Hm, if only we could rely on Gisena manipulating Hunger for his own benefit to dodge any characterization implications...
Don't misuse Gisena's protectiveness like that!

[X] The Armament Fish

I don't see how this is even a choice. The only reason we're even looking for a decimation target is because Hunger is a good guy who doesn't want to drain people's lifeforce with his aura. Why would he then kill a guy and blow up a well managed civilization causing way more deaths than the decimation would?

Waters is also kind of terrible since it sabotages our own civilizations potential probably reducing the chance we get super strong surgebinders.

Armament Fish on the other hand is morally straightforward, Hunger just has to be strong enough to kill a big fish.
 
Don't misuse Gisena's protectiveness like that!

[X] The Armament Fish

I don't see how this is even a choice. The only reason we're even looking for a decimation target is because Hunger is a good guy who doesn't want to drain people's lifeforce with his aura. Why would he then kill a guy and blow up a well managed civilization causing way more deaths than the decimation would?

Waters is also kind of terrible since it sabotages our own civilizations potential probably reducing the chance we get super strong surgebinders.

Armament Fish on the other hand is morally straightforward, Hunger just has to be strong enough to kill a big fish.

There's always a bigger fish...
 
I really, really hope this doesn't require us to kill our own Armament.

There are other possibilities. Maybe the Armament Fish births Armaments and ours is already born? That would be nice, which makes me doubt that this would happen.

If the voyaging realm is a theme park then maybe Armaments are like those giant stuffed animal prizes you can win at games of luck/skill. It also means we'd be killing one of the park's attractions, the "encounter a giant monster and win a mech" attraction. Can't tell the park manager about that! Or maybe Armaments are just commemorative memorabilia. "I went to the Voyaging Realm and all I got was this free personalized mech".

There's always a bigger fish...

The "Armament Fish" Fish, that births Armament Fish.
 
Well, it had to have come from somewhere...

They normally keep the "Armament Fish" Fish in the Voyaging Realm maintenance yard, with all the other tools they use to repair and refresh attractions. Like how Disneyworld is full of secret maintenance tunnels. Over here, you just give a whistle and a cast member (like the lioness) will pop out of a nearby astral maintenance hatch and assist in your every need. Take care of your kids and any mortals, give you directions to the nearest attraction, or whatever.

We found the magic kingdom attraction, aka the "Land of Myth", but as we all know a good theme park also needs some good water attractions for those hot summer days. No wonder it's such a long journey to get to the Armament fish; it's part of the same park but it's an entirely different attraction. You wouldn't want the wave pool flooding your magic kingdom castle after all!

Really though I just want to stop by the gift shop, grab our complementary mech and maybe a couple other souvenirs, then head out for a bit.
 
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That just means Hunger will be able to keep fishing no matter how powerful he gets.
I'm surprised you're such an ardent supporter of the Armament Fish, since that's the option with the least Gisena content! She won't be able to come without risking her life, and unlike the other two options her skillset's irrelevant. I suppose she could try her Ultimate and see if the Fish remembers the square-cube law exists, but otherwise she has no business being on that battlefield. Also, do recall that she said her priority is Hunger's well-being. Do you think she'll be happy to see him undertake this additional unnecessary risk, one that she can't even help him with? Or will it just bring those lingering concerns about being left behind back to the surface?

Anyway, this unbelievably hubristic attitude toward risk-taking is bound to have consequences. Hunger's odds here are good... if you ignore the potential Apocryphal proc, which was sufficient to upgrade the Rotbeast from an offscreen kill to a three-pick fight; what will it do for a foe that's already one? But even the baseline odds are in large part dependent on our OOC resource regeneration. I already see people talking about All-Defeating Stance immediately after OaF and yes, that'd help, maybe even hammer home the win. But what about the next time? What happens when the thread falters and Hunger's growth cliff becomes a mere growth curve? If the dice don't favor him, he'll just die. If this growth rate doesn't transition gracefully to timeskips, in the long term he's equally dead.

We're locked into this cycle of glacial pacing because the slower speed is necessary, to give us time to grind and grapple with whatever suicidal venture we voted to have Hunger undertake. Our run of good fortune has blinded people to the reality of risk to the point that a meme bandwagon can lead voters to choose a death chance. It only takes one nat 1 in the wrong place; the roll Hunger had for Mizuku against the Rotbeast would've ended him. We have to learn to limit ourselves to truly necessary risks, to invest everything only when everything's actually on the line, or the Cursebearer equivalent of the Great Filter's going to eat Hunger alive. We could win every battle only for characterization to kill him in the epilogue.
 
So let's revisit that armor prototype that ate Seiran Mizuku now that we know more about the theme park.

Then he'd found the Foremost ruins. A small outpost off the sea-brined coast, well-dilapidated by torrent and time, spray of teal lichen clinging stubbornly to its weathered marble walls. Inside he'd found a miracle, the Foremost equivalent of an Armor Prototype, folded in humble repose within a vault of solidified time...

What threadbare archives he found indicated that the 'Park' was proceeding as scheduled, and that one contingent of Builders had advanced the folded specimen as an experimental armor for their security forces. Alloyed with Builder steel, its core functionality was spun around a matrix of Ruhuk essence, a new distillation that they were confident would avoid the problems arising from previous attempts. Guaranteed to interface independently with any sapient organism, generating minimal psyche contamination. When its programming was finished, copies were to be deployed with both Ruhuk and Builder hosts.

...

Core Directive 4: Defend the Park from unlicensed mutation... He felt the Armor's satisfaction at a host well-chosen; the experiment was clearly a success, and the Park would soon be freed of unlicensed mutation. The host had understandable sympathies to its own kind, its lair a hotbed of egregious mutation, and so the Armor had to assert control, but it assured its host that volition would be returned in time, so long as it served the purposes of the Foremost. It was not bad; it was a good Armor, proud to be the first of a new series, and would care for its host within the constraints of its core directives.

Thoughts:

The park was probably never fully completed, since things were still "proceeding as scheduled" when all the Foremost died and everything was abandoned.

The park has security forces. We kinda knew that, given how it responds when people try to remove any attractions or exploit the place, but it's good to see it confirmed. It might be just as well the place is busted since I'd bet extracting people would be far more difficult if the place was actually functioning.

It appears that the powers of the elementalists are unlicensed and unintended. Could the springs be a leak of sorts, Ruhuk essence escaping some containment pipe or vessel to cause mutations? This also leads to questions about the Rotbeast and the recent uptick in the spring's power. Maybe the Rotbeast was the magical equivalent of a blood clot scabbing over an open wound? Or maybe it's just another sign of the general disrepair and dysfunction of this place.
 
Oh so now we don't consider Fish to be worthy of life. How do we know that Stalk Man has any greater right to life than Armament Fish!!
 
Also lmao Wall Might @Sharkey_smt
Thank you for the kind words. Wall Might has been featured in the previous issue of Voyaging News here

Yeah, the Voyaging News segments are great, kudos to Sharkey for making them. There's always at least one line that makes me laugh. This time it was the guy in a white hoodie jumping into straw... as though a Vetinari expy wouldn't have mined every conspicuous bale of hay for a hundred miles!
The Voyaging News are easy to do. The problem is coming up with something funny and a good picture. The New AST Times is tricky due to the inherent meta aspect.

EDIT: Here are the templates that I used, if someone wants to create a competing magazine on his own. Zampano tries with 7 Arette Gazette, but that rag is nothing but pyramid schemes for him to get voting markers
 
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[X] The Lord of Stalks

We have to promise to get an at least competent government to replace Venitari.
 
We have to promise to get an at least competent government to replace Venitari.
A competent villain that made his city a stable and ordered territory. He may be petty but come on, throwing mimes in the pit of scorpions is completely acceptable hobby for a tyrant. Don't forget - a competent overlord is indistinguishable from a benevolent ruler.

Now, don't let me detain you and vote FISH
 
The Planar Delta's a house of cards, it and every other god-king dictatorship died the moment we chose Chains of Fate. We're in the perfect position to take advantage, and the only thing we have to do is admit the Status Quo is irrelevant now.

[X] The Lord of Stalks
 
Fish has basically won, so let's brainstorm some fishing strategies. For reference, here is everything we know about this fish.

[ ] A Fish Out of Legend - Rumor foretells of a continental beast whose overturnings send entire oceans a-roil, whose roar is the death of island chains and whose latticed fin in rise-and-fall spawns tsunami waves capable of wiping entire civilizations away like grout before the cleaner. To confront a beast of this scale, even with Hunger's superhuman agility, is surely folly. And yet the mechanics of Rank are such that only he who dares may win. Venture deep, deep into the vast pitiless blue of the Voyaging Sea, far past all hope of returning to shore from whence you departed; there in the endless azure dark will you find the shadow of the Armament-Fish, whose embryonic thrashings are an Ereadhihr's birth-throes.
*Hunger desires to seek out this legend and seize immortality among the fishermen's ranks.
*Are you fucking crazy
*Risk: Insane
*Reward: 5 picks + variable, but undoubtedly great, Rank reward depending on tactics and results
*Securing an additional Armament, even if incomplete, would be an enormous coup. There are fewer than two dozen across the entire Human Sphere, each one irreplaceable and unique.
*Hunger's build is actually quite well-suited to fighting opponents of higher Rank, and will be even more so once he completes his Trinity of Artifact EFB-equivalents. That said, this is still absurdly risky, but perhaps with the power of the Praxis as well...
*Why would you pick this
[ ] The Armament Fish - This epochal beast is the end of civilizations. Put an end to its world-harrowing rampage; before the might of the Praxis, it is but one more walking swimming apocalypse put to the sword.

*A three-pick fight, you could make good progress towards Stranglethorn or another DA!
*Still very dangerous; before a monster as colossal as this even the resilience of the Outer Shadow seems tenuous and frail. All it takes is one mistake against an enemy of this size, especially with the Apocryphal Curse in play... a three-pick fight augmented with Apocryphal Intervention could well be deadly if pursued to the utmost.
*A contest of almost pure martial might, and one Hunger is reasonably well-suited for given his access to the Artful Thorn

I'll start off with my best idea, which is summoning an Astral entity for help. The lioness was old enough to remember the Foremost and the purpose of herself and the Realm. It seems reasonable to speculate that the astral realm holds beings with similar knowledge of the Armament fish.

Maybe there are astral beings who perform repair-type functions. A good builder wouldn't create a machine that would require constant effort on their part throughout the ages to maintain, no they'd build some entity to do all that tedious work for them. Any such being would have a deep knowledge of how the Armament fish functions, and might be able to guide us to weak points. That said, actually finding that exact astral seems unlikely, and they probably wouldn't be too keen on helping us destroy the fish they view themselves as responsible for. But who knows, given the millions/billions (?) of people that it's currently killing we might be able to convince an astral its malfunctioning, or given just how very, very dead the Foremost are we might find an astral that doesn't care anymore.

Maybe there are astrals who function like tour guides. A being of knowledge could tell us more about the fish, its function and history. This would be less useful but it would still only cost an hour, and it might be able to fight beside us afterwards.

Finally, the fallback option is just summon an astral that's just very powerful and wants to kill the fish. An bear astral that likes eating fish, an astral with power over water, an astral with some power that makes it really good at killing giant monsters, an astral that can buff our ability to spam artful thorn or otherwise empower us, an astral with sensory abilities that can lead us to where we can make critical hits, some astral with a huge grudge against the fish, an astral whose job was originally helping people with fishing, anything is possible.

...

Artful thorn spam is the obvious plan, but we can still try to target critical structures. Does it have any organs analogous to regular fish? We are told the fish is thrashing about. Given its immense size and power, if we managed to break some bit of its bone it might tear itself apart. Or maybe we could also empower it selectively with blood and/or edeldross, give it a sudden burst of strength right next to a bone we've critically weakened. Anything to turn its immense strength against itself.

Luring it into a shallow ocean, or even somehow tricking it into flopping onto land, would both deprive it of some of its power and mobility. At the very least we should try and deprive it of the ability to swim down into the crushing depths. Fish generally need water to breath, this one is probably an exception but maybe we could kill it by stranding it in air or inadequate water, and maybe wreck its gills.

We may be able to find allies. Given that it's destroying entire civilizations there should be quite a few very, very powerful people out for revenge. Imagine someone floating a couple miles in the sky, high enough up to be safe and unnoticed by the fish, raging at their helpless inability to harm the beast. Like from my omake. At the very least they could tell us what they've observed so far.

We might be able to find the Armament that was birthed, equip it in our last panoply slot, and use it as a powerup to help kill the beast. Our rank is high enough that just finding things personally important to us should be possible, and we should get at least something from our blood sense. Armament blood can't be that hard to find.

If the fish has blood that would open lots of possibilities, either in sensing weaknesses or critical blood-rich locations, or just general de-buffing. Mess with whatever passes for internal organs for such a creature, turn its blood toxic and incapable of carrying oxygen/magic/nutrients, stuff like that. The character sheet puts our blood rank at 9+ and we haven't even seen Winter yet so who knows what we could do.

If the fish has just given birth to a giant magical mech it might be already wounded.

741 words
 
The park has security forces.

Speculating on the similarities between the realm and normal amusement parks is kinda fun, so here's some more of that.

I like how trying to exploit the place for power makes it so angry. They take fun very seriously here, you try and power up here and they kick off an apocalypse to stop you. The fun police are real and they will arrest you for the very real crime of not having fun. Actually on second thought it's the fun military and they'll shoot to kill. Nobody takes fun more seriously than the Foremost.

Disney world has secret tunnels all through the park so supplies and actors can be moved around secretly. There's no evidence but the Astral feels like that to me, like a place to store things not be used and to move things around. Like normally the lioness is in the Foremost petting zoo but when she isn't she can hang out in her room backstage in the astral. And all visitors get the ability to summon tour guides or whatever from the astral if they get lost or want to fast travel somewhere interesting. Maybe that's what the Empyreal Signs were originally created for, traveling through the park and calling for assistance, and later on we can summon a nice meal or a manager to complain too. And the final sign just summons Aobaru.

I already mentioned the gift shop, which Rihaku said we couldn't afford.

The Armament fish is probably a game where you win prizes or just get your souvenir armament, but maybe its the wave pool as well.

If Disney world can have a jail this place is sure to have one too. The armor prototype seemed cool with just murdering people but that seems a bit on the extreme end. I wonder if there's anyone still locked up in here, like some eldritch god came to have a nice afternoon and security threw it in the park prison.

There are probably lots of other realms like the Realm of Myth but differently themed. A Western Realm where Roland Deschain chases the man in black and gun-witches ride their rifles like broomsticks. A Xianxia realm full of overpowered asshole cultivators. A Low Fantasy realm where poorly clad barbarians and sorceresses fight. We may have seen one dude who wandered out of the Realm of Pirates.

What would a Foremost dining hall look like? There's got to be a decent place to get a bite to eat around here, some Realm fully dedicated to every possible culinary delight. Like Valhalla basically. And fishing, there just has to be some Foremost with an absolute obsession with fishing, like he made it his life's goal to insure you could go fishing anytime, anywhere, and there'd be cool fish out there to catch.

If this Realm is where they go to relax I'd like to see what a seriously Foremost military training camp looks like. We'll be pretty strong once we beat this place, but being proud about being more powerful than anything in the Voyaging realm is like being proud that you won a brawl with a bunch of Disney security guards.
 
We might be able to find the Armament that was birthed
It seems completely unambiguous to me that the Huntress Moon target is the Armament itself. Voting for the Fish here is a vote to kill the fish instead of induct it into our panoply. Here's how I know the Armament-Fish is an armament:

Venture deep, deep into the vast pitiless blue of the Voyaging Sea, far past all hope of returning to shore from whence you departed; there in the endless azure dark will you find the shadow of the Armament-Fish, whose embryonic thrashings are an Ereadhihr's birth-throes.
Here's the relevant clause:
there in the endless azure dark will you find the shadow of the Armament-Fish, whose embryonic thrashings are an Ereadhihr's birth-throes.

Diagramming this sentence is a bit tough. (I don't know if "will you find" and "you will find" are interchangeable!) However, in between all the adjectival phrases, I think that it is clear that "embryonic thrashings" that "are an Ereadhihr's birth-throes" modify Armament-Fish and nothing else.



To connect the dots:
The fish has embryonic thrashings
The embryonic thrashings are birth throes
The birth throes are of an Ereadhihr
:. Therefore the fish is an Ereadhihr



If the Huntress' Moon task is to kill the fish, we will not be able to add it to our Panoply. (Well, I mean, I'd be fine adding it to our panoply and eating a few days of Decimation in the VR whlie we backtrack to the Delta, but I think the thread would riot.)




Immediate edit: fucking hell i left out the word "embryonic" from the subject line beneath "thrashings"
oh well. Posts are Engagement and Engagement is Arete, eventually.
 
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