Tyrant_Rayne
Probably Not Evil… Maybe
- Location
- Canada
[X] Combat
[X] Guile-Defeating Stance
[X] Guile-Defeating Stance
A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
It is anti-synergetic as shit in the long run, so I have this question - why is it losing?
Too real after last vote. Also don`t forget to dismiss every argument against your plan while hypocritically proclaiming that the other voters are dismissive of your plan.
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Talace
It must be raining somewhere else!
Best pick for this encounter, but not necessarily for the rest!
- Location
- The savanna.
[X] Stealth
[X] Hero-Defeating Stance
It's the safest option for diplo and fighting, right? Negates the Marshall's Rank advantage, also super relevant against Bearic when that asshole circles around for a second pass. Just because we saw TKSA's blurb doesn't mean we have save ourselves for fucking marriage with it, guys, it's okay to take synergistic options. There's other Praxis shit to buy, it's not the only game in town. I'm just kinda done with taking risks honestly, I wanted ADS to sweep the Temple but HDS + Flare's okay too.
[X] Hero-Defeating Stance
It's the safest option for diplo and fighting, right? Negates the Marshall's Rank advantage, also super relevant against Bearic when that asshole circles around for a second pass. Just because we saw TKSA's blurb doesn't mean we have save ourselves for fucking marriage with it, guys, it's okay to take synergistic options. There's other Praxis shit to buy, it's not the only game in town. I'm just kinda done with taking risks honestly, I wanted ADS to sweep the Temple but HDS + Flare's okay too.
Talace
It must be raining somewhere else!
Time to shill a bit for GDS: some of the hardest things to account for are the things we don't know! As a Cursebearer, we may subvert the works of those stronger than us, crush those weaker than us, find a way around esoteric effects. What do we do if... Gondar just decides to fake us out and kill our allies? Nothing, that's what. Unless you have GDS, which absolutely crushes deception and schemes. What about the Hidden Ones and their plots? Fuck'em, that's what. GDS lets us kick Donald Rumsfeld in the throat: unknown unknowns can suck shit.
We can have multiple stances at a time.
Hero-defeating is an enemy-defeating stance, while all-defeating is a type defeating stance, so they don't interfere with eachother. Also, we have enough rank to have 2 stances active at a time. So if we do manage to get all-defeating, we can have both Hero-defeating and all-defeating active at the same time.
Yes, GDS is good but I just don`t think we can actually have a social victory in this god forsaken DLC. The explotation of the ring yields 1000 years of lifespan, access to Soul Evocation, space and time manipulation, shitload of energy and a way to gather schmucks in the middle temple. Our way is to provide 300 years of lifespan (remember ennobling is 4x lifespan increase) and access to SWOLE and BUFF magic.
Frankly the deal is quite bad and I don`t think the Immortals will actually agree. They have memetic hazard defenses as well so Gisena EFB would have failed as well.
Forebear`s way continues to be the one true way to fix every problem in the multivers. Apply copious amount of violence and soon everything is fixed.
That is what I meant. If we want ADS, taking Hero defeating is counter-productive in the short term. Long-term it is nice but the +Rank is superceeded by Once and future and King stands alone fixes the issue with multiple opponents. Halving Rank difference is good but there are better alternatives.
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Talace
It must be raining somewhere else!
We'll apply sword to face in both worlds! But it's a safe way to disarm Administrator, prevent us from being ambushed, and gives Wits, Wisdom, and Charisma to boot! Thus, it makes persuasion considerably easier. Perhaps we might not get a social victory, but you can be guaranteed it reduces the amount of times we'll need to apply sword to face.
- Location
- Canada
Star-Forges of Plerion reaction (1110 Words)
So their civilization is based on the extraction of crystallized possibility. That sound like powerful stuff! I wonder what it can do apart from giving people access to Soul Evocation and warping space? And if the False Heavens are anything like the real Heaven, I wouldn't really worry about running out of stars, there are 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe and each individual galaxy can contain hundred of billions of stars.
That make the Call of the False Moon sound extremely scary, we already knew that the version affecting Hunger was greatly weakened by our ring, but I didn't think it was to that degree. Not sure if it makes me happy or sad we never visited the Encampment, on the one hand it would probably have been interesting but on the other I'm not sure I want to have much to do with a place described as one of the foulest dens of sin and inequity in the entire Voyaging Realm. That has to be an exaggeration, right? I mean, the Voyaging Realm contain quintillions of time more matter than the rest of the universe combined, how on earth could this place possibly come close to being one of the foulest place in it?
How did they even get access to those papers in the first place? As many people have said, this constitute an egregious breach of Op Sec.
Aeira is already proving her usefulness! And yeah, the way Hunger grows leads us to have very weird preferences from an exterior perspective. Not that Hunger deeply unhealthy attitude towards danger help in any way... I'm sure Aeira will eventually get used to it eventually, though.
So they seem to have a pretty developed society or at least a pretty developed bureaucracy. Also interesting that they apparently are ranks above marshall.
I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that this quote was from something a fascist leader once said, so that doesn't say good things about this Plerion guy... Though the way that they randomly quote his writing in their documents make think more of Mao or possibly some religious figure.
Plerion seems like way more than a simple inventor given how they treat his writing. Which, given that they have the ability to make some of their members immortal make me wonder why he was left to die... It's interesting that the interior of the Dome always show the opposite state of the day/night cycle as the exterior, I wonder what it is that make this design natural?
Just deflect all of the noise pollution from the Star Forges into the Middle Ring is such a dick move... If they can manipulate sound to that degree, can't they just destroy it instead of inflicting it on the people of Middle Ring? Talking about manipulating sound, I now see why the immunity to sound-based attack of Shadowlord would have been useful, they're likely to turn whoever or whatever they're using to manipulate sound in this way against us.
So their civilization is based on the extraction of crystallized possibility. That sound like powerful stuff! I wonder what it can do apart from giving people access to Soul Evocation and warping space? And if the False Heavens are anything like the real Heaven, I wouldn't really worry about running out of stars, there are 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe and each individual galaxy can contain hundred of billions of stars.
How many star are they extracting for them to consume them all in the scale of mere millennia?! Maybe when they say many millennia they mean like a hundred billion millennia?
That denial just make me more suspicious! Maybe they are actually secretly extracting from the moon but they don't want the population at large to know about it? Maybe they're using it to power their Immortals?
Don't ask questions, or else! Definitely fascism of some kind...
Clear social stratification between the native-born residents and everybody else... Even if you make it into the Inner Ring, as a non-native you'll always be treated as a second-grade citizen...
A pretty positive sounding quote for a plan that involve the torture of a seemingly sentient being in perpetuity! Also the quote make me think that the ring civilization see Plerion as the spiritual father of their civilization.
All magics? Now that I think about it, even though most of the Temple's combatant seem to be Soul Evokers, Fairbright had a whole bunch of different synergistic magics she could use... So, who are the Fairbrights? Are they the descendants of one of the Immortals? Also, we see one of the many way their civilization is crucially dependent upon the ring to function, without it all but the mightiest of their Soul Evokers effectively lose all access to their Soul Evocation...
Confirmation that when they said many millennia, they meant many millennia. If your resources are effectively unlimited, why are you restricting the lifespan of the immense majority of the Inner population to a mere millennia? To preserve a sharp delta of power between your most powerful combatants and everybody else, as Hunger as speculated? Surely there would have been other methods of accomplishing the same goal that didn't involve preordaining the death of your citizens at a specific age?
Lol. Oh poor me, I'm an immortal with no responsibility except having to fight in the very rare circumstances where everybody else below me is getting slaughtered and I have to step in to crush whoever is doing it, which I'll probably do trivially given the sharp delta of power between me and everybody else, whatever shall I ever do? Ceaseless burden... Yeah right!
I mean... The Inner Temple does offer powerful protectors to the inhabitants of the Middle Temple but the Call of the False Moon attracts danger to them and they have to live with the pollution from the Inner, so I'm not sure whether they're actually better off this way?
The other documents leaking already revealed Op Sec problems but this take the cake. How did those guys get access to this?!
Apparently Gisena is at most Class S in their classification. Are Class S and S-type different things? Given that Class S refer to a certain level of power but R-type refer to fast-growing threats, I would guess that they are.
Being protected by the Accursed is great. We know that R-types are fast growing threat, so what are the others? Some have speculated that X was for eXistential risk to their civilization but the most credible speculation I've heard was that they stood for Slow, Ordinary, Rapid and eXponential growth. Also, they think our protection against divination comes from an ontological perimeter, whatever that means.
I wonder why they don't think we can't be X-type anymore?
So more powerful outsiders are about to come in attracted by the Call... That's likely to be the source that the Apocryphal will use to strike at us if we don't complete the Temple fast enough...
Just as everybody else as already mention this really make me think Crowelenarch is a lich.
- Location
- Brazil
[9] A Lance's Finesse
[9] Fight: "Report, Mercenary Nine White."
O7, we made a promise, we are keeping it, no matter what. Also, speed is better than raw strenght, giving you control of the flow of the battle. Best hope that's good enough.
SACRILEGE!
Had it not been for the laws of this land(vote markers), I would have voted against you, for this insult alone
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Just because something increases your chances in strictly short timeframe doesn't mean that it's the safest option! Would we really be a match for High Marshall without Uttermost or Valor? Would we have a way to challenge Vernir if not for Apex and Quickening?
Risk aversion breeds inefficiency which breeds risk. It feels good to have no risk, but only thing we are doing is accruing risk debt for future votes. Make sure to keep our risk well managed, not too risky but not sacrificing long term safety either.
Risk aversion breeds inefficiency which breeds risk. It feels good to have no risk, but only thing we are doing is accruing risk debt for future votes. Make sure to keep our risk well managed, not too risky but not sacrificing long term safety either.
Talace
It must be raining somewhere else!
But complications build inefficiency which also build risk! Relevantly, we have neither of those big ticket options up for grabs right now, and it is risky to hedge the likelihood of a powerful option appearing soon against the chance that they might not come up in a way that is relevant to this discussion (perhaps we lose, or we don't get too many picks, or Stranglethorn comes up and we don't need Arete to pick it).
Your concerns for a short-termist mindset are valid, but not applicable here in that Guile/Hero/Magic all have buildpaths that conclude in a superior capstone stance, which is by definition investing in long-term efficiency! Besides that, we've got several long-term plans lined up for us already (the ES EFB, advancements with Edeldross pseudo-graces, Blood Advancements galore, and the perennial PRAXIS adjacent). So, conceded most of the points are valid in general, contention as to whether or not that's applicable here in a meaningful way!
Rihaku, can we develop Gardener's Hallow with the Crimson Flare? This seems like something it can do and something we can offer the Inner Circle civilization is to also replace some of their magical infrastructure with one that give super resources.
And also another question. Are we still in what you clasify as early game or are we already in the midgame?
And also another question. Are we still in what you clasify as early game or are we already in the midgame?
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Projectile
Thinking of Rabbits
- Location
- USA
Fanwork#2258 words
Planned to do a short reaction to the whole update because we're not doing a PUsH, but this information-dense update defies short reactions, so this one's just to the first document.
Hunger only uses ethically-sourced Possibility from free-range stars! No torture or Ceathlynn-yeeting in his Evening Sky, no sireebob.
Star-Forge is an ominous title for many reasons, but mostly because the scale of stars is far beyond anything we've faced. Well, Letrizia's seen better, but with Verschlengorge damaged her experience won't save us. Will we have to test the assertion that Accretion can occasionally block supernovas this early? Hopefully it's just poetic. The importance of heat and pressure means that any forge could be described as starlike, if you stretch. Right? If I can't see the Star-Forge, it can't see me. That's better.
There's so much heavenly magic going on that if I connect all the dots my paper will be blacker than the night sky. Do not get the Mantle caught in the Star-Forges, that's asking for trouble. Why is the Moon Ring opening the Star tech tree? It reflects light from the sun, as an anvil reflects force from a hammer, maybe. The metal being worked in this metal-phor being something I'll have to actually read to find out.
The Call of the False Moon seems to be much worse for most than it is for Hunger, but in addition to his protections he's actually making great progress on his goal. Even he'd get incredibly antsy; he did, actually, since we had to spend an Arete to delay for something even as relevant to the end goal as training. Yikes, the Arete-makers in these guys threads must be running on a treadmill just to keep their characters from charging in and dying, the entertainment truly is necessary. I don't regret avoid this place at all, now, even if I'm slightly interested in whatever power was being sold.
Anyone who's paying attention should be able to notice the connection between the merchants and the Inners, but it's still probably for their sake that they don't advertise it too strongly. Oh, wait, if the pages are bloodstained that means they were stolen from the Inners- oh, I'm dumb, this was all stolen (or, in the case of the Sigils and probably more, allowed to be stolen) from inside. Intelligence reports would then either clearly be bait like all the WW2 stories I hear about, or someone Inside has massively screwed up. Everybody's out for themselves and there are many layers to this intrigue, so buy Guile-Defeating Stance to make the upcoming interactions much less of a pain in the ass!
The guardian spirits are probably from the summoning magic we heard about. I'm sort of interested in that; if there are blood-having summons, it'd be a good combination with Hunger's buffs, especially since the thread (myself definitely included) is a bit skittish about increasing the size of the party.
I love to see Hunger being proactive about Tyrant avoidance, even with the Tyrant pressing on his brain to make him give less of a crap about avoiding it, particularly since infiltration is indeed our plan A. Nasty little thing. In this case, their customs suck, but this'll help us make better ones, too, if that works out.
Plerion has terrible sayings. Disorder is no excuse for totalitarianism, and I don't even think the first makes sense. I've heard it in real life that ignorance isn't a defense for breaking the law, and whether or not you agree with that sentiment it sounds less internally contradictory, but that would be disobeying the law. I guess its not different? But "obey" has more of a connotation of knowledge of orders, that might be my issue. I'm not obeying the law by not killing people (quote that out of context if you want to frame me for anything, you have my permission lol), I just don't want to kill people. Or, no, I still am, but if I didn't know murder was illegal I wouldn't be obeying the law, necessarily. Whatever, the point is fuck Plerion and his sayings.
Oh, Plerion is apparently... a nebula- wait, clearly I don't understand this well enough to use my own words for it, I'll just quote.
It's stated plainly that the Inner... Ring (uh) depends on whatever's going on with the Forges, as expected, but now it's confirmed that there's going to be fallout from this rescue mission which hopefully Hunger can be incentivized to minimize. With all the space nonsense going on, is the Temple itself the Ring? It's also possible that the Azure Ring is just the innermost concentric circle, that'd be a cool aesthetic and make my brain hurt less so let's go with that.
Day/Night are swapped inside and out, and despite the fact that I've been ranting about that duality for weeks I can't pin down why that's important. The Star-forges activate mostly in daytime, according to Vanreir who lives in the Middle. Didn't I post about being confused by that, actually? Huh, there's your answer, past me, obviously day and night were backwards inside the Inner Ring, how could you have missed that? /s
The Forges are active more often than not, I think, so did Hunger just visit the Middle at the wrong times? Or was the "auditory emission" just more of the screaming that he can already hear, so it didn't particularly change. I was wondering about what was so False about the Moon, and now I have two answers; Voyaging Realm space nonsense meaning there can be multiple night skies, for the less important one, and mostly the fact that these totalitarian assholes don't just dehumanize people, they destellify stars to justify their exploitation of them.
Which is weird, actually, there's nothing normally wrong with star-exploitation, almost every living thing on my home planet does it, but the degree of it is insane. Providing magic and plenty for ten million individuals is an enormous undertaking, but have you seen the sun? I've looked directly at it, so you can trust me when I say it's pretty big. What horrible lichy experiment could be so energy-intensive that it's using up all the stars in the night sky at a rate that they'll die in "many millennia?" I'm fairly sure they don't mean many as in a hundred million millennia, but I might be wrong and this is an overreaction. Or they could be extracting magic from the starlight of many stars, which makes them disappear from the Temple's perspective but leaves the stars themselves unharmed, which would also provide a more reasonable level of energy.
I'd ask what exactly crystallized possibility is, but there's truth in advertising. It's stuff that does stuff, magic is convenient that way. I'd want to grab some for ourselves, but it's not precisely ethically sourced. We do have the Evening Sky, maybe they have some tricks we can adapt to be non-horrific. "Least unpleasant," ewewew, I don't like how they can't even call a scream a scream but they still admit it's unpleasant.
The tone of this infodump is pretty chummy. "You've long wondered," is personal and I now feel in on a secret, is this how I'll get suckered into a cult? Nice level of social engineering, here, and if this is required reading at 0-7 they'll be in on it together. Arguments should reference these things at least a bit, they feel theological, like Bible quotes. Not in a "you're wrong" sense except for blatant exceptions, but explaining our opinions in relation to the official line to build understanding.
Now, like any good Marshall, I'm salivating to know why the Council won't harvest the moon. Presumably it's because they can't, and totalitarian governments hate to show weakness. Speaking of weakness, some of these names make me fear we have it. "Calendar Engine," are you shitting me? That sounds like something worthy of the Azure Ring's torment, at least, but we should probably stick close to Gisena so we don't get zapped to a dark future where evil is law- wait, I was making a low-effort reference but that rings a bell.
Right! Ceathlynn.
[ ] Ceathlynn "Catherine" of Amarlt
Physical *****
Social * / ***
Mental **
Considered a failed prototype in the Amarlt family's disavowed eugenic super-soldier program, Catherine was relegated to the role of a lab assistant in the Astral Exploratory of her nominal House. A high-energy rift experiment gone wrong displaced her in space and time. Hurled centuries into the future, she is now the sole pureblooded inheritor of the Amarlt lineage, the main branch having long consumed itself in a fiery internecine war.
[/QUOTE]
The Temple would hardly disavow eugenics, I think, so she'd be from the Human Sphere. But we just killed an Amarlt, and these guys also do funky spacetime games. Maybe the thing that went wrong was that the mainline Amarlt experiment bumped into a Temple experiment, possibly because the refugee Amarlt took Astral expertise with them that resulted in crossover. Maybe it was a Moon plot.
Maybe everything is a Moon plot.
Planned to do a short reaction to the whole update because we're not doing a PUsH, but this information-dense update defies short reactions, so this one's just to the first document.
Hunger only uses ethically-sourced Possibility from free-range stars! No torture or Ceathlynn-yeeting in his Evening Sky, no sireebob.
Because I am a filthy f2p reader, but I am still insatiably curious, I recognize this title from peeking. My hype is increasing!
Star-Forge is an ominous title for many reasons, but mostly because the scale of stars is far beyond anything we've faced. Well, Letrizia's seen better, but with Verschlengorge damaged her experience won't save us. Will we have to test the assertion that Accretion can occasionally block supernovas this early? Hopefully it's just poetic. The importance of heat and pressure means that any forge could be described as starlike, if you stretch. Right? If I can't see the Star-Forge, it can't see me. That's better.
There's so much heavenly magic going on that if I connect all the dots my paper will be blacker than the night sky. Do not get the Mantle caught in the Star-Forges, that's asking for trouble. Why is the Moon Ring opening the Star tech tree? It reflects light from the sun, as an anvil reflects force from a hammer, maybe. The metal being worked in this metal-phor being something I'll have to actually read to find out.
I'm not sure why I expected the ramshackle settlement of adventurers to be anything other than a "den of sin;" Hunger's overwhelming commitment to saving the Ring and Gabrielle's knight in shining armor-ness made me picture something more idealistic, perhaps. And more permanent buildings and less tents, but that might be my memory going, the first sight of it was-
-using the word encamped, too. Surely some earth mage was willing to make a few moonbux by throwing up actually decent shelters, but maybe these tents are fancy indeed. Or its full of selfish and desperate adventurers who have little common ground so even simple shared improvements are unlikely, and the Temple residents are sowing dissent to keep everyone down. How unfortunate, these guys can't even get a decent quality of life before they're killed. Hopefully they like vaudeville.
The Call of the False Moon seems to be much worse for most than it is for Hunger, but in addition to his protections he's actually making great progress on his goal. Even he'd get incredibly antsy; he did, actually, since we had to spend an Arete to delay for something even as relevant to the end goal as training. Yikes, the Arete-makers in these guys threads must be running on a treadmill just to keep their characters from charging in and dying, the entertainment truly is necessary. I don't regret avoid this place at all, now, even if I'm slightly interested in whatever power was being sold.
It would be one thing if merchants nabbed cool toys that the Residents would be interested to sell in that direction, but it sounds a bit like at least some of them are coming from the other direction, as the papers are. What an odd place to store anything important; do they fear their inner rivals more than this rabble? It would fit with their ideas of superiority, and might be a reasonable stance if only AeIRa wasn't on the case! Beware, fools, for the wind is full of knives.
Anyone who's paying attention should be able to notice the connection between the merchants and the Inners, but it's still probably for their sake that they don't advertise it too strongly. Oh, wait, if the pages are bloodstained that means they were stolen from the Inners- oh, I'm dumb, this was all stolen (or, in the case of the Sigils and probably more, allowed to be stolen) from inside. Intelligence reports would then either clearly be bait like all the WW2 stories I hear about, or someone Inside has massively screwed up. Everybody's out for themselves and there are many layers to this intrigue, so buy Guile-Defeating Stance to make the upcoming interactions much less of a pain in the ass!
The guardian spirits are probably from the summoning magic we heard about. I'm sort of interested in that; if there are blood-having summons, it'd be a good combination with Hunger's buffs, especially since the thread (myself definitely included) is a bit skittish about increasing the size of the party.
Aeira was already worth the price by having a friend with a phone, but she's already proving she more than compensates for the missed random low-level encounter XP. It's been a week and Hunger has yet to visit the camp, but Aeira ghosts in instantly, that tickles my funny bone a bit. I cocked my head at the idea that multiple Accretion-bound level Artifacts would be in the temple, but of course Aeira doesn't know much more than than Hunger has cool toys and so do the vaults. It's good that she's anticipating her employer's needs, especially since we're her employer. She made the right call leaving the treasure behind, getting pursued will already alarm the inners, and if we care about it at all we can swing by and take it by force when we're done. Give her a raise already. Or a Gisena headpat, she'll be rendered speechless and awawawa at Letrizia hours later if I've correctly pegged her anime level.
I love to see Hunger being proactive about Tyrant avoidance, even with the Tyrant pressing on his brain to make him give less of a crap about avoiding it, particularly since infiltration is indeed our plan A. Nasty little thing. In this case, their customs suck, but this'll help us make better ones, too, if that works out.
Ooh, we definitely should not be holding this right now, but Hunger doesn't care about following the Residents' classification system and neither do I! If Avecarn is a High Marshall, Marshall should still be pretty high up there. For a society of ten million people... no, nevermind, that's a lot of people, the Human Sphere has distorted my sense of scale. Rather, for a society with a late medieval aesthetic this is appears to be an intricate and possibly more-than-modern level of bureaucracy. We already practically knew that the Middle Residents had it much worse, but this is more evidence for that even before we get to the actual evidence.
Plerion has terrible sayings. Disorder is no excuse for totalitarianism, and I don't even think the first makes sense. I've heard it in real life that ignorance isn't a defense for breaking the law, and whether or not you agree with that sentiment it sounds less internally contradictory, but that would be disobeying the law. I guess its not different? But "obey" has more of a connotation of knowledge of orders, that might be my issue. I'm not obeying the law by not killing people (quote that out of context if you want to frame me for anything, you have my permission lol), I just don't want to kill people. Or, no, I still am, but if I didn't know murder was illegal I wouldn't be obeying the law, necessarily. Whatever, the point is fuck Plerion and his sayings.
Oh, Plerion is apparently... a nebula- wait, clearly I don't understand this well enough to use my own words for it, I'll just quote.
So, the Ring is the pulsar here, and rings are round, so clearly the torture is that they spin it around really fast until it throws up. Also explains the shell around the Inner Ring, or at least the separation. And there was a bit in the article I didn't understand about how you can determine properties of stuff by emissions (which is, like, all of astronomy so I don't know the subtleties here), so watch out for indirect sensing methods? Which would be impossible, but fortunately we have a convenient ninja.
Even after peeking about Plerions, I had a moment of confusion, thinking "The inventor was named Star-Forge?" Bah.
It's stated plainly that the Inner... Ring (uh) depends on whatever's going on with the Forges, as expected, but now it's confirmed that there's going to be fallout from this rescue mission which hopefully Hunger can be incentivized to minimize. With all the space nonsense going on, is the Temple itself the Ring? It's also possible that the Azure Ring is just the innermost concentric circle, that'd be a cool aesthetic and make my brain hurt less so let's go with that.
Day/Night are swapped inside and out, and despite the fact that I've been ranting about that duality for weeks I can't pin down why that's important. The Star-forges activate mostly in daytime, according to Vanreir who lives in the Middle. Didn't I post about being confused by that, actually? Huh, there's your answer, past me, obviously day and night were backwards inside the Inner Ring, how could you have missed that? /s
The Forges are active more often than not, I think, so did Hunger just visit the Middle at the wrong times? Or was the "auditory emission" just more of the screaming that he can already hear, so it didn't particularly change. I was wondering about what was so False about the Moon, and now I have two answers; Voyaging Realm space nonsense meaning there can be multiple night skies, for the less important one, and mostly the fact that these totalitarian assholes don't just dehumanize people, they destellify stars to justify their exploitation of them.
Which is weird, actually, there's nothing normally wrong with star-exploitation, almost every living thing on my home planet does it, but the degree of it is insane. Providing magic and plenty for ten million individuals is an enormous undertaking, but have you seen the sun? I've looked directly at it, so you can trust me when I say it's pretty big. What horrible lichy experiment could be so energy-intensive that it's using up all the stars in the night sky at a rate that they'll die in "many millennia?" I'm fairly sure they don't mean many as in a hundred million millennia, but I might be wrong and this is an overreaction. Or they could be extracting magic from the starlight of many stars, which makes them disappear from the Temple's perspective but leaves the stars themselves unharmed, which would also provide a more reasonable level of energy.
I'd ask what exactly crystallized possibility is, but there's truth in advertising. It's stuff that does stuff, magic is convenient that way. I'd want to grab some for ourselves, but it's not precisely ethically sourced. We do have the Evening Sky, maybe they have some tricks we can adapt to be non-horrific. "Least unpleasant," ewewew, I don't like how they can't even call a scream a scream but they still admit it's unpleasant.
The tone of this infodump is pretty chummy. "You've long wondered," is personal and I now feel in on a secret, is this how I'll get suckered into a cult? Nice level of social engineering, here, and if this is required reading at 0-7 they'll be in on it together. Arguments should reference these things at least a bit, they feel theological, like Bible quotes. Not in a "you're wrong" sense except for blatant exceptions, but explaining our opinions in relation to the official line to build understanding.
The threats are amusing after I wrote about how friendly the tone was, but it's complimentary rather than contradictory. Big Brother is watching you, after all. From that perspective, the obvious dodge in the anti-heresy argument is intentional. Yes, "there's no reason to," would be acceptable, but they're inviting heretical questions into the reader's head about why they shouldn't want some of those most esoteric applications. Inuring them to shutting the hell up about inconvenient questions, using unimportant questions as a release valve and a way to build trust. And ending with a mob-level threat. It's so slimy, I love it but surely Hunger's seething.
Now, like any good Marshall, I'm salivating to know why the Council won't harvest the moon. Presumably it's because they can't, and totalitarian governments hate to show weakness. Speaking of weakness, some of these names make me fear we have it. "Calendar Engine," are you shitting me? That sounds like something worthy of the Azure Ring's torment, at least, but we should probably stick close to Gisena so we don't get zapped to a dark future where evil is law- wait, I was making a low-effort reference but that rings a bell.
Right! Ceathlynn.
[ ] Ceathlynn "Catherine" of Amarlt
Physical *****
Social * / ***
Mental **
Considered a failed prototype in the Amarlt family's disavowed eugenic super-soldier program, Catherine was relegated to the role of a lab assistant in the Astral Exploratory of her nominal House. A high-energy rift experiment gone wrong displaced her in space and time. Hurled centuries into the future, she is now the sole pureblooded inheritor of the Amarlt lineage, the main branch having long consumed itself in a fiery internecine war.
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The Temple would hardly disavow eugenics, I think, so she'd be from the Human Sphere. But we just killed an Amarlt, and these guys also do funky spacetime games. Maybe the thing that went wrong was that the mainline Amarlt experiment bumped into a Temple experiment, possibly because the refugee Amarlt took Astral expertise with them that resulted in crossover. Maybe it was a Moon plot.
Maybe everything is a Moon plot.
But they are - every inefficient Arete puts us that much away from Pillars/Trinity which, in turn, puts us away from Armament tier combat!
Being efficient is super important as you can get into situation where you are one update short to get that SUJC you need in next fight..
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
That would require actually having Gardener's Hallow. Which we don't. The possibility has been raised that we might be offered it as a vote choice, but A) That's not guaranteed B) Even if we do get offered it, it has to actually win the vote, and C) Hunger has not way of knowing about that in-character.
We should be basing our diplomacy plan off of what we have access too now, anything else is counting chickens before they are hatched, and in the case of Gardener's Hallow it's more like counting chickens before we have eggs.
Been a while since the Hero-Defeating Stance's description was actually posted, so I went back to reread it and was surprised to find that it discounts Once and Future by one Arete. A neat feature, if we're pivoting back toward that after the planned Evening Sky EFB. What are people leaning toward there, anyway? Pillars is unlocked but Total Eclipse's slightly discounted, and Silver of Evening could come back for a rematch.
However, we could get it with Pillars. Then you'd have Crimson Flare, Pillars of Creation and Gardener's Hollow which sounds like pretty damn good combo.
Pillars. In the end, we got Cut Through and Sword Praxis. Getting another system of advancement is kinda redundant while Pillars allows us to farm picks we need.
Picks are kind of prime currency tho, and they will become rarer as we rise in power.