Last Light of a Dark Age (Warhammer 29K/Disco Elysium)

I think it's a mistake to think about colossi just as purely inanimate and neutral forces. You have to think more materially. Why are things the way they are? Why are resources so scarce? You are trapped inside a literal demiurgic hell not of your own making. There are larger structures at work which transcend well beyond individuals and their grievances. The suns are among these - Hydra, the Demiurge, Dreamspace. Sure, if we were in a purely material, neutral universe, it would be strange to rage so much against that which cannot be changed (and even then, we can change those conditions as well).

But we aren't. The universe in 40k has become ontologically hostile. The game is rigged from the start. And even on the smaller scale, think about social structure - what provokes the kind of tensions which creates people like the Immaculates? The same material conditions which provoke people like Kora, and kill people like Remari.

It doesn't matter if you're kind if the world you live in punishes that kind of kindness. A place where the old are eaten by the young, and everyone is a tool. Attacking the Colossi asks you to look beyond the personal hatreds you have and focus your hatreds far more on the very structures which allow these kinds of beings to flourish.

That does not mean Colossi is the 'right' answer. It seems peculiarly impersonal for someone as emotive as Harmony (though that in itself is a display of radical empathy), and such a mechanistic, structural view of everything, is not in itself 'correct'. It's a larger philosophical question. It shifts culpability away from people who seem to very much deserve it and towards a rotten foundation. But it is not the foundation which does the act, so is it better to hate it, than the people themselves?
 
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I am afraid that this is the fight against the Dreamshape. This is how dreamshapes really fight. Not with plasma beams and swords. With your own psychology.

I will also note that everything in the updates is in fact very relevant in ways that is going to become clear. This is not really meant to be a sideshow anymore than anything is, and the past does not mean less than the present.
"Despair and die"...

Seems like our objective here is to live, to avoid getting twisted into doing their job anyway despite the former, and preferably remaining in as good a mental shape as possible?
And our attributes represent(ed) outside context factors that made the manipulation of Harmony based off her psych profile more difficult, something that would allow us to achieve a Pyrrhic victory through Entities if it comes to that.

(Imagine if Sympathy is already infected with a Dreamshape though, that's why the eye colour was an issue?)
 
Did she really think you had forgotten about her inaction all those years, letting you and the copse suffer because of her own fears, her own avoidance, her own cowardice? Did she really think you had buried the hatchet of the long-nursed hatred, resentment, you held for her, for fifteen years? Did she really think that a bit of family-bonding, a little bit of copse-camaraderie, would erase the memory of every single day of your brutal, cruel abuse, for which she did nothing? The fifteen years in which she abandoned you?

You empathize with her. You sympathize with her. You love her. You forgive her.

But there is a cost. And the cost of her promise, her parenthood, is to join you on this downward spiral. This is the string she chose, and the string you'll never let her hide or break for the sake of any hope, or any ideal, or any fear. This is your truth, as crushing and as honest as gravity.

This is love's abyss.

Family loves each other, which means that there's some space to be a spiteful vengeful turbobitch when the opportunity presents itself. Honestly. Harmony and Sympathy can do lovey things to each other and try to seek refuge in each other and all that sappy happy stuff mother and daughter do, but tbh it's kinda just trite cliche without this expression of rage and betrayal. Truly nobody has a chance to hurt you like family does, and boy does it go both ways.

And Penitence, dropping her grin, shrugs. "Sweet elders, I would love to punish transgressions against gnosis. For this I much desire a full quorum of the Conclave, to decide the sentence. Tell me, where are Verity and Epiphany? Not buried in their work, I hope." There is a crackle of biolightning from the tips of her hair.

Damn. Calling out their shit hard.

Immaculates giggle, eat hot fruit and torment us to the end.

All immaculates know is giggle, eat hot fruit and torment selves.

You have to. You have a mother, but that's not enough. Not after the Day of Twin Suns. You have other wants, but nobody will hold you that way. Nobody wants you. No Kora wants you. No girl wants you. It hurt so much when Roxana revealed she never wanted you. The cinnabar of her hair, the curve of her neck, was so pretty in the limelight of that room before the Twin Suns it hurts you to think of. You didn't want anything special from her. Just one kiss. One good honest kiss. Why couldn't you have that?

Nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody-y~

Mister Morrow definitely invented this and spread it, right ? He's moving from "old industrial baron" to "straight-up evil cyberpunk megacorp" and I am here for it. Bring a new flavor of evil to this dystopia planet, Morrow ! We've already seen your internal management practices almost cause an apocalypse, but I'm sure you can make everything even worse by spreading some more capitalism into the shit-soup !

Hitting rock bottom just means you're closer to the diamonds!

I know I'm missing the emotional point of the rest of the paragraph, but I really want to know more about whales on this planet.

The whales are ctan shard shards, probably, considering how the entire ocean is a vat of nanocancer.

Of course, evil does lurk in the waves of the Sea and the lightrays of the Sun, as it does in the copses and Cube-streets of Today. But, "it was never the streets that were evil." It's always been us. The shape of Harmony's despair was wrought by other humans, our bloody histories, and monstrous predilection for atrocity, violence, and betrayal. I'm reminded of what The Witch they Wanted means to Harmony,

This particular sea might be evil, considering the theohydrology involved in this planet and what's in it.

It makes sense thematically. These are dreams of a forsaken past, not the actions of the present---we are experiencing monstrous highs and new lows. On the one hand, the reveal of Kora's true fate felt almost dull after everything we've already experienced. On the other, that's part of the point. Every new revelation or God-spiracy hardens Harmony's heart against the insanity of Illuminata. Nothing is sacred; everything is profane, everything has always been profane.

This I deeply agree with. "Oh, kora's a god? And she's been effectively stapled into being nothing but a tool? Well, her death seemed the kind of thing that would be greatly exagerated."

Tying unbreakable wires to us doesn't sound like it fits will with a high speed maneuver strategy behind their lines where they could get caught or traced back to us.

But on the other hand, it's the only method that really takes advantage of the threads, since it's the only strategy that would let us break their opsec. It would also let us call in the reinforcements when we find the bastard.

It's pretty confusing to make out which part is and isn't us working in the present when we're still in memory town. I thought the dreamshape part ended whenever the talk started to go back to the memories and fully after the last Gray portion ended and we went back to talking about koras and the war vs the 3 artificial gods.

The command of the dreamshape is to DESPAIR AND DIE. We are certainly despairing, and certainly dying. And it is no mistake that we have been given ourself, Beatific Dolorous Harmony, so close to what broke us into becoming Miss Normal.

[] Attrition. Slow, measured. Inflict the greatest material damage for fewest lives lost. Use your Night Witches sparingly, leveraging your immunity to illusion, target ammunition dumps, ballista batteries - tighten a vice around Phalanx Hypnos that will expose him. Then your strong reserve of Night Witches will strike, and end him.

Getting into an attrition war with a god seems very stupid. Getting into a war with a god is stupid in general, but dragging it out just magnifies the issue.

[X] Hit-and-Run. An aggressive, manuever-centric strategy. Take full advantage of your mobility, use independent demi-company sized-units to rove beyond enemy lines. Gather captives, outright destroy straggler units, seize key objectives. Eventually, you must run into, catch Morpheos - and descend on him with the witches' swarm.

I feel like this is the best way to fight an illusionist. We don't know where he is, but he doesn't know where we will be. Unfortunately, of all the stupid ideas we could do, this seems like the least stupid. We run around making a nuisance of ourselves until he pulls our wings off.

[] All-Or-Nothing. A massive, sweeping operation, aimed at the very center of Phalanx Hypnos. An antifragile strategy - if Morpheos is there, the whole of the Witches will fall on him - but if he is not, he must choose between having the center of his phalanx cut off from his illusions by your null fields - or face you head on.

This seems the poorest idea. He's an illusionist. What if the center of the phalanx just isn't where you think it is. Unsinkable-titanic ass plan.

Edit: And no, we are not actually immune to his illusions, any more than we are to the sword god. It doesn't matter if we're immune to psychic fuckery because the rest of reality isn't. He can just make an illusion out of real light and wait to spring a trap on us when we fall for it.

For no-god's sake, we and two other countries literally waged a massive war on top of 10 MEGACITY SIZED RITUAL CIRCLES EACH and didn't realize a single thing was wrong. :Edit

[] Use the Auratic Thread.
[X] Don't use the Auratic Thread.

I feel like flying around getting into random shit would get the highest return on the Auratic threat, but, unfortunately, I don't think that using an untested tech on a high risk strategy will pay off.

[X] Our Sister of Supreme Mercy. This is an idealization of your axiom The Witch they Wanted, reframed as a protection of the weak against the strong.

This is how I want others to think of us, and this is what I want us to see in ourself.

[X] The Caprices. Gods, in a human shape. Ever-passionate, ever-spiteful monsters, too-caring, too-interested, their hands on the lathe of fate, their intentions malice, evil, cruelty. The Immaculates, the Prime Souls, the Titans.

Shitty people are why the world is shit. Including fucking c'tan shards and gods. Fuck all of them. If you should meet a god on the road, kill him.
 
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He has egophagic illusions as well but you are going to be loaded up with the Progeny's best anti-illusion noiseware. You are prepared for what to look at this time and they don't have the ability to just build up layers of illusions over months of defense-prep.
 
"Harmony, my daughter."

She whispers it to you with such astonishment, such unfamiliarity, the two of you staying in a copse's loaned living quarters after dedicating the memorial for your own fallen sisters.
Owh, my heart...

It's not fair. Hyperion should have burned this place instead. Burned the smiles off their lips, let their faces warp into a screaming rictus as they melt, and shatter to ash. Let the lovers boil and turn roasted red in the evaporating pools. Die, die, die. All of them should die.
Goddamn. Real illustrative of how Blackstar & The Witch They Wanted shapes Harmony.

He points out other things you took for granted. The 'no strangers permitted' signs inside stores. The veils worn by those strangers without facemasks, to avoid offending the refugee youth out for an excuse to hurt them. The way those without veils wave to Karuna or bow to a man of his rank - but avoid you. You offer an anodyne explanation about the inferiority of strangers, but it's the wrong thing to say, and then he's frowning and stiff, and Oh Kora you want to die.
OOF that unadressed Progeny Kora-self bigotry.

Dolores Dei. The sorrowful goddess, who when they die will resurrect them in the shower of her tears.
What the fuuuck, didn't expect we'd be the Illuminatan version of her.


Before the final battle, planning to replace them, the Emerald Koras who had been her super-soldiers, sacking the temples of their cults of her as Goddess, rejecting their love of her, treating them as things.

They are not things. But now, she is.
Another holy shit revelation. The Progeny betrayed Kora!

GOAT quest continues to be GOATed, thank you Cetash.

For the votes I'm most sure of.

[X] The Colossi. Gods in an inhuman shape. Alien, structural forces, indifferent, grinding, uncaring, that define time, define history, define creation, by their brutal, impersonal design. The suns, the seasons, the sea.

A display of deep empathy, of magnificent Interlace, to transcend hatred of just the bad actors & grasp the structural forces which made all the Caprices possible really speaks to me.

[X] Our Sister of Supreme Mercy. This is an idealization of your axiom The Witch they Wanted, reframed as a protection of the weak against the strong.

I wholeheartedly agree for having this be the central aspect for Harmony to live up to.

I'm less sure of the strategy vs Morpheos vote options, so I'll defer to whatever wins for now - I do think we should pick a tactic that works best with the Auratic threads

Edit: I've been convinced.

[X] Use the Auratic Thread.

[X] Attrition. Slow, measured. Inflict the greatest material damage for fewest lives lost. Use your Night Witches sparingly, leveraging your immunity to illusion, target ammunition dumps, ballista batteries - tighten a vice around Phalanx Hypnos that will expose him. Then your strong reserve of Night Witches will strike, and end him
 
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At first, I thought it might've been some minor sabotage after that Karuna scene, but the clarification on using it with the right plan makes it seem like it's just genuine but untested aid.

The titans are offended but they're not stupid and need to support the Progeny. Karuna is just an honest and sensitive soul, and has his own hangups and biases. Try talking to him about the sack of Carnosa and it'll get just as awkward as when Harmony was talking about strangers. His personal exit doesn't represent a total rupture of relations.
 
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Random Thoughts.

I think the thing that made me purely sad without any other complicating emotion was the note about Koinon stapling the servants. They're so fucking close to understanding how evil their society was, but they're choosing to externalize the harm now that they can't inflict upon themselves. Despite everything it feels like they almost were almost able to escape their own gravity well of awfulness.

I absolutely despise The Progeny. Much more so then any of the other polities. I don't think that their horrors are truly out of proportion but they seem the most conscious of their own actions and most connected to the ones they prey upon. Literally sharing a face will do that to you. Got to love the cycle of mothers failing daughters, only for their daughters to turn on them in turn. Hi Remari, Hi Kora, Hello Immaculates! Hey there Sympathy! I'm sure this cycle isn't playing out in greater or lesser ways in this current generation as well.

Can't say I'm shocked that Harmony is also Dolores Dei, but damn if that reveal didn't hit.

Karuna remains great...mostly. Unable or unwilling to grasp the full nature of his people but clear headed enough to see how horrific what happened here was. I wonder if he ever properly reckoned with his part in Carnosa? Roxanne clearly buried her guilt, I wonder where he put his?

Oh, and we have a horrific fisherman thing in our head quoting the most fascist song to every fictionally fascism. That's bad.
 
I think it's important to remember that you are seeing the Progeny from the inside, and this is a story about the cruelty of alienation. And so, for you, you're experiencing a deeply intimate sort of cruelty. But if you had started in Koinon you would have been printed without even a voice. Things that Harmony took for granted in her childhood and even in the deeply emotive torture of her copse-years would have been barred to you. Loneliness, isolation of that kind, is unimaginably cruel to impose on a child.

And you see glimpses of Roxana between the lines here. So the person she cared most about in the world, what appears to be her effective parent, an adoptive father, is killed in front of her because he is so overwhelmed by war guilt he wants to kill himself (and the titan does it, rather than, say, just trying to get the guy some help).

Then she subsequently enters into a romantic, political, and sexual relationship with the person who murdered him. Hmm! And then starts alienating every positive influence in her life! Hmmmm! It is course more complicated from the internal POV, but these are deeply emotionally gruesome stories of their own.

If you had been looking at the Progeny from Roxana's POV, you might have seen their deep solidarity and more seemingly equal and open and honest relationships. And from Pandora's POV, you might have seen how intimate and close they were to one another in ways you were not allowed. That which glitters is not always gold.

In many ways, it should be remembered the world has in fact changed in your own lifetimes for the better before the war, if that can be believed. It is just hard always tell from the inside. And even with all the cruelties of the war, the societies which emerge may not necessarily be worse? They may certainly be different!
 
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[X] The Caprices. Gods, in a human shape. Ever-passionate, ever-spiteful monsters, too-caring, too-interested, their hands on the lathe of fate, their intentions malice, evil, cruelty. The Immaculates, the Prime Souls, the Titans.
[X] Our Sister of Supreme Mercy. This is an idealization of your axiom The Witch they Wanted, reframed as a protection of the weak against the strong.
[X] Use the Auratic Thread.
[X] Attrition. Slow, measured. Inflict the greatest material damage for fewest lives lost. Use your Night Witches sparingly, leveraging your immunity to illusion, target ammunition dumps, ballista batteries - tighten a vice around Phalanx Hypnos that will expose him. Then your strong reserve of Night Witches will strike, and end him

I think if we hit and run we need to not use the thread. Attrition though seems like it'd work well with it.

Edit: single mass attack just seems like a bad idea in a defensive battle.
 
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EVENT HORIZON [Trivial - Success]: This is not your end. We have hardly even begun.

EVENT HORIZON: Remember the Obsidian Butterfly.

Alright, fine.

EVENT HORIZON [Trivial - Success]: Someone who shares her visions with you. That reads to you from the manuscript Fifth Sun, and the tragedy of Obsidian Butterfly, the oblivion witch. Her rise, and fall.

EVENT HORIZON: Her friendship with the pneumatic Icon Bellamona, and the violence of her friend's end by the Butterfly's cursed sword. Her rally of the Still Coast against a gnostic holy war, and her wielding of the forged abyssal nail of her water-father, his soul trapped inside that cursed sword. Her yearning for the pure land, and her failure to find it in the labyrinth of Demhe. Her gift of a crystal flower to the minotaur, and her last failed attempts to save her people from the clutches of the soul-stealing deceiver.

EVENT HORIZON: Her detection of morse whispers from the deep, and the visits from the breathless god. The truth of the pure land, and the revelation that her crimes had closed it to her. Her declaration, that by this book, she came to make friends she could never make in life. The answer, contained within the seed of gnosis. The gate, contained within the wedding gift. The key, contained within the word Monad. The yin, that can complete the yang, and end the cycle.

EVENT HORIZON: Eternity, in the spiral of an awakened third eye.

So she's friends with Bellamona but her friend is killed by her cursed sword (doesn't seem to specify that she did it but also she committed "crimes" which is interesting in phrasing). Butterfly defends the Still Coast against gnosis, good for her. She has a "water-father" which is concerning considering water's association with the Demiurge but he's trapped in the sword which is cursed and killed her friend. Maybe something to do with Manasseh (I'm spelling this off memory because phone)? Tried to find it in Demhe which is probably Dis especially considering she gave the minotaur a flower and I think he's in Dis (once again off memory). The Deciever huh? That's interesting especially when the Deciever is the name of the Eater is the name of the Demiurge. Strange, very strange. The Cost and a breathless god huh? Going to guess the pure land was closed to her because Bellamona was dead and her ideas are why our dear Harmony joins Monad.

Damn was she special like us? She follows the archetype of the main character options with the exception being that she's outside of gnosis and if not actually guilty of killing her friend she was definitely blamed for it meaning I don't think she could run off and join Monad.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: What colour are her eyes?

GLAMOUR [Trivial - Success]: The same colour as yours.

GLAMOUR [Godly - Failure]: Black.

GEN《AUTOFAIL》: Useless.

Obsidian perhaps?

EVENT HORIZON: Only Elegy remains unblinking, and unbroken, perhaps because she is in so many pieces already. She tells Sympathy that Penitence has never feared the lash, and welcomed strings that cut. Each blow she marks, and each cut she remembers. Each hardens the void cocoon from which will hatch a supreme butterfly, as beautiful and terrible as the dawn.
But all you wonder is what game she's playing, and notice the shared glances between her and Penitence. Camaraderie - cooperation - maybe even desire.

Uhhhhh... Good thing the only Immaculate Penitence liked is gone (god I hope that relationship was platonic (or that Faith's "youngness" was way way younger than the rest of them) otherwise maybe we could use those Koinon pederasty raps). Penitence is giving all sorts of bad vibes throughout this update.
Also looking it over I'm a lot more skeptical of the Immaculates ability to use Kora on the regular considering there aren't unbreakable brambles all over and nobody from another country had ever brought up this ability before. They're all shocked too so they can't have pulled it out very often if at all. Maybe Faith, Verity, and Epiphany were the sanity check but Verity and Epiphany fell for a really fucking obvious Chaos plot so maybe they were the "we love Kora more than we hate Kora" block.

Interesting all this discussion of butterflies seemingly associated with both of the sisters. Their fates might mirror each other or something.

I do have to wonder how Harmony got the staple in the first place actually, wouldn't a special hylic compatible staple be a perfect opportunity to upcharge like mad?
 
[X] Our Sister of Supreme Passion.

Tears of healing and a deep sadness for the pain of others? That's Shallya! Having the same traits ascribed as a goddess from a far-off but familiar reality will definitely be interesting!
 
Maybe Faith, Verity, and Epiphany were the sanity check but Verity and Epiphany fell for a really fucking obvious Chaos plot so maybe they were the "we love Kora more than we hate Kora" block.

One should consider if the same methods by which the Immaculates kept themselves alive had stopped working or were causing other issues.

Where are the original Sympathy and Penitence, anyways?

So she's friends with Bellamona but her friend is killed by her cursed sword (doesn't seem to specify that she did it but also she committed "crimes" which is interesting in phrasing).

She killed her friend who led a crusade against the Still Coast. Unfortunate falling out there.

Also, it is the word Monad, not the organization! Some small clarifying edits to make the language more obvious.
 
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Before the final battle, planning to replace them, the Emerald Koras who had been her super-soldiers, sacking the temples of their cults of her as Goddess, rejecting their love of her, treating them as things.
The blood of selves pours into Kora's mouth, and she chokes. Wanting more than anything to die but made to keep breathing, made to keep living, her will long-since broken, Kora does what she is told, an immaculate whispering what she is to say into her ear, the way advisors did, so long ago.
God Kora truly is just stupid sexy lesbian Emperor

@Cetashwayo , do the Hylics still see the illusions?

Assuming the answer is yes...

[X] Don't use the Auratic Thread.

I don't think using these sorts of strings in such a chaotic and illusion-filled environment is a good idea at all. And like @burybone I don't really think we can out attrition a master illusionist.

[X] Hit-and-Run. An aggressive, manuever-centric strategy. Take full advantage of your mobility, use independent demi-company sized-units to rove beyond enemy lines. Gather captives, outright destroy straggler units, seize key objectives. Eventually, you must run into, catch Morpheos - and descend on him with the witches' swarm.
[X] Our Sister of Supreme Mercy. This is an idealization of your axiom The Witch they Wanted, reframed as a protection of the weak against the strong.
[X] The Caprices. Gods, in a human shape. Ever-passionate, ever-spiteful monsters, too-caring, too-interested, their hands on the lathe of fate, their intentions malice, evil, cruelty. The Immaculates, the Prime Souls, the Titans.
 
One should consider if the same methods by which the Immaculates kept themselves alive had stopped working or were causing other issues.

Where are the original Sympathy and Penitence, anyways?



She killed her friend who led a crusade against the Still Coast. Unfortunate falling out there.

Also, it is the word Monad, not the organization! Some small clarifying edits to make the language more obvious.

Fair enough about Verity and Epiphany although the whole plan is still really funny considering they were so blinded by their own biases not to think "Aisha" was in anyway suspicious when telling them to crank up the autoflayer. But I guess if you get used to committing evil then you can't notice any fishy bullshit.

EVENT HORIZON [Trivial - Success]: Someone who shares her visions with you. That reads to you from the manuscript Fifth Sun, and the tragedy of Obsidian Butterfly, the oblivion witch. Her rise, and fall.

EVENT HORIZON: Her young friendship with the pneumatic Icon Bellamona, and the violence of her old friend's end by the Butterfly's cursed sword, by her own hand. Her rally of the Still Coast against Bellamona's gnostic holy war, and her wielding of the forged abyssal nail of her water-father, his soul trapped inside that self-same sword. Her yearning for the pure land, and her failure to find it in the labyrinth of Demhe. Her gift of a crystal flower to the minotaur, and her last failed attempts to save her people from the clutches of the soul-stealing deceiver.

EVENT HORIZON: Her detection of morse whispers from the deep, and the visits from the breathless god. The truth of the pure land, and the revelation that her crimes had closed it to her. Her declaration, that by this book, she came to make friends she could never make in life. The answer, contained within the seed of gnosis. The gate, contained within the wedding gift. The key, contained within the true meaning of the word monad. The yin, that can complete the yang, and end the cycle.

EVENT HORIZON: Eternity, in the spiral of an awakened third eye.

Killed her extremely powerful psyker friend huh. She had a non-gnostic parental relationship makes sense kind of forgot they wouldn't have the gnostic parental no-no. The wedding gift? The hell is that? D5h thought the nail was made by Ea because of S.O.P.H.I.A. and the Unsouled Saint or whoever the roach is so that might be it. Monad is an interesting word but "unity" and "alone" seems an interesting root for it. Something that is in unity but also alone?

Yeah she was definitely her generation's Harmony/Pandora/Roxana but killed her Sympathy/Eleusia/Koshkin for what were probably not the worst reasons considering the crusade and all. Shame she couldn't stop her people from embracing the Demiurge but it makes a sad sort of sense. Also Sympathy is definitely doing some absolute crazy occult shit and probably gonna soul fuse or mutual spiritual cannibalism who the fuck knows it gonna be weird and she's probably not gonna explain it too well.
 
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[X] Attrition. Slow, measured. Inflict the greatest material damage for fewest lives lost. Use your Night Witches sparingly, leveraging your immunity to illusion, target ammunition dumps, ballista batteries - tighten a vice around Phalanx Hypnos that will expose him. Then your strong reserve of Night Witches will strike, and end him.

One last push against the Father of Lies. Rip away his petty tricks and gut him standing up.

[X] Use the Auratic Thread.

What is signals intelligence but the piano-wire garotte at the strategic level of war?

[X] Our Sister of Supreme Mercy. This is an idealization of your axiom The Witch they Wanted, reframed as a protection of the weak against the strong.

Salve Regina, Mater Misericordie, Miserere Nobis.

[X] The Caprices. Gods, in a human shape. Ever-passionate, ever-spiteful monsters, too-caring, too-interested, their hands on the lathe of fate, their intentions malice, evil, cruelty. The Immaculates, the Prime Souls, the Titans.

Power reveals. Absolute power reveals only unworthiness. Divine power reveals only sadistic glee. We are insects to them, but a wasp can still kill.
 
[X] Attrition. Slow, measured. Inflict the greatest material damage for fewest lives lost. Use your Night Witches sparingly, leveraging your immunity to illusion, target ammunition dumps, ballista batteries - tighten a vice around Phalanx Hypnos that will expose him. Then your strong reserve of Night Witches will strike, and end him.

[X] Use the Auratic Thread.

[X] Our Sister of Supreme Mercy. This is an idealization of your axiom The Witch they Wanted, reframed as a protection of the weak against the strong.

[X] The Caprices. Gods, in a human shape. Ever-passionate, ever-spiteful monsters, too-caring, too-interested, their hands on the lathe of fate, their intentions malice, evil, cruelty. The Immaculates, the Prime Souls, the Titans.
 
Thanks for another glimpse into some pretty terrible horrors! Very interesting to get texture in the experience of losing a total war.

I also feel like the Progeny seems to be the worst of at least the three empires. There's the surveillance apparatus with the egotamers, the stranger helot society, and now the fact that they can just make Koras explode whenever as fuel for somewhat underwhelming sorcery. Sure, it's probably more effective than using an equivalent number of Koras as suicide troops, but the depravity:effectiveness ratio feels like an added insult to the Koras used as material components.

There's not as much hierarchy in the Progeny as there is in Titanagalbat or Koinon and Koinon seems to systematically torture hylics, but at least everyone knows that the Bronze King is very mortal and at least Koinon uses the happy staples when stapling people.

[X] All-Or-Nothing. A massive, sweeping operation, aimed at the very center of Phalanx Hypnos. An antifragile strategy - if Morpheos is there, the whole of the Witches will fall on him - but if he is not, he must choose between having the center of his phalanx cut off from his illusions by your null fields - or face you head on.
[X] Use the Auratic Thread.
[X] Our Sister of Supreme Justice. This is an idealization of your axiom Sunrise Parabellum, reframed as a statement of uncompromising principle.
[X] Our Sister of Supreme Passion. This is an idealization of your axiom Blackstar, reframed as a position of overwhelming passion for the pain of others.
[X] The Colossi. Gods in an inhuman shape. Alien, structural forces, indifferent, grinding, uncaring, that define time, define history, define creation, by their brutal, impersonal design. The suns, the seasons, the sea.

As for strategy, I think the simplest and dumbest one that relies entirely on sheer force is the only option for dealing with an enemy that has an information advantage (which they have by destroying our ability to know things through illusion). I think it would be very difficult to hide something as fundamental as your center and going directly for the center also synergizes pretty well with the thread / communication line. In case we get bamboozled, we can go beep boop, beep boop, turns out the center's not here, we'll be breaking out through the North, please incinerate everything to the Southeast, and oh, they have a lot of guns right where that copse had its nursery.

Also, did Faith get exploded as well? I wasn't sure if she became politically irrelevant due to being exploded or because the other Immaculates formed a bloc that control the real Kora.
 
Halfway into update - oh wow our miss normal is brutal. No tact at all, just dropping truth bombs left and right without care or even understanding of consequences.
 
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