Glorious Shotgun Princess, Thread 3

Talon88.1 said:
Okay, now I have another question.

If Adorjan the Joker...whose Batman?
Ah, wrong scale.

The better question is, if Adorjan is Calamity and Catastrophe, then which aspect of her is the Joker, and which aspect of her is Batman?
Durabys said:
Wrong. Magic is a word that was created to describe things that cannot be understood and are un-analysable. Things are labeled magic if their are also completely inconsistent..Essence, motonics and Exalted-verse-concpets are everything but un-analysable and inconsistent. Near-impossible to understand for non-essence users, good, but not for Primordials and Exalts.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Essence is called, in universe, Magic. It is actually canonically called magic. An essence-user, such as an Exalt or even an Enlightened Mortal, is using magic in setting.
 
GreggHL said:
Ah, wrong scale.

The better question is, if Adorjan is Calamity and Catastrophe, then which aspect of her is the Joker, and which aspect of her is Batman?


Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Essence is called, in universe, Magic. It is actually canonically called magic. An essence-user, such as an Exalt or even an Enlightened Mortal, is using magic in setting.
Then we have to agree to disagree Gregg.

Sorry.

Maybe we should change topic to something like "How long will it take Kal to get through Celestial red tape to get back to Auto..and how much property damage will Autobot cause before Kal gets back.".
 
(This is kind of a bit of a derail for which I apologise, but when people are offensively, blatantly fucking wrong and then try to go "oh, let's agree to disagree" as if it's just a matter of opinion, well...)
Durabys said:
Then we have to agree to disagree Gregg.

Sorry.
This is no space for a "agree to disagree". Your definition of magic is actually factually just plain wrong in basically any aspect you care to mention. It's wrong linguistically, it's wrong historically, and it's wrong colloquially. You claimed "Magic is a word that was created to describe things that cannot be understood and are un-analysable"; that completely and absolutely fucking wrong, and a simple check of the roots of the word would confirm that, You claimed "Things are labeled magic if their are also completely inconsistent" and that's fallacious, because while some things which are inexplicable are labelled "magic", not all things labelled "magic" are inexplicable.

Shockingly, while all cats are animals, not all animals are cats.

Oh, hey, but you totally know better than historical practitioners of magic like John Dee, whose nicely worked out theories based on sound hermetic principles to try to understand and control aspects of the world were only let down by the fact that the universe doesn't work those ways.
 
GreggHL said:
Then Pria has to start using Bur charms to help Shepard organize her cult, then the Geth get wind of Pria and start worshipping her. Sadly, while Exalts do not hear the prayers of those worshipping them, spirits/gods do. Hence, Pria starts hearing dial-up modem sounds. All the time.
Tinnitus makes people cranky.

Eternal modem tinnitus makes gods really cranky.

That said, I do wish you wouldn't be switching PoV so often; it's an extremely disjointed read at the moment (though entirely made up for any time Autokun appears, because his misery is our delight).
 
Durabys said:
Wrong. Magic is a word that was created to describe things that cannot be understood and are un-analysable. Things are labeled magic if their are also completely inconsistent..Essence, motonics and Exalted-verse-concpets are everything but un-analysable and inconsistent. Near-impossible to understand for non-essence users, good, but not for Primordials and Exalts.
No, I'm afraid that you are flat-out wrong on this. Historically, in folklore, Hermeticism, Kabbalah and various other systems, magic is laden down with rules; alchemy and the like were flat-out thought of as branches of science. The only way they're not scientific is the fact that they don't actually work. But Newton and Dee and all the others who delved into them, they sure as hell didn't label them un-analysable and impossible to understand, they were banking on them being possible to pick apart and learn the inner workings of and thereby use to attain power over the universe.

You're just talking out of your ass here, based on your own personal definition of what "magic should be like", with no grounding in what the word has always been used to mean.

Edit: Whoops, ES got there before me. My bad.
 
She used superpowers she inherited from her parents to learn the language(s).

Does that satisfy everyone as an answer?
 
10
The lovely, black haired woman in the red skirts and black tunic tilts her head. She cocks an eyebrow, the gold chopsticks keeping her hair in a bun bouncing. A quirk of her lips and the fake wax mustache on her lips goes slightly crooked. "Who are you?"

Lightly sparked sweat drops roll down the side of the golden sphere. The iris goes wide, then cycles almost shut. "I am the God of Bad Disguises," he declares.

The fake mustache bristles. She folds her arms, propping up her chest. "No you're not," she says, "I know the God of Bad Disguises and you aren't her." She thrusts her shoulders back, and the mustache tilts. "Oh! I know what this is!"

"I know exactly what this is!" Marching down the street, pushing past rikshaws, past shuffling porcelain cats, another woman with a fake wax goatee marches up and grabs the mustachio'ed woman by the shoulder. "Another fucking power play, is that it?"

The mustachio'ed woman slaps the hand away. "I had nothing to do with this!"

"You've been trying to get me fired since you fucking started," the goate'ed woman yells, poking her counterpart- who Autochthon notices is identical to her save for the different fake facial hair- in the chest, "This another one of your fucking patsies? What'd you give him to get him to play along, huh?" Then the goate'ed woman makes a sudden jerking motion with her hand, as if sliding it along some sort of long rod.

The mustachio'ed woman's face turns beat red. Next to them, a canal boat slows down to watch, several dog-faced monks staring at the argument before speeding past. "Oh, that's rich," she cries out, arms folded and turning from her counterpart with a huff "At least I don't get called the 'God of Bad Disguises and Quickies with the Subdirector!'"

During this, Autochthon glances between the two, iris narrowing, opening, lightning sparks playing over gaps between his plates. A single thought runs through the peerless, transcendent architecture that is his mind;

The fuck is this?

The Maker turns, just in time to see a naked man with skin the color of layered brick step away from the layered brick wall of the building they were next to. "Excuse me," the God of Camouflage says, "But do you need me to call the Department of Nature to mediate?"

The iris of the golden sphere narrows, lightning playing behind the silver plates. A high pitched choking sound emits from Autochthon, followed by a warble when a stick insect twice the size of a man walks over and joins the argument.

Two more gods- identical gods, who introduce themselves as the God of Badly Disguising Yourself, Bureau of Humanity, and The God of Badly Disguising, Bureau of Heaven, charge into the argument while insisting that they are, in fact, the other person. Which is when Autochthon banishes the cloak and scarecrow to Elsewhere and eases himself into the entry socket of his bipedal golden Encounter Suit.

A jade and metal bench folds inward, and becomes the cloak of a distinguished older man with a long white, braided beard. "God of Inelegant Facades," he introduces himself, "Bureau of Heaven, Department of Secrets." He strides over in long steps, stepping between the two women with fake facial hair. "What is the cause of this commotion?"

The woman with the goatee pokes the woman with the mustache in the chest. There is a bit of a bounce. "She's trying to get me fired and is passing off another of her fuck buddies as the God of Bad Disguises!"

The mustache-wearing woman snorts. Her mustache bristles. "I did no such thing! I just ran into him!"

The God of Inelegant Facades turns, as do the other assembled deities, to the three meter tall golden giant standing in front of them. "Are you responsible for this?" the senior god asks, "And..." He blinks. "Who are you?"

The facet cut eyes flash. "I!" Thunder booms overhead. "Am Autochthon!"

In truth, the addled and confused mind of the Great Maker did not entirely plan on how the gods would react to him announcing that he was, in fact, the returned Autochthon. Perhaps he expected polite apologies. Perhaps he expected supplication and prayer. Perhaps he expected an explanation for what, in fact, he just witnessed.

He certainly did not, in fact, expect them to all start screaming.
 
Was Heaven's bureaucratic nightmare as bad during the days of the Primordials?
 
Durabys said:
Was Heaven's bureaucratic nightmare as bad during the days of the Primordials?
No, largely due to liberal use of Cecelyne's "DO YOUR FUCKING JOB" god-targeting Charm (and similar stuff from SWLIHN, etc), which robbed them of free will and independent action, forcing them to do their jobs to the letter and obey the Law without attempting to gain personal power or weasel their way around the rules and obtain a cult of their own.

Gee, I wonder why all these gods are screaming at the announcement of the return of a Primordial?
 
TheFoxsCloak said:
Cecelyne and SWLIHN I understand having charms like that, but what would Auto have in his purview that would justify it?
He's Autochation.

He was a Primoridal, a being of such power, that even a cripple like him is completly and utterly terrifiying to the Gods.

Not to mention that he used to rend down any nearby Gods when he was in the need for Starmetal.
 
Aleph said:
No, largely due to liberal use of Cecelyne's "DO YOUR FUCKING JOB" god-targeting Charm (and similar stuff from SWLIHN, etc), which robbed them of free will and independent action, forcing them to do their jobs to the letter and obey the Law without attempting to gain personal power or weasel their way around the rules and obtain a cult of their own.

Gee, I wonder why all these gods are screaming at the announcement of the return of a Primordial?
Fiach McCarthy said:
No, it wasn't. And that fact is one of the strongest rallying calls for those that oppose Yu-Shan.
Eh. I see. Um.

*starts thinking about how Primordial Age Creation worked..then thinks about the Celestials and lesser Gods and Yu-Shan*

Remind me..please..what was the reason for the Primordial War to begin with..besides Mankind probably going extinct and Sol and the Maidens wanting to have a go at the games?
 
Aleph said:
No, largely due to liberal use of Cecelyne's "DO YOUR FUCKING JOB" god-targeting Charm (and similar stuff from SWLIHN, etc), which robbed them of free will and independent action, forcing them to do their jobs to the letter and obey the Law without attempting to gain personal power or weasel their way around the rules and obtain a cult of their own.

Gee, I wonder why all these gods are screaming at the announcement of the return of a Primordial?
Fiach McCarthy said:
No, it wasn't. And that fact is one of the strongest rallying calls for those that oppose Yu-Shan.
Eh. I see. Um.

*starts thinking about how Primordial Age Creation worked..then thinks about the Celestials and lesser Gods and Yu-Shan*

Remind me..please..what was the reason for the Primordial War to begin with..besides Mankind probably going extinct and Sol and the Maidens wanting to have a go at the games?
 
TheFoxsCloak said:
Cecelyne and SWLIHN I understand having charms like that, but what would Auto have in his purview that would justify it?
Oh, Auto probably doesn't have any explicit "control" Charms. But that's how Primordials treat gods. That's the level of regard they have for them. Autochthon was probably more along the lines of "hmm, I need an experimental subject" *yoinks random god off the street to vivisect", but the baseline of behaviour stands.
Durabys said:
Remind me..please..what was the reason for the Primordial War to begin with..besides Mankind probably going extinct and Sol and the Maidens wanting to have a go at the games?
You need more?

That was pretty much it. Well, frankly, it wasn't really even mankind. The Unconquered Sun got fed up with being a slave to the gods, sent to fight monsters and horrors from the Wyld every time they attacked Creation, endlessly, without any pay or recompense, with no end in sight, forever.

This is what happens when you give your autonomous defence programs a brain.

So he went "fuck it, I want to retire", recruited the rest of the Incarnae and they started looking for a way to kick the Primordials out and retire. Which resulted, once Autochthon and Gaia got involved, in the Exalted.
 
And well its not like Humans where anything special in regards to Sapient Races in the primordial creation. We had untold numbers of them with the Dragon kings at the top ,which was the reason for The Unconquered Suns old body.
Sadly all of them where prevented from attacking the Primordials and so the Incarna rigged the batteries to explode and kill there masters. And well we all saw what happen to all other races after the exalted won, driven underground , under a new geas or left alone so that they could start to die out.
 
Azunth said:
Ah, Yu Shan. The only heaven in fiction that has bureaucratic turf wars. I love the feel of absurdity you've given to the place. Incidentally, this is the sort of nonsense Siderals have to deal with daily, or at least push onto somebody else so they can focus on their massive workload.
Actually this is a common trope In eastern fiction, where heaven as a bureaucracy is a trope old enough to be called classic.
 
Remember, Autochthon was not sympathetic to the Incarnae, he just had conveniently similar goals. He wanted vengeance, the Incarnae wanted freedom, and he liked humanity (because they did things he liked) enough that he decided to use them as weapon vectors. Now, remember;

This is Autochthon the Primordial. This does not, necessarily, apply to Autochthon the God. He is coming to terms with the fact that he was once a maniac inventor with no sense of consequences. He was an uncaring god-monster who unleashed indestructable reality-killing weapons on the universe. He is dealing with the utter fuck that he once was.

Or, as we say; Character Development.
 
... you know, if he gets to his workshop and there are still a few experiments and autonomous systems running... one or more of them might still be programmed to "grab random god to use in whichever incomplete experiment that needs a test subject is highest-priority". Heck, that might be a large part of why the place is quarantined; anyone who goes in gets grabbed and stuffed onto a dissection table.

Given that he is now a god, and is still absent-minded enough to forget this fact while walking in, he may just barely escape from getting a first-hand experience of what it was like from the other side of the articulated rotary beam-scalpel, back in the day.
 
Well, I'm not sure that Auto-the-Primordial was incapable of regretting the shit he did; his thing was not thinking the consequences through before doing things, not an inability to recognize the consequences after the fact. IIRC, he basically had a monument to his regret for how the Primordial War went down in his world-body.

The big difference is that this time he can't run and hide from his fuckups. Not forever, anyway.

Come to think of it, if Auto-the-God is, in fact, going to be confronting the consequences of his past self head-on, would it be safe to assume that we're going to have a trip to the Underworld at some point? Because I'd say the Neverborn are by far the biggest and most horrific of those consequences.

Not to mention that Autochthon is one of the handful of beings who might actually be able to find some way of altering Creation's metaphysics so that the Neverborn can finally finish dying without needing to drag everything that exists into Oblivion first. At the very least, he might be able to come up with something resembling funeral rites that could make their unlives slightly less of an unending agonizing nightmare while a more permanent solution was devised.
 
TheSandman said:
Well, I'm not sure that Auto-the-Primordial was incapable of regretting the shit he did; his thing was not thinking the consequences through before doing things, not an inability to recognize the consequences after the fact. IIRC, he basically had a monument to his regret for how the Primordial War went down in his world-body.

The big difference is that this time he can't run and hide from his fuckups. Not forever, anyway.

Come to think of it, if Auto-the-God is, in fact, going to be confronting the consequences of his past self head-on, would it be safe to assume that we're going to have a trip to the Underworld at some point? Because I'd say the Neverborn are by far the biggest and most horrific of those consequences.

Not to mention that Autochthon is one of the handful of beings who might actually be able to find some way of altering Creation's metaphysics so that the Neverborn can finally finish dying without needing to drag everything that exists into Oblivion first. At the very least, he might be able to come up with something resembling funeral rites that could make their unlives slightly less of an unending agonizing nightmare while a more permanent solution was devised.
If he was a Primordial still, then maybe. It's an iffy proposition even then, considering Creation was a collaborative effort between Titans and Autochthon was only one of many who helped build it. But as just a god, even one on par with the Incarnae? I highly doubt it. I don't think he's got the mojo to pull off something like that.
 
Winged Knight said:
If he was a Primordial still, then maybe. It's an iffy proposition even then, considering Creation was a collaborative effort between Titans and Autochton was one of many who helped build it. But as just a god, even one on par with the Incarnae? I highly doubt it. I don't think he's got the mojo to pull off something like that.
I said "find", not "build". There's an important distinction between the two.

Even if he most certainly isn't powerful enough to craft that system on his own, he might still be able to draw up the schematics for it.
 
Azunth said:
I knew eastern fiction had the heaven-as-bureaucracy trope since forever, but I didn't know they portrayed bureaucratic turf wars! I always thought it was a more unified, idealized bureaucracy.
No, no. Pagan mythology, east or west, almost always portrayed the gods as humans writ large. Flaws included. Remember, after sending a middle level functionary to tell sun Wu kong off and it not working, heaven's next step was to try and buy him off with a low-end sinecure. Bribery is pretty much par for the course for most old timey gods.

YHWH occasionally having a prophets who insisted, to the faces of kings no less, that you had to try and meet a standard of righteousness instead of just buying of the guy upstairs with a nice hectacomb offering, was something of an aberration, one that confused the heck out of even his erstwhile worshipers, many of whom were culturally more familiar (and happy) with the bribery system.

There's a reason he kept having to smite them. Cultural change is hard. XD
 
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