A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
[X] King and Court
Kingpin Zampano had bought their votes, and he himself hasn't weighed in which option he prefers yet. So far what you're seeing his his post where he prepares colored votes for every option so that the tallies look better.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Working vote:
[x]King and Court
The true adversary in this Story is not the Hidden Ones. Not the Geas of Indenture. Not the Apocryphal Curse. It's the incentives towards Reckless behavior our Ring gives us.
[x]King and Court
The true adversary in this Story is not the Hidden Ones. Not the Geas of Indenture. Not the Apocryphal Curse. It's the incentives towards Reckless behavior our Ring gives us.
Note that staying in the city affects Decimation in that an alternate Huntress Moon target presumably isn't in the city but Decimation isn't focused. Everyone within our hundreds of thousands of miles radius are just as subject to it as people standing next to us. Most of them won't have the cushion of extra vitality the locals have. The main difference our location makes is which people have the opportunity to find and try to kill the mass murderer. Truly Tower buying Hunger has as much concern for lives of the wider population as for those of his subjects. 0 = 0.
Hunger just doesn't treat his subjects any differently than any other people. He has concerns for their lives as a hero, but he also thinks he is good enough to deal with dangers like Decimator with his personal power.
Well, theoretically the rebellion doesn't need to be finished now. Neither Hunger nor his companions have to stay here, and I'm sure Adorie will understand the need for a pause while we search for an alternative target once he explains Decimator. He can leave them somewhere else like Elixir or the Temple while he searches the wilderness for an appropriate target. Once he has done that and has acquired OaF (+ King of Winter) in addition to Tower and Tears, he can come back and show the Lord Protector who's boss.
Edit: One problem with it is the question of Ber. Let's not forget that his original target was Versch, so leaving them alone could be dangerous.
Edit: One problem with it is the question of Ber. Let's not forget that his original target was Versch, so leaving them alone could be dangerous.
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Option 2 Hunger thinks he's good enough. Option 3 assumes he's good enough but doesn't care either way.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
To be fair, most places in the Voyaging Realm seem to be sparsely populated to the point where even if we're draining everyone within hundreds of thousands of miles, most other places that we could be standing are still going to be draining significantly less people than this place.
The Tyrant's going to go on high alert almost immediately. He will start hunting down potential allies of a Royalist uprising, trying to crush their power to stop him before they can rally. if the prospective Royalist leadership is off on another planet (or however the geography/astrography works in the Voyaging Realm), then he'll have time to do that without opposition.
We've committed to a bold, aggressive strike. That's going to be met with bold, aggressive countermoves. Expect shit to get real for the rebels, whether we're there or not.
That is part of why I want us to be physically present and strong enough to challenge the Tyrant.
TBH, Apocrypha threw us a lot of bones! So many we didn't even manage to pick them all... Our first Huntress Moon Target, Rotbeast was just a loot/picks pinata at the end of the day, and we could have picked up Lucenthorne if we went full DELAY-DELAY-DELAY on Apo-procs when we had the chance.
An obvious reference to the Day After. Day After what, though? After rotbeast's reckoning? After getting Sovereign Jewel? Or even the consequences of Letrz's ill-thought plan to bully Hunger? Simply the environmental context for this update? This story is ripe for choices for the aspiring revisionist; highlight and de-emphasize whichever event you want.
The color scene is interesting; I don't think we so much of the lilac-colored options at all outside of Exalted Quests, where that was Sidereal Color. And Red here... I dunno what it is tied to.
This is fairly impressive, given that we only invested 27 Arete into our element (discounting 7 arete that we invested to buy it). And you'd be surprised at how much of that value came out of a 2-arete advancement! Edeldross adept was so good, it is disgusting. Perhaps buying magic-improving advancement was a good idea, early on... If only we had more arete generation, back then.
Interesting to think that Evening Sky accepted Eldeldross like a natural part of itself, though. Not all elements suitable, even though magic is perceived as (one of) ES primary domains. What unites Shadowchord and Edeldross, I wonder... The "cloud" theme is pretty weak? Edeldross might have gotten in through connection to Majesty and affinity to the Realm of The Evening, but Shadowchord confuses me outright.
Hopefully, we'll see Aobaru-focused advancements in the future; magnifying effects of Vigorflame on Hunger would be pretty great, but improving Aobaru specifically is likewise a good option. We need to boost him if we ever plan on seeing that ISH potential pay off.
"lightly"
I wonder what would have been "heavily." Trying to teach Aobaru Praxis?
I do hope that this stuff actually going to empower our children somewhat once enough time passes... I probably shouldn't. Impact of zero-arete activities seems to be pretty minimal in time-frames like this. Gisena took what, two weeks to complete her evolution? And she was an Accursed-granted companion who has extreme baseline potential.
Is this shounen protagonist speaking, or a young boy trying to look cool in front of his idol? Both, perhaps?
Our relationship with Aobaru seems to mirror typical shounen stories quite interestingly; we are now in that phase where cool mentor protects the hero with his life against an overwhelming foe. Hopefully, we'll acquire potential-type options in combination with generating enough arete to properly exploit them in order to break the narrative before we dramatically die.
Hunger is pretty light on damage here; given that he is able to heal all but most grievous injuries, he really could have trained his children on conditions much closer to real live combat.
But I suppose we are too soft for that; and questionable increase of training effectiveness is probably not worth the damage it'll deal to the minds of these children besides. At very least this type of training works for Aeira, given her advancement in recent updates.
Gotta love that fierce determination, regardless of wisdom's absence. Shows that as long as we invest a little to allow them progression, forge the road that allows them to go further beyond their natural limitations, these kids actually would walk it instead of wasting our efforts. No wasted potential here.
I hope we'll get to eat some Shadowchord in the future... Probably not. Advancements like that seem to be awfully rare.
Ah, but how good it could be with Greater Shadowchord or even True Shadowchord! And we just recently bought a stealth advancement; potential for some good synergy is there. And maybe if we upgrade Aeira sufficiently, we can eat her element without depowering her...
Just delaying the inevitable, Letrz. Hunger does not tire, does not feel pain, etc, etc, and he will never ever stop until he avenges his embarrassment at your hand. Pity we don't have that metal skeleton aesthetic; a shirtless man covered in a glob of elemental goop is a combination that doesn't work very well with terminator quotes.
Letrz is really showing off such great wisdom, saying things like that. Well, perhaps with Hunger's unwillingness to train or punish these children particularly harsh, one could argue that she is demonstrating her hard-earned knowledge of Hunger's mental buttons, here. Annoying someone without actually provoking a response is a valuable skill, especially for a noble.
I wonder how well Aeira adjusted to the charisma blaster; sounds like she is actually capable of interacting with Hunger now without being a nervous, stuttering mess she was at the start. Good for her! Wonder if our charisma-regulating advancement has anything to do with that.
Is this rank? We actually don't have that many mental stats+ right now, I think. We did avoid Honing and such... Or maybe just "baseline" combat experience Hunger has played a role, here. Aeira is young, after all, while Hunger is a veteran.
Melee combat. Everyone is pretty agile; pity Aeira doesn't get to show off her impressive ninja skills in magnificent details, hunger easily countering all her moves makes her look worse at this than she really is.
And now, Hunger finally reaches the instigator of this. I wonder, what was Letrz thinking when she worked to spread that Reckoner title into the masses? Letrz sometimes shows signs of really not caring about the future and mostly living "in the moment"; perhaps Decimation shaped her mind strongly in favour of enjoying what little life she has. A hedonistic attitude is only natural when she sacrificed so much of her life as is.
Yet another meatshield between you and Hunger, Letrz? For shame...
I admit, I never got the point of that. Culture clash, I suppose.
I understand your confusion well, Letrz.
Chalk and Chalkboard are ancient artifacts now? How peculiar. Perhaps we should invest effort into locating some; perhaps such ancient, culturally significant things could make a good panoply artifact. Would certainly make finding fitting punishment for children much easier in the future.
Well, more like they lie in a completely different field of piloting a giant humongous mecha.
The fact that it wasn't instantly snuffed out is pretty significant nonetheless, I must say. Is this Surgecrafting ability to output ridiculous amount of element, or Sharpbright's innate elemental advantages against "normal" pressure?
I am torn.
Finally here is someone who doesn't just ignore pain and griveous damage like it is nothing - would be such a joy to see Hunger inflict pain and suffering on someone and have them actually react, not shrug it off like nothing.
On other hand, it is our daughteru.
Goddamnit Letrz, why are you so soft. Did we not invest 7 arete in you? By the law of companion arete transfusion, you already ought to have True Sharpbright, or something. Such a lazy duchess...
Impressive. Rank 6.3, is it? IIRC this was supposed to require a fantastic effort to achieve. Not quite a legendary feat of "high rank" but nonetheless impressive, even if Ennoblement gives her a slight leg-up.
Rihakuverse; when proficient might as well mean "completely trash."
...Really feeling that she could use some sort of a weapon. Versch is all nice and good, but she spends a lot of time out of her mech; that is a lot of time when she is essentially defensiveness against threats on the scale Hunger is currently busy with challenging.
I am surprised that she needed a demonstration at all. Letrz did see Hunger Thorn Rotbeast to death in less than a minute, after all. And before that, rushing through the battle lines at Mach speeds.
Nonetheless, she did really good here; I am pleasantly surprised.
Pity that we didn't start training her before that. Well, I suppose there was no real opportunity for proper training; it all was either fighting monsters or travel time.
Still insisting on that "Lord" thing; playing a dangerous game there, Duchess...
Bravado of the barely breathing; really looks like Hunger's charisma-blasted Aobaru a little bit too much.
...Wonder what he would have though if he refused to accept him and where he could have ended up. Jotarun's fated teachers were elves; wonder who would've been Aobaru's mentor... Some ancient forebearer's leftover, perhaps? A vestige that dreams of restoration, even?
I must say, Letrz unrelentingly sunny hedonistic attitude is refreshing.
Flattery would get your everywhere, Letrz; you just needed to be more decisive. Create opportunities, do not wait for them! Perhaps you could have worked fishing into your punishment, somehow, that could have been a suitable opening...
Very shounen'y table manners Aobaru is showing off there. Wonder what sort of questions he is interested in.
And yeah, that remark sounds awfully like Letrz believing that she should just enjoy her life to the max, since it is probably going to be cut very short.
Pity that such positive attitude was forced upon her by unpleasant weight of decimation. Pity that her father did not encourage it in her childhood; for somebody who will quite probably die before childhood, every second of joy is immensely valuable. Trying to instill grim determination and "proper behavior" was such a cruel thing to inflict on a decimated child.
Aaand we are back to the foodporn and hedonism.
Hunger knew what we were in for when we took a star-struck youth into our group. I'd say that he has no right to complain, but he actually seems to be enduring the assault with a great amount of dignity and patience.
Well, "soon" really was quite relative.
Letrz's thought here do rise an interesting point; mechanism behind marking certain targets as valid or non-valid for Huntress Moon are pretty arcane at this point. What does Fishing Competition and bringing down an arcane tower down have in common?
Perhaps there is an element of sacrifice? Like, Hunger needing to sacrifice some sort of potential gain in exchange for saying his hunger? If so, perhaps there probably was something great hidden behind social contact with that Evening Sky Pirate.
But then again, alternative to crushing Opalescent tower was simply winning a fishing contest. Not seeing a sacrifice there.
Oh well. Hopefully, the logic would be easier to figure out once we acquire more data points.
We did have options to increase Huntress Moon targets availability in the past; these would have come in handy right now. Well, oh well, hopefully, we'll get Pillars soon enough to render this entire timewasting nonsense irrelevant. Pity that rushing into realm of the Evening is not an option right now.
Careful, your imperial ambition is showing
On an unrelated note, I hope there is a physical crown we can slot into our panoply. Would be pretty amusing to inflict this on Hunger, and useful in practical terms besides.
And yet, you accepted Hunger's tyranny quite readily, Aobaru. Cannot help but question your judgment!
Seriously though, it is hard to actually judge Sovereignity's actions before we see how things are under the imperial yoke; perhaps things really are mostly fine and dandy as Letrz says...
Wonder if that phrase arose naturally in this dimension... Or there have been some other isekai heroes of some significance in the Human Sphere. Before this instance, Hunger was main source of earth-culture influences and memes in this quest.
This is hilarious. Especially hilarious considering the choices we made. Moreso, considering advancements like Gleam and absolute load of charisma Hunger has. What sort of a talk about self-determination could be there, when for average citizen Hunger might as well be a memetic hazard?
On a related note, it was remarked once that Letrz is used so superhumanly charismatic entities and is capable of enduring their influence; I wonder how she managed to acquire such resistance. Was it training by exposure, or something else?
Not quite completely sincere answer, but this is probably not the time nor the place to reveal Hunger's tragic backstory, yes.
I hope we'll get to ram Hunger's tragic backstory down someone's throat at some point in future, though. He really doesn't feel properly avenger'y without a single emotion-filled monologue about vengeance, imo.
Wonder if Apocrypha is working on that threat to put Hunger against the Empire. This sounds terribly inviting for that exact sort of shenanigans. We had given it a lot of time to work its magic, too, with any potential observers seeing Letrz and her armament prancing around VR with seemingly no rhyme or reason, enabling revolutions and bringing down small nation-states, without any obvious intent to return back home.
Perhaps a cursebearer with a geas to become a king of thousand worlds should consider getting used to the thought of being a king in the future. Such stubbornness..
She is a pretty good ruler, though? Not seeing the point of this "threat", Hunger! Especially since you are the main target of her antics...
What a one-track mind these children have.
...
At this rate, perhaps, we should explore Gisena's food as an actual weapon of chemical destruction. So far, Hunger been remarkably clean with his means of war-waging; we need to expand our repertoire to include some weapons with war crime potential or else all that history of ruthless "whatever it takes" from Hunger's backstory is going to fade out completely.
Or we could choose to rally some peasants and lead them to their doom in the Realm of Myth. That works, too.
I think I am satisfied with Core Panoply in general, even though right now I feel some tinges of regret; here we are, with Stranglethorn all but forgotten, with a good percentage of the player base choosing to forego panoply advancements this choice unlocked. Well, at very least Rank is always good.
Gisena requiring time to build stuff really limits her usefulness. Hopefully, once we acquire Pillars, we'll be done with that too, alongside with all this Huntress Moon nonsense.
Such a painfully obvious choice... Would come in handy if we choose Opalescent Tower, here! Such value, so much synergy with our choices, an impressively consistent strategy of building upon our previous choices!
Seriously, this was such an obvious pick even for the non-tower option, it is hilarious. There probably have been other factors we didn't give due attention, Rihaku rarely weights things so.
This thing is relatively impressive, but with our ever more extreme rate of growth, I can't help but think it would be rendered extremely useless extremely quickly. Maybe if we weren't about to pick two EFBs and then generate enough arete to pick up a third? Maybe it could have helped us in our recent disaster fight; perhaps it could have helped us avoid that painful choice between losing companions or other equally unpleasant options.
Wonder if this is going to be available still once we unlock Empyrean Mantle. This+a 33 Arete artifact would be a pretty great combo, I suspect.
Pity we didn't pick Inksky. Well, I suppose it was a reasonable decision, given that getting through Temple's last stretch was pretty difficult even with Eldeldross boost.
The vaunted "safe" option - even now I am unsure that this was actually safe, with threat's daring tendencies and Apocryphal looming over it all. Turning a fishing contest into a fight for life and death really sounds quite interesting and funny, therefore making it an attractive target for Apocryphal ire.
Our current choice, decided in a pretty harsh debate. We regrettably made some mistakes - not purchasing ADS when we had the opportunity - but we are still at the point where we can and should exploit the opportunities still remaining. OOC-wise, this choice made arete generation spike due to the danger - introducing incentives to generate more arete during this month is not unwise, given the bonuses. We generated 50! arete so far thanks to all this, and are going to generate so much more before the end of this arc.
DkArthas
CAPITAL IS TO BLAME
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- They
Eh, I wouldn't say that. Eruntael still exist. He has legions under his command. She can join him.
No? Option 3 emphasizes his recklessness and cool under fire, but it doesn't make him more heartless or anything. He just thinks that he is good enough despite picking a more potential option.
I am not sure leaving without her is even possible, given the description of the option. Maybe with All Under Heaven.
Which is why we wouldn't leave her here? Like, the Lord Protector hunting down rebels is sad, but it won't influence the fight's outcome, since Hunger will either bamboozle enemy legions with his Charisma and Rank or just squash everyone like a bug once he's back.
Still voting King and Court, but Eye isn't completely unsolvable, just somewhat dangerous and a bit reprehensible from a moral standpoint.
- Location
- a place
Honest question here to you, and will, all the Tower Voters. If it turns out Hunger isn't that good, that he not only gambled with other people lives for no good reason but also failed, how do you feel like that reflects on him as a person?
DkArthas
CAPITAL IS TO BLAME
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- They
It will be an interesting learning experience and might result in character growth? Including an renewed determination to not let it happen again by changing his behaviour or something? Damn, now I want to do this just to see that.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yeah, but Eruntael is likely to be outnumbered, and the Tyrant will be going all-out to crush him before the mysteriously vanished powerful warrior who busted Adorie out of jail comes back.
The thing is, recklessness can cause someone to fail to care about the consequences of their actions for other people.
Recklessness means you do not reckon, you to not calculate or contemplate, the consequences of your actions. That's what it means. You just figure "meh, it'll be all right" and then do whatever seems like a good idea at the time, based on what you've thought of at that moment in time.
Reckless driving doesn't mean you'd be less upset if you hit and killed someone. It means you've stopped thinking about the risk that your driving will kill someone.
+Recklessness may not be the same as +Heartlessness, but it's going to have similar effects.
That's kind of the point.
And kind of the problem with Hunger's current attitude towards ruling. I get that he thinks monarchy is bullshit and that power over others is merely a means to an end. But the ability to intuitively accept and understand reciprocal loyalty and not endangering the lives of thousands of squishy people who pledge themselves to your supernal charisma is... kind of important, if you want long term stable governance.
I don't want to play a Hunger responsible for mass sickening/death of billions of people just so I can fuel his character arc of learning not to willfully do that.
I want to play a Hunger who's got enough insight, foresight, and basic hero-morality to not do that shit in the first place. Someone canny, self-aware, knowledgeable of their strengths and how to leverage those strengths. Someone for whom "age and treachery" aren't just an empty slogan.
Never skip brain day.
Dunno about others, but i generally don't judge by the outcome. Regardless of him succeeding or not, underlying premise of cockiness remains.
At that point, as players, only thing we can do is to work hard to prove Hunger right.
.. man, imagine being able to vote for OaF/Tears.
[X] King and Court
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
That's an unwinnable cycle of escalation, though. Rihaku can go on putting Hunger's nuts in a vice for longer than we can go on extracting him from each new predicament.
Not really. We are only really required to win in this universe and, as far as we know, we are slowly but surely approaching the top of the food chain.