The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
- Location
- Your Universe
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- She/They
Huh, not sure where I got the idea, but the 40k wiki says nothing about slowly dissolving on Webber Weapons...
Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)
- Thread starter LordRoustabout
- Start date
Cosmic
Novel Addict
- Location
- Library Nexus
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
The story doesn't say anything either. When Joe talks about the webbers, he doesn't bring up anything about dissolving them. Subsequent chapters only bring up their use, nothing on their duration or how to dissolve them.
And all I could find on the wiki was:
Webbing can be dissolved with a special web spray.
I'm hoping Joe modified the webbing to be dissolved by vinegar. That's something he can easily do. It'd make sense since he could just inform the PRT and vinegar is easy to obtain.
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- Pronouns
- He
Okay so for the Connections:Hell perk
I just love the idea of a devil group coming into play abd consentualy taking people's souls and all that.
I hope someone writes a Omake for that.
I just love the idea of a devil group coming into play abd consentualy taking people's souls and all that.
I hope someone writes a Omake for that.
- Location
- Buffalo, NY, USA
Consensual? These are demons, ergo the souls will be ones that have already undergone the torments of Hell, if anything Joe's receiving them would be a release from their suffering. Unless things work differently in the universe that power came from...
I meant guilt free as in Joe doesn't need to harvest some poor smuck's soul.
The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
- Location
- Your Universe
- Pronouns
- She/They
Demons are lawful neutral creatures in Fallen London, souls are taken consentually. There is no actual Hell, and the demons aren't really demons in the literal sense, but that's besides the point.
- Location
- US
After chewing on my thoughts about this chapter for a while, and seeing how deeply divided people seem to be about it, I wanted to just share my perspective. I'm one of the people who walked away from this chapter feeling pretty low about things. This chapter was chock full of moments that would probably have absolutely delighted me in a comic book (and judging by the reactions, definitely landed for a lot of people!), but my aphantasia kind of leaches the awesomeness right out of them. But that's about all it was chock full of. As lots of people have said, the Chen stuff was great, but that was about all that really grabbed me here. For the rest of the chapter, I was just left wondering why I should care about the next 100k words of intense tinkering we'll get if Joe's opponents will manage to escalate at roughly the same pace as him. And I'm starting to get the impression that this is Lord's writing abilities and sensibilities running head first into a simple problem: no one knows how actually powerful Joe will be in the future. If we want to have the big finale fights be real knock-down, drag-out fights it's sort of a necessity that their threat can't be set in stone.
And honestly after thinking on that for a while, I don't mind it. I can write that off as the price of admission for getting to see how Joe can slot together all these wild disparate abilities into one buck wild thing after another. I can mentally file that away as a structural medium problem, and just keep hitting f5 every Wednesday.
And honestly after thinking on that for a while, I don't mind it. I can write that off as the price of admission for getting to see how Joe can slot together all these wild disparate abilities into one buck wild thing after another. I can mentally file that away as a structural medium problem, and just keep hitting f5 every Wednesday.
Unusual Guests (The Shallow)
The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
- Location
- Your Universe
- Pronouns
- She/They
Unusual Guests
I entered the Prismatic Laboratory, my technokinesis making the operation of the wheelchair second nature.
It looked like something out of an ancient victorian mansion that had never been repaired, yet still lived in. My eyes stung, and I could suddenly see. 7 colors that hadn't been before. There were 7 banners on one wall, each with a letter and one of the colors.
Irrigo.
Violant.
Cosmogone.
Peligin.
Apocyan.
Viric.
Gant.
The Neathbow.
A second door in the room led out into a simply entrance hall, with a grand Victorian door. I opened it fearfully. Much like the cyberpunk look I got from one of my windows, or the mountain the skyforge was on before the volcano, there was a facade of a street of a victorian city underground, a few people walking down. Just as I was about to close the door, two figures of interest rounded a corner, both carrying baskets.
One was a lovecraftian horror turned humanoid, and was being given dirty looks as he approached. One bystander picked up a loose pebble and tossed it at their face, but they continued as if nothing had happened.
The other was a white-haired, young buisnessman, bright amber eyes.
They both arrived to the door at the same time, the amber eyed one seemingly slightly unnerved by the Rubbery Man.
The Amber-eyed one stepped in and gave me, a demigod of crafting, a bone-crushing hug "Jozef! How are you today, old chap?"
There was something about the whole scenario that was so ridiculous I found myself playing along "You can likely see, not that well."
The businessman nodded, before smiling, showing his sharp fangs, and patting me on the shoulder "Well, I brought you a couple gifts. We devils really appreciate all you've done for us!"
I nodded "All I've done..?"
"Well, you know... Better not to discuss it with the..." he glanced to the rubbery man who had just entered, having been delayed by another couple stones to the face. "Anways! I'd love to stick around, but I've honestly got to get going! Hope you recover soon, Jozef!"
and with that he left, leaving the gift basket on a table. The squidman shook my hand, and and gurgled something. I found myself smiling, as if my mouth had understood his speech, and responded, "Yes, of course."
The man nodded, left his gift basket on the same table, tipped his hat slightly, and left. I closed the door, and looked at the baskets.
The rubbery man's basket was filled with a lemon-scented slime, and it was full of amber and gold coins.
The devil had gifted me a bracelet of red-hot brass, and two bottles of wi- that was not wine. Both bottles held souls...
The devil had gifted me 2 souls.
I took both baskets and walked into my workshop, only to bump into Aisha.
"Hey, Joe, I'm gonna have to leave- What is that?"
She grabbed at the rubbery gift-basket, and managed to touch the exotic ooze before I could move away fast enough.
"Aisha! This stuff was given to me by my power, I'm going to analyze it. Don't touch!"
"Oh! SHit!"
She rubbed the dollop of slime between her thumb and forefinger rapidly "No! You're spreading it like that!"
She stopped, only for the sheen of the slime to quickly fade away, absorbed by her body.
I groaned.
"What? Is it bad? Am I going to turn into a zombie?!"
"No- why would you think that?"
"I was talking with survey about a bunch of things, and the conversation somehow got to the S-class threats you had... she said one of them could make zombies or something?"
"Look, just follow me, I'll look at it in medical, and make a counteragent to whatever it's doing."
Aisha was almost shaking as we approached medical. She laid down on one of the beds and I placed a bunch of scanning arrays around her right hand.
I activated the arrays around her, glad to see that it was nothing malignant.
The ooze was nutrient-rich, and kicked the metabolism of whatever it touched into high-gear, allowing for faster regeneration and healing. Of course it was indiscriminate in what it affected, so hairs and nerves were also gaining boosts, although the nerve growths were a little more damaging.
My knowledge of how memories worked slightly covered dreams, and I was sure the trauma of nerves expanding would have a bad effect on sleeping for a couple days. I touched her hand and undid the mutations caused by the slime.
"It wasn't anything too dangerous, you'll be fine, just avoid touching it."
She nodded, said her goodbyes, and left, happy that she wasn't zombified.
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The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
- Location
- Your Universe
- Pronouns
- She/They
Is surgery done is any other way than by hand?
If they are considerably changing Joe, it could be considered crafting
Foxy Boxes
[Verified Box]
- Location
- England
[Insert dark sarcasm about our current media that's probably too political to write out.]
- Location
- Odessa
With 'Similar factions may be present in future jumps.' I suspect that it will be something more like Heaven paying Apeiron tributes or case 53s just sending gifts to Apeiron for some mysterious reason or some cape group with issues controlling their power (i.e. for all we know, Menowsky particles might be interfering with some powers letting capes have a lot more control).
I really doubt Aisha will touch 'unknown' things in tinker's lab if she really believed that some can turn her into zombie. And Survey's drones would have stopped Aisha from getting to dangerous substances
The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
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- Your Universe
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Yeah, probably. Tbf it looks like Jam, and was in a gift-basket.
Jesus is that a dude's face being cut off, that's nightmares fuel there.I can see it now.
Edit: that reminds me of leather face from Texas chainsaw massacre films
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Yep. That's a Night Lord from Warhammer and they are very good at torture.
They were so good at it that the mere mention of their name was enough to bring entire worlds to surrender.
The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
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- Your Universe
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- She/They
To bring back discussion:
What should Chen's cape name be?
Reminder of his gear:
1-star Teng suit, makes him Peak Human.
mechashifting weapon made of spatial grenades, flattens things to 2d
A scarf that makes him slightly harder to notice, and almost impossible to identify
Also, he's a Chinese immigrant.
Go off!
What should Chen's cape name be?
Reminder of his gear:
1-star Teng suit, makes him Peak Human.
mechashifting weapon made of spatial grenades, flattens things to 2d
A scarf that makes him slightly harder to notice, and almost impossible to identify
Also, he's a Chinese immigrant.
Go off!
You got the idea from Spider-man, Spider-man's webbing dissolves in an hour.
The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
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- Your Universe
- Pronouns
- She/They
Lol yeah, that's it.
You forgot aura, which makes him beyond human. And will keep increasing. And it's defensive. Oh an the 1 star tang suite is built proof. And 1 star is its base, but then you have all of the perks on top of it making it like an RPG item on top of 1 star.
Also there is the semblance. And he already knows who he is. So it's likely for him to discover it soon.
Plus it might have heretical adaption on it.
clonezero
Is it a bad thing if my t read list keeps growing?
Li Mu Bai, Wong Hei Fong, or Citan.
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Well, 'consentually' is a bit dubious - Sometimes they'll try to sneak your soul out of you. But overall, it takes 'torments' (read: just kind of random weird shit, sometimes enjoyable, sometimes not) while you have your soul for them to do anything for it, and even then they need specialized facilities they don't really seem to have in London for that. You can see such a place in Sunless Skies. Admittedly, while Virginia was mayor, those facilities were in place, but hell if I know how indicative that is of things in general.
Another interesting thing I thought of in relation to devils: They appear several decades ahead of the latest trends. In Fallen London, they love jazz, which doesn't exist yet, and have styles from the 1950s or so. That has a lot of implications for what Joe could learn from them, if we assume they style themselves ~50 years ahead of the here and now. All in all, not the worst hell he could've made.
I will mention while I'm on the topic, since Set's omake reminded me, it's exceptionally rare for Rubbery Men to be able to speak, and requires outside interference, as far as I know, in case anyone didn't. Ought to be fun to see Joe playing charades with them to figure out what they're trying to convey! (That, or grabbing a pen or something. OTHATHAROOTH!)
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The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
- Location
- Your Universe
- Pronouns
- She/They
Semblance: Enough Bullshit
Allows Chen to pause time for others for 5 seconds if they are monolouging/delaying shit/standing in his way in some capacity.
Hrm. Well, considering he called Joe-Clone Sun Wukong, he might take up one of the Monkey King's friends/sidekicks name for himself. Though I am not entirely sure which it would be.
- Location
- Philippines
For some reason or another, I ended up listing in Discord Joe's steps in developing as a person since the start of the fic. In terms of character development, Joe has already achieved some pretty big milestones:
1) Start of the story, decided to strike out on his own and away from his toxic home environment. He joined a gym, made his own social circle, and kept to those things even when they ceased to be absolutely necessary (keeping to the gym despite the life fibers).
2) He recognized that he can't rely entirely on his passenger's emotional support. In another perspective, it's the equivalent of the life milestone realizing that your parents aren't perfect and thus begin looking at their decisions more objectively.
3) He returned to his therapy session despite having plenty of excuses to skip it.
4) When forced to face the failure that is his image management, as well as his history with romantic entanglements, he confronted them both when he talked to Taylor about Khepeiron. The meeting with Danny also helped put things in perspective, in that even if things look impossible to do, that doesn't mean that they really are impossible.
5) Due to Aisha, he had learned to trust someone else with his secrets. This is actually a fairly big milestone, considering his situation and his powers. Consider how Taylor handled her own secrets and how she dealt with the reveal of them badly.
6) And then there's the talk with his sister, and how he dealt with his reaction afterwards. It might be partly due to Aura giving him a kick, but he did end up opening up more to his support structure afterwards.
All in all, Joe's been making some pretty damn good progress, especially considering it has been less than four weeks since the start of the story.
Edit: Also, I've been working on Dadpeiron and it has kind of blown up into a thing of its own. Current omake length is 2.5k, most likely outcome when it finishes is 5k. Here's to hoping I find the time to post it soon.
1) Start of the story, decided to strike out on his own and away from his toxic home environment. He joined a gym, made his own social circle, and kept to those things even when they ceased to be absolutely necessary (keeping to the gym despite the life fibers).
2) He recognized that he can't rely entirely on his passenger's emotional support. In another perspective, it's the equivalent of the life milestone realizing that your parents aren't perfect and thus begin looking at their decisions more objectively.
3) He returned to his therapy session despite having plenty of excuses to skip it.
4) When forced to face the failure that is his image management, as well as his history with romantic entanglements, he confronted them both when he talked to Taylor about Khepeiron. The meeting with Danny also helped put things in perspective, in that even if things look impossible to do, that doesn't mean that they really are impossible.
5) Due to Aisha, he had learned to trust someone else with his secrets. This is actually a fairly big milestone, considering his situation and his powers. Consider how Taylor handled her own secrets and how she dealt with the reveal of them badly.
6) And then there's the talk with his sister, and how he dealt with his reaction afterwards. It might be partly due to Aura giving him a kick, but he did end up opening up more to his support structure afterwards.
All in all, Joe's been making some pretty damn good progress, especially considering it has been less than four weeks since the start of the story.
Edit: Also, I've been working on Dadpeiron and it has kind of blown up into a thing of its own. Current omake length is 2.5k, most likely outcome when it finishes is 5k. Here's to hoping I find the time to post it soon.
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