[X] Do Something Else
-[X] What is the Evening Sky without Stars among it? Something lesser the the Evening Sky with Stars. Lord Hunger will slay the very stars of the Republics realm and add them to his Cloak.
*Given how the threat is feeding upon suns removing them should lower its potential growth
*Who knows what power the might of the stars might add to the Evening Sky
There's literally no point to Closing the Fist until and unless we have companions that can actually keep up. The power that the Broken Kaleidoscope offers is staggering and accelerating Gisena's growth is our best bet at dealing with both our current issues and surviving the Apocryphal in the mid to long term.
BK has a serious possibility of destroying Gisena as a coherent identity. She has an actual chance of dying/ losing parts of herself. It's in the blurb. It also destroys the Azure Ring, which I don't really want to do.
Not voting for it unless we get to a point where those risks can be mitigated.
[X] On the Trail
[X] A Broken Kaleidoscope
[X] A Promising Lead
I'm honestly not even sure BK is even the best thing to grab here but I don't think Gisena would even attempt to go for it if it wouldn't be immensely useful in this situation.
If the ring is all for it, i'm all for throwing even more Arete at are companions.
Going to keep a approval vote up for Promising Lead, both because i still think it's our most practical thing to grab insofar as ending this threat, and because I want to make sure it keeps in second place for the inevitable Anti-BK counterpush consolidation.
I just realized the reason azure wants to do it may be because it isn't sacrificing itself? It's going to try to using the opportunity to take control of Gisena, and the loss of its ring form is a meaningless price compared to the ability to act alone with that much power.
I just realized the reason azure wants to do it may be because it isn't sacrificing itself? It's going to try to using the opportunity to take control of Gisena, and the loss of its ring form is a meaningless price compared to the ability to act alone with that much power.
I just going to go out on limb here and say that if anyone at all amongst our immediate companions was able to gauge the risks here I think it would be Gisena, and I don't think 'let the former ring tyrant out to play with Hunger tier if not higher power' is something she'd risk when she views humanity in so precarious a positiona lready.
I'm also going to say, from a meta point of view, that I heavily doubt Rihaku is going to make us pay 50 arete on a companion EFB that just lets the Azure mindjack Giesena and create another enemy for us because god knows Hunger would avenge her at the first chance he got, largely because if he did the thread would riot with more salt generated by any update this thread has ever seen.
Edit: A twist that we only have the barest of inkling of coming up with on information that was presented later on in a pro BK context buried in the the thread, might I add, rather then in the update.
Rest in peace Ring of Artifice. You will die as you lived - being a useless piece of shit. Gentle reminder that the only thing we got from the Artifice domain was a spyglass.
Rest in peace Ring of Artifice. You will die as you lived - being a useless piece of shit. Gentle reminder that the only thing we got from the Artifice domain was a spyglass.
Yeah, I definitely took that as "Gisena doesn't have a sentimental attachment to the Ring, so why should you?" rather than implying that the Azure Ring is hunky-dory with becoming a sacrifice.
So apparently the Surgeon is breeding Orcs? I mean, the chapter wasn't entirely clear on this, but we did only see it from Aobaru's perspective (meaning we only know Gisena's reaction), and the strong implication was there in the text of the vote. If I had missed it from that, every single comment in this thread is certainly taking it as a given.
But really... What even is the narrative use of having a know-nothing everyman like Aobaru if we don't exposit at him for the benefit of readers who don't have 100% comprehension of everything written in-universe ever? I mean, sure, I get it, Gisena isn't exactly going to talk about what happened to her home. I'm just puzzled how a first-time reader is expected to follow that. I'm only 20% lost since I've read the original quest, but to anyone who started reading with this installment, it's got to be an order of magnitude more opaque than the already-quite-opaque average.
So apparently the Surgeon is breeding Orcs? I mean, the chapter wasn't entirely clear on this, but we did only see it from Aobaru's perspective (meaning we only know Gisena's reaction), and the strong implication was there in the text of the vote. If I had missed it from that, every single comment in this thread is certainly taking it as a given.
like half the update was from the Surgeons perspective. like this part:
Many lesser Heroes he'd budded across these planets, an army swelling by the billions every day, honed against themselves in the manner of Heroic warfare such that only the most able would survive; the findross of the weakling consumed by the Orkhor, and the Orkhor's by the Warlord, and so on up the cosmic chain until viable lieutenants started to materialize
Appreciate the pointer. True, that would have clued me in, if I had made the connection that "Hero" in this context meant orc instead of the half dozen other things called "heroes" in this verse, including at least two of our party members. I guess the author's intent was that we do a double-take on reading talk of orcs in the vote text, reread that section now with context, and deduce that it meant orcs? Which could conceivably have worked for me, I'll admit. Because, and only because, I've read Seram's quest.
It doesn't really help with my main point about "author assumes everyone voting will have a Ph.D. in Rihakuian History and doesn't bother to introduce concepts that were only mentioned two quests ago." But I guess I'm just supposed to treat that as normal for Rihaku, and live with it.
Appreciate the pointer. True, that would have clued me in, if I had made the connection that "Hero" in this context meant orc instead of the half dozen other things called "heroes" in this verse, including at least two of our party members. I guess the author's intent was that we do a double-take on reading talk of orcs in the vote text, reread that section now with context, and deduce that it meant orcs? Which could conceivably have worked for me, I'll admit. Because, and only because, I've read Seram's quest.
It doesn't really help with my main point about "author assumes everyone voting will have a Ph.D. in Rihakuian History and doesn't bother to introduce concepts that were only mentioned two quests ago." But I guess I'm just supposed to treat that as normal for Rihaku, and live with it.
Well, we are 280k words deep. Quests become more difficult to join as they go on, so it's maybe worth discussing what kind of assumptions Rihaku is making about the audience.
We are clearly ramping up into Arc 3. Arc 1 was the Temple (with Sten as a boss fight), Arc 2 was Nilfel (with Procyon as a boss fight), and Arc 3 seems to be the conquest / preservation of the Human Sphere (with ?? as a boss fight).
It's less obvious whether this is the "mid game" or the "late game". The long term goals like ruling for 50 years, or defeating a multiverse-spanning conspiracy by the Hidden ones... those might be outside the scope of this quest. On the other hand, Rihaku's patreon isn't doing too badly. Maybe all this effort was just the prologue to YAeira Dating Sim: the Quest
That's kind of an interesting thought, actually. Once Hunger gets too escalated for us to understand what he's doing anymore, we could potentially pivot back to previous taskworlds and see how people are doing?
[X] Do Something Else
-[X] What is the Evening Sky without Stars among it? Something lesser the the Evening Sky with Stars. Lord Hunger will slay the very stars of the Republics realm and add them to his Cloak.
As I've alluded to a few times, before writing A Silververse Story, I was thinking through bits of the story (mostly the first scene) in a highly-self-referential imaginary manner before going off to bed. If I could, I'd directly paste such an imagination in here- they have a certain feel to them I'd like to replicate- but of course, I cannot. Here is an attempted recreation and expansion of one such, in the vein of Ilbgar's "I have everything"s and also the vein of half-asleep musings. here is...
(a Si|veRVe)(̅Se S4OR𝓨𛲕 not to be confused with A Silververse Story, which is, insofar as is possible, an internally consistent story about the Games in Silver. a Si|veRVe)(̅Se S4OR𝓨𛲕 , on the other hand, is a representation of Joe from A Silververse Story having a dream about the games in silver, possibly while on the drugs, and definitely while imagining it as stupidly easy.)
Joe blinked. oh, I'm in the silververse. There was a mind in void/ there was the beginnings of time. hm, that or I'm hallucinating. in falling, it rose high / and for creation it did cry. that or that or I'm imagining myself being in silververse. there was a game in silver / there was the beginning of man. Isn't that poem out of order? score 1 for hallucination, then. Arcadia starts talking. Well, more like Arcadia starts laughing, then abruptly stops and starts talking about beamish boys and girls. Joe interrupts her. "Are you Arcadia?" "who else could I possibly be?" "My hallucination can you wait a second?" "what?" "Well, you see, I want to check if I'm hallucinating." "You're not hallucinating." "To be fair, that's exactly what my hallucinations would say." "we-Wait, actually, that probably isn't what my hallucinations would say, mine would probably acknowledge that I'm probably hallucinating and keep proclaiming their things anyway. So that's score one for you not being my hallucination, but on the other hand you could be a hallucination which is very supposed to not be my hallucination." "so-" "this'll be just a few seconds"
Joe closes his eyes and ignores Arcadia. hey, me, if this is a imagining scenario could you give me a sign, like an orb of red entropy or something?
Joe opens his eyes, observes nothing, and decides to reword his question. is this a me writing me thing, if so please make an orb of uhhhh green entropy. and there was Green Entropy in front of him. alrighty then. "I finished checking if I was hallucinating you can go on" says Joe, neglecting to mention that he found out this was his own imagination "the rules of the games in silver are you're going to die, if you don't win you suck, you can't win, and humans are great. I hate the last rule." says Arcadia, neglecting to acknowledge the orb of Green entropy that's right there or say most of her shpiel. "sounds great." "Anyway, nine Silver Orbs and all the drawbacks you want." "groovy."
Joe then looks at the list of options. The first one reads: Hallucinationism - 6 orbs.
hallucinationism blurb.
Which is clearly a much shorter description then the actual hallucinationism blurb. Since it doesn't say he has to take it, he doesn't. He then has a heart attack, dies, and respawns.
Reading through the rest of the options, he finds the list is a very reduced version of its original self in terms of prose and quality, but a much improved version in terms of number of options. He has options from every Silververse CYOA, and also Red and Green entropy. For instance, the second option on the list is:
"[ ] the silvered world
you're basically here already feel free to go for a walk for almost literally forever it's like you're always casting really bad fate magic the season man is here too"
Joe looks up from the list to see a man who radiates 'I am jeb trap with a mansion for storing children'. Joe says 'what are you' despite that radiation of what-it-isness, Jeb says 'I'm a typo I'll be gone', Joe says 'what', and a giant 4 appears through an implied wall and says "THE FOURTH WALL LAYS HEAVY ON YOUR MIND.".
Joe moves on to reading the rest of the entries (and this is around when this switches from 'faithful recreation of my sleepy imaginings' to 'extension/story/commentary'.). Most of them are short summaries of the original options, with two exceptions: Red Entropy and Green Entropy.
[] Red Entropy 4 Orms "cool quote"
Red Entropy is corruption stuff it corrupts everything it's just as absolute as Vaal Mithea but it's the opposite of what it should be has two names Skadu Verthae Skadu Duiwole and then there's name 0 which is red entropy you know what this does. [ ] Green Entropy 4 orbs "cool-er quote"
Green Entropy is creation it's also as absolute as blue entropy but it makes things instead of destroys them it's called Skemer Sierflik and per its mortality while it is itself absolute the things it makes not so much.
Joe's like "radilicious, I'm gonna get ALL THREE"
and then he's like "why was my text bold there"
but he has le beeg problim. he only starts with -GASP- 9 Orbs! But hey, he has Step Ahead and All The Money, surely he can think of somethialright pack it up boys he thought of something.
And it's a real smart something too. Or stupid. or both. The plan is to get ALL the drawbacks. Who's going to stop him, Arcadia? psht. he can totally... well, he can't actually... do... anything... to her since he has no magics. uh... Well he'll get them all anyway! Yeah! So Joe picks up Stonesnout's condemnation, the drifter's curse, Last Breath of Adonis, The Dreaming Forest, A Twisted Experiment, and uh. and then he runs out of drawbacks, except the dark ones, instant death, and the one that removes insertion choice options. So he does like any reasonable person would do and reaches over to Arcadias desk, grabs the other CYOAs, and tapes them to the first one. Being three times as fast as she expects helps with that. Then, before she can tear them back off, he picks up Indebted I, Indebted II, Dragonhunted, Blackrot, Wanted : Alive, Wanted: Dead, The Last Charge, Jicole, Aurelian Curse, Hot Pursuit, Godslayer, Child of the God that will come, and An Imagined Hell for a total of... 1+1+1+2+3+1+1+2+2+2+3+4+5+1+1+2+3+4=39 more Orbs.
That number would probably be lower if they were being rescaled reasonably or at all but this isn't the time for reasonableness, it's the time for action! or maybe breakdancing! Joe tries breakdancing.
it doesn't do much of anything, so he gets back to Action! with 48 orbs in total, he spends 12 orbs on Blue Green and Red Entropy, 4 Orbs on Diamond Perfection, 4 Orbs on the school of present light, 3 Orbs on Divinity, 1 Orb on the System, 1 Orb doing math, he has 23 Orbs left. He spends 3 Orbs on the Pompadour, 3 Orbs on Suzerain, 3 orbs on Drugs and Alchohol, 1 Orb on the will of alreos, 1 Orb on Lotus Flower, 3 on Coin Forgery, 4 on Surge of Wonder, and that leaves him with 5 Orbs so he rounds it out with The Greatest Promise. Wait, that leaves him without Remade's progress booster, so he adds A Grand Design, gets Remade, then spends the 2 extra Orbs bribing arcadia into ignoring the lack of proper rescaling. Suddenly, with a pop, he arrives in Jicole! he immediately kills the whatever it was with Blue Entropy and reanimates it on his side with Red Entropy. Lotus Flower applied to Remade, overhauling it into a Full step, So he just kinda tells his Blue and Red entropies to find Turenval's current projection and kill it, which might not make Turenval stop but will make a pseudo-Turenval which is on Joes side because that's how the Red Entropy rolls. Then Joe uses the present light to bring himself back in time. He then spends 20 years training which pompadour lets him have the willpower to go through with. Then he does it all again. Of course, he reaches the level cap several times over while doing this, A problem he resolves by creating clones of himself with the Green Entropy and bestowing all his excess power to them before dumping them in the future. Then he trains for 20 more years. Technically all the Splinter-worthy power is localized 20 years in the future, so there's no point splintering him here in the past, oh and of course when the last charge comes he goes riiight back in time after stopping the splintering in its tracks. You might wonder how he stopped it in its tracks. You see, Splintering slows down the more matter, magic, etcetra a universe has. He has the ability to create arbitrarily large and rapidly increasing quantities of matter via a mixture of Green Entropy, Coin Forgery, and Stonesnout's condemnation. He also has boundless magic via Surge of Wonder, or Coin Forgery and Stonesnout's condemnation. and he has boundless etcetra by the power of logic.
Anyway after the 20+20+20 years of training which is 60 years of training which is actually 180 years of training he's finished turning around to face the opposite direction he started, he absorbs the several thousands of copies of himself and powers up by at least 3 orders of magnitude, stops the Dark Ones from splintering everything by bribing them with 3 silver orbs worth of drugs and alcohol and also by dumping quantities of coinage so large they might as well be transfinite, then does that legendary old human move of dabbing and saying 'I won because this dab says I did'.
Everyone is confused by this except elisimor, who he at some point used a trifling quantity of drugs and alcohol on to confuse, and used fate on to make sure the confusion made them Ensilveredly write 'When a guy dumps 100% of the money on the ground and does a dab, he becomes a light one minus value drift'. Elisimor didn't undo that Fate alteration, because they thought the circumstance would never happen. Joe then becomes a light one, making him immune to splintering, and starts styling and memeing on the dark ones while constructing the Games in Bronze, Iron, and Clay simultanously before doing a backflip, killing the rest of Turenval and eating the moon. Except there is no moon because the earth is flat, It's not shaped like a cat, what do you think of that? Joe is about to add some new rules about how Arcadia gets to play and Joe can never die or stop being awesome and add to 'Humanity rules' the words 'Joe also rules but even more so' when he is rudely awoken by another consciousness 'yelling' in his 'ear' "I've figured out how to extrapolate from our current Runes to higher-tier Sorcerous Transformation runes!", rudely reminding him that he is not God and he doesn't get extra free stuff for non-reasons.
if the story wasn't explicitly an in-aSS dream, the blurbs he read for Red and Green entropy would be somewhat different as follows...
[ ] Red Entropy (4 Orbs) - "Ye fallen, rise."
An investiture of the Red Entropy is not a blessing, but a terrible curse. One so afflicted finds their very touch carries with it the wicked Skadu Verthae. In a life of combat this is felt the most dearly, Each broken body and shattered foe rising again as a twisted undead that hungers. Even if one chooses a peaceful life, they will be haunted, their every acquaintance rising when put down, their presence a festering sore in the world itself and doomed in their death to the same fate as all who surround them. Nothing escapes the touch of Corruption, a power which defies ending and beginning in equal measure, and which is beyond both reach and knowledge of the dark beings which shattered the world.
This option is not an investiture of Skadu Duiwole. With this option, you are a beginner-level user of Skadu Verthae. Even this is power enough to bring worlds to heel and raise shattered gods in your service, if you are smart about it. Great Archwizards would preform grand rituals for lesser and temporary applications of this power, if they were but given the opportunity. Be careful with it.
As a, and the sole, Beginner-level user of Skadu Verthae, you can freely shape any extrusion of it into the world. Unlike the Blue Entropy, this requires a constant effort and a modest quantity of micromanaging, as the Red Entropy is corrupt to its core. While the homing capabilities of the Red Entropy are comparable to the Blue Entropy, They are also automatic and only moderately guided by the users intent, homing in on the most powerful targets as opposed to the ones they specifically wish to strike at. To contrast it to the Blue Entropy, a single thin ray-beam of Red Entropy will bypass through a defending Knights shield, irrevocably alter his chest and heart, go out his back,lance through the dozens of other men in his unit and corrupt them, degenerate and bypass the nearby wizards barrier and Corrupt him, then continue twisting and moving along the surface of the planet until all life bears its mark, and perhaps some parts its investiture as well.
For your purposes, all beings reanimated by the Skadu Duiwole are extrusions of it; they can be controlled by your will with a constant effort and influenced with a lesser effort. No target is beyond the reach of the Skadu Duiwole, though it will require training to target beings which do not possess physical avatars of any sort; The resulting Corrupted is equally as powerful as the original, though often in ways more oriented towards slaughter. Uncontrolled Red Entropy is affected by such restrictions to a much lesser degree, but creating such a thing is dangerous.
[ ] Green Entropy (4 Orbs) - "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair."
Green Entropy is, from our perspectives as beings within the Games in Silver, perhaps the purest representation of the world after Splintering. Where Blue and Red Entropy are unstoppable and irrevocable... the products of the Skemer Sierflik can fall, and always do. As a Beginner-level user of the Skemer Sierflik, you can freely create anything you could ever dream. You could build a thousand castles; sculpt a hundred worlds; craft any weapon or shield or tool, with but a mote of Green; power enough to bring worlds into being and create divinity anew. The Green Entropy is absolute, the Utmost incarnation of Creation on this world of ours. But it is not the light of divine judgement, not the shadow of victory or hell. The Skemer Sierflik is the Dusk of Mortals. There are no limits to hold back the work of the Sierflik, no arbitrary barriers like life, no reasonable barriers like requiring comprehension. You can construct a stone without knowing the nature of atomics, and so construct a castle without knowing architecture. But nothing lasts forever, and that which is not nothing will end. The Dark Ones are but the first of the reasons this is true; were they to vanish in an afternoon, still the world would not be eternal. Wood rots. Stone erodes. People die. Meteors fall. Stars collapse. Black holes fade. Even with age vanished, some day some other mortal or chance would strike down the person where they lay. The world is not perfect.
When a worker of the Green Entropy speaks of the mighty to look upon their works and despair, they speak not of magnitude, but of finitude. To see the ruins of Ozmydias is not to despair for his might, but for his fall; that for all he rose high, what came up had to come down. Look upon the endless garden-realms and sculpted terraces and machines of maintenance and magic and war, and despair that someday it will all end. This is a knowledge, a certainty and a burdensome truth all users of Skemer Sierflik hold in their chest, and bury beneath a thousand layers, and never show the world.
But though to use the Green Entropy is ever a reminder that things end, it is also license and chance to make. Things need not be the greatest to be worthy; to see dazzling brilliance for a minute is better then to never see it at all. In the words of Jeff Williams, 'Eternity loves the creations of time'. But then, in those same words, 'though our bodies weak and breakable, the spirit is indomitable'. The Green Entropy cannot accomplish eternity, conjure perfection. But perhaps still it will always live one more day. Or if you hold some other power with which to aid it... Perhaps... you'll be different.
Unimportant note which seems to fit 'round here: Joes memories from real life are a sort of inconsistent mix of things. He knows everything I knew before I started the story; He doesn't know any of the decisions I make about the story outside of his awareness; and his knowledge of Word of Birdsie about the Silververse is kind of a mishmash of him knowing most of the information I learn from them, but not all of it, and not knowing when or whether it came from me asking Birdsie about things.
not acknowledging blackrot, indebted I and II, Wanted: Dead, Wanted: Alive, Aurelian, Hot Pursuit, or Godslayer is intentional. Joe forgets about them in the dream so they do nothing.
3019 Words. Technically this all belongs either after or at the same time as Part 4, but then I almost certainly wouldn't be posting it before the end of the Arete doubling so it comes out now. The most quality part is probably the two blurbs in the spoiler at the bottom of the main spoiler, but I think good chunks of the rest of it are at least moderately amusing.
Are we seriously voting to destroy the ring. God I hate gisena so much all of her major options fill me with rage. Dumping 50 arete into gisena and the only real positive thing is it might personality wipe her. Instead of fun interesting things like more praxis gang you decide to pour 50 precious beautiful arete into the most salt inducing option. You people manage to lower my expectations at every turn, it's actually impressive in a shockingly horrifying way.
[X] Enough Gun
[X] A Hard Counter
In an attempt to have anything fight the tyranny of poor decision making I will vote strategically.
As I've alluded to a few times, before writing A Silververse Story, I was thinking through bits of the story (mostly the first scene) in a highly-self-referential imaginary manner before going off to bed. If I could, I'd directly paste such an imagination in here- they have a certain feel to them I'd like to replicate- but of course, I cannot. Here is an attempted recreation and expansion of one such, in the vein of Ilbgar's "I have everything"s and also the vein of half-asleep musings. here is...
(a Si|veRVe)(̅Se S4OR𝓨𛲕 not to be confused with A Silververse Story, which is, insofar as is possible, an internally consistent story about the Games in Silver. a Si|veRVe)(̅Se S4OR𝓨𛲕 , on the other hand, is a representation of Joe from A Silververse Story having a dream about the games in silver, possibly while on the drugs, and definitely while imagining it as stupidly easy.)
Joe blinked. oh, I'm in the silververse. There was a mind in void/ there was the beginnings of time. hm, that or I'm hallucinating. in falling, it rose high / and for creation it did cry. that or that or I'm imagining myself being in silververse. there was a game in silver / there was the beginning of man. Isn't that poem out of order? score 1 for hallucination, then. Arcadia starts talking. Well, more like Arcadia starts laughing, then abruptly stops and starts talking about beamish boys and girls. Joe interrupts her. "Are you Arcadia?" "who else could I possibly be?" "My hallucination can you wait a second?" "what?" "Well, you see, I want to check if I'm hallucinating." "You're not hallucinating." "To be fair, that's exactly what my hallucinations would say." "we-Wait, actually, that probably isn't what my hallucinations would say, mine would probably acknowledge that I'm probably hallucinating and keep proclaiming their things anyway. So that's score one for you not being my hallucination, but on the other hand you could be a hallucination which is very supposed to not be my hallucination." "so-" "this'll be just a few seconds"
Joe closes his eyes and ignores Arcadia. hey, me, if this is a imagining scenario could you give me a sign, like an orb of red entropy or something?
Joe opens his eyes, observes nothing, and decides to reword his question. is this a me writing me thing, if so please make an orb of uhhhh green entropy. and there was Green Entropy in front of him. alrighty then. "I finished checking if I was hallucinating you can go on" says Joe, neglecting to mention that he found out this was his own imagination "the rules of the games in silver are you're going to die, if you don't win you suck, you can't win, and humans are great. I hate the last rule." says Arcadia, neglecting to acknowledge the orb of Green entropy that's right there or say most of her shpiel. "sounds great." "Anyway, nine Silver Orbs and all the drawbacks you want." "groovy."
Joe then looks at the list of options. The first one reads: Hallucinationism - 6 orbs.
hallucinationism blurb.
Which is clearly a much shorter description then the actual hallucinationism blurb. Since it doesn't say he has to take it, he doesn't. He then has a heart attack, dies, and respawns.
Reading through the rest of the options, he finds the list is a very reduced version of its original self in terms of prose and quality, but a much improved version in terms of number of options. He has options from every Silververse CYOA, and also Red and Green entropy. For instance, the second option on the list is:
"[ ] the silvered world
you're basically here already feel free to go for a walk for almost literally forever it's like you're always casting really bad fate magic the season man is here too"
Joe looks up from the list to see a man who radiates 'I am jeb trap with a mansion for storing children'. Joe says 'what are you' despite that radiation of what-it-isness, Jeb says 'I'm a typo I'll be gone', Joe says 'what', and a giant 4 appears through an implied wall and says "THE FOURTH WALL LAYS HEAVY ON YOUR MIND.".
Joe moves on to reading the rest of the entries (and this is around when this switches from 'faithful recreation of my sleepy imaginings' to 'extension/story/commentary'.). Most of them are short summaries of the original options, with two exceptions: Red Entropy and Green Entropy.
[] Red Entropy 4 Orms "cool quote"
Red Entropy is corruption stuff it corrupts everything it's just as absolute as Vaal Mithea but it's the opposite of what it should be has two names Skadu Verthae Skadu Duiwole and then there's name 0 which is red entropy you know what this does. [ ] Green Entropy 4 orbs "cool-er quote"
Green Entropy is creation it's also as absolute as blue entropy but it makes things instead of destroys them it's called Skemer Sierflik and per its mortality while it is itself absolute the things it makes not so much.
Joe's like "radilicious, I'm gonna get ALL THREE"
and then he's like "why was my text bold there"
but he has le beeg problim. he only starts with -GASP- 9 Orbs! But hey, he has Step Ahead and All The Money, surely he can think of somethialright pack it up boys he thought of something.
And it's a real smart something too. Or stupid. or both. The plan is to get ALL the drawbacks. Who's going to stop him, Arcadia? psht. he can totally... well, he can't actually... do... anything... to her since he has no magics. uh... Well he'll get them all anyway! Yeah! So Joe picks up Stonesnout's condemnation, the drifter's curse, Last Breath of Adonis, The Dreaming Forest, A Twisted Experiment, and uh. and then he runs out of drawbacks, except the dark ones, instant death, and the one that removes insertion choice options. So he does like any reasonable person would do and reaches over to Arcadias desk, grabs the other CYOAs, and tapes them to the first one. Being three times as fast as she expects helps with that. Then, before she can tear them back off, he picks up Indebted I, Indebted II, Dragonhunted, Blackrot, Wanted : Alive, Wanted: Dead, The Last Charge, Jicole, Aurelian Curse, Hot Pursuit, Godslayer, Child of the God that will come, and An Imagined Hell for a total of... 1+1+1+2+3+1+1+2+2+2+3+4+5+1+1+2+3+4=39 more Orbs.
That number would probably be lower if they were being rescaled reasonably or at all but this isn't the time for reasonableness, it's the time for action! or maybe breakdancing! Joe tries breakdancing.
it doesn't do much of anything, so he gets back to Action! with 48 orbs in total, he spends 12 orbs on Blue Green and Red Entropy, 4 Orbs on Diamond Perfection, 4 Orbs on the school of present light, 3 Orbs on Divinity, 1 Orb on the System, 1 Orb doing math, he has 23 Orbs left. He spends 3 Orbs on the Pompadour, 3 Orbs on Suzerain, 3 orbs on Drugs and Alchohol, 1 Orb on the will of alreos, 1 Orb on Lotus Flower, 3 on Coin Forgery, 4 on Surge of Wonder, and that leaves him with 5 Orbs so he rounds it out with The Greatest Promise. Wait, that leaves him without Remade's progress booster, so he adds A Grand Design, gets Remade, then spends the 2 extra Orbs bribing arcadia into ignoring the lack of proper rescaling. Suddenly, with a pop, he arrives in Jicole! he immediately kills the whatever it was with Blue Entropy and reanimates it on his side with Red Entropy. Lotus Flower applied to Remade, overhauling it into a Full step, So he just kinda tells his Blue and Red entropies to find Turenval's current projection and kill it, which might not make Turenval stop but will make a pseudo-Turenval which is on Joes side because that's how the Red Entropy rolls. Then Joe uses the present light to bring himself back in time. He then spends 20 years training which pompadour lets him have the willpower to go through with. Then he does it all again. Of course, he reaches the level cap several times over while doing this, A problem he resolves by creating clones of himself with the Green Entropy and bestowing all his excess power to them before dumping them in the future. Then he trains for 20 more years. Technically all the Splinter-worthy power is localized 20 years in the future, so there's no point splintering him here in the past, oh and of course when the last charge comes he goes riiight back in time after stopping the splintering in its tracks. You might wonder how he stopped it in its tracks. You see, Splintering slows down the more matter, magic, etcetra a universe has. He has the ability to create arbitrarily large and rapidly increasing quantities of matter via a mixture of Green Entropy, Coin Forgery, and Stonesnout's condemnation. He also has boundless magic via Surge of Wonder, or Coin Forgery and Stonesnout's condemnation. and he has boundless etcetra by the power of logic.
Anyway after the 20+20+20 years of training which is 60 years of training which is actually 180 years of training he's finished turning around to face the opposite direction he started, he absorbs the several thousands of copies of himself and powers up by at least 3 orders of magnitude, stops the Dark Ones from splintering everything by bribing them with 3 silver orbs worth of drugs and alcohol and also by dumping quantities of coinage so large they might as well be transfinite, then does that legendary old human move of dabbing and saying 'I won because this dab says I did'.
Everyone is confused by this except elisimor, who he at some point used a trifling quantity of drugs and alcohol on to confuse, and used fate on to make sure the confusion made them Ensilveredly write 'When a guy dumps 100% of the money on the ground and does a dab, he becomes a light one minus value drift'. Elisimor didn't undo that Fate alteration, because they thought the circumstance would never happen. Joe then becomes a light one, making him immune to splintering, and starts styling and memeing on the dark ones while constructing the Games in Bronze, Iron, and Clay simultanously before doing a backflip, killing the rest of Turenval and eating the moon. Except there is no moon because the earth is flat, It's not shaped like a cat, what do you think of that? Joe is about to add some new rules about how Arcadia gets to play and Joe can never die or stop being awesome and add to 'Humanity rules' the words 'Joe also rules but even more so' when he is rudely awoken by another consciousness 'yelling' in his 'ear' "I've figured out how to extrapolate from our current Runes to higher-tier Sorcerous Transformation runes!", rudely reminding him that he is not God and he doesn't get extra free stuff for non-reasons.
if the story wasn't explicitly an in-aSS dream, the blurbs he read for Red and Green entropy would be somewhat different as follows...
[ ] Red Entropy (4 Orbs) - "Ye fallen, rise."
An investiture of the Red Entropy is not a blessing, but a terrible curse. One so afflicted finds their very touch carries with it the wicked Skadu Verthae. In a life of combat this is felt the most dearly, Each broken body and shattered foe rising again as a twisted undead that hungers. Even if one chooses a peaceful life, they will be haunted, their every acquaintance rising when put down, their presence a festering sore in the world itself and doomed in their death to the same fate as all who surround them. Nothing escapes the touch of Corruption, a power which defies ending and beginning in equal measure, and which is beyond both reach and knowledge of the dark beings which shattered the world.
This option is not an investiture of Skadu Duiwole. With this option, you are a beginner-level user of Skadu Verthae. Even this is power enough to bring worlds to heel and raise shattered gods in your service, if you are smart about it. Great Archwizards would preform grand rituals for lesser and temporary applications of this power, if they were but given the opportunity. Be careful with it.
As a, and the sole, Beginner-level user of Skadu Verthae, you can freely shape any extrusion of it into the world. Unlike the Blue Entropy, this requires a constant effort and a modest quantity of micromanaging, as the Red Entropy is corrupt to its core. While the homing capabilities of the Red Entropy are comparable to the Blue Entropy, They are also automatic and only moderately guided by the users intent, homing in on the most powerful targets as opposed to the ones they specifically wish to strike at. To contrast it to the Blue Entropy, a single thin ray-beam of Red Entropy will bypass through a defending Knights shield, irrevocably alter his chest and heart, go out his back,lance through the dozens of other men in his unit and corrupt them, degenerate and bypass the nearby wizards barrier and Corrupt him, then continue twisting and moving along the surface of the planet until all life bears its mark, and perhaps some parts its investiture as well.
For your purposes, all beings reanimated by the Skadu Duiwole are extrusions of it; they can be controlled by your will with a constant effort and influenced with a lesser effort. No target is beyond the reach of the Skadu Duiwole, though it will require training to target beings which do not possess physical avatars of any sort; The resulting Corrupted is equally as powerful as the original, though often in ways more oriented towards slaughter. Uncontrolled Red Entropy is affected by such restrictions to a much lesser degree, but creating such a thing is dangerous.
[ ] Green Entropy (4 Orbs) - "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair."
Green Entropy is, from our perspectives as beings within the Games in Silver, perhaps the purest representation of the world after Splintering. Where Blue and Red Entropy are unstoppable and irrevocable... the products of the Skemer Sierflik can fall, and always do. As a Beginner-level user of the Skemer Sierflik, you can freely create anything you could ever dream. You could build a thousand castles; sculpt a hundred worlds; craft any weapon or shield or tool, with but a mote of Green; power enough to bring worlds into being and create divinity anew. The Green Entropy is absolute, the Utmost incarnation of Creation on this world of ours. But it is not the light of divine judgement, not the shadow of victory or hell. The Skemer Sierflik is the Dusk of Mortals. There are no limits to hold back the work of the Sierflik, no arbitrary barriers like life, no reasonable barriers like requiring comprehension. You can construct a stone without knowing the nature of atomics, and so construct a castle without knowing architecture. But nothing lasts forever, and that which is not nothing will end. The Dark Ones are but the first of the reasons this is true; were they to vanish in an afternoon, still the world would not be eternal. Wood rots. Stone erodes. People die. Meteors fall. Stars collapse. Black holes fade. Even with age vanished, some day some other mortal or chance would strike down the person where they lay. The world is not perfect.
When a worker of the Green Entropy speaks of the mighty to look upon their works and despair, they speak not of magnitude, but of finitude. To see the ruins of Ozmydias is not to despair for his might, but for his fall; that for all he rose high, what came up had to come down. Look upon the endless garden-realms and sculpted terraces and machines of maintenance and magic and war, and despair that someday it will all end. This is a knowledge, a certainty and a burdensome truth all users of Skemer Sierflik hold in their chest, and bury beneath a thousand layers, and never show the world.
But though to use the Green Entropy is ever a reminder that things end, it is also license and chance to make. Things need not be the greatest to be worthy; to see dazzling brilliance for a minute is better then to never see it at all. In the words of Jeff Williams, 'Eternity loves the creations of time'. But then, in those same words, 'though our bodies weak and breakable, the spirit is indomitable'. The Green Entropy cannot accomplish eternity, conjure perfection. But perhaps still it will always live one more day. Or if you hold some other power with which to aid it... Perhaps... you'll be different.
Unimportant note which seems to fit 'round here: Joes memories from real life are a sort of inconsistent mix of things. He knows everything I knew before I started the story; He doesn't know any of the decisions I make about the story outside of his awareness; and his knowledge of Word of Birdsie about the Silververse is kind of a mishmash of him knowing most of the information I learn from them, but not all of it, and not knowing when or whether it came from me asking Birdsie about things.
not acknowledging blackrot, indebted I and II, Wanted: Dead, Wanted: Alive, Aurelian, Hot Pursuit, or Godslayer is intentional. Joe forgets about them in the dream so they do nothing.
3019 Words. Technically this all belongs either after or at the same time as Part 4, but then I almost certainly wouldn't be posting it before the end of the Arete doubling so it comes out now. The most quality part is probably the two blurbs in the spoiler at the bottom of the main spoiler, but I think good chunks of the rest of it are at least moderately amusing.
Never have I been so offended by a hilarious complaint I agree with completely.
In all seriousness, that was funny. Looking forward to your next (actual) part. Work on my own Magic Savant Part Four has begun as well.
On that note, Omake idea. Dien is probably self-aware enough to know his biases would keep him from coming up with some ideas. That's likely at least part of the point of the Makers. So, what are the odds he trawls the Internet/Extranet looking at different Orcs across fiction? There are, of course, DnD Orcs, then there's World of Warcraft, and who could forget Warhammer's iteration? 40K might interest him the most, given they share a propensity for warcrimes on a galactic scale, and also they seem to have the closest to his own mentality, to the point they don't even really do resentment as an emotion or cultural concept because they subscribe to Might Makes Right so completely that they legitimately believe stronger Orks can kick around who they want, when they want, and neither side will object if the roles get reversed as long as it's an Ork doing it.
I wonder if the Heroes were the Makers pulling an Old Ones. Everything was on fire, so they decided the only way to stop it was to screw up equally badly and hope the screw-ups canceled each other out.
