Remove ads

A Practical Guide to Escalation (Worm/A Practical Guide to Evil)

Reader mode
Neat to see more of this.

The Simurgh showing up in Calernia is it's own problem.
Especially given that the thing is inside of the Tower, in the middle of Ater.
I... suppose that at least now that the capital is liable to get destroyed the Black Knight and possibly Malicia have an acceptable reason to move the capital somewhere less problematic.
Maybe move it to the Isle of the Blessed to have somewhere central to the empire, on a river, more central to good farmland, and a good defensive position.
It might also remove some of the High Lords who have been troubling Black with how they've influenced Malicia, and if the Simurgh somehow destroys the whole city and Malicia survives that the reputational situation shifts from "why didn't you protect them" to "it's impressive that you survived that" for Malicia, even if she might also be troubled at having to scheme around a new round of political figures.

I do wonder whether this fic is going to go long enough to get to see the gnomes send a yellow letter, as I think one of the chapter epigraphs might have mentioned.
 
Last edited:
I kind-of hope that the simurgh left some presents to screw over anyone left in her old multiverse when she left.

A few diseases, some messages to the fallen and to other random people over the internet, revealing of cauldron... Some Tinkertech which she held back alot less on.
etc.



Mostly because I always felt that if the simurgh was actually possible to beat, and wasn't working with the rest of the powers, the best way to secure her possible life in the long term is Mutually Assured Destruction.
(And that one of the reasons as far as they know why endbringers only attack so infrequently, is attacking more might activate something with scion, whereas with scions apparent intelligence, he might not be able to track simurgh when shes gone).


Partially, because it means its less likely she would get interrupted if she majorly screws over earth bet. Because by the time they recover, new issues would have arisen.
(That, and she might struggle to precog / effect the old multiverse when she has passed through, so better to ensure no possible surprises.)


Partially because I just want Alexandria to be screwed over for her decision.
 
Last edited:
So the Simurgh is going to become one of the new overarching villains for everyone.

Here is hoping she tinkers with tech and the Gnomes break themselves trying to smash her. Fuck the Gnomes.
 
Wow. I have no words. Well, Ater is fucked. Angels and Absence Demons can probably kill the Simurgh, but I dread what would happen if Corruption gets its hands on it. Concerning Named, I don't see any that can even slow her down if she gets serious.
 
You know what would be really fun? Imagine that the Simurgh comes through the portal, but doesn't do anything evil at all. The Simurgh becomes a hero, or a Hero, and acts as a truly benevolent angel. Imagine how much that would mess with everyone's heads.
 
Dumberfluff said:
You know what would be really fun? Imagine that the Simurgh comes through the portal, but doesn't do anything evil at all. The Simurgh becomes a hero, or a Hero, and acts as a truly benevolent angel. Imagine how much that would mess with everyone's heads.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It is all a trap! Just like when she first appeared, she is lulling you all into a false sense of security, I am not crazy!
 
I wonder if Black can Destroy Simmy, because as far as I know the Endbringers have no protection against PGtE conceptual powers. And his Name would love the fact that he is 'killing' an angelic thing and give him all the power needed to do it.
 
drakonpie250 said:
I wonder if Black can Destroy Simmy, because as far as I know the Endbringers have no protection against PGtE conceptual powers. And his Name would love the fact that he is 'killing' an angelic thing and give him all the power needed to do it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That doesn't really seem smooth, Ranger could hurt Alexandria, but not destroy her, conceptual stuff seem to be a possible counter, but it doesn't trivialize stuff, so even if it does work, I imagine it would have limited scope, and he would need to land a hit on her hidden core to actually win.
 
A lot of her relative level of vulnerability depends on whether just any aspect can fatally damage her without needing to understand her nature, and it that doesn't work, whether it's possible for an aspect use customized to target her or Weska trying to tunnel through realities to hit her machinery-basing realities to kill her.
I sort of think that Hanno siccing the Choir of judgement on her should work. It's not like she's specifically set up to fight PGtE angels or anything.

No idea what happens with Eidolon's Endbringer-creating potential if one has been exiled to another world by Alexandria, or if one is killed in another world by anyone.

It's also unclear whether her being in a different reality actually screws over her precog, but even if it does, she still has postcog and long-range mind-reading, alongside absurd physical durability and levels of destructive potential that surpass reason.
I sort of feel like some of this is because the author wants to remove some of the overpowered precogs from the story who loom over everything manipulating every event and limiting the ability of the motivations and goals of anyone else to matter to the course of events, so maybe it will block her precog, but I think that despite the temptation to get rid of her permanently, actually quickly killing off the Simurgh is a bridge too far, she's lot a lot more OP abilities than just precog and is just physically much harder to kill than Contessa.
Also if the author wants to be comprehensive about that they need to remove the Bard, and the king of the Golden Bloom too.

I am also unsure how long the rest of Cauldron can keep things together without Contessa, I think maybe getting rid of the Simurgh might prevent them from just being instantly out-precog-dueled by a godlike precog into society disintegrating, which might be the only thing that could justify such a poorly-thought-out plan with no understanding of the consequences to get rid of the simurgh, but I also think that this plan wasn't great because they haven't had time to talk to Watchdog and figure out that Praes has the capacity to retaliate with plague-based weapons of mass destruction for dropping a city-destroying monster in their capital.
 
Last edited:
ptbptb said:
Also, dumping Ziz on Calernia - big enough warcrime to get everyone to cooperate? Sources say 'doubtful'.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If moving to another planet, that is not part of the Cycle, gets her away from Eidolons commands than everything is much worse - she gets to actually play to her strengths instead of sandbagging. She loses her long range precognition but could actually think and plan without giant shackles dragging her down.
 
guyfromtheplace1 said:
whether it's possible for an aspect use customized to target her or Weska trying to tunnel through realities to hit her machinery-basing realities to kill her.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think that's worse idea than fighting her, considering a shard managed to dodge and benefit from the big G Gods' smite.

The simurgh isn't the administrator, but she is also specifically focused on precognition.

I think any solution that can kill the shard (assuming she has one and isn't just a complex machine) would be much more difficult than killing the avatar, if she is machinery spread over a lot of worlds, it might allow you to get past some defences, but we don't know enough about how endbringers flesh spread over their machinery and how much of their powers they can use in such worlds to determine if it is easier than finding a way to shatter the core.
guyfromtheplace1 said:
but I also think that this plan wasn't great because they haven't had time to talk to Watchdog and figure out that Praes has the capacity to retaliate with plague-based weapons of mass destruction for dropping a city-destroying monster in their capital.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Maybe dragon can deal with plagues, but that would require her to be useful.

Contessa could have probably dealt with it, if not by herself, than by manipulating other bio tinkers into changing their ways or improving, but she is gone, they might try to look into cloning now, Blasto could clone capes.
Zoolimar said:
If moving to another planet, that is not part of the Cycle, gets her away from Eidolons commands than everything is much worse - she gets to actually play to her strengths instead of sandbagging. She loses her long range precognition but could actually think and plan without giant shackles dragging her down.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Part of her great power is also her ability to fly in space and scan the planet over the course of months, her power is a balance where she can focus on a person to see more of their past and future or focus more broadly, losing definition but seeing everyone, combined with an ability to simulate blind spots and master people to help make her preferred futures come to be.

Simurgh might be the perfect precog here, unlike Contessa who has absolute vision, Simurgh is used to being comparably much more unreliable, she make up for it with her great physical power, mastering ability, and quantity, the simurgh got the image of all powerful precog, but she isn't one, people don't see the failures, they only see the successful schemes, the simurgh is used to throwing a lot of plots at the wall until one sticks.

But I think a lot of it is preparation, we know from Contessa that prope view of this reality is unreliable, so the simurgh's prepared plans will likely quickly fail, if she has months to fly in space, scanning the world to study it, she might adapt, but until that point, she is probably significantly weakened.

Combined with conceptual powers she might not have adapted to yet, now is probably the best time to kill her, the longer they wait, the harde it will be as she grows more entrenched and knowledgeable.
 
drakonpie250 said:
I wonder if Black can Destroy Simmy, because as far as I know the Endbringers have no protection against PGtE conceptual powers. And his Name would love the fact that he is 'killing' an angelic thing and give him all the power needed to do it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't think Destroy could kill her. She's durable enough that nukes won't work, and using Destroy on Akua's super weapon nearly killed him. In the other hand, I'm pretty sure that Severe would hurt her seriously. And if Laurence can cut the Simurg's connection with the dimension where most of her mass is located...

Roth963 said:
considering a shard managed to dodge and benefit from the big G Gods' smite.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Btw, that part makes no sense. The Gods created a whole planet and a infinity of alternate dimension ex nihilo, and somehow they couldn't kill a shard? If it was an Angel that failed, sure, but not the Gods.
 
Last edited:
K von Carstein said:
Btw, that part makes no sense. The Gods created a whole planet and a infinity of alternate dimension ex nihilo, and somehow they couldn't kill a shard? If it was an Angel that failed, sure, but not the Gods.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I am pretty sure they didn't make infinite alternative dimensions, that planet and maybe a few more prior iterations (where demons came from) are things they did make.

Shards are continent sized adaptive god machines, and the attack from the gods seem far from them going all out, it didn't give to me the impression of a God fighting another God, but one smitting a mortal, and they were just confused it failed, before backing down and covering their planet out of wariness.

This introduce a sense of unknown, neither shards as a whole or gods fought each seriously, but the fact a shard successfully dodged means that we don't have real clue what will happen if it comes to a fight, this of course means that the looming Scion rampage is still a terrifying thing, because we can't make assumptions like him being killed if he can be drawn to their world, maybe the gods will win, but it is also possible Scion will beat the gods.

This sense of uncertainty keeps the end of the world threat as the overarching problem of worm, there isn't a simple solution to Scion like drawing him into a portal, if he snaps, he might really take down everyone, even if it is not a certain thing.
 
Roth963 said:
I am pretty sure they didn't make infinite alternative dimensions, that planet and maybe a few more prior iterations (where demons came from) are things they did make.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As far as the characters know, there's an infinite number of Hells, which were presumably created by Below.

Roth963 said:
Shards are continent sized adaptive god machines, and the attack from the gods seem far from them going all out, it didn't give to me the impression of a God fighting another God, but one smitting a mortal, and they were just confused it failed, before backing down and covering their planet out of wariness.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That, on the other hand, makes sense.
 
K von Carstein said:
Wow. I have no words. Well, Ater is fucked. Angels and Absence Demons can probably kill the Simurgh, but I dread what would happen if Corruption gets its hands on it. Concerning Named, I don't see any that can even slow her down if she gets serious.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Worse she's appearing in the tower with all it's caged horrors nearby and lets not forget the giant spider army nearby and without Cat being primed to turn their boss into her minion.

drakonpie250 said:
I wonder if Black can Destroy Simmy, because as far as I know the Endbringers have no protection against PGtE conceptual powers. And his Name would love the fact that he is 'killing' an angelic thing and give him all the power needed to do it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

There's also how things from worm are outside the bet which allows the Gods to be freer with their power.

guyfromtheplace1 said:
It's also unclear whether her being in a different reality actually screws over her precog, but even if it does, she still has postcog and long-range mind-reading, alongside absurd physical durability and levels of destructive potential that surpass reason.
I sort of feel like some of this is because the author wants to remove some of the overpowered precogs from the story who loom over everything manipulating every event and limiting the ability of the motivations and goals of anyone else to matter to the course of events, so maybe it will block her precog, but I think that despite the temptation to get rid of her permanently, actually quickly killing off the Simurgh is a bridge too far, she's lot a lot more OP abilities than just precog and is just physically much harder to kill than Contessa.
Also if the author wants to be comprehensive about that they need to remove the Bard, and the king of the Golden Bloom too.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Ziz's precog should get mucked up because aside from it already being shown that guide stuff like magic does screw it up based on canon Ziz either precogs all the futures and uses data gained from scanning to determine which are more likely or just models the future from the data it has.

This means that as shown in Ward people who have never fought it before start off effective but over time it's precog builds up until it's able to accurately predict them and dodge or intercept their atks. Additionally, as a precog Dinah herself had a measure of protection because of how much more varied her actions could be since every time she answered a question it changed things from Ziz's foreseen futures and it had to start over albeit being able to use the past data to refine them quicker.

All in all Ziz's precog is probably at the lowest in can be right now since it has nothing on the people or the place it now is on top off all the stuff like magic that will throw it off.

For the bit about the other big precogs does the king of the Golden Bloom actually need removing he wasn't really in canon a lot so I don't think there were actually that many details about him certainly not enough to put him as a bigger precog than Agnes.
 
The thing is - without her directives Simurgh has no reasons to stay and fight. Going to orbit and gathering data is very much a valid and straightforward method of getting an advantage for the future.
 
Dumberfluff said:
You know what would be really fun? Imagine that the Simurgh comes through the portal, but doesn't do anything evil at all. The Simurgh becomes a hero, or a Hero, and acts as a truly benevolent angel. Imagine how much that would mess with everyone's heads.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

None of the Angels in Calernia are benevolent, just alien. Like, the first choir Catherine actually encounters tried to use a kid as a patsy to mind control a whole city and send them on a suicide crusade to kill everyone in a different nation.
 
Disregarding Simurgh's combat specs, I feel the obligation to mention that from the Calernian point of view, some foreign Heroes (?) intentionally unleashed an uncontrollable unkillable monster on their enemies. And this happened in Calernia, which means this entire event is now governed by Calernian logic and laws of plot.

I don't think there is even a single story where unleashing an uncontrollable monster ever ended well for the one doing the unleashing.

So perhaps the question is not "how can Calernians kill the Simurgh", but rather "how is this going to backfire on Alexandria in the most spectacular way possible".
 
Lav said:
So perhaps the question is not "how can Calernians kill the Simurgh", but rather "how is this going to backfire on Alexandria in the most spectacular way possible".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Probably can't be worse than fighting the simurgh normally, beyond it worsening relations, maybe the simurgh learn magic? Get a name?
 
Roth963 said:
Probably can't be worse than fighting the simurgh normally, beyond it worsening relations, maybe the simurgh learn magic? Get a name?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Monsters do not get Names unless I'm sorely mistaken. At least I can't remember any. And Simurgh doesn't seem to possess the necessary qualities to become Named anyway.

Worsening diplomatic relations aren't something that's normally a part of a story.

And magic is irrelevant. Simurgh has more than enough power on her own, any extra upgrades will not change the story she's part of in any way.
 
Lav said:
Monsters do not get Names unless I'm sorely mistaken. At least I can't remember any. And Simurgh doesn't seem to possess the necessary qualities to become Named anyway.

Worsening diplomatic relations aren't something that's normally a part of a story.

And magic is irrelevant. Simurgh has more than enough power on her own, any extra upgrades will not change the story she's part of in any way.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So can't think of anything, maybe more endbringers appearing in response? That might count for the story element of it backfiring, they got rid of one endbringers and three more rose up.
 
Lav said:
Monsters do not get Names unless I'm sorely mistaken. At least I can't remember any. And Simurgh doesn't seem to possess the necessary qualities to become Named anyway.

Worsening diplomatic relations aren't something that's normally a part of a story.

And magic is irrelevant. Simurgh has more than enough power on her own, any extra upgrades will not change the story she's part of in any way.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The ratlings do any that live long enough to evolve into a horned lord get them it's just fortunate for everyone that by that point they have to spend all their time hibernating because of the stupid amounts of food they need (other than that 1 the dead king turned into an undead) and that the modern era isn't as friendly to ancient horrors due to the whole end of the age of wonders thing.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top