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Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

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Cosmic said:
For those wondering about the new Lord of Light perks added to the Forge:
300 (Discount for Drop-Ins): The Divine Machines - Many and varied are the wonders of the Gods. From the Vasty Hall of Death, Yama brings forth Thunder Chariot and Bright Spear, Trident of Destruction and Wand of Universal Fire. In Heaven, there is an elegant statue with eight arms that plays the lute when addressed, and endless machines that keep all in perfect stasis. The elementary forms of these great sciences and artefacts are laid bare to you, and you may service and understand the technology of this world. While great innovations and the wonders forged by Yama might escape you, you have a solid basis that escapes the vast majority of men and gods in the world - sufficient to greatly impress those who understand the value of such things. With this you also gain one artefact costing 200CP or less for free.
600 (Discount for Drop-Ins): Chosen of Death - Great Yama, Death-god, has seen you clearly and bade you enter the Vasty Hall of Death, to serve as his partner in creation. Not merely revealing his secrets of science - you are his equal in the arts. Your creativity is that which may forge ten unique treasures each day, or mass produce legends. Design of all forms of weapons, armours, vehicles, and utilities comes to you with blinding light and strength of inspiration. With this position comes the virtual guarantee of rebirth in your next life, as a Demigod of the forge. You also gain a Discount on all artefacts and equipment.
100 (Free for Demigods and Gods): Divine Physique - The body selected for your enjoyment has been carefully shaped beyond the apex of humanity. Strong, vital and beauteous - it is a form that one could live within for hundreds of years, though at any time you may approach the Masters of Karma for a replacement, should the flames of your divine lifestyle burn it out. Care has been made that it expresses the initial mutations and brain structures to develop Aspect and Attribute - though once they have been induced, they will carry with your soul through whatever form you take.
300 (Free for Gods and Demigods): Attribute Induction – The Attribute is the capacity to effect the world with your will in a single, highly iconic way. It is a mutant strength, carefully developed with millennia of experience by the scientists of Heaven. With your attribute you might encourage silicates to grow into splendid – and razor sharp – trees of crystal, or have the wind sour and sicken your foes. Food cooked by your hands might keep a thousand men fed with one loaf, or you may will the birds to sing sweet praises in your favour and fly against your foes.

Many Attributes are known best for their utility in war, but the days when mankind's position on their world need be defended by flaming fists and opalescent eyes has passed, and Heaven cares as greatly for Attributes of craft and fragrance as those of iron and blood.

Demigods and Mortals have just begun to harness their virtues, they are like flickering embers – offering feeble warmth, but needing careful stoking. Their attributes are unstable and untested, often needing some tool to focus their energies. The former may rely on the assistance of their superiors in the Divine, the latter have only their own wills to push further.
600 (Free for Gods and Demigods): Aspect Cultivation – If an Attribute is the grasp of power, then the Aspect is a state of being. To wield reflections, and to become Reflection. To summon Strength and to become it. Greater and more subtle than any Attribute. Through genetic predisposition, hypnosis and chemical therapies, your passions come to correspond with those of the Universe.

Raising your Aspect is like removing a mask or standing straight, a mustering of yourself. It takes some energy to maintain, should you wish to be capable of being anything but an avatar, but it is the exertion of being rather than the struggle to become.

This is a power that requires your kindness. What is the nature of the gods who become Fire, undaunted and ferocious? Who become Death, unknowable, all-ending? Who become Divine Drunkenness, invincible in vitality and charisma? Those who look upon you in raised Aspect know, instantly and surely that you are divine, that you embody a facet of creation.

Any powers raised in harmony with your raised Aspect are magnified and exalted – they are more than just spells or mutation, they are in service of the very order of the universe. An arrow loosed by the Goddess of the Bow might strike a man's heart from ten miles away, or pin his courage to the wall.

Should the God of Flowers walk in Aspect through a forest, will it blossom and lend him strength? Or does a single rose cut and displayed by his hand speak of days of sun and offer a simple strength to all who behold it?
If you have an idea for an artefact of your own, price it by how it fits in with the examples.

50: Wealth – Not merely comfortable in your station, you are quite well arrayed with the finer things. Whether this is from your merchant holdings, your mostly symbolic but well rewarded stewardship of one of the important structures of Heaven, or just the bag of gold at your hip – you have enough capital to smooth over some eccentric purchases and a somewhat flamboyant lifestyle.

50: Opulent Warehouse – Do the bare walls and drab concrete styling of your cosmic warehouse offend thine eyes? Did you wish for a shaded bower, gilded conservatory or tawdry bordello? While the total size and features will not be changed, the cosmetic structure and layout is yours to realign – as long as it is opulent. Change your bare metal shelving into a dozen cozy rooms, filled with leather-bound books and the smell of rich mahogany. Make your Portal appear edged with basalt and gold, and Forcefield into an invincible iron gate that parts only for you. Once set, you may change the appearance once per Jump.

100: Worthy Weapon – It does not cast lightning or sing sweetly, it has no great powers of its own. But it is sharp and balanced, near-indestructible and perfectly fitted to your hands. It is a weapon that suits a legendary warrior, who is not defined by the arms that he wields but by the skill with which he wields them. If you possess an Attribute, you may channel it through this weapon – making it truly an extension of yourself.

200: Bright Spear - One and one-half span of silver is this spear, attuned to your brainwaves and taking flight at your will. It strikes faster than any arrow, and vibrates through any shield -shaking clean of gore before its return to your hand. It may also move to intercept arrows and blows, as well as carry you aloft at speeds to outpace the finest horse.

200: The Electrosword – Woe betide whoever cross swords with you and become the path for the lightning contained within this tarnished silver blade, which can extend from a hand-width shortsword into a finger-wide four metre scythe. Should you so desire, the fluid metal of the blade may flicker out as a long lash – harmless by itself, but carrying a deadly current.

200: Fountain Shield – A buckler, made of overlapping orichalcum wings that may expand to a two meter span. Proof against most hand-held kinetic weapons and energy discharges, it has a sophisticated target-acquisition system that sends frozen darts and boiling clouds of cyanide and dimethyl sulfoxide at those who dare raise arms against you – with a gallon of storage at the small of the back.
All artefacts below are perfect copies of the originals, and unless you are a God or Demigod yourself it will be considered extremely strange that you wield them.

You receive a Discount on one artefact that resonates with your nature – even if you are not a God or Demigod, though Animals may have some trouble wielding it, or it may be in the care of an ally.

When your chosen armament resonates with your own Attribute, its powers are noticeably stronger – and when opposed, it may resist your use entirely. As such free to change the cosmetic features of any artefact – the Wand of Fire might throw rays of "cold" that negate molecular binding energies with much the same effect.
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Wow. Two free 600 CP perks at once, along with whatever other perk Joe has to get to trigger them. That's gonna blow his mind.

Some of that extra text has me worried though. If Joe ends up resonating with "creation" or "crafting" or whatever, will his creations which cause destruction stop working for him? Though, It would force him into a role more reliant on others for cape fights, which could be interesting...

Though maybe it's a moot point, since this stuff is personality based and might not automatically reflect crafting in every sense.
 
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Like I know Aperion would never do it but I wonder what he would wish for if the Masters of the Bazaar approached him in exchange for bringing Brockton bay to the neath
 
LordRoustabout said:
So, shorter chapter this week, probably a bit over 10,000 words, with the rest to follow next week.
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Yes, because 10k is short. I'm lucky if the great story I'm reading updates once a month with more than 2k words per chapter, and here we got someone who's disappointed that they couldn't do their weekly 20+k and had to settle for 10k. Here, let me spell it out.

We. Are. Not. Upset.

You are allowed to have to delay the chapter. You are allowed to have to shorten it. We get it, you want to hold yourself to high standards, and you want to pump out huge mega-chapters week after week, but even when you are being swamped by tons of work and suddenly getting sick you are still doing more than the vast majority of decent writers on this site.

Anyway, I've run of steam on this little speech, so just know I think you're awesome and don't think any less of you for this delay when I'm willing to wait literal months between chapters for some of the stories I read, sometimes even years. Seriously some of them are Quests and they still have a 6 month wait time between 1k posts...
 
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If March survived that hit I will probably end up rage quitting this story, like enough is enough, no baseline human is going to be surviving a hit from Joe while he's in a berzerker rage actively trying to kill them.

Other than that everything about this chapter was awesome, though I do feel like the story is going to end soon, since I don't see where you go from here besides the S9, Endbringers and Zion. Although given how the Author has managed to drag out the conflict with the ABB of all things there could be a million more words dealing with all of that.
 
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I said it before, and I will say it again. This story is quickly approaching pirateaba's brand of ridiculousness with two 30K+ chapters per week. Soon, Lord might even get the dreaded backlogs
 
Creed said:
If March survived that hit I will probably end up rage quitting this story, like enough is enough, no baseline human is going to be surviving a hit from Joe while he's in a berzerker rage actively trying to kill them.

Other than that everything about this chapter was awesome, though I do feel like the story is going to end soon, since I don't see where you go from here besides the S9, Endbringers and Zion. Although given how the Author has managed to drag out the conflict with the ABB of all things there could be a million more words dealing with all of that.

I do find it funny that Oni Lee managed to dodge point defense lasers controlled by an A.I....actually you know what I'm stop thinking about this chapter because the more I do the More glaring plot holes I find.
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I recommend that you read the spoilers in Lord's second WOG after the 41st chapter, he explains March's fate there. If you want to though, here's a short summary: March ends up absolutely crippled in every way that matters. She destroys the call bead in the motoroid in order to heal herself, but it goes horribly wrong, with her mind now stuck inside her shard and essentially puppeting her body (and Lord has hinted at some serious body-horror there), leaving her unable to properly communicate, meaning she can't coordinate anyone but herself, drastically reducing the range of her anti-thinker power. Also, she now essentially runs on shard logic, distancing her from human thought-patterns. In total, she has lost essentially all of her slave army, her most important abilities have been irrevocably crippled, and she's probably on a one way trip to (try to) stab Flechette. Overall, a fate worse than death.
 
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DeusVult said:
I recommend that you read the spoilers in Lord's second WOG after the 41st chapter, he explains March's fate there. If you want to though, here's a short summary: March ends up absolutely crippled in every way that matters. She destroys the call bead in the motoroid in order to heal herself, but it goes horribly wrong, with her mind now stuck inside her shard and essentially puppeting her body (and Lord has hinted at some serious body-horror there), leaving her unable to properly communicate, meaning she can't coordinate anyone but herself, drastically reducing the range of her anti-thinker power. Also, she now essentially runs on shard logic, distancing her from human thought-patterns. In total, she has lost essentiallya ll of her slave army, her most important abilities have been irrevocably crippled, and she's probably on a one way trip to (try to) stab Flechette. Overall, a fate worse than death.
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Well that's....nice I guess, it still boggles my mind that she managed to not have her insides pulped by Joes unpulled strike but it's better than her pulling some Saturday morning cartoon villain shit and coming back somehow stronger than before lol.
 
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readerdreamer said:
...
but you look even more beautiful if you confront opponents such as me with a smile, Vista."
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Good story, but the whole 'you're prettier when you smile' thing is so gross. I'm sure you think it's just a compliment or being friendly or whatever, but every day I encounter at least a few women (me included) who hear that so often we just want to feed the next motherfucker who says it his own teeth.
 
Creed said:
Well that's....nice I guess, it still boggles my mind that she managed to not have her insides pulped by Joes unpulled strike but it's better than her pulling some Saturday morning cartoon villain shit and coming back somehow stronger than before lol.
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There is an easy set of explainations for that.While it's easy to miss in the chapter, Joe noted that he's not actually nearly as fast as he seems to be. That his limb movement speed in specific is much, much slower then his movement speed indicates, and that the pseudo flash stepping is effectively a breaker result, because Lifefibers. So his physical blows are both, much weaker then you might expect, and probably more dramatic then the actual impact appeared. It's effectively anime logic. A blow that sends you flying across a room doesn't actually hit you any harder then say, enough to crack a rib. It's Joes other strength enhancement that meant that even with her 'taking the blow perfectly' she was hit more then hard enough to functionally kill her, just not instantly.

He even noted when he hit her, that he did kill her with that hit. That she managed to make it something that's not immediately lethal, but still something someone would not survive. He still crushed her ribcage and likely did horrible things to the lung in it. It's just that she managed to turn it into an injury that would let her 'linger' a minute or few before succumbing to her wounds. Something people have managed to do in everything from being next to bombs that just exploded, being in airplane crashes, or even hit by oncoming trains. Hell people have lived through all three of those events.

So, yeah, do not underestimate how durable humans can be.
 
Creed said:
Other than that everything about this chapter was awesome, though I do feel like the story is going to end soon, since I don't see where you go from here besides the S9, Endbringers and Zion. Although given how the Author has managed to drag out the conflict with the ABB of all things there could be a million more words dealing with all of that.
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well, there is dragon, the dragonslayers , coil, empire, prt, travelers, uber and leet, case 53, cauldron, Parian, undersiders, improving joe's mental health, chen, accord, Aisha etc. There is still many things that were set up that hasn't payed off yet, so i doubt the story is running out of plot points. However i doubt any of these would be on the scale of the ABB, but thats not the point, before ABB, joe was basically an unknown, but now he is a major player and people are now paying close attention to him. I think the story is unlikely to to focus on crazy big scale battles again for a while and instead be about everyone planning wtf they should do about apieron, if they can. personally i look forward to garment store opening with joe as an assistant.
 
MaimakteriAnn said:
Good story, but the whole 'you're prettier when you smile' thing is so gross. I'm sure you think it's just a compliment or being friendly or whatever, but every day I encounter at least a few women (me included) who hear that so often we just want to feed the next motherfucker who says it his own teeth.
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It's in the delivery and context, I would say. It's been used as an aside often enough that I can guess how it would be insulting and derogatory to women, but charm isn't merely bound by words. It's in how one acts, and how one phrases things that lines like this can have differing results ranging from coming off as sleazy to sounding like a compliment.

In my mind, when I wrote that scene I imagined Joe phrasing it almost challengingly, like "As a hero, can you confront a monster like me with a smile" ala All Might from MHA. The fact that the receiver was Vista had been the reason why I picked it - Vista doesn't want to be dismissed. She wants to be dared, to be treated seriously. A compliment also phrased as a challenge to her by the person she hated the most seemed fitting. Or at least, that had been the intention, but I can see how it could be missed.

Anyhow, I also wrote it with the thought that Joe's perk would kick in, and it's right up the alley of lines you would get from Inexplicable Innuendo.
 
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Creed said:
Well that's....nice I guess, it still boggles my mind that she managed to not have her insides pulped by Joes unpulled strike but it's better than her pulling some Saturday morning cartoon villain shit and coming back somehow stronger than before lol.
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The story was unclear, but Joe's strike was more of a quick backhand, and as Mizuki pointed out, it was still seriously damaging.
 
Creed said:
Well that's....nice I guess, it still boggles my mind that she managed to not have her insides pulped by Joes unpulled strike but it's better than her pulling some Saturday morning cartoon villain shit and coming back somehow stronger than before lol.
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That's the thing, she wasn't going to survive that, all her timing power went into trying to not die and even then if it wasn't for the call bead she would have died there. Not that her current status is any good, the way I see it, she is locked in a permanent state of injury and healing because of her shard trying heal her but since interaction with shard dimension is basically impossible unless scion dies so she's stunlocked in that form so yeah, not fun times for March.
 
Dragna said:
That's the thing, she wasn't going to survive that, all her timing power went into trying to not die and even then if it wasn't for the call bead she would have died there. Not that her current status is any good, the way I see it, she is locked in a permanent state of injury and healing because of her shard trying heal her but since interaction with shard dimension is basically impossible unless scion dies so she's stunlocked in that form so yeah, not fun times for March.
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Please spoiler properly.
 
If there's anything that I've come to understand about this fic's readers that in general from all these comments, they're very bloodthirsty. Anything short of loss of limb and certified death don't seem to be enough for them, reasoning that if these characters don't die then they're guaranteed to come back to become worse problems.

It's almost as though Worm and Ward hasn't shown enough people coming back to life if the author really wanted them to come back and become threats again. Just look at the S9000 arc and the first batch of Titans from Ward. Just because someone is dead doesn't mean they are guaranteed to cease to be an issue, so why stress over March's condition? In the end, it's really on LordRoustabout's decision on whether she comes back again to become a nightmare, or if the charter of her appearances in story ends with the denoument of this arc.
 
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