Esquestria: The House of the Sun - A pony cultist experience

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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Dear reader! Whether you are new here, archive-reading and whatnot, or you are already someone who has been with us for quite a while, I would like to say a few words that I believe are best kept close to mind.

-This is an MLP quest. And more importantly, none of us are gratuitously cruel. So good things will happen on this quest, and I hope that enough good things have already happened to prove that.
-This is also a horror quest, so bad things will happen. Bad things might happen to good characters if you are not able to protect them, and you most certainly will not be able to intervene if you lack the tools to do so.
-And finally, this is a quest in which you jostle with powers greater than yourself, with all that it entails.

Please, do keep those things in mind as you go forward. But ultimately, this is also a quest in which it is hoped we all have fun! So if any of the above points is not exactly your cup of tea, or somehow make the experience as a whole "not worth it", then this quest might not be for you. Which is fine! Individual tastes are a thing, so don't think any more about it if you don't want to read anymore. And regardless, I hope you have a lovely day!

Kaelor said:
PSA for whoever needs to hear it:

Readers should take their own mental health into consideration when voting and not subject themselves to triggering narrative elements like rape or constant mental torture of a friend just for the Greatest Good of a world that doesn't exist.

If those are fine for you or Regrettable is even more triggering, then GREAT! More power to you. But you aren't a bad or selfish person for picking the option that keeps the characters you've emotionally connected with safe. [REDACTED for spoiler warning]

This is a high intensity quest that doesn't hold back when it comes to horror and negative consequences. Take care of yourself.
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(Quote slightly edited to avoid spoilers)
 
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Ericwinter said:
Selene pops at the end of four turns from now—with the next being the first of those—I think Windigoes are just needed by next Cult meeting, not immediately, and Shining Armor is coming at the end of next turn, not the turn after.
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Not doing your job gets you axed, and Jade hasnt done hers in a while...

Not that we should summon Windigos. But perhaps we should tell Jade to summon a mare. For her own safety.

Without telling the rest of the cult how. She can do it at our place.
 
googlyeyesultra said:
What are all of our deadlines at the moment? Obviously getting caught is an unknown timer, but stuff like...

End of next turn we can accept Lunar Bureau offer.
Windigoes required by end of next turn.
Cult lore level upgrade required by end of next turn.
Selene timer? I'm not sure how many more turns we need on that, at this point.
Shining Armor rescue mission for Twilight - is it turn after next? Beginning or end of that turn?
Probably keeping Daughter of Axes summoned so that the cult can't summon her?
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Selene, if we stick to the optimal timeline, should be restored T18.

We can accept the Bureau job at end of T15.

Shining Armor is showing up at end of T15.

DoA will presumably expire at the end of T17 if we don't meet whatever her conditions for renewal are.

Baldomare becomes available for summoning again on T18.

Is here anything else I'm forgetting?

Edit: The next cult meeting will be at the end of T16
 
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zxzx24 said:
Not that we should summon Windigos. But perhaps we should tell Jade to summon a mare. For her own safety.

Without telling the rest of the cult how. She can do it at our place.
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I... feel like that would be even fisher than if she didn't summon anything?

Also Jade, at least, does have the option of hiding out in our basement. :V

Whether or not it's a good option though...
 
zxzx24 said:
Not doing your job gets you axed, and Jade hasnt done hers in a while...

Not that we should summon Windigos. But perhaps we should tell Jade to summon a mare. For her own safety.

Without telling the rest of the cult how. She can do it at our place.
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True, but the warnings specifically call us out as having to do something every turn, but not her. And he tells her to hand them out to the others as needed, which implies she is meant to keep hold of them. She could probably excuse a turn as needing to prepare a safe place.
 
My plan to heal Twilight's Horn is... hmm. Can't do that and do manifests. I think there's like... 2 or 3 manifests needed to raise even the closest up to 3 rn?
 
Aranfan said:
My plan to heal Twilight's Horn is... hmm. Can't do that and do manifests. I think there's like... 2 or 3 manifests needed to raise even the closest up to 3 rn?
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Two actions minimum, if you're counting the reading action for Forge and Lantern books as one of those. If you had already considered that in the plan, it would only be one.
 
Bleh, even a full Forge reading action will bring us to Forge 1 +Forge 2 + 2/3 Forge 3. We'd need a manifest action to fulfill or orders for this month.

I think we may be able to help Jade delay the Windigo summoning by telling her to publically investigate what happened during the expedition with the Windigos. Then, since some cultists disappeared seemingly in connection to the Windigos, clearly something new needs to done in terms of how they're summoned etc. It's a delaying tactic basically.

So we have locked in:
  • One action for reading
  • One action for summoning
  • One action for talking to Comet Feet with Fluttershy present (right after he's been given the order to kill those who try to leave)
  • An unknown number of Fleeting Actions
  • An unknown number of actions to prepare for the Expedition to rescue Twilight

Selene Timeline:
  1. This turn she learns the last lesson of Winter
    • We need 1 Winter scrap by the end of this turn
  2. Next turn she learns the last lesson of Knock
    • No action needed
  3. The turn after next she learns the last lesson of Edge
    • We need 1 Edge scrap by the end of the turn after next
 
I'm hoping for useful fleeting actions... maybe something related to Windy again, CERTAINLY something about Comet and Fluttershy, and who knows what else.


...If we end up killing Windy, are we admitting to Stormchaser?
 
We should probably just spend the action to raise a cult lore level at least one month. After a month, we'll have joined the Bureau - which we probably can't hide, to be honest, but it'll give us a reasonable excuse to stop working as closely with the cult. It does strengthen the cult a bit, but the other cult members would presumably be able to do the same thing in a few actions, so it's probably not that important.

The Windigo thing is a bigger issue, though the cult can also I think do that without Jade's help. I don't think we can get away with her not doing it, absent maybe summoning something else. I wonder if we can improperly seal the Windigos, maybe? Set it up so in like 6 months after we're clear of the cult they break loose, go ballistic and rampage in all of the cult headquarters? It's a bit monstrous, but not really more so than just giving the cult Windigos to do with as they will.
 
We should toss our cult jobs and just use all our actions to help smooth out our betrayal.

No point in helping out people who will become our enemies.
 
Pittauro said:
If we end up killing Windy, are we admitting to Stormchaser?
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...no. No we should not cause yet another marital crisis.

googlyeyesultra said:
The Windigo thing is a bigger issue, though the cult can also I think do that without Jade's help. I don't think we can get away with her not doing it, absent maybe summoning something else. I wonder if we can improperly seal the Windigos, maybe? Set it up so in like 6 months after we're clear of the cult they break loose, go ballistic and rampage in all of the cult headquarters? It's a bit monstrous, but not really more so than just giving the cult Windigos to do with as they will.
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Uh, you do realize that would mean Ponyville and Manehattan would get nuked by Windigos, right? If anything, that's worse that just giving them the Windigos.
 
zxzx24 said:
Mmm.

What do you think Stormchaser would say if we did tell him we were planning on killing Windy Flakes?
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With horror and desperately trying to convince us not to because Stormchaser is, ultimately, still a Normal Pony?

Edit: Also, like, if we wanted to get away with telling Stormchaser about murder and murder plans, we took the wrong Convincements (or w/e they were called) for that.
 
So, for the record, I am still against raising the cult's Lore levels.

But, for the sake of argument, which two would we go for if we wanted to try and keep up the facade of loyalty?

Forge is the most likely choice as one of them, since it would only take one manuscript after a reading action. Leaving Lantern, Heart, Grail, or Knock as potential seconds.

Raising Grail would be an awful idea for what I think should be obvious reasons. Lantern would probably cost the least AP after Forge, but is also one of the more directly useful Lores...
 
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!

Ahem

BirdBodhisattva said:
Failing to obey your orders (either you or Jade) will incur in suspicion, which in turn ticks a [TRIGGER EVENT] clock. It is your understanding that you have good will accumulated with the Master, and that Jade might not have as much, if at all. But (as a QM) I very much dislike people seeing good will and favor as quantifiable resources. And your Master is also Moth-aligned. So I discourage trying to push your luck by not doing something, because it might very well blow up on your face once somepony or somecreature reacts in a perfectly reasonable way.
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We're planning to basically have our preparations done by the end of this turn, and we're doing something that will probably be a Trigger Event in itself, so I think we just ignore these orders. We don't want the Cult to have a stockpile of Windigoes, we don't want them to have high Lore levels, and we don't want them to have the Level 3 Cult infrastructure. Maybe we get away with it until the next Cult meeting, maybe we don't, it probably doesn't matter much either way.
 
Greymere said:
So, for the record, I am still against raising the cult's Lore levels.

But, for the sake of argument, which two would we go for if we wanted to try and keep up the facade of loyalty?

Forge is the most likely choice as one of them, since it would only take one manuscript after a reading action. Leaving Lantern, Heart, Grail, or Knock as potential seconds.

Raising Grail would be an awful idea for what I think should be obvious reasons. Lantern would probably cost the least AP after Forge, but is also one of the more directly useful Lores...
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Knock or Lantern. Personally I lean towards Knock, they don't have much normal summoning except Windigoes which they can already manage, and Lantern would make it much harder for us to use Moth against them. Also the only other summon we know of is Lantern, and they'll probably find it eventually.
 
Greymere said:
But, for the sake of argument, which two would we go for if we wanted to try and keep up the facade of loyalty?
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we could probably go with only one if we then used the lunar bureau/shining visit as an excuse for why we missed our target the second month, I think.

Of course that might not be worth it though. And while I could be fine with giving the cult ONE lvl 3 (remember though that THAT means they get some kind of cult-wide skill/infrastructure for that lore!), I'm not really fine with the Windigoes.

...we have to see what the fleeting moments action are, but there's a good chance that we'll leave the cult by the end of these two turns and trigger this event
 
Pittauro said:
Of course that might not be worth it though. And while I could be fine with giving the cult ONE lvl 3 (remember though that THAT means they get some kind of cult-wide skill/infrastructure for that lore!), I'm not really fine with the Windigoes.
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That does actually give me worries about giving them Forge 3. I suspect it might have something to do with Lore items getting spread more, whether that be low level reagents or very weak artifacts. Both of which make their rituals a lot more dangerous.

Then again, widespread artifacts could help spill the Lores to the general population, and give us a chance to integrate them into the bureau.
 
Greymere said:
With horror and desperately trying to convince us not to because Stormchaser is, ultimately, still a Normal Pony?

Edit: Also, like, if we wanted to get away with telling Stormchaser about murder and murder plans, we took the wrong Convincements (or w/e they were called) for that.
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What would he suggest instead?

Yeah. You guys just had to keep him from going to Dull Glass -_- having Dull Glass in position to take the cult down would have made things so much easier.

I'd teach the cult heart personally :V
 
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So, possible plan.

We fake Jade's death as a 'failed summoning ritual'. She gets hidden in our basement and sent to the lunar bureau to hide/set up circles as soon as we accept the offer.

We send shining armor after copper (maybe by planting clues in the library, maybe just by telling him) in Manehattan, then sneak in and rescue twilight while he kicks in the front door. If the master finds out we used shining to kill copper- well, they expected more backstabbing, and she did just get promoted 'above' us, and since it's an independent branch now it's not going to hurt us to sacrifice it...

We recruit shining armor by healing twilight in front of him. We justify waiting to Twilight by pointing to shining and us 'needing' his help to rescue her.

And we lie through our teeth about our own job until we leave.

We use the threat of shining to keep windy's head down with the wolfy stuff for now- send him to hunt Windy in the other city, if needed.

We use copper and windy's franchises to justify our own with the lunar bureau, and if needed we justify dropping the writing task because we had 'an unmissable opportunity' at the palace. If the master really wants the cult to learn lores, he can teach them herself.
 
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Glau said:
We send shining armor after copper (maybe by planting clues in the library, maybe just by telling him) in Manehattan, then sneak in and rescue twilight while he kicks in the front door. If the master finds out we used shining to kill copper- well, they expected more backstabbing, and she did just get promoted 'above' us, and since it's an independent branch now it's not going to hurt us to sacrifice it...
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Shining doesn't show up until the end of the turn. By which we should have rescued Twilight already, unless something goes terribly, terribly wrong.

Edit: Trying to sic the guards on the Ponyville cult though... maybe? Really depends on how long they're sticking around and weather enough of the thread could be convinced to do so.

Glau said:
We recruit shining armor by healing twilight in front of him. We justify waiting to Twilight by pointing to shining and us 'needing' his help to rescue her.
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Bird has already said that revealing anything about the Lores to anyone in authority is a no go.

BirdBodhisattva said:
So, take this as provisional WoG: "Velvet Covers may not reveal to anypony of import that she knows the Lores, due to her fear that if the future is discovered in the future as knowing the Lores a trace might be made back to her, when it comes to previous actions."
Use this to veto any brilliant plans you have.
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Glau said:
We fake Jade's death as a 'failed summoning ritual'. She gets hidden in our basement and sent to the lunar bureau to hide/set up circles as soon as we accept the offer.
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All the rest aside, summoning rituals usually require other circle members. At least, when it's not a bunch of novices trying something they have no Lore levels in or proper instructions.
 
Greymere said:
I don't know and I don't really care because asking him for input on murder plans is a silly idea.
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Kill him, drive him insane, imprison him, convince him to not pursue the wolf.

We have lots of options. Glad people are warming up to the idea of dealing with him though. Very much so.

I've gotta temper my expectations though. Dont want to get too optimistic.
 
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