Does Gisena's version of Retinue reduce our Progression? and does she mitigate the Doom of the Tyrant or 'just' the other three Curses?


The text say that she replicates the effect of Retinue for herself. So this gives her progression at 25% strength of Hunger's

And we don't know about the later. Probably not because of Uttermost. Still Grand nullification for 3 of our other curses would be incredibly useful.
 
The text say that she replicates the effect of Retinue for herself. So this gives her progression at 25% strength of Hunger's

And we don't know about the later. Probably not because of Uttermost. Still Grand nullification for 3 of our other curses would be incredibly useful.
yeah I'm hoping Rihaku will chime in; the text makes me optimistic but it's not explicit
 
[X] The Ring of Power: Crimson Flare

Anything but another sword advancement. Progress towards special advancement plus people will finally start picking up votes towards Evening Sky to get the that third EFB.

And guys just a reminder this is a game that we share. While All-Defeating Stance almost assure victory in the temple it also is fundamentally another sword power. This sets us in the path towards more sword which will probably drive other questers away because the picks that they want (Ruling Ring, Evening Sky, companions, more magic, etc.) is not getting any love and the Arete generated by them always benefits other builds. How about you give this one to others? I don't mind Crimson Flare losing to Renaissance Woman as long as we don't get another sword power.
 
Seriously now, this is quite a complicated vote; many people don't want three Blade EFBs and so would be fine with Woman or Flare; and many don't want Woman and so are fine with Flare and Stance.

Flare is legitimately the compromise option, how amusing. I still think Renaissance Woman is better becuase it just wins us the Temple and lets us move on with our lives and gives us substantial Curse mitigation. But in the interest of fairness I will actually approval vote:

[X] The Ring of Power: Crimson Flare
[X] Renaissance Woman


Just to avoid salt; and recommend everyone to do the same! If everyone's vote power is split, no-one's will be! This requires significant buy-in, but much less than the omake-storm we just did! Let's strive for the path of Compromise.
 
[X] Forbear's Blade: All-Defeating Stance

I want all three of these so fucking bad it hurts.

But I'll stick with this one, because it means we FINALLY AREN'T CONSTANTLY AT RISK OF DYING.
 
Also I want to Renaissance Woman because I know the trend of the questers. When given a choice pure power and the opportunity for more power is always the preferred option.

At least with this, we get someone that could scale with us later on that would cover our deficiencies. As it is we spend most of our time hunting alone.

Remember that Gisena is one of our lesser remittances. She is a prize on the same level as the Hunger Ring and the Forebear's Blade.

To me improving her is the same as picking options that improve the other two remittances. Having her lag behind even further with the power of progression would be a waste of a remittance.

Plus we know that Findross and Grace development requires efforts to research and train. That is not how Hunger grows, he grows through conflict and fighting. This way she holds True Quintessence that lets her develop new graces on her own time and with her own effort that she can then use to buff us. We know graces can offer some absurd buffs.
 
[X] The Ring of Power: Crimson Flare

I'm actually fine with Renaissance Woman winning. Aprocrphal curse down 20%, Tyrant mitigated, the chance to offload the pressure of getting a ressurection mechanism for our wife as eclipse can replicate Grace's, etc.

However, very much against team all defeating. As much of the thread does intend to pick up an evening sky and ring EFB, it locks us out of getting a free Trinity special advancement. Yes I realize the blurb is good, but is it as good as two blurbs?
Just as there's a Special Advancement for getting one EFB for each artifact, there's a Special Advancement for getting three EFBs for one. Don't think of it as locking us out of Trinity, it's putting us two-thirds of the way to something just as good. The blurb isn't staring us full in the face, it may not even have been written yet, but with Rihaku as the author I can vouchsafe its sickness ahead of time.

Renaissance Woman is at its core a potential-based EFB. True Quintessence requires research time to replicate all the Maiden's myriad Graces. Gisena's physical parameters for the purposes of combat (not this beauty-is-an-attack bullshit) are only modestly superior to Hunger's own. Can charm her way into the Inner Ring? Definitely. Can she solo the Temple, as All-Defeating is capable of? Absolutely not, certainly not without more research time than we can afford to give her.
 
Also, people remember that our true goal after the temple is taking over the Human Sphere.

Having Gisena becoming the uber socialite would help with this unless we really want to go on a tyrannical rampage to force the Human Sphere to submit.
 
[X] The Ring of Power: Crimson Flare

I am actually perfectly okay with the Renaissance Woman winning, though I would request we return to concentrating on the Ruling Ring with our (hers) newfound power if it wins - I think at that point we are safe enough. I wouldn't even mind All-Stance winning, even if I wouldn't choose it myself, so it's a pretty calm vote for me.
 
Also, people remember that our true goal after the temple is taking over the Human Sphere.

Having Gisena becoming the uber socialite would help with this unless we really want to go on a tyrannical rampage to force the Human Sphere to submit.
Come now, both of the other options provide their own benefits for conquest. Crimson Flare post-rescue lets us uplift entire populations into superhumans whose enhancements we can revoke at will, that's enormously relevant. The All-Defeating Stance doubles Hunger's charisma and manipulation against the vast majority of the people he's charged with ruling, who are now innately aware of his strength and powerfully disincentivized to even dream of rebellion.
 
Just as there's a Special Advancement for getting one EFB for each artifact, there's a Special Advancement for getting three EFBs for one. Don't think of it as locking us out of Trinity, it's putting us two-thirds of the way to something just as good. The blurb isn't staring us full in the face, it may not even have been written yet, but with Rihaku as the author I can vouchsafe its sickness ahead of time.
Its not that it won't be crazy awesome. Its not that it will suck compared to the Trinity. Its that it will be another Forebear's Blade EFB. Its that the Ring of Hunger or Evening Sky EFB that they want is discarded to the wayside again because if the All-Defeating Stance wins all other artifact EFBs became suboptimal. Its that at the end of the day we want other powers aside from what the Forebear had.
 
Counterpoints:

1.) Would it count as _us_ ruling the Voyaging Realm if Gisena has all the power?
2.) There are likely to be people with superhuman persuasion as well on their side, and it makes sense to have some form of force to back up that persuasion. It's better to be stronger and less persuasive than weaker and more persuasive.
3.) Primacy gains STRONG AF, progress too fast to catch up to the time limit-- diplomacy might genuinely take too long given how large the Human Sphere is
 
Just as there's a Special Advancement for getting one EFB for each artifact, there's a Special Advancement for getting three EFBs for one. Don't think of it as locking us out of Trinity, it's putting us two-thirds of the way to something just as good. The blurb isn't staring us full in the face, it may not even have been written yet, but with Rihaku as the author I can vouchsafe its sickness ahead of time.

Renaissance Woman is at its core a potential-based EFB. True Quintessence requires research time to replicate all the Maiden's myriad Graces. Gisena's physical parameters for the purposes of combat (not this beauty-is-an-attack bullshit) are only modestly superior to Hunger's own. Can charm her way into the Inner Ring? Definitely. Can she solo the Temple, as All-Defeating is capable of? Absolutely not, certainly not without more research time than we can afford to give her.
Yeah, ultimately it's very much possible that the memetic hazard just hits some hard limits against very weird soul evocations, automated defenses or monstrous guardians and then we're sitting there with a potential-based EFB and very impressive physical stats in Gisena that are very good at keeping her alive but don't necessarily help putting down something that isn't vulnerable to nullity cause her stats don't feed into SORD.
So most likely we stall out a but gain boatloads of intel very easily, manipulate stooges into becoming her allies, let her do some of that research/training and the Apocryphal comes back online and shit goes down.
 
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Also remember the Grand Nullification on all curses!

Apocryphal Curse is going to wear off soon. Another mitigation on it before it reactivates would be a blessing.

Come now, both of the other options provide their own benefits for conquest. Crimson Flare post-rescue lets us uplift entire populations into superhumans whose enhancements we can revoke at will, that's enormously relevant. The All-Defeating Stance doubles Hunger's charisma and manipulation against the vast majority of the people he's charged with ruling, who are now innately aware of his strength and powerfully disincentivized to even dream of rebellion.

The first still seems geared to making an army to conquer and occupy large parts of the Human Sphere. Still conquest with tyrannical power.

The second seems to be pretty much becoming a tyrant.
 
I really do think are letting Terrascape PTSD could their judgement here. More than usual, I mean.

Those who want us to not pick Renaissance Woman at any cost must face the fact that are some who don't want the Blade advancement at any cost. So you should at least approval vote Flare so the consolidation doesn't screw you over. Such are the benefits of compromise.
Renaissance Woman is at its core a potential-based EFB. True Quintessence requires research time to replicate all the Maiden's myriad Graces. Gisena's physical parameters for the purposes of combat (not this beauty-is-an-attack bullshit) are only modestly superior to Hunger's own. Can charm her way into the Inner Ring? Definitely. Can she solo the Temple, as All-Defeating is capable of? Absolutely not, certainly not without more research time than we can afford to give her.
But you see; then we'd have two Hunger-level combatants with us in the Inner temple! Isn't that a ton of immediate power!? She'd be able to Progress as well; it would improve our chances massively! We don't need to solo the Temple to win, especially with a memetic hazard on our side!
The All-Defeating Stance doubles Hunger's charisma and manipulation against the vast majority of the people he's charged with ruling, who are now innately aware of his strength and powerfully disincentivized to even dream of rebellion.
But that kind of necessitates the tyrannical rampage first though; that something of the Forebear that I definitely don't want to copy if possible. Ruling through strength is often not the best, to put it mildly.
 
Wow. I'm honestly speechless after seeing the EFB options. Don't really want to pick Gisena EFB atm, but the option itself is nice. Nice, but I don't think we're at the point where we can afford to worry about our companions' advancement over our own.

I'm not going to talk about Special Advancements or flavor or survival chances, plenty of people have already argued about that. I'm going to talk about an important reason we chose Crimson Flare but which was forgotten in all the excitement for some reason.

All-Defeating Stance gives us a military victory. Renaissance Woman gives us a social victory. So what does Crimson Flare give us in comparison to that? It gives us a satisfying victory, giving us the opportunity to save the Ring and the Moon citizens both. You know, the 10 million people who are going to get shafted once we get the Azure Ring? Hunger already notes in the option he has little interest taking care of the Moon Civ, despite having some of the best tools for fixing things. How much worse is his disinterest going to get if he doesn't have those tools?

Like, surviving and winning is important. But I want Hunger to be able to live with himself without being constantly reminded that he consigned a civilization to oblivion.

[X] Crimson Flare
 
Also, people remember that our true goal after the temple is taking over the Human Sphere.

Having Gisena becoming the uber socialite would help with this unless we really want to go on a tyrannical rampage to force the Human Sphere to submit.
Having Gisena qualified as a memetic hazard before we can bust out of Armament backed quarantines and fend off Armament kill squads is less useful though.
It's unclear how well we'll be able to pull the wool over people's eyes, but a lot of it is going to come down to how much she holds off on abusing her abilities, which depends highly on us not being that reliant on it, which depends on being powerful enough for SORDing many problems.
 
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