A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
Well if people want to change our characters reaction and relationship to others and reduce them as mere obstacles to our goals then fine let the god Charisma build win.
Enohthree
Hypersane
Regarding the Agent's uniforms
I recognize the hierarchical and Kill La Kill implications of ranking uniforms by star amount, but there's something pretty neat about agents of the throne having stars and the higher ups maybe having a full constellation while the King has the whole Evening Sky as his Mantle.
That said there's going to be some form of hierarchy and we might as well codify it in a way that's aesthetically pleasing.
I'd suggest a high level of freedom for customization aside from that though, as every Surgecrafter is going to be pretty different in capabilities and also this is basically an anime highschool made government agency. I'd almost suggest insignia rings (separated into crimson and azure) if not for the fact that some idiot's 100% going to try and get a sword to complete the copycat look.
I recognize the hierarchical and Kill La Kill implications of ranking uniforms by star amount, but there's something pretty neat about agents of the throne having stars and the higher ups maybe having a full constellation while the King has the whole Evening Sky as his Mantle.
That said there's going to be some form of hierarchy and we might as well codify it in a way that's aesthetically pleasing.
I'd suggest a high level of freedom for customization aside from that though, as every Surgecrafter is going to be pretty different in capabilities and also this is basically an anime highschool made government agency. I'd almost suggest insignia rings (separated into crimson and azure) if not for the fact that some idiot's 100% going to try and get a sword to complete the copycat look.
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
Nah, we've got the Evening sky. They'll learn to fear the silver and blue.
DkArthas
CAPITAL IS TO BLAME
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- They
Pfff. Fuck stinky evening sky. Red for the Ring of Blood and black for the...eh?
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
I mean the ring is red and silver, I just think dark blue and silver works better. But Dark red and silver would make sense to me.
I don't want to steal the standard evil overlord set. I want to make our own iconic one that becomes the new definition for the human sphere!
Tyrant_Rayne
Probably Not Evil… Maybe
- Location
- Canada
Putting aside the colour of the uniforms for the moment, we are all in agreement that Hunger's emblem should be a swordfish, yes?
Aabcehmu
Confusion as a Natural State of Being
- Location
- Aurora, CO
- Pronouns
- Any/All
Oh absolutely. There really isn't any other option at this point. The fact that swordfish are actually for real also seen as one of the more noble sorts of fish is just a nice bonus.
Projectile
Thinking of Rabbits
- Location
- USA
As an anti-fishmemer I am obligated to disapprove on principle, but as far as emblems go... a swordfish isn't terrible? It's a striking and recognizable image. And you can eat them. Good one-click healing for f2p runescape.
Yet the veil does not in any way prevent us from using our charisma if we need to or choose to, unless I am mistaken in my reading of it. In what way does being able to control the intensity of our charismas completely some how lead to us not being able to use it if a tyrant proc occurs. From my understanding of how tyrant works and interfaces with our charisma is that our charisma does not so much prevent tyrant procs as make them get written off as eccentric behavior and overwhelms people who might object to them. Things that we can still do with skyveil if we want to, we just do not have to do those thing all of the time.
LordOfMurder
Bhaal
- Location
- Australia
If we speak to people with our charisma lowered we risk Tyrant procs. Given that speaking to people with lower charisma is the whole point of taking Skyveil I don't see how that can be avoided. Once Tyrant procs raising our charisma again doesn't help since no amount of cha will stop us acting like a Tyrant.
So when can we expect the Accursed appearing and giving Gisena Renaissance Woman+?
DkArthas
CAPITAL IS TO BLAME
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- They
We can control our charisma with Skyviel, so that we are just below mind breaking level while still being extremely charismatic, in case we deal with people we don't want to mind fuck like our friends, allies or whatever. While with Vanguisher's Halo, we would be forced to indirectly talk with people we don't want to mindbreak. In the latter case, charisma won't be particularly useful while with Skyviel it remains so. Who knew that actually being in control of your power is actually useful and not at all detrimental compared to the alternative.
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To be fair, acting like a Tyrant with charisma can reduce the consequences of acting like a Tyrant. It is probably better to not incur these consequences in the first place.
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
On the 4th second of the 4th minute of the 4th day of the 4th month of the 4th year. Obviously.
Projectile
Thinking of Rabbits
- Location
- USA
Oh no, Halo is ahead! Come on, guys, do you really want to be super strong and blast your charisma everywhere while gaining even more plot armor? How lame is that?! Get Sky Veil, and live out your fantasies of having the charisma of an average human being with friends!
I've started writing reactions for every update up until Platinum Expanse where we took a Charisma-boosting upgrade. I thought it might be nice to see how we got to this point.
That sweet, beautiful shade. A transcendent blue, brighter than the lavender of royalty and softer than the cloudless mid-day. It's shiny like metal, but also deep and completely uniform. An inviting thing, though I'm not sure what it wants us to find once we're in.
Is this conlang or a preexisting language? I'd like to check Google, but I don't trust its analytics to give me straight answers anymore.
Explicitly decimation. A very specific number, which takes on more specific implications still when paired with the Accursed's Imperial Praxis. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't a major aspect of Exalted's setting design the careful exclusion of mediterranean and european fantasy elements, or was it just the latter? Because if the Most High invented whole-cloth the meme of Pax Romana, I'm not sure where to go with that..
Seeing as his curses were placed upon him by entities in his past, presumably they either very much favored irony, or the only ones that stuck were those that even he couldn't refute whole-cloth. For some like the Tyrant or the Champion, this is rather apparent. But what did he do to deserve this kind of punishment? It's certainly mean-spirited enough to be targeted at a warlord whose might outweighed his conscience.
Was the point that he would have to spend effort saving lives again, but this time from himself? If his foes were truly naught but wheat before the scythe by this point, the idea of turning his own presence into a greater condemnation than any material sin is a rather efficient deterrent at least.
Well when you say it like that it sounds pretty crazy, Lord Hunger! "Oh yes, this robot is my cousin. We can casually upend even the subtle suggestions of physics that you and your people have mastered over the last major fractions of an eon you've existed for. It was a vocational thing."
The thousand-yard stare probably didn't help matters.
Nice, thanks for the save there, big V. Crazy OP escalator solidarity.
I thought this was truth-saying at the time, but it's supposed to be more intense still? I've seen the term "Realm of Forms" brought up between now and then, so I suppose the "blinding firmament" mentioned within refers to that? It's pretty bad ass that the Accursed has literally turned the Meme-verse into a well of superpowers, but then that's not so much a stretch if a heroic entity were to never die or quit. To become a legend is to out-live your own storyteller; how much greater still must one be to outlast one's world, or one's cosmology? There are half-dead Babylonian gods and Olmec relics whose origins we know more of than the First Age of Creation. Will they be half as glorious as the Accursed too, should they survive their civilization's final purging by Time's irreversible defragmentation? And what will remain of them, more akin to Lovecraft's nightmarish scions of an alien cosmos, or else a tragic plaque carved into nothing, like Ozymandias' greatest achievement?
Now I understand the purpose of the Praxis at least. A weapon bound to no world will go untouched by worldly trifles. No matter what: endure. And in enduring, overcome.
Both oddly specific and general at the same time, that latter half. What's an implement that a tool isn't? I suppose there's a sense of design to it, a certainty that it was given a purpose by its creator. But still, how does one equivocate a conductor's baton and a set of brass knuckles?
Besides the hand that holds them, of course.
I think we've been too hard on Letrizia where her study of Rank comes in. How do you examine an explicitly invisible force that bends both space and time? Gravity took millenia before we took a magnifying glass to it, and anyone can literally toss a rock in the air and watch it fall back down.
A large part of scientific analysis involves trying to account for the limits of individual human perception so they can be subtracted. But the Astral space seems to slip into and out of places where human perception is highly attuned, and material physics is less so. It's a very intuitive concept and function, but that would only conceal the underlying mechanics from prying eyes. An acerbic investigator might imply even that they've been hidden. So no one can master them.
You know, if one wanted to end up [REDACTED].
I'm not really sure what the problem here is. Sure it's technically alive and looks metal as shit, but it's still at the end of the day made to have dudes sitting inside of it. Unless he's worried something will happen if he sits inside whilst insufficiently hardcore himself? I suppose it puts the near-death experience we had later with Mizuku's robot suit into perspective. How many bodyjacker robots did [REDACTED] make!?
Also, I'm not sure fate wants anything to do with this setting if it can avoid it. Tyrants murking your oracles, Ring-brothers trapped in Crazy Hand's grip to play Smash Brothers with Sten forever, Curse-chan never returns your calls, and apparently there's some kind of distant godlke Khaos gods breathing down your neck all the time? Not a positive work environment. I'd tell them to call for help... but that's probably us, isn't it?
It saddens me we've yet to find a way to make our Evening Sky serve as a net. I guarantee you that'd net us some Arete!
No? Okay. Well I do appreciate his attachment to the art and culture of fishing as more than just a Hemmingway reference. Maybe it means more to him, that he somehow retained it despite sacrificing so much to slay the Tyrant. It's nice to have good memories to fish up from time to time...
I'll stop.
Like Stealth, I think we missed out with Nutrition. Protein, calcium, Vitamin D, potassium, iron, zinc... getting your chemical +s is important for a growing shōnen!
Retrospective, those Relationship +s are probably more important than any of the predictable consequences of having fish dinner. With our power presently accelerating wildly beyond the relevant dimensions of their involvement, the last couple months have brought us from a social torrent to a trickle. Perhaps if we enhanced the Sky a bit, we could gain a friendship-boosting upgrade of some style?
Ah, who am I kidding. Even the Accursed would never be so degenerate as to sanction something as broken as Social Links!
Hey guys, do you remember what it was like to have this many options at once? It wasn't all that long ago, even... I love these consolidations, personally. They lent character to the selections at hand, in full spite of our best efforts to vote for the most nihilistic hodge-podge we could throw together in an afternoon. Here we have a 4-Arete collection of toughness enhancements made to improve our talent for literally sleeping through our problems.
These days, I approve more and more...
Vulnerability to mobs? They'd have to be pretty sturdy to take wide-swipes of full Thousand Cuts power. What kind of fights were you implying we would be getting into, swarms of kitbashed Armor Prototypes? A self-cloning monster like a slime or viral zombie might be able to muster a wide enough front line to fall in on us without being totally untouchable. I recall the Groundskeeper could summon a Golem, perhaps a lesser magus would have been caught fielding a more mundane horde of beasts or vermin instead.
The utility though is something I feel shouldn't be forgotten. Cutting of this caliber is second only to Cut Through itself, and a lot of problems can be resolved in the same way as the Gordian Knot. That said, perhaps here's where all of those other options went. When all you have is ahammer sword everything looks like a nail combat encounter. Even Hunger's personal magic system deals nigh-exclusively in stats and repositioning!
One of these days we're going to actually care that butchery is conceptually an ugly and uncomfortable solution when applied regularly and consistently. That day is, uh, probably not today.
Ah, defensive builds. Their IP-reducing ability combines well with the lack of exaggerated striking power, allowing for a slower but more certain progression. Though this one has both, since the Fell-Handed Stroke really is that good.
The description of his social power is extraorinarily specific. He's not enhanced physically, but rather lent a Hollywood-esque cinematic appeal that puts him firmly at 'larger than life'. Is it any wonder the Shroud is one that has the greatest sense of control over Charisma, when it's evening that demarcates the period between mid-day glories and midnight constellations? The lurid recollection of twilight, an honor as old as time bestowed only upon those willing to not merely survive, but to do so with the dignity to look upon it as a thing of virtue.
So intense, that ending. But then we're choosing between might, fury, honor, and curse mitigation. Damn good curse mitigation, for the record. We've done so much in a single month, even if it took us ten times as long to clear the Temple we'd still have fourteen months before seeking further Satiety.
Also: forswearing power? I... think there's something wrong with your grammar, good sir! Did you mean to write 'swear to power'? Apocryphal procs would guarantee that, if nothing else. And Gisena could have focused on staking it to the wall instead of having to spread her skills thin, so...
I wonder if we would've felt a strong incentive to pursue the Human Sphere if our growth curve were less intense. Being told 'No, you can't beat Bearic in time, stop asking' isn't really how things go around here, but fleeing the scene to buy time while we grind on Space Opera combat training equipment and whatever Armor Prototypes a duchess can supply to get her bodyguard up to god-slaughtering par sounds pretty cool too. Might even have been some novel psychic/magic systems available in the shadows of the Empire.
So is the green cap just a Sovereignty thing? The coloration's a beautiful sequence, reminiscent of a lush mountain range cut by valleys and rivers, like a buffet of nature's bounty pulled from some artist's wildest imagination. Even in the Voyaging Realm, I can't expect such things are truly common.
Not ashamed to admit I had to look up vertiginous. I had expected it to have something to do with the vertex of a mountain's peak, but apparently it refers to to vertigo. Cool metaphor, very appropriate for unlocking two magic systems in as many updates. Brings to mind the question of If we're not still trapped in that vertigo, rapid onset of awareness causing such blind desire to soar and terror towards falling that emotion overrides thought entirely...
Two hands, split relationship pluses. Coincidence? I think not! Truly this is the most subtle of the Forebear's Stances: the Monogamy-Defeating Stance!
But not really. I'm glad we got our hands (heh) on Zweihander eventually. That stuff turned out to be stupid OP, and we didn't even have to spend 20+ Arete to get it! Hero-Defeating Stance alone was worth the cost. Whoever spouted off that stacking mid-tier powers doesn't equal the power of a high-end 25 Arete option... well, they were technically right, but the Forebear would still have derided their lack of ingenuity.
Giving Letrizia a better magic system was a really good idea. While Exavolt was death fucking metal, Sharpbright was probably the right call. With it she can retire from Verschlengorge and go into studying Pressure dynamics full-time – that is, if we don't just decide to exercise our overwhelming AGI and dodge her responsibility to her people for another month while we hunt down the Armament Fish. Is that even still an option?
Without Slice Fate she's not going to last that long. Gisena's biologically immortal and we have Might's Repose, but her life-span belongs on a cavewoman. Ten more years, maybe twelve? That's the ideal, reality is never so kind. What happens when an illness creeps in and neither Nullity nor Edeldross is sufficient? For a cursebearer time is power, but our time is ever-taxed. A more permanent solution to her decay may depend on every month she can steal awat, and time not spent in that cockpit is a great place to start.
With a quick google search, that's the rough equivalent of $200'000 in-pocket. I'm not going to lie, that sounds like Alice in Wonderland mad haberdashery by the standards of anyone remotely ordinary, but then military spending always is. Survival at any cost isn't solely the domain of hyper-logarithmic scaling operators!
To say nothing of buying power. If calculating the value of Beethoven's 5th Symphony in units of cup ramen is hard, doing so across dimensional barriers is beyond impossible. How much does the working man in the Sovereignty really bring home? I'm no economist, but if they've been at war with the Rotbeast for as long as they've been manufacturing their 'secret' surgecrafters and indoctrinating them for war, I expect the constant battle has depressed them terribly. Factories don't run on nothing, and so much production must have to go to maintaining the front lines and the Armor Prototypes that hold them...
There's a lot of good to be said for Hunger taking over. We're not perfect, but peace going from a dream to a reality is half the battle. Keeping it that way's the hard part: blood and thunder are the physical symptoms, but peace ends long before the first bullet is fired. Blade and Ring alike could teach one much of the horrors of war; perhaps the Sky could teach us something of its opposite, and not merely its absence?
I dunno, that might be too much to ask of one item. We have two slots now, and who knows which vistas those will open. The power of Stranglethorn offers terrible certainty in implementing our will, and perhaps a pen or quill could ensure it be received more clearly? Our crown is already a thing of stark clarity, a platinum icon that fits perfectly beside our sword. But it lacks individuality... maybe once we've worn it into battle for a few years, or we shove the Tyrant Princess's soul into it, or something like that.
The Reckoner should have a more personal aspect in the lives of his people than just a vague public figure, a thing to look up to and project oneself onto in between petty misdeeds and the impermeable self-defense of casual apathy. But I'm not sure how one goes about achieving that, only that it should be done.
Not quite dark enough to be Accursed-approved, but I appreciate the effort. The image of a hospital resort is amusing, as well. I know what the term actually means, but the color-combo combined with the phrase 'bare-bones' actually made me think it was made of literal monster bones retrofitted to serve as a resort.
What could we have bought with more money, anyway? With the earlier thought of how pressured their economy is – possibly literally, with the Rotbeast's Rank as high as it was – what kind of artifacts could they even spare us at this level? Weapons for Verschelengorge, sure. They probably have a bunch of people who repair broken arms and armor for profit on some manner of black market, if the Sovereignty doesn't support the process outright. Cool things for Gisena to study? I guess, but not only did we not have the Jewel of Artifice until recently, only their commercial goods are likely to be open for public use. That stuff's not exactly straightforward to jailbreak, either; companies don't last long who fail to protect their trade secrets.
Maybe some of that sweet, sweet Craftsmanship bonus? I don't think we've ever had it explained to us how that works. Does it require you have magic, or at least futuristic sci-fi magic? I'd expect so, but one can never be sure.
Holy... Japan in Space! There's always one, isn't there? The green cap and the unmistakable hue of a full moon's light, piercing and perfect. So luxurious it can't even decide what kind it wants to purvey, so it just does all of them. With our spending habits, we can relate.
This kind of beauty is truly hard to tarnish. No matter what narrative one applies to it, it manages to cuts through and leave you wondering if the problem was ever it, and not yourself or someone else or nothing at all. Like a Unicorn, it's something so disgustingly special it defrays logic and becomes almost dreamlike, a waking fantasy that one spends the rest of their life looking back at, mulling over and sifting again and again for deeper meaning. Majestic merely for existing, it draws in the innocent like moths to proverbial flame, and then with supernal potency makes them its prisoners forevermore...
The Forbidden Art: Weebduction.
Yeah, our girls are more into rampant escalation and power-leveling.
That's Arete for you. The only thing more painful than gathering it is saving it. Notably it's the utility effects that are hit the hardest, including those that effect personal stats and rank. While that's fairly straightforward, the implications are worth commenting on. How many 'common' Surges are actual game-changers if upgraded? While most people don't have the benefits of Progression, what kind of... heh, Vertiginous Heights could they reach if those limits were relaxed even slightly?
The mental acuity needed to adjudicate an army of hormonal teenagers with godlike power, the physical power to protect the public without need of mass-produced arms and armor for reinforcements, the social talents to ensure social cohesion despite the embarrassing ease with which post-war economies transform into punk hellscapes, and more. Even Roilweft had the power to shunt the entire territory half a mile, and I can almost guarantee he never had any intense personal training to bouy him.
Maiden forbid Imaginary Elements turn out to be genetic...
Clarion was Jeanne's title back in AST 0, right? It showed up again on the Clarion grenade recently. Does the Universe just enjoy making these wet-behind-the-ears geniuses suffer, or just the voters? The focus on visibility is noted, but whether it's a reflection of so many years of guerilla warfare and the lessons learned thereby, or simply of intelligent application of incredible might is yet unknown. Perhaps Mizuku's young age would prove it the latter? But then, Hunger's not shown himself to want to flee his position, at least to my recollection. Only mild regret for a life spent being what others require, but never quite enough to be what others still deserve.
Perhaps this is what he would have been like, had he stayed behind on World #1. A true genius, isolated by his own sheer inability to recognize the difference between when others are being unintelligent and when they're being hopeful. Like 30 year-old Seram, who never could quite tell when he was verging into and out of arrogance, wallowing in distate or glorying in it at his leisure.
I do respect the attention to paid to how utterly merciless water is, though. Flexible? Yes. Graceful, obviously. Gentle even, on occasion. But water doesn't care about things, and those who forget that all-too-often are never heard from again. Like the Sky, the waves are so cold and dark beyond the skin layer – but unlike empty space, water always finds its way back to the sea eventually. Every drop is a fractal window into every other drop, and where earthly rains may come and go, the abyssal depths never relent, never forgive, and never forget.
I'm kind of trying to imagine why we would want to take the 2-Arete version of Quickwater. +15% Agility's not worth the time spent coming out here, but Assassin's Mist would unlock Stealth as a stat for pretty cheap. It could be worth it if we wanted to rush Ruling Ring. There's not much appeal to fighting slower for a .1 Rank upgrade, but an enterprising madman might have considered putting incentive to a slower fighting style and then using that to excuse getting Pearlescence.
In its true form, I almost have trouble thinking of things we couldn't do. It's Doctor Apocalypse all over again, with the greatest extreme of his power unavailable because without an active design phase vote we'd have no idea what to even reach for. If we'd gone for this, I would hope we'd follow up by picking Exavolt to go along with it. The interplay is just too incredible, the conductivity of water plus the reactivity of electricity, themes of callous clarity compared against escalation and exaggerated force. These two elements have no right to work together this well.
Exavolt, Quickwater, Shadowcord. The storm, the flood, and the quiet that follows. Pure pottery.
More like Inksalt. There's a heaven and a hell for options, and this one here's a little of both. It's a little odd to imagine his deeply-characteristic Imaginary Element being based on an item he wasn't exactly guaranteed to have, but the vicissitudes of fate are incomprehensible at the best of times.
Or does this imply that his items are defining element's nature? Because that would be a rather interesting example of how the spiritual overlap between person and panoply has effects beyond on-tap magical powers. We saw some of this equivalent attribute during the fights with the Prime Rotbeast, and again in the brawl with Sten. Hunger seems to be completely at-ease with thinking of himself as the items he carries; I wonder, do Blade, Ring, and Sky feel the same? And is the admixtured existence continue further, blurring the items into each other as powers grow and multiply?
If we over-focus one or two items, will the remainder begin to buckle under them? Intuition says no, though I've no perfect explanations as to why. Perhaps that's the true role of the Accretion-wielder, to balance a Panoply in such a way that they may act upon the world without being subsumed or destroyed by other agents of destiny.
I wonder what would've happened to Inksky if our Mantle were ever surrendered, even for a short period. Would it just go void, a thin and mucous like sinusoidal drainage? Or would it be torn out of us violently, like a spiritual exsanguination that can't be healed until our items get replaced.
Much like Rank, we don't actually know that much about Accretion, scientifically speaking. Thankfully we have a lovely young inventress whose highest love in life is the idea of touching magic without somehow killing it. While I agree setting her to work mitigating our Curses is more important, I do believe she would have just loved spinning us some Fundament Reinforcement to go with our fresh quest into mythical lands. Who knows, that might have been the option to upgrade the Sky that we've been waiting for, one which doesn't cost Arete, picks, or Hunger's time at all.
I still have a soft spot for turning our cloak into a prehensile extra limb. Creative swordplay gets a lot easier when you have an extra arm/leg to work with, and especially one that grows back quickly if you lose it. The ability to manifest Sky wide enough to become the actual sky above is hilarious but impractical, though with the versatility as to what it can consume we've seen so far, perhaps a more experimental approach with its powers would have come in handy at some point.
The sheer amount of discount towards Pillars makes taking this as a 2-Arete option silly to even consider. Just as planned, I imagine. I don't recall ever getting a duration on how long it took to repair it, but that's only relevant if we'd planned to continue seriously using the cloak as a shield, which unless we were willing to drop 9 more Arete on Pearlescence was painfully unlikely. Might have made for a great combo with Philosopher's Wreath and Vigor Incarnate, but ultimately it just was not to be.
Still disappointed we'll never get to see what Majesty options entailed, but then we wouldn't have taken them anyway.
"And lo', on the 46th update the optimization gods descended from their lofty perch and bequeathed unto the Lord Hunger the gift of +% to all stats. And he did look upon himself, and bask in his newfound power, and it was good."
Or something to that effect. Because let's face it, the best stat is All Stats. Even the Forebear would've approved, if the All-Defeating Stance is anything to go by. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, this isn't chuuni or pragmatic in the slightest. That thing I said earlier about power from Social Links being degenerate? Well put on your best Gilgamesh impression, because we're officially a Type-Moon now.
Since its power is sculpted by our relationships, would their suffering advance its growth or stymie it? If the power itself is set in stone now, then the rising size of our warband is nothing to worry about. Still, if something like Vanguard opens conjunctional powers because the connection to our vassals also directly overlays the origin of our Element, I would hardly be surprised. Perhaps a means to enhance their surges, a grace of some sort that could refine their nature into something closer to perfection?
And for that matter, what would an element based on Hunger's enemies look like? A hill of bodies, crested and overcome, an endless tide in the distance with even the Hidden Masters but a shadow-play projection dancing across the silver screen? A tyrant whose power and nature seem to echo on into infinity, atrocities committed under the aegis of overwhelming might and petty trickery?
I suppose one based on his curses would be appropriate, too...
Terribly straightforward, it's got two modes. One's a weapon, the other makes us a weapon. Our Sword would approve! And while muscle wizardry is the Refinement of Degeneracy, even just getting +20% to all stats back then was a steal. That it just kept scaling upward so quickly and easily should tell how powerful Surgecrafting really is.
I can only expect vertices would have been similarly intense. Gisena would have loved building machines to circumvent that pesky drinking-age registration error issue. The ability to make graces is, sad to say, unlikely to actually happen any time soon. Maybe while we're in the Human Sphere, in between Pillars and conquest segments. Without Elixir I expect our options will lack versatility, but re-reading its description there's a few creative effects one could pull from exaggerating material traits into the exotic. Like, say, replicating the Elixir water themselves.
Like our Shroud, it's an engineer's dilemma. Power is sometimes cheap, possibly fast, and potentially impressive. But it's never all three. If we don't put in the work, then even a Cursebearer won't get anything but what he's already got.
As for the 2-Arete option, a weird gimmick build involving stacking Dreadnought's Bearing onto it might be able to justify a swerve into a generalist mage build. Edeldross looks like it would sync well with other magic systems, what with a major theme of countless systems across fantasy being purity of bloodline, mindset, or energy source. Elitism bending under the weight of the abandoned hero-king of an Isekai world, his will to overcome refurbished into a drive to attain true and lasting glory... I'd read it.
That sweet, beautiful shade. A transcendent blue, brighter than the lavender of royalty and softer than the cloudless mid-day. It's shiny like metal, but also deep and completely uniform. An inviting thing, though I'm not sure what it wants us to find once we're in.
Is this conlang or a preexisting language? I'd like to check Google, but I don't trust its analytics to give me straight answers anymore.
Explicitly decimation. A very specific number, which takes on more specific implications still when paired with the Accursed's Imperial Praxis. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't a major aspect of Exalted's setting design the careful exclusion of mediterranean and european fantasy elements, or was it just the latter? Because if the Most High invented whole-cloth the meme of Pax Romana, I'm not sure where to go with that..
Seeing as his curses were placed upon him by entities in his past, presumably they either very much favored irony, or the only ones that stuck were those that even he couldn't refute whole-cloth. For some like the Tyrant or the Champion, this is rather apparent. But what did he do to deserve this kind of punishment? It's certainly mean-spirited enough to be targeted at a warlord whose might outweighed his conscience.
Was the point that he would have to spend effort saving lives again, but this time from himself? If his foes were truly naught but wheat before the scythe by this point, the idea of turning his own presence into a greater condemnation than any material sin is a rather efficient deterrent at least.
Well when you say it like that it sounds pretty crazy, Lord Hunger! "Oh yes, this robot is my cousin. We can casually upend even the subtle suggestions of physics that you and your people have mastered over the last major fractions of an eon you've existed for. It was a vocational thing."
The thousand-yard stare probably didn't help matters.
Nice, thanks for the save there, big V. Crazy OP escalator solidarity.
I thought this was truth-saying at the time, but it's supposed to be more intense still? I've seen the term "Realm of Forms" brought up between now and then, so I suppose the "blinding firmament" mentioned within refers to that? It's pretty bad ass that the Accursed has literally turned the Meme-verse into a well of superpowers, but then that's not so much a stretch if a heroic entity were to never die or quit. To become a legend is to out-live your own storyteller; how much greater still must one be to outlast one's world, or one's cosmology? There are half-dead Babylonian gods and Olmec relics whose origins we know more of than the First Age of Creation. Will they be half as glorious as the Accursed too, should they survive their civilization's final purging by Time's irreversible defragmentation? And what will remain of them, more akin to Lovecraft's nightmarish scions of an alien cosmos, or else a tragic plaque carved into nothing, like Ozymandias' greatest achievement?
Now I understand the purpose of the Praxis at least. A weapon bound to no world will go untouched by worldly trifles. No matter what: endure. And in enduring, overcome.
Both oddly specific and general at the same time, that latter half. What's an implement that a tool isn't? I suppose there's a sense of design to it, a certainty that it was given a purpose by its creator. But still, how does one equivocate a conductor's baton and a set of brass knuckles?
Besides the hand that holds them, of course.
I think we've been too hard on Letrizia where her study of Rank comes in. How do you examine an explicitly invisible force that bends both space and time? Gravity took millenia before we took a magnifying glass to it, and anyone can literally toss a rock in the air and watch it fall back down.
A large part of scientific analysis involves trying to account for the limits of individual human perception so they can be subtracted. But the Astral space seems to slip into and out of places where human perception is highly attuned, and material physics is less so. It's a very intuitive concept and function, but that would only conceal the underlying mechanics from prying eyes. An acerbic investigator might imply even that they've been hidden. So no one can master them.
You know, if one wanted to end up [REDACTED].
I'm not really sure what the problem here is. Sure it's technically alive and looks metal as shit, but it's still at the end of the day made to have dudes sitting inside of it. Unless he's worried something will happen if he sits inside whilst insufficiently hardcore himself? I suppose it puts the near-death experience we had later with Mizuku's robot suit into perspective. How many bodyjacker robots did [REDACTED] make!?
Also, I'm not sure fate wants anything to do with this setting if it can avoid it. Tyrants murking your oracles, Ring-brothers trapped in Crazy Hand's grip to play Smash Brothers with Sten forever, Curse-chan never returns your calls, and apparently there's some kind of distant godlke Khaos gods breathing down your neck all the time? Not a positive work environment. I'd tell them to call for help... but that's probably us, isn't it?
It saddens me we've yet to find a way to make our Evening Sky serve as a net. I guarantee you that'd net us some Arete!
No? Okay. Well I do appreciate his attachment to the art and culture of fishing as more than just a Hemmingway reference. Maybe it means more to him, that he somehow retained it despite sacrificing so much to slay the Tyrant. It's nice to have good memories to fish up from time to time...
I'll stop.
Like Stealth, I think we missed out with Nutrition. Protein, calcium, Vitamin D, potassium, iron, zinc... getting your chemical +s is important for a growing shōnen!
Retrospective, those Relationship +s are probably more important than any of the predictable consequences of having fish dinner. With our power presently accelerating wildly beyond the relevant dimensions of their involvement, the last couple months have brought us from a social torrent to a trickle. Perhaps if we enhanced the Sky a bit, we could gain a friendship-boosting upgrade of some style?
Ah, who am I kidding. Even the Accursed would never be so degenerate as to sanction something as broken as Social Links!
Hey guys, do you remember what it was like to have this many options at once? It wasn't all that long ago, even... I love these consolidations, personally. They lent character to the selections at hand, in full spite of our best efforts to vote for the most nihilistic hodge-podge we could throw together in an afternoon. Here we have a 4-Arete collection of toughness enhancements made to improve our talent for literally sleeping through our problems.
These days, I approve more and more...
Vulnerability to mobs? They'd have to be pretty sturdy to take wide-swipes of full Thousand Cuts power. What kind of fights were you implying we would be getting into, swarms of kitbashed Armor Prototypes? A self-cloning monster like a slime or viral zombie might be able to muster a wide enough front line to fall in on us without being totally untouchable. I recall the Groundskeeper could summon a Golem, perhaps a lesser magus would have been caught fielding a more mundane horde of beasts or vermin instead.
The utility though is something I feel shouldn't be forgotten. Cutting of this caliber is second only to Cut Through itself, and a lot of problems can be resolved in the same way as the Gordian Knot. That said, perhaps here's where all of those other options went. When all you have is a
One of these days we're going to actually care that butchery is conceptually an ugly and uncomfortable solution when applied regularly and consistently. That day is, uh, probably not today.
Ah, defensive builds. Their IP-reducing ability combines well with the lack of exaggerated striking power, allowing for a slower but more certain progression. Though this one has both, since the Fell-Handed Stroke really is that good.
The description of his social power is extraorinarily specific. He's not enhanced physically, but rather lent a Hollywood-esque cinematic appeal that puts him firmly at 'larger than life'. Is it any wonder the Shroud is one that has the greatest sense of control over Charisma, when it's evening that demarcates the period between mid-day glories and midnight constellations? The lurid recollection of twilight, an honor as old as time bestowed only upon those willing to not merely survive, but to do so with the dignity to look upon it as a thing of virtue.
So intense, that ending. But then we're choosing between might, fury, honor, and curse mitigation. Damn good curse mitigation, for the record. We've done so much in a single month, even if it took us ten times as long to clear the Temple we'd still have fourteen months before seeking further Satiety.
Also: forswearing power? I... think there's something wrong with your grammar, good sir! Did you mean to write 'swear to power'? Apocryphal procs would guarantee that, if nothing else. And Gisena could have focused on staking it to the wall instead of having to spread her skills thin, so...
I wonder if we would've felt a strong incentive to pursue the Human Sphere if our growth curve were less intense. Being told 'No, you can't beat Bearic in time, stop asking' isn't really how things go around here, but fleeing the scene to buy time while we grind on Space Opera combat training equipment and whatever Armor Prototypes a duchess can supply to get her bodyguard up to god-slaughtering par sounds pretty cool too. Might even have been some novel psychic/magic systems available in the shadows of the Empire.
So is the green cap just a Sovereignty thing? The coloration's a beautiful sequence, reminiscent of a lush mountain range cut by valleys and rivers, like a buffet of nature's bounty pulled from some artist's wildest imagination. Even in the Voyaging Realm, I can't expect such things are truly common.
Not ashamed to admit I had to look up vertiginous. I had expected it to have something to do with the vertex of a mountain's peak, but apparently it refers to to vertigo. Cool metaphor, very appropriate for unlocking two magic systems in as many updates. Brings to mind the question of If we're not still trapped in that vertigo, rapid onset of awareness causing such blind desire to soar and terror towards falling that emotion overrides thought entirely...
Two hands, split relationship pluses. Coincidence? I think not! Truly this is the most subtle of the Forebear's Stances: the Monogamy-Defeating Stance!
But not really. I'm glad we got our hands (heh) on Zweihander eventually. That stuff turned out to be stupid OP, and we didn't even have to spend 20+ Arete to get it! Hero-Defeating Stance alone was worth the cost. Whoever spouted off that stacking mid-tier powers doesn't equal the power of a high-end 25 Arete option... well, they were technically right, but the Forebear would still have derided their lack of ingenuity.
Giving Letrizia a better magic system was a really good idea. While Exavolt was death fucking metal, Sharpbright was probably the right call. With it she can retire from Verschlengorge and go into studying Pressure dynamics full-time – that is, if we don't just decide to exercise our overwhelming AGI and dodge her responsibility to her people for another month while we hunt down the Armament Fish. Is that even still an option?
Without Slice Fate she's not going to last that long. Gisena's biologically immortal and we have Might's Repose, but her life-span belongs on a cavewoman. Ten more years, maybe twelve? That's the ideal, reality is never so kind. What happens when an illness creeps in and neither Nullity nor Edeldross is sufficient? For a cursebearer time is power, but our time is ever-taxed. A more permanent solution to her decay may depend on every month she can steal awat, and time not spent in that cockpit is a great place to start.
With a quick google search, that's the rough equivalent of $200'000 in-pocket. I'm not going to lie, that sounds like Alice in Wonderland mad haberdashery by the standards of anyone remotely ordinary, but then military spending always is. Survival at any cost isn't solely the domain of hyper-logarithmic scaling operators!
To say nothing of buying power. If calculating the value of Beethoven's 5th Symphony in units of cup ramen is hard, doing so across dimensional barriers is beyond impossible. How much does the working man in the Sovereignty really bring home? I'm no economist, but if they've been at war with the Rotbeast for as long as they've been manufacturing their 'secret' surgecrafters and indoctrinating them for war, I expect the constant battle has depressed them terribly. Factories don't run on nothing, and so much production must have to go to maintaining the front lines and the Armor Prototypes that hold them...
There's a lot of good to be said for Hunger taking over. We're not perfect, but peace going from a dream to a reality is half the battle. Keeping it that way's the hard part: blood and thunder are the physical symptoms, but peace ends long before the first bullet is fired. Blade and Ring alike could teach one much of the horrors of war; perhaps the Sky could teach us something of its opposite, and not merely its absence?
I dunno, that might be too much to ask of one item. We have two slots now, and who knows which vistas those will open. The power of Stranglethorn offers terrible certainty in implementing our will, and perhaps a pen or quill could ensure it be received more clearly? Our crown is already a thing of stark clarity, a platinum icon that fits perfectly beside our sword. But it lacks individuality... maybe once we've worn it into battle for a few years, or we shove the Tyrant Princess's soul into it, or something like that.
The Reckoner should have a more personal aspect in the lives of his people than just a vague public figure, a thing to look up to and project oneself onto in between petty misdeeds and the impermeable self-defense of casual apathy. But I'm not sure how one goes about achieving that, only that it should be done.
Not quite dark enough to be Accursed-approved, but I appreciate the effort. The image of a hospital resort is amusing, as well. I know what the term actually means, but the color-combo combined with the phrase 'bare-bones' actually made me think it was made of literal monster bones retrofitted to serve as a resort.
What could we have bought with more money, anyway? With the earlier thought of how pressured their economy is – possibly literally, with the Rotbeast's Rank as high as it was – what kind of artifacts could they even spare us at this level? Weapons for Verschelengorge, sure. They probably have a bunch of people who repair broken arms and armor for profit on some manner of black market, if the Sovereignty doesn't support the process outright. Cool things for Gisena to study? I guess, but not only did we not have the Jewel of Artifice until recently, only their commercial goods are likely to be open for public use. That stuff's not exactly straightforward to jailbreak, either; companies don't last long who fail to protect their trade secrets.
Maybe some of that sweet, sweet Craftsmanship bonus? I don't think we've ever had it explained to us how that works. Does it require you have magic, or at least futuristic sci-fi magic? I'd expect so, but one can never be sure.
Holy... Japan in Space! There's always one, isn't there? The green cap and the unmistakable hue of a full moon's light, piercing and perfect. So luxurious it can't even decide what kind it wants to purvey, so it just does all of them. With our spending habits, we can relate.
This kind of beauty is truly hard to tarnish. No matter what narrative one applies to it, it manages to cuts through and leave you wondering if the problem was ever it, and not yourself or someone else or nothing at all. Like a Unicorn, it's something so disgustingly special it defrays logic and becomes almost dreamlike, a waking fantasy that one spends the rest of their life looking back at, mulling over and sifting again and again for deeper meaning. Majestic merely for existing, it draws in the innocent like moths to proverbial flame, and then with supernal potency makes them its prisoners forevermore...
The Forbidden Art: Weebduction.
Yeah, our girls are more into rampant escalation and power-leveling.
That's Arete for you. The only thing more painful than gathering it is saving it. Notably it's the utility effects that are hit the hardest, including those that effect personal stats and rank. While that's fairly straightforward, the implications are worth commenting on. How many 'common' Surges are actual game-changers if upgraded? While most people don't have the benefits of Progression, what kind of... heh, Vertiginous Heights could they reach if those limits were relaxed even slightly?
The mental acuity needed to adjudicate an army of hormonal teenagers with godlike power, the physical power to protect the public without need of mass-produced arms and armor for reinforcements, the social talents to ensure social cohesion despite the embarrassing ease with which post-war economies transform into punk hellscapes, and more. Even Roilweft had the power to shunt the entire territory half a mile, and I can almost guarantee he never had any intense personal training to bouy him.
Maiden forbid Imaginary Elements turn out to be genetic...
Clarion was Jeanne's title back in AST 0, right? It showed up again on the Clarion grenade recently. Does the Universe just enjoy making these wet-behind-the-ears geniuses suffer, or just the voters? The focus on visibility is noted, but whether it's a reflection of so many years of guerilla warfare and the lessons learned thereby, or simply of intelligent application of incredible might is yet unknown. Perhaps Mizuku's young age would prove it the latter? But then, Hunger's not shown himself to want to flee his position, at least to my recollection. Only mild regret for a life spent being what others require, but never quite enough to be what others still deserve.
Perhaps this is what he would have been like, had he stayed behind on World #1. A true genius, isolated by his own sheer inability to recognize the difference between when others are being unintelligent and when they're being hopeful. Like 30 year-old Seram, who never could quite tell when he was verging into and out of arrogance, wallowing in distate or glorying in it at his leisure.
I do respect the attention to paid to how utterly merciless water is, though. Flexible? Yes. Graceful, obviously. Gentle even, on occasion. But water doesn't care about things, and those who forget that all-too-often are never heard from again. Like the Sky, the waves are so cold and dark beyond the skin layer – but unlike empty space, water always finds its way back to the sea eventually. Every drop is a fractal window into every other drop, and where earthly rains may come and go, the abyssal depths never relent, never forgive, and never forget.
I'm kind of trying to imagine why we would want to take the 2-Arete version of Quickwater. +15% Agility's not worth the time spent coming out here, but Assassin's Mist would unlock Stealth as a stat for pretty cheap. It could be worth it if we wanted to rush Ruling Ring. There's not much appeal to fighting slower for a .1 Rank upgrade, but an enterprising madman might have considered putting incentive to a slower fighting style and then using that to excuse getting Pearlescence.
In its true form, I almost have trouble thinking of things we couldn't do. It's Doctor Apocalypse all over again, with the greatest extreme of his power unavailable because without an active design phase vote we'd have no idea what to even reach for. If we'd gone for this, I would hope we'd follow up by picking Exavolt to go along with it. The interplay is just too incredible, the conductivity of water plus the reactivity of electricity, themes of callous clarity compared against escalation and exaggerated force. These two elements have no right to work together this well.
Exavolt, Quickwater, Shadowcord. The storm, the flood, and the quiet that follows. Pure pottery.
More like Inksalt. There's a heaven and a hell for options, and this one here's a little of both. It's a little odd to imagine his deeply-characteristic Imaginary Element being based on an item he wasn't exactly guaranteed to have, but the vicissitudes of fate are incomprehensible at the best of times.
Or does this imply that his items are defining element's nature? Because that would be a rather interesting example of how the spiritual overlap between person and panoply has effects beyond on-tap magical powers. We saw some of this equivalent attribute during the fights with the Prime Rotbeast, and again in the brawl with Sten. Hunger seems to be completely at-ease with thinking of himself as the items he carries; I wonder, do Blade, Ring, and Sky feel the same? And is the admixtured existence continue further, blurring the items into each other as powers grow and multiply?
If we over-focus one or two items, will the remainder begin to buckle under them? Intuition says no, though I've no perfect explanations as to why. Perhaps that's the true role of the Accretion-wielder, to balance a Panoply in such a way that they may act upon the world without being subsumed or destroyed by other agents of destiny.
I wonder what would've happened to Inksky if our Mantle were ever surrendered, even for a short period. Would it just go void, a thin and mucous like sinusoidal drainage? Or would it be torn out of us violently, like a spiritual exsanguination that can't be healed until our items get replaced.
Much like Rank, we don't actually know that much about Accretion, scientifically speaking. Thankfully we have a lovely young inventress whose highest love in life is the idea of touching magic without somehow killing it. While I agree setting her to work mitigating our Curses is more important, I do believe she would have just loved spinning us some Fundament Reinforcement to go with our fresh quest into mythical lands. Who knows, that might have been the option to upgrade the Sky that we've been waiting for, one which doesn't cost Arete, picks, or Hunger's time at all.
I still have a soft spot for turning our cloak into a prehensile extra limb. Creative swordplay gets a lot easier when you have an extra arm/leg to work with, and especially one that grows back quickly if you lose it. The ability to manifest Sky wide enough to become the actual sky above is hilarious but impractical, though with the versatility as to what it can consume we've seen so far, perhaps a more experimental approach with its powers would have come in handy at some point.
The sheer amount of discount towards Pillars makes taking this as a 2-Arete option silly to even consider. Just as planned, I imagine. I don't recall ever getting a duration on how long it took to repair it, but that's only relevant if we'd planned to continue seriously using the cloak as a shield, which unless we were willing to drop 9 more Arete on Pearlescence was painfully unlikely. Might have made for a great combo with Philosopher's Wreath and Vigor Incarnate, but ultimately it just was not to be.
Still disappointed we'll never get to see what Majesty options entailed, but then we wouldn't have taken them anyway.
"And lo', on the 46th update the optimization gods descended from their lofty perch and bequeathed unto the Lord Hunger the gift of +% to all stats. And he did look upon himself, and bask in his newfound power, and it was good."
Or something to that effect. Because let's face it, the best stat is All Stats. Even the Forebear would've approved, if the All-Defeating Stance is anything to go by. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, this isn't chuuni or pragmatic in the slightest. That thing I said earlier about power from Social Links being degenerate? Well put on your best Gilgamesh impression, because we're officially a Type-Moon now.
Since its power is sculpted by our relationships, would their suffering advance its growth or stymie it? If the power itself is set in stone now, then the rising size of our warband is nothing to worry about. Still, if something like Vanguard opens conjunctional powers because the connection to our vassals also directly overlays the origin of our Element, I would hardly be surprised. Perhaps a means to enhance their surges, a grace of some sort that could refine their nature into something closer to perfection?
And for that matter, what would an element based on Hunger's enemies look like? A hill of bodies, crested and overcome, an endless tide in the distance with even the Hidden Masters but a shadow-play projection dancing across the silver screen? A tyrant whose power and nature seem to echo on into infinity, atrocities committed under the aegis of overwhelming might and petty trickery?
I suppose one based on his curses would be appropriate, too...
Terribly straightforward, it's got two modes. One's a weapon, the other makes us a weapon. Our Sword would approve! And while muscle wizardry is the Refinement of Degeneracy, even just getting +20% to all stats back then was a steal. That it just kept scaling upward so quickly and easily should tell how powerful Surgecrafting really is.
I can only expect vertices would have been similarly intense. Gisena would have loved building machines to circumvent that pesky drinking-age registration error issue. The ability to make graces is, sad to say, unlikely to actually happen any time soon. Maybe while we're in the Human Sphere, in between Pillars and conquest segments. Without Elixir I expect our options will lack versatility, but re-reading its description there's a few creative effects one could pull from exaggerating material traits into the exotic. Like, say, replicating the Elixir water themselves.
Like our Shroud, it's an engineer's dilemma. Power is sometimes cheap, possibly fast, and potentially impressive. But it's never all three. If we don't put in the work, then even a Cursebearer won't get anything but what he's already got.
As for the 2-Arete option, a weird gimmick build involving stacking Dreadnought's Bearing onto it might be able to justify a swerve into a generalist mage build. Edeldross looks like it would sync well with other magic systems, what with a major theme of countless systems across fantasy being purity of bloodline, mindset, or energy source. Elitism bending under the weight of the abandoned hero-king of an Isekai world, his will to overcome refurbished into a drive to attain true and lasting glory... I'd read it.
So we took inherit the world and triumphal gleam, which both have effects that mitigate the consequences of tyrant procs that do scale with charisma. Also it is not like we will be stupid about turning down our charisma, and this is ignoring the fact that overwhelming charisma brings its own problems. Problems that are permanently solved by skyveil without requiring any additional investment. Not to mention we could use the disguise capabilities to experiment with what actually happens with tyrant procs and what it takes to trigger one with minimal consequences if that is so worrying because it is bound to happen eventually.
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LordOfMurder
Bhaal
- Location
- Australia
Skyveil only allows control of Charisma in 25% chunks so we can't finetune it like that.
World and Gleam don't stop Tyrant procs they just make people not care about what we do during them, which is even more of a mind whammy than super high charisma.