I wonder what would happen in the hypothetical timeline where we decided to wake up after exploring only once every night. Would we get buried in high level cards eventually?
Pros: You would be higher up, capable of consorting with greater powers of the dream, more quickly.
Cons: You would be higher up, capable of being consorted with by greater powers of the dream, more quickly.
[X] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma. You may, if you choose, immediately abandon your Aspiration and gain a new one associated with the Ace of Swords. If you do, gain one Supernal Force.
-[X] No change to Aspiration
[X] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma. You may, if you choose, immediately abandon your Aspiration and gain a new one associated with the Ace of Swords. If you do, gain one Supernal Force.
-[X] I aspire to conquer the dreaming-realm
No. This isn't your path. It was cruel, or kind, or something of the dream to offer you a chance to pick that up again, to remind you that that aspect of yourself still coils within your soul like a sleeping dragon, but... no. You've made your choices. And if you've made your choices, there isn't a reason to stay here and hear of the ways you may yet burn brightly.
While refusing to let the Oracles look at you when they take interest is a very bad idea, there exists a known polite formula for turning down their visions. You are very glad you took the time to learn it -- or, at least, learn it well enough that any mistakes you make probably don't invite disaster. You bow shallowly to the Fotian Oracle, and you speak. "Wise one, I am honored by your attentions. For now, I prefer to look for my path with mortal eyes, and by your leave I will go now to seek my fate on the Ascent."
She regards you for a long moment, her face luminous, and then turns back to watch the fire, now burning down after having flared brilliant. "Walk on, then," she says. "Perhaps one of my sisters will see something you wish to know. Fare you well, Ash." You suppress a shudder -- you never told her your name -- and after another bow, you leave her house as quickly as you politely can. The light is still just as intense outside as it was when you entered, and it takes a moment of squinting before you get your bearings and can figure out which way you were going.
Far above you, the omen vulture screeches. "Oh, don't you start," you mutter, and walk on.
TWO OF WANDS
You walk through the plains for some time. As you do, the sunless sunlight changes in character, becoming warmer -- no brighter, but somehow gentler. Still, it's quite hot now, and you loosen your clothing to make walking through what is increasingly clearly a desert ever so slightly more comfortable. The vegetation grows rarer and rattier while the soil grows redder and tougher. You trudge along, with only flashes of sullen resentment aimed at the vulture high above. Alas that you lack wings. Or a water-bottle.
Something comes into view on the horizon, and, as ever, you're upon it quicker than you feel that you should. It's a large villa -- a white-bricked exterior standing tall and square on the ground -- which has fallen into disrepair, with stones chipped or entirely crumbled away, windows hanging open, and one of the doors in the entryway missing entirely. Through it, you espy a glimpse of a lush and green courtyard, and a tremendous looming boulder within it, and your breath catches as you suddenly recognize where you must be.
Long ago, even as these things are measured, there was an occultist who failed in the Ascent but, rather than give up on wise-dreaming or forsaking the hidden arts, built a house in the dreaming-realm. There, he sought to give shelter to fellow Aspirants from the harshness of the dream, and provide aid to them on their journeys, and for that purpose he erected a great stone and laid an enchantment on it, and that stone has persisted even long after his death and the slow disintegration of his home. Angelo's Rock (for Angelo was his name, or became it) is covered in messages that visitors have carved into it, over the years. Most of them, upon examination, will be incomprehensible scrawls. But one message will impress itself upon the visitor's eyes like a neon sign, as clear and legible as their own name. It will be a piece of advice that they desperately need to hear, or a secret that is crucial to their progress. Such is the nature of the working he made.
It is considered very wicked and rude, in the loose fraternity of occultists, to visit Angelo's Rock without carving your own message into it. Some future dreamer will have need of your words. But there is nothing compelling you to visit, if you would rather set your face back to the horizon.
[] Take a breath, and move on: Gain this card as an Aura.
[] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma. You may choose one Minor Arcanum in the Ascent Deck to become Lost.
-[] Discard nothing
-[] Write-in a Minor Arcanum card from the Ascent Deck
[][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
[][ASCENT] Wake up, ending the Night.
Decks and Resources: Character Sheet Night-specific information: 3/max 6 Explorations, Swords Aura
You can thindeck if you want to. You can leave those cards behind.
The Minor Arcana are any suited cards; this includes court cards, not just number cards. So it's any card in your Ascent Deck other than the Empress, the Emperor, or the Star.
Reminder that the current state of the Ascent Deck is always available on your character sheet.
I think it's only polite to leave something. If they're all seers maybe we should discard one of the sevens for a suit we're not interested in? Thinning the deck also makes us more likely to find a trump.
Looking at Redshirt's helpfully compiled table, I doubt we will want such a thing given our Aspiration and characterisation, but someone else might want it in the future?
[X] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma. You may choose one Minor Arcanum in the Ascent Deck to become Lost.
-[X] 4 of Swords
Now that we've seen that the Threes are indeed all creatures, I feel pretty confident in saying that the 4 of Swords is going to be some form of "gallery" tied to the aspirants ambitions and worldly power - which we've pretty firmly decided to reject with our last choice. I'm happy to give it up.
I think I would rather toss a 3 (probably another vulture) or a 2 (number seems to roughly correlate to how useful they are).
A gallery (4) of swords would most likely either mean confronting and leaving our old waking world ambitions behind or getting to pick from a collection of powerful enchanted items. Both of those sound awesome to me.
Alright, since adding this card to our Pneuma seems like it would be cool, it'll be best to talk about what we know and what we can guess about the Minor Arcana so we know what to discard.
Based on what pickle said at the end of our first night and based on the two Threes and two Fives we've seen, it seems that the number of a Minor Arcana determines it's mechanics and that the other suits "mirror" the same mechanics. It also seems that the mirroring is likely to be narrative, but I would be a bit wary about generalizing from what we've seen: in this post Redshirt guessed that Fives are Shrines and Threes are omens, but based on the two threes we've seen it might be more accurate to say that Threes are "persistent magical creatures that follow you unless you chase them away". The omen vulture had a propechy attached to it, but the Tragoudia is just a little song-y dude, it has no ominous implications at all. So I don't know if it's correct to say that the Four of Swords is a gallery - it's probably something kind of like that, but what 'kind of like that' means is anyone's guess.
So here are some thoughts about the mechanics and themes of the Minor Arcana.
Face cards are other occultists - this isn't a guess, we were told this in the mechanics post. Meeting people is cool, so I'd like to keep them. Also, mechanically face cards seem really good - they always give resources when interacted with, and so far they appear to be the only cards that can be taken to the Pneuma without expanding Willpower (if you have an appropriate resource). Keep them at all cost.
We've seen three Swords and three Cups, compared to one Wands and one Pentacles, so in the interest of balance it might make sense to discard a Cups or Swords card. Cups seem to be themed around connections and Swords seem to be themed around...ambition? Doing things? I think I would prefer to lose a Swords card, considering Ash's characther.
We haven't seen a Six yet, so I would rather not discard any Six.
Threes are the only cards we've seen that can't be passed on for an Aura - you have to expand any one Supernal Resource to do that, otherwise you must spend one Willpower and have a creature follow you. Those are also a strong candidate for discarding, but my issue here is that after the Three of Pentacles I'm not entirely sure they are always so negative. Maybe we actually want the Three of Wands or the Three of Cups following us around? Who knows.
Taken together that leaves the Two and Four of Swords, and the Threes. The Two of Wands seems like a pretty neat card, while the Four of Cups had the whole betting mechanics thing that I wasn't a huge fan of, and narritively something like the Four of Cups but themed around Swords seems like the sort of thing we're likely to pass on anyway, so yeah this was all to say that I'll join the bandwagon and discard the Four of Swords, but I'll also throw in an approval vote for discarding the Threes and possibly avoiding another persistent follower.
[X] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma. You may choose one Minor Arcanum in the Ascent Deck to become Lost.
-[X] 4 of Swords
[X] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma. You may choose one Minor Arcanum in the Ascent Deck to become Lost.
-[X] 3 of Cups
[X] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma. You may choose one Minor Arcanum in the Ascent Deck to become Lost.
-[X] 3 of Wands
[X][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
As an added bonus, if the mechanics of Four cards really are all identical then thinning our Ascent deck of Two, Threes, Fours, and Fives increases our odds of winning the bets that Four cards offer.
[X] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma. You may choose one Minor Arcanum in the Ascent Deck to become Lost.
-[X] 4 of Swords
[X][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
[X] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma. You may choose one Minor Arcanum in the Ascent Deck to become Lost.
-[X] 4 of Swords
[X] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma. You may choose one Minor Arcanum in the Ascent Deck to become Lost.
-[X] 3 of Cups
[X] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma. You may choose one Minor Arcanum in the Ascent Deck to become Lost.
-[X] 3 of Wands
[*] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma. You may choose one Minor Arcanum in the Ascent Deck to become Lost.
-[*] Four of Swords
[*][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
You enter the once-home of Angelo, walking through the already half-open door so as not to add further wear to the crumbling desert villa. The courtyard is magnificent: somehow, the water features the courtyard was built around are still working, whether through magic or cunningly-built wells and siphons you know not. And so the courtyard is lush, despite the desolate environs and the wear of years upon the stones: ringing around the perimeter are trees and vines and flowers, and while the heat is only somewhat insulated by the shade the inner walls provide, the moisture in the air does much to make it less oppressive. Insects flit and drone among the vegetation, somehow harmonizing with the ever-present distant sound of the Tragoudion. You wonder what this place was like when it was in its heyday. You wish you could stay here as the occultists of old did, studying and preparing and fraternizing.
But of course, you can't. The great stone in the center of the courtyard testifies to that. For centuries (millennia?) wise-dreamers have come here, seeking aid and leaving in trade some of their own, all in the name of the Ascent. You cannot be content and yet climb. To stay here is to undermine the very thing that brought you here.
It's easier now, than it must have been once, when this place was populated and furnished and tempting. But you remind yourself of the prize that is far, far greater than mere rest amidst beauty, and stride forth to behold Angelo's Rock for yourself.
It's covered in writing, of every writing system you know and several you don't. There are even pictures, clearly depicting something rather than telling it, and you remind yourself that illiterate is not a synonym for unwise. Humans have been visiting the dream for a long time, and even in the time since Angelo not all of them received their learning from books. It is all nonsense to you, of course; such is the magic of Angelo's Rock. Even the things your eyes tell you are in languages you know don't make their way to your mind. If it's not for you, it's not for you. You circle around it, looking carefully high and low, hoisting yourself higher to examine the upper faces of it.
Many people have come here, it seems. You're standing atop many shoulders, to be here.
Finally, you find your advice. It's in an arcing and looping script you don't recognize but suspect might be from India, painted neatly in white (and somehow having resisted the wear that befell the house) on the underside of a jutting corner, about four and a half feet off the ground. You can't read it at all, but you understand its meaning without effort, which is a bizarre feeling. "In the arena," it says, "the gain of the victor cannot equal the deprivation of the defeated."
...yeah. You knew that, obviously, but you hadn't thought of it like that. Win or die is dramatic, but winning is less good than dying is bad. You enjoyed your fight with Idra, but you stopped the fight before either of you could get actually injured. You file it away to think over more later.
Now it's your turn. You spend another long while looking for an empty spot to write your own message in, using that time to come up with something of your own. The magic of Angelo's Rock would ensure that your message would be seen by someone who needed it... but does that mean you could write literally anything and it would be useful? Or does it mean that the sort of person who would write something deliberately unhelpful would just never find it in the first place? The ontology of causality makes your head hurt, so you push that away as you claim a spot low to the ground; you have to lie down on your belly to get an angle to write. You hesitate awhile, mulling your potential advice over, and then write, using a fiery cantrip to scorch your words into the stone.
"There is no shame in walking away from that which you cannot bear."
The letters aren't as neat as the advice you were given; fire isn't as good a medium as paint. But it felt right, and you think that's really the thing that matters most, here.
You pull yourself to your feet and, with a last longing circuit around the wild-growing garden, head out the broken door, leaving Angelo's Rock behind.
SIX OF PENTACLES
There's really quite a lot of desert to cross, you think with an envious look upward at the silhouette in the sky. Wings sound really nice right now. But the end is in sight; you see the land grow darker in front of you, which means plants, which means water, which means no more fucking desert.
It was nice for Angelo to build a refuge in the hostile places of the dream, but the downside is that visiting his rock requires going into those places.
Speaking of which: is that another building? You squint at it, altering your course a little to approach. Yeah, that's definitely a building. As you get closer and closer, you see what it is: a big wooden lodge-type building, like the kind used for a cafeteria at sleepaway camp when you were a kid. The sort of place that feels cramped when it's got a few dozen screaming children in it and positively cavernous when it's just adults. You wonder what you'll find there.
A little while later, and you have your answer: maps. You find maps. Star charts, orreries, fantastic compasses, and covering the walls are hundreds of jeweled mosaic-maps. You spend a fascinated few minutes working your way around the hall, the only person there, climbing the scaffolding to see the maps that needed to be placed ten or twenty feet above the floor to fit.
What you have found is, of course, ridiculous. Every occultist knows that the Ascent cannot be mapped. It is different for every person, and its paths change from night to night.
And yet -- this is a station of the Ascent. The navigational equipment all over the place must possess some fundamental truth of your journey, something deeper than the happenstance of the road. If you can see what they really mean... if you can discern how it is that they encompass the dreaming-realm within them... then perhaps you can learn something important about the path that you walk.
[] Take a breath, and move on: Gain this card as an Aura.
[] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[] Write-in what Aura or Supernal resource to expend
[][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
[][ASCENT] Wake up, ending the Night.
Decks and Resources: Character Sheet Night-specific information: 4/max 6 Explorations, Swords Aura
Unfortunately we can't do this all in one vote like we've been doing with other card decisions because the knowledge of what's on the top of the deck would influence what you vote for; no point in paying for the six if the stuff on top is stuff you're happy with.
Consequently, I'm going to keep a close eye on this vote. If there's consensus in favor of the "scry 2" option, I'll close it earlier than I normally would, look at the next two cards, and start a new vote to resolve the effect, in the interest of keeping things moving.
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Swords Aura
How many cards are there currently in the deck, and roughly how common are effects that shuffle the card(s)?
Am thinking that we can track the position of cards we place at the bottom if we are very careful - say to shove a Trump at the bottom if we can't handle it right now
How many cards are there currently in the deck, and roughly how common are effects that shuffle the card(s)?
Am thinking that we can track the position of cards we place at the bottom if we are very careful - say to shove a Trump at the bottom if we can't handle it right now
Recall that your Ascent Deck is public information and available on the Character Sheet; that's why I link it with every post. You have twenty-four cards in the deck right now: you started the night with twenty-nine, have drawn four, and have removed one with the Two.
So far, the effects you have seen that shuffle the deck are the Four and the Five. If you were playing with a real deck, the Two would also shuffle, but since it doesn't involve new information being revealed to you I just resolved it without bothering to shuffle (since it's not a big deal if I catch a glimpse of where the cards are). But also, whenever new cards are added to the deck between Nights, the deck is shuffled.
[X] Take a breath, and move on: Gain this card as an Aura.
Given the nightly shuffling and how we havent seen any truly detrimental cards yet I'd rather not bother then - would the information gained even mean anything to us?
(Though not wanting to potentially waste Auras is a valid reason to do this anyway)
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Swords Aura
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Swords Aura
Hm, okay, quick math. 24 cards in deck. Big question IMO is how many of them we're exceptionally interested in seeing or not seeing. We've managed to hit all of the number cards currently available (speaking of which, @picklepikkl I think the Seven of Swords should be Lost & isn't?) so no extra value in scouting those. We can also at least guess at their basic functions (on the basis that repeated numbers have so far shared mechanics so the rest probably will too).
Twos offer deckthinning as an additional payoff for adding them to the Pneuma. This is not without value but not amazing either. I'd be happy to see one of these but not interested in forcing it, so excluded from both sides of the count.
Threes require expending some sort of resource, either a Supernal or a Willpower, no matter which choice is taken. Spending a Supernal gives us something other cards offer for free while spending a Willpower gives us nothing beyond the base rate of a card for our Pneuma. There are no good deals here, so I would be interested in avoiding the remaining 2 Threes in our deck.
Fours offer a chance at a bonus Supernal in exchange for a risk of going net neutral on Pneuma when spending Willpower. As we churn through the lower-ranked cards in our deck, our chances of success improve; currently, we'd be effectively rolling at 15/24, so a 62.5% chance of winning - not bad, but room for improvement. Notably, putting these cards off for later makes them more likely to be valuable. As such, I'd be interested in avoiding the remaining 2 Fours in our deck, at least for now.
Fives allow spending a same-suit Supernal or Aura to add a Trump to the deck, plus paying the usual Willpower to add the card to our Pneuma. This is in my opinion a good deal, especially if we have access to an Aura to spend; unfortunately, we currently have neither Auras nor Supernals of the appropriate type to pay for either remaining Five in our deck. As such I'd like to avoid both of them for now, that we might encounter them later and actually be able to buy in.
Sixes allow topdeck manipulation, which is nice but falls into a similar category as Twos for me, of "I'm not mad to see it but it's not so good that I want to save it for later," so neutral.
Sevens give a free Aspiration change and associated Supernal when added to the Pneuma, which is a good deal if you actually want it, but Aspirations are important enough that the Supernal really reads as more of a bonus than something to do it for (even if, y'know, we could just switch our Aspiration back the next night...but that's a bit too gamey even for me). That said, as I commented earlier, I'm very curious what a Seven does if we're already aligned with that suit, so I would be specifically interested in seeing the Seven of Wands.
I'd also say that any face card is desireable, as both the ones we've seen so far offered at worst a free Supernal to accompany spending Willpower to add them to our Pneuma (with other options in the case of having a suitable Aura or Supernal available). I'm also personally interested in running our face into at least one Trump just to see what they're like. So that's 6 face cards and 3 Trumps for a total of 10 cards I'd want to see and 6 cards I'd want to avoid - well over half of our 24-card deck, and we get two looks, plus the small but non-zero chance we can set up a deliberate synergy by reordering them to (e.g.) get a suitable Aura before rather than after a chance to spend it. Sounds like a good deal to me!
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Swords Aura
We probably should call it a night after not too much longer, as our Willpower reserves are at 3/4s before this vote and we've still got at least 3 more nights to go at this pace if we want to see the peak of the number cards (let alone any other shenanigans that may ensue). I think we can afford to go a little longer to take advantage of the maps, though (unless we see two cards we don't care about one way or the other, at which point it's added minimal value and we should maybe stop). On which note, actually - @picklepikkl if taking the scry wins then can we defer the "keep going/wake up" vote to coincide with the "top/bottom" vote? Since that way it won't interfere with pacing & will let us make a more informed choice.
(edit: also I wish I'd worked this all out before the last vote so we could've pitched a Three instead of a Four, but oh well, what's done is done and I don't hate the narrative justification for it anyway)
It's not Lost yet because it's currently hanging around as an Aura. It becomes Lost when you spend the Aura, or at the end of the Night when unused Auras all become Lost.
When you've recently set your Aspiration, I don't let you vote to change it at the end of the Day, which is why Day Zero lacked an Aspiration vote but Day One had one. If you use a Seven to swap, the cooldown gets enabled; that said, Sevens let you swap even inside the cooldown, because it's a card mechanic rather than a freeform vote.
So if you hit another Seven and changed up your Aspiration tonight, you couldn't switch until Day Three unless you hit a third Seven tonight or during Night Three.
On which note, actually - @picklepikkl if taking the scry wins then can we defer the "keep going/wake up" vote to coincide with the "top/bottom" vote? Since that way it won't interfere with pacing & will let us make a more informed choice.
(edit: also I wish I'd worked this all out before the last vote so we could've pitched a Three instead of a Four, but oh well, what's done is done and I don't hate the narrative justification for it anyway)
ngl I was expecting the last vote to be a hot dispute between the "threes are pure mechanical taxation, get rid of them" lobby and the "but i wanna catch 'em all" lobby and was surprised when consensus solidified on the Four of Swords so fast. It wasn't a very active vote in any event; I was considering holding it open longer, but there hadn't been a post in twelve hours and I was eager to write.
So having now seen all 6 available number cards and the two types of face cards (in ten draws with only two repetitions! seems pretty lucky). If mechanics are indeed determined by number then we have a pretty good idea what the rest of the deck looks like, which means that this is a pretty good time to scry on our deck - we actually know enough to make good use of this ability.
Regarding the question of expanding our Swords Aura, judging by what we've seen opportunities to use Auras are pretty rare: the only Minor Arcana we saw that even had the option to use Auras are Fives (which required the Aura or Supernal resource of the suit of that card) and face cards (which had an option requiring the Aura or resource of a different suit), and now also Sixes (which require any one aura). We've already seen the Five of Swords, and we've already seen a face card that required Aura of Swords or Supernal Force (Idra). If everything is nice and symmetric there'll be two face cards requiring the resources of each suit, so there may well be only one Minor Arcana card in our current ascent deck that requires an Aura of Swords specifically (one of the non-Swords face cards). And I guess maybe some Trumps can use an Aura of Swords, The Emperor was one of the cards we could've added to our deck with the Five of Swords so maybe it's associated with that suit in some way. With two cards at most left for the night I don't fancy our odds of getting a chance to use that aura, so sure let's spend it now.
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Swords Aura
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Swords Aura
Adhoc vote count started by picklepikkl on Apr 3, 2024 at 6:19 AM, finished with 9 posts and 6 votes.
[X] Spend 1 Willpower and one Supernal resource or Aura of any suit: Add this card to your Pneuma. Look at the top two cards of the Ascent Deck; you may put either or both of them on the top or bottom of the deck in the order of your choice.
-[X] Swords Aura
Well, the vote is pretty one-sided, so in the interest of not holding things up too much, I'm calling it here and opening voting for the Six's effect, which will have a normal 24 hour voting period.
Your top two cards are:
The Page of Cups
The Five of Wands
[] Write-in an arrangement where either or both are on the top or bottom of the deck. If both go to the top or bottom, make sure their relative order is clear.
[][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
[][ASCENT] Wake up, ending the Night.
Decks and Resources: Character Sheet Night-specific information: 4/max 6 Explorations
Not having even this information is just evil though
