I actually really want to bring Piggot on board as our Ori. Sure she doesn't have a power, but we were just shown that Autochthon is under enormous strain so that might not be as big a downside as we might have seen it as previously. This quest's Piggot is a badass hardass who isn't so much biased against parahumans as she is sick and tired of their bullshit; she's also tsundere for competence.
First, powers are pretty important. Not all important, but we have to take down endbringers and Scion, so they do matter. Auto would state it if he could not handle it. As has been pointed out, he is falling back to sleep, not dying. Heck, for all we know, learning all sorts of usefull new information from entity-shards might actually be helping him for all we know.
Also, Piggot has not really been relevant for a long time nor is the relationship between her and the assembly all that close. Frankly, she would not really make much sense at all for Taylor to choose at this point. Maybe if BB was still around and they had interacted a lot, but even the it would be iffy. As it is, she would be a choice from nowhere basically.
I would not be opposed to Piggot being healed and becoming a badass normal with a soul or something, but exalting her? That I have trouble accepting.
If holding the Cradle open is stressing Auto's energy reserves, perhaps he has set up Saki and Sakura to run their own portal? Obviously she hasn't worked out all the controls yet, but beforehand they could transport a whole buliding.
Sudden thought: has Autochthon just created the tools he plans to use to bring his body to the universe of Earth Bet? Obviously not without a lot of intervening prep work, but maybe we have something to build on now.
Auto would have had no way of knowing we would exalt Saki and Sakura. That being said, its possible he did take advantage of the opportunity we gave him to create a connection of sort, that might allow some degree of contact when Auto goes back to sleep. With the charm calibration done, we might want to consider trying to consult Iris and perhaps build somekind of unmanned high-speed probe with somekind of scanners to try and see if we could find another gate on the other side, and make contact.
However I don't realy believe that Sakis charm is capable of actually transporting Auto himself to Nowheveruniverse. We might eventually be able (maybe at higher submodules or possibly with very advanced tinkertech/artifact superspeeders) to send actual people to Autochtonia (and possibly acquire Sakura eventually). However to bring Auto himself almost certainly requires that we follow the original plan. First step of which is converting the entire planet to operate on Essence.
Isn't alexandria heavily injured in this quest?
That gives another reason to throw her in the poertal.
As has been pointed out, we can fix her with traditional methods. Sakis dimension acts as a life support system (Alexandria won't die), while also separating parahumans from their shards (Alexandria won't be near-invulnerable, making surgery and other treatment possible). All we need to do is figure it all out IC, and maybe buy Taylor a dot or two of medicine. Or just have Cauldron find trustworthy doctors who we could bring in to operate on Alexandria in order to gain SPU bonuses. That, combined with charms from Saki and Prayer make it very possible to fix Alexandria without having to exalt her (thankfully).
I'm against Exalting Vista. She is too young.
To be honest, I am not really sure why this matters?
I mean if we were making a decision between exalt or normal life, then I could see the argument. However Vista is not just a parahuman, but one that basically has made it pretty clear she intends to throw herself into S-class battles and serious fights and so on. Her friendship with us would just make that even more certain, as does the drive towards more conflict that her entity-shard will continue to push her towards. So the unfortunate reality is that she won't suddenly start leading safe, happy and risk-free life by not being chosen as an exalt candidate. Whether Vista is chosen or not simply won't make a difference to the level of battles and traumatic experiences and so on she is going to be experiencing.
If anything, exalting her could be viewed as the moral thing from that perspective. Exalts are much tougher than normal humans (or non-brute parahumans). As an exalt, Vista is far more likely to actually survive the life she leads, and grow up and reach adulthood rather than die horribly at the hands of endbringers or some enemy parahuman. Oh, and her shard-charm will probably not be hitting her with a constant conflict-drive, so theres that benefit too.
To but it simply: Vista is not an innocent and normal child. Entities took that away from her a
long time before we came along, by sticking a spacewhale shard in her brain.
If age didn't matter, Saki would not gain 4 goddamn Clarity from mere power testing.
Saki gained that mostly due to miscalibrated exaltation and the horrible torture she had underwent. I mean it was explicitly pointed in the prior scenes, that they were horribly tortured and that time did not really pass from their POV. Taylor predicted that Clarity would be a problem due to her own experiences (father trying to kill her, her own miscalibrated exaltation, etc).
I'm still not convinced that Autobot would find him suitable.
Or that he's willing to follow someone else's lead.
The point was made back during the Nine attack that he would accept an Exaltation, but that his current goals are more personal than for the Greater Good.
Frankly, the same applies to most candidates. GU for example is a far worse option than Armsmaster as she is right now. If GU could be "turned" towards Auto and the greater good, why do you think armsmaster cannot? Heck, we know from canon that he has it in him to become a better person with the right push. If we focused on trying to turn him into a better person and more suitable candidate, we could certainly do so.
A normal hero can be focused on personal glory; no problem. An Alchemical should not.
It's not as if we can't already get use out of him now as a Tinker.
Alchemicals can't worship a god planning to blow up the planet either, and its not like we can't make use of GU and her powers as a heroic mortal. Same applies to Accord too. Stick a soul in his forehead, throw Saki at him and so on and he too could become more suitable too. And we could make use of his plans as a heroic mortal aswell.
I don't think we have anyone that would be a perfect candidate right now. No matter what, we would have to try to make the person we choose become more trustworthy and reasonable.
In that sense, Armsmaster might actually be ahead of the others in that we have known him longest and would be better able to try and make him see his personal flaws. Dragon could also be recruited to help there. He also has the advantage of affinity with Auto due to being a tinker, and being a heroic figure we would not have to hide or try to justify having chosen. Whereas with GU we would basically be starting from scratch trying to convert her, and would run into PR issues due to having exalted someone who has murdered lots and lots of people (including heroes).
Armsmaster is far from perfect, but frankly, at this very moment in time, he would be better choice than GU would be. And if GU can be redeemed, Armsmaster can be "redemeed" far more easily.
Finally, I am pretty sure there is atleast one alchemical who does focus and enjoy personal glory in the canon books. Will try to look it up later. Wanting to be recognized/famous/liked is not something that automatically disqualifies you.
EDIT:
Voice of Authority loves being a Champion. Nothing thrills him like brawling with gremlin machine-cannibals in a steam-choked service tunnel, or dueling an Apostate on the lip of an electrified essence vent. Gremlin hunting is both a sacred mission and a delightful recreation for him, and the Sentinel does it extremely well. He stopped keeping track of his kill-count shortly after his first Essence upgrade (not that this has stopped the weekly printing of propaganda posters with the latest count), and now numbers only his fights with Apostates. He has fought menacing rogue Exalts such as Clambering Horror Mechanism and Ultimatum of Shadows to a standstill more than once, and has successfully killed Apostates with the aid of his assembly.
When not defending Gulak from the Apostate menace, Voice enjoys the benefits of his celebrity. Infamous for high-profile seductions of junior Tripartite members and neophyte Alchemicals in scandalous debauches, he takes equal pleasure showing off for state-sponsored parades and festivals. Such occasions stoke his considerable ego, helping him regain his humanity after long solitary missions into the reaches. Popular as he is in Gulak, most of its Champions and senior Tripartite members regard him with a grudging resentment—while he may be effective, his self-assured arrogance and habit of creatively interpreting his orders have made few friends.
Auto does not care if you have an ego or like the fame you get from doing your job, so long as you do your job.
What role is he supposed to play?
What is your vision of his place in our assembly as a Jade?
To be fair, Chevalier could easily find a role, or do the role Vista would. The benefit of alchemicals is that we can choose the charms they gain, so while Chevalier would not have the space-warping charm, he would have some other powerfull charm (with possible unique vision abilities too). And he could certainly fill the role of "beatstick/coordinator". Perhaps better even than Vista could, considering his far greater experience in actually being a leader. Vista is popular mostly because she is Taylors close(st) friend and has been around for a long time. And most of us want to read more of her. She is not however somehow irreplacable and the only one capable of doing the job.
She told him herself.
"We shall reap from them a hundred-fold for each indignity you and your sister suffered. Perhaps, then, we shall see who would dare stand against us."
From 9.1.
I'm not sure why he would be confused.
He probably will be when we tell him that one of the primary persons responsible is now part of the team. Damn I am so not looking forward to that revelation. I just hope Saki won't instantly teleport to her Safe Space and never come out.
That post hasn't been updated since tuesday, I'm not sure how relevant that is. I do generally agree with your point but I highly doubt that she ended the last chapter with Clarity 2.
Actually, I seem to recall that meditation/exaltation calibration does reset Clarity due to "autochton intervention". Did so before with Prayer and Taylor for example.
Ofcourse Saki has undergone a very traumatic experience and should get therapy (and will likely rely on clarity slightly to deal with PTSD, just as Taylor did). And learning about Bonesaw and what will quite possibly be viewed as a betrayal of sorts will inevitably drive her back to higher clarity aswell. However both of those would have happened just as surely with an adult.
I do like the idea of him fixing the area around the Cradle, but I'm not sure how important that is.
There might be some impact if we manage to connect our first Demesne to the cradle before Auto goes back to sleep. However that would require us to create that demesne very near the Cradle. Beyond that, I would expect that the location of the connecting dimensional rift will end up important in some other ways eventually too. Having a HQ around that area might be handy from that perspective.
Yes, but that usually presupposes access to a vat and technicians. Here we may need to cannabalize some of our other charms to make that work, and I'm...less than entirely sanguine about that right now.
No, I don't think so. Saki already has the charm that produces the substances from essence. Creating new drugs would be more like uploading a new programs to a pre-existing computer, rather than building a new physical computer. We don't need to cannibalize anything. Just come up with something Gromweld accepts (or use one of the recipes from the art of alchemy) and pay 2xp. Obviously this would only apply to Saki, since she is the only one with the charm.
I am interested in Armsmaster as Orichalum, but so far he hasn't had that come to Jesus moment to stop being such a self-absorbed ass. (Love you dearly armsy, but there's a difference between autism and narcissism)
True. However if we chose to, we could probably help him reach that "jesus" moment by focusing on arranging it. Certainly it would probably be easier than converting GU from Scion worship to Auto and from being a fairy into being a robot. Or becoming someonw willing to work with people and other parahumans/PRT rather than murdering them in large quantities. Or fixing all of Accords problems. All of our ori candidates need work.
The trouble is that theres so very little agreement on who should become Ori, so we are basically not really working or preparing anyone for the job. If we had decided a year ago IRL that Armsmaster would absolutely be our candidate, we could likely have arranged him to become more like canon!Defiant by now. Saki ofcourse would make it even easier, if we chose that. For example, getting him together with Dragon would likely have helped, but when the vote for that came a while back, people were not really interested in that option (even if it that would quite probably have made him reflect on himself).
