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A Simple Transaction I

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Sara said:
My favorite part was her literally ripping off bits of her dress to try bind the sword pouring out cosmic essence. It's like fixing a hole in the TARDIS with a bunch of duct tape.
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The TARDIS can be fixed with duct tape and you know it. (Maybe not all of it - the black hole containment, say - but more typical damage? Totally. You'll just want to replace it eventually, when the sealant degrades.)
Rihaku said:
Hunger's unconscious, so he won't be doing much of anything. But Adorie should be able to handle it, she is Rank 7.5 after all! It's hard to remember that she's mystically as powerful as Galadriel at the end of the day.
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Galadriel's power doesn't seem like the sort to just go 'I can actually just powerlift a skyscraper'. Like, I can believe that she's mystically potent, and that even if we never see feats for it she's at least a peer to 'raise an army of twisted spawn, including Vader-tier commanders' - but LOTR seems to cap fairly low in terms of force concentration, even if its' fate magics are fairly solid in terms of scale and latitude.
Then again, I never got far in the Silmarillion. Maybe it retcons in more?
Also, an actually specified Rank for Adorie, and it's on par with Unshattered. @runeblue360, you mind adding it?
 
ImperatorV said:
The "Let's go to Pillars and relax" does very much remind me of the post-Vanrier fight decision to go on a vacation. Which went well for a while, but then later we faceplanted into the Averncarn fight and needed to spend 32 Arete flashbuying stuff to survive.
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Averncarn? which fight is that, you're the only person who has used that word/name/lettersequence before and only twice.
Aabcehmu said:
If we manage to vote for a more-than-2-pick fight while in the Realm of Evening, after this, I will be so disappointed in the voterbase I might actually quit.
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Pick count/learning speed scales to difficulty and cost-on-failure both; with our control of Realm, it should be possible to increase difficulty without increasing danger (monsters with paralysis poison, anyone?), or to control the type of cost-on-failure to make it less tactically relevant (making use of the Tyrant's mind-affectation to make Hunger really hate pretty trivial costs as a risk ""equivalent"" to death but not as far as we're concerned, anyone? though Realm does mitigate all curses, Tyrant included, a fair bit... maybe we can toggle the mitigation on tyrant on and off?), so there could plausibly be 2+ pick fights without it actually being a bad idea, depending on how exactly Realm works.
 
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ImperatorV said:
Hopefully we have actually-for-real learned our lesson this time.
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You want that to happen, you have to ask why we keep getting into these suicidal engagements in the first place.

Me, I figure it's because we don't know how to take the small hits and minor setbacks, so we end up slowly building to an all-in scenario instead. It feels smart while we're doing it!
 
Questors have always, always, loved taking big risks. But Hunger is different because in the past there was a ceiling to what we could go up against, and there were fewer shinies.

Arthur had Imperia, the most powerful person on the island, backing him. So the big threats didn't move against him until the end game, and there was a limit to how much danger his peers could put him in. Rihaku protagonists are always good at powering up so by the time Arthur reached the end game he was pretty strong. And when the final big all-or-nothing fight came, voters picked the most powerful dragon there to fight, and managed to post the correct strategy, so he just barely pulled through.

Seram took some big risks in the orc wastes; I still vaguely remember fighting over taking The Destroyer. But other than the Hero the orcs all had a limit and Seram managed to reach it without dying, so at that point there was only one threat left on that world. But more importantly, Seram didn't power-up like Hunger does from huge risks, his thing was training montages, so there were fewer temptations. Players like reading huge, tense, risky fights, but none of those orcs were going to hand out the praxis like Vanrier.

Nameless just outleveled everyone. He started out a scion of a great clan, meaning no one would mess with him, then in the span of like a couple months or something absurd he became so strong only Kong and the Fates could threaten him. The only real time voters were given a chance to risk Nameless's life was when we voted for making the ring of truth, but luck and his name pulled through there.

Hunger on the other hand was doomed from the start. He's crippled from training but gets massively inflated rewards from fights, meaning every time he walks into a death trap we get massively rewarded. He's in a universe where there's no visible ceiling to the power levels, and he has the Apocryphal, meaning that pulling a Daylian or Nameless and out scaling literally everything could easily require reaching High Cursebearer level.

And finally, gambling is fun. Life is short, every story ends, so why vote for the option that's less fun to read about?

...

The way I see it, there's only one way to keep Hunger alive in the short to medium term and that's to take a self-resurrection EFB. I'm sure we'll encounter beings able to defeat such things eventually but I think it'll hold until the epilogue and that's good enough for me.
 
It'd be pretty kickass if Dead But Dreaming were on offer for some reason. Resurrection without the need for others to perform a ritual is cool, and also I like the sound of Outer Sorcery still (especially if we can stack it on top of Outer Darkness)
 
Ah, AST Zero. The Destroyer build probably would have been the right choice though, I still maintain that. Seram ended up getting swarmed and boxed in by Orcs anyway and had to face down an Orkhor, so the absurdly powerful and focused build of the Destroyer would have been better than the Guerilla build we ended up going with.

Also, it was the RED option (objectively the best). And it would have made Chengyu Law, Seram's father, proud! Best of both worlds.
 
So, something I've been wondering about.
A Choice of Import said:
[ ] Ring War - That's a nice Ring you got there. Would be a shame if someone... ruled it.

*Have Asterios experience a truly massive and unjustifiable breakthrough, starting the contest of Primacy!
*Our Hero must war, lest he bow to the new king among Rings!
*Force him into the Human Sphere where all manner of complication awaits!!
*Especially the thing with Letrizia's - oops, can't think about that.
*Requires [ ] One. There can only be one Ruling Ring.
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The Truth Manifest said:
No sense, at this scale, in explicating harmful truths, so long as someone with influence kept them in mind. The twisted resemblance of the Lady Protector spell's to certain of the Maiden's Graces, the likely true nature of the Foremost, the reality of Letrizia's family strife, the underlying form of Hunger's Tyrant Curse... for all the clues she'd pieced together, the truth only mattered where such knowledge would change the actions taken in reality.
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What if the reason Letrizia and her Armament were targeted with a bomb, and then the reason the Republic were tracking after her and her Armament, has to do with Letrizia's family?

For example, maybe unbeknownst to Letrizia, her family are the baddies in this situation. That they launched a coup over the Empire or something, or not a coup but pushed for war with the Republic. Or her father was possessed by, or drained by, or draining from, an Astral Lord and... stuff. Anyway. And the Republic of course assumed that Letrizia, being a von Artriez, of course knows about all this and is a part of her family's machinations -- and so they targeted her thinking she was a co-conspirator.

Alternatively, maybe Letrizia's family is undergoing a coup or civil war, and somebody from her family targeted her. Or maybe somebody from the Empire targeted her.


Anyway, long story short: I've been wondering if maybe the Republic have good reasons for fearing or going after Letrizia. I mean, reasons beyond just "Obvious geopolitical ambitions of targeting a Strategic Asset." Reasons like "Shit, the events points to X with the Von Artriez... what are the odds that Letrizia somehow isn't a part of this? Yeah, slim to none! Well, shit, this is bad guys..."

And that we'll find out that if only everybody could have stopped and talked to each other, they wouldn't have tried targeting Letrizia if only they'd known the truth...

And so, we might have taken out an Armament from somebody who could have been an allied side, if only we'd known everything. =/

I've been worrying about the possibility of this.
 
So let's take a look at the sorts of fights we can expect in the future.

Other Armaments, which have ultimates we're not immune to and are piloted by people who take us seriously.
Rihaku said:
Hunger is not exactly at the level of power where he would be able to consistently, or even frequently, defeat a full-powered Armament!
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Rihaku has mentioned outscaling Armaments several other times as well.

Rihaku said:
It's almost impossible for you to outscale full power Armaments while inside the Voyaging Realm, but you won't know the best way to subvert, control or otherwise handle the civs behind those Armaments if you have no experience with them!
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Rihaku said:
I think there were some who wanted to try staying in the Voyaging Realm long enough to outscale a full-powered Armament, which is a bit unrealistic, though one can certainly be relevant on the battlefields of the Human Sphere at power levels well below that!
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I'm hopeful that with Procyon's defeat we'll get an Armament of our own, and that voters will feel less inclined to defend the Empire quite as aggressively as they voted to defend their own country. Add in the Empire's own resources and we might manage to stick with 2-pick fights in the human sphere. We'll see though. Ring-lord Asterios in an Armament, for instance, could be an issue.


That other Cursebearer
Rihaku said:
*A being will be dispatched to eliminate the Chosen One before he completes his mission. This being has the potential to rival your power, even at its fullest expansion.
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Rihaku said:
Whether they scale at, above, or below your level depends in large part on you guys! I think Hunger has decent odds.
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Rihaku thought we had good odds back in the day, and we've been going even faster since then. I think at this point the biggest risk is what sort of drawbacks cracking the blade will give, and how that will impact our ability to keep growing as fast as we are currently.


The Arcanist
Rihaku said:
Even if you find the Arcanist, you have to ensure you don't die to her, either, or that she does not become an Augustine-shaped thorn in your side.
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Given how hard Hunger fought to defend the realm of myth I think the Apocryphal will see it as a great soft target to hit. At this point I'd be shocked if the Arcanist didn't wake up and start causing problems.

The biggest risk with the Arcanist is that there's really no limit on the amount of power it can gain. It was a Builder once; I'm sure the Apocryphal could crash-land a dead god or something into its mouth and power it back up to those heights again if it wanted. Outscaling isn't really possible.

It's sleeping now, and Sword in the Stone would be a big help in ensuring it stays that way. It also has no real motive for killing us other than general insanity. The longer we can buy time, the better off we'll be.


Cosmic entities
R' (Discord)
the only people who saw Hunger kill the Armament are
no one besides cosmic+ entities
since it all happened so fast and out of sight of the Walls
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Rihaku said:
*You may now communicate with eldritch and gargantuan monstrosities, who will treat you as peer, subject or superior depending on your relative levels of ability.
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They exist. They may be interested in an Praehihr.


Lucent Thorn
Rihaku said:
[ ] Lucent Thorn - The deadly A-class blade which hunts Ring and wielder alike has set its eyes on Miss Gisena Allria, wielder of the Azure! Lest the horrors of unbound Artifice be loosed upon the universe again, Justice Blade Lucent Thorn is here to punish you in the name of the True Moonlight! Will the evil Sorceress-Queen Gisena finally be felled? Or will her contract with the devastating handsome and also evil Ring-Lord Hunger allow her to cling to unseemly life!? Find out next time in several dozen more episodes!

*Lucent Thorn has its own agenda and sees fit to chart its own course, defying recommendations despite your nigh-omniscience and sound judgement! Hmph!!
*It's also slow af. Gotta work its way from wielder to wielder alllllll the way across the Voyaging Realm...
*But once this good boy finds a Fairbright worthy champion, ohhh boy. You won't be ready. The world won't be ready. And Hunger's body certainly won't be ready! Unless he works on the Praxis a lot...
*Strength matters not! The nigh-limitless power of Hope, Love, and Determination shall strike down the cruel Rings, implements of naked Power made manifest, right where they stand! This time, a two-for-one special...
*In Realm Voyaging, 5-pick fight runs at you! Let's hope our hero doesn't just outpace this one, though it can tangle in the Human Sphere if it has to!
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This was 5 picks back when the fish was 5 picks, so it's probably like 2 picks now. I'm including it here mostly because it has a motive to kill us.

Motive is important. The Apocryphal can create mindless kaiju and monsters to slaughter us no problem, but it can't just create people whole-cloth. The pirate attacked us because he mistook us for someone else. Ber attacked because he was hired to kill us by an Astral lord, who was presumably allied with the Republic. Procyon attacked because we were sheltering Letrezia. The curse seems to prefer empowering our already existing enemies, so it's a good idea to keep an eye on them.

In the hands of a Fairbright it was worth 5 picks, so the obvious risk is it ends up with someone better. A super-fairbright, or that hostile Cursebearer, for example.
 
Fucking.

Pierce through, even if it can't be pierced.

Something about Last Stands and All Out Attacks against supposedly insurmountable odds just speaks to me.

Hunger, you gatdam faq.
 
JOEbob said:
first of all, Rank 10 is, I believe, roughly the infinite power point; Armaments are Rank 10, and 'no amount of purely physical force can bring them to heel' (paraphrased).
second of all, we've definitely passed Planet-busting even without that because Deathly Stars activation said "This was power enough to scour entire planets from the cosmos, a supernal atrocity that could tear through whole realms of the divine".
So, we don't actually have any information saying that there's something in the Voyaging Realm which can beat (full power, Shroud-using) Armaments (in terms of non-esoteric capabilities), and hence Hunger. If there is, it's completely hidden from public knowledge and Armament pilots, because I'm fairly sure letrizia has said armaments are the strongest thing around.
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I figure Armaments are the equivalent of EFB's Titans or Grand Solipsists for the setting. Which is to say, considered the conventional 'top tier' of the current age and people think that these are the heights of power for the modern days, while still acknowledging the possibilities of Old Monsters or secret surprises or whatever... But the setting as a whole actually goes a lot higher than Armaments.

So, yeah. Cosmic+ entities and all that. (As a recent post mentioned. =/ Cosmic+ entities, yay.)

If Armaments are Rank 10+, and EFB's Titans were Rank 7 guys, maybe that means you'd probably have to be something ridiculous like Rank 20 or Rank 30 to pull off the equivalent of outleveling the Zang Kong and the Fates equivalents?

Of course except this time, there's the Apocryphal Curse involved. So, not sure if you can even rely on the Zang Kong/Fates-equivalents (or even post-endgame Nameless equivalents!) as being the "top" for this setting, as the Apocryphal can just push them further. Nameless didn't have that hanging over him. The Apocryphal Curse can cause trouble for the Accursed and the High Cursebearers. (If unmitigated, at least.) So... There's no end to how high it can go or escalate -- like, this is just the first world anyway.
 
The thing I like the most about hungers character is that his power feels extremely deserved. He manages to claw his way through every challenge by sheer force of will, taking on the costs necessary. The apocryphal curse says it tests whether you are truly worthy to carry the Accursed's mantle, and it's a test Hunger has completed every time. That's what I like about getting growth from difficult fights, it means every drop of power has to be earned.
 
GenericName said:
The thing I like the most about hungers character is that his power feels extremely deserved. He manages to claw his way through every challenge by sheer force of will, taking on the costs necessary. The apocryphal curse says it tests whether you are truly worthy to carry the Accursed's mantle, and it's a test Hunger has completed every time. That's what I like about getting growth from difficult fights, it means every drop of power has to be earned.
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In universe it's that. Out of universe it's not that. It's a gamble. It's always a gamble. A dice roll that may or may not draw on whatever metaresources we have and we may still be punished for our recklessness via conditions. Gisena had to pull our ass out of the fire via a defensive wish. So no. Not fully deserved.

Edit: Going further, we took Chains of Fate, pushing our consequences into the future rather than pay anything, like injuries, or teammate deaths when we ran into the Lord Protector's guardian.
 
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Conjured Blade said:
In universe it's that. Out of universe it's not that. It's a gamble. It's always a gamble. A dice roll that may or may not draw on whatever metaresources we have and we may still be punished for our recklessness via conditions. Gisena had to pull our ass out of the fire via a defensive wish. So no. Not fully deserved.

Edit: Going further, we took Chains of Fate, pushing our consequences into the future rather than pay anything, like injuries, or teammate deaths when we ran into the Lord Protector's guardian.
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Yeah I meant story wise, if you were just reading it outside of the meta decisions. At the end of the day it's both a game and a story, and from a story perspective it manages to make it feel deserved.
 
Conjured Blade said:
In universe it's that. Out of universe it's not that. It's a gamble. It's always a gamble. A dice roll that may or may not draw on whatever metaresources we have and we may still be punished for our recklessness via conditions. Gisena had to pull our ass out of the fire via a defensive wish. So no. Not fully deserved.

Edit: Going further, we took Chains of Fate, pushing our consequences into the future rather than pay anything, like injuries, or teammate deaths when we ran into the Lord Protector's guardian.
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I mean, taking risks doesn't mean it's less deserved? In fact, I would say succeeding despite the risks is even more so, especially given we can mitigate risk with both OOC tactics and IC decisions. Just because it could have failed doesn't make success less "worthy", I would think rather the opposite.
 
Well, that was a great fight, but part of me can't help but consider that it was all a bit unnecessary. Procyon was okay with taking things slowly, so we had the time to find a 2-pick fight, return here and have a fight almost as awesome but a lot less desperate and damaging. So while the fight was great, let's still try to refine our decision making process so we can actually reach the fights greater still.
 
BrainInAJar said:
I mean, taking risks doesn't mean it's less deserved? In fact, I would say succeeding despite the risks is even more so, especially given we can mitigate risk with both OOC tactics and IC decisions. Just because it could have failed doesn't make success less "worthy", I would think rather the opposite.
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I can agree with you in situations where it's established that the results can be improved by tactics and we come out on top, absolutely. Considering the amount of effort I put into making Synthesis work, it would be absurd of me not to. If the right pick at the right time unlocked secret problem solving route XYZ, absolutely we deserve it.

There's still some stuff where I don't remember how relevant or otherwise tactics were, stuff I'm still salty over because we didn't deserve to come out of it anywhere near as well as we did. For example, taking the Rotbeast for one of our apocrypha procs, turning our Save Mizuku mission into a trolley problem we had to use Arete to have our cake and eat it too for. The Temple of the False Moon was a nightmarish mess of panicked Arete mining on all our parts to be able to survive. Our collective decisionmaking averages out into something lackluster. Then there's the defensive wish and Aobaru's Terminator still to come that we needed to come out of siding with the Royalists ok, because for whatever reason the fishing contest or siding with the Lord Protector didn't win. We might have been able to just help Augustine with something, destroy the tower, and get out, without picking a fight with the Shard of the Arcanist or anything ridiculous and suicidal like that.
 
Conjured Blade said:
I can agree with you in situations where it's established that the results can be improved by tactics and we come out on top, absolutely. Considering the amount of effort I put into making Synthesis work, it would be absurd of me not to. If the right pick at the right time unlocked secret problem solving route XYZ, absolutely we deserve it.

There's still some stuff where I don't remember how relevant or otherwise tactics were, stuff I'm still salty over because we didn't deserve to come out of it anywhere near as well as we did. For example, taking the Rotbeast for one of our apocrypha procs, turning our Save Mizuku mission into a trolley problem we had to use Arete to have our cake and eat it too for. The Temple of the False Moon was a nightmarish mess of panicked Arete mining on all our parts to be able to survive. Our collective decisionmaking averages out into something lackluster. Then there's the defensive wish and Aobaru's Terminator still to come that we needed to come out of siding with the Royalists ok, because for whatever reason the fishing contest or siding with the Lord Protector didn't win. We might have been able to just help Augustine with something, destroy the tower, and get out, without picking a fight with the Shard of the Arcanist or anything ridiculous and suicidal like that.
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Just for a point of order, the Cursebearer's Association was not a defensive wish; Orm payed for "whatever would help Hunger most" back in August and that was just the most opportune time.

But for your other points, I don't think we don't "deserve" to win with an option just because the risks are high, just as I don't think we don't "deserve" to lose an option with low risks; those things are part of decision making and not execution. No one is arguing that we choose the most optimal path and minmaxed our risk perfectly, but we didn't get here by pure luck either; even Arete requires effort and time to produce. Our past choices do set up success for future choices, even if the planning is not perfect because we have a very unclear idea of the future.

In truth, no one actually "deserves" or "earns" anything, it's just an arrangement of circumstances. Circumstances have arranged so that our current tools could give us this victory with some luck, and that's what happened. Whether that makes the win "deserved" or not is up to your personal judgement, but that people did put in effort in terms of tactics and Omake is undeniable. And ultimately, this is what people wanted to read, and I'm personally very satisfied.

Whether this risk-taking playstyle is sustainable is another discussion, but one that should not involve merit, as I said above. A Hunger that "deserves to live" because he choose the options that give him the highest chance of living essentially ignores the contents of the action itself simply because it's what should be done; a very one-dimensional analysis.

Was this particular risk strictly necessary? Probably not, and I voted for Call Up too so I understand your frustration in this. We did not need to push this hard. But I don't think anyone voted for Hold because of survivability, and they were rewarded for this. Even the fact that we should be rewarded for careful play over risky gambles or boldly heroic actions is ultimately a value judgement too; one this Quest may or may not adhere to, but that many voters who participate do not, as we have seen repeatedly.

Again, I do understand your frustration that we risked our lives yet again "needlessly"; but I don't think we should suffer some sort of heightened punishment for the choices we made. Why would we? The game seems balanced around risk and reward anyway, and this is often not subtle like this recent Heroic Advancement. That we take risks and come out ahead simply seems to be how this is designed.

In brief, I do not share your value judgement over the perceived worth of our own actions, nor would I be any interested in any sort defined standards for "correct play". People vote for what they want to read knowing the consequences fully. Do you not "deserve" to read what you'd like?
 
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Rihaku said:
So he said, and fell to the earth, and knew no more.
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While I was quite opposed to it, I can't say that this wasn't a damn satisfying conclusion to the Voyaging Realm part of Hunger's story. Seeing him unify his methods in the pursuit of heroism was quite heartening, as was the echo to another incredibly fun and rad fight scene.

We even entered the Foresleep!
 
BrainInAJar said:
Just for a point of order, the Cursebearer's Association was not a defensive wish; Orm payed for "whatever would help Hunger most" back in August and that was just the most opportune time.

But for your other points, I don't think we don't "deserve" to win with an option just because the risks are high, just as I don't think we don't "deserve" to lose an option with low risks; those things are part of decision making and not execution. No one is arguing that we choose the most optimal path and minmaxed our risk perfectly, but we didn't get here by pure luck either; even Arete requires effort and time to produce. Our past choices do set up success for future choices, even if the planning is not perfect because we have a very unclear idea of the future.

In truth, no one actually "deserves" or earns anything, it's just an arrangement of circumstances. Circumstances have arranged so that our current tools could give us this victory with some luck, and that's what happened. Whether that makes the win "deserved" or not is up to your personal judgement, but that people did put in effort in terms of tactics and Omake is undeniable. And ultimately, this is what people wanted to read, and I'm personally very satisfied.

Whether this risk-taking playstyle is sustainable is another discussion, but one that should not involve merit, as I said above. A Hunger that "deserves to live" because he choose the options that give him the highest chance of living essentially ignores the contents of the action itself simply because it's what should be done; a very one-dimensional analysis.

Was this particular risk strictly necessary? Probably not, and I voted for Call Up too so I understand your frustration in this. We did not need to push this hard. But I don't think anyone voted for Hold because of survivability, and they were rewarded for this. Even the fact that we should be rewarded for careful play over risky gambles or boldly heroic actions is ultimately a value judgement too; one this Quest may or may not adhere to, but that many voters who participate do not, as we have seen repeatedly.

Again, I do understand your frustration that we risked our lives yet again "needlessly"; but I don't think we should suffer some sort of heightened punishment for the choices we made. Why would we? The game seems balnced around risk and reward anyway, and this is often not subtle like this recent Heroic Advancement. That we take risks and come out ahead simply seems to be how this is designed.

In brief, I do not share your value judgement over the perceived worth of our own actions, nor would I be any interested in any sort defined standards for "correct play". People vote for what they want to read knowing the consequences fully. Do you not "deserve" to read what you'd like?
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I don't think I went into the Cursebearer's Association.

Fair point about the tactics, it was established for this fight that tactics matter, to the people who put effort into it, congratulations.

I enjoy the show that is Rihaku's work in general but I like to think I treat this as a game to be won. Our metaphorical "score" is some nebulous mix of our growthrate/conquest progress, the quantity of defensive wishes used subtracting points, whether or not Hunger is an ethical dumpsterfire of a human being, how long its been since the last time we went shit shit shit mine the arete to get this or we're dead, and whether or not we die in the epilogue.

So I guess this is a gamist vs narrativist argument or something.
 
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