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Fiend: Thread Three, Thread Harder. [Exalted/Worm]

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Menma said:
Malfean air is poisonous to normal humans.... and pretty much anything that isn't Exalted or native to Malfeas.

If I recall correctly.
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Horrifically dumb 2E addition to Malfeas; not mentioned with Games of Divinity - where something that big would have been mentioned. Makes things more boring for no gain save an increase in "evlulz". Doesn't even make sense thematically; Malfeas wouldn't kill people with a "poisonous miasma", he'd just give them Green Sun Wasting unless they dressed themselves up in robes woven from threads of lead (and Exalts would be affected too by 'Malfeas is radioactive').

Ignore.
 
And no im picturing, for some reason, all this precog and counter-precog leading somehow to the simurgh being able to percive taylor in the present, but only the world without her in the past or future. That would be an interesting situation to try and plan from..
 
Mastigo said:
So what would Malfease and Cecyln's reaction be to Scion showing chasing humans. I mean they'd at least notice him. And now that I think about it, he'd probably remind them a bit of Autocthon back in the good ol' days when they made fun of him for being silly enough to have robocancer.
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If there is any resemblance, then atomic acid hate fire. Also sand. Sand in all his everything, particularity the bits that are multidimensional. She who Lives will get the boot in once hes on the ground. And he had better scream LOUD, to keep the wind away.

Not that she cares, its just good advice in hell.
 
Ixenathier said:
Now I have a mental image of one of the threads on Parahuman.net or what ever it was in response to this.
Especially if Defiler yells something about "Eat rolling blackouts birdbrain!" as she runs from portal to portal.
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This MUST HAPPEN. And it is also a good way to determine precog vs hyperanalysis thinkers - Tattletale, Number Man and Accord would be unaffected by her, but Contessa and Dinah can't see her - Simurgh is weakened but not totally helpless because postcog + hyperanalysis will let her construct a model - course, that doesn't help when taylor starts stunt-learning midfight or using excellencies like candy, cause those are so broad as to be nigh-unmodelable.
 
Ixenathier said:
Some city that is hosting an Anime/Comic/Game convention. Defiler does Dragoncon would be amusing.
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Now I'm imagining her taking a moment to very carefully sign something with a giant pen before running off to the next location.
 
Sojiko said:
Well, yes, that's correct as far as I understand the mechanism. But that's the Loom of Fate's mechanism for dealing with that sort of snag. I'm pretty sure there are no established correction system in the Wormverse, and since precog was not completely derailed in Brockton Bay we can assume that there are some correction systems.
We don't know how fast the corrections happen and how much collateral effects they have.
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The question is, why would there need to be any corrections? Indeed, what would corrections even mean? Corrections back to what? Unlike Creation there isn't any central physics engine that runs cause and effect that has a plan/destiny programmed into it. Based on what we know, in Worm physics is local, so if some force from outside the universe knocks a particle off it's trajectory then there's nothing to force it back onto the trajectory it was on before. It will simply proceed in its new direction and go on to interact with other particles as determined by the local laws of physics.

Any precongitive in Worm that takes a reading of the particles location and trajectory would then correctly predict what would happen to it, and everything else, unless another apparently acausal force intervened.

That a-causal force could be either something from another universe, or caused by something inside the universe the precognitive either couldn't perceive or couldn't predict when using its model of the now to extrapolate from.

Essentially, Taylor, or anyone else immune to precognition would mean that precognition was limited in time and space, thanks to them spinning off butterflies which mean that the precognitive's extrapolations would suddenly stop working.

Unless, of cause, some active force went butterfly hunting, and forcing things back on their desired track, but that would require some intelligent force capable of very precise and wide ranging manipulation, essentially acting as a sapient pseudo-Loom of Fate.

That all assumes of course that individual's precognition works by predicting the future based on fast forwarding a simulation of the universe and seeing what happened. If they instead mentally time travel forwards, observe what's happened, and then time travel back, all bets are off, as they'd have actually observed what would occur. I don't think you could disrupt that kind of precognition apart from with other time travel. If the future is a place you can visit, rather than the result of a process based on the state of existence now as it is in Creation, then things would be very different.
 
Here are a couple of interesting things about Infernal Sorcery:
  • It is instinctive, requiring no sort of tutelage to learn, or even any knowledge of the Occult
  • Infernal Sorcery works by imposing your laws of reality on the world around you, effectively causing changes that are due to their inner reality-engine, so any sustained effect would remain Outside Fate (and therefore mess with precog) as long as it endured
  • Its equivalent to Demon of the 1st Circle* (probably the best terrestrial spell), Slave Spawn Summon, is vastly superior, being usable in a handful of seconds rather than a handful of hours on top of being safer
  • But more than that, while in Creation Slave-Spawn Summon is limited to 1 demon per day, like Dot1C, but that is because of the Surrender Oath rather than a limit of the spell itself, and outside of Creation it can be used anytime and any number of time per day.
  • Taylor has fulfilled all the requirements to learn Sorcery
* note that this spell was specifically made to summon demons to a different world, so it wouldn't be that surprising to have it work in the Wormverse
 
Alratan said:
Essentially, Taylor, or anyone else immune to precognition would mean that precognition was limited in time and space, thanks to them spinning off butterflies which mean that the precognitive's extrapolations would suddenly stop working.

Unless, of cause, some active force went butterfly hunting, and forcing things back on their desired track, but that would require some intelligent force capable of very precise and wide ranging manipulation, essentially acting as a sapient pseudo-Loom of Fate.
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Well, Earth-Bet might run on wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff that has a certain degree of ontological inertia to it, "naturally" resisting "unnatural" snarls of causality without there necessarily being an active interventor.

This makes me think a little about the weirdness that would result if Taylor reached her way into Charms branching off Loom-Snarling Destiny designed specifically to foil precognitives. Imagine if, say, rather than the "rolling blackout" strategy, every time her anima banner flared her destiny split in two, declaring her to simultaneously be involved in multiple chains of (increasingly nonsensical) events at the same time to precognitive senses.

Actually, thinking about it, I imagine there'd also be thematic room for a Charm coming from Witness to Darkness that passively acts to interfere with Investigation rolls targeting her (by way of giving subtly false "reads" in personal interactions), thereby throwing a big spanner in the works of hyperanalytical types.
 
Alratan said:
The question is, why would there need to be any corrections? Indeed, what would corrections even mean? Corrections back to what? Unlike Creation there isn't any central physics engine that runs cause and effect that has a plan/destiny programmed into it. Based on what we know, in Worm physics is local, so if some force from outside the universe knocks a particle off it's trajectory then there's nothing to force it back onto the trajectory it was on before. It will simply proceed in its new direction and go on to interact with other particles as determined by the local laws of physics.

Any precongitive in Worm that takes a reading of the particles location and trajectory would then correctly predict what would happen to it, and everything else, unless another apparently acausal force intervened.

That a-causal force could be either something from another universe, or caused by something inside the universe the precognitive either couldn't perceive or couldn't predict when using its model of the now to extrapolate from.

Essentially, Taylor, or anyone else immune to precognition would mean that precognition was limited in time and space, thanks to them spinning off butterflies which mean that the precognitive's extrapolations would suddenly stop working.

Unless, of cause, some active force went butterfly hunting, and forcing things back on their desired track, but that would require some intelligent force capable of very precise and wide ranging manipulation, essentially acting as a sapient pseudo-Loom of Fate.

That all assumes of course that individual's precognition works by predicting the future based on fast forwarding a simulation of the universe and seeing what happened. If they instead mentally time travel forwards, observe what's happened, and then time travel back, all bets are off, as they'd have actually observed what would occur. I don't think you could disrupt that kind of precognition apart from with other time travel. If the future is a place you can visit, rather than the result of a process based on the state of existence now as it is in Creation, then things would be very different.
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Ha, It would appear that I was unclear. By "correction" I did not mean that things would go back to how they were supposed to be before the modification. I meant that precog would stop showing a flawed image.

Basically let's take a room with a TV, which is empty as far as precog can tell, except Taylor is actually there. At 1p.m the TV is turned off and since those things don't spontaneously turn on precogs see it staying off in the future. Now at 2 p.m Taylor turns the TV on and starts watching it. If a precog decides to check the state of the TV in the near future at 5 past 2, without corrections he's going to see "TV off" because Taylor's modification are not noticed by his powers ; but if the causality engines of the world catches up with unforseen and unobserved modifications in less than 5 minutes the precog will notice it is on and no one is there to change that so he's going to predict that it's going to stay on. But the corrections don't mean that the TV Taylor switched on is actually going to suddenly turn off because it's "supposed to be" off.

Now if all modifications are entirely taken into account as soon as they happen, Simurgh only has to watch a city Taylor has visited right after she leaves and she'll get a completely reliable updated situation. It's only if the corrections take some time to happen that her butterfly effect will cause a disruption in her current perception, rather than simply mess with the ones he made before.
 
illhousen said:
Wait, I thought Infernal Sorcery still requires you to go through the usual five steps. At least that's what Infernal Manual says. Was it retconned somewhere?
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You are entirely correct, but this does not change what I said. Learning Infernal Sorcery requires passing through the 5 stations, but it is also something that is instinctive to Infernals. It requires no studying and no knowledge of the occult whatsoever. Regular Sorcery works by understanding the underlying rules of Creation as established during its genesis, so you need to understand how essence is everything and how affecting it affect the world ; to use regular sorcery one understand the rules of the world enough to know how and where a nudge will result in the desired outcome. But Infernal sorcery works by being a world-engine ; to use Infernal sorcery you overwrite the surrounding reality with your own willing the desired result into being.

Regular sorcery cannot change the most minute aspect of a spell without reinventing it completely : even if you already know Death of Obsidian Butterflies, creating a Death of Silver Wrens that is the exact same except using projectiles shaped like silver wrens instead of obsidian butterflies is just as difficult as if you were starting from scratch. But Infernal sorcery can change the way the spells manifest themselves every time they are used, because they are not cast from rigid formulae.

As for passing through the stations ...
The white Treatise ; p.17 said:
A self-taught sorcerer often looks back and realizes that experiences that seemed random or unimportant at the time actually put her through one of the ordeals. Sometimes, these experiences came before Exaltation.
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So as long as Taylor has experienced them all already, she is ready for initiation.
First there is humility. Humility is something Taylor understands just fine, she does not see herself as inherently superior, she was stunned to learned she could potentially stand should to shoulder with the great ones. By moving from her home town to New York she completed the station of Journey. Fear is something she has experienced very keenly in that locker. Finally by killing Shadow Stalker she has Sacrificed her innocence and her dreams of being a hero were sacrificed when she accepted to become an anti-villain to acquire the power to fight the Endbringers.
Tutelage is about learning about what she can do, which can be covered by her pondering how the causality of her actions is enforced by herself rather than the world. Even if it is not dealt with yet, the process of training the Sorcerous Enlightenment Charm would most likely count.
 
illhousen said:
1) I think cutting ties with Danny works better as a sacrifice. It is something Taylor did deliberately instead of simply responding to the situation in a moment of crisis like killing SS or recognizing that the path she tried to walk is impossible (from her point of view, anyway) and choosing a different one because of NM's suggestion.
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That's a very good point, I agree. More than anything else the Station of Sacrifice is about making a choice, so what you lost from the path you took is not as important as what you lost from not walking the other one.
illhousen said:
2) I was mostly concerned about the tutelage. From my understanding, this step is tied with the first one, that of humility. It is about recognizing that there are people and beings with greater knowledge of the world's inner works and asking them for help.
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This is incorrect, all the examples given are of characters learning things from observation of the world, not being taught by an other person.
illhousen said:
However, now I think it is somewhat different for Infernals. They submit to the greater power as a part of their Exaltation and learn most of their tricks from them, even if power now belongs to them fully. Their power is also much closer to the underlying principles of Sorcery, so it makes sense that for them learning it is more about figuring what they can do already which can be accomplished with minimal help.
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Indeed.
 
Yes, that's the charm, but that doesn't address how you learn the charm at all, which is what people are talking about.

Edit : Yes, before the Salanian Working was done you had to learn from someone who already knew it. Afterwards, you could learn it without anyone elses help. Unless something changed real recently, however, it probably doesn't have any effect on Worms-Earth, for the simple fact that no one on Worms-Earth already knows it..

Unless, of course, the Writer decides to change that. But until we see someone else who knows it, or our Hero uses it to learn magic, it's probably safe to assume it doesn't work around here.
 
Happerry said:
Yes, that's the charm, but that doesn't address how you learn the charm at all, which is what people are talking about.

Edit : Yes, before the Salanian Working was done you had to learn from someone who already knew it. Afterwards, you could learn it without anyone elses help. Unless something changed real recently, however, it probably doesn't have any effect on Worms-Earth, for the simple fact that no one on Worms-Earth already knows it..

Unless, of course, the Writer decides to change that. But until we see someone else who knows it, or our Hero uses it to learn magic, it's probably safe to assume it doesn't work around here.
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Well, the Salinan working explicitly affects all realms of existance. So if a shard can get here, so can the working. (unless the author changes that of course. But that's the cannon reach of the Working.)
 
Depends if Taylor carried the Exalted Universe with her as well, or if she just has an Exaltation and the ability to respire Essence.

Because if the Salinian Working reaches here, then there should be people in Earth Bet who've developed Sorcery.
 
Its also possible the Salinian Working was broken. It was made, nothing says that someone at some point later couldn't either break it or make an anti-Salinian Working to negate it.

Edit: 'cause I can't spell/type, you'd think that a few years of college would fix that.
 
Either way, if it has been extended to Worms-Earth before, people would already know Sorcery. As they don't, for whatever reason it hasn't been even if a shard can still make it here.
 
Happerry said:
Either way, if it has been extended to Worms-Earth before, people would already know Sorcery. As they don't, for whatever reason it hasn't been even if a shard can still make it here.
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Nightblade said:
Maybe it got there when the shard did.
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Well, the initiation does require that the aspirant already have Awakened Essence. So if the locals have failed to manage that, then there's another reason for no local sorcerers.
 
Awakened essence typically requires either aid of a powerful weilder of essence such as an exalt or god of some power. The other methods include the use of drugs from the wyld, celestial cocaine, and a complex geomancy ritual. None of those things are available on earth, and without them there is not going to be any awakened essence. Without awakened essence there won't be any supernatural martial arts or sorcery. At least until Taylor discovers a way to do it with her powers.
 
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