Remove ads

Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

Reader mode
sonicyoash said:
Sectional Time (Personal Reality) (200 WP)
This Upgrade to Temporal Controls means you can now install fast or slow time chambers inside your Personal Reality. These can be anything from 1:100 to 100:1 and you are allowed to make use of them, but the time spent inside such an accelerated or decelerated chamber still counts only as the amount of time that passed in the host reality. Stasis still cannot be used while you're inside the Personal Reality for obvious reasons. You age at the rate you're personally experiencing time.
Discount Hyperbolic Time Chamber would be awesome! Send a Duplicate in there and watch 3 hours of work become 300.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hmm, my reading of "You age at the rate you're personally experiencing time" was that a 3 hour Duplicate would dispel 1 minute and 48 seconds later (from the outside perspective), rather than lasting 3 hours outside / 300 hours inside.

Still useful, but Joe has to either go in with them and pop out Duplicates at normal 3 hour intervals, or stand outside and chug a duplication potion every 2–3 minutes. And the issues that might occur if a Duplicate wanders into a 1:100 zone and stretches their duration from 3 hours real-time to 12½ days? Unless Joe gets a warning or confirmation when the Duplicate vanishes, he might take a second potion while the first is active, which is… ill advised…
 
@LordRoustabout
Did Joe include (imitation) Lifefibers in the new bodies for Fleet, Survey and Matrix?
The conversation he had with Tetra before he built them read like he was going to include them but the description of the build process makes no mention of them.
 
sonicyoash said:
So what Perks from the Personal Reality Constellation are you all looking forward to? Here are some that I in particular want to see:
Hallowed Earth (Personal Reality) (400 WP)
Every inch of your Personal Reality is sanctified. By who? Well... you, I guess. All those within (besides you obviously) are subject to a constant minor blessing that persists for up to a day after leaving that makes them a little luckier and healthier. In D&D terms, a general +1 Morale bonus. Those who worship you as divine may show up here when they die or see visions of you in this, your place of power... though these visions may be merely metaphors for what lies within if they lack the mental or cultural framework to understand. With Linked Portals you may appear anywhere inside your Personal Reality without having to walk there and with Eye Spy you are aware of everything that happens in this Reality. With Central Control, you are constantly aware of the contents of the PR.
The Personal Reality becomes a possible Afterlife, he essentially becomes an actual minor God by default, it has interesting synergies with other Perks, and it raises so many questions and moral dilemmas that I can't wait to see Joe freak out about it.
POWER OVERWHELMING (Personal Reality) (400 WP)
Not enough power? Okay, this Who's Got the Powa Upgrade means that your Personal Reality is now hooked up to the full power of a Sol-Class Star encased in a Dyson Sphere. Congratulations, you're now a Kardashev II civilization. If this isn't enough power, you need an intervention.
Seriously, I know that other, more expensive Perks he's gotten so far have had a major impact on him, but I really want him to see him flip his shit at the Forge giving him an actual Dyson Sphere with an actual Sol-Class Star inside. With the Tashi Station upgrade, it'd also mean Joe would have unlimited Phonic Energy on demand to test out and train with his Symphogear.
Counseling Bay (Personal Reality) (200 WP)
And how does that make you feel? Helps you work through any issue. A couch, and solid light therapist are included, but not mandatory.
While I think he'd still make appointments with Dr. Campbell for social interaction if nothing else, this would still be a huge benefit since it'd mean he could give the whole Crew reliable Therapy on demand. Seriously, how does one give therapy to an AI that is formed by and controls a Divine Nanobot Swarm? I don't know, but this room can do it anyway.
Sectional Time (Personal Reality) (200 WP)
This Upgrade to Temporal Controls means you can now install fast or slow time chambers inside your Personal Reality. These can be anything from 1:100 to 100:1 and you are allowed to make use of them, but the time spent inside such an accelerated or decelerated chamber still counts only as the amount of time that passed in the host reality. Stasis still cannot be used while you're inside the Personal Reality for obvious reasons. You age at the rate you're personally experiencing time.
Discount Hyperbolic Time Chamber would be awesome! Send a Duplicate in there and watch 3 hours of work become 300.
Nursery (Personal Reality) (100 WP)
Planning on starting a family? Just enjoy collecting infants? Either way, this Housing Upgrade is for you. The nursery Comes with all the equipment needed to deal with a (theoretically transfinite) number of infants and toddlers. It even has uterine replicators just in case no one wants to get fat or have to deal with all the pushing and screaming. The Nursery Upgrade will either be a stand alone facility or will hook each house up with its own smaller nursery. If you have food supplies, they will be adapted to the optimal dietary needs of the children, and packaged into child-friendly packages. If you have robots, diaper-changing robots will be included. Otherwise, the furniture in the nursery is dependant on the quality of your housing and is guaranteed child-safe and friendly.
Joe's reaction would be priceless, and would probably make him question how he'd even handle starting a family in the future. Also, I wonder if those Uterine Replicators would allow Tybalt to have children? @LordRoustabout, would it?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
the Personal Reality perk I'm hoping for the most is the Servant's Quarters, both because I want to see Joe freak out over the fact that the Celestial Forge gave him servants, and also because I want to see if LR will actually go for that whole scenario. Personally, I feel like he'd just combine it with Unique Servants to avoid the whole issue, thus creating the only one hundred and fifty point perk in this story (that I'm aware of), infuriating all of us who like nice round numbers with at least two zeroes at the end.
 
Chronocidal said:
Hmm, my reading of "You age at the rate you're personally experiencing time" was that a 3 hour Duplicate would dispel 1 minute and 48 seconds later (from the outside perspective), rather than lasting 3 hours outside / 300 hours inside.

Still useful, but Joe has to either go in with them and pop out Duplicates at normal 3 hour intervals, or stand outside and chug a duplication potion every 2–3 minutes. And the issues that might occur if a Duplicate wanders into a 1:100 zone and stretches their duration from 3 hours real-time to 12½ days? Unless Joe gets a warning or confirmation when the Duplicate vanishes, he might take a second potion while the first is active, which is… ill advised…
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The part you need to pay attention to is this.

sonicyoash said:
Sectional Time (Personal Reality) (200 WP)
This Upgrade to Temporal Controls means you can now install fast or slow time chambers inside your Personal Reality. These can be anything from 1:100 to 100:1 and you are allowed to make use of them, but the time spent inside such an accelerated or decelerated chamber still counts only as the amount of time that passed in the host reality. Stasis still cannot be used while you're inside the Personal Reality for obvious reasons. You age at the rate you're personally experiencing time.
Discount Hyperbolic Time Chamber would be awesome! Send a Duplicate in there and watch 3 hours of work become 300.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

If time spent inside is counted only as the amount of time that passed in the host reality, that means according to the fiat backed rules of time for dupli potions will be determined by either host reality time, or Joe Primes time. Meaning if he is NOT in an accelerated field of time, but rather in default normal host reality time, the Dupes won't vanish until his 3 hours have passed. Which means the Dupes can get in that 300 hours of work in 3 hours...well, 300 hours prior adding in all the time cutting perks that is.

EDIT: And for clarification, the Dupes don't have their own personal timer. Their timer is Joe Primes Timer. Thats why he can chug more potions despite the fact there is still a Dupe in a slow down time zone thanks to one of Bakuda's Slow Time bombs.
 
Last edited:
sonicyoash said:
Sectional Time (Personal Reality) (200 WP)
This Upgrade to Temporal Controls means you can now install fast or slow time chambers inside your Personal Reality. These can be anything from 1:100 to 100:1 and you are allowed to make use of them, but the time spent inside such an accelerated or decelerated chamber still counts only as the amount of time that passed in the host reality. Stasis still cannot be used while you're inside the Personal Reality for obvious reasons. You age at the rate you're personally experiencing time.
Discount Hyperbolic Time Chamber would be awesome! Send a Duplicate in there and watch 3 hours of work become 300.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
How would the Duplicates react to being able to live for almost 2 weeks? It seems kind of antithetical to their existence.
 
LoquaciousLizard said:
They aren't Mr. Meeseeks or whatever, they simply don't care about the cessation of their existence.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
True, but part of why they act the way they do is that they won't really live to see the consequences of their actions. Living for more than a week gives plenty of time for them to regret their actions. Additionally, they'll actually have to sleep and have something resembling a normal life, which wasn't a problem when they only lasted a few hours.
 
Chronocidal said:
Hmm, my reading of "You age at the rate you're personally experiencing time" was that a 3 hour Duplicate would dispel 1 minute and 48 seconds later (from the outside perspective), rather than lasting 3 hours outside / 300 hours inside.

Still useful, but Joe has to either go in with them and pop out Duplicates at normal 3 hour intervals, or stand outside and chug a duplication potion every 2–3 minutes. And the issues that might occur if a Duplicate wanders into a 1:100 zone and stretches their duration from 3 hours real-time to 12½ days? Unless Joe gets a warning or confirmation when the Duplicate vanishes, he might take a second potion while the first is active, which is… ill advised…
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Potion Duration is based on Joe, so as long as Joe stayed outside the chamber you'd get 300 hours inside.
Graviator said:
The duplicate still visible inside Bakuda's time bubble disagrees.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As others have clarified the duplicate is only there because a milisecond was stretched out into like 300 years. Also we're not sure if the Duplicate is there, seeing as the Motoroid in combat form perfectly covers Apeiron, making it seem like the "Praetorians" are just drones who look like his main suit for tactical purposes.
 
So, Joe just has a way to overcome arbitrarily high durability now right?

Like, he could before, probably, but he no longer needs any equipment on his person at all now.

Just, describe a plane, digitise any chemical bond or atom that crosses the plane in a particular instant. Infinite cutting power for infinitesimal power cost. Literally, since the smaller you make the timeframe the less energy you need to devote.

Probably not effective against scion unless paired with something to prevent manifesting new matter to replace what was digitised (though the explosion when the unsupported digistruct fails and the digitised matter tries to come back into existence in the same place as the replacement is fun) but if it goes through an endbringer core or Alexandria face, that is promising.
 
Helot said:
I don't know if it's been covered already, as I tend to only read the story, and not the 800+ pages of comments... But I really don't like Tybalts lack of recognizable speech.

Seeing a conversation that is essentially:
Tybalt meows. (Or possibly: Tybalt meows deliberately, while casting a glance at Joe)
Joe responds "Why Yes, that is a thoughtful and insightful description of the problem at hand. Your comment allows me to take another look, and revise my original idea! Thanks Tybalt!"

Is just... frustrating. Trying to figure out what Tybalt *might* have meant, when the only context clue comes a sentence or even paragraph later bothers the heck out of me.
It's to the point where I'm actively hoping he's less involved in the story, purely so that I don't have to deal with interpreting 'missing' conversation from him.

Please consider adding descriptions of what Tybalt is trying to communicate, or even the actual sentence he's saying, possibly once Aisha can fully understand him.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I actually really enjoy the parts of this story where Joe's power-provided friends have non-standard modes of communication; Tetra and Joe communicating almost exclusively through the dragon's pulse up until the conclusion of the bodily separation arc, Garment speaking in emotive gestures, Tybalt speaking in meow meow, etc. It's a really interesting aspect of Joe's dynamics with those characters and adds a flavor to their interactions that's hard to find anywhere else. The closest I can think of in other stories is stuff like a sentient animal companion expressing it's feelings through making faces or the like.

It's just really interesting to me to read an interaction wherein the communication falls outside of the standard flow of dialogue and forces you to interpret meaning from the emotions being conveyed.
 
LordRoustabout said:
The problem of power-> description-> new power is not lost on me. If I had a way to justify it in story I'd happily suspend rolls for the next fifty or hundred thousand words just so I could get the plot on track and let Joe actually get some use out of the powers he already has. The thing is, I feel that I have made a commitment to my readers regarding the mechanics of power gain, and it would be wrong to change it half way through.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

If your main point of concern is betraying the commitment you have made to us, then you should probably put it to a poll to find out if we even care.

From my point of view, the changes that you could enact to regain control of this problem doesn't really require much alterations to the core CF mechanics. By slightly increasing the wordcount per points gained and the power roll, you would solve this issue without touching the core of what makes BCF entertaining, while still keeping it relatively simple for you as a writer.
 
Seconded.

Especially if one of the poll options is having words written in workshop not count.

The key conceit of tying word count to new powers was always that you were entertaining whatever being granted the forge access. Just say it isn't as enthralled by you discovering details of powers it gave you as it is seeing you do things with them.
 
Speaking of Tybalt, finally started a monster hunter with felynes in it. Oh wow theyre even worse than i ever thought, how do people have positive emotional attachments to these annoying little fuckers?
 
LordRoustabout said:
I am managing it as well as I can and will be able to account for it in any future attempts at a story like this.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think I mentioned in the past but a simple mechanic you could introduce into future stories like this is to simply not count words when said character is in their workshop. To me, from what little I've read of the actual documents, the perks/points awards for words are for the character going out and interacting with the world. So when said character is doing that, count. But when they're just fizzing around in their respective workshop, they're not typically interacting with the world, thus there isn't really a need to count those words.

It would lead to a different kind of story, but I think the pacing in any future stories would be a little easier to handle. It doesn't hurt that Joe basically doesn't need to sleep anymore (what like 3 hours a night) and his crafting speed has jumped so drastically that something that should have taken days of work now takes like 5 minutes, if that, so there feels like there is no break from all the Tinker talk.
 
MagicalAmbitions said:
I actually really enjoy the parts of this story where Joe's power-provided friends have non-standard modes of communication; Tetra and Joe communicating almost exclusively through the dragon's pulse up until the conclusion of the bodily separation arc, Garment speaking in emotive gestures, Tybalt speaking in meow meow, etc. It's a really interesting aspect of Joe's dynamics with those characters and adds a flavor to their interactions that's hard to find anywhere else. The closest I can think of in other stories is stuff like a sentient animal companion expressing it's feelings through making faces or the like.

It's just really interesting to me to read an interaction wherein the communication falls outside of the standard flow of dialogue and forces you to interpret meaning from the emotions being conveyed.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't mind that there are non-standard methods of communication. Garment's method of communicating, for example, has never bothered me. Tetra, I believe, I commented on purely to say that it was hard to distinguish visually when they were using dragon's pulse to talk, but it didn't bother me, as it was expressed enough about what they were saying.
I wouldn't mind, if there was more description of what he was implying. More show, less tell. Sometimes there is, and sometimes there isn't.

Some examples of each:
Sort of explained, but not really, in the next sentence or two.
LordRoustabout said:
Tybalt explained and I nodded. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was something.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Explained in the next sentence or two.
LordRoustabout said:
He nodded and meowed. I blinked and gave him a concerned look.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Explained in the same sentence. (This is what I'd like to see).
LordRoustabout said:
Tybalt meowed his encouragement and Aisha glanced away, but there was a slight smile on her face.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Explained in the next sentence or two.
LordRoustabout said:
Tybalt made an excited little hop as he meowed an explanation. Aisha gave him a confused look. "Wait, I thought Józef needed to do that? Well, him or one of the copies."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Explained in the next sentence, and not explained at all.
LordRoustabout said:
Tybalt glanced up and meowed at her, causing Aisha to give him a sour look in response. "Web of Magic doesn't count. It's mainstream. They have movies and everything." He mewed again causing her to huff and turn away.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

(Barely) Explained in the next sentence.
LordRoustabout said:
Tybalt called out a long series of meows and Aisha smiled at him. "What he said. Make with the magic."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Explained in the same sentence (Again, what I'd like to see).
LordRoustabout said:
I swallowed and glanced at my duplicate. "Tybalt, are you sure."

He nodded with a serious expression on his face, and explained that it wasn't worth waiting, not when it could make a difference with tonight's project.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This one is an example of a 'problem' meow.
Explained thirty sentences, later.
LordRoustabout said:
Tybalt waved a paw at us and meowed, causing Tetra to immediately perk up. "Would that work?" She asked.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

With no context, some of these make zero sense, which isn't great to read. Yes, it's often, and even usually, explained shortly after the fact, but that doesn't make it less irritating to me.

It'd be like overhearing someone say "And then it exploded!"
Are they talking about...
A bomb? "The building collapsed like a wet paper bag!"
Dice in a TTRPG? "I couldn't believe I rolled three sixes in a row!"
An experiment at school? "It went all over the lab! It even hit the ceiling!"
The atmosphere after something exciting happened? "Everyone was screaming as the band started their new song!"
Who knows! You don't have any context, so you're literally guessing what happened, unless their next sentence tells you or gives you more context.

I'm sure there's some grammatical or sentence structure rule that applies here, but I'm not an English student. Something about subject of a sentence or something, sentence fragments, etc...
 
Helot said:
With no context, some of these make zero sense, which isn't great to read. Yes, it's often, and even usually, explained shortly after the fact, but that doesn't make it less irritating to me.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I get what you are saying, it's actually a pretty common feeling from what I have seen. People have the same issue with hearing only 1 half of a phone conversation
 
Hmm, I see no reason to use the out-of-date personal reality supplement, especially given a lot of it's options are over-costed (which is the main reason 1.5 exists at all).

The reference doc, at least, uses pricing that matches the latest version.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top