Remove ads

Harry Potter and the Scabbard of Excalibur [AU]

Reader mode
KreenWarrior said:
Just so people know, Birdsie implied on Discord that letting Dudley die would ruin some of our "mother's love" protection. You know, the thing that let Harry survive the first book.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think a better way to phrase it would be that saving Dudley might give a chance to salvage it, because I kinda assumed that it was gone after Petunia died and her home was destroyed. If we go with Kingsley and get put into a wizard orphanage without Dudley, the ministry (or Shacklebolt himself, not sure who is responsible in that situation) might place us somewhere without him, which might ruin the protection anyways. Just look at the attitude the aurors have towards muggles this update, no one is willing to rescue Dudley, so I'm pretty sure they aren't that concerned with keeping him together with Harry. And who knows what other conditions apply to it in this AU, I couldn't find any hints on how it differs compared to the one in canon.
 
Last edited:
Man uh I'm not one to frown on the will of the dice but that does seem rather extreme. Figured the extreme danger aspects would come after we finish forming the childhood events, and had more actual autonomy over our actions. I guess you could say our autonomy was in picking what events Harry went through, it just seems extreme to throw a potential bad end in the literal formation stage of Harry's character. Especially if there is no warning. Sometimes early extreme danger is fine if there's explicit warning that clearly shows this could have dire consequences, and a reasonable reward for the danger. This just kinda throws the whole beginning out of wack and we gain nothing from it. Ton of unexpected risk for absolutely zero gain.
 
son et lumiere said:
We gain what is likely to be a very defining moment in Harry's life. This tragedy is going to affect him significantly and I'm all for it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Not necessarily a positive. If anything for a lot of voters that's a negative, maybe they don't want edgy angstlord Harry. We did pick hufflepuff after all.

Anyway any AST voters know I'm not one to shy away from extreme risk for little gain. If anything I relish it, but I wanna know I'm voting for something stupid before I do it.
 
GenericName said:
This just kinda throws the whole beginning out of wack and we gain nothing from it. Ton of unexpected risk for absolutely zero gain.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It does, but here's the thing - we can only blame ourselves.
If you don't want dead people then don't put people in danger - considering the fact that we have the flaw of "apocryphal curse" then it's even more likely for things to go off the rails like this.
Narratively, this is the most reasonable outcome IMO and it's entirely due to the player's choices.

I was honestly kind of hoping for a similar outcome since I wanted to push harry into the wizarding world early and to make him more "hardened" for what's to come, though I did kind of forget about the blood protection thing though I assumed that since the death eaters could get to us that it works differently from canon.
The way I understand it now is that the blood protection likely limits the damage from our "mark of the equal" flaw, and now we will be basically giving it up so that's also a miscalculation on my part tbf.


edit: another thing worth considering is that by not saving our cousin when given the chance we are doing a distinctly not-Hufflepuff thing.
@Birdsie does this choice regarding Dudley is one we make in-character or one that the players make at the meta level?
 
Last edited:
Nobody134 said:
@Birdsie does this choice regarding Dudley is one we make in-character or one that the players make at the meta level?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It doesn't say anything about Harry's character that he didn't physically reach out to the voters to threaten them for not voting to save his cousin. He is not that powerful yet. It does, however, say much about your willingness to sacrifice people on the altar of clinging to power.
 
Nobody134 said:
It does, but here's the thing - we can only blame ourselves.
If you don't want dead people then don't put people in danger - considering the fact that we have the flaw of "apocryphal curse" then it's even more likely for things to go off the rails like this.
Narratively, this is the most reasonable outcome IMO and it's entirely due to the player's choices.

I was honestly kind of hoping for a similar outcome since I wanted to push harry into the wizarding world early and to make him more "hardened" for what's to come, though I did kind of forget about the blood protection thing though I assumed that since the death eaters could get to us that it works differently from canon.
The way I understand it now is that the blood protection likely limits the damage from our "mark of the equal" flaw, and now we will be basically giving it up so that's also a miscalculation on my part tbf.


edit: another thing worth considering is that by not saving our cousin when given the chance we are doing a distinctly not-Hufflepuff thing.
@Birdsie does this choice regarding Dudley is one we make in-character or one that the players make at the meta level?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Again the danger wasn't expressed clearly enough imo. Everything was phrased as misadventures and small shaping points before we get to the real wizarding stuff. You could even argue it wasn't expressly stated the kidnappers would even be wizards. Especially with the protection over our heads, it would seem more likely the danger would be mundane and teleporting wizards would rush in and stop it.

There's a reason no one likes "rocks fall everyone dies" for unexpected stuff. It's not fun. You don't want unexpected danger without good warning signs to completely throw everything off and then go "oh well don't ever take anything that seems remotely dangerous then." Now we have to decide between the morally good thing to do that erases a huge bonus we sacrificed for in char gen, or lose the only character left that Harry cares about. Because we picked a relatively innocuous option that ended up being a potential end to the quest.

Edit: rereading through the option it does say dark cloaks skull masks so yeah retract the not wizards thing. Still think it's a jump.
 
Last edited:
Am I the only one shocked that it was an Auror that killed the entire family? I expected it from the Death Eaters, not the guys meant to protect Harry
 
GenericName said:
Again the danger wasn't expressed clearly enough imo. Everything was phrased as misadventures and small shaping points before we get to the real wizarding stuff. You could even argue it wasn't expressly stated the kidnappers would even be wizards. Especially with the protection over our heads, it would seem more likely the danger would be mundane and teleporting wizards would rush in and stop it.

There's a reason no one likes "rocks fall everyone dies" for unexpected stuff. It's not fun. You don't want unexpected danger without good warning signs to completely throw everything off and then go "oh well don't ever take anything that seems remotely dangerous then." Now we have to decide between the morally good thing to do that erases a huge bonus we sacrificed for in char gen, or lose the only character left that Harry cares about. Because we picked a relatively innocuous option that ended up being a potential end to the quest.

Edit: rereading through the option it does say dark cloaks skull masks so yeah retract the not wizards thing. Still think it's a jump.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't know man.
To me it was pretty clear that a rather big wizard fight was going to break out and thus there was always the inherent risk of this happening, which our trait escalated tbf.
You can argue that the extent of it was a bit much (though I wouldn't necessarily agree given the circumstances of the encounter) but the fact that bad things were going to happen does seem rather obvious - nothing good (Aside from exposing harry to the world of wizards) was going to come out of it.

néocorvinus said:
Am I the only one shocked that it was an Auror that killed the entire family? I expected it from the Death Eaters, not the guys meant to protect Harry
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's extremely telling about how wizards in general view muggles.
 
Nobody134 said:
I don't know man.
To me it was pretty clear that a rather big wizard fight was going to break out and thus there was always the inherent risk of this happening, which our trait escalated tbf.
You can argue that the extent of it was a bit much (though I wouldn't necessarily agree given the circumstances of the encounter) but the fact that bad things were going to happen does seem rather obvious - nothing good (Aside from exposing harry to the world of wizards) was going to come out of it.



It's extremely telling about how wizards in general view muggles.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It was clear that a fight would break out and that it would be an 'action update'. Not that there was a chance of a bad end or of all the Dursleys dying.

Hell, since the rolls don't appear outside the discord I didn't realize rolls were *happening*. So far all of these options have sounded like they had a single fixed outcome because the quest hadn't actually started yet. The tone has been more 'slice of life/extended character creation' than anything else.

It's not like Tom Riddle's shade was treated with this level of seriousness.
 
Last edited:
Just discovered this quest. I don't really like the build that you guys did, but it's alright. I just don't get why are we abandoning Dudley when we can save him...
We did a suboptimal build in my view, we did everything around being a good leader, about being a people's person... If Dudley dies and Harry is left alone then what? Do you guys think that he'll continue with that path? The path of personal power isn't closed but it would take so much longer to prove fruitful...

Better that Dudley lives than playing a character designed to be a social monster transform into someone that would must like develop some really heavy mental problems.

[X] Beg On Your Knees
[X] Headmaster Albus Dumbledore
 
Huh, wow. I had assumed that there might be some kind of protections on the house or something, to, y'know, stop attempts to kill people via magic, given the whole 'Mother's Love' thing and/or Dumbledore not being interested in having some random wizard come in and splat Harry, but I guess not? I had thought it would be just some Death Eater remnants coming in to try and poach Harry while some Aurors came in and looked cool and inspired the kid, not... this.

Not particularly happy with what happened, but, well, whatever. What can ya do, y'know? Not interested in sacrificing our Gnosis for Dudley though. If we get enough Gnosis, we could probably become some kind of super-necromancer and revive him anyway :V

[X] Rest In Peace
[X] Headmaster Albus Dumbledore

I anticipate a lot more turtling on our end after this, though.
 
WillRobinson said:
It was clear that a fight would break out and that it would be an 'action update'. Not that there was a chance of a bad end or of all the Dursleys dying.

Hell, since the rolls don't appear outside the discord I didn't realize rolls were *happening*. So far all of these options have sounded like they had a single fixed outcome because the quest hadn't actually started yet. The tone has been more 'slice of life/extended character creation' than anything else.

It's not like Tom Riddle's shade was treated with this level of seriousness.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

If there's a fight breaking out between wizards and there are muggles nearby then there's a chance that they will die.

I don't understand what the problem here is aside from how much we got screwed over
 
Hm. Given the overall trend of voting for Rest In Peace (2x as many voters as its counterpart) and Dumbledore (over 2x as many voters as its counterpart), I believe there is not much of a point to dallying about - we'll do the final tally and vote lock in two hours, unless something drastic happens, like someone deploying an incredibly compelling argument that turns around a number of voters and makes the process less one-sided. If nothing changes, I should be more than able to get an update out today.
 
Nobody134 said:
If there's a fight breaking out between wizards and there are muggles nearby then there's a chance that they will die.

I don't understand what the problem here is aside from how much we got screwed over
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And there's a chance that Harry accidentally commanded his rat buddies to eat someone alive, Salem's Lot style, or that one of his spontaneous magic outbreaks at an inopportune time caused a car crash. After all, wizards are more powerful in this universe, right? But all the other options gave Addams Family antics at worst, so that was what people expected.

I don't really have a complaint about Birdsie running the quest as they wish, I just don't agree with your arguments presented in the thread. Powerscaling exists as a contributing part of the narrative, not to dominate it.
 
Last edited:
KidFromPallet said:
Not particularly happy with what happened, but, well, whatever. What can ya do, y'know? Not interested in sacrificing our Gnosis for Dudley though. If we get enough Gnosis, we could probably become some kind of super-necromancer and revive him anyway :V
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So, just to be clear.

The update does tend to lead to the impression we are sacrificing our Gnosis.

We are not, this is a trick of phrasing and emotion.

We are actually *spending* our Gnosis. A loss to an event is mechanically the same as a trip to Birdsie's narrative market. We are using it to purchase some things, namely: Dudley's life, which may have knock-on effects, a continuation of our mother's love protection, and the opportunity to enter into a business relationship with Odin and Death. Also, the moral high ground - Birdsie has pointed out that we are sacrificing our brother on the altar of power with RIP.

We are, in effect, taking out a loan against our future Gnosis. So the question is, how much Gnosis are we spending now? What is the cost of the above-named things? Also, how much of a premium are we willing to spend on this opportunity which is available *now* and will not be in the future? We don't have perfect information, but we can make guesses.

Birdsie has said that the quest has a minimum of 50 updates, and more likely in the hundreds. So that is an average of 25+ Gnosis, at the rate of .25 Gnosis per update. Keep in mind that we will lose more Gnosis over time due to attrition from people violating the naming rules.

We know from the front page that 2 points of Gnosis buys enough Will to cancel out fatigue (a mechanic we're not using). 7 points is mastery of a spell. 25 points is an opportunity to research the Philosopher's Stone. Of course, we won't hit the latter using incremental awards - we'll spend it before it accumulates to that degree, because that's quest dynamics.

So, what price a human life? How many mastered spells is a living cousin worth? How much Will do we sacrifice for a mother's love?

Heavy questions.

Personally I would much rather save Dudley for narrative reasons - I just like the way Birdsie has been writing the Dursleys. Also, it will soften the blow to Harry, and Dudley may have some connection to Arthur and the greater metaplot, both important factors. However, there are non-narrative reasons to do so as well. If we must do the cold calculus, we must recognize it as a bargain and see both what we are spending and gaining accurately.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top