[ ] Wealbierogh
[ ] Fire Magic
[ ] Ring and Rod Magic
[ ] Delphium Inscription
[ ] Steel Magic
[ ] Immortal Steel
[ ] Blank Mask
[ ] Blood Magic

[ ] Blood Scion
[ ] Body
[ ] Heart


Strength ++++++
Agility ++++++++++
Endurance +++++++++
Intelligence +++
Wits +++++
Wisdom +++++
Charisma +++
Manipulation +++
Composure +++++
Willpower ++++++
Luck +++
Protection +++
Heartlessness ++++++++++
Progression +++

Worlds evilest baby. With a ridiculous spread in stats, the only way I could have had more was by taking the August Ring but why would I when I could just make my own? With three points in progression something like that is far from impossible. In fact it's only a matter of time. But that's not where the true power of this build lays. No that's just the cherry on top. The true power is from Immortal Steel and Blood Magic. I'll create an army of loyal mechanical abominations that run on pure molten life force to serve me. There's also the possibility of being able to empower them with Rod and Ring Magic. Depends on how it works but even if I can't do it initially 3 points in progression is a lot. I'm sure I'll figure out a way eventually. Regardless they will raze the land and conquer in my name. Those who resist me will perish and have their life blood extracted for my use, those who surrender… will also probably perish and have their life blood extracted. I will be a fair Tyrant who kills all equally rather than some bigot that spares a select few. The only regret I have is not being able to get Secret Flame but it's not impossible to find the temple where the demon lady got it from. With an entire army under my control it may even be easy…
 
Hunger also has additional Echoes appropriate to nine trips in the Realm of Evening, plus all the stats from Gilded Cage.

Choose one additional Imprisoner's Refinement target:

[ ] Refinement of Battle: The Best Defense - Increases the offensive multiplier by 70%, but reduces the defensive by 30%. Advantageous for Hunger who possesses the Power of Ruin.
This is the option I'd take by default, if the vote was closing right away.

[ ] Refinement of Quickness: Always Forward - Reduces ISH elevation by 30% outside of combat or when fully retreating from conflict, but steadily ramps elevation by up to 2x if necessary to match an opponent still quicker than the Refinement-boosted practitioner.
What is the class of enemy that this ability is designed to combat? It's gotta be a peer-level opponent: someone whose speed is problematic for an ISH 2.5+ Hunger. But, it's also gotta be someone whose initial advantage is less than overwhelming: Hunger needs to survive long enough to "ramp up" the elevation from Attainment of Quickness. Notably, this ramping up will be fully nullified if Hunger decides to disengage from combat.

[ ] Refinement of War: The Iron Fist - Causes the technique to become permanently active, at the cost of a permanent 90% investment of the character's present and future Praxis Endurance, and one half-stage reduction of his mitigation of the Tyrant's Doom. This may cause behavioral changes beyond that of an unmitigated Doom.
Hunger would be left with one tenth of his Praxis Endurance (albeit expanded by an ever-more-powerful Adorie). That's a major consideration given Hunger's newfound Flood of Runes ability.

The existing reduction of Tyrant's Doom is spent on allowing Hunger to obey the Accursed. During the visit in Nilfel, Hunger seemed to enjoy being able to unclench a little bit. We still don't know what Gisena saw in RW that made her decide not to mitigate this Curse. On the other hand, Hunger is currently the top dawg so it might not be such a big deal to reduce his mitigation here.

Permanent 0.7 ISH elevation, combined with Seraph's Favor ensures that Hunger's Might, Agility, Wits, Prowess, Luck, Protection, and Wisdom (Combat) are all operating in the neighborhood of almost ISH 2.0 or maybe even above. Refinement of Quickness was a massive step up over Hunger's peer-level enemies at the time. This would be a dramatic upgrade.


I'm open to arguments otherwise, especially from Rihaku, but 'Always Forward' feels somewhat limited to me. The deciding factor between 'Iron Fist' and 'Best Defense' is how frightened you think we should be of the 'walking wound' in the universe represented by the newest Apocryphal proc.

The newest Apocryphal proc has 9 months plus 9 RoE jaunts worth of juice saved up. I think we need to play as though there are no Whales coming to save us. Aab is confirmed on Discord to be repurposing the Defensive wish - there is no safety net. After giving the Apocryphal effectively an entire year to power up, we should be as cautious as possible. Right now, we have limited information about the Wound, but RoW sure has paved over everything we've faced so far.

The Tyrant mitigation is gonna hurt but right now I've talked myself into
[X] Refinement of War: The Iron Fist


Choose Hunger's Soul Evocation focus:

[ ] The Imprisoner True - The domains of Space and Law hold a special affinity for Hunger, and with their combined powers he has accessed many of the grandest applications of the Seven Seals, alongside universe-spanning control over distance, direction, location, and size. It is child's play for Hunger to reflexively reflect the attacks of his enemies, turn them inside-out, trap them within an infinite oubliette or shrink them to the size of a gluon. Creating pocket dimensions, bestriding the various Realms, harnessing resources from every corner of the universe seen and unseen - and applying his universal dominion throughout. Naturally, the space around Hunger's own person, his place of uttermost power, has become a sanctum nigh-unassailable whose very metaphysics exalt his every effort and oppress those of his enemies. Has great synergy with Adorie, who derives sympathetic potency from her mythic role as the Princess in the Tower. ++Adorie.
We've already got Adorie's 2nd companion EFB (Ascendancy Halo) and aren't guaranteed a second shot at Hail the Queen. However, Adorie's "sympathetic potency" might help to defray the costs of Refinement of War. Adorie is great.

On the other hand, Rihaku said on Discord that Hunger has a unique affinity for Space & Law so he'd make more progress with these domains compared to all the other options. So this may be the most powerful choice within its domain. I certainly like the mention of an area 'whose very metaphysics exalt his every effort and oppress those of his enemies.' That's the buff from Syncretic Foundationalism that applied a buff & debuff combination on anybody who got close to Hunger, written as though it is an entire ontology that Hunger can now impose. Anything that mimics the abilities of OaF3 is worth a very careful consideration before we set it aside.


[ ] The Tree of Liberty - Having been watered with blood aplenty, must now begin the process of healing. Hunger will focus his efforts on the domains of Life and Spirit, allowing him to fully restore the population of the Republic as well as infuse himself with illimitable might and vigor. Conceptual, adaptive, permanently empowering regeneration of the body and soul that makes even the Ring of Blood look laughable; modification and augmentation of the populace to apply Advanced Sublime Fulcrum templates without cost; elevation of existing Armaments to Novakhron's level; replicating and exceeding Dien's array of effects, and more. +Popularity, ++Echo Potency, +Letrizia. Upgrading Versch would give more +Letrizia but restoring the Republic cancels that.
+Letrizia puts her at 10 Relationship +s according to the character sheet, which might give us a chance at SJUC (or something similar, if that blurb has been superseded).

I'm tempted to simply quote this blurb at you. Hunger gains another avenue of scaling, which is perpetually improving the parameters of his body & soul. The Advanced Sublime Fulcrum templates were pretty bonkers - Vitruvian Gisena was one avenue to simply out-smarting Dien altogether. Applying templates to an entire civilization would be fun to read about. It's effectively DIY Indenture Leeway, as it makes the civilians more robust against attacks from the Apocryphal or Indenture.

Nova has been a good boye - duplicating the High-Rank Armament might help to duplicate the kind of results we've seen from the Apocryphal Armament.

We have like 400 Echoes now, so ++Echo Efficiency would be a good immediate powerup.


[ ] The Master of Myths - Focus on broad-spectrum control over reality by improving the domains of Magic and Essence directly. Alongside a comprehensive suite of metamagic effects allowing him to heighten, co-opt, modify or nullify the magics of himself and others, Hunger will also be able to generally empower his other spells to reach a serviceable level of versatility in any Domain. Of course his efficacy in any Domain besides metamagic will be pathetic compared to the focused options here, but nonetheless overwhelming compared to a normal archmage. Also greatly strengthens the Power of Ruin. Synergizes well with the all-domain skill bonus granted by Gisena, and complements Gisena's abilities and identity in general. ++Gisena.
++Gisena puts her at 24 Relationship +s, which is just one away from her second companion EFB.

Strengthening the power of ruin would work well if that's the Praxis option that wins.

I don't actually like this option so I'm reluctant to come up with reasons people might vote for it.
[ ] The Unending Hunger - A Cursebearer has one primary task: the mitigation of his shouldered burdens. Use the domains of Union and Artifice to manifest an even more outrageous version of I'll Form The Head; fusing with Gisena, Verschlengorge, the Forebear's Blade and an upgraded Novakhron to temporarily become a being capable of achieving an additional half-stage of Mitigation to all standard Curses, and an additional quarter-stage to the Apocryphal Curse. This combination of domains also grants the 'Compression' portion of Signature Compression Schema for free, allowing Novakhron to be used as human-sized armor, though without granting it enhanced Attributes in its full-sized incarnation. Hunger may optionally fuse Verschlengorge with Novakhron permanently to gain an even more powerful Implement. +1 Accursed Favor.
Accursed favor is nothing to laugh at.

An extra 1/2 stage will slow the rate at which Hunger is bleeding the Realm of Evening. Decimator is a prime attack vector for Apocryphal to use against the Human Sphere. Bleeding out the power of his Soul Evocation for mitigation is not a long-term solution.

This is good, is what I'm saying.


For now, my vote is
[X] The Imprisoner True
#819 words
 
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[X] Refinement of Battle: The Best Defense
[X] The Unending Hunger


The Accursed said not to fuck with Tyrant, feels like a good idea to do what the Accursed man says. In line with that, Accursed Favor is best stat.
 
[X] The Unending Hunger

I like the idea of more accursed favor, and the domains are versatile enough that it's okay to give up the other options imo.

More mitigation can hopefully give us pseudo-Leeway too, even if it isn't even a full stage's worth.
 
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Unending Hunger pleases me immensively; Unity really is pretty goddamn good.

Overall, Apocryphal mitigation is the only thing that really matters, Armament-Ring-Blade-Gisena is overhelming amount of immediate power that would allow us to survive and prosper from this current proc, and in the long-term, Ring+Blade somewhat adresses theoretical build inefficiency that I was musing about some days ago on discord.

As far Imprisoner Refinement techniques go, I am not quite sure... Well, no, that's not quite right. Iron Fist is an obvious no-brainer that transforms our pointlessly, absurdly immense Praxis endurance into something that actually matters. I just don't really want to empower Tyrant's curse any further. (probably sounds pretty funny, coming from a guy who campaigned for Uttermost back in the day, lol)

Other options are not terrible, but it is hard to compete with this, imo. I guess Tree unlocks SJUC's the value of which is ever-increasing at a rapid pace? 11.75 base rank would be pretty incredible. 12 might actually be enough for 3rd Step, and that could be achievable with picks from this Tribulation and next round of Fault-Defeating gains. Myth and (working toward) Gisena's next Relationship EFB is also of immense potential value, given that she is actually our primary source of mitigation, lol. And ofc The Imprisoner's works toward mitigating the big derp of not having any Indenture mitigation at all.

Lots of stuff this round. I have obvious preferences, but, overall, options are not terrible.
 
One issue that seems to be glossed over despite Hunger himself brining it up is Hunter Sated. During the timeskip we have been forced to dip into finite supply of Realm of Evening Hunger Sated procs to stop Decimation - which, as times goes by, is just not a real strategy. Finding a reliable method of stopping Decimator is absolutely crucial, and we even have one already in Fisher King, but we were incapable of truly activating it as our power is just too immense.

Imprisoner True helps us with mitigation in two ways. First, by having access to more stuff we also gain access to more natural Hunger Sated mitigation. Hunger complained that there are no valid Hunger Sated mitigation targets left within the Human Sphere, but with Space domain we can look outside to find relevant enemies or fishing spots to get the mitigation we need. More importantly, Space gives us opportunity to conquer more stuff, allowing us to match our Grail Keeper range with our Decimator range. Ultimately, our goal is to have Grail Keeper running for years, and Space gives us a headstart in that endeavor.

As such getting Space here is pretty crucial. In truth, I have completely failed to consider this earlier when going over Domains, but with the issue spelled out it would be for the best to take solution we were presented with.
 
[X] The Imprisoner True

[X] Refinement of War: The Iron Fist
 
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What happened to Catherine? I know it's mentioned in the update that her Armament was cut down, so was she cut down with it? Kinda grim for her; she resolves herself to avenge her friend only to unleash a biological monstrosity that causes immense harm to countless people, only for that monster to be killed by the original enemy she sought vengeance against, who is now totally beyond any hope of being harmed by her.

Would have liked to have an insight into what she was thinking throughout the whole situation.
 
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Attramemnar was the one to be cut down, not the Etrynome. Attramemnar was the Imperial Armament, the bearer of Tyrant's doom and chief Armament of Empire. Due to nature of his curse it was impossible for him to accept our rule.

Anyway, another thing to consider with Imprisoner True is sheer utility of ability to go places. Consider this very situation - we have an unknown foe roaming Epistolary Realm. With Space we can move there instantly(or at least with great haste) and learn for ourselves whats going on. With other options, we need to either send agents and risk them killed, sit firm and let threat escalate or go and scout ourselves and leave the Human Sphere undefended while we are on our quest. None of this are really acceptable.

We need that ability to go places. Dien has proven how impotent Hunger us when he can't force an engagement. We also need to work on our Hunger Sated decimation. And on top of just being very powerful, it is an option especially well suited for Hunger himself.

Whats not to like?
 
[X] The Tree of Liberty

Our priority is to be able to use Grail Keeper, so we should take the option that lets us counteract its downsides by personally replacing the drop to fertility.

Also, we can resurrect Attramemnar, the Tyrant Armament, who could not accept us as being more important than its pilot, but without it's previous pilot we can take that role, and it's one of the few Armaments we can synchronize Curses with. This gives us enough Letrizia +s to finally get SJUC, and if we can then get either Sword in The Stone or Regalia of Strife we should have enough Rank to pull off Stage 3 Mitigation through sheer Rank.

Edit: hopefully formatted my vote so that the tally will count it as the same thing now.
 
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Attramemnar was the one to be cut down, not the Etrynome. Attramemnar was the Imperial Armament, the bearer of Tyrant's doom and chief Armament of Empire. Due to nature of his curse it was impossible for him to accept our rule.

Anyway, another thing to consider with Imprisoner True is sheer utility of ability to go places. Consider this very situation - we have an unknown foe roaming Epistolary Realm. With Space we can move there instantly(or at least with great haste) and learn for ourselves whats going on. With other options, we need to either send agents and risk them killed, sit firm and let threat escalate or go and scout ourselves and leave the Human Sphere undefended while we are on our quest. None of this are really acceptable.

We need that ability to go places. Dien has proven how impotent Hunger us when he can't force an engagement. We also need to work on our Hunger Sated decimation. And on top of just being very powerful, it is an option especially well suited for Hunger himself.

Whats not to like?
Ah sound, must have misremembered so. Guess that means she's probably still out there somewhere so. Thanks!
 
Is it alright if I use this post to justify a later version of this build with the Tier I Creator's Blessing of +2 Bronze? That post probably won't reach 500 words, since I've covered most of what I'd discuss for it here.
@Birdsie

I haven't seen any response to this entire post yet, so I'm going to start writing up the versions with Creator's Blessing.

Now, the objectively correct change is to keep all of my previous choices, and spend one of the two extra Bronze on The Raven's Whistle.

[]The Faustian Curse (+8 mundane Bronze)
[]Wheel Of Fortune (-20 mundane Bronze)
-[]The Third Discipline: War Recruitment
-[]Amorphous Blood
[]The Discipline Of Imperial Obeisance (-1 Exalted Gold)
[]The Black Debilitation (+3 Refined Silver)
[]The Discipline Of Blood's Fortitude (-1 Refined Silver)
[]Marevar's Principle (-1 Refined Silver)
[]Amulet Of Arcane Greatness (-1 Refined Silver)
[]Cloak Of The Balanced King (-6 Refined Silver)
[]Creator's Blessing: 500 words (+2 mundane Bronze)
[]The Raven's Whistle (-1 mundane Bronze)

Even if the Whistle can only be used once, I should earn some Bronze quickly from the experience of being in an entirely new world, but more importantly my Refined Silver total is based on my material wealth. I recognize that simply being in a modern world and having access to the amenities I do as an American is actually worth a lot more than it feels like when my only point of comparison is other Americans and some online Europeans/Australians, but even if this counts my family's belongings that I can access rather than what is specifically mine, I'm still only just out of Lower middle class. Even in a mundane medieval world, a single Noble's estate would be worth significantly more than what I have access to, and this being a fantasy medieval world increases that significantly. Even if the conversion of wealth to Silver is an exponential equation, all I need to do is get a single Noble under my Blood Control to give me everything they own, and I should get over a dozen extra Silver coins.

...But if I wanted to do the objectively correct choices, I would never have taken this Wheel Of Fortune result to begin with. So let's go with something with a more synergistic and interesting interaction with my previous Refuscent Disciplines.

Turn the Debilitation into 6 Bronze instead of 3 Silver, and with the two extra from Creator's Blessing, I can turn the Faustian Curse into an Exalted Gold rather than 8 Bronze. I can then spend that Gold on the Cloak, freeing up the 6 Silver I would have spent on it previously, and I've turned my 2 extra Bronze into 3 extra Silver. What is the most interesting addition to my build for 3 Silver? Honestly? Amorphous Countenance.

[]The Faustian Curse (+1 Exalted Gold)
[]The Black Debilitation (+6 mundane Bronze)
[]Creator's Blessing: 500 words (+2 mundane Bronze)
[]Wheel Of Fortune (-20 mundane Bronze)
-[]The Third Discipline: War Recruitment
-[]Amorphous Blood
[]Amorphous Countenance (-3 Refined Silver)
[]The Discipline Of Imperial Obeisance (-1 Exalted Gold)
[]Aura Zero (-1 Refined Silver)
[]Marevar's Principle (-1 Refined Silver)
[]Amulet Of Arcane Greatness (-1 Refined Silver)
[]Cloak Of The Balanced King (-1 Exalted Gold)

Normally this wouldn't be that good, but it's specifically based on the Discipline Amorphous Blood, and I actually have that. What does having both do? I'm not sure, but I expect it to make the upgraded Transhuman Transformation count as a Discipline, which means I can actually train the ability itself better rather than 'just' training how well I apply it, and Imperial Blood boosts it immediately along those same lines. I don't know what that looks like, with how each stage is generally exponentially better, but I expect it to be enough to hold my own in combat with even any notable individual of Fairfax that Obeisance doesn't work on.

Of course, that does leave the possibility of stronger people coming from Albion proper; which is why I replaced Blood's Fortitude with Aura Zero. The basic multiplier from being an initiate isn't too impressive, but I can advance it, it will let me win proper spars to advance via Maervar's much faster than even successfully abusing my Cloak's boost to the point of getting the 1/10000 boost off each victorious round of Rock Paper Scissors (which I do intend to test, though), because each spar is with several hundred peaceful games, so beating out sparring and gaining a few percent off each fight needs a game I can fit multiple hundreds of into less than five minutes.

...It may be a mistake to swap to Aura Zero, as it's entirely possible I could advance Battle Aura from even my inherent incompetence with it simply by using Maervar's against people who know it as one of the most common magical techniques around, but whatever. Outscaling Fairfax will be fairly easy from here, and hopefully Imperial Obeisance will let me stop word from getting out to the new Overlord of Albion in general until I'm ready to take on such heights. Once I've outscaled all local threats in Albion, hunting down morally repugnant people for new Disciplines from each individual will scale me really fast, and while I doubt this build will ever be up to facing Turenval short of Faust allowing me the exploit of using the Cloak and Maervar's on board games with him to exceed his power in a decade and thus start applying it against my new peers of the most powerful people in the local multiverse, it shouldn't take that many years to outscale Melicau.

Edit: broke up the wall of text into the last three paragraphs. Also, Birdsie, if you don't mind I'd love to know what the upgraded version of Amorphous Countenance looks like with Amorphous Blood making it a Discipline for Imperial Blood to improve by a stage.

And I'm going to roll for a potential Wheel Of Fortune for another build, if I decide to do more.
Edit 2: The System. Well, I have a decision to make, and I'm definitely going to try to get at least the Tier I Creator's Blessing for this.
beowolf threw 1 100-faced dice. Reason: Wheel of Fortune Total: 90
90 90
 
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Adhoc vote count started by Rah13 on Jun 12, 2021 at 11:00 AM, finished with 89 posts and 30 votes.
 
So a lot of people seem to be forgetting one important thing, our Geas tasks are orders from the Accursed. Would the -0.5 mitigation from The Iron Fist prevent us from following the Accursed's orders? I'd say it's a strong maybe. It depends on which parts of the baseline mitigation are given away. Maybe it would only make Hunger more unwilling to complete a task rather than outright reject it but even that has major consequences especially when you factor Apoc into the equation. There's also the fact that some people think that Tyrant is fine because we're now the strongest in this universe. Well the thing is we're not always going to be in this universe. We'd have to continuously pull a Seram and grow strong enough to come into the new universe as the strongest being but again, Apocryphal.

Also during the last Accursed visit he specifically warned us about the Tyrant. It's possible that he was referring to this exact scenario and cautioning us on strengthening Tyrant for power. The guy is a reasonably benevolent Tier 3 Omnipotent, I think we should listen to any advice he gives us.
 
Znel will determine your lifepath if you take Body, and will do so with her personal entertainment in mind. Assuming you didn't sacrifice Memories (which it sounds like people are reasonably hesitant to do), they return to you as you grow up, mostly in the form of dreams. Your actual offerings will come to you via auspicious circumstances and events arranged by Znel.
I'm going to conclude that Znel will probably not set things up to allow you to get randomly ganked before her plans can play out, but will probably fuck with you for the lulz and if you pull something really dumb in response you might buy it anyway.
The deciding factor between 'Iron Fist' and 'Best Defense' is how frightened you think we should be of the 'walking wound' in the universe represented by the newest Apocryphal proc.
Mm... Iron Fist makes us stronger, but by nerfing our other Praxis powers and further fucking with our decision-making via empowering the Tyrant's Curse it reduces our flexibility from both a powerset and a decision-making standpoint. With almost no info on what the nature of this threat actually is, I'd be reluctant to assume that Iron Fist will necessarily be the best bet for dealing with it.
 
Consider this very situation - we have an unknown foe roaming Epistolary Realm. With Space we can move there instantly(or at least with great haste) and learn for ourselves whats going on.
We can still use our space domain to travel to the Epistolary Realm if we don't pick Imprisoner True. That our Echoes are able to travel there means doing so ourselves is going to be easy regardless of what we pick.
but by nerfing our other Praxis powers
Unused endurance does absolutely nothing, it's not nerfing anything, so we're better off getting Iron Fist. None of our Praxis techniques use a significant amount of endurance other than war anyways, with Artful Thorn's cost being reduced by Pierce Through and the rest being passives.
 
[X] Refinement of Battle: The Best Defense

[X] The Tree of Liberty


Best defense is just really, really good in general, and none of these have any particular advantage over the others against an infomorph type opponent. Well, maybe Iron Fist would with how broad the enhancements are, but increasing the strength of Tyrant to the point we can't obey our Geas or the Accursed sounds like... a really bad idea. We can't be sure it'll do that, but we also can't be sure it won't. It's phenomenally powerful, but not worth the chance that it'll irrevocably screw us over forever.

Tree of Liberty is, meanwhile, a ridiculously huge boost both for Hunger and his people, and allows our guy to have substantially more people in his territories. Which is especially helpful in that sufficient loss of population may trigger Indenture failure, which would be a rough time.

Between these two options, Hunger capitalizes even further on the Echoes he got access to over the timeskip, even if they may or may not prove meaningless in the face of an opponent that (possibly) doesn't operate on an even remotely physical paradigm. Curious to see how that'll work out - Pierce Through, at the very least, will allow us to hurt it. And of course, Archmage probably has some kind of answer. If there were a focus that would help with this, I would go for it, but I don't see much. Maybe Imprisoner True?
 
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