nameless has much better things to do in the next five thousands years than wasting his time and Essence on torturing bullies. It may be that at some point there is no more sky above the sky - but there will never be lack of people for Nameless to offload delegate his responsibilities onto
  • Resurrect Beanlixire, and enhance him with your endless power. Then, let him go to town with Fates
  • Provision Lich with tools he needs to carry out his Vengeance - powerful Artifacts, Diagram arrays, Reality Effects, whatever
  • Let Fates known greatest torments Luch can devise while you, like, roam the multiverse and fuck around
  • Really, who cares? Boys just wanna have fun and torture is a busy work
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Honestly I'm not sure how much this would differ from non-FB Vengeance?
 
Orm Embar said:
But Vengeance is his Heroic Passion. It's slumbered for much of the quest, save for flareups with the Extrusion, but we chose to build an Overlord with passions as grand as his powers.
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And yet we've played against that type as much as possible. We've cultivated the mindset and behavior of an Isekai protagonist, oftentimes in flagrant disregard of what the Fates wanted us to do. At no point in this process have we permitted ourselves to fall into the trap of perceiving ourselves as the villain.

If there can be nothing else that Yong Lie Fang taught us, it should be that you cannot allow your enemies to define you.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
So what you're saying is that we can take this opportunity to overcome a Flaw that never really affected Nameless's character all that much? That's worth BP all by itself.
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Nameless has been pursuing vengeance for, like, most of the quest. The Passion itself hasn't negatively affected his character, because it is a core part of his character, the reason beyond mere survival that set him on his trajectory against the Fates.
Rask said:
Except by making that choice, Nameless shows that he is someone cruel who wouldn't be particularly interested in bargaining with Zang or in a better future for anyone but himself.
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Negotiation has already won, so it's locked in that Nameless is showing concern for the multitudes within Zang. Ironically, the primary reason I'm voting Vengeance is because in my view, he's defined by caring about someone else: the lich who sacrificed what life remained to him for Nameless' empowerment.
Prospalz said:
Mostly because our waifu and entirety of Elven Nation will rrrreally not like Vengeance, which will result in difficulties of leveraging out stage 14 Blood Elves to get infinitive artifice and uber-quick cultivation.

Also, wife will be incredibly disappointed with Nameless. That would be just the worst, I guess.
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Perhaps she will, and in the long arc of eternity our bond may be stronger for it. In any marriage, there are fights, yet Nameless and Aurelia are bound to each other by chains of unbreakable love. But the reason we swore that oath in the first place, is because Amouthanos maneuvered us to the point of absolute inflection by invoking our vengeance. We could either commit to the Elves, or destroy them. The option that procrastinated, doing neither, literally cost a mastermind point for 'betraying the teachings of our mentor'. We chose the marriage because we wanted to win. And we wanted to win, in large part, to wreak vengeance on the Fates.
 
[X] Justice
This is more fitting for Nameless's vengeance. As the crime was slavery, death followed by post-death slavery, the punishment should be slavery.
 
I also don't want to go into the epilogue(s?) with a decision that sets Nameless up as, frankly, evil. Justice isn't a selfless absolution of their sins, it's a proportional response - giving the Fates exactly what they deserve. And frankly, whilst Bael's dedication to his hatred of the Fates is certainly remarkable, we're going to be undoing his big sacrifice of killing himself to see it done - he can just deal with not going overboard on the vengeance, he's a big lich who's going to live forever, probably.

Aabcehmu said:
This! This is a perfectly formed argument against Vengeance. I still disagree, but this is a really good reason to not vote for it, if you aren't committed.
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Aw, thanks.
 
I do wonder what could be done with customized Ages.

Nameless: "Right, I have decided it's time for the Age of the Diagram Resurgent! Get to work, and give me some of those Celestial Orbs while you are at it."
 
Rask said:
I do wonder what could be done with customized Ages.

Nameless: "Right, I have decided it's time for the Age of the Diagram Resurgent! Get to work, and give me some of those Celestial Orbs while you are at it."
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I mean, Nameless choosing Justice doesn't suddenly make him a paragon of virtue. I would predict there being at least one Age of "The Fates can't stop hitting themselves".
 
[x] Vengeance

What has been the cause of so much suffering and exploitation? Power bought at the price of inhumanity. Decadence and venality beyond the scope of your or mine reckoning. Scientific curiosity unbound by ethics or practical matters. If the inhuman must suffer for the sake of humanity, to bind existence to a scope fitting for the vast majority of sophonts living in it- then so be it. For theirs is a crime perpetuated for all that has ever been (as far as we know) and meditated to occur for all that will ever be.

What four entities, no matter their scope, can have the audacity to measure their woes greater than all who might be, could be, and were? Give me Mercy or Vengeance. Prove Nameless better than them in one way or another but to stoop to their exact level out of convenience? Bah.
 
Karugus said:
What four entities, no matter their scope, can have the audacity to measure their woes greater than all who might be, could be, and were? Give me Mercy or Vengeance. Prove Nameless better than them in one way or another but to stoop to their exact level out of convenience? Bah.
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What, you think Justice is "stooping to the level of the criminals"? It's a proportional response! By returning to them what they gave others, we do not "stoop to their level" - that would be acting us such against relative innocents like, say, their victims.

Hey, you know, it would be pretty funny to give the previous Overlords the chance to boss the Fates around as their helpless lackies like they were for a few aeons. You've got to imagine they've got some ideas about what to do to them.
 
I don't know how many arguments I can construct for this, honestly. I mean, 7 Beyond Points is a bounty equal to our wildest dreams. I could just repeat '7 BP' over and over again, at the top of my digital lungs, but it's really just rhetorical gravy, the cherry on top of the option. A better epilogue is neat, don't get me wrong, but that's not what ultimately matters.

I participate in these quests to give a shit, because good stories lift our hearts up out of the dust. They make us care, and conjure from words on a screen images of more interesting worlds. The strongest emotional beat in the entire quest, for me, was A Throne of Stars. There was this ancient lich, a creature from a different Age, one of the last remnants of a ruined world. Sustained by hate, he nevertheless entrusted his vengeance to a child, and gave his life to arm the boy with the incarnation of everything he'd lost. An act of selflessness from a monster, the old passing the torch to the new.

It was beautiful, and it was melancholy. For the first time, I got a sense of the scope. The spells of the Diagram were named for their inventors, and there were stories behind each of them. This was a world with a history. A palimpsest - not of the Nameless One - but of creation itself, the slate wiped clean over and over again, entire civilizations erased until the legend faded to myth and the sheer horror of it all passed beyond comprehension. I began to give a shit.

So now, at the end, I care more about fulfilling Baenlixnaire's wishes than I do about the suffering of the most evil entities in the setting. I want to honor the spirit of the compact we made with our mentor and not just make a half-hearted gesture in that direction, faltering at the final juncture when instead we could complete the arc of Nameless' character.
 
Orm Embar said:
It was beautiful, and it was melancholy. For the first time, I got a sense of the scope. The spells of the Diagrams were named for the inventors, and there were stories behind each of them. This was a world with a history. A palimpsest - not of the Nameless One - but of creation itself, the slate wiped clean over and over again, entire civilizations erased until the legend faded to myth and the sheer horror of it all passed beyond comprehension. I began to give a shit.
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[X] Vengeance

as usual, all you have to do is incorporate the diagram schools into your arguments and i'll follow you like a sucker
 
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