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What Can SV Teach an Sorcerer in the Mesolithic?

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0. Status, Basics, Summaries, & Tech List
  • Informational
    • 0
    Code: 
                             NOTICES
    Code: 
    Cacophonous Interlude is NOT active
  (Bianca does NOT hear what you write right now)
    Code: 
    Next story update : soon, I hope
Next vote closing : TBD
Progress toward next update : 2,724 words
We're on step 5: reading & composition of in-line replies
Total words in 'what Bianca's been told' notes : 3,119
    Code: 
    Anything I post that's not in vote options, quote boxes,
code blocks or in spoilers may be understood to be said
by Bianca.
    Code: 
    Players do not need to use code blocks or spoilers
outside of cacophonous interludes

If you use code blocks, please limit yourself to 32 lines
and your lines to 57 characters, so that people on mobile
can read them without scrolling within the code block
    Code: 
    You can quote other sources, but I don't want this to 
turn into Plagiarism Quest.

You're not discouraged from using outside reference
material or quoting other sources. When you do, please
cite your sources in spoilers or a code box.

Please do not use Large Language Model assistants like
ChatGPT or similar to compose your effortposts. I mean
for this game to be about communication, not prompt
engineering.

Thank you.


    Check the summaries in this status post and read the latest story post in the Threadmarks to get a rough idea of where things are at.

    If you're not already involved in the game and you want to get right into it without digging through the back catalog, consider doing this:
    1. Read the summaries in this Status Post.
    2. Pull up the latest Threadmark.
    3. Skip to the line that says "B R E A K."
    4. Skim from there to get an idea of what's going on.

    If there's no Closing The Vote post in the Informationals corresponding to the latest Threadmarks, then the game is in a Cacophonous Interlude and Bianca will hear what you post, unless you post inside spoilers or code boxes. The NOTICES portion at the top of this post should also tell you if the game is in a Cacophonous Interlude.

    If the game is not in a Cacophonous Interlude, you can still post. It's just that Bianca can't hear you. You might still want to post so you can coordinate with other players, make suggestions, ask questions, and propose plans. You can compose a message to Bianca all whether or not the game is in a Cacophonous Interlude. And once the game returns to a Cacophonous Interlude, you can vote and/or send a message to Bianca by creating a post in the thread.

    If you want to vote, simply do so as you would in other quests on this board. You may look at other players' votes to see how yours should be formatted. And you may check the tally to see that yours are counted as you intend them. I should find the 'how to vote' general post and link it here, I guess.

    If you want to send a message to Bianca, keep in mind that she is a creature of another time. She may not understand what you mean if you don't take the time to make it clear. This game rewards and demands work from its players. When a player wants to introduce a concept or tool or technology to Bianca, that player will probably need to expend effort to explain it carefully, and take into consideration the limits of her understanding of the world. You might even need to consider her biases and values.

    I think this is similar enough to Graeber's 'interpretive labor' that we can use the term colloquially to describe what is being asked of players. Put yourself in the mind of Bianca and ask yourself how such a person can be made to understand what you want to tell her.

    Bianca has different values than we do. She has different assumptions about the world and objects and forces within it. Her goals may not align directly with number-go-up or color-get-big gaming agendas. But she wants power and will listen most attentively to players that tell her how to get more of or closer to what she wants.

    Keep in mind that you players are not trusted advisors. You're the Astute Cacophony: voices that Bianca mostly can't tell apart from each other.

    If the total amount of player-generated content gets to be more than I can handle either because there are so many players or because player posts get so long, I will set a cap. At this time, I intend that the cap will be some total number of characters, with each player who speaks to Bianca having access to an equal share. Unused share gets divided up among the rest of the players until it runs out. If each player's share seems too small, I will also set a limit on the number of players Bianca will hear in a Cacophonous Interlude. And priority will be assigned based on post order.

    I guess ideally the story doesn't attract so many people who want to guide the uplift that I have to set these limits.

    I do not at this time plan to set a limit on voting players. I don't see how that could get out of hand on a niche quest like this.
    1. I post and Threadmark a story update that has 3 parts:
      • Bianca's responses to player posts made during the last Cacophonous Interlude, followed by 'B R E A K'
      • An update by Bianca following a hiatus of varying length but usually some number of years, covering what she believes is worth mentioning
      • Requests by Bianca for direction on a number of issues, which the players will provide in the form of votes
    2. Following each story update, players' posts are audible to Bianca until voting is closed.
      This is the Cacophonous Interlude.
      • Players may convey any information they can represent in text.
      • No images, sounds, or hyperlinks will get through (this is my limitation, not a limitation of the game, so please do not try to transcend it with clever protocol tricks).
      • Players may use spoilers or code blocks to communicate with me and with each other without doing so in ways Bianca can hear.
    3. When votes are tallied, I collect player posts in an Informational so that it may be known what Bianca heard.
      • Votes are tallied in the conventional fashion. So only votes in the most recent post by each player are counted. [X] marks what the player is voting for. And only effectively identical write-ins accumulate votes.
      • You can vote your own write-in any time you want anyway, of course.
    4. I collect player posts and post them in the vote results for reference. This is the point where what is said in the Cacophonous Interlude is locked in.
    5. I read player posts, take notes, determine what Bianca already thinks she knows, and compose Bianca's in-line replies to those posts that invite replies.
    6. I research player advice, claims, and suggestions, check my notes for precedent, determine what Bianca's right or wrong about, how likely she is to engage with the topic, how likely Blanca's followers are to follow through in the matter, and finally what the result is going to be, later in the narrative.
    7. When the narrative benefits from uncertainty and chance, I devise tests for Bianca or other characters and make those tests using die rolls on a post made just for that purpose.
      • Skill or attribute tests will be made with a largely undocumented homebrew that's mostly the Burning Wheel system, notably including War and Factions from the Burning Wheel Anthology -- which I really, really would have benefitted from the last time around -- on d10s with different 'shade' ranges (see below), no Artha, no Beliefs or Instincts, no Stock-exclusive skills, probably no Emotional Attributes, and clocks from Blades in the Dark because setting automation is fantastic. (The Burning Wheel is a good system and I encourage you to check it out.)
        • I will post the dice, threshold of success, and results of each test before rolling it.
        • Tests may:
          • Be made by rolling one of an entity's attributes against a static target, or may
          • Be made by two entities each rolling one of their attributes where the one with the greater result wins to some degree, and may
          • Have absolute results, or may
          • Have tiered results, and may
          • Result in pyrrhic victories or welcome defeats.
        • The rules being used and followed will be described in each Informational in which tests are made.
        • Normal mortals count 7s and better toward success.
        • Heroic characters and characters who are otherwise innately magical count 6s and better toward success, so long as what they're doing aligns with their heroism or their magical theme.
        • Demigod characters and characters who otherwise possess some spark of divinity count 5s and better toward success, so long as what they're doing aligns with their divine heritage.
        • Gods and count 4s and better toward success, as do their avatars, so long as what the avatar is doing aligns with the god's domains.
        • Gods count 3s and better toward success when what they're going aligns with their domains.
        • 1s and 2s never count toward success.
        • Sorcery, other magic skills, and some magical tools lower the threshold of success by a non-cumulative 1 to a minimum of 3 only when they are or are essential to the skill being tested, not when they help with other skills. Players may note that a god's threshold of success when they are acting within their domain does not improve when they use magic or magical tools.
        • Helping dice provided by magic, magical items, tame (not domesticated) warbeasts larger than hounds, or any incendiary devices more complicated than a burning arrow roll an additional die after each 9 or 10 and keep counting successes. Further 9s & 10s lead to further rolls. Unless the magic, magical item, or incendiary device is the product of an especially refined industry or practice (no exceptions for non-domesticated big warbeasts -- if the animal is dangerous to the enemy it is dangerous to everyone), these same helping dice cancel successes on 1s & 2s and roll another die for each 1 or 2. Additional 1s & 2s cancel additional successes. More 1s, 2s, 9s, or 10s mean more rerolling and more successes or cancelations, but only in the manner of the original die. That is, when a 9 or 10 on a helping die from war elephants provides an additional die and that die rolls a 1 or 2, that doesn't cancel successes or lead to further additional dice.
      • When players expect a test -- for example if they vote for an invasion or to send a diplomat to manipulate a foreign leader -- they might be able to add helping dice to the test by providing Bianca with advice specific to that matter. If the advice is not mistaken or outright bad, there will be at least a chance it will help. Often, decent advice adds dice. Sometimes good advice may outright guarantee success, preventing the test entirely.
      • I'm going to have to choose some kind of accumulation-of-progress-toward-a-goal mechanic that fits the faction clocks from Burning Wheel but I'm not sure about how that's going to work right now. Maybe Conflicts from Mouseguard or Torchbearer?
      • Similarly, since this is an uplift quest and players will often provide incomplete but potentially sufficient information, some kind of test will be needed to see if Bianca and/or her minions are able to fill in the gaps and implement the desired technology. This is probably just going to be some skill test with a high obstacle and not-a-complete-failure thresholds that make the next test easier and whoops-all-on-fire-now thresholds that make the next test harder.
    8. I compose Bianca's post-hiatus update, new questions for vote, and new vote options.
    9. GOTO 1
    Bianca will be the only character the players will directly interact with in this game.

    Bianca is a human-shaped interface in the material world for a powerful soul entity. She's smaller than most of the human and human-like people she's met. And her phenotypic expression is unique from all surviving human-like populations. She looks really old and she'll tell you that she wears it well.

    Bianca has magical abilities related to her original function as a vault guardian for her missing maker. She has other magical abilities related to the hundreds of years she spent traveling the world after she gave up waiting on her maker. As a being of divine heritage, Bianca counts 6s and better as successes on all tests. The nature of her divine heritage means she counts 5s and better as successes if what she's doing is related to getting into god crypts or similar, keeping others from getting into the same, or awakening great soul-things that have been cut off from the material world since the last time magic wasn't forbidden by reality. Other applications exist and haven't appeared in the game.

    Bianca needs to return to the vault that her maker entrusted to her every few years for magical maintenance on her material form. She's pretty sure that if her material form is destroyed without injuring her soul and the stuff in that vault is intact she can rebuild her material 'body.'

    Bianca has claimed to perform Soul Magic, Wayfinding Magic, and Healing Magic. She can also enchant objects under unspecified circumstances.

    Despite sacrificing autonomy to connect with the Astute Cacophony, Bianca values her independence.

    1. Era Choice
    Bianca woke up from a long time when magic didn't work. Afterward, she spent about 900 years in the place where she woke, which the god who made her told her to guard before everyone who couldn't survive without magic went into some kind of hibernation. Then Bianca traveled the world for around another 900 years. She found people who didn't have magic. She didn't find any gods.

    Bianca understands that the players can't tell her about the setting's magical systems. She wants power and wants the players to tell her how to get power in the material world.

    There's stuff in Bianca's Vault that does things she understands, and more that she doesn't.

    Bianca asks the players when the game should start.
    2. Three Quests at the Dawn of the World
    The players choose the Stone Age, but just barely.

    Bianca starts with two magic items: the Red Knife, a very nice Acheulean hand axe enchanted to keep its edge and not break; and the Coat of Two Suns, a shimmery cloak made from the hide of an unspecified magical creature ("swift running beasts that shimmer like water") enchanted to smell good and be soft.

    The players give Bianca a lot of advice. More than one suggest iron, which Bianca says she'll try to get.

    Bianca spends around 400 years getting pottery working, finding iron ore, figuring out iron smelting and fining, making soap, figuring out clay pot distillation of alcohol, obtaining potassium nitrite, and figuring out steel bluing.

    There's a community of fishers in a bay near where she's digging up ore. She pulls them into her shenanigans. The place they live is called Black Hook Bay.

    Bianca enchants the best blued steel 'knife' she made like her Red Knife. It's called the Black Knife now.

    The combination of the pescatarian lure of (mostly) relatively easy meat and the steel tools Bianca has given them and has taught them to make keeps the Black Hook Bay people around longer than the land will endure with grace. They've grown in number and overstayed their time such that they've cleared out medicinal and essential nutrition plants from the area. Also, they lost knowledge of a lot of them.

    (Un?)fortunately, their neighbors are within reach for young people with iron weapons and bright ideas. So raids are solving some problems and creating others.

    Bianca has asked the players which of three tasks she should undertake: very cursed dungeon crawl, suborn a murderous cult trying to summon the kind of god murderous cults summon, or befriend some monsters who aren't finding a place for themselves in a world after they went through some big changes.
    3. Launching the River Warrior's Legend
    Players chose to split Bianca's attention between a main focus on befriending the winged lions with a little side-trip to fuck up something powerful's blood-soaked wake-up call. Bianca does not win the trust of the lions and they leave. Bianca reached out again around 220 years after her last contact.

    Armed with an indicator species and the function of the liver, Bianca decides that The Problem with Black Hook Bay is something in the water downstream from her smelting sites. She tells the people to move and not use the water in certain places and matters improve.

    Bianca invents an alphabet, writes down iron-making instructions, and teaches BHB folk to read. They're a bit excited about being able to write their own names on stuff, but don't use literacy enough to keep it long term

    Bianca loses interest in glassmaking after a series of frustrating explosions but the BHB folk are in love with the stuff and are going to try to figure it out for themselves.

    Those rare magic livers the BHB folk end up with make them resistant to poisons and are there because Bianca was healing that population for generations.

    People the BHB have been stealing from get fed up and follow a Special Kid on a Unicorn to attack the BHB. They get trounced and the BHB gets the Horn of Sheshlan, which has healing powers. They also get a head start on regaining their lost area lore, but kind of fuck that up instead of making progress when they get the chance.

    Bianca goes looking for a place to invent farming and picks some nice floodplains with just one problem: a magical river dolphin that fucks up whatever Bianca doesn't ward the fuck out of every time the river floods. She's picked out a grain to focus on and can grow more than she can harvest alone. But she can't get enough to keep people fed year round. She does bring seed back to BHB at unspecified intervals to get more iron for tools.

    Bianca kind of raised a Heroic River Warrior and needs to give the woman something to focus on.

    Bianca asks the players about handling that very cursed dungeon crawl from last time, the possible murder god's wake-up call that's kind of trying to stop being on hold, that fucking dolphin, and a cache of bog iron up-country that she's been thinking about.

    This list is of things that Bianca has described to exist in the setting independently (or -- later in play -- at least seemingly independently) of actions she has taken based on player advice.
    • Language
    • 'Wolves' (dogs)
    • 'Hide' clothing
    • 'Webs of vegetation' clothing
    • Sharp sticks
    • 'Broken rocks' (knapped stone tools and weapons)
    • 'How to live in the places they go' (local plant, animal, mineral, weather, and geographic lore)
    • 'Brimstone' (elemental sulfur at volcanic sites)
    • Murder
    • 'Dragon Glyphs' (actual ideograms (as opposed to logograms) that are used by or the product of magic)
    • 'Counting by dozens, grosses, great gosses, and so on' (base-12 eunmeration)
      • 'Dragon counting' (base-8)
    • 'Bulbs that grow leaves like a hawk's tail' which nearly all people plant wherever they go
    • Spreading the seeds of every plant they use as they travel
    • 'Don't handle shit, don't eat rotten things, & keep the midden away from living spaces ' (very basic hygiene)
    • Rope
    • Gold, silver, iron, and copper (all very rare)
    • Needles
    • Thread
    • 'Boats' (logs that dream of being as cool as caballito de totora but have a long way to go before they get there)
    • 'Webs' (nets, this time)
    • Resource raiding
    • Poisoning
    • 'Sunstead' (understanding of the seasons sufficient to identify a solstice)
    • Bows and arrows
    • Soft metal seen once that might have been lead
    • "Where beasts' seeds fell outside the womb" (ectopic pregnancies in animals)
    • Bees and honey
    • Toys that spin in the wind
    • 'Stones to weigh down webs' (weighted nets)
    • Buckskin tanning
    • Unicorns, horses, and zebras
      • Unicorns are larger than horses, not as robustly build, and have a magic horn
      • Zebras have family dynamics
      • Stallions do not lead horse herds, they herd from the back
    • Hills and walls of ice in high places and far north and south (Glaciers and polar caps)
    • "The world is round like a perfect river stone"
    • "There is something in the work that brains do with substance that touches the Soul Lands"
    • Bone setters (she says people just figure that shit out all the time)
    • Basket fishing and fish weirs
    • Baskets in general
    • Non-domesticated grains, beans, and nuts
    • River dolphins
    This list is of things that have been described to Bianca. To let me know about something I missed, PM me a link and a searchable keyword from the passage.
    Bianca reports failure
    Bianca reports success - Skill exponent opened (if any)
    • Writing
      • Paper
      • Soot ink
      • Printing press
      • Cypher Wheel
    • Farming
      • Irrigation
      • Evolution
      • Selective breeding
      • Food preservation
    • Disease
      • Sickmakers (pathogens)
        • Wound care - Field Dressing
      • Undersuckling (nutritional deficiency)
      • Slow poisons
      • 'Free problems' 'wardful flesh problems' (immune problems)
      • Cankers (cancer)
      • 'Origin problems' (genetic problems)
    • Lye-making - no Skill opened
    • Soap-making - no Skill opened
    • 'The stain' (alcohol) making - Distiller
    • Clay pots and other shapes - Potter
      • Waterproofing clay with ash - no Skill opened
    • Bricks & mortar - Mason
    • 'Rock-cooking tower' (smelter) - Tree Cutter & Miner (kind of incidentally)
    • 'Air-cooking tower' (blast furnace) - no Skill opened
    • 'Bubbling cooking tower' (finery) - no Skill opened
    • Metal
      • Copper
        • Malachite
        • Chalcocite
      • Tin
        • Cassiterite
        • Bronze
      • Zinc
        • Smithsonite and hemimorphite
        • Brass
      • Iron - Blacksmith
        • Magnetite
        • Hematite
        • 'Firm iron' (steel) - no Skill opened
    • 'Blue-making' (steel bluing corrosion protection) - no Skill opened
    • 'Fat on iron' (steel oiling corrosion protection) - no Skill opened
    • 'Blow-bags (bellows) - no Skill opened
    • 'Charred coals' (charcoal) - no Skill opened
    • 'Biters' (tongs) - no Skill opened
    • 'Burning' (annealing)
    • 'Pot-ash-niter crystals' (potassium nitrate) - Munitions
    • 'Outclappers' (explosives)
    • The value of falsifiable claims (Scientific method)
    • 'Improved midden' (covered latrine) - no Skill opened
    • Long bows - Bowyer
    • Fletched arrows - Fletcher
    • 'Trunk and take' (block and tackle and related compound bow)
    • 'returning doves (homing pigeons)
    • Nose and mouth masks when in the presence of sick people
    • Storm signs
      • Birds fly low
      • Smoke stays low
      • People ache more
      • Pests bites more
      • Smells are stronger
      • Clouds that are tall, fast, or change direction
      • Certain people's headaches
    • Volcanos should show up in lines (plate tectonics)
    • Lighting lure - no Skill opened
    • Bog iron - no Skill opened
    • Boats
      • Dugout boats - Boatwright
      • Second boat fastened to first by stout branches (outrigger) - Carpentry
      • Pitch - Pitch Collector
      • Oars - Wood Carving
      • Sail
      • Seabirds fly away from land in the morning and toward it at night
      • Shallow water reflects more light to the underside of clouds
    • Buildings
      • Cob
      • Start walls below the ground (foundations)
      • Fire in home with smoke pipe (fireplace and chimney)
      • Arches - Architect
      • Concrete
    • 'Breaking rock with outclapping stuff' (blast mining with explosives)
    • Tools
      • 'Shover' (shovel)
      • 'Point' (pick)
      • 'Striker' (hoe)
      • 'Cutter' (chisel)
      • Breaking up rocks with fire
      • Hafting by shrinkage and spike and even glue
    • Agriculture
      • Plow
      • 'Dirt making' (compost) - Farming
        • Basket with layers of green & brown, little water, ready 6 months later
      • Use the seeds of the plants that work best
      • Remove undesired plants
      • Mushroom farming - Farmer
    • Grow branches as forms for clay pipes
    • Hills and ravines against flood rivers (levees and canals)
    • 'Fighters that only fight' (Standing army)
      • People should have a plan and a leader they'll listen to if they want to win combat
      • And they should play at fighting to get better at fighting
      • Murder axes should the lighter so they're faster
    • Glassmaking
    • Glue - Mending
    • Liquor social
    • Hypothermia recovery
    • Math
      • Vertical addition
      • Vertical subtraction
      • Partial product multiplication
      • Long division
    • Body weight poison determinism
    • Saltpans - no Skill opened
    • Phonetic alphabet - Read and Write
     
    Last edited:
  • Informational
    • liberty90 said:
    My greedy instincts of the Black Cat enjoy guiding governance over a particular territory, I'm a possessive creature. As such I'm against hunter-gatherer ways. I feel some distaste about wandering ways of life. My desire is, thus, that Bianca should acquire mortal servants and remain with them around one place.

    It's possible to have people somewhat settled in one place even without plant cultivation; it would probably need to depend on fishing and remain small-scale in nature, until plants could be reliably placed in soil, harvested and stored during all years. I would like to start these ways-of-living-in-one-place sooner rather than later.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I'm not saying we can't settle down eventually. But by starting so early we need not be in a hurry. Our lady can spread her influence among many tribes over a large area, which means she can uplift more people faster. And again, there is a ton of loot lying around that it would be really helpful to have scouted out for later harvesting. We have the opportunity to find the best place to settle. And we should take it. This isn't civilization, we don't lose out if we spend a few turns scouting with our first settler.
     
    Who was your maker? What was the Library?

    What was the Well, the Loom and the Choir?

    These question may sound stupid, my apologies; but we know about the world of substance, not Soul.
     
    liberty90 said:
    Who was your maker? What was the Library?

    What was the Well, the Loom and the Choir?

    These question may sound stupid, my apologies; but we know about the world of substance, not Soul.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Probably Bianca the Second and her fun house, she was a funny one. Pity someone had to make her stop talking to us.
     
    LoserThree said:
    My aim is that none should think themselves above me!
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    [X] Go build material power in the world immediately.
    Greetings Bianca!
    A warning, I may mention terms that cause confusion. Please make a list and ask about them. Now to introduce myself.

    I am a voice that likes trees and my first advice is to clarify your aim a little, because an overcomplex idea, that came quite fast, is to advice you and a civillization of your choosing to build an air ship or to reach beyond your World into the space of worlds. And/or settle the Moon and build it into a palace. It can reasonable assumed that this is not what you meant because i belive we shoot beyond the goal. An advice to goal phrasing, if you would like. A goal should be formulated with following in mind:
    • Specific: The goal should address directly who and what.
    • Mesaruable: The goal ahould be able to be mesared. For example: Bianca write a holy book in a year.
    • Acceptable: The goal should be acceptable among the involved.
    • Reachable: The goal should be reachable. For example building a device to split the fundamedal building blocks of the universe cannot be reached in a century, from what we start.
    • Terminated: The goal should have a deadline, a time where it has to be done.
    Now for an example:
    1. Goal: Expanding our trade influnce.
    2. Goal: Our pepople should build ten times more trade ships and trade ways in a five year plan.
    That is what i want to say concerning goals. On the assumption that a early start is choosen their is a list of five essential knowlege piece that make a great and productive civilization.
    1. spoken Language
    2. written language
    3. Good numbers
    4. scientific method
    5. Calorie surplus or plentiful and diverse Food
    As other have touched upon the language and numbers, I will expand the others a bit.

    What is the scientific method? The scientific method is a method to uncover knowlege or correct current not corrert enough knowlege. It has about eight steps with generalized are:
    First observe the world and ask why or how things function. Then make a disprovable therory about it. Thirdly test that therory and note down the results and share them. Lastly you may reject or alter your Therory to refine it.

    As an example: You see a fire. You then ask why to things burn? Then you make the therory that inside things are tiny parts of the bigger things that left them as they burn. In other words fire is parts leaving a bigger thing into the air. Then you burn a few things like wood or plants. So the Therory explains fire. You note what you have done in what order and in what numbers. But then as you share your findings something happens. Another reapates your experiment with the addion of burn a metal named magnesium and said metal gains weight. That means that it beame more while it burned. So the therory is disproven and your knowlege expands.

    Fire, by the way, is an reaction between things and has three conditions to start. First it needs air. Secondly it needs something to burn. Thirdly it needs a certain heat. Take one of them away and the fire dies off.

    Now to the Calorie surplus. Once more generalized calorie is engery not yet used. One gains them by eating. Calories are used by doing anything. Example given: Jumping on the spot or moving.
    A surplus thus means to make more food than one needs. With people freed from food collection they can do things like build stuff like a market or houses.

    I hope we are with you longer than other Biancas we gave advice to.
    Source: half rememberd school education and "How to invent everything" from Ryan North
     
    I have a feeling that some Voices are trying to say much, while not yet knowing what may be even needed. That's insane. We don't yet know where Bianca wlll be, and around what.
     
    [X] Go build material power in the world immediately.

    Greetings Bianca.

    We are creatures of knowledge and creation, and we wish to see things created and used well.

    Some of us, like myself, are most interested in the arts of craftsmanship of useful and grand tools and how they may be best used, and others are more interested in the crafting of great and powerful societies and the workings of ruling and leadership.

    This may lead to some of us losing focus on the immediate needs and practicalities of you and your future people, in our excitement to see some great work completed, so do not be afraid to chide us if we seem to be missing the obvious. Our perspective is both much greater and lesser than your own. If we are aware of a problem or obstacle, there are very few that we cannot provide knowledge of techniques or tools capable of overcoming them.

    To impress upon you the breadth of our knowledge, we are aware of how to construct great flying ships in the heavens capable of flying to the planets and even other stars, the means of constructing terrible weapons of such immense destructive power they can shatter mountains in a single blow, as well as the means to feed an entire people so well that everyone may grow fat, and means of worldly travel so swift as to reach anywhere in the world in only a single day or less.

    This knowledge we have access to in the form of a great enchanted library of unthinkable size and breadth. Many of us have a wide array of knowledge that we can personally remember, we are not all knowing. But, given time for us to research a subject in our great library, we can find you almost any piece of knowledge you could ever possibly need. Many of us discover new knowledge in this library that none of us knew before on a regular basis, so do forgive us if plans need to be reworked as we find new information on the subject.

    Much of this knowledge will require an immense effort by a massive number of people working together in harmony to properly make use of. Simply organizing the required labor and the teaching of craftsmen in the required skills for even some of the simplest of our great works will be the work of many lifetimes. That being said, we have many useful things to teach you that will be very useful in the present.

    Thankfully, ageing and the passage of time seem to be no impediment to your continued living due to your nature, so a work of many lifetimes is within your grasp.

    What you must come to understand is our need for people to perform labor for our purposes of making. The establisment of a people for you to rule over and command is likely best delayed until you are fully ready for it, but it will eventually be needed for much of our knowledge to be useful.

    We are eager to see your rise into greatness unfold.
     
    Guys we're probably scaring the new Overlady so let's take it easy, it's not like we can actually show her what we know, D̷a̸m̶n̸ ̷y̷o̵u̸ ̴̨̨̟̯̯͕̖̳̳̻̐͗͒̿͌̍Ḷ̵̯̱͖͈̻͕̙̗̭͔̦̪̑̇̈́į̶̧͖̺͙͎̮̮̫̼̟̳͓̮̲̺̘̼̲̱͚̈́͆͌̀̓̉̋̄͆̒̑m̸̡̢̰̜̳̩̻̲̼̙͓͊̓̎͂̂̄̾̚ì̶̧̧̧͉̰̱̰̗͔̺̩̥͖̞̹̱͍̹̗̓̇̑̀̄͑̾̌͑̔͌̅̓̅̐͘̕͝ţ̶̡̧̣̰̮̲̟̺̬̹̞͈͖͎̩̹̯͔̥̦̀̌͛̈́̿͝ͅá̸̟͓̺̳̥̘͊̉̐̑̆̑̓͛̓͛̓̒̓̄̀̚ť̶͖̥̤̤̦̿̓̊̅í̴̠̼͖̯̑̆̀̄̑̆̈͌̇ǫ̸̬̜͔̱̜͖̘͈͙̝̹̮̰̺̬̓̾̽̅̔̌̿̚͘͘n̶̞͉͕͓̩͉̔̽̽͂̀̿́̎̈̏̿̀̅̉͜s̷̡̢̼̱̤̦̰̱̼͙̻̥̣̯̮͙̗̭͑̓̀̉̀͊̑̔̈́̀̑̆̆̽͝ ̴̪̘̹̻̤͖͉̠̳̝̝͙͒̃̌͊̆̒̔́̇̋̿̈̒̑͒̌̀̌̓̚̕͝ͅ, we have to rely on her understanding us and being able to make sense of our ramblings.
     
    Ciber said:
    We'd definitely like to find at least one volcanic area to secure a supply of sulphur because stone age tribe with black powder is a pretty funny anachronism and it could be very useful for breaking into tombs or getting a mining industry bootstrapped. We had issues with that in a previous kalpa ( I'm petitioning we refer to one go-around in the cycle of waxing and waning magic a kalpa ).
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    Acc. No. 1409 said:
    I am doubtful that we could get Bianca access to Blackpowder because I am fairly certain that the tools used to make the substance doesn't exist and would take several iterations of "Build the tools to Build the tools" to get to a degree that manufacturing is reliable and wouldn't end with whoever was assigned to the task an explosive death. But then again, I could be wrong on this account.
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    Firstly, traditional black powder is very easy to make if you have the raw materials available even with stone age tech, so that isn't the problem. The problem is largely getting access to sulphur.

    You do not require nitrates or sulphur to make useful black powder.

    Charcoal powder and sodium chlorate are sufficient to make black powder, though it would be advisable to use nitrate based black powder in any iron or steel firearms due to to the corrosive properties of chlorates. For the purposes of primitive grenades the use of chlorate based black powder is perfectly servicable and only requires charcoal and saltwater.

    Furthermore, nitrates are significantly more valuable as ferilizers, if chlorates can be substituted until we have artificial nitrate production online, we are not splitting our resources. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that there are readily available nitrates in the area we want to settle in, which will ideally have access to the ocean. If we have access to the ocean we have both an unlimited supply of saltwater and an unlimited supply of energy with the construction of tidal mills.

    Sodium chlorate does not exist in nature and is synthesized with electrical current passed through saltwater. It requires charcoal electrodes, but the rest of the electrical supply can be accomplished with lead wires and conductors until we gain access to copper. The first source of magnets required can be compressed magnetite blocks magnetized by voltaic piles wired in parallel running high current through them for a short time.

    With a tide mill or waterwheel on a river we can produce unilimited quantities of sodium chlorate with saltwater, and charcoal can be easily mass produced with gasifiers we use for our early gas smelting furnaces, or with primitive charcoal ovens.

    The electrical supply from these mills can be used for a great many purposes, including the synthesis of nitric acid from air and water, as well as electrochemical ore refining and the operation of arc lamps for searchlights and night illumination.

    Now, dear Bianca, don't fret about not understanding most of what I just said, this was for debating the other voices. All of what I just said will be explained in time should it be the pathway that is chosen.

    We Just Write said:
    A pencil is a tool consisting of a solid material such as graphite; dark in color, and prone to leaving streaks when rubbed against a surface.
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    Compressed charcoal works well as a substitute for graphite, and may be more readily available.

    We Just Write said:
    To rapidly duplicate written texts, a device known as a printing press is most useful. This is a machine in which a rack of blocks with symbols etched into them (known as type) can be affixed in arbitrary order. By operating a lever, the rack of type is pressed down onto the writing material, hence the name. If printing into clay, the symbols can simply be forced into the clay; if printing on paper, ink must be applied to the type before printing each page.
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    There is an inaccuracy in this description: the type should be on the bottom of the press, and the surface to be printed on should be pressed down into the type by a flat board being pressed down on it from above by the lever. Otherwise, the type blocks will fall out of the press.
     
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    [X] Go build material power in the world immediately.
    Acting immediately has the advantage of maximising the potential benefit of our advice. In this early time seeking out the best environmental conditions to support a large population. Building a city full of people loyal to you can provide an excellent base for future expansion into an empire.
     
    While wars against estabilished powers would have their charms, I'm persuaded. Let's go into this savage world already.

    [X] Go build material power in the world immediately.
     
    Lincolnator said:
    There is an inaccuracy in this description: the type should be on the bottom of the press, and the surface to be printed on should be pressed down into the type by a flat board being pressed down on it from above by the lever. Otherwise, the type blocks will fall out of the press.
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    You also don't want the writing material falling onto the type, and it's rather straightforward to design the rack and type so that the rack holds the type in place.
     
    This is Black Cat again. I have some advice about keeping mortal human servants in good health. I understand that you currently lack servants, but surely would like to have them when practical.

    Health of mortals benefits from eating diverse foods. Especially children grow taller and better if feed with diverse way, with meats, various plants, fruits and grains. This may be often impossible to do well, but some such diversity is better than none. Mortal body feed only with one thing could lack various types of substances to build or repair itself, and in some cases could even die.

    Shit, rotting meats and corpses are very bad for health of mortals and shouldn't be near their food or water. It makes food and water unhealthy. When possible, it's the best to bury shit and waste downstream or downhill, so that risks of drinking unhealthy water are reduced for valuable servants living upstream or on the hill. When touching such waste is unavoidable, mortal should clean hands in water afterwards, especially before touching any foods or eating. These dangers are caused by invisible small worms. These worms are made out of substance, not magical, but invisible because too small to be seen. These worms love to eat waste and cause many ilnesses. You cannot see these worms but you can see effects of their hunger: decay of meats and corpses, they eat these.

    Boiling water and fire also kill these invisible worms. It's good to roast fresh meats with fire, not only to improve taste, but also to kill invisible worms. But visibly rotten meat is usually too full of worm waste poison to be salvaged with even long roasting.

    When mortals live in one place for longer time, it may be good idea to dig a big hole for shit and waste downstream or downhill, and place some wooden logs over it, leaving only opening big enough so that mortals could squat over it when needed. This way they would all know where it's mostly safe and easy to leave their waste. Hole could be big enough for some time, then buried and new one dig. Harmful worms are not forever, and foul things in the unused buried waste-hole should become safe after a few years.

    Invisible worms are also very bad for wounds. Some wounds are always deadly for mortals, but smaller ones could be survived more often if never touched by dirty worm-containing things or hands. As was said before, carefully clean hands with clean water, and then throw away such water downstream or downhill, as often as practical.

    When mortal servant is doing something against your wishes, first explain to them what they are doing wrong and what should change. If they change their ways, then it's good. But if they persist or are disrespectful, you can cause them pain, for example with beating. Killing a mortal should be done only if it's clear that they cannot be changed into useful servant.

    But there is also another way. Some mortals can be punished even without any damage done to their body, especially for lesser violations of your will. For example, preventing a mortal from doing interesting things or talking with friends is sometimes sufficient punishment. Saying: "For what you had done, you need to remain silent for three days, or you will be beaten" may be often as effective punishment as beating, while avoiding risks to health that come out of pain.

    With enough cunning, children can be raised without any beating that could be harmful to their health. In the case of children, even forcing them to sit in one place for a while, preventing them from playing, can be effective. Such is also the way of wolf cubs: when one uses their teeth too hard during playfighting, another may punish this not with anger, but just refusing to continue playing for a while.

    When there are too many servants to manage well yourself, obedient and smart servant should be made a leader over others. All mortals shall be below you, but some may be less important than others, and some more important than others.
     
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    We aren't at the point of implementing almost any of these ideas, really.

    The best advice we can probably give right now is where to even start settling in the first place. With the whole world available and with no competing claimants, you will want to settle somewhere with access to running water, fertile land, defensible geography, and room for expansion later. A short distance up from the mouth of a river as it enters a great ocean, perhaps, on a hill, in or nearby some forests.

    Volcanoes can give very fertile soil where they've erupted previously; you'd have to keep an eye out for further eruptions of course, but perhaps magic could make that a benefit rather than a drawback?
     
    I'd think participants in this quest should think of it as more than just it's premise of getting to directly talk to the GM PC, at it's best it's a collaborative creative writing exercise. Keep in mind that your audience is everyone else in this thread, and the quest is at its most fun when we can read and respond to each others posts.

    With that in mind, I think we would all have a more fun experience if everyone puts a bit of effort into making their posts a bit better formatted and focused. Just, you know, keeping in mind that the goal is as much making what you've written fun to read as it is communicating how to build a loom or whatever.
     
    Deathbybunnies said:
    We aren't at the point of implementing almost any of these ideas, really.

    The best advice we can probably give right now is where to even start settling in the first place. With the whole world available and with no competing claimants, you will want to settle somewhere with access to running water, fertile land, defensible geography, and room for expansion later. A short distance up from the mouth of a river as it enters a great ocean, perhaps, on a hill, in or nearby some forests.

    Volcanoes can give very fertile soil where they've erupted previously; you'd have to keep an eye out for further eruptions of course, but perhaps magic could make that a benefit rather than a drawback?
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    Junction speaking: A mediterranean climate (read: plenty of rain, plenty of sun, and mild winters) would also be helpful. There are several very useful plants that grow best in such an environment.
     
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    Ciber said:
    I'd think participants in this quest should think of it as more than just it's premise of getting to directly talk to the GM PC, at it's best it's a collaborative creative writing exercise. Keep in mind that your audience is everyone else in this thread, and the quest is at its most fun when we can read and respond to each others posts.

    With that in mind, I think we would all have a more fun experience if everyone puts a bit of effort into making their posts a bit better formatted and focused. Just, you know, keeping in mind that the goal is as much making what you've written fun to read as it is communicating how to build a loom or whatever.
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    Code: 
    You know the PC can see you're post right? there going to be very baffled.
     
    I have always done that intentionally. It's not really a caphony if our gibberish doesn't drive Bianca IV (who, odds are, can't even get drunk ) to drink.
     
    Speak for yourselves, we of the Junction intend to provide good advice to the best of our ability.
     
    Rafin said:
    @KeinNiemand
    @KeinNiemand May I ask what the exact prompt(s) that you used was (or were)?
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    Sure My Whole Prompt is in the second spoiler. Not sure If for future respones I should keep just giving ChatGPT the whole post (at least unitl it runis out of it's 128k token context) or if I should try something else. One other option is to give bianca some kind of more direct access to ChatGPT, with or without context as to what's going on. It would require some more explanation to bianca and probably perform worse but it would be a better expermiment to the question as to how usefull access to ChatGPT would be to somone in a pre modern fantasy world like Bianca (e xact time period to be determined by the vote). Maybe I'll do a bit of both direct question and full post based advice generation or use the existing context for direct questions bianca has.
    What would probably work best is to use ChatGPT more manually, giving it more context and telling it to explain specific things, but at that point it's no longer a question of how usefulll ChatGPT would be for Bianca and more how usefull it would be to somone with todays knowldge who wanted to help ulift somone.

    Can't really decide on my vote I'm leaning more towards the later 2 options, starting in the stone age would be very hard an while it might be a big advantage from a pure min max gameplay perspective, it has the major downside that a lot of developments simpley can't be easily done in the stone age. Starting that early the problem is bigger hten just building the tools to build the Tools you also have to build up the population and domesticate animals and things like that, without a sufficient population advancment is going to hit a hard wall with a lot of stuff not beeing viable. At that point either progress slows to a crawl and the quest turns less into uplifting and more into dealing with current events and such, or we need larger time skips for these things to progress. For now I'll vote for the middle option but I can be convicted otherwise
    There this quest on spacebattles, where players can give direct advice to the fictinal character Bianca in a fantasy world. Primearly this is used for the players to give information to bianca used to uplift this world.
    Here is how this quest is supposed to work:
    Check the summaries in this status post and read the latest story post in the Threadmarks to get a rough idea of where things are at.

    If you're not already involved in the game and you want to get right into it without digging through the back catalog, consider doing this:
    Read the summaries in this Status Post.
    Pull up the latest Threadmark.
    Skip to the line that says "B R E A K."
    Skim from there to get an idea of what's going on.

    If there's no Closing The Vote post in the Informationals corresponding to the latest Threadmarks, then the game is in a Cacophonous Interlude and Bianca will hear what you post, unless you post inside spoilers or code boxes. The NOTICES portion at the top of this post should also tell you if the game is in a Cacophonous Interlude.

    If the game is not in a Cacophonous Interlude, you can still post. It's just that Bianca can't hear you. You might still want to post so you can coordinate with other players, make suggestions, ask questions, and propose plans. You can compose a message to Bianca all whether or not the game is in a Cacophonous Interlude. And once the game returns to a Cacophonous Interlude, you can vote and/or send a message to Bianca by creating a post in the thread.

    If you want to vote, simply do so as you would in other quests on this board. You may look at other players' votes to see how yours should be formatted. And you may check the tally to see that yours are counted as you intend them. I should find the 'how to vote' general post and link it here, I guess.

    If you want to send a message to Bianca, keep in mind that she is a creature of another time. She may not understand what you mean if you don't take the time to make it clear. This game rewards and demands work from its players. When a player wants to introduce a concept or tool or technology to Bianca, that player will probably need to expend effort to explain it carefully, and take into consideration the limits of her understanding of the world. You might even need to consider her biases and values.

    I think this is similar enough to Graeber's 'interpretive labor' that we can use the term colloquially to describe what is being asked of players. Put yourself in the mind of Bianca and ask yourself how such a person can be made to understand what you want to tell her.

    Bianca has different values than we do. She has different assumptions about the world and objects and forces within it. Her goals may not align directly with number-go-up or color-get-big gaming agendas. But she wants power and will listen most attentively to players that tell her how to get more of or closer to what she wants.

    Keep in mind that you players are not trusted advisors. You're the Astute Cacophony: voices that Bianca mostly can't tell apart from each other.

    Rules/Structure:
    I post and Threadmark a story update that has 3 parts:
    Bianca's responses to player posts made during the last Cacophonous Interlude, followed by 'B R E A K'
    An update by Bianca following a hiatus of varying length but usually some number of years, covering what she believes is worth mentioning
    Requests by Bianca for direction on a number of issues, which the players will provide in the form of votes
    Following each story update, players' posts are audible to Bianca until voting is closed.
    This is the Cacophonous Interlude.
    Players may convey any information they can represent in text.
    No images, sounds, or hyperlinks will get through (this is my limitation, not a limitation of the game, so please do not try to transcend it with clever protocol tricks).
    Players may use spoilers or code blocks to communicate with me and with each other without doing so in ways Bianca can hear.
    When votes are tallied, I collect player posts in an Informational so that it may be known what Bianca heard.
    Votes are tallied in the conventional fashion. So only votes in the most recent post by each player are counted. [X] marks what the player is voting for. And only effectively identical write-ins accumulate votes.
    You can vote your own write-in any time you want anyway, of course.
    I read player posts, research their suggestions, check my notes for precedent, determine what Bianca thinks she already knows on the topic, what she's right or wrong about, how likely she is to engage with the topic, how likely Blanca's followers are to follow through in the matter, and finally what the result is going to be, later in the narrative.
    I compose Bianca's responses to player posts made during the cacophonous interlude and update my notes, but do not post this material.
    When the narrative benefits from uncertainty and chance, I devise tests for Bianca or other characters and make those tests using die rolls on a post made just for that purpose.
    Skill or attribute tests will be made with a largely undocumented homebrew that's mostly the Burning Wheel system, notably including War and Factions from the Burning Wheel Anthology -- which I really, really would have benefitted from the last time around -- on d10s with different 'shade' ranges (see below), no Artha, no Beliefs or Instincts, no Stock-exclusive skills, probably no Emotional Attributes, and clocks from Blades in the Dark because setting automation is fantastic. (The Burning Wheel is a good system and I encourage you to check it out.)
    I will post the dice, threshold of success, and results of each test before rolling it.
    Tests may:
    Be made by rolling one of an entity's attributes against a static target, or may
    Be made by two entities each rolling one of their attributes where the one with the greater result wins to some degree, and may
    Have absolute results, or may
    Have tiered results, and may
    Result in pyrrhic victories or welcome defeats.
    The rules being used and followed will be described in each Informational in which tests are made.
    Normal mortals count 7s and better toward success.
    Heroic characters and characters who are otherwise innately magical count 6s and better toward success, so long as what they're doing aligns with their heroism or their magical theme.
    Demigod characters and characters who otherwise possess some spark of divinity count 5s and better toward success, so long as what they're doing aligns with their divine heritage.
    Gods and count 4s and better toward success, as do their avatars, so long as what the avatar is doing aligns with the god's domains.
    Gods count 3s and better toward success when what they're going aligns with their domains.
    1s and 2s never count toward success.
    Sorcery, other magic skills, and some magical tools lower the threshold of success by a non-cumulative 1 to a minimum of 3 only when they are or are essential to the skill being tested, not when they help with other skills. Players may note that a god's threshold of success when they are acting within their domain does not improve when they use magic or magical tools.
    Helping dice provided by magic, magical items, tame (not domesticated) warbeasts larger than hounds, or any incendiary devices more complicated than a burning arrow roll an additional die after each 9 or 10 and keep counting successes. Further 9s & 10s lead to further rolls. Unless the magic, magical item, or incendiary device is the product of an especially refined industry or practice (no exceptions for non-domesticated big warbeasts -- if the animal is dangerous to the enemy it is dangerous to everyone), these same helping dice cancel successes on 1s & 2s and roll another die for each 1 or 2. Additional 1s & 2s cancel additional successes. More 1s, 2s, 9s, or 10s mean more rerolling and more successes or cancelations, but only in the manner of the original die. That is, when a 9 or 10 on a helping die from war elephants provides an additional die and that die rolls a 1 or 2, that doesn't cancel successes or lead to further additional dice.
    When players expect a test -- for example if they vote for an invasion or to send a diplomat to manipulate a foreign leader -- they might be able to add helping dice to the test by providing Bianca with advice specific to that matter. If the advice is not mistaken or outright bad, there will be at least a chance it will help. Often, decent advice adds dice. Sometimes good advice may outright guarantee success, preventing the test entirely.
    I'm going to have to choose some kind of accumulation-of-progress-toward-a-goal mechanic that fits the faction clocks from Burning Wheel but I'm not sure about how that's going to work right now. Maybe Conflicts from Mouseguard or Torchbearer?
    Similarly, since this is an uplift quest and players will often provide incomplete but potentially sufficient information, some kind of test will be needed to see if Bianca and/or her minions are able to fill in the gaps and implement the desired technology. This is probably just going to be some skill test with a high obstacle and not-a-complete-failure thresholds that make the next test easier and whoops-all-on-fire-now thresholds that make the next test harder.
    I compose Bianca's post-hiatus update, new questions for vote, and new vote options.
    GOTO 1
    Bianca:
    Bianca will be the only character the players will directly interact with in this game.

    Bianca's nature will be determined by the first few votes of the game and this space will be updated to reflect the consequences of those choices.

    Despite sacrificing autonomy to connect with the Astute Cacophony, Bianca values her independence.
    First Story Post:
    I cannot find my maker.

    Do you know what that means? What even are you? Do you have makers? Were you drawn from the Choir like me, made for a purpose? Or were you made when the Cacophony came into being? Are you bound to it?

    Do you know where my maker is?

    I knew I would slumber for ages. I knew I would wait in the timelessness of the Soul Lands until the Winter of Magic passed and my soul could once again reach the world of substance. And when I awoke in substance alone, I was afraid.

    My maker was not waiting for me. She was not there to instruct me on how I should serve, what I should do. So I waited, afraid.

    I wondered what should happen to me. And I thought I might find the answer in the Library. But the Library is not there. I cannot find the Library or the Well or the Loom or the Choir. I cannot reach the infrastructure of the Soul Lands. This should be impossible. The Soul Lands are timeless, they were untouchable to substance in the Winter of Magic.

    I waited longer, and I worried.

    And then I did what I was instructed that I should not do. I left the Vault I was made to watch over. I abandoned my duty to look for my maker in the world.

    I did not find my maker. And I found a world much changed.

    Firstly, the Wonders of Artifice are absent from the sky. The Citadel, the Eye, the Moon Crown, and the Countless Jewels are nowhere to be seen. I looked closely where they should be, and there are not even ruins.

    But there are ruins in the world.

    I have found only ruins in the world. The Roads, the Towers, the Fountains, the Orchards, they are all gone. But there are shattered thrones to gods I know and others I do not. There are piles of stones that I think were once markers gods placed on the land so that all would know it was theirs. And under the ever-changing face of the Moon there is something wrong. Something reaches into the outermost coats of the Moon's face and can sometimes be seen to glint when the Sun strikes it just so.

    The world is disordered. Beasts go where they will. People are here and there with no god over them, no divine direction. There are wolves among the people.

    The people are tall and run well. But they have no lances of light, no shadows to cloak them. Instead they carry sharp sticks, they hurl broken rocks, and they wear hides here and webs of vegetation there and both in other places. They do not speak properly. They cannot account for themselves. There are wolves among them.

    I think I waited six gross winters of substance before I left the Vault. I know I have seen another six gross winters while searching the world for my maker. And as I searched I decided that will be sufficient. I said to the sky that if I cannot find my maker in a great gross of winters of substance, then I have been left to my own devices, and I will use what I have to my own ends. I, Bianca, will make my own way.

    So I have returned to the Vault where I awoke so long ago, where I slept for so very much longer before that, and where my maker put me to watch over her devices. I came here to make her devices my own. And now I will bind you voices to my service. Your wisdom in matters of substance will benefit me. Your wild ramblings will trouble my soul and no other.

    I seal this pact with the sacrifice of my power.

    Voices of the Astute Cacophony! My aim is to be mighty! My aim is that none should think themselves above me! How long should I spend working in isolation, here in what is now my Vault? For how long shall I refine my soul, build the soul tools of magic, claim my maker's possessions here, and grow in power?

    [ ] Go build material power in the world immediately. Bianca will practice soulcraft and grow in magical power, but also secure mortal servants, gather resources, and perhaps plunder the resting places of dragons and gods still sleeping or forever smothered in Winter.

    Code:
    Mid-Spring - magic grows rapidly in the world

    Bianca will be powerful like an immortal sorcerer/ruler,
    maybe a little less powerful than Saruman.

    The setting will have the least competition for power and
    only as much politics as Bianca and the players choose to
    engage with.

    There are few other beings around who think with their
    souls. No true dragons have awoken yet, though they will.

    The world is still in the Stone Age. There is no
    irrigation. Few domestication events are meaningfully
    complete.

    Disturbing the places dragons and gods prepared for their
    own rest or the rest of their servants will be very
    profitable and very dangerous. But there are more to be
    found starting now than there will be in any later start.

    [ ] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret. Bianca will practice soulcraft, win possession of her maker's treasures, and build her magical strength and capacity until she is irrevocably discovered by an outsider.

    Code:
    Early Summer - magical growth much reduced

    Bianca will be powerful like a great spirit or minor god,
    maybe somewhat less powerful than Morgoth.

    The setting will include established gods and true
    dragons. And there will be three or four mortal empires
    in the world comparable to China, Rome, or Inca. Players
    will only be able to avoid politics with enough violence,
    foresight, and luck.

    The world will be in the equivalent of the Late Classical
    Period. Cereal grains will be grown for bread, porridge,
    and beer. Many root vegetables will be so easily grown
    that common people eat them, but most fruit and
    vegetables will be grown only as luxuries and for trade.
    Livestock provide eggs, meat, milk, fiber, traction, and
    pest control. Ironwork will be ubiquitous and valuable.

    No one will be expecting Bianca or prepared for her.

    [ ] Prepare for as long as it is safe to do so. Bianca will perfect her soulcraft, subsume all functions of the Vault and its contents into her person, break through the apotheotic barrier, and grow in power until actions of outside forces oblige her to emerge into the greater world.

    Code:
    Mid-Summer - peak magical power worldwide

    Bianca will be powerful like a D&D god.

    The setting will include plentiful and immediate
    competition. Politics will be pervasive and inescapable.
    Kingdoms and guilds and every kind of organization will
    have opinions on anything Bianca does. There will not be
    an open niche for Bianca to step into. To get geographic,
    social, political, or economic territory she will have to
    take it from someone else.

    The world will be equivalent to the Islamic Golden Age or
    typical High Fantasy. People speak and write in common
    tongues across wide territories. An educated and studious
    class will overlap broadly with warriors and rulers.

    Some very powerful entities will have known of Bianca
    while she was hidden. And some divinatory practices will
    predict her emergence. And, of course, the party that
    forces Biana into the open will have been aware of her.

    ***
    I want to give Bianca more or less direct access to Chatgpt (either by giving chagpt the whole posts of when bianca asks specific questions). You should act as an excelent and wise advisor for Bianca, both answering her questions and providing ideas and infomration on tech to invenst (this is primarily a tech uplift quest afterall). Explain everything in high detail and make sure to explain things in a way somone from a prmitive (stone age or later depneinding on vote) fantasy world that has no idea about our world would understand.
    You should probable start with an introduction and introduce yourself to Bianca, you can call yourself ChatGPT (I don't want to pretend I'm writing this) but don't mention your an AI directly instead come up with some way to explain your vast knowledge and capabilities to someone in a fantasy world.

    [X] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret.
     
    Junction speaking: Bianca, some of the others are secretly discussing adding a voice known as ChatGPT to the cacophony. If this occurs, we would recommend being very skeptical of anything it says; bluntly, ChatGPT doesn't actually think or reason. It is a mechanism that predicts which words are likely to go together in response to a prompt, and strings them together into vaguely coherent statements.

    We do not approve of inducting ChatGPT to the cacophony, but do not have the authority to actually stop the others from doing so. At the very least, we have warned you of its limitations.
     
    On the other hand, ChatGPT can explain complex concepts well in simple words. Which is quite useful considering that Bianca and I have a different cultural background.
     
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