Post I'm making so I can use the forum roller for a
Gifted One Ineptitude build, as I assume that the Casino is beyond the bounds of merely ISH 3 or so Luck at absolute most. Considering the sheer power of the Pale Welkin in terms of restoring me, 'Cursebearer accidentally killed me' is just about the only plausible way I could see that version of me getting killed. On the bright side, I'd probably arranged for the Star Guardians to write down everything I believed I could teach them, and Ectonconara should be capable of dealing with most issues through sheer Stats after all the upgrades I'd have handed her, so I feel like their second go at stewardship of the cosmos would go a lot better. Given that I'm assuming possession of the Bridge Welkin to maintain my Gifted One powers, it would have been a while since I got them anyway, and with this kind of ridiculous power, I don't think I'd have much excuse for not having trivially resolved most of the issues here.
It's entirely possible they'd have just assumed I considered them in a position where they didn't need me any more and bowed out, unless, of course, somebody witnessed me getting a smiting. Accidental, but there's no guarantee they know that. That might cause some issues.
Edit: 4 extra Seals. Enough for Exponential II, as III is largely useless to a Gifted One.
[GOI] Normal Mode: Begin with 7 Primary Points and 2 Ultimate Seals.
Role:
[GOI] Strategos [7 Points, 1 Seal] Essence 7 variant. Sidereal advisor.
I'll be heading to a variant of 40K that gets something akin to an ISOT, but with the whole universe effectively being fused with a number of other space settings. Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Babylon 5, The Culture, Starcraft, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, The Expanse, Firefly, The Orville's universe, Halo, Mass Effect, Voltron, Final Space, Andromeda, Dune, Dead Space, Doom, Half-Life, Stellaris, Destiny, Borderlands, Vandread, To Love Ru(much like Highschool DxD, the series ecchi nature does a lot to cover up an interesting setting we only really get glimpses of), Blame!, Tenchi Muyo(somewhat similar to To Love Ru, but leans a
little more into the plot than the 'plot'), Macross, Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy, Dragon Ball Z, Marvel, DC, Kid Cosmic, Crysis, Knights of Sidonia, Spectrobes, The Foundation, Ringworld, Ender's Game, Cthulhutech, and maybe a few more. That's 40 universes mashed together, their physics and metaphysics having been made compatible by whatever caused this(maybe Ineptitude+Apocryphal, forcing Haeliel to work to keep a small multiverse's worth of people from getting their souls screwed over or whatever). For some perspective, the average density of the intergalactic void is about 10% of the Milky Way's. Meaning this new super-verse has about 400% of the density of the Milky Way as the new
minimum. If Marvel, DC, DBZ, and Doctor Who weren't explicitly part of this mashup, I might be concerned about the universe imploding from a Big Crunch in relatively short order, or at very least massed supernovas from stars smashing into each other and black holes eating half the universe. I mean, Firefly physics alone would probably raise the average number of planets per star from 1 to 10 with a large complement of moons closer to Ganymede or Titan than Charon. As is, it's probably going to keep them busy for a while, and if they conclude that I was in some way responsible, well, On The Run would only make sense as a Drawback, right? These are all HI interpretations in the vein of Galaxies of Darkness, which is '40K, but expanded out to the whole universe' in simple terms. So yeah. It's pretty extreme.
Drawbacks:
[GOI] Paramount [+2 Points,
Special] Static-> Eternal
[GOI] Humiliation [+3 Points]
[GOI] On the Run [+3 Points]
[GOI] Impulse [+4 Points] Smell.
[GOI] Nemesis [+5 Points]
Bindings:
6: Forgotten. Replaced with Procession. +2 Seals. 3: Jackpot. +2 Seals
Allies:
[GOI] Grand Master [1 Seal] Chiron. Skill training.
Panoply:
[GOI] Stone Rings [7 Points]
[GOI] Feather of Favor [2 Seals] Stone Rings->Elder Ring.
Self:
[GOI] Static [2 Points]
[GOI] Linear [8 Points] III. Effectively an Essence 9 Solar and change.
[GOI] Exponential [2 Seals] II. Dectupled Progression+potential in all areas, and an uncapped Functional Set. 925% Progression after Eternal.
With Gifted One powers on top of a relative willingness to take Drawbacks and Casino Bindings, my Nemesis should basically be free Points. Impulse is, if anything, even less of an inconvenience, since I'm practically nose-blind half the time anyway. Humiliation can be trivially made into a boon by an Exalted willing to invest 50 or so XP into a Charm for it(or less, honestly) while On The Run gets pretty much the same justification it got in the build I posted for the previous iteration of the super-verse mentioned above. The Deliberative sent me here to investigate the recently-fused 'verse, in case it's going to be a regular thing, and at least some of the celestial bureaucracy and mystics came to the conclusion that my arrival and the recent merger were suspiciously timed, which lead to escalation, especially with a significant portion of my Tyrant Curse active still. Paramount isn't like Wicked or Heroic Journey. It's a buff, not a scaling mechanism.
I'm curious whether a recent fusion would count as a single world for Stone Rings purposes, or if I'd get 30+ powers considered high-tier in these HI universes right off the bat. Perhaps a middle ground where they all count for the purposes of the powers, but I have to wait the year to get the powers of each universe, and which universe I'm grabbing from is fairly random, though process of elimination will get them all within the half-century no matter what.
Even with On the Run, Elder Ring+Eternal means that I'm nearly unkillable to anything in this mess that would be willing to bother with me. There's some risk of my Nemesis gathering up a band of heroes and lawful types to oppose me, but that's where Linear III and Exponential II come in.
So, with the Bridge Welkin making it all transfer in the first place(with a little help from the Pale Welkin restoring any augs that are part of me like the Crystal Conduit) and Exponential II, I've practically got a Feather of Favor comprehensive buff on all my Gifted One stuff. The Welkins themselves, which already have a Legendary buff without the emotional instability, might get another new Welkin to play with. Alchemy has already transcended it's bounds as an outgrowth of Time, who knows what another *10 could allow in Solar hands? Crystal Conduit is an interesting case where my throughput probably wouldn't change, but my skill with it probably would. My Major Summon would finally be able to actually Progress with speed, though I'm curious how it would look. Probably ridiculously specialized compared to my main self, but I'm just wondering what a Solar Exaltation with Essence 9~ would look like after being tweaked to be a support for Immortal Feasts' powers.
It's no +1 ISH, but *10 to the potential I possess in use of Elemental Interest's Fire line should push me a lot closer to the Deep version. Fifth Quarter's powers are a little different. Grand Design gaining a *9.25 multiplier to it's gains is certainly helpful. I expect the potential boost to eventually be helpful too. Time's Favorite, meanwhile, is more like a divine blessing, and I may not even be able to access the 'wishing' capability, especially with so many rival pantheons around, though if Bridge keeps it active, boosting my collection of Wishes should be extremely helpful. Light Magic should benefit in an equivalent manner as Fire, after the former's +1 ISH boost.
A *10 on all 9 of my soulsongs would be awesome, though I don't think my Azoth boost would qualify, as it's more like a Stat-Up item that I ate than the Conduit's active Bright Realm channeling. For similar reasons, the Membership Card wouldn't benefit unless it somehow qualified as a *9.25 on getting Once/Always tokens and I'm still somehow in range of the store. Assuming that immolation didn't ash it like my corporeal form.
Five Wishes (in addition to the +3 Wishes having moved up to +8 from all the words I've been and am writing for this new build (which is technically an extension of the old one) and stuff added to the old one from Edits and thus giving 12 instances of Growth) would have it's +Attributes multiplied by 9.25, or 111 per year, meaning 5550 every 50 years. *10 on 'maxes out as the ISH does' certainly
sounds like transcending the ISH. Normally I'd say that wouldn't work, but it's
Haeliel. Plus Time's Favorite potentially hitting me up with another 111 a year. That's something akin to one-sixth the jump between ISH 1 and 2, though it's a full order of magnitude for each further jump. It's sort of like how the Perfect Number increases both in complexity and rewards for advancing that way.
Status Screen's Prestiges are similarly boosted to 9 thanks to hitting the second breakpoint with my Edits. That means an 83.25 multiplier on Prestige's rewards at every stage, meaning I get more than my money's worth at pretty much every stage, since the /100 breakpoint will have been more than overcome by having beaten the /10 stages to get a net *8.325 at least twice beforehand. Prestige is slower than Progression, but is just as capable of reaching the same sort of heights, meaning it can elevate all my abilities to High Cursebearer-relevant levels, and the 'linear' boost to Prestige rewards is technically exponential due to the way the cycle works.
If Illustration's Wishcraft gets a 9.25 multiplier on producing Wishes, since the ability to stockpile Wishes technically qualifies as a growth mechanism on it's own, then that means a Minor Wish every 3.25 days(approximately), and a Least Wish every 39.45 days(approximately) which promises some truly ridiculous power. Plus Eternal reduces major costs like burning resources in this manner by 99%, so each Minor Wish I get is effectively 100 Minor Wishes, and each Least Wish is effectively 100 Least Wishes. Also, if Time's Favorite is still working, then I can get an extra 9.25 Least Wishes and 111 Minor Wishes a year. Further, Wishcraft scales to your capabilities, with the Least Wish explicitly being based on what you could do in a year, so Linear III on an Essence 7 Solar, especially one with Eternal hitting spell costs with a *0.01 and as many powers as the Elder Ring might grant, not to mention *9.25 to Progression and *10 to potential dramatically bolstering them. I'm pretty sure my Share in Illustration counts as a Panoply item like my Membership Card though.
In the Gift CYOA, I got Vertex and 4 Surgecraft, with +1 ISH to my current strength and maximum potential on the latter, Welkins, Wishcraft, and Light Magic. Vertex getting a *10 to it's potential might allow it to be actually useful, and I'm sure I could make some serious nuttiness with all these Progression boosters, not the least of which is the *9.25 from Ineptitude. Plus it's really easy to teach to people, much like Welkins. I might still have the Luminous Scroll to teach people Light Magic, but if they don't have the Bridge Welkin there's no guarantee it'll work, and I'd actually lean towards no in the majority of cases. On the bright side, Light Magic with +1 ISH and a *10 to it's potential should be able to hit Deep levels even without Prestige's virtuous cycle or Essence 9 Solar bullshit to help.
Anyway, with +1 ISH to Surgecraft, *10 to it's potential, *9.25 to it's Progression, and /100 to the cost of using my Elements, they'd be pretty well-equipped to bootstrap my power by themselves. Exavolt and Inksky boost my offense and defense, which makes conquering/protecting places to empower Followerforce for it's general boost, which in turn boosts Edelross' general boost, which boosts Exavolt and Inksky, and so on. By themselves, they could give my a virtuous cycle able to push me to the furthest limits of Surgecraft as expanded by Legendary's buff. With how ridiculous it's power would have become, any tiny increment higher would have disproportionate effects, as the slightest boost to the 'MP pool' would be effectively 100 times as large.
I'm reasonably certain that Ectonconara wouldn't be coming along, so the Pearl Necklace isn't really relevant to my interests except perhaps as a reference I use in making something similar. The Diary is also of little use without the Wish Upon A Star setting being accessible. Really, there isn't much here that benefits, since I was mostly helping out the world I'd have made and planning to enter a buffing cycle with Ectonconara.
As for Galaxia, well with the way Mythos works, it should benefit a lot from 'got reincarnated in a new world as recompense for a super-being killing me by accident' and the benefits of Exponential II. Not to mention my new Panoply items. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to use the Mythos to backtrack back my home cosmology one day. Or at least get my old Panoply back. Speaking of which, while my Three Arts should be fine, I'd have hopefully gotten The Classic memorized. Now, with how different my new ontology is, there's no guarantee it's still the perfect civilization, but with my new Stats, I should be able to adjust as necessary, and if nothing else, it would still be a really good basis to build off of in any non-Wicked ontology. I'd probably miss the scripture, FR Sword.
The Storm CYOA's problems should be more or less resolved, and I could probably make a Slayer's Solution equivalent of better with Essence 9 Solar craftsmanship. One of my two weekly Minor Wishes for some XP to grab Crafting Charms might resolve the issue fairly trivially if I haven't already. Either way, Nameless and the doctor shouldn't be an issue. Either they're dead, or they can't find me.
Now for the Edits. Now, the Mage-Recruit Powers don't seem to have a lot of growth potential, with most of them being something you either have or don't, but raw skill in their use likely counts to some degree, and ironing out all their kinks might have some marginal value, particularly with Perspective and full efficiency in Workings. This was as much meant to broaden Wishcraft's reach as anything else. Hopefully I got the opportunity to help them out before getting hit with Ineptitude.
The boons Ectonconara can offer, on the other hand, have some gems. Light Magic can fill in for Illuminosan/Star Lord growth, with the latter growing a lot faster from a much weaker baseline, and me having *9.25 on their growth. Exalted Spirit would be granting a lot more Int, Wits, and Wis and a lot more quickly, not to mention Pale Welkin +Eternal means that spells that inflict physical damage as a consequence for overspending MP are a joke. Even the first step, before considerations such as Essence 9 Solar nonsense or Status Screen Prestiges, would drop to less than 7.6 years to max out, another 7.6 in this new phase, and another 21.6 to max out this phase, and of course Exponential II's buff to potential is still in full effect, so rather than sacrificing a few centuries of progress in Exalted Spirit to do something equivalent to adding 5000 years to the Wishing Star's lifespan and hitting all Star Guardians with a *2 to their global training, it would cost about 20 years. I wonder if I could make a cosmology similar to the Wish Upon A Star, and if the Deliberative would be interested in me being able to essentially snap my fingers and make them a new dimension to conquer. With Wishcraft, I probably don't need to worry about burning 20 years of progress, actually. A month's worth of effort +1 ISH would probably be more than enough, nevermind 100-fold. Heck, I could probably build them a custom cosmology of immense power and utility by completely burning out a singular Least Wish, and do so for every member of the Deliberative in a matter of a few centuries even with all the other demands on my Wishing resources. Not to mention using this strategy to rapidly empower Followerforce with truly ludicrous numbers of followers.
Half-Devourer would let me get much, much more out of eating things, and of course 'can eat anything' might let me replace my Sword's Essence-harvesting by simply... eating the hostile cosmological entities. Man, can you imagine the New Gods faces when somebody just eats Darkseid and gets a fraction of his abilities? Probably wouldn't help with On the Run though.
Hope and Wishcraft seemed like an obvious synergy, and *9.25 on Progression gives me new Hope charges every 21.6 years for similar reasons as Wishcraft. Not to mention Eternal turns any individual Hope charge into 100 Hope charges. Hope excels in reversals of fortune, assuming my chances weren't 0. It's sort of like getting a reroll with a +50 bonus. Even if you get another 1, you'll still have a huge improvement.
With Pale and Eternal, I should be able to externalize Astaroth at all times, assuming that it's nature as a symbiote of mine gets it restored when I'm placed in a new body. Unification Module drops to about 54 hours and 3 minutes to capture new spirits, which Determination allows me to unify with without worry about running out of slots, and that's before my various Stat boosts. The Perfect Number, meanwhile, is evolved by Exponential II. In addition to becoming ten times as powerful, progress in it is boosted by 925% before any other factors like ridiculous Stats and being able to Hope/Wish through a breakthrough. I might be able to use it to ease Wishing new realities into being, using it as a blueprint once I'm far enough along, since more knowledge of the proper structure of reality should make it easier, based on Wishcraft mechanics.
The artifacts mostly just provide inspiration for artifacts I can craft to empower myself and others, though that can be of value in it's own right.
Lastly, the new set of Welkins and how they interact with the Ineptitude powers. Fleet Welkin and Dust Welkin individually offer many components of competent rulership, and together practically guarantee that any modifications of the Classic I put forward to account for the modified ontology I'm dealing with are of similar quality. Plus the Whole Welkin ensuring there's a pretty high floor on any powers the Ring gives me with it's holistic elevation of any weaker powers *1000 and +1 ISH. The Torn Welkin would further buff my defenses with the reductive half of Seram's old standby in Amplitude. The Bridge Welkin is what allows the Gifted One to carry their powers along between ontologies, and the Blind Welkin preventing alterations to my essence by outside elements and allowing survival of existential annihilation might also have helped. Might have at least kept my stuff safe.
In conclusion, this variant is probably about as well-disposed to head up to High Cursebearer levels as is possible, since Prestige is empowered to be more competitive with Progression, and without Attention, Apocryphal, or Hubris, I'm much less likely to die, and I'd be inclined to Mitigate my Tyrant and Plenary shards as much as possible, so Haeliel's Ineptitude might have pulled a Mordred and blessed her in disguise, via propping up a future ally to reach the sort of power that would make them relevant, without having any truly dangerous Curses.
Ah, almost forgot. Chiron's skill-training plus Solar bullshit and Exponential II should give me a lot of benefits for effectively free, and I can probably teach him at least a few things in return.
I had considered an Epic Blessing, but Paramount keeps my Feather working, and my Seals are few enough that I wouldn't really get my money's worth if I halved my Points. Hence Easy Mode. This might have been a very different build if I'd gotten some different rolls. Oh well. This is a decent contribution to the cause of killing the veil-shaped blight on the cosmos.
3450 words in this build, combining with other portion for 8990. Almost a full Arete's worth.
