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A Simple Transaction I

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Zampano said:
I don't think you get to invoke "unimaginable heights" when we are kicking their feet out from under them and then leaving.
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Though the Springs will be diminished, the lack of the Rotbeast and its constant attrition would likely leave them better off than they were before Hunger's intervention regardless. Between Nilfel's support (financial, magical, administrative or otherwise) and the fact that our return is nigh-guaranteed (either due to Apocryphal procs or Aobaru's destiny), I expect they'll be perfectly fine.

Simon_Jester said:
I'd rather kill the Tyrant of Stalks, then rely on Adorie's help to conquer and administer the place.
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>Adorie
>help to conquer

I'm not sure she'll be as reliable in this regard as you might be expecting, even if her country hadn't just engaged in a vigorous bout of civil war.

Simon_Jester said:
no matter what the costs and risks are to the little people. I do NOT want to amplify that characterization with "preys on the people when he doesn't have to."
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What exactly do you think will happen to the Planar Delta, exactly? Destabilising an incredibly successful polity and leaving them vulnerable to the predations of oppressive opportunists isn't what I'd call the moral choice here. Certainly, it has the least personal impact on Hunger though, which is quite appealing on a lot of levels.
 
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DkArthas said:
For fucks sake, it's time to pull back from the stupid characterization if we don't want to die in the long run. Lord of Stalks death can be mitigated by simply asking Adoria's legions to conquer the place in the aftermath and Territorial waters is such an low price, that I am starring in disbelief, in 55 years we will be strong enough to give them something far stronger than Elixer shit and it's not like they aren't getting shinies from Nilfel. Simply take the goddamned freebies.
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You know, i'd be all for that but right now we have a tyrant breathing down our necks who we were just recently favoured in a war against him IF WE DIDN'T GIVE THE EVIL OVERLORD TIME TO DO EVIL SHIT.

right now we just turned a at minimum 3 pick fight with Lord Ruler to a 4 or even 5 pick fight just by giving the summoner TIME to marshel his army and summoner shit.

If we take some risk now, we can at least lower the risk that comes from fighting the tyrant who now has definetly marsheled his forces to try and murder us.

Also, what makes you believe Adorie can stop the imminent collapse of the Stalks civilization? how many will die as infighting begins? How many hungry dogs and beasts will eye forth the leaderless civilization and wish to devour it whole?

Quite frankly, this is the fucking Voyaging Realm where the random drunken looking peasant might actually be a fucking master brawler who's punches can shake the fucking world. A world where beasts come and go but when they come the can threaten to DESTROY entire civilizations just as we saw with the Elixer Republic.

Theirs going to be deaths, no matter what if we choose to fuck over the Stalkings civ and you bloody know it. Killing the leader of a civilization who is the pillar which keeps it functioning will see it fall into mass chaos. Chaos that which the Beasts and the Wolves of the voyaging realm will see forth to plunder and ravage forth their civilization. Damming millions of lives to death and suffering all for the convenience and easy picking for Hungers 'characterization'.

I think we shouldn't downplay what the chaos of a civilization means for the people who reside in it. How many suffer today because of the incompetency of today's rich elite as well as the goverment lacking to do anything about it. What say the rampant chaos that is going on in Africa where the citizens starve, droughts occuring, gangs and rebel forces causing mass suffering within the chaos of their state nation goverment being to incompetent to do anything about it and to the detriment and suffering of the common man who resides within their lands.

Hunger who has seen the horrors of wars knows full well the humanitarian costs that come with chaos in a civilization. He has fought wars against a tyrant for years on end and has sacraficed much in both lives, friends, companions, and himself to actually win and got shitted on for it.

this might come of as aggressive but it really makes me grind my teeth to see people just say 'Adorie can solve it' when that quite obviously isn't going to be the case as she got her own shit to do and i don't believe she has the time or expense to dedicate conquering another civ. If your going to argue for another characterization, fine. But don't disregard the humanitarien costs for Hunger will know the costs of his actions whether he likes it or not.

Although i have not much problem is you argue it for the waters but... it probably doesn't do much in terms of characterization.

I still stand by my previous statements that choosing a 3 pick fight now will be beneficial in the fight that is to come against Lord Ruler since he most definetly is a 4 pick fight if not 5 pick due to apocrapha.

For words for this argument which i'm not sure if it counts but here it goes

# 602 Words
 
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Simon_Jester said:
I agree with your reasoning from The Lord of Stalks. I disagree with your reasoning on Territorial Waters because it represents a form of treachery against those Hunger rules.

We've been directly called out on Hunger being a reckless and greedy monarch who relies on being able to use his personal power to pull solutions of thin air, no matter what the costs and risks are to the little people. I do NOT want to amplify that characterization with "preys on the people when he doesn't have to."

I'd rather kill the Tyrant of Stalks, then rely on Adorie's help to conquer and administer the place.

Let's take the low risk to us and to the people we rule, for once.
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Treachery, wtf? Hunger saved these people and by draining the waters he saves even more people. The only reason the Waters are even more powerful than normal is that Hunger killed the Rotbeast; without him they would likely be dead. It doesn't even drain the Waters; they just go back to where they were with the Rotbeast, except now they don't actually have a a huge monster horde invading in their doorstep. Nevermind the fact that now that we are 10.4 Bloodcasting we can easily make up the lost quality of life through Ennobling.

Like, this is literally a money versus lives choice. They can take the hit in the name of actually saving people; we can make up for them later. The trade-off proposed by Stalk of lives saved from the Decimation against the lives lost by civil unrest and chaos is much, much worse. There's no need to put ourselves into a position to worsen lives yet again. It's pointless.
 
I suspect we've got more than a solar system's worth of Decimation Radius, that we've exceeded a combat cursebearer. If my suspicions are right, then depending on the relative location of the Elixir Sovereignty vs Nilfel and/or the Lord Vetinari expy's territory we may end up decimating one of them too.
 
Raydom said:
You know, i'd be all for that but right now we have a tyrant breathing down our necks who we were just recently favoured in a war against him IF WE DIDN'T GIVE THE EVIL OVERLORD TIME TO DO EVIL SHIT.

right now we just turned a at minimum 3 pick fight with Lord Ruler to a 4 or even 5 pick fight just by giving the summoner TIME to marshel his army and summoner shit.

If we take some risk now, we can at least lower the risk that comes from fighting the tyrant who now has definetly marsheled his forces to try and murder us.

Also, what makes you believe Adorie can stop the imminent collapse of the Stalks civilization? how many will die as infighting begins? How many hungry dogs and beasts will eye forth the leaderless civilization and wish to devour it whole?

Quite frankly, this is the fucking Voyaging Realm where the random drunken looking peasant might actually be a fucking master brawler who's punches can shake the fucking world. A world where beasts come and go but when they come the can threaten to DESTROY entire civilizations just as we saw with the Elixer Republic.

Theirs going to be deaths, no matter what if we choose to fuck over the Stalkings civ and you bloody know it. Killing the leader of a civilization who is the pillar which keeps it functioning will see it fall into mass chaos. Chaos that which the Beasts and the Wolves of the voyaging realm will see forth to plunder and ravage forth their civilization. Damming millions of lives to death and suffering all for the convenience and easy picking for Hungers 'characterization'.

I think we shouldn't downplay what the chaos of a civilization means for the people who reside in it. How many suffer today because of the incompetency of today's rich elite as well as the goverment lacking to do anything about it. What say the rampant chaos that is going on in Africa where the citizens starve, droughts occuring, gangs and rebel forces causing mass suffering within the chaos of their state nation goverment being to incompetent to do anything about it and to the detriment and suffering of the common man who resides within their lands.

Hunger who has seen the horrors of wars knows full well the humanitarian costs that come with chaos in a civilization. He has fought wars against a tyrant for years on end and has sacraficed much in both lives, friends, companions, and himself to actually win and got shitted on for it.

this might come of as aggressive but it really makes me grind my teeth to see people just say 'Adorie can solve it' when that quite obviously isn't going to be the case as she got her own shit to do and i don't believe she has the time or expense to dedicate conquering another civ. If your going to argue for another characterization, fine. But don't disregard the humanitarien costs for Hunger will know the costs of his actions whether he likes it or not.

Although i have not much problem is you argue it for the waters but... it probably doesn't do much in terms of characterization.

I still stand by my previous statements that choosing a 3 pick fight now will be beneficial in the fight that is to come against Lord Ruler since he most definetly is a 4 pick fight if not 5 pick due to apocrapha.

For words for this argument which i'm not sure if it counts but here it goes

# 602 Words
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We have not given him that much time if we go with Lord of Stalks, it's pretty clear we can end this shit in an day. The alternative that is winning an potentially fighting an 4-5 Apocryphal buffed Armament Fish, if Hunger were to die due to his own foolish recklessness, imagine what will happen to our companions, who we got into this situation. Do you think the Tyrant wouldn't kill them?

As for the rest, Hunger is fully capable of mitigating the fall of the there leader, just like he did with the Moon-Civ, don't pretend he can't do that in the aftermath of dealing with the Tyrant.
 
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Given that we went with Second Priority, are we even going to be sticking around in the VR long enough to snatch the Armament Fish? I'd rather kill it than never see it at all, even if I'd rather catch it than kill it.
 
[X] Territorial Waters

I would not want Lord of Stalks win, but Armament Fish is sufficiently in the lead for me to vote for my preferred option. We really will be able to compensate for that choice with our current power, much less with what will get in the future. On the other hand, murdering a guy simply because it's good for us is bad even without plunging his realm into chaos we would have to spend our time to mitigate - if we will do that at all, since we decided to go for the Human Sphere. Armament Fish is a much more palatable choice, but it does carry risks and we will probably not get our own Armament if we just kill it.
 
Given that it has been going on a rampage and we have teleportation, I think catching it isn't out of the question. Yes, we decided to return to the Human Sphere, but we still need to wrap up a few things in the Voyaging Realm, so it won't be immediate, and getting an Armament is a direct boon to our efforts in the Empire.
 
Fair enough. Let's take a bath.

[X] Territorial Waters

Do we think that, in the 1-2 days it's going to take Gisena build our bath, we could go catch the Armament Fish?
 
Aabcehmu said:
Do we think that, in the 1-2 days it's going to take Gisena build our bath, we could go catch the Armament Fish?
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Hmm, I'm not sure we'll have teleportation on speed dial. We want to get back as soon as possible to protect our companions and give the Lord Protector less time to prepare, so if Gisena finishes on the second day, we'll want to return immediately.

Edit: But we'll have to find something to do, you're right there...
 
Armament Fish Tactic- 1239 words

Well alright then... It's obvious that the fish is going to win so I suppose it's time to start discussing tactics for it. First off let's look at the things capabilities:
1) Rank- I'm going to assume the fish has 9+ Rank. It's still a difficult fight even with our 9.4 martial Rank so it stands to reason that the fish has at least 9 itself. Now this in itself isn't too bad however armaments are able to manifest shrouds at 9+ Rank. A shroud limits the function of a beings Rank to within it but in exchange all of the reality warping shenanigans Rank can produce are massively enhanced. It's possible that the fish may not be able to manifest one if it's still enough of an embryo but I'm not willing to bet on this. Also we still have enhanced HDS so even if the fish has a max Rank of 10, not likely but still possible, the most the difference between us and it would be about 0.13. Of course its also possible the fish has Rank below our own but it's better to be conservative and assume its higher.
2) Stats- The thing is an Armament. It's going to have massive stats to coincide with its massive Rank. At the very least its physical strength should be about 10x our own. However with our build and attack options that strength difference doesn't matter as much. It's not inconsequential but it's not too big of a problem. The main issue of stats would be the things constitution and health. Huge health means that the thing would take a along time to take down with average means. It's very likely that the fish could tank most attacks thrown against it and the last thing we want is for this to become a battle of attrition. It shouldn't be up for debate that a continent sized beast has more fuel in the tank than us.
3) Armament weapons- Not much is known about these yet but its safe to say that one clean hit from one of these will most likely result in our death. The only saving grace is that these things probably have a charge and cooldown time so the fish probably can't spam us with continent destroying nukes.
4) Weakness- Armaments seem to grow weaker in Rank the more they are damaged. So we don't need to kill the thing all the way with our attacks, just reduce its Rank enough that we can shutdown its shroud and overpower it. Still this is a difficult task and by no means does it trivialize what we are going into.

So with the fish's capabilities lined up lets's look at what we can do to deal with them:
1) Blood Domain. Our blood casting is now Rank 10.4. Each 0.1 difference at 10+ Rank is an overwhelming difference. At this level their shouldn't be anything that can stop us yes? Wrong. As mentioned the fish probably has a shroud meaning not only is its own Rank Stronger but it can more easily counter our own Rank based abilities. I doubt it's enough to deal with our blood casting but at the very least it can slow down/reduce any damage from it. We can weaken the thing but killing it with just blood casting is impossible. Also armaments are part machine so while our blood casting can weaken parts of it it can't weaken all of it.
2) Praxis- This is going to be our main method of not just offense but also defense. As mentioned before with the fish's health pool and sheer size standard attacks are not effective. Even our power of ruin is less useful as their is only so much area that it can cover. Our best, and possibly only, method of attack is going to be Artful Thorn. With it turning every strike into a critical hit we'll be reducing the things health by significant percentages. Thanks to the 1/4 Praxis exertion I'm certain that we have enough fuel to spam it with Artful Thorns until it's dead. However as I first said Praxis is also our main source of defense. If we get hit we are dead. Our second form isn't strong enough to continue the fight. Heck it's probably not strong enough to get away. We have to avoid everything the fish throws at us meaning we'll need to rely on Refinement of Quickness. The problem is that its duration is limited and it's a lot more costly than Thorn. We'll need to carefully manage how often we use RoQ because we can't win if we can't use Thorn.
3) Silver of Evening- We get one perfect defense. We should only use this if we have no other choice. The fish probably has a mega ultimate attack and if we can't avoid it this would be the time to use Silver. But after this we can not afford to get hit again. The best scenario for Silver would be if the fish is left drained after it's ultimate and we could use the opening created by blocking to score our finishing hit.
4) Gisena- She already said she wants to come with us and who are we to deny her. For the most part she wouldn't be able to contribute too much to the fight however her ultimate is a game changer. We could use it to create a much needed opening or to stop an attack that could kill us.
5) Letrizia/Versch- We don't know if the knowledge that the fish is an armament would be revealed to Hunger but if it is it would be foolish to not ask Letrizia and Versch for advice on how to deal with armaments. The information they could provide may be the difference between life and death for us.
6) Nightmare Flight- This one is a bit more iffy. Would we only be able to use it to teleport into the fishes vicinity or could we get directly on top of it to land a couple of cheap hits. Of course if we choose to use flight for an ambush then anyone we bring with us would also land atop the fish. The risk of that probably doesn't make a sneak attack worth it.

So basically all of this sums up to one thing. Speed. It will all come down to how fast we are. How fast we attack, how fast we dodge, how fast we react. This fight will be over if we get hit or get exhausted so we need to keep moving but do so as efficiently as possibly. There is also the Apocryphal Curse to deal with and it could take the form of any number of things. Ber could show up. Even a trivial opponent can still function as a distraction. The fish could become empowered possibly achieving maturity or getting close to it. There is no way to tell so all we can do is plan as much as we can. Thankfully Hunger has a bonus to planning and adapting to unexpected developments. We're probably not going to use the former but it's still there. We just need to remember one thing. The fish is to be killed not turned into our new animal companion. We can and will eat it however so let's look forward to what bonuses Hunger can get from devouring an almost demigod.
 
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Urg, if we drain the springs, we probably cant get Elixir, we also cripple their capacity to create Mages right before we leave, after voting to focus their entire society around mage production.

I know we like to kid about anti synsergy, but at this point I think we deserve some Accursed Favor for pulling this @#%&.
 
Also seeing as I'm already discussing tactics for it I may as well vote for the fish.

[X] The Armament Fish

It is definitely the most palpable of the options on a moral perspective. I was mainly only against it because I was sure everyone would want to tame the thing delaying decimation more. But I think the thread has a bit more sense than that.
... I am so going to regret this next update.
 
[X] Territorial Waters

Let's be real here.

The best reason to not Slay ArmaFish and Lord Stalker is, actually, to serve as Key Points for Aobaru's not-quite Isekai Adventure.

Lord Hunger, The King of Winter, crowned Emperor of the Empire of Elixir. Chosen to sit upon the throne for his strength of arms; he who has educated and trained the Chosen One of the Voyaging Realm.

It is but one of his grander schemes, to allow the continued existence of the Lord of Stalks and the Armament of The Deep. For how can the Chosen One rise to his fated destiny without sufficient adversity to spur his growth?

A good educator guides; a great one creates opportunity.

Pick the option that will increase the chances of Aobaru fulfilling the role laid before him: That of the Voyaging Realm's Chairman of the Board; the Tycoon of Amusement.

But for fucking real. It's been a hot minute since the last post.

What the bloody fuck did we get ourselves thrown into again
 
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