A Simple Transaction I

Rihaku said:

Hunter Hunted

The winning vote was [X] Hunt for Healing with [X] Amaranth Star, Age and Treachery. You have spent 2 Arete on Amaranth Star and 1 Arete deposited into [X] Once and Future. You may purchase [X] Once And Future for 24 Arete at any spending point, including (theoretically) this one.

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my pillars lost

so, hunt for healing? I can understand not wanting Letrizia to be crippled I suppose. Age and Treachery is a nice power boost, and amaranth star makes it immediately useful by mitigating the effect of exhausted and tired (and the +++ agility is nice too), though I think I'd have preferred hunt to go with the specific hunting ability.

Oh well, this can work too, I'm not upset about it.

I AM a bit upset about the Pillars though.. Once and Future is certainly not a bad pick, but my heart yearns for the Evening Realm... a little slice of paradise to keep us happy throughout eternity..

Rihaku said:

Hunger pursued a monster to find healing for his companion. Which suitable creature did he encounter?

[ ] The Plumed Offering - Hunger encountered a group of traders who, stunned by his force of personality and breathtaking appearance, happily traded him a magnificent regenerating creature for the King Fish's Scale and meat. The tormented beast had spent its life regularly being carved for steaks and was relieved to experience the blissful release of death.

100% Chance of Uneventful Victory
+0.5 Arete, 1 Selection
Time Spent: 4 Hours
Lose King Fish's Scale
Lose King Fish Meat
Gain Money

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uh. Interesting use of a regenerating beast. Infinite meat. A bit dark though.

No chance on death or injury, 0.5 arete, reasonably quick but only one selection (that I still have to go through) and it costs us our fish...

THe clear safe choice, which possibly makes it the wisest... but SV rarely goes for the safest (and usually less rewarding) choice

Rihaku said:

[ ] The Mire Wolf - Deep in the swamps at the far edge of the lake lay a legendary predator: part direwolf, part alligator, whose fangs were ivory daggers, whose flesh was stone carapace, the shock of its tail a dragon's thrashing. Feared for its nigh-unkillable resilience and dogged pursuit of prey, but Hunger drew it out and in prolonged battle slew it, the Fell-Handed Stroke and power of Ruin too much for even its undying thews to withstand.

80% Chance of Uneventful Victory
20% Chance of Complication (an unhealable wound, poison, or some other moderately inconvenient long-term debuff)
No Arete, 2 Selections
Time Spent: Only 2 Hours! Minimal chance of Gisena / Letrizia being attacked, as you're close by anyway.

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fastest option, middle level risk, we keep the fish, 2 options to select, no arete and money.

I think I like it a bit more than the previous one, though not actually that much. I'm likely to change my mind once I go through the actual options we unlock though.

Rihaku said:

[ ] The Tyrant Beast - Of course the Apocryphal Curse would strike once again when he was wounded and separated from his allies. Nonetheless Hunger mustered all his remaining strength to oppose the creature which reminded him so much of the man he gave everything to slay. Its towering bulk, its claws like drawn sabers, its scales like congealed lead - all paled before the glint of cold experience in its eye, evaluating him as rival or prize.

50% Chance of Uneventful Victory
30% Chance of Complication
10% Chance of Grievous Complication (very inconvenient long-term debuff)
10% Chance of Death

+1 Arete, 2 Selections
+0.25 Astral Rank if successful
Reduced % of Apocryphal Curse for 2 weeks
Resets A Hunger, Sated (gain ~2 days)
Time Spent: 10 Hours. Letrizia will suffer some minor permanent damage, nothing that would noticeably impair her. Reversible with Pristine Star and similar effects.

Less risky creatures more attuned to pure healing exist, but were not available because Scent of Prey was not chosen. However, high Charisma enabled The Plumed Offering.

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more arete than the first option, as many picks as the second option, extra rank and reduces apocryphal in the short term. The 2 days of hunger sated are really not worth mentioning.

Of course it's also the option with the highest risk, INCLUDING A NOT NEGLIGIBLE CHANCE OF DEATH, and some minor "permanent" damage to Letrizia.

...yeah, no. Too risky. 10% of quest end is not fine by me. The prize is NOT worth the risk. Better the wolf at that point. Even if the worst happens the risk from that is not unbearable, it will just have us slow down some more.

So the choice for me comes down to the safe option or the mid-risk option, and that's going to come down to the special picks.

is 1 extra pick worth 0.5 arete+ money + reduced risk to our companions (-fish)?

Let's see!!

Rihaku said:

We will use the forum dice roller for these checks, so bear that in mind. You presently have about 5 Arete, plus whatever you gained from the choice above.

Which healing abilities did he acquire in the process? Select 1 if you picked The Plumed Offering and 2 if you chose any other creature.

[ ] Evening Sky - Pristine Star - The wearer and those regularly in his presence will always heal completely, without complications or scarring, even from grievous or amputating wounds. Grants resistance to illness and disease. Healing is somewhat accelerated, in that one may expect to recover from even the worst of survivable injuries in about two weeks.

Enemy effects may contest this.

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the free option. It STILL slows us down considerably and is slow to act, but removes any risk of long-term injuries, like the ones to Letrizia for the 10-hours beast, or the injuries such a beast could give us (as long as we survive, obviously).

Decent, and a possible good extra pick if we want to save some arete.

Rihaku said:

-- 2 Arete Options --

[ ] Evening Sky - Shine Bright - 2 Arete. The wearer can slowly (over the course of several minutes) heal most forms of wound, illness and disease in others. Sustainable in moderation, draining if overused. Creates noticeable illumination, useful in dungeons but can attract attention. Does not work on the wearer. Greater Charisma modestly improves healing efficacy, speed, stamina cost.

Unlocks a path of findross related research.

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better healing... of others! Still, this is probably the option best suited to heal our companions, even if it leaves US just as hurt, and likely even more tired. I wonder if we can use it to heal Veschle... on that note I also wonder if Pristine Star would slowly repair Veschle too.

possible pick, but we can likely do better. If we take this Pristine Star is mostly superfluous though.. except I just realized that with Pristine Star we can finally get our limbs/eye/lung back!

uh, Pristine Star just went up a bit in my evaluation.

Rihaku said:

[ ] Forebear's Blade - Second Stage - 2 Arete. Those who believed the Forebear felled were in for an unpleasant surprise. Upon reaching 0% health, instead of dying manifest as your Second Stage, a being of wraithflesh and shadow that pierces the curtain of the real. If your Second Stage is not slain, revert to your ordinary human form, fully healed, after a night has passed. Second Stage has [-Strength, +Agility], weakness to certain uncommon types of damage, and minor phasing abilities. Your Artifacts phase with you.

Pre-requisite for Form of Rage. Pre-requisite for Final Form. Second Stage prevents most forms of overflow damage.

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And HERE we get a VERY good complement to the other 2 arete option! If the previous pick had the perfect "heal other" effect, this one gives us something even better than a "heal self" effect: it gives us a second life, a respawn, and it renews after just a night!

Taken together they would allow us to Heal Letrizia AND to be a bit more reckless with Hunger even while he's still injured.

It even offers a somewhat dangerous form of self-healing: we can basically kill ourself, and wait a night. Of course we'd be more at risk for that one night, but if we're in a reasonably safe location it's worth considering (even if, with Apocryphal, it's probably better not to risk it most of the time)

The question is, does a 2+2=4 arete plan beat a 0+7=7 arete plan?

Well, it's going to depend on the 7 point options! 7s are usually more efficient, but synergy might very well make the 2+2 better in this case, and it would let us save some arete too instead of wiping out our reserves!

Rihaku said:

-- 7 Arete Options --

[ ] Forebear's Blade - Echo of the Forebear + Undying Echo + Undying Vanguard - 7 Arete. Taking Echo of the Forebear (1 pick) and Undying Echo (2 Arete) unlocks Undying Vanguard (upgrade to Undying Echo, 5 Arete).

Where tread the Forebear, his men would not fall, for the shadow of his presence could turn even death aside. And for his most stalwart servants, the reach of his shadow spanned continents and worlds.

Choose up to 5 companions whose true Astral Ranks do not exceed your own. They receive bonus Protection, Constitution and regeneration depending on both your relative power levels and their level of loyalty to you. A highly loyal companion would be about as difficult to kill as you yourself are, including the effects of your Artifacts. [+Might, +Agility, +++Constitution]

You personally don't receive any healing from this, though the extra Constitution will increase your effective health. While this offers comprehensive protection to your companions, it is expensive protection that does not really help you scale.

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a retinue-lite option. It doesn't make our companions actually stronger, but it makes them much more resistant, which is still good. And this power increase scales with our own strenght.

The extra power is also nice, though still leaves us crippled, while Pristine Star (and possibly second stage too) would give us our limbs back (one slowly over the course of a few days to 2 weeks, the other as soon as we die and respawn).

We could probably get these back later though, so it's still a valid option, even if takes 2 full picks.

Rihaku said:

[ ] Hunger - Pitiless Maw - 7 Arete. A Conjunctional Advancement that requires the Forebear's Blade. How can hunger perish from this world? So long as there is one hungering thing, it will emerge again and again to feast upon this realm of mere phenomena. Passively restore health equal to 100% of the damage you deal in melee combat, and triples the Power of Ruin associated with melee strikes.

This average rate of healing offered by this effect vastly surpasses that offered by the other effects here. This is compounded by the additional armor-penetrating effect of tripled Ruin. It doesn't help you heal Letrizia, but you'll be able to heal yourself and protect her much more effectively while she's recuperating! Incredible sustain that lets you take on armies of moderately weaker enemies, and even stronger enemies without powerful burst attacks may struggle to fell you. Beware the melee range limitation, however.

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good combo with Pristine Star, getting slow full healing for our whole group and the power to buy the time needed for it to complete.




ok, now let's talk plan/combos. I see a few different valid strategies.

We're doing all of this to heal Letrizia, so a selfish plan (like taking only Second Stage) is not an option. If we take a single pick it has to be either

1)Evening sky (Pro: no arete cost. Con: we're still slowed down until she heals, and we're still injured for that time).

2)Shine bright (Pro: heals Letrizia quickly, costs only 2 arete. Con: it doesn't heal US at all!)

This said, I think a single pick plan is suboptimal. This basically forces me to choose the Dire wolf for the 2 picks, as I'm NOT fine with the 10% death risk.

so, with 2 picks and a max of 7 arete we could spend.. IF we got to 7 before the plan is over, which is unlikely unless taken with a +arete option, and as a single pick is not good enough that would be the tyrant beast, which I ALREADY said I'm not willing to risk..

basically 7 arete points are barely possible, and would leave us with nothing stored. I think the best choice is to limit ourselves to a 4 arete expenditure max, maybe even 2.

so, what are the best combination under 4 arete (ignoring the single picks I discussed before?)

well, there are only two that achieve all our goals


PLAN A) Pristine Star + Shine Bright. Healing for our companions immediately, slow healing for our limbs in a couple of weeks. costs only 2 arete.

PLAN B) Shine Bright + Second Stage. Healing for our companions immediately, a renewable second life for us that comes with full healing AND that we could theoretically use to heal ourselves immediately if we're willing to risk being without that extra life for a whole night, which I personally am. Still a much lower risk than taking a 10% death chance after all, and we'd actually be in a better situation than we're in right now against a sudden ambush anyway. And after this night we'd STILL have our secret form second life anyway.


so, with this said... I think

Mire Wolf (2 picks)
Shine Bright (heal others)
Second Stage (second life with health restored to max)

is the best plan. IF Second Stage comes with regrown limbs that's even better. I'm sure someone asked if it works like this after the update, so I'm going to get some clarification soon enough.

well, I can see that the quest is still going on, so I at least know that even if Tyrant Beast won we missed the 10% chance .

(not that it would suddenly make it a good decision, mind you!)

SUN VS. SUN (Majesty vs. The Unending)

-The Bureaucrat
-Spite (Combat-Type) (-3 RV, +1 Primary, +3 Lesser)
-Curses:
+Major: The Geas of Indenture, Affliction of Slumber (+6 RV)
+Lesser: Doom of the Sailor, Sign of the Twins, Brand of the Childish, Brand of the Chaste (+4 RV) (7 RV->7LR)
-Primary Remittance: Wands: The Power of Love (Accretion) (-1 Primary)
-Lesser Remittances: The High Priestess, The Emperor, The Hermit, The Sun, The Hanged Man, Temperance, The Hierophant, Death (-9LR)
-Location: Coda Sola (-1LR)

Yes, that's right, we're changing from Mythic Hero Simulator into a different genre.

The actual joke here is that neither you nor the assassination target are never, ever going to 1v1 each other.

The idea is to lean on Serring's Core stats and Skills to keep him in the role of social specialist by compounding advantages. First, Combat-Type Accretion likely gives some excellent Rank, which is effective for basically all purposes. This only gets more useful once The Sun and The Hanged Man are taken as Panoply items, since that would give Majesty and Rule domains to gather advancements in, plus strong conjunctional magic advancements. Temperance might give something like Mastermind Points, or maybe Glory points; just some way to do social manipulation even more effectively. The Hanged Man is great synergy with everything else, since it forbids you from moving but not from speaking, which allows active exertion of social abilities. Thus, rapid Rank growth is available via the mechanism of Fame (which access to the Majesty domain is great for), especially since Death respawns you in an "advantageous" position which you can hopefully leverage hard out of the gate.

If Serring ever really needs combat prowess, he has high Rank and access to the "Sun" domain, plus can use the Coronal Ejection special ability of the Ring of Majesty in case he finds himself in a tough spot early on, Cursebearer-Seram-style. He isn't likely to be doing much fighting alone, however.

This build also focuses on the benefits of dedicated allies, which is why you're taking so many of them. The High Priestess, the Emperor, and the Hermit work pretty well together. First, The High Priestess ensures a large body of people to interact with and rule for social advancements, creates a solid base of people to deal with Brand of the Childish and protect you during your Slumber, and might give you an in to their system of Faith-based Fate magic, which could be good with your social spec and The Hanged Man. Second, the Emperor can use the resources that The High Priestess has to offer to advance his own abilities safely, with support to help him cultivate plants as well as hunt for ingredients in aquatic and other threatening environments, creating a loop of making food that empowers everyone and going hunting for better ingredients. Third, The Hermit would be in much the same situation, but with improving technomagical artifice instead of improving food. Both of these cycles feed (ha) into one another.

The Hierophant lets you safely pick out member of The High Priestess to act as Disciples for the purpose of immediately lowering Curse burdens, and thematically might combine with The Hanged Man as a Panoply Item to let you find easier ways to awaken active Rank/Accretion in allies, which is obviously incredibly valuable in an environment where you have a constant flow of empowering consumables and artifacts. Actually, despite not having The Forebear's Blade, I wouldn't be surprised if Serring could produce something like the "Companions of the King" EFB, since it seems within the "Rule" domain. Anyways, The Hierophant also allows you to get in general Curse Mitigation beyond your means while you focus the most important Curse to mitigate: The Geas of Indenture. You need to take companions along with you to other tasks, so mitigating any other Curses can wait. It might actually be necessary to take another Lesser Curse in order to take The Fool and mitigate Indenture indirectly in order to be able to travel to past Geas tasks and pick your people up, though there'll be more on that later. Also, allies can keep working even while you sleep, so Slumber makes their efforts proportionally more valuable because you have less ability to get shit done personally.

I think that people are sleeping on Death in general. Death is a strong choice here because it allows you time at the start of many Geas tasks to build another Fame/Rank engine and ignore the main restriction on your progress, which is Slumber. It's really good with taking several lesser Curses, since that provides more times you can use it while causing less of a pain in your ass. Death much worse in overall time off from your Curses than a Progression Type's Relinquishment when taking into account the length of The Geas of Indenture, but the specific form which the time off takes is actually well-suited for this build since it gives you a way to obtain a position of social and material advantage at the beginning of many of your early Geas tasks, which alleviates the pressure caused by not being a Progression-Type (despite Wands's limited +Progression and The Hanged Man).

Curse choices are also pretty easy to understand.

Indenture is inexpensive as far as pain caused by Curses goes, and is necessary to make the most of Serring's new power by displacing him into a new and simpler social context. Coda Sola is the chosen Geas task because it's suitable in length and resources for building up the kinds of advantage that you want to have, while remaining fairly safe from Immediate Loss conditions that one could trigger as a Combat-type. Actually, this build excels at Conquer and Rule tasks and is much more suited for them than it is for Assassination, but none of the other buyable Locations really hit that balance of safety/productivity/timespan which is important for a first Geas task. Also, obviously, Coda Sola allows Serring to take Doom of the Sailor without having to worry much about the consequences for the next few hundred years.

Slumber is costly in terms of how much time a Cursebearer can be personally active and in how it makes them vulnerable, but both of those are well-addressed by this build because Serring will have people to do things for him and protect him while he's asleep, which allows his waking hours to be optimized. Might also synergize with the Majesty domain to promote a sort of "don't tickle a sleeping dragon" advancement, which is an extra layer of protection via reputation.

Sign of the Twins basically just feeds Serring opportunities in the form of opponents, especially if a variant of this build with The Devil or The Tower is taken. Even if it would be extremely annoying to deal with near the start of a Geas task when the effectiveness and number of Twins procs is highest, Serring has indirect mitigation in the form of Death, which will let him avoid it for early Geas tasks. Being reborn in an advantageous position and having 21 years to enter new theaters in that reality without Twins being active takes a lot of the spice out of the Curse. Once he's past the first few Geas tasks he'll probably have be strong and well-rounded enough that a stacking series of Twin procs aren't a fatal risk.

Childish is trivial to someone who always has dependable allies for assistance and is usually very, very rich. With some targeted mitigation, the negative perception aspect to the Brand will be really reduced, which is the only significant detriment. Childish is much riskier for builds that go for a Crowning Curse because it becomes a vector for them to fuck you over pretty hard, but without them pushing you into bad situations you're probably not losing that much by taking it, most of the time.

Brand of the Chaste isn't really an issue. Serring isn't historically interested in romance, and if he was he could just avoid the inevitable bad end by cutting things off early like other Cursebearers do, or even duck it altogether with clever and sparing use of The Hierophant's mutual Curse Immunity, though that is a risk in itself given how Curse blowback + emotional pain can hit at a bad time if they're killed.

This build generally wins tasks by aggressively accumulating and compounding material and social advantage, then directing it effectively with Serring's ability to rule, which is always increasing due to Accretion or exploitation of other magic. Laterally, eventually, considering that he doesn't have TSH to break Accretion's limits, even if having The Hanged Man as a Panoply item might allow some metagaming via Evening-Sky-like metamagic advancements or magic acquisition advancements.

There are good versions of this build that take more Curses, though I think someone prudent should know where to stop, especially as a Combat-Type. Past a certain threshold, you don't actually need more power to get what you want, and taking more Curses than you need is a losing proposition. However, Hierophant + Death + The High Priestess does give a lot of immediate and some good long-term Curse forgiveness if you're careful, so taking more Curses is not necessarily the worst thing you can do with this set up. This build is the opposite of most greed builds in that it can't go all-in on being antisocial Wolber-style because it derives its power from being social, so you have to pick other things...mostly.

For example, taking Sign of the Crab/Doom of the Occultist and using it to grab Gisena + Ring of Time + The Devil/The World is extremely synergistic, even if it goes more in on consolidation of resources and either sacrifices the Fame/Rank engine and the bludgeon of turning Serring's CHA on non-companions or sacrifices the smoothness of the process of exploiting his personal magic and his general force multiplication mechanisms for those he rules. Affliction of the Carnivore is a pain due to it limiting the scope of The Emperor's usefulness, but it's not a big issue if you're using The High Priestess to deal with Brand of the Childish anyways. Affliction of the Weary isn't as bad if you're already taking Affliction of Slumber + can get restorative draughts from The Emperor's ability. Extra Lesser Curses like these are valuable because there are so many useful possible Lesser Remittances, like taking The Fool in order to get cheaper indirect Indenture Mitigation so you can bring along companions, or taking The Star because of its synergy with The High Priestess, or grabbing Gisena because of her optimization for mitigation and synergistic genius, etc. Sadly, the social focus of this build means that most Brands and Dooms are a no-go, though Plenary would be extremely appropriate from a thematic point of view even if it's terrible and nobody should take it.

You could even take a Crowning Curse despite the lack of requirement (so, the Curse of Hubris, then : P) and sacrifice a non-essential Lesser Remittance in order to take Cups or The Joker, both of which only feed your methods of improvement, or taking Blank Card(/another Wands?) and going straight for The Praxis, which itself is really synergistic with our other choices. I think that taking an unnecessary Crowning Curse in order to grab a Primary Remittance Like Pay to Win/Three Wishes or New Game Plus is deeply stupid. Those are things to take to protect you from a Crowning Curse that you have to take in order to be a Cursebearer, and in my opinion do not match the increased difficulty.

I think that this would actually be a fun build to play! It doesn't get drowned under the unfortunate nature of excessive Curses, it has clear goals and means, it comes with a bunch of social interaction built-in, has lots of possible references to general Rihaku lore, and would be a much different playstyle than the other two Cursebearers that we've been, especially as we would be a Combat Type.

Some challenges I think he would face:

At first, he'll just be spinning his wheels. Choosing Spite over Justice but still ducking out of his origin universe seems like an unlikely combination of choices. Maybe he accepts the necessity of saving others, but would rather not risk a period of personal weakness? At the very least this build is Combat-Type only, and is extremely suited for "getting it right" the way that the Galactic Empire failed utterly at doing. But transitioning away from the mode of a bitter, mostly helpless saboteur into being a savior who navigates realpolitik as an active head of state might be confusing, especially since it's supposed to happen overnight. Though getting a new family and some time before the Curses set in would certainly help. I bet that Serring would pick Death just for the new family alone!

Overall, Serring is really, really not adapted to being a very significant person rather than a somewhat meaningful cog in a machine, so there's a lot of personal growth available for him there and a lot of interesting and genuine social possibilities to explore with companions, though Brand of the Chaste might stopper them from going too far into new territory. Brand of the Chaste is absolutely something that Serring would be okay with, since it's really just extending his avoidance of meaningful relationships in pursuit of his goal, though I bet he would regret it in the long term and use Hierophant's mutual Curse immunity to try to get around the restriction.

Serring is also switching mindsets due to coming from an all-tech universe and becoming someone who is really heavily specced into magic. Doom of the Occultist builds are especially funny here, as the required bullshit would just even further obfuscate things and remove magic from his ability to understand it as a sensible thing with internally consistent rules.