What if Odyssial wins? Let's say he reforges Creation, will he ever be satisfied? Perfection is a pretty damn far way away for someone who is scarred, suboptimal and hypocritical. Rihaku listed his flaws; things that keep him back from perfection. How many experiments, how many rewrites of reality is it going to take before he's satisfied?
No more iterations? The entire point of the Lathe is achieving the impossible, a perfect world that he can be content with.
That's the problem: he cares about everyone, not someone. If people (other than his personal friends) were replaced then he wouldn't notice or care. Mortals are numbers to be crunched to find an optimal solution: he's a calculator. That's great in some ways but is bad in a leader. Being a strict number cruncher does not make you allies.
You'd be surprised. Lots of things make you allies; Ulyssian's monomaniacal determination was what drew Moon to him in the first place. I'd argue that you absolutely do want a leader who sees the bigger picture, who seeks the greatest good for the greatest number, rather than some fool compromised by emotions who cannot lead the world into a golden age.
Rihaku acknowledged that his most fatal flaw was hubris. Here he is, rewriting reality in search of perfection. Odyssial will never be able to stop and call his works complete. For someone so near perfection and yet so far, the gulf would be unbearable.
The Lathe is perfection. It's precisely because of that, that once he reaches it, he will stop and rule his Golden Forever.
Did you read what Rihaku posted? Staying in Luseng only works if we went for Solar Circle Sorcery and picked up Time Dilation. We didn't. The option to stay exists only if we go against a defining and major principle and risk another limit break. Even then, it was only arguble if Time Dilation was better than seeking Lea.
Right, because we can never learn Sorcery in the future. It's not like we haven't passed it up multiple times before and been offered a chance to learn it again or anything.
This entire choice is about our path to power forwards. Embrace: become Odyssial mrk 2. Resist: take advantage of Odyssial but don't peg yourself to it.
Resisting isn't taking advantage of Odyssial, it's destroying his ideology and costing us the power to not only achieve our vision in the long run, but survive in the short term.
No, it's worse than thinking mortals are dirt. Odyssial doesn't care about them at all; his realm was better because of profound indifference. Mortals are almost literally extras in his mind. Odyssial isn't terrifying because he's an amoral or evil bastard but because of his utility. He's a calculator, one with power but he's cut out his heart and operates solely on 'best or least bad options'.
Ok, I'd argue that Odyssial does what he does because he cares, on a fundamental level, about humanity... but that's irrelevant. Let's assume you're right and he gives not one single fuck about people; why does that matter? Aren't people prospering under his rule? Isn't he creating order and happiness? You'd rather have atrocities under an inefficient and emotionally compromised ruler than an Odyssian paradise of order and prosperity?
People have compared him to Kiritsugu and they're half right. Unless someone worms his way into his heart, they're interchangeable. Odyssial is just the great machine that grinds down mortals, dragonbloods, and Exalts and tries to leave something better behind. A machine is not interesting to play as.
The false notion that this will render Ulyssian an unfeeling robot has already been refuted by Rihaku. Embracing Clarity is focusing solely on one goal. If we want to change that goal, we can. But frankly I find the notion of being the determinator who defends one thing above all others to be
vastly compelling. Since Orm currently has Moon on the brain and is incapable of retrieving his head from his ass, I'll just quote this, which sums up my opinion neatly:
I don't want a shackle on Odyssial, someone who limits him far more than actual Limit does. The Lily would be a shackle on our ideology, an impediment to finding a way, and would taint the purity of conviction that I would argue makes up the core of Ulyssian's character: the unceasing will to prevail, no matter the cost.
There are a thousand other quests on this and other forums wherein you can play men and women fettered by morality, forced to compromise when confronted with the prospect of sacrifice. What drew me to this one, what has made me participate so ardently that I have more posts than the third and fourth most prolific people in this thread combined, is the fact that Ulyssian is free of that. He is unchained and glorious, both renewal and salvation. That is why I am here, and you think that's a bad thing? We're a Solar, don't make us into a bloody milksop.
Compared to his defining tie of 'I must grow stronger' and major principle of 'Loves Training', not really. We'd be accumulating limit every scene; this entire decision is about whether we embrace Odyssial's path going forward or will accept suboptimal choices. We've missed out since we lack Solar Circle Sorcery.
And we will continue to miss out on it if we blithely piss away our experience and discard everything that made Odyssial interesting as a character.
