Alchemical Solutions [Worm/Exalted] Thread 23: We Wonder Where Who Wanders When Watchers Wane

Pre-Vote Running Tally: Who Are Your Top 3 Choices For Orichalcum?


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I agree on Piggot for Ori. @FunkyEntropy we should shape our free action for EOA to meet with Piggot and extend the offer. Piggot is likely to accept, but she's going to have to take some time to parse it through her her sense of justice. We're asking her to essentially become a parahuman after all. But we're offering to make her dream of full adapting parahumans into human society come true.
I'm on the fence about this. Weaver could make the pitch but we grabbed the moebots explicitly to have a social steamroller (even if we keep our App at 4 and don't use any charms, Saki will demolish any non-social cape 1v1 baring extremely unlucky rolls) and it's not like Piggot doesn't know Saki. Saki might also get some points thanks to being a very recent victim of parahuman malfeasance.

What I was thinking of was writing the stunt so as to let @Gromweld have ultimate control over who gives the final pitch. Basically, Saki just going, "would now be a good time to talk about it or would you prefer to set a time so we can do this later." This way he can do what he thinks will make for the better story.
 
You are misremembering. It's an E3 charm.
E4.
MAN-MACHINE WEAVING ENGINE

Cost: — [1m]
Mins: Intelligence 4, Essence 4
Type: Permanent
Keywords: Exemplar 1, Obvious
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: None
This Charm takes the form of an adamant ring implanted around the Alchemical's soulgem, inscribed with hundreds of tiny Old Realm glyphs. When activated, the crystal rapidly spins in its socket and the runes inscribed along its rim light up in patterns consistent with the protocol being invoked. At the consummation of the casting, sparks jump from the ring into the Exalt's soulgem before discharging with a brilliant display of power. This Charm may never be removed once installed, but it does not function for characters infected with Gremlin Syndrome.
The character may take Weave Man-Machine Protocol actions, which are identical to Shape Terrestrial Circle Sorcery actions save that they invoke a Man-Machine protocol rather than a spell. For full details on protocol weaving, see Chapter Six. This Charm cannot be placed in an Array.
Unless there is Errata.
Or the GM changes his mind. Or cooks up a custom artifact/familiar to help.
 
What's with the sudden push for Piggot as Orichalcum again?:???:
Couple of reasons:

- It makes tactical sense to pick her next for reasons that I laid out earlier
- Piggot has the potential to be very useful and I think she could add an interesting dynamic to the assembly
- No shard means we have more flexibility with alchie charms. Alternately we could give her the option of us burning a Cauldron favor and get her one. I think it's possible that she'd appreciate the irony.
- Possibility of treading new Quest ground by being the first to actually upgrade Piggot to PC status
 
I agree on Piggot for Ori
How well do you know Piggot IC? That's the question here.
That's also my question about GU; at the moment they're all candidates, and until we get a better look at them, we can't make any sort of informed decision.

Some people we've had better looks at than others(Miss M, Armsmaster) and some we barely know(Accord, GU).

I'm on the fence about this.
Saki shouldn't be making the pitch to anyone.
Always send the person with Perception 6 and a 2nd Perception Aug.
 
those have a permanent 3 mote commitment compared to TMI's 1 so it's a trade off that would depend on how we intend to use the Hypothetical Ori Armsmanster's mote pools.
e: thought the AoMM are likely better for a Tinker Exalt.
:confused:
Why would you build a Tinker without Technomorphic Integration Engine?
And crucially, without the submod Resonance Harmonizer that decreases artifact attunement costs by (Essence) to a minimum of 1?
 
Saki shouldn't be making the pitch to anyone.
Always send the person with Perception 6 and a 2nd Perception Aug.
Why? Saki has much better social chops and would thus be the better choice making the actual pitch.

How well do you know Piggot IC? That's the question here.
That's also my question about GU; at the moment they're all candidates, and until we get a better look at them, we can't make any sort of informed decision.

Some people we've had better looks at than others(Miss M, Armsmaster) and some we barely know(Accord, GU).
More than anything I trust Piggot to keep us honest. She has a very different, adult, perspective on things which I think could be very useful.

Even if she was remotely open to the idea, which isn't guaranteed, we still run into one of Alexandria's issues: Will she follow orders from us, or will she go rogue/try to usurp us?
That's something we could negotiate beforehand, and in any case I actually want a little bit of second-guessing in order to avoid groupthink. Sirkalla and Saki idolize us too much which means they're not as likely to call us on something. That's actually why I think our pitch will be successful - we know we need someone that can keep us honest and Piggot is someone we trust to do so.
 
Neither Weld nor Wyld have been suggested as Orichalcum candidates; Wyld lacks the strength of character to be Exalted, Weld lacks the drive to be Ori.
Lustrum hasn't actually been seriously proposed either.
And you're missing Miss Militia and Chevalier.

Chevalier is a valid point. Wyld has certainly been suggested as Ori, and I think Weld has been mentioned as well, though I agree he doesn't fit the caste. I haven't seen anyone talking about Miss Militia for Orichalcum, only Jade and Moonsilver; and she fits those better anyway. As for Lustrum... well, GU has been seriously proposed, so who knows what's serious and what isn't.

So...
Candidates who shouldn't be Exalted: Alexandria, Glaistig Uaine, Lustrum
Candidates who shouldn't be Orichalcum: Miss Militia, Piggot, Weld
Candidates I have serious doubts about: Accord, Armsmaster, Chevalier, Wyld

(And let's not give too much credit for the stuff Chevalier did in canon but not in this quest, in the same way we shouldn't attack Armsmaster for stuff he did in canon but not here. People change with circumstances. Accord is the only person on this list I'm entirely certain can catalyze Orichalcum, but his history with Marrow is very much problematic.)

Or we could pick the one option not able to be produced later. Like an intelligent person. Rather than just taking the "could make later but too lazy to learn to" choices.

We can't do everything in this quest! "We can do it later" is not a valid reason to avoid doing something, because something will come up, we'll have other things that must be done immediately if they're to be done at all, and we wind up making a bunch of choices we don't really want to because that's our last chance to make them, and not taking the better option at all, or at least taking it too late for it to help us.
 
:confused:
Why would you build a Tinker without Technomorphic Integration Engine?
And crucially, without the submod Resonance Harmonizer that decreases artifact attunement costs by (Essence) to a minimum of 1?
because I don't have the books memorized?
this is literally the only place I use them after all.
edit:
Why? Saki has much better social chops and would thus be the better choice making the actual pitch.
why not both?
 
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Why? Saki has much better social chops and would thus be the better choice making the actual pitch.
Because the key finding for Exaltation tends to be how well you understand who you are sending.
Taylor still has the best insight of anyone in the Assembly.
Doesn't matter if your candidate agrees if they are not suitable, after all.

And it's not like she's a slouch socially; she's rolling Cha/Man3 + Presence 5 + Stunt 2 while rocking App 5.

Doesn't especially matter; as long as Taylor takes an assistant, any assistant, she is golden.
Use Saki for the social obstacles impeding our candidate, not for recruiting the candidate; the only one on our list I'd anticipate needing Saki for is GU, and that's because we'd need to neutralize her socially anyway.

More than anything I trust Piggot to keep us honest. She has a very different, adult, perspective on things which I think could be very useful.
That's what we have Prayer for.
She hasn't proven short of the ability to pull us short, like when we were complaining that Autobot didn't get some things right.

Basically, we have yet to see the rest of the candidates, including the big one; I'm making no push for one candidate over the other until then.
Meantime, please try to write stunts?
 
more options means we're better able to tailor our strategies to our challenges better.
ie a Infiltrator would allow Stealth actions, non obvious scouting, infiltrating a invisible squad of troopers, retrieval of hostages, abduction of targets:V, stealth neutralization of enemy combatants. basically it grants as another tool set to work with to eliminate the problems that will come up simply from being on Earth bet, Main force isn't always the best option but without a Stealth specialist it's nearly the only option.

Stealth and infiltration against who? Why do we want to build our circle into a special forces team as opposed to a research lab, a musical act, or a corporate consulting group? We are not the PRT, and our main goal is not to push up the attendance numbers at Endbringer fights, or the hero/villain ratios of each city.
 
I thought he was referring to Thermionic Orthodoxy Array. *shrugs*
Yeah, was referring to Weaving.
- It makes tactical sense to pick her next for reasons that I laid out earlier
- No shard means we have more flexibility with alchie charms. Alternately we could give her the option of us burning a Cauldron favor and get her one. I think it's possible that she'd appreciate the irony.
Except we're quite low on XP at the moment, and thus would not be able to fully utilise the flexibility that an extra 3 personal motes gives. And the second runs into the issue of Eden.
:wtf: Why is she even on the list?
Why do we want to build our circle into a special forces team as opposed to a research lab, a musical act, or a corporate consulting group?
:wtf: But other than that - we sort of want multiples with individual Alchemicals. EoA (and potentially Armsmaster/Accord if we Exalt them) would be our 'research' (probably with Iris), Moonsilver's Infil (because we're going to make enemies, and being able to find out what they're doing is always good), Prayer's our offense/defence for when needed etc. We're not going to get far just sitting around prepping - we'll need to actively do things, work with people, convince them why this should happen etc.
 
Stealth and infiltration against who?
The Yangban. The Elite. Lost Garden. Krasnaya Perchatka. Elitnaya Armiya.
Heartbreaker. Saint. Goddess. South American supervillain groups that outright took over their governments.
Anyone of godknowshowmany groups who might have information they choose not to share, or who we don't want to know of our scrutiny, or where surprise would allow us reduce collateral damage.

Why do we want to build our circle into a special forces team as opposed to a research lab, a musical act, or a corporate consulting group? We are not the PRT, and our main goal is not to push up the attendance numbers at Endbringer fights, or the hero/villain ratios of each city.
I currently can't be arsed to track down the quote(somewhere on SB) but back in ancient prehistory of this Quest, it was mentioned by the GM that stealth in particular opens up additional options.
We maintain options to approach each problem from different angles, and specialists who can take advantage of different approaches.

It's why we have a moebot as well as a generalbot and a beatemupbot.
 
I currently can't be arsed to track down the quote(somewhere on SB) but back in ancient prehistory of this Quest, it was mentioned by the GM that stealth in particular opens up additional options.
We maintain options to approach each problem from different angles, and specialists who can take advantage of different approaches.

It's why we have a moebot as well as a generalbot and a beatemupbot.
unless there's a different WoG I quoted it just last page.
 
while the nanites would help with keeping Riley out of the Birdcage, they're not anything Wlyd can't do already and we can always invest in Medicine to make them ourselves eventually
No, this is not something Wyld can do. There is a major difference between one person working on one patient at a time, and a permanent regeneration upgrade which can be mass produced.

For one, it works on Wyld herself, greatly mitigating her inability to heal herself.
Frankly, thats pretty unrealistic anytime soon. To get that level of worship going we would have to basically perform absurd miracles. Would likely not be happening until after Auto has been summoned (if then).
Not really? If you count the actual number of persons needed we have enough for Cult N/A within most states of America.

Creation and Autochtonia's's Cult values are based on premodern population counts. Earth Bet is a modern, urbanized population, and I'd point out that New York on it's own has more people living in it than most of the Roman Empire put together had.
And I would expect manufacturing souls would be slow and expensive enough that we could not possibly make enough for everyone in time.
Also not strictly true. Creation's soul production is a fully automatic and unmaintained mechanism, which keeps up with soul loss to Oblivion, ghosts hanging around, soulsteel forging, Raksha predation AND the birth rate. While in the First Age, it also had to deal with producing new souls for Solars pulling entire countries complete with population out of the Wyld

The biggest challenge is generating the Essence to power it and actually constructing it, but a large scale prayer engine should be able to run the necessary power to fuel it in order to make any souls. And once you can translate souls to Essence production, the rate will grow logarithmically to the limits of the Ewer of Souls 2.0's ability to plant them in hosts, followed by running out of people to plant them in.
We would need to set up Loom and Lethe equivalents, which would be a monumental undertaking (likely would need help of Auto or atleast divine ministers).
We have Autochton's fetich soul right here. Iris is capable of the job, especially working with the more pliable Causality Essence. The big challenge is doing it fast.
Bad Girl, No Biscuit is sort of canon end Riley. She's not as cheerful as she could be, and she's kind of resigned to the fact that she's made some pretty bad choices. Also, perhaps making some amends?
Sounds about right pegging it as handling her as a penitent criminal rather than a victim.
Respect My Authority is well, Taylor is the moral compass upon which Riley's new world operates and she wants to make her proud and have her say good girl. Or something, I'm not a hundred percent sure on this, because I was tired at the time and I think I forgot a large chunk of it.
This serves well for our longer term loyalties.

Though it's disturbing to displace Jack Slash's spot in her psychology like that.
This isn't just addressed to you, but knowing this quest, I'm guessing that in less than four days, something big will come up that will force us to delay Exalting the next candidate by at least a week.
This is something that is predictable yes.

I mean, something like that has ALWAYS happened to date. Gromweld is not in the habit of putting pointless things up to vote.
Earth Bet is not currently susceptible to Weaving, and won't be for a long time IC. When we WILL need sorcery we will need it bigtime.
Hence our Ori candidates being groomed for the role.

Noting that we may be able to help Iris with a Weaving Engine even prior to the demesne, by working in concert to split the load.
 
I think that Piggot would be honest enough that If she couldn't accept Taylor as her XO, she'd decline the offer.

That seems consistent with canon Piggot. If she isn't going to listen to you, she'd cite conflict of loyalty to your face and you can shove it up your ass if you have a problem with that.

We also know for a fact(Word of Gromweld), that she will immediately resign all conflicting obligations if she accepts.

I personally still prefer Accord, GU or Armsmaster(approximately in that order), but would not particularly object if Piggot was picked.
 
It's why we have a moebot as well as a generalbot and a beatemupbot.

For those of you just tuning in, Prayer is the moebot, Warden is the generalbot, and Administrator is the beatemupbot. Because I dare anyone to tell me First Prayer of Perfection is not moe, Warden is not star-spangled and Administrator is not capable of beating things up.

Not really? If you count the actual number of persons needed we have enough for Cult N/A within most states of America.

Creation and Autochtonia's's Cult values are based on premodern population counts. Earth Bet is a modern, urbanized population, and I'd point out that New York on it's own has more people living in it than most of the Roman Empire put together had.

Even assuming we had the spare souls required, we are not facing a tabula rasa religious front; while some spiritual groups may be accommodating to a new challenger appearing, I suspect significant difficulties in the USA if only because of the large and active section of the population who are devout (or semi-devout) Christians or other monotheists. I suspect we'd get a lot better results in somewhere like India or Japan, which not only allows for the worship of spirits but have a habit of appropriating loose bits of other religions to sew into their own local traditions. Having Saki stop by Japan on an international good-will tour/teleportation refresher course seems like another good opportunity to not only scare up revanchists looking for an opportunity to stick it to the Endbringers, but to cultivate a new branch of Shintoism that says 'it's okay to pray to your car, and we have a physical kami that can help restore Japan to glory but needs your help to do so'. ("Backing [all of Japan] ●●●●●")
From what we know in-setting, Japan's been slipping back from 1st world to 3rd world living conditions, has been increasingly fascist and xenophobic and while they're still the #1 recipients of foreign aid, they're also desperately in need of more than they have. If we could get the government there to take the infirm, the old, those unable, unwilling or unsuited for work and have mandated prayer camps to support a national hero...that should not only do a lot for national unity, but be a (comparatively) easy source of Cult dots for Iris. The problem here becomes...well, a) do we have enough souls to reach Cult 5 much less Cult N/A? Signs point to 'no', and b) even if we did, how are we going to go about it? Staple souls to their heads? Have Saki tied up rewriting their souls to forget the horrible agony they're going through?

I do like the idea of Saki propping up Japan as part of her good will tour. I suspect Glen Chambers to become involved (as he is wont to do), and even if it's just the planning stages I suspect we'd benefit considerably from certain synergy and efficiency charms being applied to something as important as PR.
 
unless there's a different WoG I quoted it just last page.
There was another, earlier one.
But that one will do.
I wonder what sort of Might a mass combat formation of Weaver-bots would be. I have this image of something like Tony Stark's Iron Legion formation, but more feminine and coordinated by a pillar of light bearing a colossal Design Weaver pulling at threads.
I really like the idea of the Weaver Legion for a number of reasons, and not just because of the thought of law enforcement in disaster zones being conducted by having a Weaver-bot in armor on every street corner being both approachable and frighteningly efficient.
Hmmm.....
*goes looking in book*
Well, comparing to the Core scale (Exalted 2E pg 161), tinkertech warbots would rank somewhere between Might 1(God-Blooded, trained thaumaturges, young Dragon Kings, average ghosts, Mountain Folk warriors) and Might 2(Younger Terrestrial Exalted, neomah and other non-combative First Circle demons, weak gods and elementals, ghost warriors, young faerie nobles, elite Mountain Folk warriors.)

Might Equipment bonus would be +3(Essence-discharge weapons, magical power armor such as warstriders or dragon armor).
So basically expect a Weaver Legion detachment to have Might 4-5, or it's equivalent.

Alternatively, compare a Jadeborn mercenary company from Scrolls of Fallen Races pg 21
JADEBORN MERCENARY SHARD
Description: This company represents the standard
Jadeborn mercenary company of 99 Unenlightened Warriors,
led by a single Enlightened Warrior. These mercenaries serve
only Exalted commanders.

Commanding Officer: Varies
Armor Color: Varies
Motto: Varies
General Makeup: 100 Jadeborn Warriors outfitted with
sparti armor, two-dot skirmish pikes and repeating assault
crossbows.
Overall Quality: Excellent
Magnitude: 3
Drill: 4

Close Combat Attack: 3
Close Combat Damage: 3
Ranged Attack: 3
Ranged Damage: 3

Endurance: 8
Might: 4
Armor: 3
Morale: 4

Formation: Mountain Folk mercenary shards operate
alone or as shock troops for mortal armies. On the surface
of Creation, a Dragon-Blooded commander always leads
them, with a single Enlightened Warrior acting as a sub-
commander. They tend to be employed in close formation
to maximize both their physical and their psychological
impact on enemy troops.
Might 4.

This has been your overly pedantic answer for the day.
:)
 
Even assuming we had the spare souls required, we are not facing a tabula rasa religious front; while some spiritual groups may be accommodating to a new challenger appearing, I suspect significant difficulties in the USA if only because of the large and active section of the population who are devout (or semi-devout) Christians or other monotheists.
Mmm, we do have charms for that, but that would indeed pose some difficulties
I suspect we'd get a lot better results in somewhere like India or Japan, which not only allows for the worship of spirits but have a habit of appropriating loose bits of other religions to sew into their own local traditions. Having Saki stop by Japan on an international good-will tour/teleportation refresher course seems like another good opportunity to not only scare up revanchists looking for an opportunity to stick it to the Endbringers, but to cultivate a new branch of Shintoism that says 'it's okay to pray to your car, and we have a physical kami that can help restore Japan to glory but needs your help to do so'. ("Backing [all of Japan] ●●●●●")
From what we know in-setting, Japan's been slipping back from 1st world to 3rd world living conditions, has been increasingly fascist and xenophobic and while they're still the #1 recipients of foreign aid, they're also desperately in need of more than they have. If we could get the government there to take the infirm, the old, those unable, unwilling or unsuited for work and have mandated prayer camps to support a national hero...that should not only do a lot for national unity, but be a (comparatively) easy source of Cult dots for Iris.
A very interesting idea for Saki to propose IC as well I think. Once she gets her self confidence.
The problem here becomes...well, a) do we have enough souls to reach Cult 5 much less Cult N/A? Signs point to 'no', and b) even if we did, how are we going to go about it? Staple souls to their heads? Have Saki tied up rewriting their souls to forget the horrible agony they're going through?
We do. Iris carries enough souls to fully ensoul a modern city, which alone is enough dudes to hit Cult N/A if they were all devoted full time.

Obviously it won't be quite that easy, and spreading a cult would complicate things a bit, but the number of souls is not the barrier here to kickstarting soul production.
 
Yeah, that is not necessarily a good outcome to aim for.

End of canon Riley is the result of a couple carefully crafted words by Contessa, and then two years worth of self-realization, ended by Tattletale being used as a bludgeon to hammer the girl's self image in the middle of an apocalyptic war. No attempt at any sort of support then.
We should not be aiming at that as some sort of ideal.

The other options are worse (replacing ourself with Jack Slash and basically not redeeming her at all). Note that we are presumably not copying canon exactly, and can do stunts.

I still maintain that choosing the option that holds Riley responsible (she IS, if in diminished capacity, pretending otherwise will not help) and forces her to accept the past, but doing a stunt where Taylor is being guided in the whole thing by Yamada/Therapist in the whole process (say have the stunt be Taylor meeting Yamada before going to see Bonesaw?) would be best. It makes Bonesaw confront her past, but does so better and in a controlled way guided by an expert. So the best of canon, without actually doing anykind of "revenge porn" or anything (is that what the word was?).

She does not have to be completely miserable all the time or anything, but ignoring what she did will be doing her no service.

Both Taylor and Saki are Compassion 3; this is one of those occasions I expect it to show.

As a very recent victim, Saki can't really be expected to be rational about it though. As for Taylor, sometimes you have to be honest to be kind, even if the truth hurts in the shot term. Helping Riley escape her past and pretend it never happened won't actually be whats the best thing for her in the long run. And replacing us as "Jack Slash" who she has to be "good girl" for is no better. Far better if she learns to develop a moral compass of her own.

I actually think an approach guided by an expert, where we go "You did do all this horror. You can't escape from it or make it go away. But you were influenced by a thinker who manipulated you, and you can now work to redeem yourself" would actually be the compassionate thing to.

This Riley is two years younger than canon end's.
Give her role models to live to, ethics to live up to, and authority figures to guide.
She can make amends without being miserable, or finding that the only person she can spend time with is Nilbog.

I would think with a stunt, this is what the first option would produce this. Stunts are afterall descriptors to the how, and we have no reason to torture Riley or emulate canon exactly, but I don't think its torture to make her face and accept actual reality.

The second option just seems to be her doing everything we tell her, but not actually becoming a good person (so if we tell her to do something horrific, option 1 would have her able to realise "no, thats wrong", on her own. Option 2 would have her happily do the horrible things, because "big sister Taylor told me to, and I am a good girl..".
 
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I actually think an approach guided by an expert, where we go "You did do all this horror. You can't escape from it or make it go away. But you were influenced by a thinker who manipulated you, and you can now work to redeem yourself" would actually be the compassionate thing to.
For multiple reasons, at that. If Riley is ever going to have a chance of being accepted by the cape community or the world in general, she's going to need to be visibly penitent about what she's done. A redemption-seeking Riley has the brightest future ahead of her, even if it won't come for a while.
 
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