Ignition (MTG/Multicross, Planeswalker PC)

[Vebyast]

Okay, that's neat.

I'm starting to think that personality overlays may be some part of our "thing". "Setting things on fire" always seemed a bit... weak, might be the right word?... for a Planeswalker, when Sidhe is walking around with "Everything to do with Mind Control" as her Thing. Being able to instantiate two full-blown lines of consciousness on the same bits of soul can't be common.

Obviously, this means we have to try channeling Blue and Red at the same time.

On the things we should ask about...

I think that I agree with the idea that we should be asking about things that are immediately relevant. Neph already gave us the long-term plan. Which, by the way, kudos to Alivaril, this should get the quest very solidly back in gear plot-wise - it feels like we just got our first glance at what's waiting for us on Disc 2. I doubt that we'll be able to get infodumps like that in the future, but @SynchronizedWritersBlock is absolutely right that we can drop R9 on instantiating Neph far more often than might be otherwise expected. Especially if we do it at the same time we're practicing Overchanneling.

As for specific questions:

First question: important because it's one of the reasons we're on this plane in the first place. Will help Agneyastra in understanding her abilities and the safety of Unison, and searching for a person isn't something we can do easily. Might make a friend.

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If we want to figure out Unison, I think that we should ask about Unison specifically, rather than about what we think is useful for Unison on the assumption that it is.

I think that asking for help for Mitra is another excellent idea. It's clearly causing her trouble, and I suspect that one of the best ways to help Nanoha is to help Mitra.

I'm torn as to asking about low-hanging fruit on the King-Selection plane. I suspect that unfucking Agneyastra's Unison capabilities will send us to at least one Dungeon, which should accomplish our goal of finding something to do with Nanoha. I'd also feel bad asking two questions for Nanoha and none for Sidhe. The best way to help Sidhe out would probably be... the proposed question about improving our reaction to mind magic, I think. That said, I think that we can allocate another invocation of Neph for that; it wouldn't be immediately relevant the way boosting Agneyastra or Nanoha are.

[X] Quick advice on fixing Agneyastra's Unison capabilities? Who to talk to/where to go.
[X] If we wanted to help out Mitra's various problems how would we do it?
[X] Any low-hanging fruit on the King-Selection plane?

 

[Alivaril]

screwed

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Deliberate. Pronounced so that it rhymes with "awed" instead of "rude."



Timezone request will need to wait until I have ctrl-F (computer) access, they're buried at different parts of my notes. Having Search has made me slightly spoiled, I now see; I'll properly organize them later.

 

[Nachtigall]

-[] Anyone I'm likely to meet in the next few months who are genuinely trustworthy but hard to evaluate on first impression?
-[] Best way to diffuse tensions between Agneyastra and Sigurd?

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I'd prefer to handle social interactions by ourselves. Additionally, Neph already mentioned the Numbers and Fate (hard to give a worse first impression).

-[] What kind of chaos happens if Kladenets recognizes us as heir?
-[] Best way to help our phobia of mind magic?
-[] Is it safe to overchannel non-red colors?
-[] Any common misconceptions about colors/spells that you or other yous have made?
-[] How to modify magical girl form to match your current form? Or duplicate the fireproof clothes?
-[] Has anyone of us found any evidence of Sylvester Agni among the planes? Where?

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Added to my vote, slightly rephrased for first person.

[X] Thanks for your help!
[X] Questions for now:
-[X] What's that Black/Green effect?
-[X] Who should I find about djinn equip and Unison?

[X] Questions to be asked soon:
-[X] Any reason against resettling that ruined capital city?
-[X] Any low-hanging fruit on the King-Selection plane?
-[X] If we wanted to fix Mitra's access/avatar problems where do we go?
-[X] Demonstrations of advanced spellsteal, non-lethal chain lightning, dragon shapeshifting?

[X] Questions for later:
-[X] Eyesparkles?
-[X] Who's Holly?
-[X] Tips on Siofra's origin?
-[X] Tips for summoning from an unfreezing plane?
-[X] "Hayate is one of the people linked to the [...] Book of Darkness", who else?
-[X] What kind of chaos happens if Kladenets recognizes me as heir?
-[X] Best way to help my phobia of mind magic?
-[X] Is it safe to overchannel non-red colors?
-[X] Any common misconceptions about colors/spells that I or other Jades have made?
-[X] Can I update my magical girl form to match the artificial vessel? Or duplicate the fireproof clothes?
-[X] Has anyone of us found any evidence of Sylvester Agni among the planes? Where?

[X] Questions that are unlikely to work, but high reward:
-[X] Make an artifact on par with Sidhe's earrings?
-[X] Where to find Agni artifacts to recognize me as heir?
-[X] Precommit to helping with unlocking Nanoha's and Sidhe's aura, ask for forwarded knowledge?

[X] After leaving Magnostadt:
-[X] Tell the party about terms of engagement for the JS incident. Fate needs a hug.

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[Simon_Jester]

Okay, that's neat.

I'm starting to think that personality overlays may be some part of our "thing". "Setting things on fire" always seemed a bit... weak, might be the right word?... for a Planeswalker, when Sidhe is walking around with "Everything to do with Mind Control" as her Thing. Being able to instantiate two full-blown lines of consciousness on the same bits of soul can't be common.

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Maybe the readiness with which Jade does it (and apparently do it even more in-parallel than "two lines at once") is a side-effect of the 'invulnerable soul' thing? Maybe that somehow gives us the ability to 'overclock' and run in parallel in a way that normal beings could not? Like, how aggressively could you overclock an indestructible computer chip?

 

[Nixeu]

Yeah, but it could be the equivalent of Gaea's Cradle or Boseiju, Who Shelters All or even (given the difficulty of acquisition) something like Spitfire Bastion!

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Or it's just That Which Man Was Not Meant to Bond With. And I don't think we'll get off scot-free because we're female.

Thedas is the type of place where we could literally burn half of the continent with cleansing hellfire and be fairly confident in improving the situation, so long as we were careful to burn the correct half.

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Pretty much, yeah.

Basically, Neph is a spam filter on our precog. Sucks to be her.

edit: Also, precog goes as far as a year.

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Sounds about right. I'm somewhat unsurprised we need one. The only other solution I can think of is to only look at the planes we aren't currently one. Precog taking into account the actions you'll take knowing what you know is probably quite difficult, but, where you're not a factor, things would be more stable. Project how it would look without Jade intervening when off that plane, and stick to immediate stuff, if anything, while there.

I do basically trust that Neph is Jade + a year of memories from a lot of sources.

The question of if we can trust what Neph says depends a lot on can we trust Neph's principles, but like, think about that a bit. How far would a year of Jades be from the Jade we know? It's definitely plausible that there are Jades who bought fully into early-quest Agneyastra logic or rather just went with the flow since her will to contest things needed a lot of work early on. It's plausible that there are Jades who delved too much into reckless channeling or overchanneling and that led to an overly reckless personality. It's plausible that there are Jades who were much less lucky - no Agneyastra, didn't figure out how to free her, didn't manage to make friends, and so on, who might be in a worse place mentally or at a lower-power point like working as a translator in TSAB space or something. But those might not affect Neph as much since she does know what the best-case is.

There aren't going to be Jades who went fully evil and started massacring or sacrificing people, though. Not unless they were fully mind-controlled, and Neph implies she doesn't have access to those. So I'm actually pretty on-board with trusting Neph to be mostly like us except maybe more reckless at times, maybe more or less confident at times, maybe a little more willing to embrace the "most efficient" route since she has an idea what that might be. Basically, a Jade that needs a bit of temperament to be reasonably effective as an adviser, less "apply hammer to problem" than Agneyastra, more than our Jade.

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I think we also need to account for the fact that she ssems to be incredibly result-oriented. She's looking for ways for us to succeed, it seems like, and those get easier as we get stronger. I doubt experiencing any sorts of failed lines is fun for her, so she's going to act in ways to best avoid experiencing those. Which explains the data dump.

Also, Neph appears to have trouble keeping track of what timeline she's talking to us in. She cannot, for instance, readily remember whether we ran from Calypso or not. So most of her useful advice is useful in statistical terms.

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Also something to keep in mind.

Nah worst case we do something the qm hasnt foreseen and all the prophecy based planning falls apart.

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Given that most of what she's given us is more intel on things we might encounter than advice on actual actions, I think we'll be fine. The few things she has advised us on have been pretty generalized and non-specfic about methods, too. Mostly big pitfalls or areas where we'd be operating without vital information. Like on the state of PMMM.

This is disappointing.

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It's not particularly out-of-character for Sparks to expose themselves to the fire of enemy death machines just to get a better look at them. Their self-preservation tends to go haywire when they find something interesting.

I cut down "questions for now" to the two immediately useful ones, and moved the others further down.
Nixeu commented that the green-black effect "could be a number of things from canon. None of them particularly good."

From past votes, Alivaril frequently put parts that weren't covered by the next update "on hold". I don't think resolving to ask these questions at a later date is problematic?

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Could be even more things, if I look at parallels in some of the other planes. Generally, though, a person leaking mana like an old bucket, especially in those colors, is going to be something bad. My gut is leaning towards "artifical alterations to biology or soul", though.

If we want to figure out Unison, I think that we should ask about Unison specifically, rather than about what we think is useful for Unison on the assumption that it is.

I think that asking for help for Mitra is another excellent idea. It's clearly causing her trouble, and I suspect that one of the best ways to help Nanoha is to help Mitra.

I'm torn as to asking about low-hanging fruit on the King-Selection plane. I suspect that unfucking Agneyastra's Unison capabilities will send us to at least one Dungeon, which should accomplish our goal of finding something to do with Nanoha. I'd also feel bad asking two questions for Nanoha and none for Sidhe. The best way to help Sidhe out would probably be... the proposed question about improving our reaction to mind magic, I think. That said, I think that we can allocate another invocation of Neph for that; it wouldn't be immediately relevant the way boosting Agneyastra or Nanoha are.

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I'm going to have to second the suggestion about asking what the Black/Green effect is. It's immediately relevant, and a potential threat, as it could be anything from a parasitic construct turning his life-force to mana, to some sort of genetic advantage. And a person becoming a living mana generator is certainly of interest to us, and Astra.

 

[Sapient_Ham]

I'm going to have to second the suggestion about asking what the Black/Green effect is. It's immediately relevant, and a potential threat, as it could be anything from a parasitic construct turning his life-force to mana, to some sort of genetic advantage. And a person becoming a living mana generator is certainly of interest to us, and Astra.

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Spending a question on the Black/Green effect seems like a waste, given how it's right in front of us and not an immediate threat. (Neph would have warned us if it was.) It's interesting, but not in a "ask the nigh-omniscient precog" kind of way. Not when there are harder to answer, more critical questions to ask instead.

We have a very rough idea of what to expect from the recent update to the character sheet. Disease registers as Black/Green (Green=Life & Black=Parasitism, thus Black/Green = Parasitic Life), so at a guess we're looking at a particularly nasty, possibly magical disease or parasite:

Self-Cleanse, Red / Red Cleansing [Rank 23]: You formerly used this to burn Grief out of your Soul Gem. You've since learned that the same concepts can be used to selectively burn out diseases, albeit while causing severe internal burns to surrounding tissue. That particular application also pulls from your talents in Pyrokinesis; you're basically telling Red mana what it needs to burn and helping it stay focused on only those areas. You'd need to get sick to find out if this process counts as actual fire.

You honestly don't know how you know what to aim for. Disease just feels... wrong, somehow? It's different from the rest of the body.

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[cl20]

[X]Vebyast

 

[Keldin]

"Sudo show me the future."

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"How do we end up becoming an assassin for the United States government?"

"Oh, Sudo, I thought you said Suda."

 

[Nachtigall]

Spending a question on the Black/Green effect seems like a waste, given how it's right in front of us and not an immediate threat. (Neph would have warned us if it was.)
[...]
Disease registers as Black/Green (Green=Life & Black=Parasitism, thus Black/Green = Parasitic Life), so at a guess we're looking at a particularly nasty, possibly magical disease or parasite

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Except WoG states it's actively generating mana:

Also, the red-haired man is literally producing mana. As in, mana you could just pull out and use without needing to retrieve it from a construct or anything. It feels similar to what Indira's vessel seems to be doing.

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Also, what's a "more critical question" than something right in front of us which we are unlikely to ever see again?

Low-hanging fruit is nice, but it'll still be around for Neph's next Q&A session. (Besides, it limits exploration/adventuring fun if we don't discover it ourselves)

Incidentally, I think we should start each "channel Neph" with an urgent question to rouse her (prolongs channeling) and then field as many general questions as she has time for.

 

[Vebyast]

with an urgent question

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RIGHT, that's what was bothering me!

What makes this an "urgent situation that we care about", more so than Siofra?

 

[Nachtigall]

The devoid mana from the fateless rukh was the urgent situation, our cancer treatment merely was right after.

No idea why Calypso threatening Siofra wasn't urgent enough, maybe Jade bought into Agneyastra's argument that Siofra could handle herself?

 

[Skjadir]

[X]Vebyast

geting more info on where we can fix/get help with the astra/jade unsion problem likely the fastes way to solving it overall.

not sure the problem is just with astra, would not be surprised if jade if some of her mental problems will/are messing with it/ there is also the magic bs that going on in/around jades soul.

 

[LightLan]

(Ability Discovered and Improved: Chain Spell [Rank 0 -> 3])

(Ability Discovered and Improved: Slow Spell [Rank 0 -> 3])

(Ability Improved: Red Cleansing [Rank 23 -> 25])

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neph is not restricted to a single color unlike our other channelings.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Neph isn't an overchanneling personality like Red!Jade or Blue!Jade. She's just... Jade hopped up on waaay more precognition than is healthy for anyone who wants to maintain a clear sense of when they are and what they're doing.

 

[curiosity]

Their post-war footsoldiers can cut Seekers apart with just daggers.

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Also says a lot about quality of their daggers.

I'm starting to think that personality overlays may be some part of our "thing". "Setting things on fire" always seemed a bit... weak, might be the right word?... for a Planeswalker, when Sidhe is walking around with "Everything to do with Mind Control" as her Thing. Being able to instantiate two full-blown lines of consciousness on the same bits of soul can't be common.

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Maybe that's why we can take full advantage of Unison.

Spoiler: Relevant quote

"If we wish to give Mitra the abilities from a djinn, she will need to be granted direct access to mana-based magic, become a Unison Device, or both. The former would take an unknown amount of time and should likely be done after we loosen a few of her restrictions. The latter would require technology and resources we do not currently possess. My personal recommendation is for the former; I do not believe Nanoha is capable of properly utilizing a Unison Device. Unless we find a way to grant that particular Rare Skill family to Nanoha or to significantly upgrade Mitra at the same time, we'd be decreasing Mitra's overall usability."

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---

[] Quick advice on fixing Agneyastra's Unison capabilities? Who to talk to/where to go.
[] If we wanted to help out Mitra's various problems how would we do it?
[] What's that Black/Green effect?
edit: cancel vote

 

[Yog]

Who called it? I think I called it on the topics of Indira (who loves us, apparently, which is even more than I expected, instead of being hostile to us), Neph (I called her a downstream version of Jade, which is close enough)ю

[X] Quick advice on fixing Agneyastra's Unison capabilities? Who to talk to/where to go.
[X] Is Nanoha's plane "no immortality" mental filter safe to mess with? And is the AI not being perfect part of that filter?
[X] Do we figure out why the Earth is special (appears near identical in two planes)?
[X] What kind of chaos happens if Kladenets recognizes us as heir?
[X] Where to look for Agni confirming artifacts?

I'll read over the vote and hash out the total monstrosity in a bit, unless someone else does that.

 

[Nachtigall]

I'll read over the vote and hash out the total monstrosity in a bit, unless someone else does that.

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If you want to list all questions we have, my vote should be a good starting point.
As SynchronizedWritersBlock reminded me:

Any questions? Have time for one or two, I think.

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Due to that, I listed most of our questions in sub-sections for later Q&A sessions.

 

[Yog]

[X] Quick advice on fixing Agneyastra's Unison capabilities? Who to talk to/where to go.
[X] Locations of Agni artifacts we most need to get

Limiting it to two, and stuff that we otherwise can't really get.

 

[Pyrotech51]

[X] Quick advice on fixing Agneyastra's Unison capabilities? Who to talk to/where to go.
[X] Is it a good idea to try channeling or overchanneling other colors?
[] Any low-hanging fruit on the King-Selection plane?

The third one sounds sorta like a last throwaway question, and a pointer to anything which could be grabbed easily shouldn't need more than a 'X, in/at Y Location, in Z Days time' for an answer, since we can probably plan things out given that much knowledge.

It'd also give the option for generating an additional sub-quest hook to the QM, so I'd say it's got somewhat good odds of making it should the first two not take too long.

Edit - tapped off the one that I think can wait a bit longer. Might switch if I change my mind. Agneyastra should definitely be priority though.

 

[Nachtigall]

Decided to add a preparation step for channeling Neph again:

[] For future Q&A sessions, pass all questions through Blue and Red channeling first to get as much info as possible (can be done en masse). Start with an urgent issue to bring Neph to the fore.

Should I add Red overchanneling? Neph advised us to get better with it anyhow, and we might get practical advice from Reddest-Jade.


@Pyrotech51, "low hanging fruit" is currently in second place and would probably take a full slot - after all, it's "one or two questions", so it's pretty much guaranteed we won't get three (unless it's a simple yes/no).

 

[curiosity]

Maybe this should have been a priority voting. The throwaway unimportant question "Any low-hanging fruit on the King-Selection plane?" is the second in lead.

edit:

@Pyrotech51, "low hanging fruit" is currently in second place and would probably take a full slot - after all, it's "one or two questions", so it's pretty much guaranteed we won't get three (unless it's a simple yes/no).

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Jade: Any low-hanging fruit on the King-Selection plane?
Neph: Yes. *disconnects*

 

[SynchronizedWritersBlock]

Decided to add a preparation step for channeling Neph again:

[] For future Q&A sessions, pass all questions through Blue and Red channeling first to get as much info as possible (can be done en masse). Start with an urgent issue to bring Neph to the fore.

Should I add Red overchanneling? Neph advised us to get better with it anyhow, and we might get practical advice from Reddest-Jade.

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I don't really agree with channeling first. As noted in the character sheet, channeling isn't much good unless the problem is in front of us. Half of what we want to ask is about future knowledge anyway, which won't apply.

 

[Filraen]

[X] Quick advice on fixing Agneyastra's Unison capabilities? Who to talk to/where to go/what to do.
[X] Any low-hanging fruit on the King-Selection plane?
[X] (If there's still time left) How long it'd take to make a summon bond with Sigurd? How much it'd clash with our other plans?

The last question is to know if we can afford the time trying to form a summon bond before the Jewel Seed incident.

 

[SynchronizedWritersBlock]

If we want to figure out Unison, I think that we should ask about Unison specifically, rather than about what we think is useful for Unison on the assumption that it is.

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I strongly disagree, Unison isn't even the main point, for me I just want to understand Djinn abilities. We've gone almost six months with the only thing we've gotten from the KS plane being materials and mana, despite beating two of the main plot devices and cheesing a third.

Just because they get in the way of Unison doesn't make it the main point. Agneyasta did seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid Unison and I don't think that'll change.

 

[Nachtigall]

I don't really agree with channeling first. As noted in the character sheet, channeling isn't much good unless the problem is in front of us. Half of what we want to ask is about future knowledge anyway, which won't apply.

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Blue told us that we could only timestop for 7 months before we attract the Eldrazi, so Blue-Jade definitely is more aware of our foreknowledge.
Blue being better at 'specific problems' was in contrast to magical practice where we just try to improve - we don't need the problem "in front of us". Red is the opposite, excelling at practical work instead of problem solving.

If Neph has to start with basics we could have found out via regular channeling, that's just wasting our limited time with her.