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Would being able to generate the images from memory work?
Knight of Wessex (A Written World Quest)
- Thread starter Alectai
- Start date
- Original Fantasy Alt. History
Would being able to generate the images from memory work?
Path to Victory, the intent is to get better pre-made plans when faced with unknown situations, subject to unknown unknowns making them worse.
Would a disruption effect against opponents be under Precision and valid? (Not specifying scope of what it applies to, since I am not sure.)
Insight: Would Environmental Effects (good or bad, or maybe even mundane ones) be acceptable?
Thanks.
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Hmmm. That would be worth being a Prayer. I'm less sure it's within the scope of Light per se...maybe. I'd need to think about that.
Skills and Prayers can't plan for you the Questers. You can get additional information, maybe even stuff that tells you a particular plan is wrong, but just as a structural thing nothing will ever tell you 'This plan is right' and certainly not do the planning for you.
Inasmuch as they're available, yes.
I'm not sure what you're asking here? Insight is specifically insight into magic, you could get a Meditation for better detection of ambient magic in the environment...but that's super niche, as the base skill can already do that, so it's just a bonus to a highly niche sense.
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- Location
- San Ramon, CA
I think the closest we've seen to that in-quest has been the Norse Berserks, specifically their twitch-like instincts that make them able to outplay their opponents.
But as for "general life" planning based off of unknowns, we would need either:
-Whatever skill King Alfred has for all his "plans within plans" that's he's been spinning for decades
-Praying to God for divine guidance.
Kelirapc
The Bright in your Night
- Location
- Kali-Forni
So I haven't read Norsequest yet(I'll be getting to that soon), and I only really started reading more of the thread during the first tournament, but are Carolignian cultivators new? I sometimes get the impression that Thanes were the primary cultivators here before Alfred or whoever started to make Knights I think. Also do we know how old the oldest Knight is? Is it Reinald?
Also I think I remember seeing something about there being three sorts of Carolignian cultivators, the Knights, Priests, and a Ruler one I can't remember. What are the differences between the three?
Also I think I remember seeing something about there being three sorts of Carolignian cultivators, the Knights, Priests, and a Ruler one I can't remember. What are the differences between the three?
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Carolingian cultivators are 'new' compared to some other varieties, but they were created by Charlemagne, so they have existed for well over 1000 years in this setting. The truth you've probably caught onto here is that they are indeed very new to England. Most Carolingians are found in the lands once ruled by Charlemagne on the mainland, importing some to help defend Wessex is a recent invention, within the last century or two. Reinald is a middling young Knight originally from the continent, who came to Wessex because he found the political maneuvering needed to advance there distasteful. Knights actually born in Wessex are all very young indeed by the standards of powerful Knights on the continent.
And, to be clear, most people in Wessex still are Thanes or otherwise using Anglo-Saxon cultivation, Knights are rare and valuable, not the majority.
Chivalric, Clerical, and Nobiliary are the categories, yes. On a metaphysical level, the three aren't inherently that different, but they are widely separated by training and equipment. Chivalric Cultivators are taught to fight and use Knightly Armour, while Clerical ones are taught effects involving group buffing and a lot of interesting and unique stuff with Revelations, and Nobles are taught administrative, rulership, and logistical matters.
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- Location
- Space between realms
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Maybe an admin or scholar prayer to keep track of Byzantine plots.
As that one Dune quote goes, "Plans within plans within plans."
- Location
- Space between realms
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Relatively as Deadman said. The more interesting quirk of the "Wessex" knights is the use of Hama.
It is possible to adopt another culture's "Soul/Esoteric"* stat equivalent. There is a Norseman in the OG quest that learned Finnish Magic, and he has that stat instead of a Fylgia.
*One of the QM's has said at some point that Psyche is technically the Soul, since the belief at this time is that the mind is the seat of the soul.
It has been implied that it is something of a representation of the culture you identify with.
You might be born ____, but at your core, you feel ____.
The Soma and Psyche stats are quintessentially Christian (not sure if the Byzantine Body and Mind stats are different), but Hama is a Wessex-specific stat.
Alfred's reforms are at the core of this. They understand the weakness of Thanes, but don't sacrifice their culture for strength. They don't seek to replace Thanes with Knights, but to preserve the Soul of the Wessex people, wedding it with the strength of the Carolingian system.
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A few more ideas for applications of Light
- Reveal when something is going wrong in Audrey's land (while she is tending to it, not as a remote function)
- Anti concealment effect
- Light-enhanced Wisdom might do both of the above. It could also be the best route to apply Light to tactical analysis
- Light + Joy: could come in clutch as a moment of battlefield leadership, or as a diplomatic tool
- Grace + Light (revelation aspect and enhancing ephemeral aspect) = summon/discover mystery box
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Light doesn't have an auto-detect feature, it can only reveal things you point it at. It can't provide information like this...it can potentially reveal things in a very blunt way (like 'all concealed things in this specific area') but nothing that requires judgment about what's important.
This works in an area, potentially, sure.
Using Light to enhance Wisdom is possible, but what it'd do is increase your ability to read and judge people in a social context, not any of the things suggested here. It's probably a valid replacement for a dedicated lie-detection Meditation, though.
This probably doesn't do anything Cloak of Grandeur doesn't.
This definitely doesn't work at all.
- Location
- his hidden lair
The fief is there to fund our Knightly endeavors and needs not the other way around. Given that historically, capital investment outside of specific industries and circumstances was significantly less efficient compared to more modern economic circumstances- I'd prefer we look at whatever fief we're given with a bit more restraint.
It's presumptuous, but when I see these sort of sentiments towards investing and reinvesting it seems heavily colored by our modern context. The Written World takes place in a setting where the burghs and economic reforms of King Alfred are not years old- but centuries old. Assuming economic life for the average Anglo-Saxon is still fairly historical, strong investments with rapid dividends are going to be pretty unlikely. I'm sure we can set Alvis up with something, but the fief's economy is going to be the product of centuries of factors, not the frantic result of a few years of Audrey dumping a bit of surplus into it.
I don't mean to suggest the economy is entirely static, or unsophisticated, but it's likely the product of the same inertia that leads to this quest taking place in the tenth millennia rather than the tenth century. Expecting rapid turn around on investments is likely to run into the face of that inertia on top of historical limitations on capital investment. Though I am entirely willing to eat crow if I'm off base.
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I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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Captured my thoughts on the matter perfectly, I'd say. Enough that I'll give you a meow reaction.
As for Alfred's economical reforms, I'll say that Alfred is the kind of guy who never could leave well enough alone. He's always tweaking this policy or that law in an attempt to create an economy that will outlast him. And also boats, the guy loves boats, probably too much for what Wessex is actually capable of supporting.
- Location
- Bretonnia
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[X] Maybe you should be willing to take a bit of a loss today, to earn some favor here and there. Goodwill is difficult to buy, but potent armaments are a mighty offer indeed. (+2 Wealth and a Favor from a well placed buyer)
- Location
- Norway
Games set in the Early Medieval era tend to compress decades of advancement and improvement into one overnight button, for the sake of giving the player a button to press on a game-relevant timescale.
On the one hand, since a quest is a kind of game, maybe we'll get tech tree speed runs for the same reason.
On the other hand, the Written World cultivation setting stretches those decades into centuries partly so that cultivators can have long lives while remaining in the 'same' period, which should make capital improvement even less effective.
Tangent: Part of the reason games do that, I think, is that designers and developers flinch away a little from the high relative value of violence and conquest in this era. Sure, they often make murder-hobo-warlord games that are about violent conquest, but that's a choice of subject matter, not a relative valuation. Infrastructure upgrades are made unrealistically effective in games when they exist at all, because devs don't want players thinking "infrastructure sucks, conquest is where it's at", neither for gameplay nor for morality.
One of the many reasons the 9th century was so full of violent conquest, though, was that "infrastructure sucks, conquest is where it's at" was mostly true.
However much Wealth it takes to upgrade a farm to provide an extra 1 Wealth-per-year income, that same starting cash could pay for thugs and weapons to conquer someone else's farms providing perhaps 5 Wealth-per-year.
Eventually this arms race led to everyone being fortified and going scorched earth and engaging in punitive expeditions to destroy the value of conquests, but that's a gradual process which will take several hundred years to finish. It will also be a nonlinear process, there's a lot of times along the way when King Gourmet of Mainland says "let's focus on our farms instead of military spending" and tries to demilitarize a little, and then Jarl Frederick the Viking sails in with a dozen armed friends and goes "ooh, nice farms, fat cows, mine now" and loots the cows, next year he comes back with more armed friends and conquers Normandy and is unreasonably happy about owning nice farms built with someone else's money.
Circling back around to the quest, fief income is meant for gearing Audrey as part of that process to ensure peace through power. Spending it on improving the fief is contrary to the point.
Crudely summarizing: England tried spending money on fief improvements and that resulted in fiefs being looted or conquered by Vikings; so now it's policy to spend money on Knights in order to make the Vikings stop.
- Location
- USA
How did the whole "talking to Chad and his mastery about training in Grip" thing pan out? I don't think I saw any mention of it in the last update.
AeonIlluminate
The power of friendship and aggressive landscaping
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Monday's chapter was just the first chunk of the turn, the rest of it gets posted tonight. The main way you can tell we still have more stuff this chapter that isn't posted yet is that we don't have a turn plan that we're voting on, if you haven't seen anything from Alectai about how much is left to write for whatever reason.
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This maybe goes a bit too far. Spending money to make money is still valid. However, it's definitely true that, for the most part, it will take a very long time for any infrastructure investments to actually pay out, and that the ones available are limited.
To use an analogy from another part of this system, if comparing a Fief to your Temple, infrastructure stuff is not like Foundation stuff where you pick from a list, but like Decoration stuff where certain things are available due to specific factors. The bonuses are notably less impressive than Decorations, mind you, but if we're talking availability it's more 'you can do specific things as the situation makes them viable' than it is 'tech tree' in the sense some games use.
Which is all to say that investing in the fief isn't crazy or futile, but it's probably a very long term play to get your money back out of it, and not actually something you can realistically pour money into whenever you like and reap benefits. Of course, the other side of that is that some improvements (or just avoiding bad things due to events) may well be time limited and require you to have money right now.
So there are reasons to have money on hand related to your fief, but there isn't anything resembling a tech tree for you to work through by simply spending money.
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- Location
- Red Blood on Golden Shield
[X] It would be better if you focused on making a useful investment first–it's often much easier to bear a small hit to your profits over time than a single large investment of coin right away. You can leverage that into further profits. (+1 Wealth per turn for 6 Turns)
- Location
- Space between realms
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@DeadmanwalkingXI The fief we're getting, will it be a vote of where? Or are we just getting an area near our family's holdings?
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There's a vote planned OOC though Audrey herself has to just take what she's given...but also this isn't from your family, it's from the King, why would it be anywhere near your family's holdings?
- Location
- some computer lab
Yeah it makes sense that the fief would be far away from our family's holdings, so that on our death it would go to a new knight or the king rather than the Eotenslaga getting grabby.
That one was mostly a joke.
- Location
- Florida
[X] Maybe you should be willing to take a bit of a loss today, to earn some favor here and there. Goodwill is difficult to buy, but potent armaments are a mighty offer indeed. (+2 Wealth and a Favor from a well placed buyer)