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A Simple Transaction I

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The alternative solution is drinking some more Forebear kool-aid for that ++++++Heartlessness, so yes, I would at least like to attempt saving their people from destruction. Or I guess Hunger could tell himself he's a Ring and filthy humans don't matter, but is that a direction we want to go in? I'm not sure who we'll want to save and who to condemn, that depends on what we'll find out once we infiltrate.
 
DkArthas said:
This update has clearly shown in which way shadowcord is most useful to us, she will never truly be able to keep up (unless people want another arete blackhole),
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I'm not really convinced this is true. We now have refundable Ennoblement and Augment Dominion Blood, both of which gives considerable buffs to our entire party including here, with the latter also increasing our personal power a great deal. These are also both things we will gain by default as soon as we save the ring and thanks to Crimson Flare, Blood buffing other people will only get more powerful as we rise in rank. I can't imagine how much better that will get once we have the ruling ring. Various other abilities that would greatly increase our personal power, such as increases to Edeldross magnitude or Wreath in general will also boost her progression. The Evening Sky EFB people seem most likely to want to get, Pillars, is one that can easily be used to buff our entire party, where as the other Evening Sky EFbs we've seen also have amazing potential for making our companions stronger.

We have continuously, over and over, including with the EFB we just got invested in options that make other members of our party much stronger to the point that thing options that are locked in and refundable, or one's we'd want purely to augment Lord Hunger's power like more Rank, more Edeldross magnitude, the inevitable evening sky efb, ect. The thread has made decisions that make it so we don't have to choose between builds that make Hunger stronger and making his companions stronger over and over and over again. We might as well take it advantage of it here.

Also, for what it's worth, aside from trading wits gain from might gain and adding combat progression in exchange for more magnitude the stat gains for Combat Vs Stealth aren't very different, including agility which we know has been continually tied to stealth picks. Considering the Combat training option explicitly includes infiltration and ambush training, it seems very likely she'll be even better at stealth then beforehand, and possibly better at it in the long run if agility falls under combat progression.
 
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Whether we end up in position to take the ring from successfully infiltrating or bloody combat, I don't think Hunger cares at all about what happens to these people, regardless of his past circumstances.

I think, from Hungers POV, this entire civilization has been enslaving the ring and feasting on its suffering. He's completely attuned to his own ring which rebukes this premise completely.

If he walks in, kills anyone who tries to stop him, takes the ring, and leaves, I don't think Hunger has any feelings whatsoever for the aftermath.

I don't think he stays to find out why this is bad for them, I don't think he cares. He gets the ring and he leaves. From his inner monologue I don't think this is nearly as heart-wrenching a decision for him as it is for the thread.

I don't even think he would care to help these people after he took the ring, if he even realized he could do so.
 
Rihaku said:
What was the art of the realm into which the hero first stumbled? Though he had mastered it to a prodigious degree, the exertion of his final onslaught degraded his power in this field as it did others. Now in his pre-Cursebearer state he was barely more notable than an average soldier, given the many ills and maiming wounds that plagued him. As a Cursebearer, that may no longer be the case.

By default, options that grant you immediate power will take the most efficient route of restoring, upgrading, or expanding on your chosen magic. You may gain access to other sources of supernatural power as well, such as the Praxis if a certain Remittance is chosen, or simply the magics and technologies of other worlds. Each would possess varying levels of synergy with the options below. Especially as a Progression-type Cursebearer, no field is truly barred to you save that which your Curses preclude. And, of course, it's easier to tread a path already taken.
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Nice, so we get to decide what kind of magic system our erstwhile Hero starts off with. A good change of pace from Seram who didn't have anything 'sides the clothes on his back and the power of Progression. Gives us a bit of leeway in developing our personal safety if we pick Vengeance and cross magic system synergies are the reason we won EFB, so I'm all for more powers. It's just great to see more magic systems from Rihaku though, they're easily my favorite part of his quests.

The Praxis worshiper in me wonders why we would need other systems though. It's the best magical style in the omniverse offensively and defensively so just mainlining training montages and grinding that power could be more efficient than training multiple different styles and trying for S Y N E R G Y (that most dreaded effect). Of course, the Geas of Indenture does force us into combat situations relatively quickly so it's probably the reason the Hero has to get a power to justify his survival. Anyway, onto the options of magics!

Rihaku said:
[ ] Battle Mastery - At first glance a simplistic art, yet few are more sophisticated at their core. The power of battle magic appears almost shockingly literal: techniques of sword and fist sporting superhuman might, orbs and shields channeling stupendous energies, summoned beasts who charge fearlessly into battle. All the mainstays of a hero's arsenal are present, but their implementation cleaves conceptual lines with a precision that bewilders and frustrates. How can a torrent of lightning that vaporizes a giant leave the surrounding greenery unmarred, save for a cosmetically significant singe mark?

How can a technique of bodily resilience grant superior resistance to harm without affecting one's health or the texture of one's flesh? How can a technique sufficient to propel the hero in a sixty-meter leaping charge fail to generate enough force to break down a wooden door? How can a spell of healing restore one from the brink of death yet have no effect on maiming wounds? The values of the system seem orthogonal to physical reality or common sense, and yet prioritized over both.

Mastery comes not only from cultivating its spells and techniques, but from clever exploitation of their confounding results. Lateral thinking is key. You need to scale a wall, but only wield a spell which summons a horde of skeletons that mindlessly attack a single target? Target the wall and use the skeletons as a makeshift ramp. Need to carve a statue? Animate a pile of marble into the weakest tier of golem so that it counts as a foe, allowing you to shape it with offensive spells. Polymorph passengers into helpless frogs so that your ferry can fit more, lowering the fares for all!

*Leaps, charges, strikes, sweeps, stances, orbs, bolts, cones, blasts, shields, fields, auras, lances, and other active effects distinguished by their kinetic and spatial parameters
*Extremely efficient at what it does; no extraneous power is wasted on combat-irrelevant effects, and even the most destructive effects unleashed at point-blank range will leave allies and bystanders untouched. Does eventually cap out, though many effects retain their utility; reducing damage taken by 99.8% is frequently relevant.
*Recombination of techniques allows for surprising versatility for the quick-witted and sharp of mind.
*Forbidden Art: Spirit Mastery. The hero learned to burn his own fundamental essence in order to magnify the power of his techniques, but he burned so much during the final confrontation that he has lost even the knowledge to attempt this.
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Very... DnD-esque? Or at least classically fantasy-ish - whimsical yet eminently practical at the same time. I really like that Battlemagic is so laser-focused on combat, destruction magic is really my bag and being able to defend against 99.8% of all damage sounds super useful. The Lance Ordinal was the apex combat spell for most Ordinalists due to its versatility and applicability to nearly all combat situations, a swiss army knife in terms of combat ability. Battlemagic sounds like we're pretty much just carrying an entire arsenal of weaponry, packing as many knives, hammers and shields as necessary to solve possible problems. Throw everything at the enemy, including the kitchensink! Then, pour oil on the fire by casting Baleful Polymorph to turn them into a toad!

The illogical nature of the spell-system seems like it would get frustrating though. Classical magic often seems to have nonsensical rules but my preference when it comes to magics is more broadly-encompassing arts like the Signs of the Diagram. The Force Sign contained multiple energy effects and was even able to enhance our internal power, and while having dozens of spells with specific rules seems good for diversity, it feels like it would become a total pain to plan around. Also, is there really a meaningful difference between magical blasts, bolts or lances? Sure, there's the triangle of Blunt, Piercing and Slashing damage to consider but all of these kinetic energy effects fall under the same branch in the end. Feels a little too limited in the end, though supreme efficiency might be a favorable trade in exchange for that.

That the magical power of its effects don't scale with time and mastery is also a little disappointing. Yeah, it emphasizes having more Wits and applying lateral thinking to solve issues but it probably wouldn't be as flashy or potent at higher levels since so much of its power is concentrated on versatility and efficiency. Battlemagic automatically affecting only the intended targets is pretty sweet though, that's a benefit we picked up Edeldross for so it would be nice to have Battlemagic if you had the Doom of Lunacy alongside. Blast out at your enemies with Battlemagic then when they think you're cornered, scream 'THIS ISN'T EVEN MY FINAL FORM!' and wildout with amplified power once you transform - with your effects not causing collateral damage, affecting only your enemies and avoiding needless ally casualties. They'd still be pretty badly affected from the mental harm caused by the transformation though, so that's an issue that'll remain no matter what.

Battlemagic is a nice, compact set of useful spells but I'm not sure how relevant at higher power levels it'll remain. Maybe it'd be good for street to army levels of conflict but I think nation-razing, sea-boiling levels of combat power may be out of its reach. If it comes with classic spells like continent-spanning teleportation and time-stop, it might remain useful but I doubt that such broken effects would be encapsulated by Battlemagic.

I wonder what kind of spells result from Spirit Mastery though. Maybe burning away selfhood and life-force results in a qualitative ascension in the essence of a spell, similar to how Mordant Flame would have been elevated from mere bolts of necromantic energy to searing charms of blue Truth if we Truespelled it. That'd be a pretty cool ability, though I'm leery of any abilities that require us to cast from life-force unless we have an insane regeneration factor capable of negating those costs. Since Rihaku clarified that the choice of magicset doesn't meaningfully impact the Hero's chances of survival in the immediate aftermath of being transported to a new world, I think I will turn my attention to the other available magics.

Rihaku said:
[ ] Seven Seals - The magic of the world was evocation of the self, the light of the soul made manifest. Each who had awakened to the light could offer their own unique capabilities, but few were as versatile and encompassing as this. The power to Seal can broadly be thought of as the inverse of reification: a flame becomes the character for 'Fire'; an onrushing torrent locked into a picture of itself. But this is an ability whose applications well exceed mere storage and containment. Not only can attacks from one foe be captured to be released against another, the nature of things sealed can be intensified through addition or fundamentally altered via combination. One may lack the equipment to meld fire with stone, but far easier to combine the character 'Fire' with the character 'Stone.'

And stranger effects than this are possible for a true master of the art: drawing upon sealed reserves without unsealing them; sealing and combining concepts; safely converting one's self into a seal, thereby to reside halfway into the Realm of Forms!

*An extremely versatile ability that allows for countless permutations
*Seal and redirect enemy attacks or convert any convenient form of quickly moving mass-energy into attacks; contain and constrict the abilities of foes; channel intensified sealed strength for superhuman attributes, seal one's own tiredness, or even become a being of pattern more than form and sear yourself across the span of reality!
*The first two Seals are easy to learn. Each subsequent level represents a rapidly escalating leap in difficulty. Progress will be relatively slow compared to other disciplines.
*Forbidden Art: Fifth Seal. The hero can no longer recall any details of the Fifth or higher Seals.
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Soul Evocations, huh. 'Light of the Soul made manifest' makes me immediately think of RWBY and Semblances though, not gonna lie. Personality-based superpowers are a strong staple of both battle manga and older comic books, so this could be said to be a pretty classical type of magic and power. I actually think the kind-of world which Evocations would develop is an interesting concept; if these magics are derived from the shape and expression of the soul, what would happen if you specifically cultivate certain characteristics and personality traits of a person? Could their Soul Evocation be altered after birth? Did changing the nature of one's Evocation cause a cascading change in the person's soul? Soul-based eugenics might even be a common practice amongst the nobles of such a society, crossing bloodlines and deliberately developing a particular lineage in such a way that their Soul Evocations become bent towards greater and greater manifestations of a desired concept.

Superpower enhancements via escalation over a long line of descent are not uncommon in fiction (see Worm and Shards apparently growing more powerful and easier to trigger with each new generation of parahumans, as well as the Quirk 'Singularity' and eugenics in My Hero Academia) so I could definitely see clans trying to create the perfect exemplar of their desired concept through experimentation and cultivation of their family's Soul Evocations throughout the centuries. After all, the Amarlt family seems to have done the same with Vanreir's father living his life as an embodiment of a blade, so if you repeat that long enough, with enough bodies, you'd probably develop a pretty kickass Soul Evocation chain though you'd have to wreck a lot of lives to get there. Might be a tad to difficult to implement and manage though. You'd need someone capable of perceiving the soul itself and ascertain as to whether the soul is developing according to desired paths and you'd effectively have to create countless mental clones of the same person to really maximize the efficiency of an Evocation before trying to elevate its powers further.

The body and purity of the bloodlines seem to play a strong role in enhancing a Soul Evocation's power though. Even though Vanreir's father was the perfect embodiment of a Blade, it took him seventy years to master his soul and then Vanreir had to master his own nature as the 'Unerring' before they could intertwine their beings in such a way as to resurrect the Unerring Blade, which seems to be a legendary Soul Evocation of the Amarlts in the past. Ceathlynn would have been genetically optimized in comparison to the current Amarlt bloodline and I think her Soul Evocation would naturally manifest as the Unerring Blade? Something to consider.

Anyway, in relation to the Hero's own personal Evocation, Seven Seals is rather cool. Sealing is almost always a high-level conceptual art so having it as one's personal magic system bodes well for battle at conceptual power levels. I presume that each level of Sealing allows manipulation of increasingly esoteric concepts and being able to fuse characters together sounds like an innovative combat style, highly flexible and kinetic in nature since we could freely seal and unseal things as necessary in battle. The art's speed of execution is concerning though, cause drawing a sigil may take a second or two and in fast-paced melee combat, such a delay could be easily fatal. Manipulation of 'characters' representing concepts kind of reminds me of Word Magic from Konjiki no Word Master though I didn't really that light novel.

I think that the first two Seals deal with substance and the material world, maybe the first Seal is something like Elements, letting you control the basic forces of Fire, Water, Air and Earth. Seems plausible since the described effect concerns manipulation of Fire and Stone. The second and third Seals are probably a little more esoteric, like physical energy and magical energy. I think Space and Time are probably higher Seals though - those seem to fit that level of power. Seven Seals is pretty cool and the fact that it is more focused, being an art directed towards the restriction and control of forces, makes it a solid powerset to visualize and tracing runes out into existence with it has a compelling appeal to me. I'd vote for Seven Seals as our magic, not only because of its power but because it being the magic of the Hero's world seems like it would develop an interesting society around its existence.

Rihaku said:
[ ] Accretion - A farmer's boy. A sword of fable. A perilous quest. Death or glory.

A form of symbiosis between wielder and object, integrating shared experiences, mythic archetypes, accumulated legendry and personal craftsmanship. The result is a being greater than the sum of its parts, not a man wielding a sword but Arthur with Excalibur, the blade closer to his being than his own sword-arm. That deep conceptual weight, wearing a groove in reality's current, permits the slow unfurling of impossible feats as a product of the partnership.

The power of Accretion is rarely replicable and never easily defined. Its greatest masters turn the tides of battle simply by taking the field, their presence an inexpressible radiance, sharp light beyond sense or reason, that erodes the existential basis of those who would oppose them. You will find them at the crux of fate, the critical point of inflection; there does that power reach its apex, starshine become a blazing sun, light and fire and fury as to bring the world to its knees.

*A power that is somewhat agnostic to the strength of one's foes. Battle Magic will never deflect a supernova; a master of this art might, though they'd have near equal difficulty deflecting a tank shell.
*Operates on a level beyond physical causality. With few exceptions, does not enhance physical parameters at all.
*With time and many shared tribulations, some of a union's powers may become relatively consistent and explicable. For example, the hero wears a suit of dark grey plate, and nothing may slay him short of annihilating the armor entire.
*Forbidden Art: Abduction. The forceful seizing of another's armament, inconsistent in applicable and terribly risky, as aspects of the prior wielder may impose themselves upon you. The hero stole into the Tyrant's Catacomb and emerged bearing the sword of the Tyrant's progenitor. That blade now lies broken, and with it its wielder.

The arts not picked will never have been present in the hero's initial realm.

Please remember to copy your vote for the previous choice when you vote here, so as not to override your previous vote.
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Just as the other powers have a classic kind of appeal in their magical nature, Accretion hearkens back to the mythic qualities of the heroic story. More intangible than the other magics, but thus attaining a deeper conceptual strength as a result. It's a compelling theme - great deeds naturally result in the accumulation of great power, great power facilitates the performance of great deeds, feeding back on itself in a recursive loop, an ouroboros of magical power. And while the nature of this magic is subtle initially, it encourages a practitioner to boldly brave danger and walk away from the aftermath directly empowered by their travails. A legendary magic meant to cultivate the legend of its wielder. Though, practicing Accretion seems simple enough in theory - perform mythic deed, establish mythic fame and thus accrue mythic power - actually implementing this practice is probably a balancing act of extreme difficulty. One probably needs to coldly calculate the probability of danger and harm against the potential gain from such feats in order to grow their power over the long-term, though with time and experience, masters of Accretion might acquire a natural intuition as to how to fully leverage powers from circumstance.

This ability seems very interesting to me in a narrative sense, since it would literally transform the Hero's story and manifest it in physical form, binding his experiences to his Artifacts and serving as a material representation of his legend. That's just a super fascinating A E S T H E T I C to rock and might give us an in to our protagonist's back-story and lore. Each Artifact would be an extension of his self, a sword being the embodiment of the destructive nature of the Hero made manifest in the physical realm, the truest expression of the part of his being that simply kills. Artifacts are always a cool part of a character's themes and aesthetic and I've always greatly enjoyed the various powers imbued in the weaponry and armors that Rihaku has conjured up for his protagonists in the past.

Ambition, of course, remains King of all possible weapons and its incredible concept of 'overwhelming power that surpasses even Solar Excellence' is super memorable. Away was also a striking idea, a sword made supernal through the conclusion of an immense number of murders as to be exalted beyond other weapons. In that regard, Accretion paves a strong path to the creation of a similar Artifact, encouraging us to develop our personal legend by causing the realization of powers compatible with our nature and deeds within our Artifacts. However, Abduction is an intriguing element, taking up the Artifacts of others to artificially strengthen ourselves by allowing the story of another Accretion master to become one with our own legend. It allows us to introduce new factors into the Hero's characterization, perhaps shaping his personality to be more dangerous or more charismatic and either elevating him or reducing him as a result.

It's a dangerous game but it can allow us the opportunity to strengthen the Hero's fundamental nature even further; emphasizing his heroic will despite the 'corrupting' influence of other Artifacts, and the Hero already seems to show a talent for suborning the weapons of others, taking advantage of preceding legends to enhance the scale of his own mythic journey. That's more interesting to me in a narrative sense though the ambiguous nature of Accretion-derived powers seems like it would be a possible downside, being much more malleable than Seven Seal's relative simplicity of restriction. That Accretion's magical power can overcome even supernovas is a pretty big plus in my books though, as a strong worry of mine when investing in magic systems is how well they scale into the lategame of a story, so Accretion being so conceptually dense yet magically powerful definitely pushes it over Battlemagic in my opinion.

It's a tiny bit of a shame that Soul Evocations and Accretion would be mutually exclusive from each other though, I think the two systems existing in the same world would make a supremely interesting setting. What if you could invest your Soul Evocation into your Artifacts, making your soul and its inherent powers a discrete existence in another object? Or perhaps, you could harness the magic derived from Accretion's conversion of mythic legend and fame into pure power to directly feed into your own Evocation and thus soul? It would allow one to become greater than others in spiritual import in truth, again facilitating the cultivation of Accretion power in a synergistic loop. A society with these mythic heroes, wielding a panoply of Artifacts and casting out the light of their soul in combat sounds super rad though highly destructive in nature. Accretion is my favorite in terms of aesthetic appeal and access to Lore but I feel Seven Seals might be well-suited to the early parts of the Hero's journey. It's tough to choose between the two honestly, especially when picking one of these magics would result in the nonavailability of the other (well, at the time, this story post was made).
Alright, made another reaction! 2407 words this time and I'm a little low on energy since I typed this out on a laptop rather than a mechanical keyboard as is my preference, but I wanted to see whether I could really write out my thoughts and reactions to these early updates. Trying to cut ahead a bit and maybe start reacting to more storyposts. Hopefully, these reactions are relatively understandable and don't read like a mad loon's incoherent ramblings! A lot of the fanworks, omakes, art and reactions have been super interesting to read in recent times and their sheer volume has kind of made me start reading every fanwork and think about sharing some of my own thoughts.

AST I has been a pretty thrilling quest and the setting elements are so cool that I feel invested enough to try expressing my thoughts on this. I'm not sure if I'll be able to really write out reactions to every single update Rihaku has done but I'm glad to be able to contribute some stuff to the thread. Now, to sleep...
 
For those voting to improve our chances in a fight, consider that we aren't taking Guile just for the charisma bonuses but also for it's enormous advantage in spotting enemy schemes. Our enemy, quite frankly, strongly out-wisdoms us for once, so we aren't going to Age and Treachery him anytime soon, more likely the opposite.

Having a way to avoid falling into a trap would be tremendously useful, and considering that the Stance would as such boost both our Diplomatic Victory and actual fighting chances against him we'd have a much higher total probability of ending up with a positive outcome out of this interaction.
 
Rihaku said:
Why would they want to revolt? They'd lose 90% of their lifespan without the Ring!
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Why indeed. Perhaps... if we teach them how to fish?

I'm thinking the report might be lying or be ignorant about some things, and one of those could be that the Ring is actually on its last legs and might break (or even worse, though I don't know what) soon. No specific thing that led me to the conclusion, more like a combination of little things, like how exhausted it sounded and how they suddenly decided to kill Gabrielle, how Apocrypha led us here and how our coming here feels like something more than a coincidence or just a simple plot to kill us.

Though that might mean that their Council will be even more incentivized to capture our own Ring as a replacement...
 
Garlak said:
Why do the information peddlers even have this?

How do the info-brokers even have this?? How'd they get this?
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The camp's subverted to some degree, we've known that since meeting the merchants. They had sigils to command the Knights and disable the Call. The commentary about Prelairn's death also confirms that the sigils are tracking devices, the bread and butter of any totalitarian society. The Inners may have set it up in the first place, the ability to offer respite from the Call when adventurers are willing to resort to all sorts of hedonism for distraction's powerful.

No wonder people who breach the Middle and return are cagey about their experiences; we know from Vanreir's interlude that sigils can transmit audio. One or more Inners are likely embedded in the Encampment to manage the whole circus, which would be where the reports got stolen from. They've got this whole business down to a science. Hell, there are probably people attending Temple University majoring in Incursion Management.
Garlak said:
... Why's this even a thing... This is weird. Why would there be problems extracting Aeira? And and why does "study economics/business" address the Voyaging Realm Anti-Looting Mechanism???
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Native magic users leaving seems to cause problems, but yeah, that it happens on this small a scale is surprising. As for why this helps, I think it's because studying the dismal science (a Carlyle reference) implies an intent not to live and work as a mage? We're not extracting an Elementalist assassin, but an economist, Letrizia's friend and advisor.

The option's not getting enough play in my opinion, we've already seen how useful Aeira's default capabilities are and with a substantial fraction of the thread gunning for Pillars, there are other ways of healing the liver. The danger of a combined extraction & Apocryphal proc may outweigh the vulnerability of having a maimed liver. Also, it gives Rihaku a chance to display his knowledge! I periodically reread the part of Most High where credit default swaps drove Anys Syn to drink.

Great analysis post, by the way.

Thinking about the categories, an X-type incursion might be a Ringbearer? If Sector X is where Hunger disrupted the Knight formations (still don't know what their deal is) and has defenses outside their control, then that refers to the antechamber and surrounding area. By 'more deliberate machinations' Crowelenarch might mean the Imprisoned Ring opening the door for us? Gven the basis of their society the Inners would naturally fear a Ringbearer Incursion.

Speaking of the Azure Ring, 'time burns' is an interesting line. We've been interpreting it as a reference/evidence the Council's faithful servant is a lich. But to quote Flare's poem: Forgotten not, the debt of Time. What does the Ring do for the ten million Inner Residents? Among other things, it gives them more time. Could be a clue as to the Ring's themes and a literal description of the Star-Forges' purpose, burning away the firmament for power!
 
DkArthas said:
[X] Stealth
[X] Magic-Defeating Stance

Mage defeating Stance is an option which increases our chances of success during almost potential fights in the temple. It's the perfect answer to an civilization of Soul evocation experts. Sure, it may not be as good as the other stances for this scenario but it makes it up for it with greater long term security due to the anti-magic and Curse mitigation.

It's an good balanced option that increases our survival chances now as well as in the long term. Balance between power and greed is the optimal choice in many cases. Here we don't need to maximize our chances, so we can look toward the future.
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But ask yourself - what does MDS offer us in upcoming update? If your answer is "not that much", then why get it? Instead, you could S A V E and spend on some sort of 7AP reward from High Marshal fight/social!

And if there's nothing good to get, we can get MDS anyway..
 
Wolfy said:
But ask yourself - what does MDS offer us in upcoming update? If your answer is "not that much", then why get it? Instead, you could S A V E and spend on some sort of 7AP reward from High Marshal fight/social!

And if there's nothing good to get, we can get MDS anyway..
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I am not interested in any high arete option from High Marshal fight. My optimal picks would be the disgustingly powerful Vigor incarnate or RANK or perhaps both if we get enough picks.

There is also the choice of ennobling and Blood dominion Rank increase which would be overpowered with Crimson Flair. That would actually help us in making some people in Moon Civ defect. All of them are either 2 arete or no arete option.
 
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I realized something. It would be extremely heartless, but we could threaten them with the Decimator's Affliction. In 19 days we are going to start indiscriminately devouring their civilization's lifeforce and the speed of our development will improve. Our range is sufficient to ensure they are all subject to it, even the immortals. We are immune to divination. All we have to do is hide and we will make even the immortals bleed in time. We don't actually have to lift a finger to judge their civilization for the torture of the ring. That's why they should accept our gift. Blood Ennoblement which will extend their lifespans and preserve more of their people's soul evocations, for the ring. The gift will be indiscriminate and their autonomy will be preserved if it's accepted within 19 days, and we will come in to rule as a devouring tyrant using ennobling as a reward for our supporters if they haven't accepted in 19 days.

If the immortals are genuine heroes looking out for their civilization's best interests, they will realize they have been beaten. If they are secret oligarchs and tyrants, they will panic and make that fact known.
 
Rihaku said:
It is well known that the Treasure at Temple's Heart is the source and guiding light of all magics practiced by its attendant civilization. As the vast majority of practitioners are Soul Evokers,
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Vast majority implies that not all of the magic using Inner Residents are Soul Evokers. More evidence for alternative (diagram lich?) magic styles. Last thing we need to to spec into countering some effects and be blindsided by other parallel magics.

[X] Stealth
[X] Magic-Defeating Stance
 
Rihaku said:
Hm, I haven't gotten a good sense of what strategy you guys want to pursue for the Temple civ as a whole. Just trying to stay flexible, or do you guys have a specific diplomatic solution in mind?
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Implying we have a strategy is itself a bold strategy. That said, I think the general idea's to offer them buffs/aid in the short term. From the leaked intel we know their strategic situation's precarious. On top of Avecarn's '404, fucks not found' demeanor, they need to subvert major incursions or the containment damage will eventually bury them beneath a horde of moonbrains. They have to either deploy the Immortals or fight fire with fire adventurers with adventurers, and Rank 7 blood buffs are a huge force multiplier.

Also, man, rereading the part of the update where Aeira swipes all this delicious worldbuilding is giving me retroactive salt about King of Thieves! Little did we know that we'd already killed a Marshall. Vicissitude's a cool name, shame we don't get XP for indirect victories.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by DkArthas on Jul 2, 2020 at 12:56 PM, finished with 288 posts and 51 votes.
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To adjust the threat further, we could use things like ennobling middle temple dissidents and ritual grounds damage as penalties for delay or attempting to attack us.
 
Even if we ignore saving for Total Eclipse, Pillars of Creation or some other Evening Sky EFB, I just don't see the point of spending Arete without seeing the other options and before we need it.

If we are in serious danger we can just snap buy it then, even use it to surprise our enemy.
 
And hey, if there is some conspiracy that makes the immortals about as morally grey as Cauldron from Worm, targeting their lifespans should be enough for them to try letting us in on it.
 
The problem is that we only unlock the extra features like Ennobling after we rescue the Ring. We still have to retrieve it and at that point there is a good argument to just leave and head straight towards the Human Sphere.

The Immortals would have lost the majority of their power due to Soul Evocation no longer being viable.
 
The recent Ringy influences on Hunger-the-manswordmantlering and the Renaissance Woman blurb might mean giving the Azure Ring to Gisena, even if possible, is probably a bad idea. Can she become the quintessence of humanity if she's also a Ring?
 
Ennobling is a separate advancement we could develop, we can just refund it and have it become much more efficient after we rescue the Ring. It's useful for conquest, our Geas task, so we would want it sooner or later anyway.
 
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