Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover
- Location
- Laniakea
Integrity is a passive thing, not an activated skill like Dodge or Larceny or Socialize. I mean yeah, it can be trained and/or learned, but once you have it, you have it.
The physical counterpart to Integrity is Resistance. You don't just decide to "activate" Resistance when you take a hit or happen to drink poison (or alcohol, as the example in 2e rulebook), it's just part of your body. Your superhuman immune system will automatically kill diseases without you needing to turn on anything. Once it is obtained, it becomes a part of you.
My understanding is that it works the same way for Integrity. Unless the QM says otherwise, my interpretation is that Integrity involves "toughening up" a person's actual core identity in the same way Resistance apparently permanently enhances the immune system and liver to make one impervious to getting drunk or sick.
Tell me it's not that opera singer and the man playing the piano in the back of the Velvet Room.
I feel like there's no clear "right choice" at the moment.
Amu doesn't actually know what she's going to do with that Shadow. Maybe she's going to absorb it somehow, or she'll just get it to follow her around like she's the pied piper until she can "fix it".
In the former case, there's likely going to be side effects, no telling what those would be. In the latter case, the next shadow is probably going to do the same thing and the next, and then by the time we run into Yui's Shadow Self, we'll have an army of lesser Shadows trailing behind us. One wrong move after that and that army could swarm us like a plague.
If Utau wrenches Amu away, that Shadow is probably going to get aggressive and attack and then we'll be fighting through Shadows the whole way up. Might piss off Yui's Shadow Self at the same time too.
The most benign solution would be if Amu is able to "fix" the Shadow before triggering any hostilities and either recruit it or dismiss it without absorbing it, but that's contingent on a whole lot of unknowns - assuming such a thing is possible at all.
@Baughn - What are the chances that Su could fix it like she did with Nikaido's Heart's Egg?
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Subzero. In theory it's inside Su's themes, but in practice Amu feels that—unless she does something she has no idea how to do—if she pulled Su to the surface, or Ran or Dia for that matter, it'd either run away or attack her.
- Location
- Laniakea
Yeah, I got that impression too.
The thing wants Amu's base self, doesn't want her Charas. Would probably be hostile to any of them the way Shadows in P4 tend to eat people that come into the cognitive world. Iru is probably right to be scared.
- Location
- Laniakea
Utau has 3 dots in Empathy as well.
Is it possible for her to use Empathy + Lightsmithing to copy what Amu is currently feeling and project it out to draw the Shadow's attention onto herself to keep it from noticing Amu loading Su?
Or would using that kind of Psionics also trigger fight-or-flight?
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
It trails off with a leeway of about a dot. However, I think I can confirm that much by now: Overgrowth reflects how much cognitive growth the wielder has, above and beyond what is needed to implement their conscious mind. It is, specifically, the part of the user's mind that's dedicated to pushing their will on reality—by means other than muscles and limbs.
As such, it is essentially a strength stat. There's no specific upper limit on psionic skill based on overgrowth, but no amount of skill will let you lift a helicopter if you have the strength of a small child. As the psionic skill stats are a combination of skill, dexterity and ability to project force, the skill stat is allowed to exceed the overgrowth stat at the cost of the wielder not actually getting a boost to maximum power. Also, doing so allows you to mentally-abrade yourself by exceeding your limits through willpower, though that's more likely to trigger growth than anything else.
The Overgrowth stat is also a HP stat.
I'll start writing out a proper ruleset for you later.
Sadly, she is.
It's disjunctive, not conjunctive. The fox was looking* for a part of Amu which isn't her charas, isn't internal—so not simply skillsets for memory retrieval, etc, which aren't considered personality—and which are specifically Amu. As in the personality calling itself Amu, which is generally in charge of her body and so forth. This describes a fair bit of her mind, but not most of it.
*: Though this implies too much volition. It's far too broken to be doing anything; its actions are closer to a boulder rolling down a hill than a hiker walking down it.
It emerged from rampant speculation between @Nero200 and myself on how to make full sense of Shugo Chara. In the manga, of course, it's quite a lot subtler; this happened during the fusion with Persona/SMT, when I asked myself-
Oh, but that would be telling.
In theory, though you'd be pushing the limits of human knowledge. Might not be entirely safe. If you want to go that path, I'd recommend starting by eating this fox.
It does, actually. It's just that Utau has several years more experience with that than Amu. Plus, Eru and Iru never got merged into Utau in the first place; her only strain is from keeping them in existence.
To state the obvious, 'identity' may have relatively little to do with how a mind is mechanically constructed.
Let alone when the construction is distinctly nonstandard, like for Amu.
That is approximately correct, though there's more to it than that; see above.
Amu is the only one here it isn't automatically hostile to.
See above...
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I'm kind of confused what this means, a core for what? The best to achieve for what? I really don't know what Amu is up to here. What is this vague/nebulous? unspoken goal she's working towards here.
- Location
- Laniakea
I assume the same thing is going to apply to Ami and Hikaru when they arrive. Well, I guess Ami might have a chance as not riling them up since she's apparently so similar to Amu.
But Hikaru is probably going to send them all apeshit the moment he shows.
Amu is kinda high on fog at the moment.
My guess is that these lesser Shadows count as parts of the fog, because the whole fog area is Yui's cognitive domain - everything in it, including the fog, is generated by her thoughts and emotions. Lesser Shadows are slightly more coherent formations than fog, they are "dense" enough to be considered pebbles, but not large rocks. The "core" is probably Yui's Shadow Self, the thickest clump of cognitive mass in the whole domain. Guessing Amu's own potential "core" would be her base self (apparently her Shadow Self), the thickest cognitive mass of her own that she has, compared to her Charas anyway.
That's assuming she's not just completely drunk from too much fog and that she's not just thinking complete nonsense.
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Yeah, I had those branches of thought as well, aside of the being a bit out of her mind right now I guess... But then it still doesn't make sense to me. Why talk about it like it would be the best she could achieve? For what?
Strange...
- Location
- Laniakea
Hotsuin seems to have thought Amu might have been possessed by her Shadow Self too, back when he met Miki.
Shadow Selves usually tend to be psychotic, murderous and insane.
If Amu isn't a Velvet Room Attendant or the like, her base self is probably akin to some sort of benign human-like Shadow akin to Teddie, who was also not murderous and insane and actually pretty friendly. Shadows are usually OK with other Shadows, which is probably why these ones are OK with Amu's base self, yet would sink their teeth into her the moment she swapped for Ran or Su instead.
Honestly, I'm feeling like the best course of action is just to lead the Shadow (and others) along like a pied piper and pray Hikaru and Ami don't send them into a frenzy when they show up, until we reach Yui's Shadow Self.
There will probably be near zero chance of avoiding hostilities at that point as I doubt the Shadow Self will be anything close to reasonable, but I'm hoping that at that point, Amu can also just use Su to do one huge Remake Honey boosted by assist from her whole party to "repair" Yui's Shadow Self and all of the lesser Shadows at once.
Considering that the problem with Amu's TK right now is control, rather than power, it sounds like TK might be comparatively easy to raise to 4, compared to her other psi skills. We'd be working on control, rather than trying to push for power, so Overgrowth would be less of an issue.
I wonder what sort of power requirements would be involved in pushing skills like Dreamwalking.
...is this "growth" exponential too? Would an Overgrowth 10 Amu be as "big" as 10 million regular people put together?
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
The base of the exponential isn't that high. But a hundred thousand or so, sure.
Consider, however, how this would interact with her integrity rating. Which maxes out at five, with up to three specialties—and the only valid specialties here would be "when confronting a hurt child" or similar; highly situational.
Bingo.
I led you on a merry chase, it seems. Amu gets a 1 XP bonus for figuring this out.
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Hey, good job tinfoil-hat guy. You got it right.
With her power exceeding her control that much, she might be at risk of becoming more "boss monster" than "person".
Huh. For a while, my primary hypothesis about base Amu has been that Amu's unusual development has made her Shadow a larger and larger fraction of her base self, especially with so much of the rest of her mind seeming to split off into separate components. I didn't guess at base Amu just being a Shadow outright, though.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
It becomes a question of definitions.
The shadow and the persona are two components of a functioning mind, according to Jung at least, but they're far from the only components. The shadows we see in the game are, generally, just the shadow — devoid of the other mind-parts that form a functioning person.
Amu isn't missing those, so she isn't a shadow in that sense. Hell, at this stage she isn't even missing her persona(s). They just aren't how she faces the world.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
In all fairness, that's happened several times in her unwritten backstory. As you can see by this point, it isn't normally fatal.
Even if your mind isn't fully integrated, it still isn't likely to harm other parts of itself. Not that schizophrenia is all that great either, but for kids her age it's almost standard.
Aka: Charas or something probably.
She's just powerful enough it manifests externally instead of staying in her head.
[X] "Trust me."
I'm way too curious about whatever this is.
I'm way too curious about whatever this is.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/Ey/Em
[X] "Amu, stop. Let's think this through. Back home."
Throwing that there more because I feel like I should vote than because I have a strong preference for it, but what I'd really like to do is go back to Ami's gift to Amu. I skipped most of the discussion in catching up from where I somehow stopped in the single-digit pages, but did anyone else get "Oramus presenting Luna" vibes from the shard of Moonlight and Murder?
In other news,
I sincerely doubt you're introducing yet another crossover property with fundamentally different metaphysics, but this reminds me of the In Nomine TTRPG. IN makes heavy use of music and sound terms/metaphors; the universe as a whole is called the Symphony, and doing almost anything supernatural in the Corporeal realm (including just "damaging something native to the Corporeal without pretending hard enough that you're a Mortal", for supernatural beings) creates Disturbance that is audible to anyone with Symphonic Awareness.
Throwing that there more because I feel like I should vote than because I have a strong preference for it, but what I'd really like to do is go back to Ami's gift to Amu. I skipped most of the discussion in catching up from where I somehow stopped in the single-digit pages, but did anyone else get "Oramus presenting Luna" vibes from the shard of Moonlight and Murder?
In other news,
I sincerely doubt you're introducing yet another crossover property with fundamentally different metaphysics, but this reminds me of the In Nomine TTRPG. IN makes heavy use of music and sound terms/metaphors; the universe as a whole is called the Symphony, and doing almost anything supernatural in the Corporeal realm (including just "damaging something native to the Corporeal without pretending hard enough that you're a Mortal", for supernatural beings) creates Disturbance that is audible to anyone with Symphonic Awareness.
I get the feeling that the terminology is used because Utau's an idol singer, and so that's just how she views this stuff.
Hmm, not sure how that affects the risk assessment though..
Interesting?
???
Couldn't what? Hold her mind together?
It seems Amu is currently inviting the fox over for who knows what, but giving this thing tenancy in Amu's head doesn't seem like a good idea.
[X] "Amu, stop. Let's think this through. Back home."
- [X] Try and bring the Fox with us. If this place is created by Yui, this probably belongs to her, and might help with her dependency on Kana.
-[X] If unsuccessful, attempt to drown out the Fog using low-level Lightsmithing and get Amu to explain what she's actually trying to do.
-[X] In either case, take a photo of the Fox and use Ragged Crossroads on the photo.
Edit: My vote keeps not getting merged with the rest because of my extra writeins :/
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Don't worry about that, I'll merge it in my head.
Yes. Though this is being thought by someone failing to fully hold herself together, so take the implications with some salt.
Yeah, going for it is probably going to work, but also give you an opportunity to show why you are a 'healing-type writer' lol: Pass, thanks.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
If Ami were to actually manifest a Chara, then her Overgrowth stat will drop. Which I think answers the earlier question on how charas factor into mental stability here.
To be honest, with that integrity rating, at her age? It's only a matter of time.
By the way, Hikaru's character sheet will be showing up shortly along with Hikaru and Ami, as Ami knows him well enough to pass that bar. His Overgrowth/Integrity ratings are 5/1. Well, it could be worse.
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