So we finished Fuyuki.
Closer to two years but it is done. And now, this is the part where I open up the QM curtains and for you all to see what the decisions made lead up to. And considering that this Chapter might have ended with both Masters potentially dead, I don't think I need to relay what Bad Ends might have occurred.
Instead, I am going to relay again the three corners of grading. The meta centerpieces that led to the results as viewed. They are:
- Rolls. Self-explanatory. As designed, I used d100s to be intentionally swingy with just enough bonus to make things suitably dramatic. Other, smaller, dice sizes will be used for certain rolls that signify game mechanics like Battle Continuation. I may phase the more tabletoppy elements down the line though. Mostly because rolls alone would not save you from the narratives. Speaking of…
- Planning. Having plans of action is good. In other news, water is wet. Whether within Singularities or in Chaldea Turns, resources and costs would need to be managed properly. In this, synergies and anti-synergies would have to be considered with some degree of care. Speaking of costs though…
- Judgement Calls. Or opportunity costs. These are the cumulative weight of… karma seems like a good word for it. Basically, the snap judgements and calls made in the Quest to prioritize and lock certain courses of action will have consequences. One can consider this more important than the other two due to their propensity to flat out make one automatically pass or fail rolls and enable other courses of actions.
With the grading triangle elaborated, how
did you all fare?
Rolls: You have rolled surprisingly well, both seen and unseen rolls. Of interest would be the fact that made the strike against Salter to be an anti-climactic affair- more on that later. The other ones would be the fact that Billy managed to completely
bowl over EMIYA. That one was a
sequence.
Let me clip the most
ridiculous part of that:
>Archer really not going down without a fight?
[70]
>Nope, EMIYA Genes
>Disengaging?
[68]
>Disengaged
>Bow and arrow?
[9]
>"Get down here, y'damn fool!"
>Marksmanship Skill Activates (All Hits Extra Fatal)
= 88 =
>o o f
>EMIYA falls down.
>That's a surprisingly easy fight...is that really all?
[8]
>Yup.
>That was hardly a duel at all.
>...is it really all?
[7]
So yeah. 'Course, you do not have a monopoly on dice rolls being good. To that, we return to the Yorokobe Interrupt. As a forewarning, don't expect me to draw the curtain
this far next time. Mostly because there's no Yorokobe in other Singus to sap the luck so badly
Main Group
>Nearly there on the bridge
>Severity of complications against the group?
[74]
>Roll below 40 or Yorokobe
[81]
>Romani Interrupt?
= 18 =
>"W-Wha-"
>THE PRIEST COMETH
>1d4 for Target, in terms of squishiness
[2]
[Medea]
>Dragon Warriors Interception?
= 35 - 15 (Surprise) =
>Incantation of The Divine? (Pass 60)
= 57 - 15 =
>Instinct of an Elemental?
= 47 - 15 =
>Severity
[85]
>The Plucky Master
DC 60, -15 Surprise Malus
= 27 - 15 =
>Medea is incapacitated
> ???
= 5 =
>Priest tracks the closest target
>Ritsuka
>The Fear-Gripped Master?
= 9 - 10 (Lessened Surprise)=
>The Purest Knight
= 11 =
>Is all for naught?
> ???
= 47 =
> Interception of An Elemental, Bent on Revenge
= 39 =
> ???
= 5 =
> Awaken, Magus
= 66 + 20 (Medea's Ministrations) =
= Olga Marie Animusphere Enters =
>The Heir of Chaldea
= 86 =
>Interception Success
>Black Key Strike
[76]
>Black Key Dismissal
= 41 =
>Black Key Hits...
>Resistance against Spiritual
= 65 + 20 =
>Success
>Duet of Shield and Blades
= 60 + 5 (Newfound Cohesion) + 5 (Righteous Fury) =
[27]
>Yorokobe Beaten Back!
>Medea?
= 94 =
>Surprise 3 Line Aria of The Gods
= 8 =
>Utter evasion
= Result: Battleline is set. Update Ends.
As you can see from the rolls though, two other parts of the triangle shows themselves. Speaking of which…
Plans: It's the 'tutorial Singularity', I wasn't going to give you all a
hard time on deciding which plans but due to the interrelation with this and judgement calls, I will say that your decisions on utilizing Resonance and finishing off all three Servants are the
optimal course of actions given...
Judgement Calls/Opportunity Costs:
The vote to tell Olga Marie that she's dead is
not the most tactful as can be. But it was the
fastest option in the long run to cure her. Medea said it in another way:
On that matter, she does not know whether to thank or curse her new Master. Thank her, for the fact that patient is unconscious, which meant that she can operate easier; and due to the fact the cognizance of the Director to her predicament meant that it is easier for Medea to do more..thorough surgery.
If you Questers opted to not tell OMA that she's dead- both in City and Church, it would have made her vulnerable from two death-flags. The first being Kirei, who will be singling
her to take out first. The Black Keys would have made a short work of her, if she- and intervening characters- failed their rolls. The second would have been Flauros doing as canon and attempting to suck her into the CHALDEAS black hole. In this and in order, Billy, Medea, and Hinako would each make consecutive rolls where two out of three of them
must win the roll-offs. Respectively to murder Lev, dispel the CHALDEAS portal, and
quickly pull Olga Marie to safety.
Failure here, of course, means that Olga Marie would be dead.
That plotline done with, we move to the next bit. The Church Votes:
[X] [MEDEA] Fully commit her attention to cure Olga Marie's affliction. The undivided attention of one of the most accomplished Magus from the Age of Gods will allow her to survive past the Rayshift back to Chaldea...and perhaps more.
[] [MEDEA] Only commit half her attention on Olga Marie. As much as completely curing the Director is a thing to accomplish, their battle against the Blackened Servants takes precedent:
-[] Focus half her attention on improving the combat capacity of the Masters. Allowing Hinako to leverage her melee prowess and making Ritsuka less of a combat liability and supporting of the team is a good idea.
-[] Focus half her attention on replenishing herself. Without Master and pitted against three hostile Servants and one Executor, Medea managed to force a fighting retreat. A full-powered Medea, in prime fighting conditions would be even greater, as befitting of her fame.
This voting block is the formation of the general plan made for the Singularity. Regardless, the coffin will be made. But only the 'full commit' option that gives the safety net of OMA 'resurrecting' herself with the potential for the dice roll to allow her waking up before the final duel with Salter.
As for the roads untravelled well... Had 'improving' been taken, Hinako would have access to her canonical blood-swords, which has the nifty feature of being able to, drawing from Medea's Helios lineage, set the blood on fire. As for Gudako, she would have been granted a defensive suite. Or
suit. Sure, the whole Greco-nanomachine deal is decidedly LB5 but Achilles had the Tron power armour aesthetics way back. Alas, we did not get power armoured Guda keeping up with Servants. Why even live ; -;
And for the focus of letting Medea recuperate then well… I had
ideas. Ones that involved a good deal of magical saturation, area denial, and pinning down of Servant-grade oppositions. I would have drawn several notches of inspirations from Touhou for the could-have-beens. Probably a mix of Yuyuko and Okuu's respective purple-flavoured death and nuclear hellfire shenanigans, respectively. Esoteric payload kamikaze skeleton warriors is also one of the things in the cards. Those would have been the safety nets for the Yorokobe.
[] [HINAKO] There's no time like the present. Talk to Medea right away and explain to the Caster about her conditions. Nipping this off the bud would be of substantial good to easing the contract between both Master and Servant.
[] [HINAKO] Give encouragement to Ritsuka. Hinako is not human, but Ritsuka is. And as one of the two people tasked to save the world, as well as being the (bluntly put) worse one, it falls to the Elemental to guide her.
[X] [HINAKO] Clear out the bad blood between her and Shielder. Hinako knows that her action in regards to Olga Marie had soured her relations with the Demi-Servant. After all, the Director had stopped all experimentations on the homunculus and treated her like a human. If nothing else, the Elemental respected the Director for that.
This set of votes are still
technically ongoing. In a way. Medea Talk would have unlocked her Interlude turn by now and made her a more natural confidante to Hinako's secrets. Now though, the way to unlock it… a secret.
Encouragements to the Gudako would have granted her an early resolve. And would have made her look up to Hinako as a senpai even more. The possibility is very distant now that Gudako got "Endurance+" but she would have followed a tad along on being a more combative Master. Considering that not all foes will be Servants… well, that's that. It would also assuage Mashu that Hinako is at
least a bit on the up-and-up.
Speaking of, what got voted is an interesting one. The talk with Mashu has its own votes, of course:
[X] For her peace of mind.
[] For the fate of the world.
[] For Chaldea.
With Medea actively peeping at the matter, this does impact how Hinako is viewed by the two as a sliding scale of sorts because remember, Hinako
is her own character. The lower you go down the list, the less 'truthful' she is. And Medea knows
enough what the fate of inhuman 'monstrous' beings are, even in her times. Picking 'peace of mind' is Hinako being at her most truthful… which shifts Mashu's antagonism to
sheer incredulity and a flare of indignant anger- possibly a chivalric bleed-off from the Perfect Knight, who knows~ It very much resonates with Medea though, considering who her new husband is. Well, was.
The second and third would assuage Mash the more but they well… Medea can smell the Augean Stables from what Hinako's saying. Which is well, obviously would have made her more stand-offish.
All in all, the calls made are good calls. And all three sides of the triangle are solid and reinforce one another, which is why you lot got what is
essentially the Golden Ending of the Singularity. Let's review it in motion:
- You brought everyone along for the ride, this meant that Medea was there to, despite being ganked by Kirei, keep the convoy going to the outskirts of the Fuyuki Grail.
- The journey to the centre of the city had very few stragglers accosting the convoy and then the tag-team crit between Mash and Hinako cleared out the tarpit before Berserker could join the scrum.
- Billy got ultra-lucky and took out EMIYA without him doing his trademark 'fake fade-out'. Which…
- ...means David gets assistance. And the vote went to finishing the job, at the risk of one of the Archer dying and the other disengaging while heavily wounded. Billy nearly did bit the dust here, but Elemental mana-output is a wellspring.
- Hinako chose to take the 1 on 1 fight against Kirei which is well… I didn't need to tell you how that could have gone badly.
- Olga Marie got revived and thus able to contribute her firepower to the fight.
- Everyone made it through without dying.
The key point here? You all pushed through without stopping and took out the three non-Salter foes which means…
Calculating Time Elapsed since exiting the Church...
And yet, static defences are all that barred the way. No ghouls save for pockets of one and twos — heads instantly blown off by a venting Archer — and no amalgams of large make made themselves known.
And as they reached the spacious cavern that hosted the corrupted King of Knights...
Calculation Complete. 50 Minutes Elapsed.
Hidden Goal Reached!
...they find her standing alone. Arms holding her stabbed sword on the ground. A haze of black smoke suffusing her armour, equally black and covers all but her face. An imperious expression is held by the pale King, ashen gold eyes peering to the assembly of Chaldeans.
...See, Grail Mud Corruption takes time but even headstrong as she is, the corrupted Arthuria would be… circumvented given
time. Time is of the essence- without Chaldea's input, the pieces that I set will move and change states.
Chaldea faced Salter alone in her regular blackened raiment. Had ten more minutes passed on the hour mark, Chaldea would have faced Salter with a more protective living armour raiment. Had an hour and fifteen minutes passed, you would have faced her atop a skeletal steed and be a superior maneuverer that would've been hard-pressed to be pinned by the Archers and smoke screen as she was on foot.
Had you somehow faced her on an hour and half mark, you would have had to deal with skeletal flunkies, just as a cherry on the top.
But as it was, well the results can be seen. The Archers pinned Salter down and chipped her armour bits by bits, stalling enough time for the casting duo to do their work and enact the smoke screen, and then allow Hinako an alpha-strike that
normally would have merely severely crippled Salter but well…
The Strike: 100 + 25 (HD) + 15 (Medea's Enhancements) vs 68 + 25 (MB A) + 25 (STR A) - 15 (Smokescreen)
140 vs 103
...yeah. Golden ending.
Do
not expect this to happen again. Not because I wouldn't plan for them- I still will - but because the stakes and the board gets more complex. There isn't going to be a single target to deal with, nor, perhaps, a single win condition. You lads
will make mistakes, and that's fine~
Because there will
never be a single point of failure. Because even in failure or seeming ones, there's a silver lining and a path forward. And that is how I simulate this Quest.
If you have any questions with regards to Fuyuki, feel free to ask. This is, after all, the
broad strokes. There's numerous details that I might not have elaborated because this is pushing 1.7K words and I'd rather not get too verbose. Answers might come in 'this is classified' or cryptic variants though. Some of the things are still in motion, after all~
Also, please give feedbacks and/or comments as well, the QM needs it.
