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A Simple Transaction I

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Thoughts on Heroes:

Here's my Hero theory that I've posted previously.

vali said:
1: The Accursed changed the universe so that it would generate heroes when needed, as part of his effort to *fix* reality.
2: Someone (the Hidden Ones?) disliked this, so they cursed him with the curse of Indenture, which forces the Accursed (and his Cursebearers) to spend all eternity killing the heroes they helped created. This is both revenge AND makes the hero generation effect irrelevant, since the heroes tend to die.
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Heroes we've encountered so far:
Definitely Jotarun, Hunger, and Aobaru.
Maybe Spring in her human form, Caroline, and Iskander/Hal.

In terms of social and magical interactions with Heroism, we have
The Orcs calling themselves heroes
The Geas of Indenture sending Cursebearers to kill Heroes.
The poem that empowered Hunger
Haeliel watches over Heroes, can massively empower Heroes, and also sometimes kills them with truck-kun,

So this Hero phenomenon is pretty widespread. They're in every Rihaku quest since Terrascape, there's who knows how many Cursebearers running around killing them, and Haeliel has made taking care of them her life's work. They're everywhere.

...

We know that heroes are empowered by destiny, and we know that destiny has stewards.

Rihaku said:
But the Tyrant is not so easily overcome.

He is wise to destiny's tricks, greater than destiny's stewards. He sets the world spinning to the direction of a new master. Destiny falters; only causality remains
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vali said:
What is destiny, why did it make Hunger the hero, why does it decree the Tyrant's death, and what gives it the right to make that decree? Everything happens for a reason, after all. And who, or what, are destiny's stewards?

And then there's the Tyrant, who given what we've been told is almost certainly being aided by the Hidden Ones.
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It would seem that Haeliel, the Seraph of Heroism, who is maybe Caroline, is one of these stewards. Here we see her confronting someone opposed to the concept of Heroes.

Rihaku said:
"Bane of Heroes! Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"
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Now look at how powerful Haeliel is.

Rihaku said:
No enemy you encounter short of the Hidden Ones themselves will be capable of so much as inconveniencing her.
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It's possible that the 'Bane of Heroes' is some scrub she instantly annihilated, but given that Heroes are still dying I think the 'Bane of Heroes' is likely one of the Hidden Ones. And this being is probably responsible for the Geas of Indenture's hero-killing nature.
 
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vali said:
It's possible that the 'Bane of Heroes' is some scrub she instantly annihilated, but given that Heroes are still dying I think the 'Bane of Heroes' is likely one of the Hidden Ones. And this being is probably responsible for the Geas of Indenture's hero-killing nature.
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There's a line in the update regarding this actually.

Rihaku said:
The Apocryphal Curse is the bane of heroes.
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So Hael's probably talking to Apocryphal-chan in that section.
 
Daylian can already reasonably be presumed to have Endbringer+ Tier Earth Powers (Cosmic level Geokinesis).

Here's some more Ordinalism Facts I remembered enough to dig up for interested parties.

To reach Endbringer tier with Ordinalism...

forums.sufficientvelocity.com

The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original

Btw, Imperia tells you that, once you have three Elements, you can take Specialist Forms that remove Elements rather than adding them. This makes the remaining Elements more powerful, and it's how they get their massive stores of precious metals / gemstones / jade / rare woods. Theoretically if...
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Btw, Imperia tells you that, once you have three Elements, you can take Specialist Forms that remove Elements rather than adding them. This makes the remaining Elements more powerful, and it's how they get their massive stores of precious metals / gemstones / jade / rare woods. Theoretically if you went Full Elements to the 12th Ordinal, and dumped Supreme into it, and trained A LOT, and focused only on one Element, you could approach Endbringer-kinesis levels with that Element. How that stacks up to a Specialist Form Nightmare, or Valour, or War, you don't know.
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forums.sufficientvelocity.com

The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original

Once and Future Arthur took her advice. After all, in a short time he intended to be taking orders from her. He stepped outside the room into the hallway, and suddenly there was Eileen Cho. But the blue-patterned Conjoiner saw Imperia in the room behind him, and beat a hasty retreat. Arthur...
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[ ] Supreme - You may convert Depth to XP for Ordinal access only at a 1:1 rate, up to the 11th Ordinal. You do not benefit from Mentor bonuses, but may benefit from Ordinal Purity if you possess it. You may use both the Seeker and Shield Forms of the First Ordinal. This is the only recorded power to ever grant access to two Forms of an Ordinal. This fills your first Attainment Slot. Initially, you may not possess higher than the 7th Ordinal.

Points of Depth invested into this power that are not converted into XP will grant half-tiers of advancement for Ordinal Skills:
500 - Distribute 1 Half-tier
2000 - +1 Half-tier, stackable
8000 - +1 Half-tier, stackable
32000 - +1 Half-tier, stackable
x4

These bonuses can take a Skill above Archmastery and do not increase the practice or XP requirements of a Skill; ie they are applied after all other modifiers. However, they are fixed and cannot be altered once placed.

You still need to learn Ordinal Multicasting manually, but note that the First Ordinal can be combined with other Forms without Multicasting.
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Here's a Lance Build Blurb(The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original)
[ ] The Lightning, Grasped - Among Ordinalist Forms, the Lance is highly respected for its shield-breaking penetration, immense destructive might, superb striking versatility, speed of engagement, and precision of force. It is, some say, the ultimate expression of cutting and piercing power. Wielded with the Seeker, a Lance can be broken into separate beams, spun and woven around enemy defenses, launched to burrow through the earth or high into the sky to strike from unexpected angles. It can cleave through battleship armor or carve semiconductors from silicone plate. This simple and effective build puts the Lance to work.
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What you could do with 12th level Construct(Nothing esoteric but some formidable shenanigans indeed)(The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original)
Similarly, Akhena's 12th level Construct spell can make Constructs almost on the level of functional nanotechnology while within the bounds of her own body, allowing her to fight evenly with Ken even though the enormous g-forces involved should paste her after one exchange. It can go huge on scale, easily erasing a county from the map with pure ballooning force, or generate a veritable forest of prehensible limbs each wielding a monomolecular blade.
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Terrascape Shenanigans you could pull if you found a way to make yourself immune to gravity(The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original)
If you have high physical speed, you can run up to people and Terrascape them, so that's a thing. You even have your own preferential environment since Chryso (eventually) makes you immune to gravity when you want, so you could make your Terrascape a gravity chamber. Or, at high enough levels, a black hole!
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A Rihaku bit extending on what Elementalism can do(The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original)
There are four types of activities possible with the Elements Form:

1. Brute Creation - Attacks and walls made of a generic form of the element, like iron or rock. You cannot really specify the form besides stuff like choosing soil or rock for Earth. The stuff is an arcane composite and melts away within minutes to days depending on power / skill.

2. Defense - protects you from being harmed by the element. This seems conceptual in nature; eg you can breathe water.

3 - Shaping - allows you to detect quantities of your element within range, and move them around. Simple but extremely versatile.

4 - True Creation - allows you to make specific substances within the purview of your element mediated by your Specialist Form rank and Reductions taken. The objects created are real.

Reduction imparts very substantial bonuses to Shaping and True Creation especially. You will not be able to make gemstones or Jade as a normal Elementalist until you buy more Ordinals or achieve a significantly higher Skill level than the Reducer did. If you are going for Nightmare or think it likely that Nightmare will win, it is possible that the 8th Ordinal will be the last you take in Elements. That is not to say that Elementalist is weak - Avatar characters get along fine with basically just Shaping - but if you want True Creation it is very risky to assume you will be able to do so profitably as an Elementalist that stops at Ordinal 8 with no Supreme bonus. There is a reason Elementalists typically pick up conjure.

However True Creation is most relevant for Earth, Metal, and Wood in that order so that's why Earth and Wood are given the Reducer builds. Metal is worse than Earth for high Vitalism so it was not put into a build, but you can write one in. Also there are some synergies like Air/Water granting a solid in the form of Ice, or Fire/Earth getting many of the offensive properties of water with magma / lava. Fire can be used to prevent cooling so that focused hydrojets of lava at water-cutter speeds are possible, if your Elemental power is high enough.
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Here's a link with some of the build options for Valor when we got it: The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original
And here's a link with some of the build options for Valor when we upgraded it to the 11th Ordinal Version: The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original

And here's some upgrades from Hiltless 3 that were the last ones we got(The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original).
[ ] The Archblade - This is the 'standard' form of the First Sword at this level. Its appearance and aspect do not change. The Archblade severs all materials, challenging even those of infinite or infallible strength. Its edge is unerring, even against the most distant foes. In motion, it is less a sword and more a brilliance of sharpness that permeates all corners and strikes dead those unfortunate enough to bear witness. To glimpse its mirror-sheen is to face the Gorgon's Stare: not the mortal stillness of stone, but the utter stillness of oblivion.
--Dominions: Durability (Ascension), Fallibility (All Finite), Recovery (All Finite), Space (Major), Time (Moderate), All Others (Modest)

[ ] The Fallen Blade - This brand of black-red flames seethes with unnatural hate and illimitable power. Only Arthur can acquire this form of the Perishing Blade, and it boasts such egregious power as to eclipse even that of its counterpart. For brilliant as the solar light of the Archblade may be, still it must yield to this truth: that even a sun is a mere defiance of light, drowned in a sea of vaster darkness. And indeed, where the Archblade was light this is the Shadow, a darkness to blot out eternities and worlds. The Fallen Blade is a capricious ally, difficult to master under the best of circumstances, but its power is truly unimaginable. It is the Heat-Death, the Event Horizon, the Bar of Judgement, the curtain-close of the material realm.
--Dominions: All? (Major), Apocalyptic Destruction*, Dread of the Perisher**
*Exponentially amplifies the damage and area-of-effect of the blade, in the form of red-black flames that seethe like its cutting edge
**Extends available dominions to encompass the Mind and Spirit of targets.
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As you can see it got quite ridiculous by the local power level standards to balance the fact there was one everybody had to fight over.
 
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This may have been answered in a link you posted, but I haven't read everything yet. Suppose you reach the 25th ordinal. If you want to empower that Ordinal then could you drop a previously learned spell in exchange?

I ask because it seems like you could empower the first ordinal 25 times while you can only empower the 25th ordinal once.

Why isn't everybody a shield or laser specialist?
 
Zampano said:
This may have been answered in a link you posted, but I haven't read everything yet. Suppose you reach the 25th ordinal. If you want to empower that Ordinal then could you drop a previously learned spell in exchange?

I ask because it seems like you could empower the first ordinal 25 times while you can only empower the 25th ordinal once.

Why isn't everybody a shield or laser specialist?
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Lack of Esoteric power. Things get progressively more esoteric/ridiculous and having a higher base power as one makes their way up the spiral. You want high end esoteric abilities like a superpowered monster form or the Perishing blade you need to take them when you get them. Wyrd is conceptual level immutability. War is a high-end monster transformation with unique abilities. Vindicate can pull a lot more shenanigans compared to say, Seeker or Shield. You couldn't if Vindicate could do that, make a dent in a cursebearers curse if you were just a seeker or shield specialist.

You only get to empower the 25th Ordinal once however at that level the esoteric shenanigans should be pretty ridiculous since you're in the territory approaching the fight Yog-Sothoth peak and could potentially go up against people some ways over rank 10 or stage 15 cultivators.

@Zampano Extending on this, here's the explanation of scaling for upgrading previously taken Ordinals. The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original:

Specialist Forms

At the moment he or she accesses a higher Ordinal, characters are presented with a choice between the two Forms. They can instead opt to acquire the Specialist Form of an earlier Ordinal spell. A Form elevated by Specialization has its general potency raised to the level of the spells it replaces, and improves its primary numerical parameters by an additional 10%. Thus, a spell augmented by Specialist Forms is in some views even more powerful than the native Forms of that level.

Multiple Specialist Forms will improve numerical parameters by an increasing amount. The second Specialization grants an 11% bonus, the third a 12%, and so on.

For example, Akhena possesses the Shield Form of the First Ordinal and the Construct Form of the Second Ordinal. She has otherwise only purchased Specialist Forms of Construct for her remaining Ordinal levels. Her Ordinal Chart looks like this:

1 - Shield
2 - Construct
3 - Specialist Form (Construct)
4 - Specialist Form (Construct)
5 - Specialist Form (Construct)
...
12 - Specialist Form (Construct)

Her Construct spell has the general potency of a 12th-level Ordinal, but its numerical parameters are increased to 245% of its 12th-level baseline. Many Ordinalists tend to Specialize (though not in this extreme a fashion), as practicing multiple Ordinals in order to maintain one's skill in all of them is a major time sink, and Specialists tend to win direct contests anyway. However, there is something to be said for the utility of access to many versatile effects.
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That brings up an idea... What Ordinals would be good for Curse Mitigation? Dispel if buffed a lot? High-skill Overwhelm probably can, Vindicate definitely can. Valour maybe. Perhaps War could get Mitigation as one of its powers.
 
So, while we're on the topic of the Perishing Blade - is there only one blade, period? Across all worlds/dimensions/whatever? If so, how the heck did Arthur and Foxglove ever get a hold of it, wouldn't there be archmages off in some distant dimension fighting over it? And if there's more then one copy, how is it subdivided? It's a bit of a confusing spell.
 
Strange9 said:
bold of you to imply Gisena could focus on one artifact/task long enough to develop it fully
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That's why she needs the Legion Form! Who needs to focus on one task when you can instead create more minds to focus with? I'm honestly surprised that Gisena fans aren't all in on Haeliel, this is an extremely rare and valuable chance to get multiple Gisenas, especially considering Haeliel won't take up much of her screentime.
 
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The Legion Form has many downsides, especially without an Attainment to empower it... surely there is the question of quality vs quantity!
 
Even one extra Gisena would provide significant gains! Especially with Imperia's full powered Legion Attainment...
 
Rihaku said:
The Legion Form has many downsides, especially without an Attainment to empower it... surely there is the question of quality vs quantity!
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Would you rather fight one Verschlengorge sized Gisena, or one hundred Gisena sized Verschlengorges?
 
The main reason I'd want Haeliel is because it could mean that, at some point in the future, we could enjoy the delights of Wolber and Daylian's Most Excellent Interlude and I really feel like I need that in my life.
 
Rihaku said:
On the other hand, perhaps exposure to Hubris incarnate can help Hunger develop some perspective on his own habit of risk-taking...
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I'll admit, being forced into caution because we found a dude who is even more YOLT than we are would be absolutely wild.

Curious how talented he and Wolber are in comparison to Hunger. Are they generally on the level? Daylion can theoretically keep up but to what extent does that account for our Arete spending, risk taking and potential Progression boosts? Would they also achieve transcendental powerspikes akin to OaF 1?
 
runeblue360 said:
I'll admit, being forced into caution because we found a dude who is even more YOLT than we are would be absolutely wild.

Curious how talented he and Wolber are in comparison to Hunger. Are they generally on the level? Daylion can theoretically keep up but to what extent does that account for our Arete spending, risk taking and potential Progression boosts? Would they also achieve transcendental powerspikes akin to OaF 1?
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Depends on how long they've been cursebearers for. Hungers only been one for 2 months but thanks to the ring he's on the level of someone who's been a cursebearer for a couple years.
 
Rihaku said:
Honor demanded that he instead return all of what Adorie had given, but he had no idea of the timeframe required for such a task.
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Honour can eat shit, like hell Nilfel should benefit from the reaving squads and imperialism they engaged in. We can consider this a collective payment from the Realm of Myth to our boy Hunger for freeing them from the rule of a genocidal Tyrant.
 
[X] Wolber Strobe [Committed, 12 Arete]

While Haeliel is rad and would be interesting to see, she's too expensive for my tastes, and the risks of our party being watched over by her are just too great. The lore and the opportunities provided by her would be absolutely incredible, make no mistake, but I can't justify this expense to myself even if we miraculously gather the necessary Arete.

So it's a choice between Daylian and Wolber for me. Not sure whether Wolber's greater cost is a question of greater quality or lesser suitability, so I can't judge the difference by that criterion. So it's up to deciding which of them I like more and which I think benefits Hunger's situation more.

To be honest, Daylian is more appealing personality-wise despite (or because of?) his Crowning Curse. While having to deal with his Hubris would be supremely annoying, he sounds like an all-around fun guy to be around. Maybe I feel like our party lacks someone bombastic like him? Plus people have already mentioned that his Lazulite might offer a solution to our platinum problem, so that's another argument for him.

But in the end I think I prefer Wolber more, if only for practical reasons. While thinking about twice as many Apocryphal Curses is a bit scary, I think this will be beneficial on the whole, and Wolber will be both a voice of reason and someone with much experience concerning the Apocryphal Curse. Maybe hearing about his procs will teach us to be more cautious when it comes to our Crowning Curse.

And while his potential as a Combat-type Cursebearer isn't as good as Daylian's, he somewhat makes up for it with the Imperial Praxis in the short- and maybe medium-term. Plus his A Beautiful Mind trait sounds effectively like a competence bonus to me, giving the party advice on how to develop their powers better and how best to approach our upcoming problems. Not that I expect perfect advice from him, but it's certainly better than listening to Mr Invincible. Unless we intend to always do the exact opposite of what Daylian tells us?..
 
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