Horatio, Philosopher of Hell
The concept is this: me with
Devildoor, versus Earth Bet. (You can click the element name for its' writeup.)
Comprehensive spoilers for Worm are assumed - my canon knowledge is one of your assets here.
By default I drop in a high-combat zone with Devildoor at Second Gate, putting me fairly close to Burnscar's canon powerset - craziness and Bonesaw mods included. The main differences are that my flame can buff others at the cost of sharing the mania, and that I can forego the mania entirely in exchange for the buffing
and the teleportation.
Mission objectives - select
one or more:
[ ] Spill The Cauldron
Bring Cauldron's crimes to light, and see its' leaders executed. This intention will not directly trigger Path To Victory, but its' second-order effects
can. Requires a careful style of play, but has arguably the easiest endgame - once you can publish, you just have to kill half a dozen world-class capes and deal with their emergency resources.
[ ] House of Gold
Set civilization up to develop fast enough, in the long term, to defeat the undamaged Entities that will presumably show up eventually. The local Shards have few interplanetary action vectors, and fewer still that are also interdimensional. If you can get things set up for a reasonably stable interplanetary civ, I'll consider this goal complete.
[ ] Beasts of Apocalypse
Kill all official Class S threats. If you kill an Endbringer and don't deal with the others quickly enough, a new Endbringer will appear that's optimized (with a shard's limited intelligence) to counter whatever you did previously.
While
theoretically most of the difficulty is in the endgame, in practice this will mostly mean having me run around retrieving people and weapons from high-danger areas until I get enough synergies in place. Dodging the Simurgh is not actually your biggest worry here, although she does make things more complicated. Not very America-centric. Probably the most difficult option, but only by a small margin.
For each Goal chosen, you may choose 1 Perk.
[ ] Devil's Toolbox
I start in an area with several Tinkers and some preptime. Payment or persuasion will be necessary, but I
will get some kind of benefit; depending on play this could be the strongest starting build or the weakest. If the former, not overwhelmingly so.
[ ] Go Further
I start with the third Gate, capable of summoning Evil Elementals - which could easily be A-Rank minions in this setting, with the right prep. This does make the Final Gate moderately more difficult to reach in-game, though; I can't use the Third as part of my path to it, so it'd require an appropriate sidequest rather than being unlockable through the main questline.
[ ] Guardian Angel
I'm guaranteed no hostility from Zion or the Simurgh unless I've already tried to kill them; the latter's plans will treat assisting me as a lowest-priority secondary goal.
[ ] Boss Rush
I begin with an armored backpack containing the brain of Cleanroom, a
Cloaker with the power to send himself and others to a mirror world made of white blocks. Though he's sedated, his power can be activated in three modes - shift all parahumans in a two-mile radius, all humans in the same radius, or his wearer and anyone they're touching. Manual escape is possible by reaching the edge of the radius, but only a very few powers can cross over directly.
Finally, choose my drop-in point.
[ ] Express Train Number Nine
A running battle between the Slaughterhouse Nine and the Railway Tinker, Nonstop. American countryside, August 2, 2010. Nonstop is attempting to execute the Nine's kill orders, with assistance from the Guild. Barring intervention, Nonstop will die within a day and a half.
[ ] Fourteenth Apocalypse Zone
Borlänge, Sweden. Former industrial and immigration hub, now a periodically-bombed labyrinth mostly dominated by metal ghouls. Was the site of a cluster trigger resulting in multiple Army-Tinkers, all presumed dead by now.
June 27th, 2010. The surviving creations have adapted again; a major breakout is due in three weeks. This Zone has been active for eight years and expanded twice, although it is presently considered quiescent.
[ ] Onslaught's Wager
Fifteen rogues and villains, some of eastern europe's finest, are touring the continent and offering a boon to anyone who can hold off all fifteen of them in sequence. There's obviously something fishy going on beneath the surface, but as lethal force is banned this is theoretically the safest opening option. This would drop me in Amsterdam on November 19th, 2010, but if you pick an earlier starting point I could theoretically track them down by the last week of October.
A final point of clarification: SI-me has knowledge of canon Worm, and what these blurbs tell him - he's almost exactly as blind as you are. He does know, however, that his Imaginary Element is
not Shard-generated, and should do nothing to impair him from drinking a Cauldron vial. If he's willing to risk it.
(842 words.
Bonus points if you can come up with a good name for this. I have discovered a sufficiently convoluted joke.)
