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Alchemical Solutions [Worm/Exalted] Thread 23: We Wonder Where Who Wanders When Watchers Wane
- Thread starter Gromweld
- Start date
Graypairofsocks
What is Grammar?
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- earth
What screwups are you refering to?
Hmm. Interesting
I'm unsure which one to choose atm. Are we really ready to go public, as it were? In-house issues still need to be addressed.
Hm. Well, option 3 is out imo. Option 2 is kind of right, in that Jack's deeds pushed things to where VoV came out to "play". The wording of option 1 doesn't agree with me, in that we (Taylor) had no real control over what happened and nearly suffered Permanent Existence Failure trying to fight back.
Hmmm. I wonder if access to GU would be 3 credits or 5? Also thinking about either 2 Medium quality or 1 High and 1 Low quality vials, though a couple convincing arguments are around for the alt Earth access choice.
*Looks at subsection title, choices*
Oh dear. Anyway, leaning towards Option 2, if only for the imagery involved.
I want to peer over Armsmaster's shoulders, find out what he is thinking.
No real opinion on these. If I see something I like, I'll vote for it.
Preferably gear like Heavy Implosion Bows, should they exist in Autochthonia (and weren't a development of the mid- to late- High First Age).
It is.
- Location
- Austria
Not even trying to analyze Scion and his actions, instead hoping that senseless, aimless amassing of parahumans is
a) equivalent to having an army; b) sound strategy at all.
Not killing Saint to at least help/control, if not unchain Dragon. Latter would probably irk Simurgh, but former would be safe-ish and sensible and not hard for them.
Those two are pretty major IMO. Then there are 53s and other stuff.
I would prefer sound adult over little sister and adorableness is of no importance compared to responsibility and communication skills, but eh.NO!(I want my badass adorable little sister Jade!Missy)
Maybe Saki, Aisha and others will grow into their roles? After all, Taylor did not start out as Willpower 10 Conviction 4 Death Metal robot with the mission of saving the world(s).
That's kind of a good point. Even if they are inured to hardship, kids aren't going to be able to handle the moral grey areas that come with saving the world in Worm.
We should look into exalting more adults. Plus Grom has said Miss Militia will be OP as an Alchemical, and she qualifies for Jade pretty hard.
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Well, if Missy is found to be no longer willing to become an Alchemical, I suppose Miss Militia is a good back-up choice.
On Cauldron Backing:
I figure it would be ok enough to get say 1 more dot of backing for Taylor. Thanks to SoPAs enhanced range, mobile sensory drones and Iris also apparently acting as a relay, Taylors multitasking capabilities have basically skyrocketed since many of those comments were made. And thats not taking into account stuff such as enhanced IEU (all mental augs and 8x now) or SPU. Yes, there might be some tasks where we need to be physically present, but we can probably handle those. Theres also the sleeping drug, that Taylor could use to sleep less when necessary (maybe Iris could figure out a way to replicate it, so we won't need Saki).
Having more backing would presumably make other tasks easier, such as convincing Doctor Mother to let us work on Cauldron Vials to try and improve the process, or study Eden to try and figure out Entity weaknesses. It would be mutually beneficial. They get better and more powerfull capes against Scion from the boosts Taylor and Iris can give, while we reduce C53 mutations and potentially even find a cure for current C53s and/or develop a shard POS.
Furthermore, if we take the thing below into account, then odds are we will be able to get more "credits" to buy more stuff with by doing tasks. I wonder if perhaps it would be worth it to buy one single dot of backing to Taylor now both to slightly increase our influence in the next chapter, and to generally see what kind of tasks they want. We could then choose whether to go higher based on what happens, how much effort backing 2 involves and so on.
On Cauldron Vials:
Manton was a vial expert, so his help would presumably allow for greater powers from level 3 vial. Furthermore, if we wait and let Iris study a level 1 vial first to figure out stuff (he is far superiour to Doctor Mother OR Manton), we can potentially further figure out how to get even greater power from it. Heck, I wonder for example if POS could be used to influence the power someone gets for example. Obviously talking about someone who has agreed to it, and wants help attaining a specific state of mind that Manton&Iris state would give the greatest power.
And ofcourse, we DO still have the option of throwing a vial in with Aisha for two shard-charms. Yes, its somewhat risky given that Eden started screaming when we exalted Marrow, but it would also be both a big boost for Aisha and big XP saver, since eden shards emulate pre-existing alchemical charms (and serve as prerequisites for others too). Level 3 one could easily give us several charms for "free", at the risk of drawing Scions attention. Perhaps this is something Taylor might have thought of and might ask Doctor mother about?
I think it would be wise to get atleast one level 1 vial for Iris to study at minimum, and preferably another level 3 vial for later. Depending on what Iris can figure out from the level 1 vial, we could then choose to either have him also study the presumably more powerfull level 3 vial for greater entity insight, or have someone drink it assisted by anything Iris might have figured out.
On Cauldron Resources:
Frankly, I think resources is the weakest option. I would choose multiple level 1 vials over resources. We frankly have multiple ways of acquiring money, and those means will only continue to increase as our skills improve and as we acquire more assembly members. Money also can't really help us deal with the biggest problems we have (no amount of money would give us a Vat, or get us Magical Materials, or convert Earth faster, or anything).
Granted, right now we don't really have any money at all, since both Taylor, Saki and Aisha are going to be underage, and so can't access the money they have (without violating PRT rules blatantly anyway). Cauldron money would be in Number Mans accounts, which we would have full access to right away.
I figure it would be ok enough to get say 1 more dot of backing for Taylor. Thanks to SoPAs enhanced range, mobile sensory drones and Iris also apparently acting as a relay, Taylors multitasking capabilities have basically skyrocketed since many of those comments were made. And thats not taking into account stuff such as enhanced IEU (all mental augs and 8x now) or SPU. Yes, there might be some tasks where we need to be physically present, but we can probably handle those. Theres also the sleeping drug, that Taylor could use to sleep less when necessary (maybe Iris could figure out a way to replicate it, so we won't need Saki).
Having more backing would presumably make other tasks easier, such as convincing Doctor Mother to let us work on Cauldron Vials to try and improve the process, or study Eden to try and figure out Entity weaknesses. It would be mutually beneficial. They get better and more powerfull capes against Scion from the boosts Taylor and Iris can give, while we reduce C53 mutations and potentially even find a cure for current C53s and/or develop a shard POS.
Furthermore, if we take the thing below into account, then odds are we will be able to get more "credits" to buy more stuff with by doing tasks. I wonder if perhaps it would be worth it to buy one single dot of backing to Taylor now both to slightly increase our influence in the next chapter, and to generally see what kind of tasks they want. We could then choose whether to go higher based on what happens, how much effort backing 2 involves and so on.
On Cauldron Vials:
Manton was a vial expert, so his help would presumably allow for greater powers from level 3 vial. Furthermore, if we wait and let Iris study a level 1 vial first to figure out stuff (he is far superiour to Doctor Mother OR Manton), we can potentially further figure out how to get even greater power from it. Heck, I wonder for example if POS could be used to influence the power someone gets for example. Obviously talking about someone who has agreed to it, and wants help attaining a specific state of mind that Manton&Iris state would give the greatest power.
And ofcourse, we DO still have the option of throwing a vial in with Aisha for two shard-charms. Yes, its somewhat risky given that Eden started screaming when we exalted Marrow, but it would also be both a big boost for Aisha and big XP saver, since eden shards emulate pre-existing alchemical charms (and serve as prerequisites for others too). Level 3 one could easily give us several charms for "free", at the risk of drawing Scions attention. Perhaps this is something Taylor might have thought of and might ask Doctor mother about?
I think it would be wise to get atleast one level 1 vial for Iris to study at minimum, and preferably another level 3 vial for later. Depending on what Iris can figure out from the level 1 vial, we could then choose to either have him also study the presumably more powerfull level 3 vial for greater entity insight, or have someone drink it assisted by anything Iris might have figured out.
On Cauldron Resources:
Frankly, I think resources is the weakest option. I would choose multiple level 1 vials over resources. We frankly have multiple ways of acquiring money, and those means will only continue to increase as our skills improve and as we acquire more assembly members. Money also can't really help us deal with the biggest problems we have (no amount of money would give us a Vat, or get us Magical Materials, or convert Earth faster, or anything).
Granted, right now we don't really have any money at all, since both Taylor, Saki and Aisha are going to be underage, and so can't access the money they have (without violating PRT rules blatantly anyway). Cauldron money would be in Number Mans accounts, which we would have full access to right away.
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That idea is too risky imo. The possibility of The Thinker waking up and becoming active again outweighs the perceived utility of a couple more charm equivalents.
- Location
- Austria
Yes. Chev for sane!Ori, MM for sane!Jade and we have 3 kids and 3 adults. And only one male, lol.
Whether Missy is willing is one thing; her lacking life experience and perspective to understand all morally grey areas and people of Worm is quite another, which is kind of a dealbreaker to me.
For example, look at reaction of FPoP to Cauldron, Accord and Defiant and working with them - and compare to Saki's breakdown at mere mention of Bonesaw's shot at redemption. FPoP is on the whole different level of level-headedness and this, to me, matters more than almost anything else.
Fair enough. Gradual increase to both look at what they would want from us and to adjust them to working with us is cool.
Not without long and extensive investigation by Taylor and Cauldron. Power-up for Who is not worth waking up Eden or spooking Scion, so better err on side of caution.
Resources are needed to invest into rebuilding Philadelphia. If they can buy us, say, several honest mercenary teams to keep things down, or buy food, clothes, medicine and other stuff in bulk to distribute, it is very strong PR option which aligns with Assembly being, in fact, good guys (or magical girls).
Fair enough I suppose, even though I don't agree with some of your reasonings. Saki's breakdown is due to the closeness of the events in time. Age has little to do with it, as I think an adult who had been vivisected/turned into a flesh backpack would have a similar reaction so soon afterwards. PTSD is a bitch and a half like that. Anyway, I have a strong desire to have Missy becoming more involved in the plot.
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Eh, Missy's always been pretty boring to me, and with Saki last turn and Aisha this one we probably don't have the political capital to burn converting another child. (Unless we can get Saki to actually help before then, but that's another issue entirely.) Better to just keep Missy around as our Clarity sink, and Exalt someone who's better equipped to cope with all the shady shit we've been up to.
Seriously, how do you think Missy'd react to the news that we lied to everyone about killing the S9 and gave them to the organization that has been experimenting on people to make Case 53s? Probably about how Saki's reacting now, and redoing this with an even younger character is something I'm not prepared to deal with.
Vista's a tough little girl, granted, but that same surety of focus and conviction that makes her willing to kill herself rather than be used against her friends just makes her less willing to compromise her morals for expediency as we've done.
Clarity sink. Having her around to give us the average person's view of all the crazy shit we get up to might not be a bad idea.
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- Location
- Britain
@landcollector
Whoops, my reading comprehension needs work.
Whoops, my reading comprehension needs work.
That is what Chris and the other Wards are around for, imo. On the flip side, boring is relative. I find Miss Militia a little on the boring side. *shrugs*
Note that this is not our only Cauldron Job ever. We can buy Vials at future date(it's basically the only Cauldron Favor that's always available).
So we only need to buy the vial we need for Iris to study, and leave the second vial for the next job if Iris deems it worthwhile to get more samples.
Scify
It always starts with a lighthouse.
Someone else touched on this, but I want to reinforce it: things like Reputation are not just cosmetic dice adders that we're picking up when we need them. They impact the story to a varying extent, and probably open up options that might not have been present otherwise.
Remember, we aren't playing a game of Exalted via forum. Grom is writing a story set in an Exalted/Worm crossover, and our choices help steer that story.
Alternatively, she doesn't know that he knows, and doesn't know how she feels about what she's feeling, so she's doing the thing that a lot of teenagers do: throw hints that can easily be explained away as joking around.
Why not both? Both is good.
Is this... a reasonable assessment of characters and their choices and an admission that the writer doesn't know everything? On Sufficient Velocity? ... Excuse me. I need to go invest in porcine flight suits.
True, but that does allow for some distance from the situation causing the emotions in the first place and (as we saw with Taylor) some time processing things. It won't magically fix it, of course, but it could quite possibly be better than the strength of the initial reaction without Clarity.
... Please? I saw Moana over the weekend, and I desire more War Boy expies.
I'm relatively certain that she doesn't know the extent of his access and danger to Dragon. He has, however, been a problem for us already, so turning our attention to him shouldn't be too hard. We probably can't justify going hard after him, though. Not yet.
I'm kicking around an idea for dragging everyone into the Safe Space so we can do a proper debrief without worrying over whether or not someone is spying, with an eye towards making sure we're all on the same page and to try and soothe any issues before they blow up.
Edit: Half-joking idea for the alternate earth option: find a deathworld!Earth, drop Defiant on it, tell him we hid an extremely rare stamp somewhere. Check in on him after the quest ends.
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- Location
- Britain
Surely we want more than one Clarity sink, though. Yeah, there are loads of Wards, but we need someone that isn't going to be distracted by Appearance 5 and that we know well. Don't get me wrong, Missy's such a good candidate for Jade Caste that I think we kind of have to Exalt her, but we could do with someone that we have a mutual friendship as equals with instead of a mutual friendship clouded by testosterone or hierarchical trappings. Either way, what happens happens.
If it goes well, this is a brilliant idea. If it goes poorly? Taylor probably ends up trapped, Saki loses more faith in the cause, Prayer gets a headache at dealing with everything and Bonesaw gets to see what Transcendent Brutality Programming can really do first hand.
Still a good idea, though. Maybe we can set up some workstations in there, or some form of minor creature comforts for the Assembly. Assuming Saki approves, of course.
- Location
- Austria
Well, Marrow suddenly remembered that she had to be cocooned inside the bone prison with no human contact (no hugs with Bladedancer) for god knows how long and then goes out of Cradle to ally with those who did it to her(Cauldron) and the one who hunts down her brethren(Accord) and fight S9 and then, when Defiant changed sides, to accept him despite all the hurt and pain he had brought and move along.
This is not a maturity I would expect from a child or even average adult, true. This is a level of maturity I expect from post-humans who are tasked with preventing multiple Apocalypses while remaining at least somewhat human and humane though, and if children can't be relied upon to keep up (and they shouldn't because being responsible for multiverse has its downsides like, y'know death or endless trauma), we shouldn't exalt children.
Charms and Exalting can give power and intelligence and willpower and tools for a lot of jobs, but they don't give wisdom and life experience (case in point: look at Creatio...whoops), so honestly, I think someone like Dr. Yamada would be, in hindsight, much better Starmetal.
Because Worm has enough power(s), but utterly lacks communication, acceptance and sanity.
I guess. I don't think "being not experienced enough to grok gray areas of life" is interesting and not frustrating, but that's a matter of taste and there is something to be said about story of a child growing up to understanding all this shit.
Do you think it means we should postpone dimensional stuff as it is long-term project?
I don't get this reference
> teenagers
> Worm
> reasonable communication without mind control
what are you on about Exalted bullshit only goes so far
A long term project that needs to be started early. Like the Essence conversion project.
There will be a long timeskip coming up after we finish the Assembly and the Cradle closes. Infrastructure to fully take advantage of that is a plus.
Also a vial is relatively cheap compared to the planet access...
Evil Atlas
Inspector of Details
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- Denial
- Pronouns
- He/Him
On Alchemicals On Parade, I was thinking something along the lines of "something something The Freezing that occurred late in the conflict was the result of an unprecedented power interaction between Weaver and a rogue tinker construct going by the name "Vision of Vengeance". The construct reportedly incapacitated Weaver and took control of her power, temporarily increasing her range and reducing her restrictions in the process. As Vision proceeded to hunt down Jack Slash, Weaver was able to gradually retake control of her power, first using it to bring down the rest of the Nine before cutting off the construct's access entirely. Vision of Vengeance remains under PRT investigation."
Don't really have time to refine it more at the moment. Feel free to take this and modify it.
Don't really have time to refine it more at the moment. Feel free to take this and modify it.
Eh, most likely Dragon was not happy that Iris was able to basically "hack" (which it would have been from her POV) into her systems with so little effort.
True, but every parahuman has such a connection. There are other twisted parahumans with kill orders that do nothing but harm others. Heck, I think Prayer and Crawler took one down offscreen recently? Even if the process of poking at the shard was fatal (and its possible its not), we could basically go after one like that, take Iris with us, and then have Iris study said parahumans shard-connection to its dimension the way VoV did with Jack. This would also have the added benefit of having Iris be able to observe an entity shard directly, which would help with stuff such as figuring out Shard-POS submodule or cures for C53s.
Beyond that, there are other options too. We could for example get Iris permission to study the portal to Earth!Aleph. And odds are he was observing when the door opened near him in recent chapter. And ofcourse, if we go for higher backing, we will presumably be in occasional contact with Cauldron, and its only natural that Iris would accompany us, scanning the portal with everything he has each time he passes through.
Beyond that, it also occurs to me that this, like the potential for mutual vial research, might be something we might be able to bargain with? Note that Cauldron does NOT have access to all dimensions. Cauldrons Clairvoyant sees a lot, but he does not see in every dimension. Scion has locked some away or somesuch. This was actually brought up in the story:
Gromweld also mentioned in a WoG how Cauldron did infact want this guy bad, so they were not lying there. Presumably he either died, or escaped into a dimension beyond Cauldrons ability to reach. Reaching Scions (or perhaps I should say Zions) body is basically the "holy grail" for Cauldron.
I am pretty sure that shard-dimensions were also locked away? However VoV was able to break into the dimension with the Broadcast shard without major effort. Something which Cauldron would certainly have noticed.
Which might suggest that Iris has the potential to breach into dimensions that Cauldron cannot, and which the entities blocked. Bringing up the possibility of Iris being able to figure out a way to breach into the dimension with Scions real body might be something that would make Cauldron salivate, and possibly agree to let Iris study Doormakers portals in exchange for the research results. That would again be something that would benefit both parties (we might gain a way to dimensional travel via tech/artifacts, they might reach dimensions and places they now cannot, such as shard-worlds and Scions body).
Blasto is also someone potentially usefull, since he could presumably create non-sapient critters for us. Ofcourse, if we were willing to go POS on people, there would be others such as the Blue Empress or the shard-boosters in the Yang Ban. It might be interesting if the guy called One could boost shard-charms for example. It would also disrupt the C.U.I, which might give us opportunities there.
Citrine/Butcher for POS&Soul treatment is also a possibility.
Presumably 3, since she is on Earth!Bet. Though I seem to recall Khepri had trouble entering Birdcage directly, so dunno? We would also have to get Dragons cooperation in keeping silent. Though technically, if Saki was willing, we could implant an alternative personality on some major criminal being sent to birdcage, designed to send GU a message and avoid the need for using Cauldron entirely (One option Gromweld brought up way back, was sending Bonesaw to birdcage, and have her deliver a message to GU from us). Not sure Saki would cooperate with that though.
We did vote for Prayer to have a talk with him. I would like to see how that went.
Personally, since the soulgem injector won, and since we have something like a hundred souls, we should have atleast one of the free actions be an offer to give a soul to someone. Accord is the obvious one, but Armsmaster is also a possibility.
Chevalier also qualifies as jade I believe. He is another interesting choice. Though Miss Militia potentially being able to start pulling out artifacts would be pretty cool too.
The problem here would be explaining where the money comes from. Since we have all minors, whose money (including bounties apparently) all goes to trust as members of PRT, except for Prayer (who as a C53 would not have hidden riches), having Taylor suddenly throw millions at fixing Philadelphia would be pretty damn suspicious. We could certainly make it an anonymous donation, or work through someone (Taylor gives it to Accord, who does what she says), but its unlikely we could get PR from this without drawing suspicion we don't really want. Also, not sure if a single 5 resouces is sufficient to make a big difference, since we are talking about a major city.
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Depends on how the cash manifests. If Taylor starts breaking out the stacks of cash, then yes, it'd probably draw some suspicion. If the MATERIALS are bought and then donated to the city recovery efforts, that's another.
Or if we had our private planet to develop, that's a thing too.
Scify
It always starts with a lighthouse.
Overly pessimistic, I think. I'm not seeing it suddenly making everything okay, but I seriously doubt discussing things will make it worse. If nothing else, it gives Saki and Prayer a chance to air any grievances they have, clues Taylor in to any issues that she's unaware of, and ensures no one is working with incomplete information about what's going on.
That was one of her first things she thought about when she used her shard-charm after coming out of the Cradle. IIRC, she and Sakura had been discussing it before anyway.
The kakamora (coconut pirates) in Moana are explicitly expies of the War Boys from Mad Max: Fury Road.I don't get this reference
True, but it would not directly be linked to Taylor, since we would basically have to make it an anoymous donation. Also again, not sure if 25 million (which dot 5 resources were, at some point atleast) would be sufficient to make a truly major difference. I mean its a lot of money for a person yes, but on the scale of a major city? Saki could probably get billionaires to make donations of equal value without too much trouble for example (app 7 victim of S9 makes a public announcement on a major TV network, asking for help for the city in which S9 died from anyone who can donate, with the whole thing carefully planned by PRT PR experts like Glenn and Lord Grasp?). Though that would probably depend on what extent we go public with the alchemical thing.
Basically, would it actually be worth it to throw that money to Philadelphia, when we could for example give Iris multiple low-level vials to study rather than just one, and potentially gain far greater benefits from the knowledge about shards, entities, C53s, etc, that could help save the multiverse?
Yeah, though again, on a planetary scale, dot 5 resources is pretty minor.
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