Remove ads

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

Reader mode
There must be some pretty strong Stories about Hubris, Pride Coming Before the Fall, and There's Always a Bigger Fish just about to smack Cauldron hard.
I'm rather hard pressed to think of anything that might work in their favor... Their best hope might be to abandon the facade of being the good guys and try to become the Big Bad with Scion relegated to the Hidden Horror, soon to be Sealed away for "eternity".
 
MajorPane said:
There must be some pretty strong Stories about Hubris, Pride Coming Before the Fall, and There's Always a Bigger Fish just about to smack Cauldron hard.
I'm rather hard pressed to think of anything that might work in their favor... Their best hope might be to abandon the facade of being the good guys and try to become the Big Bad with Scion relegated to the Hidden Horror, soon to be Sealed away for "eternity".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Thing is, this is stage one. And if the narrative sees Cauldron as the villains, then they are gonna win at stage one.

Cauldron does have mind control capes, right?
 
Maybe they're trying to get Scion into Calernia? Hoping it'll make winning more possible with narrative power behind them?

On the other hand, Cauldron is a massively dysfunctional Hero group. Black deals with those pretty well. Alexandria, Eidolon, Legend, Contessa, Number Man. 5-Man Band.

Come to think of it, Alexandria is especially vulnerable to mind control stuff right? Or is that fanon? Either way, they won't know that Dread Empress Malicia has a very high Master rating.
 
Enshuu said:
Come to think of it, Alexandria is especially vulnerable to mind control stuff right? Or is that fanon? Either way, they won't know that Dread Empress Malicia has a very high Master rating.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You're completely wrong, actually. Alexandria was 100% immune to Master effects right up until her mind was gone due to a spontaneous case of buglung depriving her brain of oxygen long enough to - y'know - kill her.
 
So, next up is Skitter or the Dwarven viewpoint?

I believe I know why the Dwarves showed up. Spiders and the one who took an army away to crash the flying city.

They finally tracked where Skitter went to and were informed by someone that sold her out, not sure if it was a random goblin willing to get premium dwarf gear because Skitter can defend herself while the goblin escapes and comes back after the dust and dead bodies settle.

Warlock was on the job with Ranger and the Black Knight with Skitter.

That is 4 named, 3 Majors right there. Would the dwarves be able to deal with that easily?

Of course, the Dwarves could be there to inform the Black Knight to give Skitter up or the City will sink or a new Lava tube forms a volcano or some 'Random Earthquake' may happen?

I believe the Dwarves want to grab Skitter and make her a minion or irrelevant as she controls the spiders as a resource for the Dwarves.

No one will miss her, right? She killed her enemy and did her part, story over. This is their chance to catch the threat and subdue her!

Thus building a story or Enslaving and impressment for 10 years as they profit and she builds a grudge, because of man's aging grow enfeebled as they are weak and abused and they can kill her later.

A Fool-Proof Plan! They are Dwarves! One little girl cannot resist the Dwarves' place as UNOPPOSED!

Of course, Skitter is an out of context and will not Cooperate with the Dwarves.

She may get her spiders and eat the Dwarven nation without a fuck, thus starting another story arc as she gains a name and any Dwarf survivors have a GRUDGE and will work tirelessly to kill her in VENGENCE! for daring to oppose them and reestablish the dwarves in their rightful, ancestral homes.

Thoughts or replies?
 
I mean...would shoving Scion into Calernia even change anything? He's already a multi-dimensional creature, the rules might not apply to him regardless. At best I could see a Lovecraftian 'sealing away' the great evil...

Which just blocks access to that particular dimension, which I mean, yay for Calernia?
 
I think I'll have to wait for 4-5 more chapters before I read again. I can only take so much Cauldron bullshit at once, and they deserve the full narrative weight of their shitty karma punching in their stupid arrogant faces. I sincerely hope @MajorPane is right about that happening. And with any luck magic will completely bypass some of their powers, out of context for the win.

Writing was good. I enjoyed Cat's thoughts on Bet and the people around her. The part with Masego getting to ride with Tattletale was pretty funny.
 
To be honest, not nearly as anti cauldron as the rest of the thread

They must have huge nariative weight as the last bastion fighting against eventually extinction. That seems like a pretty heavy story to justify actions.

Also, somehow my dislike for Catherine in the original is flowing over into this story and I just want her and Black to lose and lose badly.

Please give me respite from the original story
 
What's interesting is that people seem to be forgetting Cauldron's win condition. They set theirs very low after all.
Scion dies and some of humanity live. That's it.

Sure, they'd like to survive at the end of it all (none of them are suicidal... yet anyway) but if the choice comes down to Cauldron surviving but failing to kill Scion or Scion dying at the cost of their lives, well there's not really a choice. And that's something that will have a lot of Narrative Weight.
 
The major issue with cauldron as Good is how they just framed themselves as their introduction to the narrative. Alexandria busts in and starts threatening the lives of a group of people just trying to get home/their friend back. One of them decides to try to stall despite being outmatched and seems to just barely succeed, only for Alexandria to go all according to plan and have a series of gates ominously open up to reveal the figures of a number of very powerful figures known to be a part of a shadowy conspiracy. She then says what they just desperately tried to obtained belonged to them and basically made what could be considered a death threat to anyone who tried to oppose them. I mean that is almost a textbook villain entrance, and depend on what happens next could be the Catherine's loss in a pattern of three, which really is not likely to go well for Alexandria.
 
TigerOfTroy said:
Avatar would have a word.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Ender's Game
GATE
Bolo series
Also, as far as I am concerned, making a mining company retreat isn't exactly winning. It just delays the resource acquisition for a few years.

You can even frame Cauldron as refugees seeking asylum for the rest of Humanity, who are willing to hurt anyone who tries to stop them from saving as many as they can.
I wouldn't, but the narrative of the story can be spun that way.
 
Pinklestia said:
Thing is, this is stage one. And if the narrative sees Cauldron as the villains, then they are gonna win at stage one.

Cauldron does have mind control capes, right?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The Slug handles the bulk of Cauldron's mindfuckery through memory tampering, Eidolon can serve as a Master if needed as mentioned, Contessa can pull off sufficiently bullshit brainwashing, and they have the resources to get such capes even if they lack them. Villains who win in the beginning and use mind control, however, have a nasty habit of losing horribly later on when something goes catastrophically wrong after trying to leash something dangerous in hubris and general foolishness. Messing with the mind of the likes of the Butcher sounds indeed foolish even on the best of days.

Goldenroot said:
The major issue with cauldron as Good is how they just framed themselves as their introduction to the narrative. Alexandria busts in and starts threatening the lives of a group of people just trying to get home/their friend back. One of them decides to try to stall despite being outmatched and seems to just barely succeed, only for Alexandria to go all according to plan and have a series of gates ominously open up to reveal the figures of a number of very powerful figures known to be a part of a shadowy conspiracy. She then says what they just desperately tried to obtained belonged to them and basically made what could be considered a death threat to anyone who tried to oppose them. I mean that is almost a textbook villain entrance, and depend on what happens next could be the Catherine's loss in a pattern of three, which really is not likely to go well for Alexandria.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Indeed. Alexandria even looks like a bad guy for her costume aesthetic. In the very act of making the rule of the narrative more significant, the one who looks like a bad guy is acting like a bad guy... as if she is a bad guy. Hell, she's basically the classic evil mastermind even beyond this sequence, given her civilian identity, and she even has the genius intellect to boot. Wildbow made her as something of an inverted Superman in the first place, but now? She's looking pretty damn Lex Luthor-ish if you ask me. It is also quite appropriate for the likes of Alexandria to encounter her sort of mirror in the likes of Skitter, to, anti-hero versus anti-villain. With narrative weight in effect, even if the bad guys win at first, the cold and ruthless villain wearing the mantle of a hero, born of an idealistic innocent who became the evil that she fought... well she tends to have a rather hard time when faced with the idealistic innocent who turned cynical but failed to surrender the spark of that idealism even as she herself embraced the image of a ruthless villain who arrives when the bad guys are on the brink of total victory to triumph in the face of impossibility. Why, in some narratives, the anti-villain even kills the anti-hero whom she used to adore.
 
Even if Cauldron acted like texbook heroes, they are still the ones invading creation. So that makes them the enemy.

Let's take one of the oldest War Epics, the War Of Troy. Both sides had good people and bad people but one side had made a huge diplomatic fuck up and stole the wife of another King.

When was the last time Creation had a War Epic?

The main difference between Catherine and Taylor are their end goals and some of their methods. Taylor end goal was to save as much as humanity as she could and she usually tried to negotiate before attacking.

Catherine seeks power as her main goal. That's why one of her aspects was "Take". And what she can't have she destroys, hence one of her other aspects. And her main goal... is basically to kill the Gods. There is no other way she can break the rules of creation and survive.

Granted the Gods are assholes and is quite evident the system as it is at least needs a rule patch since people can be assholes and still keep being heroes while any villain that acts nice gets killed.

But... the system works.

Can Creation even survive without the Gods?
 
TikiTau said:
...Well, I'm sure that Cauldron trying to take over the portal leading to a more Practical World won't backfire -spectacularly- at all.

Bet they're planning something Dumb like 'let's invade/colonize the neighboring World since it's outside of Scion's pocket of dimensional locked Earths or whatnot'.

Which means they're probably about to run head-on into narrativium.

I also have a rider bet with myself that they decided to make a deal with the Summer Queen! Which, you know, won't end badly at all either.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Doing stupid things for the 'greater good' is practically Cauldron slogan and living credo.

They are gonna mess it up and it will end up badly for both worlds.



On the other hand, im the only one that wants that someone wipe the smirk and self-assurance off Alexandria face? Posibly via Demi-Fiend-lvl punch in the face?
 
Katsuragi said:
Apparently I'm the only person pro Cauldron reading this. :p
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

What is there to like about those idiots?

I can understand that their... quest, is a masive and extremely hard undertaking.

But there is only so much of their bullshit that you can justifie with the excuse of saving the world.

Parahuman feudalism? Seriously?

Worst at all is that with Contessa there you can practically justifie narratively any and all the bullshit they do.

"Why are we doing this again? It seems stupid"

"Because the path say so"

And thats one of the reasons why i hate Contessa.

The other is because she is basically, and i quote Sephiroth form Dissidia for this:

"Nothing but a puppet"
 
She isnt a complete puppet, no.

But a lot if not almost anything she does is guided by a fragment of a eldritch abomination whose power borderline perfect simulation of everything.

If that shard has a agenda of its own or the third entity had one then all of them would be puppets dancing at its tune.

And she can also surrend the control of her body to her shard turning her into a literal meat puppet to do whatever it is needed to escape the situation that made necesary such desicion.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top