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Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

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I'm worried about how Lord is gonna end the Bakuda arc. The status of March is unknown, but I think if we ignore our genre-savvy tinted glasses for a bit, realistically, the March arc has ended.

The power creep has gotten insane. It doesn't really matter how believable or well done the level of threat the ABB was able to pose to Apieron, all that matters from a writing perspective is that the cieling for what each confrontation and villain arc is like is way way high.

Butcher, Saint, Coil, etc. They're all future arcs. There's gonna need to be some really skilled storytelling for there not to be a jarring underwhemingness because our expectations are through the roof. Coil for example, while I'd say he's realistically not a threat, I had assumed so with Lung (the Worf), Bakuda, Oni Lee, and March.

I don't think the level of raw (super)power is gonna rival the Oni Lee and Lung fights. However, the feeling (illusion) of stakes and threat have to match. Coil has resources and has been trying to build and chessmaster his little kingdom for years. He might not have March's Sting, but he has her (and Bakuda's) willingness to go to whatever lengths to win. Plus, the Worm OCP anti-precog perk specifically makes him the exception. The stakes are set to always be the citizens and the city. They're gonna have to be even more so with something extra.

Coil is resourceful, ruthless, amoral, and most importantly, desperate. I can see Joe's identity and family being at risk. The emotional suspense/turmoil/conflict is gonna need to be raised to match that of this chapter. The drama has to rival this arc. The Travellers, Noelle, the bombs he set up, the control over the PRT, his power that makes him a slippery snake, the horror of what's happened Dinah, the many cape identities he has, all his contingencies, and his hold on the Undersiders, all these things will come into play. Because that's the very minimum of what I now expect. It'd be too jarring if it was underwheming because we now see that Lord doesn't do underwheming. There needs to be some skilled deescalation in the power creep/expectations or some skilled adjacent/tangential/paralleling escalation.
 
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Narasan said:
he specifically didnt kill her
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Except that's just plain untrue.
Nowhere is it mentioned that she lived, therefore by definition he cannot have specifically not killed her.
Not killing, and not confirming the kill, are two very different things.

Hells, it wasn't even mentioned that he specifically tried to not kill her.
 
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Image said:
Uh. The motoriod thats busted in the ground is aperion's real one. That's still a lot of non tinker tinker tech lying around to be examined.
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For 2 days, before fiat restore it.
Cosmic said:
Butcher, Saint, Coil, etc. They're all future arcs. There's gonna be some really skilled storytelling for there not to be a jarring underwhemingness because our expectations are through the roof. Coil for example, while I'd say he's realistically not a threat, I had assumed so with Lung (the Word), Bakuda, Oni Lee, and March.
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Coil could have a Noelle to throw at Apeiron. Or have Noelle copy Damsel or Flechette to get some annihilator effect. Or he could try to kidnap / convince Bakuda. Or he could buy tinkertech that could act as annihilators.

Other threats include : Endbringers (most likely able to damage Apeiron), Scion (able to damage Apeiron).

But physical threats are not the only way to drive a conflict (see most of superman's story for example). Joe have to save Dragon for herself, and that will be a challenge despite Dragon not being able to physically threaten him.
 
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So if no-one else has mentioned it yet:
Joe just happens to get soul-manipulation and biweekly demonic gifts that can include souls. But will it come into play?
 
After some thinking, I start to believe that March is dead after all. I know it's possible to limit the damages by twisting/jumping your body at the right moment.
But let's be serious, you can twist your body however you want, if a train or meteorite strike you at ludicrous speed, you die.
Oni Lee is capable to create more than 20+ clones in the air at the target that is moving faster than sound? Wow. It's an attack that could kill an Endbringer, even Scion
 
This chapter is full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
yes Lung died, so what, Lung was irrelevant the moment Joe basically became immune against thermal and kinetic attacks, and that was several chapters ago!
none of the real threats died, so the danger level is exactly the same as 710,000 words ago!

Don't get me wrong, this entire story is VERY well written and I was on the edge of my seat reading it , But...
Yzarc said:
At this point, I am all but convinced that the Author is taking the "If you give Fraudo a lightsaber, give Sauron the Deathstar" way too seriously.
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it's basically this trope, souring the story for me.

I'm going to call it now,
Joe is going the spend the next few chapters building new and more powerful Godly , Magical , Fairy crafted armor and equipment , none of which will actually protect him from any annihilator attacks that he knew to worry about from the start.
He keeps wasting time making his stuff even more invincible against attacks he is already invincible from, but doesn't even try to find some kind of defense against the real threats, and no, dodging doesn't count.

IIRC WH40K has a Geller Field Device that's suppose to protect against dimensional attacks, maybe it can be modified to work against Sting or maybe not, but he doesn't even try!

Another thing Joe could have tried, is to go for stealth , after all you can't attack what you can't find.

Another way is a robot/drone swarm , he could be sitting safe in his house drinking tea while his robot army dog-pile the ABB
-if he is worry about his tech being captured and reverse-engineered , he just need to build in self-destruct devices in all his stuff. He could even wait until Bakuda or Leet is in the same room as the captured robot wreck before blowing it up, who knows maybe he gets lucky.
-also he can track and find stuff he makes by hand , so if any of that stuff gets captured he can follow it all the way to Bakuda , or just drop a missile on her head.

I still like the story , but can he please stop charging into the action like he has a conflict-drive on maximum?!
 
Jimmy040 said:
Lung was irrelevant the moment Joe basically became immune against thermal and kinetic attacks
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Yes, because the rest of the city that isn't immune don't matter. The city that contains everyone and everything Joe knows, loves, and otherwise cares for.

Jimmy040 said:
IIRC WH40K has a Geller Field Device that's suppose to protect against dimensional attacks, maybe it can be modified to work against Sting or maybe not, but he doesn't even try!
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Shame then, that all he has from 40k is the weapon (and armour) tech, isn't it. It's almost like he can't use what he doesn't have.
 
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Jimmy040 said:
This chapter is full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
yes Lung died, so what, Lung was irrelevant the moment Joe basically became immune against thermal and kinetic attacks, and that was several chapters ago!
none of the real threats died, so the danger level is exactly the same as 710,000 words ago!

Don't get me wrong, this entire story is VERY well written and I was on the edge of my seat reading it , But...

it's basically this trope, souring the story for me.

I'm going to call it now,
Joe is going the spend the next few chapters building new and more powerful Godly , Magical , Fairy crafted armor and equipment , none of which will actually protect him from any annihilator attacks that he knew to worry about from the start.
He keeps wasting time making his stuff even more invincible against attacks he is already invincible from, but doesn't even try to find some kind of defense against the real threats, and no, dodging doesn't count.

IIRC WH40K has a Geller Field Device that's suppose to protect against dimensional attacks, maybe it can be modified to work against Sting or maybe not, but he doesn't even try!

Another thing Joe could have tried, is to go for stealth , after all you can't attack what you can't find.

Another way is a robot/drone swarm , he could be sitting safe in his house drinking tea while his robot army dog-pile the ABB
-if he is worry about his tech being captured and reverse-engineered , he just need to build in self-destruct devices in all his stuff. He could even wait until Bakuda or Leet is in the same room as the captured robot wreck before blowing it up, who knows maybe he gets lucky.
-also he can track and find stuff he makes by hand , so if any of that stuff gets captured he can follow it all the way to Bakuda , or just drop a missile on her head.

I still like the story , but can he please stop charging into the action like he has a conflict-drive on maximum?!
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This post is giving me Deja Vu...

Foxy Boxes said:
Shame then, that all he has from 40k is the weapon (and armour) tech, isn't it. It's almost like he can't use what he doesn't have.
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Geller Feilds are AOE devices, not something integrated into armor afaik.
 
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And that's what I had done. Syphoned flame from Lung's fire blasts, maneuvering bursts, and aura, and concentrated them into a two-foot-wide chunk of solid thermal energy.

The shard of glowing plasma in my hand was beyond anything Lung could dream of producing. It was something that could barely exist within a conventional setting. Even with all conductive properties suspended the radiant energy alone would have destroyed any material on earth at the distance I was holding it.
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How much energy would this hold?

Prismatic Laboratory (Fallen London) 400:
you have fashioned a workspace of lenses, liquids, critters and crystals to focus upon recreating a spectrum of lights fantastic
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Are anyone familiar with the media? What does this do?

Sea Snail Shells (Splatoon) 300:
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Same here again. What does this do that its worth the 300 points?
 
(Firstly, I realize this topic has been beaten to death in the past few hours, so I'm not going to make claims as to how Joe should have acted. LR's got the best claim to understanding his character.)

Alright so there have been some SOD-breaking developments:
  • This version of Oni Lee could probably walk up to the canon Leviathan battle and massacre all 100+ capes there, even curb stomp the Triumvirate. He'd then turn around and shred Leviathan because Levi's reflexes and durability ain't got nothing on Sting Lee. Seriously, his teleportation and reflexes seem to be instantaneous, and with Sting bombs there's no defending.
  • I haven't read Ward, but March as she's written here feels like she could have taken care Scion easily had she been given even half of Cauldron's resources. Just give her Doormaker support and Numberman's financial backing and she could probably string together a global cabal of capes to annihilate Scion in under a year.
  • And of course Bakuda seems to have also triggered with the Celestial Forge except all she's rolled is the entire Efficiency constellation because look at the sheer amount of work she's gotten done in the handful of days since the last major fight. She's pumped out hundreds of bombs, performed hundreds of surgeries, jazzed up her Deadman's switch something fierce, and apparently taken a crash course in extreme cybersecurity.

And for the most part, each of these powerups are alright. They all sound like fun challenges for a competent MC to navigate. I actually enjoy obscenely overpowered antagonists when they're done right.

Except it wasn't done quite right in this case. I won't go into detail -- that's already been covered many times over already. I will, however, point out that if you had introduced that idea of shards supercharging their powers in response to Joe a few chapters earlier, and let the anticipation and curiosity build up, and primed us to expect some top tier bullshit -- then it would have been so much easier to believe the absurd powerups that the ABB capes got. There wouldn't have been nearly as much backlash.

Now, the other key point that has people upset:
LordRoustabout said:
My sudden arrival shattered the ground beneath March's feet. She probably would have lost her footing if not for the fact that I had the wrist of her sword arm in a vice grip.

I could feel her mind, her power, her energy at work, groping for a way out of the situation. A way to turn things to her advantage, the way she always did. That wouldn't happen. Loose fibers from wounds on my arm wrapped around March's wrist, burning through her costume and causing the rabbit cape to scream and flail. I pulled an arm around my body and struck out, catching the thinker in the side without releasing my grip.

Even with the speed of my movement I could see her try to twist her body to absorb the force. The strength of her timing power, active even while being overwhelmed. At best it saved her from instantly being killed by the blow. I felt bones snap as my fist connected with the tiny cape, both in her torso and in her arm where my grip held her. The impact tore her from my grip in a bloody motion and sent her flying, painfully bouncing along the concrete before stopping dead against a cargo container.
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That's the last we see of March and it's not a kill confirmation. In fact, a later moment where Joe's about to go check for a kill confirmation on March -- but is interrupted -- is the last time he seriously thinks of her this chapter. This, this is a deeply familiar pattern to most of us who read fiction: it's the "oh shit, I forgot about the bad guy and whoops they've disappeared since the last time I checked the body." It's why people are getting so upset, because this trope usually leads into an endless rival situation where status quo is king and nothing ever really sticks -- something that's anathema to the fundamental concept of the reality-breaking Celestial Forge powerset.

In fairness to LordRoustabout, with the way he's evolved this story so far, I think March is neutralized for good as far as this arc is concerned. While I am annoyed that she's not definitively dead after blundering into a lethal situation, I don't mind overmuch some authorial fiat for future conflict. He's not going to bring her back to lead the ABB. In all likelihood she'll be in the hands of Cauldron, Coil, the Protectorate, or some other group until Joe needs super-coordinated enemies again. Look forward to March's Slaughterhouse or Teeth or Birdcage in about half a million words.
 
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Jimmy040 said:
IIRC WH40K has a Geller Field Device that's suppose to protect against dimensional attacks, maybe it can be modified to work against Sting or maybe not, but he doesn't even try!
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Eh, a Geller Field is for protecting you while in the warp. Basically it keeps demons (and only demons in the warp) away from you. Joe also hasn't gotten that tech yet.

When he does he can add that info on warp travel (and its denizens) to the knowledge he can summon Satan, Demons and eldritch horrors exist (he happens to be on their invite lists for parties), and the "can power stuff with souls" horror show he currently has going on. The sea of souls is just another ones of those things he didn't want to know about, but now he does.
 
oh yeah, about Joe's latest powerup.....that is some bullshit.

No, wait, seriously, it is. But not for the reason you think.

He is now pathologically forced to attempt to find a way to non-lethally take down his opponents. Even though he claims he can ignore it, I seriously doubt that. I'm ambidextrous, but when someone throws a ball at me I still automatically react to catch it with my right hand. But, the need or not to follow the new rules being applied isn't the point. The point is that now his power is encouraging him to drag out and prolong combat. His power is feeding the Data-hungry shards by nerfing Joe, making him wear the kid gloves and try to fight gently so it can prolong the fights with other capes. All in a way that he will not only not notice, but approve of if he does.

Joe's passenger is an evil, evil bastard.
 
SIDoragon said:
Joe's passenger is an evil, evil bastard.
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Seriously?
I'm fairly certain that Lord stated fairly early that Joe didn't have a regular shard.
His shard is trying to feed him intel on whats going on and what might/is going to happen.
It gets lost in translation a lot but I would consider it helpful or at least trying to be.
I am certain that it is not sabotaging him, and I really don't understand how that conclusion could be reached.
The powers rolled are random, thats all there is to it.
 
RefugeInAbsrdity said:
(Firstly, I realize this topic has been beaten to death in the past few hours, so I'm not going to make claims as to how Joe should have acted. LR's got the best claim to understanding his character.)

Alright so there have been some SOD-breaking developments:
  • This version of Oni Lee could probably walk up to the canon Leviathan battle and massacre all 100+ capes there, even curb stomp the Triumvirate. He'd then turn around and shred Leviathan because Levi's reflexes and durability ain't got nothing on Sting Lee. Seriously, his teleportation and reflexes seem to be instantaneous, and with Sting bombs there's no defending.
  • I haven't read Ward, but March as she's written here feels like she could have taken care Scion easily had she been given even half of Cauldron's resources. Just give her Doormaker support and Numberman's financial backing and she could probably string together a global cabal of capes to annihilate Scion in under a year.
  • And of course Bakuda seems to have also triggered with the Celestial Forge except all she's rolled is the entire Efficiency constellation because look at the sheer amount of work she's gotten done in the handful of days since the last major fight. She's pumped out hundreds of bombs, performed hundreds of surgeries, jazzed up her Deadman's switch something fierce, and apparently taken a crash course in extreme cybersecurity.

And for the most part, each of these powerups are alright. They all sound like fun challenges for a competent MC to navigate. I actually enjoy obscenely overpowered antagonists when they're done right.

Except it wasn't done quite right in this case. I won't go into detail -- that's already been covered many times over already. I will, however, point out that if you had introduced that idea of shards supercharging their powers in response to Joe a few chapters earlier, and let the anticipation and curiosity build up, and primed us to expect some top tier bullshit -- then it would have been so much easier to believe the absurd powerups that the ABB capes got. There wouldn't have been nearly as much backlash.

Now, the other key point that has people upset:

That's the last we see of March and it's not a kill confirmation. In fact, a later moment where Joe's about to go check for a kill confirmation on March -- but is interrupted -- is the last time he seriously thinks of her this chapter. This, this is a deeply familiar pattern to most of us who read fiction: it's the "oh shit, I forgot about the bad guy and whoops they've disappeared since the last time I checked the body." It's why people are getting so upset, because this trope usually leads into an endless rival situation where status quo is king and nothing ever really sticks -- something that's anathema to the fundamental concept of the reality-breaking Celestial Forge powerset.

In fairness to LordRoustabout, with the way he's evolved this story so far, I think March is neutralized for good as far as this arc is concerned. While I am annoyed that she's not definitively dead after blundering into a lethal situation, I don't mind overmuch some authorial fiat for future conflict. He's not going to bring her back to lead the ABB. In all likelihood she'll be in the hands of Cauldron, Coil, the Protectorate, or some other group until Joe needs super-coordinated enemies again. Look forward to March's Slaughterhouse or Teeth or Birdcage in about half a million words.
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Remind me of the Trope Talks: Character Death where it talks about how our culture and genre-savvy has evolved to the point where authors must be dramatic and painfully obvious with the death of a character or else it'll always be assumed they'll live/return.

It's an unfortunate consequence of the evolution of stories, tropes, and readers. It can make writing hard for authors. I'm hoping this is the case here. The situation, condition, looming threats, and speed of Joe would have made confirming the kill difficult to write because it'd need to be obvious and really clear and dug into. I can see Lord struggling with making March's death implied yet not wanting it to seem like the world was paused as Joe confirms and goes over a thousand dramatic thoughts while looking at her corpse. It's a case of there was no time to confirm. A real life thing in battle and warfare. The problem is at the meta level where it's not believed.
 
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RefugeInAbsrdity said:
In fairness to LordRoustabout, with the way he's evolved this story so far, I think March is neutralized for good as far as this arc is concerned. While I am annoyed that she's not definitively dead after blundering into a lethal situation, I don't mind overmuch some authorial fiat for future conflict. He's not going to bring her back to lead the ABB. In all likelihood she'll be in the hands of Cauldron, Coil, the Protectorate, or some other group until Joe needs super-coordinated enemies again. Look forward to March's Slaughterhouse or Teeth or Birdcage in about half a million words.
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I'd love it if people assumed she fucked off, but no, she's now with coil. I can imagine the Coil arc ending with cauldron showing up and whisking Coil, March, and Dinah away. Joe then enters his V Cauldron arc, which is interrupted by Echidna, who then reveals Cauldron is real to everyone.
Apeiron & The Irregulars then raid Cauldron together.
I'm spitballing, but it could be so fun lol.
 
I don't understand.
Is there always was so many people on internet who will see a post and go:"Ah I see they talked about it already, then i'm gonna just... take this post, copy this exact idea and wording and post it again!"?

Why can't we talk about fun stuff?
Like the fact that Chen with his sword and scarf-mask will look like male Miss Militia on steroids with china flavor.

Or how Gun-EZ now partially organic. Somehow. Nanites are bullshit.

SIDoragon said:
oh yeah, about Joe's latest powerup.....that is some bullshit.

No, wait, seriously, it is. But not for the reason you think.

He is now pathologically forced to attempt to find a way to non-lethally take down his opponents. Even though he claims he can ignore it, I seriously doubt that. I'm ambidextrous, but when someone throws a ball at me I still automatically react to catch it with my right hand. But, the need or not to follow the new rules being applied isn't the point. The point is that now his power is encouraging him to drag out and prolong combat. His power is feeding the Data-hungry shards by nerfing Joe, making him wear the kid gloves and try to fight gently so it can prolong the fights with other capes. All in a way that he will not only not notice, but approve of if he does.

Joe's passenger is an evil, evil bastard.
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Or yes, about how Forge is benevolent sadistic bastard, that wants Joe's situation to get better, but will not be against some fun at Apeiron's expense. Gods, I don't think a could relate to something more.
 
So, quick question, does anyone know what Joe was trying to say in Greek, when he got back up from the ABB's super Ultimate attack?
 
Slentoru said:
Like the fact that Chen with his sword and scarf-mask will look like male Miss Militia on steroids with china flavor.
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I'm honestly tempted to write a Chen omake. I like the thought of him coralling all the asian gangs back into the ABB, but now a protective force closer to the black panther party, rather than the Irish Republican Army they were before. Kinda like Constellations' idea of the 433 union.
 
That was beautiful. I can't think of a single cut off point in that entire chapter that would have worked to cut the size down into multiple cohesive chapters. Absolutely exquisite.
 
Why do peopple assume she ends up with Coil?
She screws with his powers, Coil has more reason than most to want her dead.
LordRoustabout specifically stated that he was trying to off her and considered Apeiron concentrating on her exclusively to be the best news possible.
I can't see any way Coil would not have her shot the moment she comes in range, even if she' still alive, which I seriously doubt.
Due to her disrupting his powers she is too much of a liability to him for any cooperation to be possible.
Coil is a control freak as shown in his interlude. March takes that control away simply by existing witjin several miles of him.
 
Slentoru said:
I don't understand.
Is there always was so many people on internet who will see a post and go:"Ah I see they talked about it already, then i'm gonna just... take this post, copy this exact idea and wording and post it again!"?

Why can't we talk about fun stuff?
Like the fact that Chen with his sword and scarf-mask will look like male Miss Militia on steroids with china flavor.

Or how Gun-EZ now partially organic. Somehow. Nanites are bullshit.


Or yes, about how Forge is benevolent sadistic bastard, that wants Joe's situation to get better, but will not be against some fun at Apeiron's expense. Gods, I don't think a could relate to something more.
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Because all of that is pointless window dressing if March survives. Basically no one core to March's plans was taken out definitely. She's still got a massively overclocked bomb tinker, she's still got the endless invincible teleporting clone maker and she still has an actually working Uber and Leet. She lost a bunch of unpowered fodder, some enslaved conscripts and an over rated beat stick. If she's still around she's came out way ahead of Joe who just lost literally everything he was wearing and had in storage on him and the majority of his mechs. March is shown to easily match Joe's production speed through the powers of shard conflict and 'planning' so why shouldn't people be worried about the rematch? March master plot two, electric boogaloo is what some people really don't want to read.
 
Flutters Is Shy said:
That was beautiful. I can't think of a single cut off point in that entire chapter that would have worked to cut the size down into multiple cohesive chapters. Absolutely exquisite.
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I can think of one:
Right after Joe got hit by multidimensional explosions. End it on the cliffhanger.
Wait, a chapter would be to short then. Maybe if give more cape interactions and show more clearly that trap hitting Apeiron was sheer luck...

Am i evil? No, just bad writer.
Wargamer08 said:
Because all of that is pointless window dressing if March survives. Basically no one core to March's plans was taken out definitely. She's still got a massively overclocked bomb tinker, she's still got the endless invincible teleporting clone maker and she still has an actually working Uber and Leet. She lost a bunch of unpowered fodder, some enslaved conscripts and an over rated beat stick. If she's still around she's came out way ahead of Joe who just lost literally everything he was wearing and had in storage on him and the majority of his mechs. March is shown to easily match Joe's production speed through the powers of shard conflict and 'planning' so why shouldn't people be worried about the rematch? March master plot two, electric boogaloo is what some people really don't want to read.
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So thats the reason to spam all of the thread by basically same post? Over and over and over and over again. Because of IF situation?
 
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