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Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

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Subrosian_Smithy said:
...

You know, I wonder if Joe could send a duplicate to handle the family dinner, or if the dupe would rebel against his master :V
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Joe himself doesn't want to give it to his duplicates to do, hence why the duplicates force him to do it. It's that kind of "I don't want to do it, but I know I have to do it myself" thing since Joe knows that unless he confronts his family and deals with his situation himself, part of him will always remain stuck as the college drop-out that had been emotionally browbeaten by his family so much that he Triggered from it, and we all know how big Triggers are.
Mizu said:
...I wonder if Taylor Varga also has the occasional user complaining about wordcount vs in-story time passing levied towards it?
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Oh, definitely. It happened in Spacebattles and it happened here in SufficientVelocity. At some point people either just accepted the facts and left or stayed to argue with the author, who in time also learned to just ignore the complaints. Personally, my reasons for dropping Taylor Varga hadn't been the slow plot progress - because I could accept that as long as I felt like the characters were growing - but more about the fact that after a while, the author themselves seemed bored with the series and released a bunch of spin-offs and crossover omakes that had absolutely no weight in the story.

And when those omakes can be summed up as "Taylor goes into another universe and makes everyone look like an idiot as they gawk upon her ridiculousness" in various formats, I felt it so demeaning to both those works and to the main fic as whole that I dropped the fic after the fifth consecutive omake.
 
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Tsotate said:
I hope he makes a protective watch for his therapist. People who know and accept his identity aren't common enough to be left vulnerable.
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Considering how everyone else reacts to his ridiculousness, his therapist might end up needing a therapist from that.

"He gave me a watch and apparently it is strong enough to give me a Thinker/Striker/Brute/Trump rating. And then he said he'll give me a better one on our next session."
 
readerdreamer said:
Considering how everyone else reacts to his ridiculousness, his therapist might end up needing a therapist from that.

"He gave me a watch and apparently it is strong enough to give me a Thinker/Striker/Brute/Trump rating. And then he said he'll give me a better one on our next session."
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He probably wouldn't, he's pretty clearly restraining the vast majority of his ability when it comes to handing out his tech. Him making a better watch would involve at least a chapter or two of questioning if it's the right choice.
 
You know if you are looking for other Unnatural Skills you could use, you could use the supernatural levels of Masonry or Woodworking that creatures like dwarves and elves are noted to possess.

Edit: It just occurred to me that you could also add the Unnatural Skills of Weaving, Drawing, Painting, Glassware and Engineering into the mix as well. If you really want to stretch things you could even give him the skill of Mystiokinesis, which while not a proper forge ability, could serve to supplement his magical talents. Manipulating the Mist is after all one of those innate characteristics of inhuman beings who are just better at it than humans and demigods.
 
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Execute/Dumbo said:
There hasn't been ever since he got Workaholic, no. At his current construction pace, 24 hours of constant work is worth about a millenia and two centuries of supernaturally perfect work. Not counting his copies or automation. There isn't a problem on the planet he couldn't solve within about a week at this point, especially since I believe at least one of his techbases has time dilation. Any problems he hasn't solved by now is entirely just him not bothering.
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I think you missed my point. I was referring to taking a single item, reassembling it into a more advanced version, and then repeating on the more advanced version, and then repeating on the even more advanced version, and then repeating on the advanced+++ version ... until he's gone from a digital weapon to a green lantern ring or something.
 
mastigos said:
I think you missed my point. I was referring to taking a single item, reassembling it into a more advanced version, and then repeating on the more advanced version, and then repeating on the even more advanced version, and then repeating on the advanced+++ version ... until he's gone from a digital weapon to a green lantern ring or something.
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Yeah, that's easy, he could just exponentially scale up his supercomputer and upgrade his gear via designing and refining it, even before this. 1-100 time dilation is just the stable point he stopped at, dude could spend months in a hyperbolic time chamber of tech designing. Remember, his main ability is a Tinker power, not a Trump. His main firepower doesn't actually need to come from his power directly giving him stronger and stronger gear, he can just make it himself.
 
I actually have no clue what's supposed to limit Joe at this point..... just at all. With the word count we are up to and the portion of the Forge he now has access to I am actually not clear if even Scion actually poses a real threat considering he isn't paying attention like at all to whats going on. He can, while in the world, spontaneously project whatever base item he needs due to his complete understanding of.... well.... every material, technology, and resource ever - then he can rebuild it under time dilation and with speed enhancing perks almost instantly into an output that is 3x the size and better and repeat that infinitely. The man could literally walk up to Armsmaster naked and in the span of about 2 seconds construct a laser cannon which could kill him and everything behind him for hundreds of miles with no prep time. We have technically been at this level for a while now but as the action is just now starting to ramp up again (hopefully) its become even more pressing and noticeable. Truly I think every chapter from this point on will just be Joe trying to step as lightly as possible in case he accidentally ends all of humanity by exploiting the Forge any further.... all while his being careful grants him more powers making the situation worse.

At this point I definitely feel like the sense of scale has gone completely insane with the powers. It's one of those things that we all know can happen with this kind of setup but most authors end up either abandoning ship long before it hits this point or resolve everything and move on. I like the quality of the writing and the characters so much I almost wish a less impressive array of abilities had been available from the start - maybe limited much more harshly and based around some sort of hidden achievement system you decided on beforehand as opposed to word count.

Regardless thanks for the chapter! I think I have finally settled down and managed to actually enjoy the pacing that this goes at even if it means I'm not expecting the Leviathan encounter (assuming that its still on the table, and since Noelle hasn't been touched yet I assume so) until sometime in late 2022.
 
Kris-71854 said:
Aisha is going to get a training montage soon. Learning ninja stuff and basic alchemy. Maybe also some other odds and ends as well.

I can sort of see Taylor's mindset. She doesn't care about clothing. She wasn't expecting anything like that. To her, the important part was the armor. Then finding out it is a bag of holding she's allowed to keep? Squee.

Actually, I think it's more that she can actually wrap her head around a bag of holding. The rest of Joe's stuff? Just a bit hard to handle.

Alec got morals/feelings back from being healed up. He knows he was screwed up before. He can accept being healed, but damn that's a rough side effect/price of things. That's actually more getting him properly healthy so it's not like Joe could have healed him to a lesser state.

Joe needs to bring his therapist into his time acceleration chair so he can spend a full 100x for the hour to unload everything on the poor guy.

I'm thrilled at hearing about Rachel. The quality of life improvement for her is utterly massive and can't be understated.
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The only disappointment I have with Rachel's situation currently is that Angelica's picture doesn't have her wearing at least an eye-patch, if not a full-on pirate hat as well. 🐾🏴‍☠️🐾
 
Execute/Dumbo said:
Remember, his main ability is a Tinker power, not a Trump.
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No it's not. His main ability is Fashion.
Execute/Dumbo said:
Yeah, that's easy, he could just exponentially scale up his supercomputer and upgrade his gear via designing and refining it, even before this. 1-100 time dilation is just the stable point he stopped at, dude could spend months in a hyperbolic time chamber of tech designing. Remember, his main ability is a Tinker power, not a Trump. His main firepower doesn't actually need to come from his power directly giving him stronger and stronger gear, he can just make it himself.
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The difference being that unlike doing that, the continuous cycle of improvement would address Joe's complaint about projects being over before he even gets a chance to sink his teeth into them.
 
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At this point I curious how much more difficult is to simulate this guy^^. And their only 'blessing' is that his 'shard' is playing ball.

'Oh, you want to know what would happen if X annihilator come here? he would run'.

dead or alive shards 'it seem legit'.

I mean for all their power and mental capacity. They were still convince by a ?'average joe'? that convince Scion to play as hero for a little bit. And with how shards can actually like humans. I can see they allowing for a lot of thing and believing a lot of bullshit so long they get sweet, sweet data from this.

Hell, I will not be surprise if Lisa's 'power' like her here. She at last is playing as negotiator. In a weird way that a shard alien mind could like. and getting results.

And lol, this Goddess like you enough from getting even a fraction of her attention that she throw more power with her blessing.

I sure that not only the appearance. But also the voice and etc that was boosted. Or will be with the temple build in a area that is self-improving and that is getting more mana per day than some nexus in some (doomed) worlds.
 
Mizu said:
...I wonder if Taylor Varga also has the occasional user complaining about wordcount vs in-story time passing levied towards it?
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Constantly, in the earlier chapters. It has thankfully fallen off, though.
Sethraw said:
After seeing the "rebuild a gun into a better, 3X-Bigger, gun" thing, I decided to calculate how far he could take it.

A quickly-googled estimate of the mass of the Death Star is 2.5E17 Kg. If he started with 555 grams, it would only take 37 rebuilds to reach Death Star size. (Assuming that Workaholic triples the mass each time).

This also ignores the "more advanced than before" part of the rebuilding, so the performance of the resulting Death Star-sized gun might be stronger than just a planet buster.
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Lets NOT accidentally the 10^80 universes that comprise Worm, thank you very much. At least not until Joe figures out how to travel to other fictional universes and leaves with all his friends.
KaySchus said:
I actually have no clue what's supposed to limit Joe at this point..... just at all. With the word count we are up to and the portion of the Forge he now has access to I am actually not clear if even Scion actually poses a real threat considering he isn't paying attention like at all to whats going on. He can, while in the world, spontaneously project whatever base item he needs due to his complete understanding of.... well.... every material, technology, and resource ever - then he can rebuild it under time dilation and with speed enhancing perks almost instantly into an output that is 3x the size and better and repeat that infinitely. The man could literally walk up to Armsmaster naked and in the span of about 2 seconds construct a laser cannon which could kill him and everything behind him for hundreds of miles with no prep time. We have technically been at this level for a while now but as the action is just now starting to ramp up again (hopefully) its become even more pressing and noticeable. Truly I think every chapter from this point on will just be Joe trying to step as lightly as possible in case he accidentally ends all of humanity by exploiting the Forge any further.... all while his being careful grants him more powers making the situation worse.

At this point I definitely feel like the sense of scale has gone completely insane with the powers. It's one of those things that we all know can happen with this kind of setup but most authors end up either abandoning ship long before it hits this point or resolve everything and move on. I like the quality of the writing and the characters so much I almost wish a less impressive array of abilities had been available from the start - maybe limited much more harshly and based around some sort of hidden achievement system you decided on beforehand as opposed to word count.

Regardless thanks for the chapter! I think I have finally settled down and managed to actually enjoy the pacing that this goes at even if it means I'm not expecting the Leviathan encounter (assuming that its still on the table, and since Noelle hasn't been touched yet I assume so) until sometime in late 2022.
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The thing that limits Joe? There are two main things. One, Joe does not have the information that we do about Worm, so he doesn't know that he can just make something to block telekinesis or dimensional effects or some such to prevent the Simurgh from catching him, or build some cross-dimensional annahilaser to one-shot Scion and make things infinitely better for everybody. Two, Joe personally has enough issues to fill a copy of the DSM.
 
Jordisk said:
Constantly, in the earlier chapters. It has thankfully fallen off, though.

Lets NOT accidentally the 10^80 universes that comprise Worm, thank you very much. At least not until Joe figures out how to travel to other fictional universes and leaves with all his friends.

The thing that limits Joe? There are two main things. One, Joe does not have the information that we do about Worm, so he doesn't know that he can just make something to block telekinesis or dimensional effects or some such to prevent the Simurgh from catching him, or build some cross-dimensional annahilaser to one-shot Scion and make things infinitely better for everybody. Two, Joe personally has enough issues to fill a copy of the DSM.
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DSM?
 
Sethraw said:
After seeing the "rebuild a gun into a better, 3X-Bigger, gun" thing, I decided to calculate how far he could take it.

A quickly-googled estimate of the mass of the Death Star is 2.5E17 Kg. If he started with 555 grams, it would only take 37 rebuilds to reach Death Star size. (Assuming that Workaholic triples the mass each time).

This also ignores the "more advanced than before" part of the rebuilding, so the performance of the resulting Death Star-sized gun might be stronger than just a planet buster.
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Joe might actually start hitting some exponential limits on building speed at that scale.

36 hours in a second sounds a lot until you check how long it takes to build really big things. I found an article that estimates the time to build a US destroyer at 4 million person hours. Other perks come into play and Joe's going to be doing everything better than anyone else, so call it...12 hours build time for Joe.

Purely from mass comparisions the Death Star is 25 billion times bigger than a Arleigh Burke class destroyer. So I dunno, a few thousand centuries for Joe to build it himself this way?
I'm probably off by several orders of magnitude but at that scale it doesn't matter too much.
 
Elfalpha said:
Joe might actually start hitting some exponential limits on building speed at that scale.

36 hours in a second sounds a lot until you check how long it takes to build really big things. I found an article that estimates the time to build a US destroyer at 4 million person hours. Other perks come into play and Joe's going to be doing everything better than anyone else, so call it...12 hours build time for Joe.

Purely from mass comparisions the Death Star is 25 billion times bigger than a Arleigh Burke class destroyer. So I dunno, a few thousand centuries for Joe to build it himself this way?
I'm probably off by several orders of magnitude but at that scale it doesn't matter too much.
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At that size build time kicks in. Not sure how that factors and I'm about to go to bed.



Also great chapter Lord! Looking forward to Asia's training!
 
Elfalpha said:
Joe might actually start hitting some exponential limits on building speed at that scale.

36 hours in a second sounds a lot until you check how long it takes to build really big things. I found an article that estimates the time to build a US destroyer at 4 million person hours. Other perks come into play and Joe's going to be doing everything better than anyone else, so call it...12 hours build time for Joe.

Purely from mass comparisions the Death Star is 25 billion times bigger than a Arleigh Burke class destroyer. So I dunno, a few thousand centuries for Joe to build it himself this way?
I'm probably off by several orders of magnitude but at that scale it doesn't matter too much.
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Four million build hours with modern technology and logistical constraints. When you take out transport, welding, most manufacturing, planning, etc, it basically assembles itself. Like, with none of the assembly accelerating perks, Joe could make a destroyer in maybe a couple of hours. Nanomachines, Projection, magical transmutation, and more make it a snap. A death star's even easier, since at that point you can just use economies of scale to make use of automated drones and AI assistance. Hell, he could do it himself with a big enough alchemy circle and a source of energy to make the trade equivalent.

Edit: Honestly, considering it further, I doubt it'd even take half an hour if he had the tools ready. Mass nanomachine assembly to get the parts and form the transmutation circles, the ability to perform all construction perfectly with zero lost effort... it'd be beyond effortless. Oh, right, and perfect modularity of parts means he doesn't need to worry about scale problems whatsoever. He can make the parts in as small pieces as he wants and assemble them later, so he could assemble the ship piecemeal with none of the demands of properly forging one.
 
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Inbetweenaction said:
She bought her new eye from all the money she made from selling bellyrubbs. So no eyepatch.
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I completely forgot that she'd gotten her eye fixed by Joe didn't I?

In that case Angelica at least deserves a stylish beret and a snout covering bandit-bandana. She is a member of one of the toughest gangs in Brockton Bay after all!
 
…I desperately desire more coverage of Rachel's newfound love for social media. I love it when Rachel gets character development, :grin:
 
SomeOneElse007 said:
Zeus would start looking for a way to off him as fast as possible but that's the greek gods for you.
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Either that or Zeus would bless Joe too, giving him sky/storm related powers—or a complete inability to keep it in his pants.

Kris-71854 said:
Alec got morals/feelings back from being healed up. He knows he was screwed up before. He can accept being healed, but damn that's a rough side effect/price of things. That's actually more getting him properly healthy so it's not like Joe could have healed him to a lesser state.
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While I was reading that section, I started to wonder if Joe might think to refer Alex to his therapist.

Mizu said:
I wonder if Taylor Varga also has the occasional user complaining about wordcount vs in-story time passing levied towards it?
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Incessantly. Mauling Snarks was similarly infested with critics that insisted that the writer had to write the story in their heads, and ignored everything the writer had posted over and over to the contrary. Not that the poster you were responding to was making that type of demand. They were just saying they were no longer enjoying the story and were likely to stop reading it.

ImperatorV said:
Imagine if canon-powerset Aisha was a better tinker then most actual tinkers.
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This is canon powerset Aisha. The very first thing Joe made for her was a hairpin that granted her ease of control over her canon powers.

Cheetored20 said:
DSM?
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Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Up to the sixth or seventh edition now, the DSM is a comprehensive catalogue of possible psychological/psychiatric diagnosises an symptoms of each.
 
I liked how we didn't see Joe's elemental kung fu showdown. That we don't need to know every inch of Joe's life. It makes sense to limit it so we can plow forward. We only needed to know the aftermath which Aisha took up with Joe.

I'm glad that Joe explained so to speak his current thoughts on equipment, liability, and only imaginative liability. It cleared things up why Joe is still how he is.

Taylor having a panic attack was so good. I'm pretty burned by Warlord Skitter so it was sooo good to read about a panicked teenager acting her age about clothing choices from Danny's view.

I admit this is one of the demigod powers I've been waiting for. I'm looking forward to create something that will utilise the full might of Apeiron. I'll even say it'll be godly.
 
I can't wait to see Joe finally address all of the people freaking out online about the dangers of him discovering how to mass-produce his tech, and him just going :

"Oh yeah, I cracked that like two days after I triggered. I just prefer a more bespoke experience for people using my tech so never really saw any point in mass-producing it."

The fallout would be glorious to see even if only on an omake.
 
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