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Dragon Ball: After the End

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KaintukeeBob said:
I see what you did there.

Vague won, and also you were vague about what made your night so great.

The uncertainty to which statement your closing statement was intended to regard causes humor. I have been told that dissecting humor removes the humor. I would apologize, but I am not sorry.

Can...can I have my handcuffs back after you wipe them down?
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My wife and I were fighting; now we are not. I'm told that gloating is unseemly, so I'll refrain. :rolleyes:

No. They're my handcuffs now. :rofl:

In any case, folks, update shall arrive tonight.
 
PoptartProdigy said:
No. They're my handcuffs now.
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I'm glad I didn't loan you the cattle prod, then. Those are expensive to replace.

In any case, we are the Scion and we're going to be telling the Heirs of several Houses that this is an important matter that they don't want to splash on them. They should generally be savvy enough to get it.

In other news, I was wondering what sort of video games tend to be popular on Garenhuld. Most popular games in our world have adventure or exploration components. Other popular franchises look for creativity, puzzle solving, and imagination.

I'm pretty certain that no self-respecting Garenhulder would ever willingly play Skyrim - the roads aren't clearly marked and the exploration required to get through the game would give them heart attacks.

Or are their video games more along the lines of 'Theater Troupe Manager' and 'SimCivilization 2000', with a healthy dose of Pong?
 
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Quest Declined
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Be vague: It's a matter of political disagreements.

    Quest Declined
    ​
    You glance down at your hands, fiddling with your nails. "We argue a lot when politics come up. And politics always come up."

    Dillon frowns. "What, that's it? That's the only reason you have for pissing off the Lady Vegeta? You know, the woman who-"

    Abruptly, Dillon pitches forward, gagging; Fennella sits back, pulling back her fist from his stomach. "Shut it, dummy."

    "Oh, come on!" he whines, trying to sit up straight. "What, I'm not allowed to call it like I see it?"

    "Not if I don't like it," she replies, smirking. "Besides, it's obvious that there's more to it than that. Kakara just doesn't want to tell us."

    You wince. "Was it that obvious?"

    "I mean, we asked for gossip and you basically didn't answer us," she replies, shrugging. "You're usually a lot better about this stuff, so I figured that there wasn't any way you'd be that rude unless you were trying to let us know that we shouldn't ask."

    You gape at her. "Rude?!"

    "Kinda," she says. "Maybe not if you were bad at this kind of stuff and didn't realize that you weren't actually answering, but you're really good at it. You'd know that it wasn't a real answer, so you'd know that it was rude. And we're your friends, so I'm guessing that you were trying to clue us to back off rather than trying to insult our intelligence."

    You blink, slightly taken off guard by that summation. You glance at Tabe to see if he has an opinion.

    He shifts under your gaze. "I...guess she's not wrong?" he says, rubbing the back of his neck. "I wasn't going to call you rude, but I got the rest of that stuff..."

    "And I get hit when I try to say what's on my mind," grumbles Dillon.

    Tabe shrugs. "Hey, man, you're the one who mouthed off in front of your girlfriend."

    Dillon chokes. "Excuse me, what? Girlfriend? What are you talking about?"

    Watching Fenn slowly go red in the face, you lean back slightly. Just enough to be out of the blast radius.

    Dillon frowns, glancing at Fenn with a nervous expression. "Are you- I mean, are we- are you my-?"

    "I don't know, Dillon," says Fenn, looking straight ahead with a perfectly level expression. "What do you think?"

    The poor boy actually takes that as a serious question, casting his eyes up in thought. You lean back a little more, and, out of the corner of your eye, see Tabe doing the same. You don't look over, though; you can't bring yourself to look away from the impending explosion.

    "I...guess maybe?" says Dillon. "I'm not sure, though, because we never actually talked about it. But there was that time last-"

    "You are not finishing that sentence," hisses Fenn, her cheeks practically glowing.

    Dillon blinks, for the first time appearing to notice the danger. "I- I'm not?"

    "You are not."

    He nods. "I...okay. Sure."

    You and Tabe trade glances as the atmosphere turns stifling and silent. Nobody says anything. Dillon begins to realize more and more that, were it not for your presence, Fennella would probably be gutting him right now.

    It's when you see that knowledge creeping into his eyes that you finally decide to just reach over, lay a hand on Tabe's knee-

    vip

    -and leave Dillon to his fate. Scion or not, you do not want to be in the middle of that.

    Like the title says; Quest Declined.


    Days begin to blur together as you enter the final preparations for the Unsealing. Given your role in things, you primarily spend your time with Dandelor Senzu.

    "Once you get Jaron here, we're going to need to talk fast in order to explain to him what's going on," says the Sorcerer, walking you around the walls of Hall Senzu. "Otherwise he'll struggle -- understandably -- and possibly throw off our attempt at freeing Jaffur. It's a...very delicate procedure, on my end."

    "Well, if we can get him to remember, making him hold still won't be a problem," you say, looking down.

    Dandelor winces. "...yeah. Yeah, I remember. I wish there was another option. The boy's been through enough. But we have to stop this somehow."

    "I know," you say. "I..." You sigh. "I'm sick of all the ways out leading through somebody. Someone always has to be in the way."

    "That's pretty typical," mutters Dandelor. "Not saying it's good, but...there's a person to go with every position, no matter how deranged. If you can imagine it existing, people have figured out how somebody would reach it. If people have figured out how somebody would reach it, at least one of them winds up convincing themself."

    You shake your head; you don't know what to say.

    Dandelor rolls his neck. "Anyway. Once you convince Jaron to let us work, I'll make sure to isolate him from Jaffur, and Jaffur can cut loose. He'll burn down the Seal from the inside, and that'll be that. We'll be done. We take it to Lord Berra and get him on board. Dandeer doesn't have a leg to stand on..." An eager grin flickers across his lips. "...justice."

    You shudder slightly at the thirsty note in his voice. "You really, really hate her."

    He schools his expression to blankness and glances at you. "So do you."

    You grimace. "Yeah. You hate her like Jaron hates her, though. Like it's personal."

    "She Sealed my nephew. She's destroying my Clan. My House is in hiding because of her. She insults my art with every breath she takes," says Dandelor. "I've been waiting a long time for this."
    Deceit: DC 65; 92; Pass.
    You blink, and lean on your power level for a moment to shoot him a look faster than he can track. He wears a sneer of sheer, personal hatred. He said it himself; he was never close enough to Jaffur to form a direct communication spell. You don't doubt that he loves his nephew, but he wasn't close enough to inspire this kind of loathing. Clans are too impersonal to really work up this much spite. Houses are closer, but his rage is so much more personal. He feels wronged on an individual basis. And his art...that's too abstract. It's out of step with the image of the man you've built up to now. He loves magic, but not enough to nearly salivate over the thought of Dandeer dying in agony for the crime of misusing it.

    You blink, looking away as the world speeds up again, and realize: he is lying. Dandeer did something to him personally. It must have been years ago, even before the Sealing, but still it's personal enough to have left a scar; bad enough that he's still glimmering with spite and hatred even after all the time he's had.
    Intrigue: DC 80; 78; Pass.
    What you can't figure out is what it was. What on Earth could it possibly have been? You know how Dandeer holds grudges. She was ready to attack you if she could get away with it. She never does somebody a small injury. She doesn't let things go. She doesn't hurt somebody this badly and then leave them walking around to do something about it.

    What happened?


    Dandelor has slipped. What is his secret?

    [ ] About that. Dandelor? Spill.
    [ ] None of your business, is what it is. We all have reasons to hate Dandeer. Sorcerers often know each other, and people don't always match in how much they hate each other. You hated Dandeer for years before she ever reciprocated. Maybe Dandelor's just better about being subtle than you are.
    [ ] Write-in.

    MANUAL MORATORIUM. APPROVAL VOTING.

    The pace continues; we're starting to tie down loose ends before the end arrives. Events will keep on accelerating. For now, though:

    Days left until the Unsealing: 21.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • So, do we want to risk alienating one of our greatest weapons against dandeer by asking, or do we want to risk having our best magic user go too far in order to hurt Dandeer without our knowledge?
     
    I feel like we should just mention that we know that is not all it is and ask him if it is going to be relevant, unless you guys think it will impair his judgment enough we should force his issue into the open and try to talk him through it?
     
    Uh guys? Potential flaw in the un-Sealing planas written. If we're not telling Berra what happened on the night before the Sealing until after we've already kidnapped Jaron and started magicking him up, there's a much higher risk of Berra going on the warpath and doing something aggressive that results in a violent confrontation. Dandeer will contact Berra, her only ally, almost immediately as soon as she realizes Jaron is missing, and she'll probably realize that quickly given that we know she has sensors of some kind monitoring her son and husband. Anti-tampering seals, if you will.

    Furthermore, Berra has pre-built hostility towards the Senzus. More than anyone else, he's the guy the Senzus are hiding from. There is a considerable danger in my opinion that if we don't convince Berra to be neutral and step out of the way before grabbing Jaron, things could get ugly over a misunderstanding.

    PoptartProdigy said:
    "Not if I don't like it," she replies, smirking. "Besides, it's obvious that there's more to it than that. Kakara just doesn't want to tell us."

    You wince. "Was it that obvious?"

    "I mean, we asked for gossip and you basically didn't answer us," she replies, shrugging. "You're usually a lot better about this stuff, so I figured that there wasn't any way you'd be that rude unless you were trying to let us know that we shouldn't ask."

    You gape at her. "Rude?!"

    "Kinda," she says. "Maybe not if you were bad at this kind of stuff and didn't realize that you weren't actually answering, but you're really good at it. You'd know that it wasn't a real answer, so you'd know that it was rude. And we're your friends, so I'm guessing that you were trying to clue us to back off rather than trying to insult our intelligence."
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    Fennella, now, sounds like she's politics-and-intrigue specced. Tabe, impressively, seems to be landing somewhere in between the other two in subtlety. Maybe not as purely a punching specialist as I'd thought, just very much not having come into his own yet.

    [ ] About that. Dandelor? Spill.
    [ ] None of your business, is what it is. We all have reasons to hate Dandeer. Sorcerers often know each other, and people don't always match in how much they hate each other. You hated Dandeer for years before she ever reciprocated. Maybe Dandelor's just better about being subtle than you are.
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    @PoptartProdigy :

    I assume, but just wanted to check for the record, that if we pick 'Spill,' Kakara isn't going to be that blunt and brusque about asking him to explain himself. I mean, if she crit-failed a Communications check maybe she'd talk to someone like that, but normally I'd expect her to be smoother when circumstances permit her to be, more or less as Fennella pointed out.

    Cariyaga said:
    We had the opportunity to get the heirs of other clans in on our conspiracy and chose not to.
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    To be fair, they were assets of very doubtful utility. We have plenty of muscle for what's coming, the job of laying political groundwork is already being done by Apra and Yammar who have been contacting house heads, not heirs, and relying on other teenagers (one of them Dillon :p ) to keep a secret well enough to avoid tipping anyone off is problematic.

    Lost Egos said:
    I feel like we should just mention that we know that is not all it is and ask him if it is going to be relevant, unless you guys think it will impair his judgment enough we should force his issue into the open and try to talk him through it?
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    Well, if we-the-players aren't really concerned with keeping Dandeer alive, we can probably afford not to worry about it too much. If we are thus concerned, it's a lot more of an issue.
     
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    Simon_Jester said:
    I assume, but just wanted to check for the record, that if we pick 'Spill,' Kakara isn't going to be that blunt and brusque about asking him to explain himself. I mean, if she crit-failed a Communications check maybe she'd talk to someone like that, but normally I'd expect her to be smoother when circumstances permit her to be, more or less as Fennella pointed out.
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    You assume correctly. Generally, votes will not reflect exact wording save when quotation marks are used.
     
    You know, this update brings up the very scary possibility that Dillon might actually be worse at intrigue than Tabe. Good in that the next Head of Mato is unlikely to plot against us, bad in that they seem to be becoming our support base/liutenants.
     
    I any case, I believe it's time to open the vote.
    Bakkasama said:
    You know, this update brings up the very scary possibility that Dillon might actually be worse at intrigue than Tabe. Good in that the next Head of Mato is unlikely to plot against us, bad in that they seem to be becoming our support base/liutenants.
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    Dillon is a very straightforward boy, and one who's presently in that stage where he's thinking with his, "Real men make hard decisions without considering their emotions," conviction. He's the, "Hard men make hard decisions while hard," phenomenon, but in a barely-teenaged boy, where it's supposed to be. Thus why his absolute first response to Kakara's explanation is to chide her for letting personal feelings get in the way of doing her job -- even though Kakara explicitly stated that those feelings are the result of very real political differences. Of course, he's still a teenager; he doesn't actually exemplify this philosophy. No teen exemplifies the half-formed ideologies they espouse. But it's his latest intellectual toy with which to play, and he's fond of it.

    Tabe, meanwhile, is in his, "fixate on a rival," stage without having an actual rival, and somewhat lacks direction because of it. He defines himself by comparisons to others, and he's either so far ahead of his peers as to make competition pointless, or they're Kakara, and he's crushing on them while trying to remain at a respectful distance; not prime rival material. He'd probably latch onto Jaffur, if Jaffur was around. Fenn is in an extended, "big sister," stage, resulting from her actual younger siblings and her close friendship with Kakara, who often falls into a little sister role around Fenn. This has the side effect of being a, "needs to be right," stage, which is why she's so tactlessly blunt about showing off how she figured out Kakara's barely-hidden message to back off, in the update.

    Of course, while Kakara is aware of the above, she doesn't really think of it that way. Her thoughts on Dillon and Tabe can roughly be summed up as, "Ugh, boys," while her thoughts on Fenn are a mix of appreciating her big sister figure and getting annoyed when Fenn gets the bit between her teeth.
     
    So Tabe would like to have a rival? I mean, Jaron seems to have fixed Maya in said role and vice versa. Maybe Betarel? Though he doesn't seem that competitive...
     
    Declining that quest is probably a good thing, TBH. Our plan already has a lot of failure points and I'm not sure how much they could have brought to the table.
     
    PoptartProdigy said:
    Dandelor shifts nervously. "He couldn't ask his mother, because he didn't trust her to keep it a secret from his father, and Lord Vegeta would never have approved. And forget asking the Gokun. And given that there are no other Vegetan Sorcerers -- more on that later-"

    "Focus, Dandelor," says Raditz, sounding dazed.
    "-right, sorry, later, given that there are no other Vegetan Sorcerers, I was his only choice. So. Jaffur passed. He's a Sorcerer, completely untrained. And it was meant to be a secret I thought I could keep because the Seal took, and I figured that he couldn't have thrown up any counterspells if that happened and the point was moot. But, it turns out, he changed the very nature of the spell into one that keeps himself awake and creates somebody else to be the Masque. I can even see how it would happen now that I know it happened, not that I think he meant to achieve that. I doubt he even meant to cast a spell or do anything beyond resist in general. But he was transformed and we all know that dumping ki into a spell can supercharge it and make it do weird things." His jaw snaps shut. "And...that's that. And now I'm going to have to apologize to him for sharing this secret once we get him out, too."
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    I'm guessing it has something to do with this.
     
    [X] None of your business, is what it is. We all have reasons to hate Dandeer. Sorcerers often know each other, and people don't always match in how much they hate each other. You hated Dandeer for years before she ever reciprocated. Maybe Dandelor's just better about being subtle than you are.
    I dont want to risk getting a crit fail, and alienating one of the essential parts of unsealing Jaron TBH
     
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