It's a Girl's World -- And Lilly wants Adventure

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Slyvena said:
Title of 2.5: "Blood on the Floor, Bone in my Skin"
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Alright, ladies and gents, the showdown you've been waiting for! The Benevolent Demigod of the Forest vs the Commanding Queen of Destruction! 13 seconds on the clock! Hostages that will hopefully not die! A whole heap of consequences even if successful!

Heaven or Hell! Duel 1! Let's Rock!
 
Alectai said:
Anyway, adding in my speculation on the Concordance technobabble. I'm thinking based on all of this that Pre-Factor is the accumulated events that are leading to the expected Juncture, and the Post-Factor are unresolved variables that may potentially contribute to the final outcome. So in the case of Myah, with so much shit in flux there with the events that had unfolded, there was a very large percentile chance that the right combination of variables might have just occurred anyway and pulled her out of the death spiral without our intervention anyway. Myah was in critical condition but hadn't hit the final point of no-return yet, so her doomcounter was 33% resolved.
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The stats courses in me want to say something about Bayesian Priors.

Bayes Rule is P(A|B) = P(B|A) P(A) / P(B). Or, concretely:

The posterior probability P(A|B) of Silas Family {{Slaughter}}/Liatris and Lily Silas {{Fragment Harvest}} Event (i.e., the event happening, after factors) is -7% relative to the prior probability P(A) = 84%.

The factors are given by P(B|A) / P(B), but I'm too tired to stretch this.

Terminology's strikingly similar, but IDK if this is actually the case.
 
And here we fucking go again.

God have mercy on us because RNG and the universe will have none. I was really hoping we'd get even just twelve fucking hours of a reprieve T_T

Honestly, as much as I hope this sorts it out, I rather expect Valerie is probably going to get popped here. I just wasn't willing to rely on Petal being okay when even Evie got rattled by the Stop command despite being a Transcendent who's not even phased into three dimensional reality here.
 
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Secret Challenges 2.4
  • Informational
    • Deuterium Dawn said:
    And we still don't have confirmation divergence is actually bad.
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    In fact, you have direct QM confirmation that it can go either way.

    Alectai said:
    and possibly done by the time we get home if we didn't have the foresight to grind {Riemannian Geometer} in our training session
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    This was in fact the sort of consequence I was thinking of as part of the warning for taking a Foundational and an extra Ethos at once, the chance Valerie would just show up right at your house instead of causing a fuss in the surrounding area skyrocketed. (Evie would have woken you early from unconsciousness, with a not yet active [Towering Edifice to Heaven] if you'd rolled too many days sleep. So it wasn't an auto-lose situation.)

    Alectai said:
    Another thing I noticed.
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    And bingo, that's one of them.
    There is indeed a direct connection between the original state of the Melange Layer and the innards of Mortal Souls (I almost considered putting in a deliberate typo of '...melange layer...' instead of '...melange lay...'.
    Lilly will find another one of the secondary utility functions brought along with the [Towering Edifice to Heaven] next chapter.

    Razzocnor said:
    Perhaps it is a hint that the Dream is more than just our Dream, that it connects to other people as well? After all, it certainly isn't drawing the reactions of the represented people from nowhere. We could even form Essence links through them! Which means that all of them must be connected to a Dream as well. Mayhap our Dream is but a small, fenced corner of a greater Dream-world that incorporates ALL living things?
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    And that's another.
    The [Dream within the Forest] is indeed not actually Lilly's Dream at all, she is just currently the only occupant. Petal will grow to embody all of the Collective when more are added. Massive bonus to relevant DCs when Petal and Lilly meet in the waking world in the future.

    Silverking said:
    Alright, ladies and gents, the showdown you've been waiting for! The Benevolent Demigod of the Forest vs the Commanding Queen of Destruction! 13 seconds on the clock! Hostages that will hopefully not die! A whole heap of consequences even if successful!
    Heaven or Hell! Duel 1! Let's Rock!
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    Meanwhile in the coaches box, Aboleath and Ev'aclliál are practically quivering their _̷̺͋̍|̵͖̂-̸͕͚̈́͒\̶̬̻̓_̸̫̆͒-̷͖͛\̷͇̮̈-̵̨̲̓̑_̷̝͋_̸̡̃̍-̷͎͋/̸̞͌''s, so you know it's gonna be a good match!
     
  • Informational
    • The true surprise will be if we win because we have boiling blood and are restraining Valerie, something that may make her completely reconsider the new order she would have given to defeat us and let us buy the time we need.
     
    Has Pith got a resource pool it draws from? I assume {Counterforce} got a level because she ran to the town.

    But what of starting to use Pulse surge in a more general way, tying more of her actions, her speech, casual movements, all to her heartbeat and the philosophy that the upbeats, downbeats, and the in-between imply. Her talking, her convincing, her healing, her ethos use, her cleaver use, her bedrock and its rest state.
    Tying it all together and making all her powers dance to the beat of her heart.

    And then Lilly learned to control her heart, she can keep her heart still at the up beat, low beat, or hold at any position in between. :V Or oscillating at super speeds.
    And then there is her {core heart}.... beating to the drums of creation.


    The heat vision power Lilly gained is going to make reading people and their emotions a lot easier.
     
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    Now that voting is over, some power-synergy-pondering:

    Could Essence Formations / Remembrances like Applied Current be made permanent (or at least semi-permanent) with Imposition? This would be very, very useful, when considering that the prototype Lilly has is currently easy to dissipate and doesn't seem to last long. But with Imposition, she could just focus on the potency of any essence-effects, and leave the stability-issues asides as either completely or nearly unnecessary, then just step around those same unsolved issues with Imposition.

    This would allow to bring up the usefulness of Essence Formations much faster, which would be nice considering that nearly every waking moment of Lilly after the quest-start has been spent this far trying to solve one crisis after the next and that trend doesn't seem to be stopping. So a near-immediate boost to Lilly's abilities would be more than welcome. Getting Imposition would of course make any Mana-Ethos that we might grab even more potent (fingers crossed for Sorcerer and/or Quickwrit Stennovoker coming up again).

    The only thing confusing me is the similiarity of descriptions of Imposition and Constructs. So maybe Imposition applies to powers when used on living things and more ephemeral workings, while Constructs is the more traditonal "magic items" focus? Maybe this was already clarified at some point, but I can't remember if so. Also, as a slight damper for getting either of those, under "Mental Load" in the character sheet:
    ::Required to unlock a third Aspect::
    Relations or Artefacts Lvl 2
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    Which might mean that we aren't getting that third Aspect anytime soon.
     
    Slyvena said:
    In fact, you have direct QM confirmation that it can go either way.
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    Actually begs a question or three.

    Specifically. What about Inverted Ethae?

    1) Do they follow the same general rules on having Sync and Divergence in the first place?
    2) Is it typical for Inverted Ethae to have low or high Divergence? Assuming any of them survive for a notable length of time that is.
    3) Is having high Divergence better or worse for the user of Inverted Ethos - mostly in terms of quality of life, ability to conceal the Inverted nature of their Ethos, and overall survivability?
    4) What would it mean to have an Inverted Ethos and a very very low Synch for it?

    On the topic of Valerie - does her beelining for us instead of "causing a fuss in the surrounding area" make it easier to keep/conceal her (if she even survives the encounter)?
     
    Based on the upcoming title, I can guess that one of the following occurs;

    1. Valerie is more dangerous than we thought, and manages to seriously injure Lilly somehow. Either by some kind of limited command ability even after we mute her, or as a combatant. Perhaps Aboleath gets involved and is a nasty fight.

    2. Lilly gets firsthand experience in just how much squishier normal humans are than her Primordial Chassis, and does more damage than precisely intended. May end up killing Valerie instead of saving her on accident. Probably psychological trauma.

    3. A mix. Valerie manages to hurt Lilly somehow (maybe a quick 'CUT!' command or something), scalding blood splashes around, causes nasty damage, maybe wrecks Valerie bad.
     
    Razzocnor said:
    Based on the upcoming title, I can guess that one of the following occurs;

    1. Valerie is more dangerous than we thought, and manages to seriously injure Lilly somehow. Either by some kind of limited command ability even after we mute her, or as a combatant. Perhaps Aboleath gets involved and is a nasty fight.

    2. Lilly gets firsthand experience in just how much squishier normal humans are than her Primordial Chassis, and does more damage than precisely intended. May end up killing Valerie instead of saving her on accident. Probably psychological trauma.

    3. A mix. Valerie manages to hurt Lilly somehow (maybe a quick 'CUT!' command or something), scalding blood splashes around, causes nasty damage, maybe wrecks Valerie bad.
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    I'm going to add more:

    4. The use of {Subversion} mutate our body badly and we may need some time to recover.

    5. Not all of our body stops being stopped, but we still find a bloody way to move and continue with our objective.

    6. It is just a big troll and the title refers to the consequences of the dead watchman outside of our home.

    7. Someone close to us and/or Valerie dies.

    8. We died. This may or may not be a game over depending on our {Locus} and Evie.

    9. Valerie try to stop us by giving a mental order to one of her bones. It suddenly gets launched out of her body and penetrate our skin, but then stops.
     
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    I really really hope it isn't just because Alectai's plan used Subversion to cause 'Stop' to become 'Stop Me' meaning we're forced to paste Val because that would really suck even if I rather Val die that any of the family.
     
    NotteBoy97 said:
    I really really hope it isn't just because Alectai's plan used Subversion to cause 'Stop' to become 'Stop Me' meaning we're forced to paste Val because that would really suck even if I rather Val die that any of the family.
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    Well, we've been given explicit, direct instructions for how to incapacitate Valerie without (hopefully without) killing her, so our odds of success there are about as good as we can hope for.
     
    God I wish we had an omake bonus for +10 to all rolls this update cause I'm going to be so sad if someone dies because of rolls cause the update title is not filling me with confidence.
     
    It's not an Epilogue, I'll take it. Still wish Alectai had grabbed some of the tricks I had in my plan that could be concurrent, but ah well.
     
    You guys are assuming she doesn't figure out the Power and then die afterwards to Valerie. I'm not sure I would take that bet. 13 seconds is enough time to get an epiphany and then die :p
     
    Actually, as pointed out, surviving this battle may be optional (though we certainly hope we survive because we like having family and friends). Because we do have an ability that we haven't used yet, namely that as long as Petal is alive Lilly has some degree of resurrective immortality, and will regenerate after some amount of time from Petal. Presumably, getting 'harvested' would stop that, but that seems to be more involved than just killing Lilly and may be mutually exclusive.
     
    So random thoughts on Diveregence but I wonder how it can be both a good and bad thing.

    Cause it sounds like it could break the Ethos given the 'pushed past a breaking point' in the most recent update and our experience with True Song which makes it sounds really bad even if it allows us to have more flexible powers. There's also the fact low divergence made our threshold change easier which implies high divergence would increase the DC.

    But it's also true that Divergence allowed us to get some useful powers we needed even if it didn't fit the Ethos itself. There's also the fact that despite True Song being the start of our divergence with Brave Blood the Weaver/God that gave us Brave Blood still helped us when we asked for it when we were saving our dad and even helped fix True Song in the aftermath despite our Divergence issues. So Divergence can't be that bad from even the creator's perspective.

    Makes me wonder if it might be a good idea to take an Ethos with the intention of diverging it from its 'intended' use if it has a decent power. Like taking an Ethos about twisting people's flesh to make them puppets and using it as a healing power or something like that.
     
    I feel like the thing about Divergence is that when you don't have a pre set path ahead, its less likely the ethos will be as Powerful as using it as intended. Like you could say Diverge [Dream within the Forest] to a more healing focused ethos, but you would be losing a lot of what makes it good in exchange for focusing on one specific aspect. And likely no matter what, it still wouldnt match more dedicated Healing ethos.

    Sometimes, this allows you to essentially match your powers to better fit your situation, but you are likely gonna lose some of the oomph you otherwise might have had.
     
    Razzocnor said:
    Actually, as pointed out, surviving this battle may be optional (though we certainly hope we survive because we like having family and friends). Because we do have an ability that we haven't used yet, namely that as long as Petal is alive Lilly has some degree of resurrective immortality, and will regenerate after some amount of time from Petal. Presumably, getting 'harvested' would stop that, but that seems to be more involved than just killing Lilly and may be mutually exclusive.
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    Also mutually exclusive with a double-kill (e.g. Valerie manages a command that kills Lilly as a dying effort). Because then Valerie's in no shape to 'harvest' Lilly after death.

    NotteBoy97 said:
    But it's also true that Divergence allowed us to get some useful powers we needed even if it didn't fit the Ethos itself. There's also the fact that despite True Song being the start of our divergence with Brave Blood the Weaver/God that gave us Brave Blood still helped us when we asked for it when we were saving our dad and even helped fix True Song in the aftermath despite our Divergence issues. So Divergence can't be that bad from even the creator's perspective.
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    That, or Pithe is just a nice guy like that.
     
    GlassMask said:
    I feel like the thing about Divergence is that when you don't have a pre set path ahead, its less likely the ethos will be as Powerful as using it as intended. Like you could say Diverge [Dream within the Forest] to a more healing focused ethos, but you would be losing a lot of what makes it good in exchange for focusing on one specific aspect. And likely no matter what, it still wouldnt match more dedicated Healing ethos.

    Sometimes, this allows you to essentially match your powers to better fit your situation, but you are likely gonna lose some of the oomph you otherwise might have had.
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    Oh is that what the powers that be do with all the people sent to them? Don't give a shit about what their power is supposed to do they just force fit them into a mold by diverging in ways they want? Like how they were initially going to send Lilly to a temple and force her to heal and only heal until that's all she could do despite her other abilities? Wow that's fucked up even if you get the power of your dreams and it's super useful you're still forced into basically bending it to fit your master's whims.
     
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    NotteBoy97 said:
    Oh is that what the powers that be do with all the people sent to them? Don't give a shit about what their power is supposed to do they just force fit them into a mold by diverging in ways they want? Like how they were initially going to send Lilly to a temple and force her to heal and only heal until that's all she could do despite her other abilities? Wow that's fucked up even if you get the power of your dreams and it's super useful you're still forced into basically bending it to fit your master's whims.
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    I feel like the Powers that Be (at least the smarter ones) understand how ethea work in a broad sense and would not intentionally let a gem like [Dream within a Forest] become a shitty healer. We however live in Narisell which is well not exactly where people who understand how ethos work on a broad scale live. But yeah I think organizations really will push people to push their ethos in directions that the org prefers.
     
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