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A Simple Transaction I

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[X] Keep Your Own Counsel
[X] Of Fishermen, A King

Keep your own counsel because it's dangerous info and...narratively I feel like this isn't the moment yet to spill our secrets.

I can't resist the mystery box option. It also helps that Accretion Rank is based on accumulating legend and myth.
 
[X] Spill

Hiding is boring, and she already brought it up. I just want to see reactions and counter reactions.
 
cheesyme said:
It seems you were right, joy of joys. :V
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I'm pretty happy about it.

This is what arguments are for, though. Not only do they turn the tides of the vote itself if eloquent, they increase the power of the votes you have!

Walloping said:
[X] Spill

Hiding is boring, and she already brought it up. I just want to see reactions and counter reactions.
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Mm. But there are always countless scenes to see, and only so many words to fit them in...
 
[X] Spill
[X] Of Fishermen, A King

Since King Fisher is as popular as such an amazing option deserves I can stop hedging my bets with keep and take the far superior spill option instead. The promise of curse lore is sweet as well as some clarification on how society feels about superweapons cursed to wipe out all life. Any information we get from this is
Rihaku said:
Hm...? The real question is, who is Best Girl?
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This question doesn't even need to be asked! Discount Asuka can't hold a candle to the glory that is Gisena! Zea won't even appreciate us catching a legendary fish! What kind of twisted individual won't get a plus to their relationship after witnessing such a feat?!
 
Rihaku said:
But you forget... Spill + Fisher King... the Full Yolo option...

You guys will have more opportunities to interact with Letrizia over the course of months, and if her Armament is truly tied to you, possibly much longer as well...
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While content-wise this may be the most attractive, I do still think that Spill+Fisher King is too risky; even if we prioritize Letrizia+s in the future, and she reaches sufficient loyalty to both spill any mitigation secrets she knows and not spill that we also bear the Decimator's Affliction to the governments, it changes how someone looks at you when they know that you're slowly killing them by being anywhere near remotely close to them, and Fisher King drops the chance that we'll pick up Conclusion which would mitigate the risks because if we consistently get Sated procs, Decimation becomes significantly less of a social problem, as we spend Arete. Either that, or we run out of Arete and take up Exhausted instead which... apparently is even worse. So I'd rather not go for it, because it's just significantly riskier than the three combinations with synergy.
 
cheesyme said:
It is perhaps a bit more hypocritical than you're thinking, as you're not merely passing up on .5 Arete, you're voting to spend 1 Arete on your fishing.
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No, that's exactly the amount of hypocrisy I'm consigning myself to. Truth be told, I rewrote my argument a couple times because I was so torn...

Actually, y'know what. NO. I refuse! How can I expect other people to be willing to give up shinies and save on Arete if I'm not willing to make that sacrifice myself!? I shall resist the mystery box! I shall resist the Devil's Advocating! I shall resist the sick blurbs! Here and now I make a stand for fiscal responsibility! For perseverance and integrity, that false idols may not lead us astray from the True Shinies! Join me, and together we can get an EFB equivalent within a month of the start of the Quest!

[X] Keep Your Own Counsel
[X] None
 
Genesys said:
While content-wise this may be the most attractive, I do still think that Spill+Fisher King is too risky; even if we prioritize Letrizia+s in the future, and she reaches sufficient loyalty to both spill any mitigation secrets she knows and not spill that we also bear the Decimator's Affliction to the governments, it changes how someone looks at you when they know that you're slowly killing them by being anywhere near remotely close to them, and Fisher King drops the chance that we'll pick up Conclusion which would mitigate the risks because if we consistently get Sated procs, Decimation becomes significantly less of a social problem, as we spend Arete. Either that, or we run out of Arete and take up Exhausted instead which... apparently is even worse. So I'd rather not go for it, because it's just significantly riskier than the three combinations with synergy.
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Their government already knows that the mech does the same thing and seem to be fine with it. They let a duchess pilot it and let it near people. Given we're a comparable combatant to it while their unable to draw out an armaments full power I don't see them turning us away either. Especially since it looks like we can mitigate the curse while the mech can't given how our affinity decreased with it after becoming sated.
 
[X] Keep Your Own Counsel
[X] Of Fishermen, A King


I would prefer getting closer to her before spilling.
 
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There's certainly nothing stopping y'all from going full YOLO... All I'm gonna say is, your Arete better be willing to cash the check that your votes are writing.

The Apocryphal Curse has recently procced, but ultimately it obeys no single rule. Such is the nature of interesting times.

LordOfMurder said:
This question doesn't even need to be asked! Discount Asuka can't hold a candle to the glory that is Gisena! Zea won't even appreciate us catching a legendary fish! What kind of twisted individual won't get a plus to their relationship after witnessing such a feat?!
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Is the calibre of fish wrestled from a lake truly the foundation upon which solid relationships are built?

Or, put another way:

Just because you extracted some watery tart from a lake with your sword doesn't mean that supreme relational power should fall to you!

Genesys said:
While content-wise this may be the most attractive, I do still think that Spill+Fisher King is too risky; even if we prioritize Letrizia+s in the future, and she reaches sufficient loyalty to both spill any mitigation secrets she knows and not spill that we also bear the Decimator's Affliction to the governments, it changes how someone looks at you when they know that you're slowly killing them by being anywhere near remotely close to them
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And she's already concerned about running out of time! However, the fact that you've mitigated this Curse and are making mitigation a priority (if you indeed are doing that) would certainly help a lot!

KidFromPallet said:
Actually, y'know what. NO. I refuse! How can I expect other people to be willing to give up shinies and save on Arete if I'm not willing to make that sacrifice myself!? I shall resist the mystery box! I shall resist the Devil's Advocating! I shall resist the sick blurbs! Here and now I make a stand for fiscal responsibility! For perseverance and integrity, that false idols may not lead us astray from the True Shinies! Join me, and together we can get an EFB equivalent within a month of the start of the Quest!
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Such principle... it's ennobling to witness... though as a Progression-Type Cursebearer under near constant threat I don't know if "fiscal" responsibility should be your priority here!
 
Rihaku said:
Such principle... it's ennobling to witness... though as a Progression-Type Cursebearer under near constant threat I don't know if "fiscal" responsibility should be your priority here!
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Well we've seen what 'fiscal responsibility' has done to real world countries: fucked them over super ultra hard forever. We're a country with military that can se FU to debt collectors progression class cursebearer, we can write checks, default on them when they come due, then outscale whatever auditors come in to investigate our marinated and well-done balance sheets.
 
Hmm, the more I think about it the more I'm talking myself into spill. Even if she can't keep a secret surely one of the three governments will be have some grievance serious enough that they're willing to make the other guy pay the cost in decimation deploying us into enemy lands entails. The fact they use the armaments is a strong indicator they've rationalized the cost already so we're not really breaking new ground here. Meanwhile the benefits of grabbing their thousands of years of institutional knowledge on the phenomenon are very pertinent.
 
[X] Spill
[X] Of Fishermen, A King

Earlier we decided not to false-flag a parlay for the sake of remaining trustworthy. This is not significantly different in my eyes.
 
Box Lunch said:
Earlier we decided not to false-flag a parlay for the sake of remaining trustworthy. This is not significantly different in my eyes.
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I would argue not offering something that has not been asked for is fairly different from spitting upon the concept of honor and being bound by your word, but I suppose that's up to you.
 
[X] Of Fishermen, A King

I suspect the ??? will be the equivalent of maxing our 'Fishing' skill to the maximum, then acquiring [[Fishing Mastery]] which we will somehow exploit in our combat. ALL ABOARD THE MOMENTUM TRAIN, THERE ARE NO BREAKS. Okay in seriousness I don't think the ??? will be that.

Having just said that though, I wonder if Accursed-level training that Seram had as an option would proc Hunger, particularly if we frame it as 'prelude to bigmajorevent'?

Personally I'd like for a compromise between Spill and Council, she really doesn't need to know about the Curse of Decimation. Instead, better to frame it as a curiosity as to the afflictions the Arnaments suffer, and ways in which they might be mitigated and then applying those methods to our own Curse. Not as efficient but much safer.
 
I'm curious that the phenomena she was describing this update are still so unexplored that she as a youngster in her 20s thought it was reasonable she'd be able to present novel insights into the field relatively soon. The fact she mentions that studies have only recently proved humans can gain rank makes me wonder if there's been some sort of background shift. Otherwise you'd think this would have been covered hundreds of years back.

Shard said:
Well we've seen what 'fiscal responsibility' has done to real world countries: fucked them over super ultra hard forever. We're a country with military that can se FU to debt collectors progression class cursebearer, we can write checks, default on them when they come due, then outscale whatever auditors come in to investigate our marinated and well-done balance sheets.
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The only time in Rihaku quests we had a choice on what to file for tax wise we chose to cheat outrageously... And it worked out, the auditor went straight to hell. So all was well. Yes, all was well...
 
LordOfMurder said:
Did our arete progress counter reset after the update?
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The escalating Arete bonus per post did reset, as it counts as a major update, yes. Which was unfortunate, because you guys were pretty close to an even larger bonus, but I had already delayed the update by that point and couldn't countenance delaying it much further. Still, if we keep up the same level of activity as the last update your Arete troubles should be very manageable.

Shard said:
Well we've seen what 'fiscal responsibility' has done to real world countries: fucked them over super ultra hard forever. We're a country with military that can se FU to debt collectors progression class cursebearer, we can write checks, default on them when they come due, then outscale whatever auditors come in to investigate our marinated and well-done balance sheets.
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Since you're writing checks of Arete, there's no audit involved, and the only way you're getting funny money is by paying me tribute discussion and omakes!

Or cold hard cash I guess, but the exchange rate on that would be pretty fucking heavy.

Thomasfoolery said:
Hmm, the more I think about it the more I'm talking myself into spill. Even if she can't keep a secret surely one of the three governments will be have some grievance serious enough that they're willing to make the other guy pay the cost in decimation deploying us into enemy lands entails. The fact they use the armaments is a strong indicator they've rationalized the cost already so we're not really breaking new ground here. Meanwhile the benefits of grabbing their thousands of years of institutional knowledge on the phenomenon are very pertinent.
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Rationalized... or nationalized?

LordOfMurder said:
Foolish Rihaku not even you can devil's advocate against the power of the Fisher King!
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Is that a challenge? It's one thing to obliquely indicate that the Exhausted Condition is bad, but spelling it out would show the voters just how great of a risk you're taking!
 
Shard said:
Personally I'd like for a compromise between Spill and Council, she really doesn't need to know about the Curse of Decimation. Instead, better to frame it as a curiosity as to the afflictions the Arnaments suffer, and ways in which they might be mitigated and then applying those methods to our own Curse. Not as efficient but much safer.
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That will presumably be done in the Keep your own Council vote.
Rihaku said:
[ ] Keep Your Own Counsel - See if you can get more information out of her without disclosing anything about your particular circumstances. It's good to trust; better to trust after you hold all the cards. You've barely known her half a week. You can always tell her more when she proves herself a reliable ally. [+0.5 Arete]
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If you want to be smart instead of risking others taking offense at our slowly killing continents and later worlds, then vote to be a Nightmare Praetorean! Vote to Keep your Own Council!

Its not like we can't spill the beans latter once we know its safe!
 
Thomasfoolery said:
I'm curious that the phenomena she was describing this update are still so unexplored that she as a youngster in her 20s thought it was reasonable she'd be able to present novel insights into the field relatively soon. The fact she mentions that studies have only recently proved humans can gain rank makes me wonder if there's been some sort of background shift. Otherwise you'd think this would have been covered hundreds of years back.
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Perhaps the instruments required to measure such things objectively only became available recently! Theory needs data to advance.

Sickul said:
Would we be exhausted even if we had 3 +'s worth of Con?
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It's a matter of spiritual force (which you're low on due to blade winds), so unfortunately yes.
 
Anyway, at a rate of what seems to be ~3 Arete per update, saving up for a 25 Arete option will take.. roughly 6 updates.

How does Arete compare to exp, though? A 2 Arete option seems worth 1.5 options, while the 7 arete options are rather harder to quantify (and the 25 impossible), but if we say it's a 50% increase of efficiency per tier we'd get something like 7 options worth for a 7 arete option and 32.5 for a 25 Arete option.

Then there is possibly using those Arete granted options to get more exp and thus more options. Hmm.
 
Shard said:
Anyway, at a rate of what seems to be ~3 Arete per update, saving up for a 25 Arete option will take.. roughly 6 updates.
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I wouldn't be so hasty to assume a consistent Arete production rate, were I you! We'll see how the activity goes, but you should at least wait for a sample size of greater than 1!

Burst productivity and sustained productivity are different things!
 
Rihaku said:
Rationalized... or nationalized?
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Hmm, I was thinking that much of Ol'Gorger's decline was a pretty recent thing based on some of the stuff said earlier. It might be instead that it's simply that their solution is just to stick it in space and let it cannibalize itself till needed though and it's just been slowly ticking down over the ages. That would be a strong disincentive for us to run our mouth here.

Rihaku said:
Perhaps the instruments required to measure such things objectively only became available recently! Theory needs data to advance.
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I guess it depends on how significant rank 3 is, the way she talked didn't give me the impression that it was previously some widely known/accepted phenomenon that just hadn't been fully quantified but everyone accepted was a thing. If rank three is still potentially within human norms (Like you look at the guy's life and say "How the hell is he so lucky, smart, and physically fit" but don't seriously think anything supernatural is going on, sombody like George Washington with him strolling through bullets, the weather favoring him, setting up lasting political system) then that would explain it.
 
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