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Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

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readerdreamer said:
To be fair, it might be his shard pushing him. After all, look at all this tasty data!
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Too true. In fact he is probably getting a boost from his shard to use it. That can really help him out given the amount of filling in the details is could do.

naarn said:
Frankly, it seems kind of absurd to me. Even if he had the skills (which I'm dubious of... many "skills" directly contradict other such skills), he can't possibly find the time to use all of them for the E88 to the degree he seems to think he does.
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He is really focused on his power and how it applies to his life. He isn't all that humble either, and to be fair when you power makes you world class at anything you do it does tend to be a large part of your life.

verycoolname said:
The reason that Human Transmutation is a big no-no is because a human soul has no 'equivalent' value. Trying to revive the dead and bring back a living human using a pile of matter? It doesn't work. It breaks the law. That has ...consequences.
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The thing he has that has a decent chance of making things work are the shards, and the idea that humans are "stored" there after they die. In FMA you can move souls around, you can even makes working bodies and then move souls into them. The thing you can't do is just magic up a soul. With the Eleric brothers for example they got stuff ready for a body and didn't do anything about the missing soul. That made it backfire as the circle could have been unable to find a soul, or been told to make one without the necessary knowledge to do either of those things.
EDIT:IIRC Al got stuffed into the body for a bit.

Victor is trying to make a body and then try to point it at a shard for where to get the soul. It could work, and most shards would be happy to let a new version of an old host run around for more data. Of course that assumes he gets the correct "address" for the shard he wants- he could get nothing (which would backfire) or get the wrong shard (which could be pretty interesting as an outcome).

For those hoping for his demise remember that the price they paid never took away the ability to use alchemy (except for Ed when he deliberately did that) or the ability to use what they learned.

An interesting result for alchemy becoming available is going to be with tinkers. How much they can lean on their shard will effect how much they can magic up out of no where, but the ability to just transmute the materials they need will be a game changer. Need gold, copper, rubber, plastic, or plutonium? Quick and easy to do. Just think of the danger boost even non combat alchemy would give say Squealer.

Tinkers are set up to take advantage of alchemy very well with how their powers tends to help fill in the blanks.
 
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TheGolden said:
So yeah here's the endgame: Joe and the forge vs The Thinker and The warrior who's actually no more depressed but highly motivated.
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No one ever succeeded in using human alchemy to resurrect someone, it's just flat out not possible.
There's plenty of fridge horror (and nicely "bodyheat warm" horror) but a revived Eden isn't even in the cards.

Nimeroni said:
Shards don't have any data about Alchemy (it's Outside Context), so they won't help.
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Since at first look it's close to negative entropy, and it's obviously (delicious) new data, they'll try. Which is arguably worse.
...
Actually, scratch the arguably part.

TaleMaster Redux said:
Victor is perfectly embodying the typical power-gamer/munchkin/SB/SV-compentence mentality of seeing a skill someone Is using extrapolating its possible maximum limits and calling the guy who has the skill an idiot for not using it to the full potential but they can due to having the 'Knowledge and insight'.

Lord Raust throwing some heavy shades man but Victor deserves to use it like that more than many of the Mary-Sue Self Inserts

That trope is really grinding my gears the past few days as I am also getting a bit frustrated with the two SI stories I am writing and upon rereads come off even worst than some Chinese Webnovels.
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Victor: "Imma hard cap my INT and use my WIS as a dump-stat. What could possibly go wrong?"
:rofl:

Graviator said:
They manage to add new technologies to their tinkertech library every cycle. As long as a shard can provide the necessary COMPREHENSION like it does with tinkertech, it can treat alchemy techniques as a tinker power.
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While it is (delicious) "new data" for the Shards, FMA Alchemy is entirely useless to solving entropy.
FMA:B Alchemy is slightly better as the homunculus seem to break entropy if you look at it sideways, but as iirc it's actually equally useless as it's all powered by tectonics and crossdimensional genocide.
 
ShockingWeasel said:
Did OP ever mention which FMA the skill was from? Cause if it came from Brotherhood, then we'll at most see an already dying body, and probably not even that. It took a whole body plus a leg to reach that result, and I doubt Truth takes the size of the body into consideration so Victor's older body wont help him any.
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Eh, personally I think the price will be paid via his shard. The question then becomes what will occur to it.
 
What's up everybody it's ya boys Blasto, Bonesaw, Nilbog, and Simurgh, and we decided this story was getting a little stale so we decided to make it a crossover with The Last of Us, Resident Evil, and special guest appearances from Warhammer 40k Orks.
 
I actually want him to succeed, because being on the receiving end of the Forge is something he deserves more than losing his powers/skills/limbs/life/wife. He deserves the full attention of Mendelevium Monkey and his distaste for Wet Tinkers of the unscrupulous kind. Also Victor beating a personified law only to get a heart to heart with Joe as his prize makes my inner schadenfreude Flare up deliciously
 
I am always impressed by how Lord can make the POVs of casually despicable characters retain coherence and inner voice. It's like the opposite of a Disney Villain in terms of inner narrative.

I also like the way that his marriage is portrayed, that Othala really does love him, and that Victor uses his power to boost his soft stats so his relationship is top tier. It makes him seem even more heartless that he is trying to resurrect his first Fiance. Casual personalized cruelty, with new angles of fridge horror mixed in.

Great interlude!
 
This is the first chapter that I would put a definite dislike on.

Because this is reaching too far to make others relevant again. You CAN'T "comprehend" a field of study that took a veritable genius, son of a half-god in the field, no less than a year to make minimal progress with, from a short glimpse of a shielded mind. Nope.

Alchemy is not a skill. It's a field of study. It is applied knowledge.

I was fine with overblowing Victor's power out of any canonical proportions, but that was too far. Victor does not absorb knowledge. Only skills. Basically, he can't steal anything from a purely theoretical physicist past his skill at reading whitepapers. Or, stealing from a genius engineer won't give him that genius knowledge, only skill. By stealing from Gregory House, M.D. he'll get some middling half-forgotten skills in medical procedures and that's it.

Basically, all he might've gotten from Lethe was an ability to draw cool circles, with all the know-how how to draw, but with 0 knowledge of what to draw. And even then, skill stealing requires either time which he had practically none, or focus which would be noticeable.
 
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TheQwertyOne said:
This is the first chapter that I would put a definite dislike on.

Because this is reaching too far to make others relevant again. You CAN'T "comprehend" a field of study that took a veritable genius, son of a half-god in the field, no less than a year to make minimal progress with, from a short glimpse of a shielded mind. Nope.

Alchemy is not a skill. It's a field of study. It is applied knowledge.

I was fine with overblowing Victor's power out of any canonical proportions, but that was too far. Victor does not absorb knowledge. Only skills. Basically, he can't steal anything from a purely theoretical physicist past his skill at reading whitepapers. Or, stealing from a genius engineer won't give him that genius knowledge, only skill. By stealing from Gregory House, M.D. he'll get some middling half-forgotten skills in medical procedures and that's it.

Basically, all he might've gotten from Lethe was an ability to draw cool circles, with all the know-how how to draw, but with 0 knowledge of what to draw. And even then, skill stealing requires either time which he had practically none, or focus which would be noticeable.
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Alchemy is a practical skill, that anybody can be taught to others. He got the ability to do the practical, but got none of the theoretical, hence why he thinks he can cheat equivelent exchange.
 
I'd like to point out that

1. Leah/ othala's cousin wasn't a parahuman iirc, so her "soul" shouldn't be in shardspace.

2. Aisha probably doesn't have knowledge of or skills in manipulating the soul with alchemy, so neither Victor, or PTV really, should be able to bootstrap homunculus or philosopher stones.

I say "really" because it's probable that PTV can't path what it doesn't understand, and it can't understand what it's never been able to scan, if it even has the means to scan alchemical processes. Obviously it can model and extrapolate based on observed capabilities, but it probably isn't able to derive philosopher's stones from first principles, especially with all the anti-precog surrounding anyone who knows enough to do so.

Of course if PTV did figure out how to generate philosopher's stones, that would be a potential neogentropic process, powered by human souls. Can't wait to see what truth thinks of that.
 
LordRoustabout said:
It would take time, effort, more consultations with other thinkers, but he could do it. Death would not be permanent, not to him. Finally, real power, meaningful power, power that didn't have a crippling cost or a series of slow compromises.
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IT'S NOT JUST VICTOR!!!

Victor consulting with various Thinkers means that even if he messes up, knowledge of Alchemic Transmutation has been spread to others.

It's no longer a single point of failure, the knowledge gleaned from Lethe's mind has been shared, so it doesn't matter if Victor gets killed by his attempt at resurrecting Lena with Human Transmutation.

And any electronic communication can be hacked by Contessa or the Number Man.
 
TheQwertyOne said:
Alchemy is not a skill. It's a field of study. It is applied knowledge.
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Wildbow on what he considers a "skill" here
Wildbow said:
'Skills' in this case is anything that you can practice and get better at (music, parkour), or broad knowledge you can learn, such as language or medical ability.
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So, broad knowledge, "a field of study/applied knowledge" seems applicable.

Edit: Also, here is quotes from Ward, Radiation 18.2
ward said:
It had been Victor, breaking into a man's home to steal his computer know-how, spending more than twenty four hours doing it, so as to leave the man with nothing. [...] until it came out that the whole thing was an attempt by the startup guy to bail on his own project and claim the compensation and disability insurance, with Victor as his paid hire.

Victor had done other things. Taking all talent from a black violinist and leaving her with nothing. She'd never got it back. Taking away all restraint and subtlety from a gay twenty-something, in an effort to humiliate them, or get them to do something criminal. The victim's friends had managed to restrain him and alert authorities, but they'd only noticed because he'd already self destructed whole parts of his life, outing himself and losing the funding from his parents that let him attend the University. I remembered the fundraiser from after. According to the gathered info that had been released about the Empire Eighty-Eight villains, he'd once tortured ABB gang members, taking away all pain tolerance and willpower, because those were skills we all learned over the course of our lives. He'd broken them, then taunted Lung with videos of him lording over the once-proud gang members that now acted like animals.
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So, it is canon he can take willpower, restraint, subtlety and pain tolerance among other things.
 
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Yea entities and to an extent shards are rally fucking bullshit. Although there are moment where I think lord is being to beneficial on the entities side (not getting into it right now) but this case i think is possible as grey show what amounts to "skill" and we have seen many thinkers that go into the bullshit category so it is possible
 
The Mysterious Dark Thinker Network of Super Secrecy is probably what has me the most uncertain about all of this.

Is it just a network so secret that the Celestial Forge doesn't know about it, despite the fact Victor somehow learned about it?

Is it a Cauldron backed network for one of their projects?

Is it not as secure as Victor thinks and already infiltrated by Survey?

Is it a Survey info gathering project from the ground up?

Too many unknowns, the network only exists right now as a brief offhand mention by Victor, it effectively didn't exist before this chapter and now exists as part of the explanation of how Victor picked up alchemy so fast. It's also a Chekhov's gun that exists effectively to undermine Apeiron's efforts to limit the spread of his tech, especially the parts capable of the most dark and detestable things.

Will said gun fire? No idea, there's so little info about this 'Ultimate secret network' that we might as well be trying to pull water from stone in trying to gain any understanding about it. So speculation abound and judgement withheld until more about this 'hyper network' is revealed.
 
Burn-The-Candle said:
The Mysterious Dark Thinker Network of Super Secrecy is probably what has me the most uncertain about all of this.

Is it just a network so secret that the Celestial Forge doesn't know about it, despite the fact Victor somehow learned about it?

Is it a Cauldron backed network for one of their projects?

Is it not as secure as Victor thinks and already infiltrated by Survey?

Is it a Survey info gathering project from the ground up?

Too many unknowns, the network only exists right now as a brief offhand mention by Victor, it effectively didn't exist before this chapter and now exists as part of the explanation of how Victor picked up alchemy so fast. It's also a Chekhov's gun that exists effectively to undermine Apeiron's efforts to limit the spread of his tech, especially the parts capable of the most dark and detestable things.

Will said gun fire? No idea, there's so little info about this 'Ultimate secret network' that we might as well be trying to pull water from stone in trying to gain any understanding about it. So speculation abound and judgement withheld until more about this 'hyper network' is revealed.
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It could also be that Survey just... hasn't found the network. The internet is massive and as good as Survey is, she's not omniscient. Heck, the server(s) hosting this network might not be anywhere near Brockton Bay, protected by a cybersecurity Tinker, or even just... overlooked.
 
Burn-The-Candle said:
The Mysterious Dark Thinker Network of Super Secrecy is probably what has me the most uncertain about all of this.

Is it just a network so secret that the Celestial Forge doesn't know about it, despite the fact Victor somehow learned about it?

Is it a Cauldron backed network for one of their projects?

Is it not as secure as Victor thinks and already infiltrated by Survey?

Is it a Survey info gathering project from the ground up?

Too many unknowns, the network only exists right now as a brief offhand mention by Victor, it effectively didn't exist before this chapter and now exists as part of the explanation of how Victor picked up alchemy so fast. It's also a Chekhov's gun that exists effectively to undermine Apeiron's efforts to limit the spread of his tech, especially the parts capable of the most dark and detestable things.

Will said gun fire? No idea, there's so little info about this 'Ultimate secret network' that we might as well be trying to pull water from stone in trying to gain any understanding about it. So speculation abound and judgement withheld until more about this 'hyper network' is revealed.
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or it could be a bunch of newspaper clippings that need to be read in a specific order with a specific cipher.
 
Everybody keeps trying to figure out what Victor might lose to Truth, but is it really him driving this?

His shard wants all that sweet sweet data, and is pushing him to learn something he just caught the slightest hint of.

Sure its leaning on his desire for his lost girl, but will the price of human transmutation be taken from Victor, the Shard, or both? Will Othala "help" and get to be his Al?
 
Treekin3000 said:
Everybody keeps trying to figure out what Victor might lose to Truth, but is it really him driving this?

His shard wants all that sweet sweet data, and is pushing him to learn something he just caught the slightest hint of.

Sure its leaning on his desire for his lost girl, but will the price of human transmutation be taken from Victor, the Shard, or both? Will Othala "help" and get to be his Al?
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Never use an untested means of resurrection on a loved one, do a practice run with a random corpse to work out the kinks.

Furthermore, if Victor (or Victor's shard) was smart, he'd trick someone else into attempting Human Transmutation, gathering more data before trying it out himself.
 
Foxy Boxes said:
The warnings come after the Ritual.
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I remember reading a story that explained this thing in a reasonable manner, basically magic users investigated new rituals or spells and recorded their creation and findings, then in the next pages they added the drawbacks and considerations they should take, that they didn't knew at the moment of testing the skill, thats why the warnings came after the ritual, because they were written after it was tried a few times.
 
Burn-The-Candle said:
The Mysterious Dark Thinker Network of Super Secrecy is probably what has me the most uncertain about all of this.

Is it just a network so secret that the Celestial Forge doesn't know about it, despite the fact Victor somehow learned about it?
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Eh, some thinker collaboration does make sense, it probably started out as info brokering and gossip and hit a shared passion. The shards would certainly push working together.

The CF has only been active for a short time, and given it is a thinker group it probably it made to be somewhat difficult to find- or only be found by thinkers. That assumes it is even an open site on the net.

drvash said:
Furthermore, if Victor (or Victor's shard) was smart, he'd trick someone else into attempting Human Transmutation, gathering more data before trying it out himself.
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Might happen, we only have his POV so we don't know what other people are thinking. Trying to heal or bring back a loved one would be a very common desire for a ton of capes. Thinkers ,like TT for instance, could progress very rapidly.
 
TheQwertyOne said:
You CAN'T "comprehend" a field of study that took a veritable genius, son of a half-god in the field, no less than a year to make minimal progress with, from a short glimpse of a shielded mind. Nope.
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...the Jumpdoc disagree with you, as it explicitly call Alchemy a science that can be taught to others.

Burn-The-Candle said:
Is it just a network so secret that the Celestial Forge doesn't know about it, despite the fact Victor somehow learned about it?
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Victor probably "learned about it" waaaaayyy before Survey was even born. Considering his internal monologue, he's been trading information for quite some time.
 
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Oh, now that is an unexpected twist. Very nicely done - a bit of something that Victor could steal, from a target he had just enough exposure to, that the Forge wouldn't really register some temporary loss of... that is potentially a major power on its own.

And of course he ends up attempting that greatest of alchemical sins without understanding of just what might result.
 
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