It Belongs to a Museum

Blackshard · Wednesday at 8:28 PM

The Phoenixian said:
It's not a focused plan but perhaps something like...

[]Plan: Three Avenues
-[ ] New Acquisitionist (1 Goodwill Spent)
-[ ] Research Relic (Slann Palanquin)
-[ ] Skeletons (Rare)

I was just thinking along the lines of "What would make sense to do on a turn that we Cultivate Audience instead of grabbing a New Acquisitionist immediately", and your plan seemed basically there.

[ ] Plan: Lizardly Interests
-[ ] Cultivate Audience (Awakening - Lizardmen)
-[ ] Research Relic (Slann Palanquin)
-[ ] Skeletons (Rare)

This plan is heavily focused on the "we're definitely going to have more Lizardman exhibits, so you'd better appreciate them" idea... and so puts off bringing in an Acquisitionist by one turn. Plausibly worth doing, if the thread can stomach putting off the Acquisitionist.

Loltop said:
what are the odds getting awakening interested in lizard men triggers a progression in the lutr mind magic storyline? Magic + Lizardmen + Lutr's Homebase = ?

It is a mystery, but I'd personally be more inclined to suspect the previously-hypothesized Death Mask Collection of that. I'm not necessarily advocating we spend another 11 actions making them, nor that we start doing so this turn... but we can be reasonably certain that they'll be Vampire/Piracy Relics, worth ~3.3 Interest each.

EDIT: I couldn't help myself, so have a half-joking plan that advances this idea:

[ ] Plan: Faces of Luthor
-[ ] New Acquisitionist
-[ ] Investigate (Luthor Harkon)
-[ ] Acquire Relic (Death Mask of whichever Luthor we talk to next that isn't Haakon)

...and then we'd presumably go on to make another mask approximately every time we talk to the guy, until we have the full set. Then he visits the exhibit, sees every facet of his identity in one place at once, and ~~gets cured of his curse~~ gives us a hefty chunk of Goodwill for spending more than a decade on a project that tickles both his personal interests and his vanity. Presumably we fit in some Cultivate Audience (Awakening - Vampire/Piracy) in there somewhere for extra bonus points.

somewhatLazy said:
@Boney we'll only learn what new acquirers/staff/contacts we can recruit once the action resolves during the turn, right?

Boney said:
An Acquisitionist is someone you send out with instructions to acquire a specific type of relic. You will be given a selection of Acquisitionist to choose from based on your existing Patrons and Contacts.

Sounds like it, yes; "You will be given a selection" is quite different from "Here's the selection".

Talon TigerDino · Wednesday at 9:08 PM

[] Plan The Teaching Never Ends
- [] New Acquisitionist
An Acquisitionist is someone you send out with instructions to acquire a specific type of relic. You will be given a selection of Acquisitionist to choose from based on your existing Patrons and Contacts.
- [] Develop Affiliate (Princess Aelsabrim)
- [] Skeletons (rare)

Yes, my ultimate goals are to give Aelsabrim the full Uncle Experience (tm) and to gain permission for The Tide of Skjold to go fight Merwyrms in sunken elven ruins for museum acquisitions. Thankfully the Princess is an avenue to both of those things, so here we are. And it's not like we're in a hurry to slam out another exhibit; everyone directly invested in this museum has plenty of time, what with being either undead, a liche priest, or an elf.

Chimeraguard · Wednesday at 9:13 PM

We only have 1 Goodwill. I don't think we can take two Spend Goodwill actions.

Loltop · Wednesday at 9:16 PM

Talon TigerDino said:
[] Plan The Teaching Never Ends
- [] New Acquisitionist
An Acquisitionist is someone you send out with instructions to acquire a specific type of relic. You will be given a selection of Acquisitionist to choose from based on your existing Patrons and Contacts.
- [] Develop Affiliate (Princess Aelsabrim)
- [] Skeletons (rare)

Yes, my ultimate goals are to give Aelsabrim the full Uncle Experience (tm) and to gain permission for The Tide of Skjold to go fight Merwyrms in sunken elven ruins for museum acquisitions. Thankfully the Princess is an avenue to both of those things, so here we are. And it's not like we're in a hurry to slam out another exhibit; everyone directly invested in this museum has plenty of time, what with being either undead, a liche priest, or an elf.

Both the first two require goodwill spent. Maybe change the new aquisitionalist to plants? Underwater plants for the future underwater acquisition and playing into the relationship developement?
I really like the plant option, it could be feed for critters, and it's half of lustria's challenges.

Boney · Wednesday at 9:21 PM

Green Baron said:
What type of interest would you say Skeggi have Boney?

edit.
I just know realized that this was infact not an option to get new audiences. My fault 😅

Blackshard said:
As a "this would be useful as fuck" guess from the tags we've seen so far... Piracy, Norsca, Lustria?

EDIT: We don't seem to have any actions that let us go out and fetch an existing faction as an audience, though... unless that's one of the things Contacts do?

Getting a contact in or near or otherwise related to Skeggi could reveal a Skeggi audience, including what their affinities are.

Rockeye said:
Would examining the palanquin's magical nature and functions be covered under 'Research Relic'?

Yes, though that would just be for the sake of understanding the palanquin. This isn't a magical R&D quest and at most you'll figure out how to do neat levitation things for museum display purposes.

Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Both Awakening and the Arabyan academics value magic, and we could cultivate an interest in magic in the Sea Elves later (I'm a little surprised they don't already have it, but I suppose there aren't many Sapherian elves in this corner of the world)

Sapherians tend to be homebodies. 'Sea Elves' are mostly from Cothique and Eataine, and almost all of the rest are from Yvresse or Tiranoc. Teclis, the most prominent example of a magically-inclined Elf that goes out into the world and investigates things, is from Cothique.

Sparsebeard said:
I wonder. We know that the Citadel of Dusk has contacts with the Lizardmen, would it be possible to try and get our own skink contact?

@Boney Could "[ ] New Contact (Princess Aelsabrim)" be used to try to get in touch with the Citadel of Dusk's lizardmen interlocutors?

Walk me through what your expectations for that would be. The introduction has been made. You have a translator standing beside you. What sort of mutually beneficial arrangement are you trying to pitch to this Skink?

somewhatLazy said:
@Boney we'll only learn what new acquirers/staff/contacts we can recruit once the action resolves during the turn, right?

Right, though you can reasonably foresee what at least a few of the options would be.

horngeek · Wednesday at 9:27 PM

H2F2 said:
I wonder if we can modernize existing exhibitions?
For example, if we acquire a necromancer in the future, we can revive the skeletons at previous exhibitions so that they do not just stand but imitate activity.

Would probably negate some of the advantages of Island if we're too blatant wuth necromancy.

BananaBuddy · Wednesday at 9:35 PM

I always enjoy reading this quest and am honestly surprised at how much i enjoy every chapter!

Thanks for the chapter and great work boney!

Blackshard · Wednesday at 9:38 PM

Boney said:
Getting a contact in or near or otherwise related to Skeggi could reveal a Skeggi audience, including what their affinities are.

Aha! Contacts are indeed how we get in touch with new audiences! Thanks for the confirmation, that's very helpful to know.

I don't think it's our top priority right now, since there's no guarantee that the desired tags will be at all convenient... but the potential returns from adding extra audiences are certainly high enough to offset the action economy issues of having several contacts available when we only have three actions per turn to spend between them all.

Loltop · Wednesday at 9:43 PM

Getting the black lion with his beast wrangling opens up live critters and beasts, possible sea beast wrangling if we get an underwater capable crew? Live lustrian floura and fauna exhibit?

Blackshard · Wednesday at 9:54 PM

Loltop said:
Getting the black lion with his beast wrangling opens up live critters and beasts, possible sea beast wrangling if we get an underwater capable crew? Live lustrian floura and fauna exhibit?

If you're leaning that way, do remember that the Black Lion was a Museum Staff applicant, not an Acquisitionist applicant. Possible Acquisitionists would include The Tide of Skjold, The Lamprey, and The Salt Lord from Year 0 Part 1... assuming that none of them have found other work by now. For that matter, I expect there to be elven "Acquisitionists" on offer to compete with them.

Talon TigerDino · Wednesday at 10:07 PM

Chimeraguard said:
We only have 1 Goodwill. I don't think we can take two Spend Goodwill actions.

Loltop said:
Both the first two require goodwill spent. Maybe change the new aquisitionalist to plants? Underwater plants for the future underwater acquisition and playing into the relationship developement?
I really like the plant option, it could be feed for critters, and it's half of lustria's challenges.

I might have forgotten that developing a contact required goodwill. I shall change things accordingly.

Blackshard · Wednesday at 10:09 PM

Voting is open.

Now, I'm a little disappointed that none of my plans so far have been popular, so I'm going to try something slightly different this time and just start the vote with three plans, to improve my chances.

[X] Plan: Lizardly Interests
-[X] Cultivate Audience (Awakening - Lizardmen)
-[X] Research Relic (Slann Palanquin)
-[X] Skeletons (Rare)

This plan is heavily focused on the "we're definitely going to have more Lizardman exhibits, so you'd better appreciate them" idea... and so puts off bringing in an Acquisitionist by one turn.

[X] Plan: Things Elves Like
-[X] New Acquisitionist
-[X] Gems
-[X] Beasts

This plan focuses on the things we know we can get that fit elf-desired tags, in the hopes of opening an elf-interesting exhibit and getting elf visitors in sooner rather than later. Given our Contact, we ought to get at least one Acquisitionist suited to this sort of thing.

[X] Plan: Faces of Luthor
-[X] New Acquisitionist
-[X] Investigate (Luthor Harkon)
-[X] Acquire Relic (Death Mask of whichever Luthor we talk to next that isn't Haakon)

This half-joke plan focuses on speedrunning Luthor Harkon's identity plotline, while also appealing to his interests/vanity. He didn't even bother to visit last time, so clearly we need to suck up more, right?

(I also plan to approval vote for @picklepikkl's previously-suggested Skeleton Crew plan, since I find it thoroughly unobjectionable, but I see that he's viewing the thread now, and feel it'd be rude to preempt him by posting his plan before he gets the chance.)

EDIT: As promised,
[X] Plan Skeleton Crew

picklepikkl · Wednesday at 10:09 PM

[X] Plan Skeleton Crew
-[X] New Acquisitionist
-[X] Skeletons (rare)
-[X] Investigate (Haakon the Bloody)

This plan advances our museum in several synergistic ways:

It is very important that we get a new source of relics somehow, because right now we're limited to the Princess's network and our own personal efforts. Each source of artifacts makes new staff more valuable, each staff member makes new artifacts more valuable, and right now we need more Stuff more than we need more ability to go into detail on the Stuff we have. So let's spend our first Goodwill on a source, and for the sake of variety let's get an Acquisitionist (i.e. "a pirate crew that goes out and gets us stuff") rather than another Contact.
If we want to build a second exhibit, we need a centerpiece as a matter of mechanical fact (you can't have exhibits without centerpieces). Currently, the only lead we have on a new centerpiece is the Skeletons (Rare), so we should get those and then see if we can get supporting artifacts to split our current mega-exhibit into two more focused ones. Centerpieces are going to be our big limiting factor on putting together exhibits.
Speaking of splitting our two exhibits up, if we're going to do that we need more stuff on the piracy front and the history of our boss. Taking an Investigate action will let us find Leads, a mechanic for acquiring cool Relics relevant to the thing being Investigated.

So, basically, this plan takes the most direct route to us having a new and good exhibit ASAP while also expanding our capabilities to get more artifacts in the future: three actions that each increase the value of the others. I don't want to toot my own horn too much, but it's basically an incredible work of unadulterated genius that not even God in His infinite wisdom could improve.

EDIT: Also the title is a silly pun.

Chimeraguard · Wednesday at 10:09 PM

Voting is open, so...

[X] Plan Lustrian Economic Lessons
-[X] New Acquisitionist (1 Goodwill Spent)
-[X] Investigate (New World Colonies)
-[X] Beasts

I have become a bit more skeptical if now is the right time for an "Economy of Lustrian Colonies" exhibit, but these actions that I'd planned for it overall I think cast a wide enough net to be worthwhile even if we go for something different. Particularly if that direction is more focused on my idea for an alternative of New World Piracy, but even without that they're another potential source of items and audiences.

Beasts is an option I'm not particularly attached to, so if people feel strongly about a different third choice I can switch.

[X] Plan Skeleton Crew

Talon TigerDino · Wednesday at 10:10 PM

[X] Plan The Teaching and Never Ends
- [X] Plants
- [X] Develop Affiliate (Princess Aelsabrim)
- [X] Skeletons (rare)

In light of being told I can't develop a student and get an acquisitions team in the same turn due to a lack of goodwill, I have instead opted for plants to accompany the development. To get closer to the Life Mage with a curious pall of Death Magic. Because 2 students would be better than 1. Flawless logic it is.

Gavin Prince · Wednesday at 10:11 PM

So far as I can tell, our current options are:

* Consolidate our fairly solid Lustrian chops by finding or making an audience that'll appreciate what we have
* Expand our exhibits to more closely match the tastes of our primary patron, Luthor Harkon (who mostly likes material on Vampires)
* Expand our exhibits to match the tastes of our existing audience (Awakening, who love Trophies)

We can't do both the first and the second for lack of goodwill, but I feel that a New Contact gives us more future options. Rare skeletons are very very likely to end up as trophy relics. And maybe a centrepiece.

[X] Plan: Vampires and Trophies
- [X] GOODWILL: New Contact: Luthor Harkon
- [X] Investigate (Haakon the Bloody)
- [X] Skeletons (Rare)

Chlof · Wednesday at 10:11 PM

[X] Plan Skeleton Crew

Candesce · Wednesday at 10:12 PM

[X] Plan: Faces of Luthor
[X] Plan Skeleton Crew

Blackshard · Wednesday at 10:14 PM

Gavin Prince said:
So far as I can tell, our current options are:

* Consolidate our fairly solid Lustrian chops by finding or making an audience that'll appreciate what we have
* Expand our exhibits to more closely match the tastes of our primary patron, Luthor Harkon (who mostly likes material on Vampires)
* Expand our exhibits to match the tastes of our existing audience (Awakening, who love Trophies)

We can't do both the first and the second for lack of goodwill, but I feel that a New Contact gives us more future options. We can always cultivate Lustrian interest in Awakening for "free".

[X] Plan: Vampires and Trophies
- [X] GOODWILL: New Contact: Foreign Vampiric Courts (through Luthor Harkon)
- [X] Investigate (Haakon the Bloody)
- [X] Skeletons (Rare)

I don't think we can specify who we get as a contact?

Boney said:
[ ] New Contact (specify a Patron or Contact)
A Contact is someone you can acquire specific types of goods from. You will be given a selection of Contacts to choose from based on who it is that you're asking to introduce you to one of their Contacts.

It sounds like we do have to specify who we want introducing us to their friends, but we don't get to specify which friends they introduce us to, so there'll be a secondary vote on that one.

einargs · Wednesday at 10:14 PM

Boney said:
Walk me through what your expectations for that would be. The introduction has been made. You have a translator standing beside you. What sort of mutually beneficial arrangement are you trying to pitch to this Skink?

We want them to tell us stories about their retribution on people for grabbing the plates so we can make a big exhibit about why you shouldn't do that.

That seems like a good pitch to build bridges? And then parlay that into getting more information about their beliefs and history for better exhibits.

And I guess when we're back home we'll add on "and isn't Harkon is impressive for taking a whole city from the lizardfolk."

It could be very awkward if any of them ever want to come see the exhibits...

Gavin Prince · Wednesday at 10:16 PM

Blackshard said:
I don't think we can specify who we get as a contact?

[ ] New Contact (specify (a Patron or) Contact)

Given we only have one patron, the latter is the only variable we can actually pick. I don't think it's particularly far-fetched that Luthor can provide us a subvote's worth of vampiric contacts to choose from. I guess it's worth asking though.

@Boney : Is asking Luthor for specifically foreign vampire contacts viable here?

picklepikkl · Wednesday at 10:17 PM

Gavin Prince said:
- [X] GOODWILL: New Contact: Foreign Vampiric Courts (through Luthor Harkon)

I don't believe this is valid; or, rather, it might be valid, but it's not guaranteed to work. Based on the option as written, we don't get to specify what type of Contact we get -- we just hit up a selected Patron or Contact and go "can you introduce us to anyone?". If Harkon doesn't have Contacts in foreign vampiric courts (or, at least, none he's willing to introduce us to), well, Boney probably won't go "ha ha you get nothing," but at best we just get the standard draw.

Gavin Prince said:
[ ] New Contact (specify (a Patron or) Contact)

Read the description, though.

Boney said:
[ ] New Contact (specify a Patron or Contact)
A Contact is someone you can acquire specific types of goods from. You will be given a selection of Contacts to choose from based on who it is that you're asking to introduce you to one of their Contacts.

If it worked the way you're interpreting, where the parenthetical is who you're seeking out, the fact that it says "specify a Patron" would make no sense, given that it's a New Contact option. Also, Boney already confirmed my interpretation when I checked earlier:

picklepikkl said:
Our sole Contact is Aelsabrim. Contacts know people, can have specific kinds of goods acquired from them, and require an action to hit up but can be hit up as frequently as we want until they become tapped out, but we can Develop the connection to get more/better stuff or to enhance their capabilities. We can spend 1 Goodwill to ask either one of our Patrons or one of our other Contacts for new Contact options.

Boney said:
All correct, with the minor quibble that I'd consider a Patron to be an Affiliate, in a 'some affiliates are more affiliate than others' kind of way. There's not a lot of options for Patrons in the general area because Lutr's got Awakening pretty centralized under him, though there was an option to convert the Princess into one. Otherwise the easiest way to get some would probably be to get contacts on Ulthuan or in the Old World and see who they can introduce you to.

Chimeraguard · Wednesday at 10:19 PM

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's that we can pick a Patron or a Contact we already have, and then they can introduce us to other Contacts that we then pick from.

So it would be a choice between Luthor or the Princess.

Blackshard · Wednesday at 10:20 PM

Gavin Prince said:
[ ] New Contact (specify (a Patron or) Contact)

Sure: we can specify our Contact, Princess Aelsabrim Fallenstar of Tiranoc, and ask her to introduce us to one of her friends... but we don't get to also specify "The Phoenix King", and ask the Princess to introduce us to him.

Gavin Prince · Wednesday at 10:25 PM

Okay, on reading all that I agree I was mistaken on how that option worked.

That said, I do still think asking Luthor for Contacts is extremely likely to offer at least one Vampiric option (he does not have all that many non-vampiric peers, and it is his primary stated interest), so I'll stick with the plan as stated.

It Belongs to a Museum

We do deserve to exist.

Australian Dragon

This isn't even my nerdiest form

We do deserve to exist.

Her Ladyship

Verified Spiller of the Egg Yolk

This isn't even my nerdiest form

We do deserve to exist.