Suffice to say that I am strongly in favor of us going to places that are civilized and organized in
recognizable terms, because this makes it much easier for us to get our bearings and find magic teachers who will help an adolescent girl obviously lost and stranded from another dimension. Places with towns and laws and crowds and roads and marketplaces and big buildings tend to be like that, much more so than eldritch glowing pools of blood with unseen persons singing songs asking us to tell them stories so we can "forget about the fear" together.
I think people were taking "grey stone looks unusually well-maintained" to imply that it was a modern concrete road. But without either it smelling like gasoline or a description of painted markings, that seems unlikely.
To be fair, well-maintained roads are
usually the sign of an orderly, stable civilization in which random crime and highway robbery are less common. There's considerably less point in bothering to maintain a road that people are afraid to travel, or that only a small army can travel safely.
I'm glad that Melia has already been characterized as an extremely curious person, almost to a fault, so I can do suicidally curious votes like this without feeling out of character.
I want Melia to live, and not die, so I would very much prefer her to combine her intense curiosity with basic self-preservation instincts. There is
so much to learn in the multiverse; there is no need to stick her head down a garbage disposal and press the 'on' switch to find out what happens.
Alivaril said:
I will neither confirm nor deny if the various above responses are in any way related IC to any of the current options. I mean it. People frequently seem to take that as confirmation, but for me, it's honestly not. Please do not take it as a QM-hint in either direction; if you publicly attempt to do so, I reserve the right to play Devil's Advocate for one or both sides.
Duly noted.
...You're pretty sure showing up in that sort of area—with your current skills and companions, at least—would fall under "fatal" and is something your Talent wouldn't do to you. To reuse the example, a warzone may be exceptionally difficult to get out of unharmed, but it wouldn't be impossible.
OOC: Will confirm the above. Areas might be higher risk (possibly without a corresponding increase in potential rewards), but going to one wouldn't be an instant loss / instant severe trauma condition.
Okay, but while the kind of location I've described might sounds super-traumatic and inescapable, it MIGHT be escapable. I can imagine magical energy-draining traps we could break out of. Or just survive in, until we figure out how to break our anchor and escape.
But at the same time, enemies might try to keep us in those places forever, and like with the hypothetical warzone, it may be difficult to escape unharmed. Just because it's not impossible, doesn't mean I want to find out if we can do it. The knowledge that we
could reasonably hope to escape whatever bad situations might exist in or near that pool of blood doesn't mean we should go there.
I can accept that the blood pool isn't certain instant inescapable death. But even "probable, slowly escalating, escapable death" sounds like a place I don't want to visit in a hurry. I mean, to me the weird nature of the blood pool and its (seemingly artificially) enticing elements like the smell are a warning sign that Something Might Be Wrong. Ignoring the first warning sign because we know there will be other warning signs that show up before something actually kills us? Yeah, that doesn't sound like a good strategy to me.
I'd like to emphasize the negative connotations of the word "risk," though. I've noticed a trend in questing—and structured roleplaying in general, for that matter—where players often don't believe negative consequences from "failing" a high-risk scenario will ever happen to them. You take on enough of them, you'll likely fail sooner or later even if you try to be really damn careful. A cautious approach to a high-risk scenario is, as a general rule, still more dangerous than a cautious approach to a low-risk one.
THIS. Very much this. I mean, when you have a character who's actually got a significant arsenal of powers, you can take risks because they have a backup plan if something goes wrong: power up and break out of the danger. Melia has very, very little power, she is
squishy compared to many quest protagonists.
Eh... *waggles hand* I did actually say something close to that, so you're both right. That being said, players don't possess the Path to Victory. A "wrong" reaction may seem perfectly sensible at the time, as if it's less likely to lead to disaster compared to alternatives, etc.
This, too. I'm trying to use judgment to avoid dangers until we have enough power that "confront danger" doesn't look like a stupid plan.
The mugging victims don't go down alleys for the adventure.
That doesn't mean that because we
did walk into the alley looking for adventure, we're going to be safe.
Gangs mug people by counting on them avoiding people who look like 'trouble' on the open streets until they make the mistake of leaving the open streets for an alley.
If they just hung around in alleys waiting for people to 'ignore their instincts' they'd be waiting for a very long time.
Okay, if we're going to play details like this- you've kind of got it backwards.
Muggers are people who hope to profit (in an unusual way) by encountering foot traffic. Like everyone else who hopes to profit by encountering foot traffic, are looking for places where there
is foot traffic. They're not waiting for specific individuals to panic and flee into their trap, because that would take forever. Panicking people who scatter and run into dark alleys are not
normal in the kind of neighborhood where dark alleys containing muggers are a likelihood, in other words.
Muggings and other opportunistic, predatory crime are most likely to happen in
transitional spaces like stairwells, doorways, and parking lots. That is to say, places that people
pass through in large numbers, but do not normally loiter in without a reason. You don't just go lurk somewhere out of sight, you go lurking somewhere you can easily intercept people who aren't looking out for the possibility of someone like you trying to intercept them.
...
Now, how does this apply to our situation? Well, basically, what we're seeing is OBVIOUSLY not a trap meant to catch us personally, because nobody could foresee that a dimension-hopping girl would suddenly have the option of materializing in the middle of their giant pool of blood. Unless there's a lot more to this dimension-hopping thing than we believe- but we can ignore that possibility for now.
However, as I mentioned earlier, it is very likely that the chamber we see is part of a larger 'complex' of interacting systems or things or forces. We may be seeing a place where people are imprisoned, that is not
in and of itself a trap, but that is part of a trap: namely, the place the trapped people are stored. The trap was not laid specifically for us, or for other people in our exact situation. We can't even necessarily see the part that actuall That doesn't make it safe, though.
For example, the Venus flytrap is a type of carnivorous plant native to swamps in the southern parts of North America. It lives in large part on a diet of ants and beetles imprudent enough to crawl into its jaws. It is not a trap set for, for example, beetles from India, because there are no Venus flytraps in India, only in America.
However, if a continent-hopping beetle from India were to see through a portal the exciting opportunity to crawl inside a Venus flytrap on another continent... they would be most unwise to do so. The Venus flytrap will close on them and try to eat them,
regardless of the fact that it wasn't specifically put there to entice and trap them.
And the blood pool doesn't seem like such a place? Our second most powerful skill is Necromancy. Plus, ancient magical beings make pretty good teachers.
Depends on the form the trouble takes, doesn't it? Also, the sheer amount of magic available in that cave is power. A lot of it. More than any place else we have access to. We could use the energy there to summon ALL of our elementals, very quickly, given how the mana there becomes usable so fast.
If I had a clear idea of just how much firepower the elementals had and how much capability they had to drive off an enemy, I might be less worried. My impression of them so far is that, just as Melia's magical powers are in their larval state, so are the elementals. They're cute little sprites with the power to singe, bruise, and baffle an attacker, but not necessarily the power to deal with hostile or highly competent beings that have the power to kill.
Also, any entities native to (or worse yet,
controlling) the place with the pool of blood are likely to be just as good at accessing its power as we are, if not better- so if they are hostile, we don't get a power advantage over them that way. And given our utterly untutored state of magical knowledge, it seems dangerous to assume we can outmaneuver OR outpower them on their home turf.
It's complete conjecture with very little to back it up? This could just as easily be a spooky magical spa for necromancers. Or, alternatively, the prison for an ancient and powerful being, or a naturally occurring source of necromantic power (and our affinity for such is why we absorb the power someasily), or innumerable other things. They're all just about equally supported by the evidence as your assumption.
To be fair, these
are possibilities. But "it's some kind of place that traps people and draws power from having trapped them," while
very possibly wrong, is not
obviously-wrong. It is not a possibility we should breezily dismiss as "oh, that can't be what's going to happen."
The "spa for necromancers" options are plausible and very interesting, of course- but frankly, our knowledge of necromancy and how it works are a bit shaky, and even a natural affinity doesn't guarantee you won't screw up when you are (again) utterly untutored in magic.
The "prison for ancient magical being" option is plausible, but
deeply worrying. Ancient magical beings that have been imprisoned for long periods of time are not safe cellmates; they are entities that are likely willing to do nearly anything to escape, who may have been imprisoned for a reason, and who may well be very 'hungry' in some dangerous sense. All this is especially relevant to a girl who is (again) utterly untutored in magic.
Excuse me, but I disagree. Our instincts on the subject are mixed, in point of fact. They're more intrigued tempered with caution than 'NOPE NOPE NOPE', by my reading. And we have some affinity with the necromantic. A pool of blood is right up our alley, frankly. Especially if it's close enough to water for our elementals to absorb the power there.
Melia's instincts are mixed. Melia is, we have noted, curious to a fault, to the point where almost any dangerous environment she might walk into would have some element of "oooh shiny" in her eyes.
Meanwhile, my own instincts are going "NOPE NOPE NOPE" and I am trying to articulate why.
If you've got an affinity with the necromantic, there are a lot of places other people would avoid that are wonderful for you. Same with being an elementalist. This place could be good for either one, honestly, and we have both (though obviously more alignment with the elemental than the necromantic).
Look, I'm going to try to be fair, you have a
point about the necromancy aspect. However, this is still the sort of place I'd be a lot more confident of being able to survive in, if I knew Melia had some ability to create basic wards and defenses. And that her familiar creatures (elementals, spirits, etc.) were powerful enough to be effective counterattackers against the typical sort of magical threat.
Sorry for the double post but I am on my phone so editing the quotes in wpuld of been tricky...
So I asked as to have clarification on the nature of the game - since not being lethal at the start is diffrent then nit being an immediate doom. I basically wanted to know if, for this choice, any path would lock us into a bad end. The reply I got indicates that if we do die it will be do our choices beyond mere destination.
Also none of the options are trap votes, as stated in the GMs note, having the bad end from this vote be 9 updates from now would still make it a trap vote.
Uh... what if this is a vote that leads us into a situation where, say, there is a 50% chance of Melia dying if we don't make the right choices further down the line? That's not a "trap vote" in that it isn't certain death
just because we took that vote. We still get a second chance to avoid death. Or Melia gets to roll a skill check to avoid death. Or something.
But if we keep pursuing options like that,
sooner or later the law of averages catches up with us. Sooner or later we'd take a wrong turn, and death would happen. As Alivaril notes, we do not have an automatic Path to Victory ability that lets us foresee a correct set of solutions to every problem. We can't just assume that because "there are no trap options," we are
literally unable to vote to put Melia in situations where she might come to a bad end.
Moreover, all Alivaril actually said is that we would be warned of danger in advance. Alivaril might, quite reasonably, consider the existing description of the pool of blood a valid warning of danger! We have an unseen voice talking about "the fear," we have a giant pool of magically energized blood, we have Melia
explicitly wondering to herself about "You vaguely wonder if this sort of thing is what people were thinking of when they claimed 'curiosity kills.' It's a room
full of blood. Shouldn't you be running away
(screaming is optional) instead of seriously considering it?"
I mean, do you expect Alivaril to clearly mark all risky quest vote options with big bold letters saying
"IF YOU DO THIS, YOU MIGHT DIE!" Because I don't think we can expect Alivaril to do that. But if so, that means we have to pay attention to context clues to spot possible dangers in advance, and we have to recognize that Alivaril will give us options that expose Melia to danger, and that this is
NOT just bad QMing.
The GM will punish us for poor choices, but not this choice - likely due to thw lack of information we can realasticly get. If we get punished here then every interesting optipn will be shunned henceforth giving us a poor story and a poor quest.
There are lots of wonderful and exciting things Melia can do that don't start with "hey, let's dive into the lake of blood and join the unknown singing person who's talking about telling each other stories to "forget about the fear!" "
