[Exalted, ?] Most High

Yeah, the trade off is either "Grab Ambition's remaining Evocations within our grasp" or "Instantly master the Storm Armor of Shogun Feng". The latter might be useful by dint of giving us some Innate keywords to permalearn even if we ever return it.
This got me thinking: I don't know the exact mechanics of Innate permalearn you mentioned, but in the possibility of returning the armor like you said and revoking the Evocations, would we still get the XP "returned" to us, even when we kind of conjured it out of nothing?
Three words.

God King's Shrike.

We can start all Manner of shenanagans with a well timed natural disaster, especially if we pin it to the actions of one of the other players.
It has the problem of cast time of a week. But if we pull it off...

Ulyssian: The Dragon's have answered my prayers! The doom of our enemy approaches!
*A blinding light comes from the horizon, followed by an earth-shattering kaboom*

I would pay to see Anys reacting to that.:p
 
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This got me thinking: I don't know the exact mechanics of Innate permalearn you mentioned, but in the possibility of returning the armor like you said and revoking the Evocations, would we still get the XP "returned" to us, even when we kind of conjured it out of nothing?

It has the problem of cast time of a week. But if we pull it off...

Ulyssian: The Dragon's have answered my prayers! The doom of our enemy approaches!
*A blinding light comes from the horizon, followed by an earth-shattering kaboom*

I would pay to see Anys reacting to that.:p

Yeah, we can only use it once, but a giant hammer from the heavens at the right time can be decisive.
 
Does Zao have the standing needed to challenge "Hesiah" to a duel? If so, giving him Ambition and letting him wait a year, then challenging Ayns to a duel could work. She expects a DBed. She gets a Solar tier fighter instead.

Or hell, simply assassinate her.
 
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Once per Story or Once Ever or Once per Season or what?
Once per season.

[X] Serentidopolis
[X] Lend Moon Ambition


Luseng is interesting to me, but the prospect of Moon with Ambition is moreso, and I'm not suicidal enough to cripple our combat power before heading off to the hottest of hot zones. As for rationalizing this...? Well. Consider that we failed to heed Ambition's advice in the tournament; we are now reaping the fruits of that failure and by being marginalized, pushed to the periphery where all we can do is fight and die, bereft of the opportunities for real change. Perhaps we should give the Blade of Odyssial to someone who isn't being exiled to the ass end of nowhere, someone who isn't under as much surveillance and receiving the amount of religious ire that Zao is. Someone who can, given a degree of latitude by Anys' own plans for her, forge her own way within the Realm while we work to forestall its enemies. Someone like Empty Moon.
 
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[X] Serentidopolis
This one seems more interesting than Luseng, and plays more to our strengths, giving us a better chance to use our recently acquired Arch-Predictionism. I might lean the other way if we had just picked up a bunch of war charms, but we got Lore charms instead. Let's put them to their best use.

It also hopefully gives us a bit more time before shit hits the fan, especially if the most immediate threat is assassination, not rampaging behemoths and three allied armies of doom. Instead we have to worry about intrigue, corruption, and logistics. The only drawback is that we don't have Bureaucracy charms, but I think we can make do with

Still, it's not going to be easy by any means. It wouldn't be an option if it were, but I think it is the more manageable of the two. The other almost feels like a trap for a glory hound Dawn caste.
 
[X] Fade Away
[X] Lend Moon Ambition

Why, exactly, do we want to play along with Anys Syn? Fuck her. The cover's blown, the benefits of staying are scattered to the winds. We have no influence, just deathtraps disguised as honors. Time to change gears. Give Moon Ambition; she can make best use of it, since she's not tied to the Academy by Anys' cronies and watched like a hawk, as Zao most certainly is. With the sword's drive and her own talent, she'll be able to accrue the legitimate influence that we won't. Syn recognizes the threat posed by Ulyssian and Zao, not Moon; she thinks she's her asset. Let's make her our stalking horse. In the meantime, we go full murderhobo, unbound by the shackles of the Realm's dogma.
 
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[X] Fade Away
[X] Lend Moon Ambition

Why, exactly, do we want to play along with Anys Syn? Fuck her. The cover's blown, the benefits of staying are scattered to the winds. We have no influence, just deathtraps disguised as honors. Time to change gears. Give Moon Ambition; she can make best use of it, since she's not tied to the Academy by Anys' cronies and watched like a hawk, as Zao most certainly is. With the sword's drive and her own talent, she'll be able to accrue the legitimate influence that we won't. Syn recognizes the threat posed by Ulyssian and Zao, not Moon; she thinks she's her asset. Let's make her our stalking horse.

Explicitly wrong. Rihaku said that "Playing along" is a high risk, very high reward option, as success would make us virtually inassailable without Anys getting her hands dirty, and by the time it became clear that she'd have to deal with us herself, we'd be strong enough that she couldn't guarantee victory without destroying herself, and still having another terrible enemy now out for revenge in her permanently weakened state. We'd essentially hit a case of Mutually Assured Destruction, where she can't attack either of us without destroying herself, while we become Hero of the Realm.

The problem would be actually winning which would be quite difficult, though not impossible, given as how Ulyssian has a near vertical growth curve (Essence 5 Ulyssian would evidently be a match for Zao). Serentidopolis is an intrigue focused area where we'll be sussing out a conspiracy, and it'd be easier for Anys Syn to arrange our death. Luseng meanwhile basically ensures she won't actively dick with us significantly (Beyond just cutting off reinforcements or othewise denying us support), by dint of her being almost positive that we can't possibly come out ahead against that alliance.

I'm in favor of keeping Ambition if we go to Luseng, and giving it to Moon if we go to Serentidopolis. I'd rather not go full out murderhobo because it would put a lot of our deeds so far to waste, and we're not quite at the point of sunk costs yet, as we can certainly prevail with a good deal of effort, and angle ourselves in a position to make a legit run on the Sword of Creation within a year or so.
 
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Explicitly wrong. Rihaku said that "Playing along" is a high risk, very high reward option, as success would make us virtually inassailable without Anys getting her hands dirty
Her hands are already dirty. They're soaked in the blood of innocents. This is Anys Syn, Elder Sidereal, playing her trump card: there are no depths to which she will not sink.
and by the time it became clear that she'd have to deal with us herself, we'd be strong enough that she couldn't guarantee victory without destroying herself, and still having another terrible enemy now out for revenge in her permanently weakened state.
She's already considering doing just that. Assassinating us if an opportunity arises. She's not an idiot, she's going to come at us at the worst possible time, minimizing the risk to her, both of exposure and diminishment.
The problem would be actually winning which would be quite difficult, though not unassailable.
Made more difficult by a lack of Ambition, which I am all for giving to Moon.
 
Each time I pop into this thread I see these fancy and well-thought arguments that just makes me smile. Cause I don't have to do any thinking by myself. Huehuehue. But I agree with Alectai with the post above - if we go full intrigue-assassin we lend Moon Ambition, if we go all gung-ho destroy the Lunar, Fae nd' Deathguy we keep it.
 
Her hands are already dirty. They're soaked in the blood of innocents. This is Anys Syn, Elder Sidereal, playing her trump card: there are no depths to which she will not sink.
She's already considering doing just that. Assassinating us if an opportunity arises. She's not an idiot, she's going to come at us at the worst possible time, minimizing the risk to her, both of exposure and diminishment.
Made more difficult by a lack of Ambition, which I am all for giving to Moon.

I know, full well, but at the same time, She isn't going to take even more risks when she's already edge-riding. She can't just straight up teleport to us and kill us and be back before tea the next day, because long range travel in Creation is hard. She's spending most of her time wrangling the Great Houses to keep the tensions damped down, and she is neither omniscient nor omnipotent--she won't instantly and perfectly understand the most optimal moment to fuck off and kill us, becuase she's too busy, and her ideal outcome here is to ensure that we go down hard, and hopefully take a few chunks of flesh out of other issues on the way down. That's why she put us in what should be an impossible situation, and why her response to us winning would be "Ship us off to another one".

Except... The problem is that if she wants to maintain her Nuclear Option, she has to keep wrangling the Great Houses, and Sidereals aren't typically very good at making direct, long term changes of thought--they encourage certain actions by astrology, but that's not really an option for her anymore due to the Wracking. It means she needs to constantly fine-tune the situation to keep it from spiralling out of control--she's essentially shackled herself to the Isle, and it would be extremely difficult for her to come over to us and attack us. And you can be damn sure that Zao will exploit any weakness he finds. Do note that he was strong enough to force her down to the level of a "Talented, but new Solaroid" even before the Academy was further buffed by Ulyssian's Predictionism.

She also can't call us Anathema without calling herself into question, especially if she does so after we come back from a grand victory. And if we actually Win, in either territory (But especially Luseng, as that's a known, horrific threat, and already considered a lost cause despite it's value. Reversing that would be a hell of a coup.) And if we clear one of these? We'll officially be a rough combat-match for Zao, and she loses her ability to just punch us to death unless she wants to lose everything.

At that point, we'd be in a position to play kingmaker, especially if we've gotten our command codes to the Sword of Creation back. And Hesiesh or otherwise, there's no arguing with control of the Realm Defense Grid. She would need to directly engage us, with all of our strength gathered to us, or otherwise seal the Realm Defense Grid, and that would likely be tricky even for her at her peak, let alone suffering from the Wracking.
 
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[X] Luseng

Better the devil you know. Also, I really want to see giant armies clashing in epic battle. We've already had plenty of subtle sniping.
 
[X] Luseng
[X] Keep Ambition

We've invested too much into Ambition to give it up at this juncture, as training time is at a premium, despite my earlier inclination. Luseng seems to have the most opportunities for our new Lore charms to do work.
 
[X] Luseng
[X] Keep Ambition

The way we have been playing this game has soar always been about picking the hardest option we have available to us and then freaking out and writing omakes to power up our character enough to survive. Reminds me about that naruto game rihaku recently finished and I do mean actually finished. Power gaming is the only way to apparently win at these rihaku games. Play hardball and keep playing, force the opposition to constantly deal with our ever more efficient killing machine. So yeah, that's my vote. We either live over die by playing the game as hard as we can.
 
The way we have been playing this game has soar always been about picking the hardest option we have available to us and then freaking out and writing omakes to power up our character enough to survive. Reminds me about that naruto game rihaku recently finished and I do mean actually finished. Power gaming is the only way to apparently win at these rihaku games. Play hardball and keep playing, force the opposition to constantly deal with our ever more efficient killing machine. So yeah, that's my vote. We either live over die by playing the game as hard as we can.
As one of the people actually writing the omakes, that kind of style is extremely tiresome and far from the only way to play. It can even prematurely end the quest if it goes too far, not that I think there's a serious risk of that here, but we'll never know what the alternatives are or if they're viable if we consistently pursue a single strategy to the exclusion of all else. Investing in our allies has proved worthwhile in the past, but the playerbase is too interested in personal power to ever make any true leaps of faith. Ambition was designed to empower our comrades; why choose it at all, if we're just going to use it as a beatstick?
 
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[X] Luseng
[X] Keep Ambition

Isn't this basically exactly what we wanted out of a satrapy. It's straightforward enemies to fight as far as the eye can see which means delicious xp and renown is ours for the taking. So what if Anys Sys is only giving it to us to try and kill us it's still what we were going for anyway. Although we definitely should have killed flame.
 
[X] Luseng
[X] Keep Ambition

Isn't this basically exactly what we wanted out of a satrapy. It's straightforward enemies to fight as far as the eye can see which means delicious xp and renown is ours for the taking. So what if Anys Sys is only giving it to us to try and kill us it's still what we were going for anyway. Although we definitely should have killed flame.

"Nothing is as terrifying as an old woman with nothing to lose".

She still considers the plan "Salvagable", she probably wouldn't if we killed Flame. This was the "Nuclear Option", but it was still better then the "Creation's fucked, so I don't need to give a shit about consequences anymore" option.

Tacnuke versus a stratnuke, if you will. The only reason she got away with this power grab is because we were too busy Saving the fucking Realm. She just considers her own plan succeeding, and keeping the boot on the neck of other Celestials to be a higher priority than actually preserving a central power--given her remark about "Destruction isn't the worst fate that you can suffer".

In other words, she considers the destruction of the world to be more desirable than a Solar taking power again. Which is kind of strange as it suggests that the Great Prophecy was quite a bit different than it was in canon--as the very reason that the Vision of Bronze prevailed was because it saved the world--and that even the Vision of Gold that failed was still better than the option where they did nothing at all.

That she considers the Vision of Darkness to be more desirable than a failed Vision of Gold in this timeline (Assuming there was a Vision of Gold period), kind of suggests that either the powers that be were fudging the data, or that Odyssial's Plan was Really fucking likely to end in a horrible, screaming disaster if he was nudged the wrong way.

Quite possibly because he had lost context of what a "Better World" would actually entail for someone who isn't Odyssial, or possibly one of his close confidents.
 
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As one of the people actually writing the omakes, that kind of style is extremely tiresome and far from the only way to play. It can even prematurely end the quest if it goes too far, not that I think there's a serious risk of that here, but we'll never know what the alternatives are or if they're viable if we consistently pursue a single strategy to the exclusion of all else. Investing in our allies has proved worthwhile in the past, but the playerbase is too interested in personal power to ever make any true leaps of faith. Ambition was designed to empower our comrades; why choose it at all, if we're just going to use it as a beatstick?
As a fellow omake writer, I kind of agree, but still at some level disagree. While the long run it may be optimal to temporarily lend Ambition to someone, that person likely being Moon, Luseng is an interesting and fun option for me. It is a place where we can put the skills Ulyssian has been grinding from the start of the quest to good use, with epic battles and such involved. Its already inspiring new ideas for omakes in my head, though I might wait for the next update if it will just be mostly an info-dump about the details of satrapy's situation and our default options.

Also, Ambition's extreme power-boost makes it easier for us to survive against unseen and unexpected threats, which could strike us anywhere or anytime, without us knowing how strong our opponents could be. However, after we reach Essence 5, we will be on the level of strength where I feel comfortable of giving away our safety-blanket temporarily to someone else if it would be optimal for our overall strategy.

Also, like it has been already said, Wake the Sleeper at Essence 5 allows its use for other characters benefit, thus skipping a great part of time required for training with the sword for its Evocation, though only admittedly only if its cool-down and XP spending requirements have both reset.

Still, if we manage to implement WtS strategically, more training time (and XP spending, if that is a mechanic for NPCs) for other things, or even higher levels of Ambition's Evocations is a great boon, but the greatest one would be that the N/A sword won't spend as much time not in direct use.
 
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"Nothing is as terrifying as an old woman with nothing to lose".

She still considers the plan "Salvagable", she probably wouldn't if we killed Flame. This was the "Nuclear Option", but it was still better then the "Creation's fucked, so I don't need to give a shit about consequences anymore" option.

Tacnuke versus a stratnuke, if you will. The only reason she got away with this power grab is because we were too busy Saving the fucking Realm. She just considers her own plan succeeding, and keeping the boot on the neck of other Celestials to be a higher priority than actually preserving a central power--given her remark about "Destruction isn't the worst fate that you can suffer".

In other words, she considers the destruction of the world to be more desirable than a Solar taking power again. Which is kind of strange as it suggests that the Great Prophecy was quite a bit different than it was in canon--as the very reason that the Vision of Bronze prevailed was because it saved the world--and that even the Vision of Gold that failed was still better than the option where they did nothing at all.

That she considers the Vision of Darkness to be more desirable than a failed Vision of Gold in this timeline (Assuming there was a Vision of Gold period), kind of suggests that either the powers that be were fudging the data, or that Odyssial's Plan was Really fucking likely to end in a horrible, screaming disaster if he was nudged the wrong way.

Quite possibly because he had lost context of what a "Better World" would actually entail for someone who isn't Odyssial, or possibly one of his close confidents.

Or maybe, somewhere along the way, keeping the solars out of power became more important then saving creation for Anys.
 
Welp, after not getting access to my desktop for the weekend, I really felt like rambling about the various options we have for this update. 1.5k words long, for the curious.

[x] Serentidopolis
[x] Keep Ambition

Choice Discussion:
While going to the Satrapy is playing into Anys plans, its the high risk high reward path. If we succeed, not only do we keep the influence and power that we have carefully build, it would also vastly increase. In addition, by basically endorsing us in the eyes of the public, our position and identity as a DB becomes basically unassailable by Anys unless she wants to cause a lot of chaos.Ironically, it also gives us the ability to weaken Anys by revealing that we are an Anathema, thought that is part of the nuclear option that we don't really need right. Another factor that tickles my fancy with this choice is that the trope of reassignment backfire, if only to see Anys face.

As for why I prefer Serenti over Luseng is that Luseng main issue is fighting, and fighting against opponents that can challenge a mid high tier solaroid combantant. The issue with that is that makes it harder and more dangerous for our allies and associates like Nilul and Moon to contribute as their strengths are not really relevant in Luseng, and their combat ability is far lower than ours. Conversely, in Serenti, the problems there play well with their strengths, while also being an area where we are good at. The lore charms that we have bought would be equally useful in both Luseng and Serenti, after all, while Nilul is basically as good in social as we are in combat. The lowered danger level towards our allies would also make it more likely that they would be able to join us. Zao will probably throw a fit about sending Moon towards Luseng.

Furthermore, Uly's best abilites does not really require him to show his face at Luseng to help out. Both Prophet and God King Strike do not have a range limit on their use, after all, and since Uly does not have any war charms, his impact at battles would be more on the level of his personal combat prowress.

Another issue to consider is exposure. Unlike Luseng, Serenti does not as obviously have opponents who have actual knowledge of Solar charms and capabilities. Luseng has a Deathlord, ancient Fae Holds as well as a Lunar who knows the Bull Of the North. All of those, especially the Deathlord, should be able to recognize the effects of Solar Charms, especially the more obvious ones like God-King Strike and Prophet. On a more socialpathic note, let Luseng get conquered by the three forces, then when they inevitably betray each other, use God King Strike on Luseng, denying them access to Luseng resources while severely damaging the three factions.

Another issue that makes me more partial to Serenti is the mysterious backers causing the assassinations. With surprise anticipation method, surprising Uly is quite hard, while his personal combat prowress means that most assassins are absolutely no match for him. Furthermore, those assassinations give us a pretty good excuse for why Anys lackeys die when they come here. In addition, rather than the known threat facing Luseng, Serenti has an unknown threat of unknown power, so we should investigate it to see which faction is stirring the pot. Also, it is me, or does the problems plaguing Serenti sound a bit like someone using Prophet on the city?

Plans:
Regardless of what option is chosen, there are certain things I believe should be done. Firstly, would be to delay the amount of time it takes before Uly is deployed to the field. This addition time would allow Uly research and use Prophet. If we fade away, it would be harder to do research, while allowing Prophet to come into effect before being deployed to the Satrapy should lower the suspicion that arises when all those miraculous coincidences start to happen. The delay would also give us time to contact our allies, marshal our resources and make plans before moving off.

One thing we definitely need to do would be to contact the Infernals, Having Anys being a position of strength is bad for both our and their plans, and contacting them gives a valid reason for the information to spread out to the other factions. The Immaculate Order has become stronger than it has ever been in centuries, but that strength is relatively fragile and dependent on Anys. If she is exposed, or she loses too much of her strength due to the Wracking, then the Order would be relatively easy to bring down. She is currently juggling a lot of balls, so lets add some more and try to help her drop them. This is something that the Infernals would also want, in my opinion.

Using Prophet, we should first target the Order. While this might weaken the Realm, in the end, the Order is something that inevitably needs to fall, so we should start weakening it now. Afterwards, we should liason with Ayala about her plans. Using both CCS and Prophet to cause trouble for Anys would force her to deal with them rather than try and sabotage us. Frankly, if it is at all possible, I would want to use Prophet to cause problems for all projects relating to Hessiah. Having problems plague anything that Anys tries is not going to build up confidence in her, paving the foundation for when we deal with her.

Another possible move is to use the proclamation by Anys as method gaining resources and influence. WIth that glowing endorsement and recommendation by virtually the entirely of the Realm's ruling elite, it should be possible for us to pry out more resources, artifacts and influence for our use then otherwise possible.

Ambition:
As for Ambition, I prefer to keep it with us. Firstly, we have spent quite a bit of time learning its evocations, and thus losing it will be a blow to our power, especially seeing that whatever replacement we get is invariably going to be weaker than it. Furthermore, regardless of what choice wins, Any will be highly unlikely to underestimate us by a large margin. She will be planning to deal with us with the amount of strength that we showed when we killed Polegmaos. Being weaker only makes it more likely that her plans to deal with us will succeed. Even if we get WtS and use it on another artifact, we will only regain 30% to 40% of our combat effectiveness.

Furthermore, we could have used WtS on Ambition and given ourselves a larger boost. Ambition too is a pretty unique and noticeable blade. If we lend it to someone else, then Anys would almost certainly notice that we no longer have it, and have given it to someone else. There is no good reason for us to do that, so its almost certainly going to make her investigate. Furthermore, since we are not a E5, we can't use WtS on others, thus they would have to spend time learning to use the Evocations of Ambitions, thus it would take quite a while before they would really become proficient with it. That time spent mastering Ambition also means that they would be building up their competencies in other areas. I rather let our allies specialize in other areas while we take care of combat.

Charms:
From Rihaku's statements, we could buy 13 charms when we went from E3 to E4. Thus, that puts the amount of XP that we can spend at 13 x 40k = 520k XP. Currently, by getting Prophet, we should have bought 5 charms, leaving us with 320k XP worth of charms that can be bought.

In the Lore tree, going WtS would cost us 120k, while the training tree, Tireless Learner + Legendary Scholar 200k. God King's Strike can be bought for 40k from either of these two options. Celestial Circle Sorcery would cost us 100k, but the real issue is the training time. In War, there are quite a few things we can buy, but Tiger Warrior Training would cost 120k.

Personally, if its possible, I favour flash buying at least Terrestial Circle Sorcery. The main benefit of flash buying is getting access to the charm without needing training time. However, as a whole most of the charms I believe would be most useful towards Uly take quite a bit of time to show their benefits, and so might not be ideal candidates for flashbuying. Getting TCS would give us Infallible Messenger, which would be vital for allowing us to coordinate our plans with the Academy and the Infernals. And while Anys is almost certainly protected against it, if we have Infallible Messenger as a control spell, we can use Awareness Charms through them, like say, EoTUS.

Regardless of what we buy, I favour leaving 1 E5 charm slot open. The E5 charms are all very powerful and useful. However, we can buy very few of them, so we should keep one open until we are certain we need a certain E5 charm before buying it. The flexibility would make up for the lowered prowess of Uly and higher cost of the charm.
 
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