Remove ads

A Simple Transaction I

Reader mode
Hm... let's look at the synergy of each presented option in the context of options you've already purchased.

You have ++INT, ++++CHA, +Might, ++++AGI, Might's Repose, Fell-Handed Stroke and Rank 4. You acquired the Evening Sky.

Relative to your overall advancement, your Might is rather low, your Agi and Cha are high, and your Int is quite high. Your Rank would be impressive if you weren't currently exhausted and you have three vectors of esoteric attack (Ring of Power, Power of Ruin, Fell-Handed Stroke). Aside from Rank, your greatest overall assets are your comprehensive defenses and high Charisma, and it was precisely the latter that allowed you to bait the superior combatant Seralize into an overextension.

Pristine Star: Heals but takes a long time to heal, which is troubling given you are being hunted by some kind of video gamer analogue.

Second Stage: Has decent synergy with your build. High protection multiplies the effect of additional HP, as does high evasiveness, and you've both, with Second Stage itself having even higher. However the Second Stage does penalize strength which means it will lack even more offensive punch than you do.

Shine Bright: Has some synergy in that it utilizes your high CHA. Patches a utility hole (lack of fast healing for allies). No additional Synergy from Second Stage, moderate synergy with Pristine Star. Doesn't improve your combat effectiveness in any way, though your allies can be a little more reckless.

Vanguard: Very high synergy, your investment into protection will now apply to your allies. Partially patches the weaker stats in your build, bringing you to ++Str, +++++Con, +++++Agi effectively. You go from having weak stats for your total experience to high stats. Also heals your allies in addition to protecting them down the line.

Maw: High synergy. Gives you fast combat-speed healing that takes no extra actions (!), and increases your ability to penetrate armor and other defenses, somewhat making up for your relatively low Strength. The best option for improving your combat effectiveness, though Vanguard isn't far behind. Doesn't heal Letrizia.

I know it hurts not healing one of yourself or Letrizia, but looking at overall effectiveness, Vanguard and Maw are so much better than even Second Stage + Shine Bright. I would suggest either a 2-Arete or 7-Arete spending plan. If 2-Arete, I would go for Pristine Star + Second Stage. Pristine Star ensures Letrizia will recover without scarring or nerve damage and Second Stage heals you and helps you protect her. It's basically a crappy but inexpensive version of Maw + Pristine Star and has a similar strategy.

Vanguard or Maw both radically increase your combat power and offer good healing. You can take them with the Plumed Offering to avoid the Tyrant Beast, or Maw + Pristine for maximum combat power while still healing her.
 
Last edited:
So I've been thinking about some stuff not relevant to the current vote, but I thought I'd post it anyway. Specifically, I've been thinking about the differences in the offers the Accursed gave to Hunger vs Seram. Because I like finding explanations for things. Let's start with the reason for Cursebearers in the first place.

Curses

So there are only two points of overlap between Seram's offer and Hunger's. The Affliction of Slumber and the Geas of Indentiture. All other curses were offered to only one or the other. So, why did the Accursed offer the curses he did?

Let's start with Seram. Why wasn't Seram offered the Decimator's Affliction, Brand of the Champion, Doom of the Tyrant, Doom of Lunacy, and Plenary Brand? Well, the OOC reason is that Rihaku had not come up with those curses yet, but we're looking for IC reasons here. The last one is easy at least - Seram was only ever going to be a Progression type, and the Plenary Brand is terrible on Progression types. It's much better for combat types though, and Hunger could have been either so it made sense to offer. Moving on, I believe the Brand of the Champion was not offered because Seram didn't have the personality for it. Seram had to problem with being disliked, so the Brand of the Wretched was easy for him. But being forced to do things for people? Constantly? He hated social obligations, and went as far as sabotaging his own business to avoid dealing with unpleasant tasks. The Brand of the Champion would have driven him insane. Hunger with his stoicism would have been much suited for it.

The Doom of the Tyrant is harder to justify. Seram was all about personal freedom and flouting social rules and obligations, it would seem on the surface to be a good fit. I had to think about this one for a bit, but I eventually came to the possible explanationthat the Accursed didn't offer Seram the Tyrant because the best way to deal with that curse is to be on charge of things. And Seram did not have anything approaching leadership skills. That doesn't hold up to scrutiny though, because the Geas of Indentiture was offered and that would have forced Seram to learn to be in charge eventually with conquest tasks. So I'm drawing a blank. Maybe there's some hidden requirement to qualify for various curses? That would explain why the Tyrant wasn't offered, Seram lacked the attributes to have that curse put upon him or something? I'll mark it down as a possibility.

Decimator's Affliction I have a theory for. The Decimator can have horrific costs if not mitigated properly. As such, I think the Accursed only offers the Decimator to cursebearers who are going to have to take a lot of curses. Seram could become a Progression type off of only one curse - so let him take one that didn't have a crazy moral cost. On the other hand, cursebearers who have to take a boatload of curses could just straight-up die if they take too many that affect themselves - so the Accursed offers them the Decimator to defray the cost by spreading it out. Morally terrible, but worse then losing a cursebearer because they took too many curses that debuffed themselves? Or maybe we get that curse affinity thing I mentioned earlier.

Doom of Lunacy I don't have an explanation for. But if cursebearers had to fit certain requirements to take up certain curses, then it and the previous two make sense. I'm leaning more and more towards this explanation.

Now, we're finally out of Seram and in to Hunger. Why wasn't Hunger offered the Doom of the Martyr or Brand of the Wretched? One of these is actually really easy to explain.

There are two paths that the Accursed envisioned for Hunger. Freedom, the ability to just be done with everything and move on to have a happy life, or Vengeance, an eternal quest for power with the goal of bringing down the Hidden Masters. Doom of the Martyr is absolutely terrible for both of these. For Freedom, having Martyr could potentially drag Hunger into heroing again, which would defeat the point. For Vengeance, Hunger would spend many eons gathering power, go to confront the Hidden Masters, only for them to fall to their knees and claim that they'd had a change of heart. Vengeance failed.

As for why Hunger wasn't offered the Brand of the Wretched, that's because unlike Seram he could tolerate the Brand of the Champion, which is way better. Or, you know, that affinity thing.

Conclusion: I'm really leaning towards that theory that people can only take curses they fit certain requirements for. It neatly explains a lot that either doesn't have an explanation or has really tenuous explanations otherwise. Or, y'know, we could use the meta explanations, but that's boring.


Now, on to the next bit, hopefully shorter:

Primary Remittances

So, first lets take note that both Seram and Hunger got offered four remittances. These offers also had a common structure - one remittance that had time-resetting abilities, one that granted pure power, one that got the Accursed to show up sometimes to help, and one that was just Praxis. Based on the fact that this structure occurred twice, I'm going to say it's a common set up that the Accursed uses a lot, possibly for every cursebearer.

The Primary difference between the offers is Hunger's remittance offers were much more proactive. Regalia is only 1/8th of New Game Plus, and doesn't have the ability to recharge time resets like NGP does. However, it comes with a superpower, LR, and versatile bonus. Three Wishes is much weaker then Pay to Win, but comes with the ability to use parts of it proactively or to obtain immediate power, where as Pay to Win is purely defensive.

Why the differences? It may be a matter of personality. Seram was very laid back and as such got a greater degree of defensive remittances, compared to Hunger who is more likely to go solve problems himself. Or it might be a matter of circumstances. Seram only needed to take one curse, he could get away with remittances that didn't offer immediate power. As opposed to Hunger who was either going to be stuck with the Apocryphal, necessitating the ability to act proactively right away, or was taking the path of freedom, in which case he wouldn't need a ton of stockpiled defenses, just one or two in case of emergency.

Conclusion: Not a lot to see here, but the four-remittance-offers structure is interesting. If we ever get a third canon portrayal of a cursebearer I'd be interested to see if the pattern holds up.


And, lastly,

Lesser Remittances

Running out of steam so I'll make this short.

Hunger got offered a lot more LR options then Seram. Seram didn't get offered any companions at all, except maybe the Seed of Genesis qualifies? It's more of a summon/pokemon really. I'd assume this is because Seram as of the start of AST wasn't really the type to take companions or something.

Notably, Seram did not get offered Relingquishment or Retinue, which seem like things that would be useful to any cursebearer! Retinue could be explained by Seram being anti-social as above; Hunger is not the most social guy in the world but he's used to working in parties and is very protective of companions he does get, so Retinue would make more sense for him. Relingquishment, on the other hand, I'm just assuming wasn't offered to Seram because Seram only needed one curse, so he wasn't going to need a break from it as badly as someone stuck with four of the things, one of which is the Apocryphal.

Also Seram didn't get offered any artifacts, not sure why. Probably just Rihaku didn't think of that yet or something.

Conclusion: Don't write 1300 words of speculation it makes you tired.
 
Ok. Looks like I'm taking that advice then.

[X] The Mire Wolf
[X] Evening Sky - Pristine Star
[X] Forebear's Blade - Second Stage
 
Rihaku said:
I know it hurts not healing one of yourself or Letrizia, but looking at overall effectiveness, Vanguard and Maw are so much better than even Second Stage + Shine Bright. I would suggest either a 2-Arete or 7-Arete spending plan. If 2-Arete, I would go for Pristine Star + Second Stage. Pristine Star ensures Letrizia will recover without scarring or nerve damage and Second Stage heals you and helps you protect her.

Vanguard or Maw both radically increase your combat power and offer good healing. You can take them with the Plumed Offering to avoid the Tyrant Beast, or Maw + Pristine for maximum combat power while still healing her.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Alright. I can see the logic in this.

[x]Plumed Offering
[x]Undying Vanguard
 
Though I suppose it's really a 2-Arete or 6.5-Arete spending plan, since Plumed Offering gives .5 Arete. Something to consider!
 
Fanwork#3317words

Hero​

Chapter 1: The Cradle of Becoming

The boy from Earth stumbles into another realm.

The magic that takes you to another world isn't nearly as hard as people would have you believe. It goes like this;

He was born an exile to his own world. It was not a thing he dwelt on, for he wasn't given to introspection; it was just a simple fact, as inalienable as his name. He loved stories because he knew deep in his bones that he belonged in some finer world, Middle Earth or maybe the moons of Jupiter, but mostly just wherever dad had gone to.

Back when he was a kid his father had promised him he could come live with him in London, so he'd told the other school children that this was his last year here. That his father was going to scoop him up in his great big arms, press him into his jacket, and carry him away, far away, across the ocean, across the world, to places foreign and strange. And he'd known in his heart that everything would be different there, because nothing half the world away could ever be the same. Then he'd get home from school and let himself in the house, and if his mother was slumped comatose in front of the TV he'd give her a hug, and then he'd run up to his room, pull the great Atlas of the world from its hiding place and pour over the map of England, and it seemed that the grand adventure could begin at any moment.

In the end, his father had sent him a novelty T-shirt. Then dad had gotten a job at a multi-national oil company, making more money in a year than mother earned in a lifetime, and without a thought he'd shed his old life and disappeared into a fairy-tale of wealth, power, and freedom, never to be seen or heard from again.

So he'd grown up. He'd tried his best, but his best wasn't good enough, nothing about him was good enough, so after that he didn't bother to try at all. Time stretched out, each day indistinguishable from the last. He skipped school and there were no consequences. He went a week without speaking to another human being, and no one but him noticed. He rejected the world, as it had rejected him, and he felt within himself a great emptiness, of that true and perfect freedom that can be had only when there is nothing left to lose.

Once he had seen and felt all those things he stumbled upon the other worlds, close as fingerprints on skin, and nothing left to keep him from them.


Chapter 2: That Which Will Burn

He walked through groves of cinnamon trees, crushed the hard little pea-sized fruits beneath his feet and breathed in deep the scent. Between columns of autumn trees, whose fallen leaves covered the ground in a patina of gold. He slept in meadows of thick, sweet-smelling grass, pale lilies bent about his bed like a halo, beneath a night sky bright with majesty and glory. He walked in shadowed valleys, between mountains so high he cracked his neck just to see see the shining white peaks that cut the clouds like knives, waterfalls falling about their granite faces like bridal-veils. He knelt and drank by fast-running streams of water, clear as glass and so cold his teeth ached, blinking in surprise to see the wide-eyed child with twigs in his hair and mud on his face looking back.

He was a plump little son of civilization, and the boy scouts had taught him to eat the berries and herbs the animals ate, so for a while he lost himself in the wonder, years and pounds falling from him unnoticed. He caught a fish once and ate it raw on a bed of miner's lettuce and blackberries, and called it sushi. His only spice was hunger. It was the best meal he'd ever eaten.

As his hunger grew a mood took him, such that he took off his shoes and walked barefoot, to better feel this strange new world. He breathed the thin mountain air until it felt like home. He rested in hidden places, quiet as the silence between breaths. He watched the moon change its face. He witnessed a unicorn, swift as the rushing rivers and shining as though warmed by some otherworldly sun, and the sound of the wind upon its horn was a song. He saw nothing that was not holy.

Perhaps he would be there still, grown to solitary manhood in those mountain, but just as change is inevitable, so too was the coming of his first mentor, the Moth Sage.

...

The mist came first, heralding his arrival.

Soft plumes of white, rising from the river like an exhalation, unfurling up between the ancient trees, muffling the world in moth's wings. Moonlight struck these pearly curtains and was caught, so that every bead and hanging breath shone with light, silvery and fair to see. The boy stood motionless within a forest glade, licking red berry stains from his fingers and lips, letting the great aerial rivers of mist brush his face with cool fingers.

The mist thickened, from effervescent vapor to woolly soup, so thick that to breath was to drink. The light darkened to twilight. The world was soundless, shapeless, unformed. Only then did the sage appear.

"A napkin, boy," he said, tearing a ribbon from his cloak proffering the aforementioned linen. He sniffed. "Well, are you going to take it? Or have you gone entirely feral out here?"

The Moth Sage was a thin old man, with grey eyes and grey hair shaved down to a fuzz. His clothing consisted of countless ribbons, strands, tassels, cables of grey silk that floated all around him in the mist, as though he stood not on dry land but underwater. A great fan of ribbons rose around him, like the fan of a peacock's feathers bleached into grey, while even more ribbons trailed back into the mist, so that he looked less like a man than a man-shaped extrusion from the mist. He stood just at the edge of visibility, and so thick was the mist and so diaphanous the cloak that where the mist ended and the man began was impossible to say.

"... I'm already clean," the boy said.

"Manifestly untrue.The depredations of the wilderness may be repaired in time, but a lie, once spoken, can never be unsaid. Take the linen and return yourself to a state of at least approaching that of a civilized human. Good, good. I am Shade, the Moth Sage. You are the child of prophecy- now don't make that face at me boy. Prophecy is not to be gainsaid."

"I'm not a child; I'm a teenager."

A raised eyebrow. "Oh? My apologies for the mistaken identification, though I'm afraid it's an easy mistake to make. From your silence I presume you have no objections to prophecy?"

"I'll do what I want, when I want, how I want. Life happens on my terms or not at all. That's all the prophecy I need."

"Very bold of you. I assume spending these past few months wandering the woods half-naked while slowly starving to death was what you wanted, then?"

"I assume you want something from me, despite me being the half-naked starving savage?"

"The powerful might walk between the worlds merely because they will it, but for you and I, want alone can pierce infinity." There was something guttural about how he said 'want', wet and hungry and angry and longing all at once. "A man wants immortality. A father wants his son. A son wants his father. The lonely want to love and be loved. The broken want to be made whole. So has it always been, so it will always be. Your want reached out across infinity, and in this place found an answering echo. But your journey is not complete. I will show you the beauty of this world, and lead you to the Tyrant who has authored its suffering. In return, I ask only that you stay true to yourself, for your own inner nature will drive you far more cruelly than a tired old man like myself ever could. Such is always the nature and fate of the hero."

The boy hesitated.

"In addition, as my apprentice you'll be taught magic and and the secrets of this world. There is also a stipend, which you many spend on wine and whores, or whatever else you please."

"Alright. I'll come."


Chapter 3: Forge of Heroes

The world taught him peace, the princess taught him love, Moth Sage taught him magic, but the Tyrant taught him hate, and it was that lesson that was essential.

He saw the sack of the city of Water-Song, when the rivers and waterfalls of that great city ran black and red with ink and blood, and the child brothels and the clink of chains and cries from within, and the whole race of short, malnourished slaves bent and scarred from a lifetime of toil.

There are some evils that ought not to mentioned, for to speak of them is to inflict some fraction of their inhuman cruelty and lunatic misery while offering no response.

The memories of what he had seen he kept with him like a fire, even when the heat of it burned, especially when it burned. Hate remade him, burned away merely human impurities like fear and hesitation and guilt, until all that remained was a Hero. That is all that needs to be said of the matter.


Chapter 4: Lament

Here is how they died:

His mentor, the Moth Sage, died first. The blade cut open his great cloak and the Hero saw that there was no flesh or blood beneath, only emptiness. The Sage smiled a little sadly and took a step backwards into the ever present mist, until he seemed nothing more than a mirage, a trick of the mind that saw bodies and faces in the indistinct patterns of light and dark that lurked at the edge of vision. Then the wind came and carried the mist away, and he was gone.

Constança the rogue died in the torture chambers deep beneath the palace dungeons. The Tyrant told him later how she died, casually describing her torments between blows.

When Ásvaldr the warrior was slain six Valkyries came for him, their mail armor drenched in blood and spears shining, and sang

Here lies Ásvaldr
Weep Illium, for your son lies broken
Who succored the knight of Greenford
The falcon-bearers' friend
Who slew the beast Lycaon

Weep, oh maidens!
No marriage-gift shall he receive.
No fair children shall he bequeath
No stout household shall he erect
But for the worms shall he remain

Let no joyful voice come
Let the stars of twilight therefor be dark
For in the house of the wicked comes rejoicing
For the black one laughs in his pit
Here brave Ásvaldr lies fallen.
His like will not come again

Opolla the Sun-Priest called upon the fullness of his power and was consumed. The twilight sky was an abyss, darkness secured to the vault of heaven with stars like silver nails, but he grasped the noonday sun from below the horizon and drew it up over them, wrapped half the world in the pure blue of the infinite sky. And for a moment he stood over them all, Phaéthōn in his father's chariot, and his face was like a mask held before the sun, and from his eyes came great pillars of celestial fire, and when he spoke it was with divine fury, a tongue that lashed the earth like the sea in storm and lips from which dripped the blood of the sun itself. Then the moment passed and he was gone, and not even ash remained.

Jedda the Wit died of starvation. The Tyrant had driven them to the desert, where madmen and prophets go to find god and death, and bent his will such that every spring was dry and every beast fled. Jedda joked that he bequeathed his tongue to the Hero, in hopes that it might introduce some measure of playfulness and wit to his taciturn nature. So when at last he starved to death and his body was divided to be eaten, the Hero claimed the tongue as his inheritance and ate it.

Of the death of Nuadu of the Tuatha they do not speak, but some say that the night after the battle of the Whispering Gate a great owl the size of a person rose from the Hero's camp and flew west, across the Great Sea, and was never seen again in mortal lands.

As for the princess, slain by the Tyrant in the last moments of his life, the Hero held her in his arms and wet her face with tears, as he begged her to tell him her name, tell the Hero his own name, tell him why he cried, tell why he loved her, tell him anything at all, for he had burned his soul for power and only wane fragments of the Princess and the Hero remained.


Chapter 5: That Which Remains

They called him a hero, and he remembered when he thought that being a hero was something desirable, rather than an implicit demand that he give everything of himself and gain nothing in return. When he'd thought that real power, the power to change the world, came from having something to protect, something worth dying for. Rather than just being really, really good at precisely manipulating magical energies in such a way that they killed all the right people. He didn't want to be a Hero anymore.

And so, when the last ceremony was finished, the last accolade bestowed, the last celebration come to its conclusion, he headed south.

At first he'd promised himself he'd walk until he found a place where he didn't draw crowds of the grateful. Then he promised himself he'd stop when travelers no longer boggled in shock at the sight of his face. Then he promised he'd stop when he couldn't get a free beer in one of the many inns he passed.

He broke those promises, just like he'd broken all the others. He walked until he ran out of road, and then kept going.

They'd always told him he didn't know when to stop.

...


Whenever he grew still the past encroached on him, for though he'd burned his very soul a bare handful of memories had passed through that fire and been reforged, made imperishable. He felt like a ghost, stretched and faded thin, bearing within memories so hot and bright that at times he grew confused, a part of him disbelieving that mere remembrance could impose itself on him so much more powerfully than the grey nothing of the present, or that he could ever have become this tired broken old man resting by the side of an old, overgrown foot path.

He remembered when he walked through Sentinel Forest, where trees like titans stood in solemn splendor, with limbs the size of the Giant Sequoias of his home world raised to the heavens, their roots piercing soil and stone to drink deep from the aquifer they called Iophiel's Tears. He remembered the sound of the wind in that forest, as soft as two leaves clasping hands in prayer, as loud as a million-voiced choir. He waited till night, then climbed to the top of the highest tree and saw stars beyond number, bright enough that the shadows of a billion stars lay about his feet like an aura of darkness.

(He'd started walking down the path again, but slowly. It was spring and the whole world was blooming, which mean that the allergies he'd developed in the past few years had him wiping mucus from the faucet that was his nose every few steps.)

He remembered when he wrapped the selkie skin about his naked body, pressing it tight against his abs (abs!) and shivering as the cold flesh adhered itself to his dick. The skin thickened and grew around him and there was a moment of profound discomfort, like being buried alive, then he wasn't being buried within the skin because he was the skin and the skin was him.

But his explorations of his new body were quickly and rudely cut short. "Off you go" princess said cheerfully, and with a womanful heave sent him flying off the boat into the ocean.

He slid into the water like a knife. He breathed in the ocean and it was like inhaling steam or fog, like when he used to sit in the shower and turn the temperature as hot as he could stand and just relax. He plunged downward, his sleek seal-body scything through the water. Down, to the very bottom, where leviathans slept and waited for Rongomai's Harpoon to pass once more into legend and myth, to the sunken city of Ys, where the Abyssals lived in great palaces carved into the stone-flesh of a nameless dead titan, and where a single ray of light was punishable by death. And finally, to his audience with He-Sings-The-Deep, lord of the Aphotic Throne, the last of the Great Alliance to still defy the Tyrant and live.

(It was time for lunch, so he rested and whiled away the time fishing. The ice-cold mountain spring water burned his mouth, and the fish tasted of soft cardboard.)

He remembered, again, when she died.

He should turned the Sacrean bread-basket into a desert watered only by tears. He should have sought out the Unseelie courts and sworn to take on their tithe to the Prince of Light. He should given the fishermen of the sea of teeth their harvest. He should given the daughter of the king of nightmares what she'd wanted. Maybe then he'd have been strong enough to protect her and deserve her.

She died again, and his soul was alight again, burning, but in that agony there was the relief of knowing that he deserved this. He burned his soul and laughed, for his life was worth nothing, and so nothing of value was lost. And he felt within himself a great emptiness, of that true and perfect freedom that can be had only when there is nothing left to lose.

Once he had seen and felt all those things the Accursed came for him, and there was nothing left with which to deny him.


Chapter 6: A Simple Transaction

Happiness is a paltry reward. A momentary, fleeting thing. Meaningless, worthless. If he had it, he wouldn't even know what to do with it.

He lost his war because he was too weak. He lost his friends and allies and companions and mentors because he was too weak. He lost something of himself because he was too weak. He lost his wife because he was too weak.

He will not be too weak, not anymore. They will know his coming, they will feel the shadow of his power upon them, his decimation scouring them of their strength. Once he was weak, but now he will never be constrained again.

He could call his wife back with a wish, but he will not. Not until he is strong enough to protect her, not until he knows he can keep her safe.

(He will never be strong enough to save her. To one who has known famine, a shadow of that hunger remains forever. To one who has known war, the potential for violence remains but a breath away. To one who has known loss, the certainty of death is absolute. He will never be strong enough to save her.)

"I accept," he told the Accursed.

Nothing could be simpler.
 
Rihaku said:
I know it hurts not healing one of yourself or Letrizia, but looking at overall effectiveness, Vanguard and Maw are so much better than even Second Stage + Shine Bright.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I mean yeah, that's how it works. How do Vanguard and Maw compare in overall effectiveness to a 25 Arete? Because by not ever choosing to save when we are not in a huge crunch to do so we're never going to get there, as you well know!

It feels like now is a relatively safe period, and we can get what we need without dipping into Arete.
 
Last edited:
It's getting late for me, but I'd like to warn everyone that from an Omake power standpoint Vali just gave Plumed+Pristine a lot of Omake power.
 
In theory we could also try getting so much fan works that we can just select the 25 Arete option and proceed onwards (lol).
 
[X] The Mire Wolf
[X] Evening Sky - Pristine Star
[X] Forebear's Blade - Second Stage

Fine, fine. I still want to save the Arete though. Second Stage is good Arete purchase that helps our survivability greatly, and in fact, actually fucking heals us. Finally.
 
[X] The Mire Wolf
[X] Evening Sky - Pristine Star
[X] Forebear's Blade - Second Stage

Sweet findross, forsaken in the name of voting unity and Arete conservation.
 
[X] The Tyrant Beast
[X] Evening Sky - Pristine Star
[X] Hunger - Pitiless Maw

I can see the thread has overcorrected into risk aversion again so there's no hope of tyrant winning despite all the extra benefits it brings in comparison to mire wolf especially since we just commited to a high rank build last vote. I'll keep voting for it though just in case.

I should stop making meme votes so here's a serious one. As much as I like shine bright I doubt the thread is going to vote for a 9 arete plan even if we get that much so pristine star is a good alternative that passively heals our companions and achieves our stated goal of healing Zea.

Pitiless Maw is still incredible. The last fight would have been trivial if we had it even with exhausted. The sacrificial move we pulled to kill that chick wouldn't have even hurt us because we would have healed back to full when we finished her off. Also boosts our offence patching both the holes in our build at the same time.
 
Shard said:
If we aren't scaling hard we are going to die.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not necessarily. He can scale like a boss, but he probably can't spec for things he doesn't know about. Things like our full Pressure.

Not that spending more Arete here would be a bad thing. Narratives of long-term planning don't really align with the strategy to 'rush tech' to a 25-pointer by saving Arete instead of taking strategically rational benefits. Especially since it's now on permanent reserve-buy.

[X] The Tyrant Hydra
[X] Evening Sky - Pristine Star
[X] Forebear's Blade - Undying Vanguard
 
[X] The Mire Wolf
[X] Evening Sky - Shine Bright
[X] Forebear's Blade - Second Stage

These options open up the path to making Gisena stat relevant and thus mitigate our curses more + making us less of a glass canon. What's not to like.
 
George said:
we should thank him for the Arete and the story!!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Maybe so. Maybe this'll get us enough Arete to make up for lost time at the next build vote in the event of a Pristine Star only victory. Thinking about things further while trying to fall asleep, the idea of the default reaction to Omakes becoming people shouting tactical warnings seems like the kind of thing that's a bit much even for these threads. We're all salty and bitter over the trench warfare of arguing in these threads anyway, let's not make this worse than it has to be.

So for what it's worth @vali, sorry for the hasty and ill-considered escalation.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top