- Location
- NA
Yeah, I actually had a second part of my comment saying exactly that, I just didn't feel like dealing with everyone that would try to justify the asspull. lol
Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)
- Thread starter LordRoustabout
- Start date
We have no real idea just how long it takes for Victor to properly drain someone. The only reference for a timeframe I've found in canon was over 24 hours to fully drain someone of a skill, but that doesn't tell us how long he needs to get enough of a skill to retain it. Honestly, we don't even know if there even is a lower limit to what he can retain - For all we know he could be capable of retaining even the slightest scrap of skill he drains.
What we do know is that the speed at which he can steal a skill depends on the strength of his power. The strength of Victor's power is effected by a number of variables, such as distance, how much Victor is focusing on the target,how much the target is focusing on Victor, physical contact, and a couple other factors as well. He can also tell what sort of skills a person has, and choose which to steal. Also, a Sechen Range boost from his shard could also increase the drain speed, theoretically up to the level of the Nemean Titan in Ward (nigh-instant drain strong enough to cause brain damage), though the boost will never reach that level without some real Titan-grade BS.
Aisha was the closest to Victor, drew his attention the most thanks to putting a sword to his wife's throat, was likely quite focused on him, has some of the weakest defenses against those sorts of parahuman effects amongst the members of the Celestial Forge, and Victor's shard (and the shard of every other parahuman at Somer's Rock for that matter) was almost certainly being quite cooperative thanks to the walking Sechen Range that is Apeiron being nearby. And despite all that, per recent WoG Victor was still only able to learn just enough on how to activate a transmutation circle, and that Aisha knew a ton about materials science. Everything else that Victor manged with it in the chapter was the result of a clandestine Thinker think-tank piecing shit together bit by bit. Because Thinkers are bullshit.
If people think that's an asspull, then fine. But honestly, even if it is a bit of an asspull, so what? Even if it is a bit of a stretch, it's still plausible within the context and framework that Lord has set out (mostly in WoGs, admittedly), and it makes for an interesting story thread (with a potentially very satisfying outcome), so I really don't see the issue.
What we do know is that the speed at which he can steal a skill depends on the strength of his power. The strength of Victor's power is effected by a number of variables, such as distance, how much Victor is focusing on the target,how much the target is focusing on Victor, physical contact, and a couple other factors as well. He can also tell what sort of skills a person has, and choose which to steal. Also, a Sechen Range boost from his shard could also increase the drain speed, theoretically up to the level of the Nemean Titan in Ward (nigh-instant drain strong enough to cause brain damage), though the boost will never reach that level without some real Titan-grade BS.
Aisha was the closest to Victor, drew his attention the most thanks to putting a sword to his wife's throat, was likely quite focused on him, has some of the weakest defenses against those sorts of parahuman effects amongst the members of the Celestial Forge, and Victor's shard (and the shard of every other parahuman at Somer's Rock for that matter) was almost certainly being quite cooperative thanks to the walking Sechen Range that is Apeiron being nearby. And despite all that, per recent WoG Victor was still only able to learn just enough on how to activate a transmutation circle, and that Aisha knew a ton about materials science. Everything else that Victor manged with it in the chapter was the result of a clandestine Thinker think-tank piecing shit together bit by bit. Because Thinkers are bullshit.
If people think that's an asspull, then fine. But honestly, even if it is a bit of an asspull, so what? Even if it is a bit of a stretch, it's still plausible within the context and framework that Lord has set out (mostly in WoGs, admittedly), and it makes for an interesting story thread (with a potentially very satisfying outcome), so I really don't see the issue.
Not just WoG, it's expressed by the capes themselves the chapter 38 Leet preamble:
and detected by Joe during the Lung fight in chapter 41:
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How it works:
When Joe's 'walking Sechen range' status matters:
About how it affects Tinkers specifically when combined with them analysing Joe's work for inspiration:
Tl;dr - with an exception to tinkers, Sechen range provides boosts in speed of response and control of power. Useful for someone like Lung (Man-to-dragon faster), Regent (Hijack people faster), or DoD (Can actually be in control of her outbursts), but not so useful for someone like Khepri (already has all control and speed she can get), Hellhound (her dogs would transform faster, but that's it) or Coil (There are no aspects of his power that rely on control). Actually, forget about Coil, capes that got their powers from Vials don't get Sechen'd, because their Shard too dead to react. No power up for the Travellers.
Didn't LEET get boosted? He described his connection to be almost dead or dead. What's preventing them from getting a boost even just for a last hurrah type of thing?
There was a reason why I wrote "Vials" and not "Eden"...
Leet's Shard is one of the few who managed to stay alive after Eden's demise and make a natural connection with a host. It's not dead, just disconnected from the bigger entity net. Leet's Shard have enough of a sapience to set limits on his power and make leeways (Sechen ranges) in those limits when Leet plays ball.
Shards that connected from Cauldron Vials, on the other hand, are as dead as Shards can be. There's no sapience, no limits to the powers, no reaction to new information and no safeguards to keep the hosts useful. That's why Cauldron's capes are both stronger from the get go, and more...volatile on connection.
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Alternatively, Aisha has acquired so many PhDs in Badassary that the alchemical knowledge that Victor was able steal was such a small percentage as to be considered irrelevant.
"Why would I want that knowledge back? That was the level of education Apeiron was providing three days ago."
I actually love the idea of Victor's Shard starting to act up after he attempts Human Transmutation.
How would it act out?
Random skill steal: Victor suddenly realizes he knows how to nurse an infant, style an afro, and please a homosexual partner?
Random skill expression: Apeiron has managed to surpress/control most of his unexpected skills. What if Victor CAN'T surpress his skills in sexual innuendo, posing, vocal mimicry, singing, etc.?
Walking Apocalypse: Desperate Shard flails about desperately. Disconnected from the Shard network, Victor's Shard starts siphoning off all the data it can from around it's host. Given that most Shards are functiong at a miniscule fraction of their true power, Victor could become an S-class threat, completely draining the minds of everyone who approachs within x meters of his location. Victor would probably be completely overwhelmed and either lie on the ground comatose or (given that this is Worm) become an insane monster seeking out the most knowledgeable people on the planet. Alternately, for dramatic/plot purposes could rework power into instant and complete drain when used as a Striker power, meaning that Victor would bring back Lena THEN kill her the first time he touches her. Followed by rapid deterioration of his relationships and mental state until he is ready and willing to join the S9 when they arrive in town. Ironically, just as Bakuda served as a dark mirror to Apeiron's Tinker abilities, this would allow Victor to serve as a mirror to Apeiron's gestalt accumulation of skills and knowledge.
Any other ideas?
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@Spidey_phd doubleposting isn't allowed, can't remember why, if you want to reply to someone just edit your comment and tag them
- Location
- Somewhere and Nowhere in a state of super-position
Bro, don't blame us - blame Wildbow. The Entities and parahumans are almost a definition of asspull.
The Entities? Showed up from nowhere. Came from nowhere - their home-world was literally a ball of grey dust where somehow through sheer force of "yes" they evolved such great power, despite having nearly zero external pressure to mutate and gain such power.
Parahumans and Shards? All the solutions are prepared. Why are parahuman powers inconsistent? Because the restrictions are arbitrary and artificial in order to outsource their experiments to unwitting pawns - thus conveniently allowing a parahuman to suddenly become stronger if a Shard thinks that allowing more power will gain a better result from the experiment. Why do such godly beings do such inane things as bother with outsourcing their experiments? Because despite eclipsing all of humanity ever in raw knowledge, somehow they were never smart enough on their own to use that knowledge. Why didn't they get smarter? Because they were already so powerful no one could challenge them. Why didn't a rival entity evolve a fucking brain and outsmart and outcompete all of its peers? Because apparently self-awareness isn't useful, despite the fact that self-awareness is allowing you and I to see where we make mistakes rather than how the Entities just keep on ignoring their mistakes in favor of paving over them with patchwork after patchwork solution.
It's asspulls all the way down my friend. We're just another brick in the wall.
These fully explain how Victor got some usable alchemy knowledge out of his very limited stealing, despite Lethe's defenses. The shard gave him the control to focus his power more narrowly on a topic for the specific purpose of seeking out the very information that was boosting his Sechen level to begin with.
This isn't a rule here, it's just considered rude if there's no clear reason not to combine the posts. We often double post if one of the two posts is intended to have a threadmark, for example.
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They did actually have a reason for developing as they did - Their star system had a sort dimensional tear running through it, which their world would pass through twice a year letting them access alternate versions of their planet. And eventually all that interdimensional travel resulted in a mutation or something and some of them managed to retain the whole interdimensional travel ability, and then they kinda evolved from there.
It's not necessarily the best reason, but it's still a reason.
BarbaCoPut
Voluta indomita
- Location
- Argentina
- Pronouns
- He/His
Cool! Do you have a source? is a Wildblow WoG?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Somewhere in this thread I read the greatest Wildbow-comment ever. It went something like
"Wildbow wrote a lot of really excellent stuff about the Worm universe.
Some of it is even in Worm."
You know...re-reading this fic and the whole story with Sabah and everything...makes me wonder what would have happened if he triggered together with Sabah as a cluster mate.
With or without Celestial Forge.
The one without Celestial Forge gives me a sense of horror. Of a small possibility of Joe ending up as March. Hugely obsessed with Sabah.
The fact that his mother is also controlling like March's was also gives me chills.
With or without Celestial Forge.
The one without Celestial Forge gives me a sense of horror. Of a small possibility of Joe ending up as March. Hugely obsessed with Sabah.
The fact that his mother is also controlling like March's was also gives me chills.
Inb4 March actually turns out to be his cousin
Couldn't it be explained that they're not self aware enough to realise being more self aware would be a worth it improvement?
ExploerTM
Ruin has found you at last!
- Location
- Russia, Perm
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
People really do underestimate power of malignant logic loops, dont they? Despite this being addressed in early chapters as Fleet had to drag Survey out of quite a few of them. Not to mention Joe's mental state could've been described this way.
That's not how evolution works. For an entity to evolve self awareness it would have to appear as a mutation, allow enough success for that trait to be passed on to an offspring, and then have that trait continue to be refined through further generations.
I'm not super clear on the entities reproductive cycles, but I given how old the ones we see are I doubt the have been enough generations of entities for self awareness to evolve.
SiegfriedisOP
Calamity Demon King of Time
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Self-awareness and wisdom would be a detriment to the cycle and so they suppress it and literally sabotage themselves from ever developing it.
AntaeusTheGiant
Child of Gaea
- Location
- Lawrence, KS
Finally caught up with all of the comments after the latest chapter... not easy to do with 2 full time jobs lol. This chapter certainly generated far more than the usual amount of comments that's for sure.
Everybody has been gloating about Victor meeting Truth, but I have a different question. Not being a super expert on the FMA universe, I must say that there seems to be little argument that Truth is of the utmost power and authority. My question would be, how does that measure against the power and authority that Jozef has derived from other settings? Could Spiral Energy compete with it? In the D&D universes Raise Dead is a simple 5th level Divine spell, and while Jozef doesn't have access to this spell he does have perk(s) from a D&D world. Would Truth object to that? LordR hasn't specified the Minor Blessing of Demeter yet, could it somehow give Jozef a "right" to create life that Truth would recognize? What if LordR suddenly had time to thoroughly learn the Darksiders universe, would becoming a Maker (a 1200pt perk by the way) give Jozef standing to meet Truth as an equal? Or is Truth an omniversal authority that has no equal from any setting? And how did it become such? Is it kind of like that scene from the Chronicles of Narnia where someone asks about fighting against the Emperor-across-the-sea's magic and Aslan just frowns and says "fight against the Emperor's magic?" and no one mentions it again.
Everybody has been gloating about Victor meeting Truth, but I have a different question. Not being a super expert on the FMA universe, I must say that there seems to be little argument that Truth is of the utmost power and authority. My question would be, how does that measure against the power and authority that Jozef has derived from other settings? Could Spiral Energy compete with it? In the D&D universes Raise Dead is a simple 5th level Divine spell, and while Jozef doesn't have access to this spell he does have perk(s) from a D&D world. Would Truth object to that? LordR hasn't specified the Minor Blessing of Demeter yet, could it somehow give Jozef a "right" to create life that Truth would recognize? What if LordR suddenly had time to thoroughly learn the Darksiders universe, would becoming a Maker (a 1200pt perk by the way) give Jozef standing to meet Truth as an equal? Or is Truth an omniversal authority that has no equal from any setting? And how did it become such? Is it kind of like that scene from the Chronicles of Narnia where someone asks about fighting against the Emperor-across-the-sea's magic and Aslan just frowns and says "fight against the Emperor's magic?" and no one mentions it again.
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Gumiho
Reach heaven through violence!
Its never answered im setting how Truth came to be, Truth simply is. And when its comes to FMA Alchemy he is like Aslan, you dont fight him when it comes to Alchemy.
BarbaCoPut
Voluta indomita
- Location
- Argentina
- Pronouns
- He/His
The problem is that we don't have a good definition of how self awareness forms, or why. Many think that awareness is an emergent property of intelligence (which is another bag of chaos), we have no examples of advanced pure intelligences lacking awareness, is all theory and speculation.
I personally believe that when enough adaptative automated responses work together, intelligence forms, and once an intelligence reaches a threshold that allows it to inspect itself, the self-awareness is formed.
It was first mentioned in a WoG here, and was solidified into canon at the end of Ward (Last 20.e1, the Entity page on the Worm wiki has the quote in the sources).
Truth an omniversal authority but only about FMA version of alchemy
- Location
- spain
^^^ Pretty much that. Truth didn't object resurrection per say, but using alchemy to bring back/create/exchange a soul. And unless it comes to alchemy, I simply don't see Truth getting involved.