Subrosian_Smithy
endless
- Location
- Washington
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Hers
Alexandria: I'll do anything to save the world even if it makes me the villain of the story
Homelander: I am feel uncomfortable when we are not about me?
Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)
- Thread starter LordRoustabout
- Start date
Alexandria: I'll do anything to save the world even if it makes me the villain of the story
Homelander: I am feel uncomfortable when we are not about me?
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Thanks for the artwork. Great job!
I think I've answered this before, but to clarify, the jump doc states
"Synchronicity Event boosts psychic powers from outside this setting by a decent amount. It's nothing like Alma, but it's a decent boost."
So anything from any setting that could be described as psychic gats a boost. That includes things like Esper powers from Railgun, XCOM psychic training, Starcraft psionics, and even latent potential, like force sensitivity in Star Wars, newtype development from Gundam, and base psychic potential from Warhammer 40,000 (probably boosting Joe from the Pi/Rho rating to somewhere between Kappa and Omicron).
The one thing I still haven't decided on is the Attribute and Aspect from Lord of Light. It's not describes in-universe as a psychic ability, instead a kind of developed mutation that persists with a person mind, but it is close enough to classic SciFi definitions of 'psychic' powers that I might include a boost from Synchronicity Event.
I'm just going to put this here. (Hilarious idea, particularly if Joe has to justify expenses after spending his budget on ludicrous things, and nobody knows enough about the principles behind his technology to contradict his half-assed explanations.
This is a good insight, but probably also a reason why Joe would never work well with the Brockton Protectorate/PRT. That kind of situation is something that requires an exceptional light touch, as Joe would react very badly if it became clear that he was being manipulated. Neither Armsmaster nor Piggot would be able to maintain that, and that's assuming they could set it up in the first place. As soon as Joe got a hint of being forced into a controlling social dynamic it would burn every bridge they had with him. The idea of Piggot needing to manage through soft-power is almost laughable, and working through intermediaries (probably Dauntless, Miss Militia, or Assault) who could build and manage more amenable interactions would only hold for so long. Trying to control Joe's support structures would go badly as well.
It's actually an interesting idea for how things could have gone. Assuming they didn't try to strong arm him from the beginning, then both Armsmaster and Piggot would be dealing with someone moving progressively further beyond their influence, requiring more soft-power to be exerted, meaning more of their time devoted to managing Joe's social circle and interactions to keep him invested in the team. Depending on how good their advice and psychological profiles were they might try to leverage some aspect of that social power to force a particular action or set of restrictions. If they were lucky they might get some surface level concessions from Joe as he slowly realized he was in a controlling situation. If they were unlucky they'd try it right after a major power altered Joe psyche in which case he would react in an unpredictable way.
The Protectorate as a whole is good at that kind of thing, but Brockton Bay isn't really representative of the rest of the Protectorate. Pretty much any Protectorate/PRT leaders would have an easier time managing Joe than Armsmaster and Piggot. As soon as Joe's power was confirmed to be expanding continuously and unpredictably it would hit the biggest insecurities of both individuals. That would be made even worse by the fact that they would probably be under mandates from the national level at that point (Similar to what happened with Dauntless, the directive for him to focus on defense and be used conservatively was issued to make sure he survived long enough to reach a level where his safety could be assured. Piggot effectively had her hands tied with regards to her strongest cape.) A gift from heaven for any other department would be something they would be struggling with, and unable to properly explain why it was bothering them.
This is something that's going to come up in story after the interludes (given the deliveries that have arrived from Joe's Fallen London connections), but I'll comment on it here.
Souls are one of those things that are subject to metaphysical equivalences in Jumpchain. They have a different form, different characteristics, and different abilities based on what setting you are considering. You have distinct ideas of what a 'soul' is from Warhammer 40,000, Thundercats, Samurai Jack, Gargoyles, Magical Index, Overlord, God of War, Percy Jackson, Fullmetal Alchemist, RWBY, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Castlevania, Inukami, Tales of Symphonia, Fallen London, and probably several more settings. You even have things like Newtype ghosts from Gundam and Sparks from Transformers thrown into the mix.
What constitutes a 'soul' varies wildly. Sometimes it's just a mass of energy, unconnected to the person it belongs to. Sometimes it's their passions, emotional depth, and empathy, letting you function without it in a different state. Sometimes it's you, applying the full C.S. Lewis quote of "You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body."
The thing is, because of those equivalences, Joe can treat anything that falls under the definition of a soul as a soul for any application. Fullmetal Alchemist alchemy doesn't care if the souls used are in the form found in its home setting or bottled by the devils of Fallen London. The same with Tales of Symphonia Exspheres and Key Crests. And with Castlevania alchemy and rituals. To be exceptionally crass about it, they all spend the same.
That's also where the shard-shadow soul thing comes from. The copies of hosts that shards retain aren't like souls from any other setting, but they count as souls for the purpose of any other setting, and anyone who can manipulate them (Butcher, Glaistig Uaine) and also manipulate souls as defined by any other setting.
This is going to be something that it will take Joe a while to deal with properly. Thanks to Fullmetal Alchemist alchemy and That Undefinable Thing from Tales of Symphonia Joe can manipulate, use, and alter souls in a way that most people would be uncomfortable with. It's basically like someone took his two original specializations, rolled them together, and dialed them up to eleven. The ethics of doing anything to a person's soul are incredibly complicated, made more complex by the myriad of forms a soul can take. The level of discussion the forum has had over this subject is roughly the same as what Joe will be wrestling with regarding this power.
This was something I was hinting at in Joe's monitoring of the Slaughterhouse Nine, but Cherish has just finished her recruitment tests. The key quotes were "Two independent sightings of the Siberian on what appeared to be single target hunting behavior" and "The individuals had no history of mental illness or warning signs and all inflicted self-harm using bladed weapons. The bodies were also thoroughly exsanguinated with no sign of the quantity of blood lost present at the scene of the event. Incidents occurred in two clusters, separated by time and location, but sharing the same characteristics."
Cherish's tests for recruitment involved the Siberian hunting her, Bonesaw infecting her with a parasite that shut down her powers unless she drank enough blood, and Jack making her do all the tests a second time. So the Nine are just finished with Cherish;s recruitment, and are down Hatchetface, meaning they'll be looking for another recruitment drive.
Thanks for the omake, and sorry to her about your cat. My condolences.
Thank you! That is absolutely fantastic, and I'm incredibly impressed by your talent and the work you put into the piece. Thank you for the fantastic piece of artwork!
I'm going to get to this on AO3, but I'm a bit behind on my responses, so I thought I'd answer it here. Just as a heads up, this is going to get a little squicky.
Heretical Adaptation lets Joe apply Symphogear style growth to "other materials". In order for Joe to apply the property he must be able to work with the material. That means it needs to count as the 'material' he is working with for some project. Going with the dictionary definition here, we have materials as "the physical substance that things can be made from". That's the real key here. It needs to be something that Joe can use in making something. Parts of living creatures don't typically count as material for making something else, at least not while also staying as parts of living creatures. Cloning or grafting wouldn't count since growing from something doesn't isn't the same as having been made from it. So with this perk Joe would not be able to apply Heretical Adaptation to living creatures.
But Joe doesn't just have this perk.
Lathe of Heaven states "You'll also learn how to make use of any material" meaning Joe could work with living flesh. Of course, working with living creatures is a lot more complicated and sensitive than working with metals, so Joe wouldn't be able to apply Heretical Adaptation to them the way he could to a material material like Iron.
...so Exotic Compatibility from Gundam: After Colony states "You have a way of working with quirky and strange materials-in your hands and machinery, it assumes the forging and abilities of plain Iron until you begin building with it". So Joe can treat any substance as a material for crafting and treat any material as if it were iron.
So, in summation, thanks to a complicated interconnection of perks Joe could apply Heretical Adaptation to people by literally forging them like a piece of iron, allowing their bodies to gain additional improvements in the same manner as a Symphogear. Also, since we're already half-way down this rabbit hole and might as well take the plunge, he could apply any other properties that he could normally apply to iron to a person. This includes boosts from his Skyforge and volcano, and the volcano's ability to apply a property of one material to another.
At this point I think we may have gone so far into wet tinkering that we somehow started approaching metallurgy from the other side. I probably don't need to explain that Joe would be significantly uncomfortable with this kind of thing. On a slightly les horrifying note, everything listed above would apply to life fibers, meaning Tetra would be able to gain all of those bonuses, and that's something Joe would probably be a lot more comfortable with that dragging a person through such a procedure.
It also just occurred to me that 'Reforged by a demigod in a divine volcano' is about the most classic mythological origin possible for an archetypal 'hero of legend', and Joe could basically make his own version of Achilles of Siegfried, only without the manufacturer's defects because Joe has standards.
At best Joe's treatment would trigger his repair perks, but it wouldn't count as new construction for either workshop fiat protection or any or his other creation powers, not unless the duplicates need to make an entirely new body for him.
Thank you, corrected.
Thanks for the omake.
Those are within the realm of what Joe could do with Elven Enchanting, particularly with Dwarven Craft added. A Morgul Blade is more attainable, but still probably beyond what Joe can manage with his current skills. Doing something on the level of the One Ring would require Joe to have basically mastered singing to the unseen, and the expenditure of its creation would have some kind of permanent cost on Joe's part.
This is, of course, only looking at things from the perspective of what he could do with LotR perks. Adding his other powers into the mix would result in items far more powerful than what could otherwise be produced.
...I may need to start a list of every technically possible but practically terrible idea that my readers have suggested. Maybe I started this myself with an early joke about Joe's strongest weapon being a blunderbuss full of call beads, but since then we've gotten demon-bonesteel, Satan connected call beads, the recent Heretically Adaptatively body parts, and now Joe making a god in his basement.
So the answer is yes, Joe could make a mechanical god of household anything with Simple Scientific Solution. That is Washu tech, and the bigger Joe's tech base the more he can push the effects of that power. Teleporter defenses and n-dimensional precog blockers wouldn't be possible without things like the information from Master Builder giving Joe context on what he was working with. So yes, Joe could create a fully developed mechanical intelligence of incredible power that would start fully formed rather than needing a long development period like Fleet or Survey.
What would this look like? Well, what did it look like when Washu tried to make a person? How strong were they? What were they like?
Ryoko. What we are talking about here is making Ryoko as a household assistant. Only not just Ryoko because Joe's other perks would kick in, meaning you would get a divine, enchanted Ryoko with extra capacities who is also completely devoted to household issues. For some reason, probably because this is anime, I can't picture that as anything other than some form of maid.
So god-like power and devotion to a cause, at least until someone tried to drag her into a concern outside of that 'household' limitation. Then the 'Washu tech backfire" kicks in, probably in a way that will have people rushing to come up with a name for what is apparently the fourth endbringer.
I find this very entertaining, mostly because I could never get into the Boys as a comic. It was too ridiculous, too over-the-top to the point where I could never really see the world as something that could actually exist. Most of my enjoyment with that series has come from occasional corssover fiction that works to point out what an insane asylum that entire setting actually is (though the series did dial things down enough that I can at least follow it without constantly having suspension of disbelief issues).
A comic that I feel did everything the Boys was trying to do, but better, was Empowered. I'm not a fan of the level of fanservice (even though that's why the series started), but if you push past that every element of the Boys commentary on superheroes is present in Empowered, and presented in a way that, to me, feels a lot more rounded. It even managed to have worse villains without coming across as completely grimdark. Seriously, I would welcome an encounter with the Homelander over having to deal with people like Willy Pete or Neurospear (Neurospear is actually the kind of direction Joe could have ended up taking if he got his original trigger without the Celestial Forge).
Really didn't mean to go off in a rant like that. The crossover is a interesting idea, and Joe's ability to empower capes would put him in direct competition with Vought. The most likely situation I could see happening is a conflict between Apeiron heroes and Vought heroes, for as long as Vought could maintain the impression that their capes were heroic. With Joe digging into their secrets it would either mean their dirty laundry would quickly be brought to light, or they would immediately move to smear him, meaning Joe would be playing villain again against the publicly recognized 'heroes'.
I'll make sure to do that in the future. I'm hoping to avoid any more delays, but life gets in the way sometimes. I'll do everything I can to prevent that, or at least give as much notice on a delay as I can manage.
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- Location
- Florida
I was referring to the Amazon show since I never read the comics and despite not finishing Season 1, I'm more familiar with the adaption instead of the original. Plus everywhere I've looked, people give reviews how the adaption is better and more consistent than the original since the actors are practically carrying the show.
Joe/Apeiron interacting with Show!Homelander...that is a clash I would love to see.
But thanks for replying to my post. It was very informative and just introduced me to another Super Hero setting to eventually get around to viewing. Thanks again!
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Couldn't he do this if he was using his Chimera ability? IIRC people are some of the preferred material for making kaiju in that universe, though I don't think one necessarily needs to go full kaiju. Could be wrong though.
Edit: This one.
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rafuki22
Anti-nihilist(maybe).
- Location
- Earth/Spain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In other words, Joe's one research project on Taylor away from being able to mass-produce copies of her soul. Minus the defects, so saintly alt-Taylor souls. And sell them for demonic power. One more thing to add to the bad idea pile, I suppose.
Add some cloning and the aforementioned flesh-forging, and subtract the sale, and Joe would get a mass-produced army of effectively-angels based on Taylor. This is somewhat less horrifying but still probably a bad idea.
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Dragna
Profesional Lurker
Okay, I gotta ask this because I can't unthink this but does this count as cosmetic surgery?
NotInventedHere
MSV, Desert Class
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh boy. Joe is not going to be comfortable if that's implying what I think it's implying. (It *is*, I understand, theoretically possible to return a bottled soul to its original owner's body, and if anyone can do it, Joe can, but he would presumably need access to the original owners first.)
- Location
- Why would this be required?
On one hand he could probably have his duplicates do it to himself, which would be a trip.
On the other hand he'd still probably be uncomfortable with that and if he can do it with the lifefibers then, assuming it doesn't stack, it's probably redundent anyway
- Location
- Eldorado, Il
Pretty much, the sheer charisma and skill a lot of the cast have makes believing in the setting easier.
Given the size of the Volcano Lair, and the need to have it always connect to the real world if Joe's inside . . .
. . . Housekeeper Super-Ryoko crossed with Mary Poppins (to help manage Aisha, or Taylor, or Lisa, or Rachel, or Alec) doesn't seem like that bad of an idea, as long as she understands restraint. Which she should, as long as there's enough British Nanny in her conceptual makeup.
But yeah, Housekeeper Super-Ryoko on her own would be a disaster waiting to happen.
Thinking about it, making a nanny and assigning it Undersider duty sounds like the kind of gone horribly, gloriously right thing that Simple Scientific Solution is perfect for. Especially if it can perform remedial tutoring in proper comportment for those lacking in such.
. . . Housekeeper Super-Ryoko crossed with Mary Poppins (to help manage Aisha, or Taylor, or Lisa, or Rachel, or Alec) doesn't seem like that bad of an idea, as long as she understands restraint. Which she should, as long as there's enough British Nanny in her conceptual makeup.
But yeah, Housekeeper Super-Ryoko on her own would be a disaster waiting to happen.
Thinking about it, making a nanny and assigning it Undersider duty sounds like the kind of gone horribly, gloriously right thing that Simple Scientific Solution is perfect for. Especially if it can perform remedial tutoring in proper comportment for those lacking in such.
Ursine
Concerned Citizen
- Location
- Home, Sweet Home
Wouldn't he end up with five of them?
- Location
- United States of America
This is actually more widespread than you might think. Appears in African mythology as well: The Epic of Mwindo .
Lagoon12002
How far have I fell down into this deep deep sea
LordRoustabout is one of the only authors that when I look at a 2.6k post, I think, oh hey he's answering a few questions.
I'm sorry the idea of a forge god literally forging a human into a hero is so metal like that is unbelievably metal. I had the sao abridged Kirito I want that playing in my mind.
Though I had similar thoughts in a mage the awakening 2e game in one of the supplements you can create platonic perfect materials including biological stuff but the rules as written take all the fun out of creating a platonically perfect human
Does the forge used by op have mage the ascension or awakening jump perks because adding on that can of worms would be even more hilarious. Like the idea he could awakening the spirits of his stuff and have the spirits use there influences on his tech would be just *chef kiss*. I'm mean besides using matter to make platonically perfect metals on top of his other magic metals
Though I had similar thoughts in a mage the awakening 2e game in one of the supplements you can create platonic perfect materials including biological stuff but the rules as written take all the fun out of creating a platonically perfect human
Does the forge used by op have mage the ascension or awakening jump perks because adding on that can of worms would be even more hilarious. Like the idea he could awakening the spirits of his stuff and have the spirits use there influences on his tech would be just *chef kiss*. I'm mean besides using matter to make platonically perfect metals on top of his other magic metals
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- Location
- Up on a Hill
I would just like to note for the record that my enthusiasm for this horrible idea has only grown from reading this.
I would very much like to see how an Endbringer level catastrophe could result specifically from a comedic backfire. Maybe it'd have to work by means of differing perspective, where it's perhaps funny to see the clumsy maid fail at romance because it isn't a household task, but not so funny for the thousands of people who just drowned in cleaning fluid when she spilled her magic bucket in the process.
So with all of his powers, at least as far as I understand them, then he could make a Symphogear demon bone steel\adamantite divinely empowered vortex rocket fueled by call bead that uses Satans soul as a power source? Maybe with an added tunneling system by using another callbead to open a portal directly to Scions main body to launch it into?
- Location
- Ohio
So it hit me that joe is ignoring the symphonia perk and stuff like the cruxis crystal. He also has a perk that lets him substitute for missing materials. Could he just substitute for the souls he needs. Can he substitute for more than one? What are the upper limits on what he can substitute?
Lightwavers
Purple Noodle
- Pronouns
- they/them
Jumpchain perks tend to be very generously worded. With the right interpretation, even a seemingly-minor 100 point perk can easily break most settings wide-open. With as many perks as Joe has, you don't even need to stretch for the right wording to do that. Lord is subtly tampering with his power level behind the scenes, toning things down when looking at the interactions between perks and the way they work in a way that lets the status quo put up some semblance of resistance before completely and utterly shattering to pieces. This tweaking is necessary if we want any part of the story to be street-level beyond a certain point, so Lord saying that the perk only lets him substitute physical materials or whatnot seems like a possibility.
makopaulo
Nice bakuretsu!
- Location
- England
Espers aren't psychics. Their abilities are directed solely by their minds, but they're actually artificial magicians of a system invented by Crowley that doesn't play nice with other magic systems.
I feel that could be splitting hairs a little the metaphysics of that setting is weird.
Ihaxlikenoob
Dragon of Terror
That's not it at all; the situation is exactly as they said it is.
The distinction between Magic and Science (Espers) is entirely artificial and that archetype has been maintained by Crowley using Archetype Controller for the better part of a century. We've known characters in-universe saying that the 'sides' are one in the same when they got to sneak a peek under the curtain for years now.