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A Simple Transaction I

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Do you want to stick your hand in the garbage disposal?

Someone who hates you and would love to shred your hand is standing by the switch.

There is something shiny down there. You know the person who hates you put the shiny thing there, so you can stick your hand in the disposal and they can shred your hand.

Just kill the LP and loot her afterwards. Don't bumble directly into her trap.

Just because you aren't getting odds doesn't make it safe. It is explicitly not safe in the slightest. It is bait so obvious with so clear downsides it might as well be a reading comprehension test.
 
Mr. Prokosch said:
Just kill the LP and loot her afterwards.
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Other choices include destroying Earth Tower.
Just because you aren't getting odds doesn't make it safe. It is explicitly not safe in the slightest. It is bait so obvious with so clear downsides it might as well be a reading comprehension test.
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Sure. Now define the danger in concrete terms so we can have an actual discussion. Give me an example of what you think Augustine will do if we eat tower. What is the possible danger that makes you not vote Absorption?
 
The death of multiple companions. The shattering of key abilities. The death of hunger. A straight failure state. It's walking headlong, naked, into a trap designed exactly for us, because you can't let some shiney toys go.
 
Wolfy said:
Evidently you don't, as we almost ended up choosing option that explicitly had around 60% chance of instantly killing us in the first update. Now, notice what we had then, and in the situation you are using to stoke pointless paranoia? That's right, Rihaku pointing out risk and quite clearly outlining that choices do have consequences. Rihaku does go out of his way to point out bad shit we can take in very obvious manner.

Like, it's insane how predictable this shit is. You folks wouldn't even blink when taking 50/50 option, but moment risk gets unknown your paranoia acts up and you have to quote every time you've fucked up in past. Remember Fairbright? Mention of "something's not right here" had people running around screaming about agency vampire that would surely take all agency away from Hunger. After we fought fucking Librarian.

We don't *need* to do many things. Unless you think that there's need for current pack of useless baggage we're carrying around?
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First off, that hostile tone isn't really doing you any favors to convincing me of your position.

Second, it's rather uncalled for you to take that tone, when I clearly misunderstood what you were referring to.

Third, pointless paranoia? That's just downright disingenuous. I didn't directly conflate the risk of Absorbing the Tower as equivalent to the Mardukth incident.

I merely said that after learning about the incident, it reminded me of the real risk of complicating matters by walking into a potential trap. Thus deciding it not worth it, after weighing the pros and cons discussed. While I admit I'm a risk-averse person, I don't appreciate trivializing my decision into a stereotype.

Lastly, my point of not needing to absorb the tower is based on subjective priorities, I don't put much value on the potential Advancements offered. So let's kindly agree to disagree there.
 
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Mr. Prokosch said:
The death of multiple companions.
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Fairly unlikely to happen as their death wouldn't stop us from killing LP. Augustine's goal is not to harm us, but to win.

As I've discussed earlier, she can't just do whatever. She needs to win, which limits the kind of things she could do. That could still include killing our allies, but it's somewhat unlikely.
The shattering of key abilities.
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This would have to go past Silver, Adorie's resistance to diminishement, general protection we are granted as a Cursebearer and likely three additional abilities. As mentioned earlier, if source of such disruption is Cloak, we can have it Nullified for time being. If Augustine steal parts of our mantle, we can get it back. If lose is permanent, it would still need to be greater than our gain.

Other than that, if we can use Heel right away we could just try undoing any effect that is not lethal or otherwise stops Hunger from doing stuff.
The death of hunger. A straight failure state.
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Ignoring all possible defenses we could use, in case of absolute failure we can just burn Aab's defensive wish. Not a choice I'd make, but he seems to be fine with this.
It's walking headlong, naked, into a trap designed exactly for us, because you can't let some shiney toys go.
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And playing it safe reduces our long term scaling and thus accumulates long term risk. We had this particular discussion million times already.

Like, going "b-but we could lose" is not some kind of hot take only you can come up with, it's basic thing everyone understands. What I'm asking you guys is to start fucking thinking beyond most basic possible "things can go bad" and actually put thought into making the choice. This might end up with you coming to same conclusion, of course, but what matters is how you got there, and not what you picked.

Right now I'm not voting Absorb because other people are not voting Absorb, showcasing general kneejerk reaction to pick uninteresting options. I find general risk aversion to be boring and trite, and possibility of losing defensive wish here means more risk averse gameplay in future.

Which is sad, as everything about Hugner taking the bait would be funny, but it is what it is.
 
[X] Absorb the Tower of Earth
Alas, quick but methodical didn't manage to stand on its own, still got ol' long and stiff to fall back on though!

...Why are you looking at me like that?
 
I don't like the signs very much in comparison to Pillars and Fisher King, both of which compete directly for Arete.

To be honest I didn't want Fisher King at all, but I'd like to finish sinking the cost and actually get it now that we've started.

I do want Pillars, and badly. I think it's a drip feed of fights and food porn, both of which I love. Also picks and buffs I suppose.

Mystery boxes are fun, but I try not to get too excited about them unless I'm meme-ing.


For actual effectiveness, I think Quick plays out our hand neatly. Use the agressive options first, make Augustine react to Hunger, then fall back on our trump cards, such as Silver and Nullity when we go in for the kill/capture.
 
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Resonant said:
I do remember, if you're referring to how Hunger originally had to burn himself and sacrifice all his companions in the Isekai World to beat the Tyrant.

I don't believe it's equivalent to 'Absorbing the Tower' because the argument to do the latter is framed as aiming for benefits. We don't need to fall into a trap to beat Augustine.
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We may not need to absorb the tower to defeat Augustine, but remember that we will need to defend Aoboru from an enemy progression cursebearer, so we'll need every bit of power we can get.
Mr. Prokosch said:
Just because you aren't getting odds doesn't make it safe. It is explicitly not safe in the slightest. It is bait so obvious with so clear downsides it might as well be a reading comprehension test.
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We can not afford to take the slower and safer path.
 
Comparisons between Absorb the Tower of Earth and Vendetta - Sword seem incompatible and if you're relating it to risk attitude, it's a rather disingenuous point to conflate the two options.

Vendetta - Sword offered us Imperial Praxis, unlimited in scope. That's a 25 Arete bonus in the form of Imperial Refinement right there, only even more overwhelming cause it wouldn't be limited to the Sword, even if that seems to be the coolest expression of Praxis. And the broad applicability and power of the Praxis in full is a benefit that I don't think we could properly quantify into Arete anyway. Whereas the Tower of Earth, at its max potential, merely surpasses the Royal Praxis which may well be an entire order of magnitude lesser than the Imperial Praxis (insert however many steps down on the ISH-scale it might be, since that seems to be the new Rihaku omniverse measure of power).

And yes, up to 60% death chances (not a flat 60%, could have been as low as 30% with optimal decision-making, though LOL on that happening) for multiple updates is a devastating challenge, but the reward would have been incomparable to any other benefit we've seen in this quest.

OOC, it was a very competitive choice too. Praxis is a lore element that Rihaku questers have been teased about for 3 years and having the opportunity to get it, with an accompanying thematic for our MC? Sounds like a cool deal. And it was during chargen too, where we could afford to be more risky on the basis that we haven't yet grown attached to the Hero or any companions.

Here, Tower of Earth definitely offers us way less benefits and probably less risk too in comparison to Vendetta - Sword, sure. But it's also just unnecessary. What major lore elements do you guys foresee arising out of Absorbing the Tower? Is it going to be equal to Praxis? No? Then, the 'accepting 60% death chances' argument falls flat.

And also, I'd like to remind everyone that PraxisGang lost. Unfortunately for myself.

Anyway, the thread's attitude to risk has vacillated wildly depending on the given options, for one reason or another, but we can generally say that the thread is fairly conservative when it comes to GREED options barring certain votes pushed through by force. So it makes perfect sense to not go Tower of Earth when its powers just straight-up aren't as cool as the bunch of other Arete options we already have like Once and Future II, Pillars, Ruling Ring ( :cry: ) or maybe even a Praxis EFB (!).

Why spend Arete when you don't have to, and at the cost of additional risk too?

SaveGang, rise up!
 
Memorably, arguments against taking Opalescence and Honing stayed that we had enough power to walk through the remainder of Nilfel, justifying sinking 3 picks into power that hasn't been delivered yet. When we returned, we found the Royalists in disarray and Letrizia in the hospital.

It's certainly risky to Absorb, but it may be risky in different ways not to absorb.
 
Kurowari said:
What major lore elements do you guys foresee arising out of Absorbing the Tower? Is it going to be equal to Praxis? No? Then, the 'accepting 60% death chances' argument falls flat.
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The Empyrean Signs are explicitly stated to rival or exceed the Royal Praxis. Upgrading our existing Third Sign would certainly be enough to qualify imo.

If I didn't have the curse of real life activating so hard this week, I really might have argued myself into crusading for Absorb.
 
Wolfy said:
Other choices include destroying Earth Tower.

Sure. Now define the danger in concrete terms so we can have an actual discussion. Give me an example of what you think Augustine will do if we eat tower. What is the possible danger that makes you not vote Absorption?
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If the danger could be expressed in a concrete and calculable manner, we wouldn't be having this discussion, we'd just have some maths on 'Is this worth it'? Followed by a precise line of 'Yes/No'. There would not even be any risk -or uncertainty- in the discussion at all, merely a tabulation of gains and losses, evaluation of the relative values and results.
 
Shard said:
If the danger could be expressed in a concrete and calculable manner, we wouldn't be having this discussion, we'd just have some maths on 'Is this worth it'? Followed by a precise line of 'Yes/No'. There would not even be any risk -or uncertainty- in the discussion at all, merely a tabulation of gains and losses, evaluation of the relative values and results.
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No, I think Wolfy's correct here. Rihaku is mostly very good about incorporating the tactics that we propose that are compatible with his universe. If you aren't able to propose a plausible mode of attack available to Augustine then your concern about the risks should fall. (Note that I said "fall" and not "disappear." Rihaku is good at surprising us, after all.)

The fact is that most primary modes of failure from eating the tower have been addressed by Absorb voters: Silver of Evening, Purity & Rulership domains on the Tears of Winter, Blood manipulation to defeat toxins, Blood manipulation to mimic Adorie's bloodline, etc.

The risk has not been eliminated by naming those risks, but naming the risk is necessary to calculate the stakes and probabilities. What are you afraid of, other than Rihaku's general proclamations of doom that come with bait / meme options?
 
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Sharkey_smt said:
MFW I see Zampano get excited for a MAEG vote and I still have markers
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just remember that when your blood lust is finally sated, you will need to step very carefully lest I come upon another Shark Mark(er). There's no telling what you might vote for in such a situation.
 
Zampano said:
just remember that when your blood lust is finally sated, you will need to step very carefully lest I come upon another Shark Mark(er). There's no telling what you might vote for in such a situation.
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I will NEVER give anyone my marker ever again. This is a promise. Also I think the Opalescent tower was a good choice and you know why I helped you (what I said in the PM).

I am currently writing an omake about the elders of the SORD Gang and how they manipulated the events in the series to work in their favor. The episode with the Opalesecent tower is mentioned there.
 
i thought about it, i'm realizing that i'd prefer to just get fisher king or some other 25 arete upgrade

[X] Cut Through

when in doubt, be the forebear
 
Yikes

Tally

My Mistake

Adhoc vote count started by Taka on Sep 18, 2020 at 9:31 AM, finished with 269 posts and 56 votes.
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Wolfy said:
Fairly unlikely to happen as their death wouldn't stop us from killing LP. Augustine's goal is not to harm us, but to win.

As I've discussed earlier, she can't just do whatever. She needs to win, which limits the kind of things she could do. That could still include killing our allies, but it's somewhat unlikely.
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Hostage taking where she follows through on the threat and kills them if pressed is very much on the table, considering that's basically where Versh was for doing something more or less identical to what's proposed.
 
Enohthree said:
Hostage taking where she follows through on the threat and kills them if pressed is very much on the table, considering that's basically where Versh was for doing something more or less identical to what's proposed.
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And how is whole "hold hostage to make Hunger not kill me" working out for her?

That's ignoring part where we can just use Heel to deal with hostage situation.

My current top three are eating Walls of Myth, Atlasing Hunger and triggering Shard to attack us.
 
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