Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Hey now.
I can always blame myself
Anyway, griping over, I just have to wait and hope.
It's a Girl's World -- And Lilly wants Adventure
Hey now.
I can always blame myself
Anyway, griping over, I just have to wait and hope.
Solarstream
It's all in the cards
- Location
- Zombie World
- Pronouns
- He/Him
huh, so what does the -7% for the post-factor mean then? -7% of the consequences of this Juncture have occurred?
- Location
- San Ramon, CA
Madam Silva's explanation seemed to imply that Concordance is less tied to "objective chronology" as it is to "subjective chronology". That is to say, whether or not someone is observing an event is considered a significant factor into the difficulty of altering it. So, let's consider this thought experiment.
A Pithe user, a Flow user, and a Concordance user are all in an enclosed room with no windows or other outside observers. The experiment is for Pithe to throw a ball at Flow, with Concord using his abilities to make the ball miss.
Experiment 1: Pithe tosses a ball at Flow, using no special abilities.
Result: Concord expends a certain amount of Weight in order to find a deviating timeline where the ball misses.
Experiment 2: Pithe tosses a ball at Flow using an [Unerring Throw] skill.
Probable Result: Concord expends much more Weight, as finding a timeline where the ball misses requires much more deviation.
Experiment 3: All the lights in the room are turned out; nobody can see anything. Pithe tosses a ball at Flow using no special abilities.
Possible Result: Concord may need to expend less Weight, as there is no distinct memory of a timeline where the ball actually hit Flow, and so it is easier to deviate into a timeline where he wasn't hit
Experiment 4: Pithe tosses a ball at Flow, using no special abilities. After the toss, Flow casts [Memory Stutter], causing everyone (including himself) to completely forget the last 5 seconds.
Result?: At the time Concord cast his spell, there were 3 witnesses that would be able to see his alteration, but after the fact, there is nobody who remembers the events. Would the Weight expended in altering the ball's path be equal to Experiment 1, or would it be able to forsee the future lack of memory and actually cost as much as Experiment 3?
A Pithe user, a Flow user, and a Concordance user are all in an enclosed room with no windows or other outside observers. The experiment is for Pithe to throw a ball at Flow, with Concord using his abilities to make the ball miss.
Experiment 1: Pithe tosses a ball at Flow, using no special abilities.
Result: Concord expends a certain amount of Weight in order to find a deviating timeline where the ball misses.
Experiment 2: Pithe tosses a ball at Flow using an [Unerring Throw] skill.
Probable Result: Concord expends much more Weight, as finding a timeline where the ball misses requires much more deviation.
Experiment 3: All the lights in the room are turned out; nobody can see anything. Pithe tosses a ball at Flow using no special abilities.
Possible Result: Concord may need to expend less Weight, as there is no distinct memory of a timeline where the ball actually hit Flow, and so it is easier to deviate into a timeline where he wasn't hit
Experiment 4: Pithe tosses a ball at Flow, using no special abilities. After the toss, Flow casts [Memory Stutter], causing everyone (including himself) to completely forget the last 5 seconds.
Result?: At the time Concord cast his spell, there were 3 witnesses that would be able to see his alteration, but after the fact, there is nobody who remembers the events. Would the Weight expended in altering the ball's path be equal to Experiment 1, or would it be able to forsee the future lack of memory and actually cost as much as Experiment 3?
So, newly reinvigorated, I spontaneously got the idea of trying to put together a working model of Concordance as a whole armed with the knowledge everyone has put together to get our understanding this far. If nothing else, I think there may be an outstanding question or two worth tackling even if I whiff on it here.
Perception and Predestination
This one has always festered a bit in my mind. At the beginning of the quest, Lilly's Innate Concordance Fracture is listed as "Unwoven." (It changes to <0.1% upon taking [Cleaver]) This has always struck me as significant because it's the only time we've ever gotten a word in one of those slots instead of the scale, struck out or not, or an N/A. Now, my initial impression of such a word would be along the lines of "Lilly is untied to the tapestry that is Concordance" but to me that also implies that she's immune to fate stuff which is pretty much the opposite of what we know. Indeed, Lilly's dreamstate when she takes [Cleaver] suggests much the opposite: "You look behind you through time and see that the course of your life has been a single line of causality, each action and reaction destined from the start, choice an illusion. You look in front of you, this is true no more. The line of your fate widens out in a stream, a river and eventually flows into an ocean of pure possibility. You are outside the context of prediction, beyond the machinations of schemers or planners. Your life, your future, will be your own. And no one else's." (1.5) If anything, taken at face value, prior to [Cleaver] and a connection to Concordance there was some predestination stuff going on with Lilly's (and presumably everyone else without a Concordance power's) fate. Taken literally, it would suggest that absent a Concordance ability, you are entirely at the whim of predestination (and the whim of other Concordance users.) ...This... isn't inconsistent with what we know, even the Boundless Ethea is heavily implied by Evie to be part of Flower's plan.
Ply the Line
No, not the power so much as the actual words again. "Ply." Now to me this evoked the imagery of well lines/strands (specifically fishing lines for whatever reason but I digress) and on its face I think this is a very plausible reading. However, to double-check my thinking here I went and pulled up a dictionary definition to double-check alternate meetings and well, well "(artificial intelligence, combinatorial game theory) In two-player sequential games, a 'half-turn' or a move made by one of the players." I'm already too deep into my programming based model of the world to just ignore this. So let's give two competing ideas on how Ply the Line, the power, might work by using each of the definitions there.
Ply, as in a strand: This was closer to my working theory *checks clock* about 10 minutes ago. Let's run with the line imagery that appears to be Lilly's closest perception of the Concordance. If everyone's (and probably everything's, but for ease let's just stick with people) fate is represented by a line, let's imagine them running in parallel in the medium of time, all flowing towards the future. Absent a connection to the Concordance, your fate line is just that, a line. With one, you can either play with these lines to make them take different paths, or even untangle the line into strands that branch down endless future possibilities representing different future choices. The spreadsheet tells us that Lilly's intuition is gravitating towards Critical Pivot (a subpower under Ply the Line) being less about altering the odds to fall in her favor and more about specifically relating to people's choices going in her favor more likely than they should. So under this interpretation it's more like Ply the Line can exert a gravitational "weight" on the lines of people near Lilly and entwine them to make a stronger rope that adds momentum and resists interference to reach Lilly's desired endgoal.
Ply, as in the AI/game theory term: Okay, the more time passes, the more I'm falling in love with this interpretation but you're basically watching me form it in real time here so I've not rigorously tested it against much yet so there may be a glaring flaw here or there or everywhere. Right now my biggest catch is my thoughts are going more down the lines that I'm actually explaining The Ladder instead. in fact, I feel like this theory holds up best if you think of every power level iterating on the previous. So let's just roll with this. What happens is that the fate lines of the objects in question are all subject to an analysis a few plys (steps) deep on all their junctures. Ladder returns this as advice on the optimal course of action. Contention Prognosticator returns this as a very specific warning (perhaps specifically to points where the Line is terminated, likely by Lilly's death.) Sample Space ensures that Lilly runs the ideal scenario she is capable of in the simulated run of the various possibilities ahead of her. That Lilly can only operate these powers for very brief periods of time is not just because of inefficient use of her powers, or that it would be broken (though both help) it's just straight-up a computationally difficult problem. Think Chess or Go AIs. They're good, but the games still aren't solved. Now imagine trying to solve something as complex as an entire world? Even just a brief or directed inquiry from Lilly would be an extremely demanding task, throw her inefficient grasp of her powers and it's even worse.
Concord
More "well I'm just going to look at the word itself" here. Agreement or an index showing where in a book each thing can be found (with a specific application in computational linguistics.
) Oh boy, another one where I could play either-or. I won't go as lengthy as with Ply the Line but broadly I think you could say Agreement works in the sense of "reality is more subjective and the Concordance is the agreed upon version of reality that, by that agreement, becomes real" or "Almost literally it's a convenient index that the Powers-That-Be/someone with enough power/grasp can ping the right keyword on and get back the associated context on it." Given that Mindstate!Lilly employs it in almost the exact fashion as the latter interpretation in 2.1 (and it leans into my growing "It's a Girl's World Computer AI Sandbox" cinematic universe) that's where I'm currently leaning. Of perhaps some note is that the Concord was present during the First Era. It's noted that Yalsfreet had woven some murals into the Concord ("He'd even taken the time to Weave the design into the Concord, which meant he'd made this into true material rather than just concept-enforced pseudo-matter. That confused me further because that was the one thing any Demon could still easily rip apart here; meaning he'd taken an immense amount of time and effort strengthening this structure to then deliberately weaken it? I doubted the answer to this riddle would be satisfying. " Interlude 1.3) so it was around and it does seem as though that you can write/edit into it and thereby make something "real."
Lines and Bubbles
Okay, so I'm pretty pot-committed to the idea that Lines refer to "timelines" in the sense that you can plot the past, present, and future of everything in the world on a line. Because people are born without Ethea, they are born without a connection to Concordance, and by Lilly's own perception of her history pre-[Cleaver] as an illusion of choice entirely at the whims of fate and/or Concordance users it can be inferred that there is a kind of predestined/natural fate for everyone. In practice, however, with Concordance Ethea I suspect it has become far less simple because now you have a bunch of people out there who can mess around with the lines, their own and others. such that even those who remain unconnected to Concordance can have their paths knocked off course. There may be a kind of gravitational effect that tries to pull them back to how it should have been (Lilly describes moving the ant's time of death as arcing its path towards its termination point), but shove something hard enough and you may well send it out of the metaphysical orbit and the powers-that-be just have to deal with the fact that they'll have to edit their assumed future history to account for a change of that magnitude. They may not care if the change is as seemingly insignificant as "some ant that Lilly Silas came across will now live two days longer" because that's the equivalent of, well, an ant trying to push the mountain that is history, but "Flower's Boundless Ethea project just gained the means to break from its predestined fate and is a free actor now" just might. Bubbles... Bubbles are the mystery here for me still. I've considered a wide spectrum of interpretations here (Bubbles rising/falling from the "sea" as the things Concordance users can emit that nudge lines, injecting a "bubble" into a line to explosively fracture it as a High Fracture type maneuver, etc.) but nothing I'm satisfied with.
All right, I can tell I've exhausted my mental energy and my thoughts have turned into a thick sludge and my momentum is gone. I actually wanted to flesh a few more things out, even add a subheader for talking about Fracture and Tension, but I tried and well... it was just a jumble of words... well more than usual. Gonna call it a post here.
Perception and Predestination
This one has always festered a bit in my mind. At the beginning of the quest, Lilly's Innate Concordance Fracture is listed as "Unwoven." (It changes to <0.1% upon taking [Cleaver]) This has always struck me as significant because it's the only time we've ever gotten a word in one of those slots instead of the scale, struck out or not, or an N/A. Now, my initial impression of such a word would be along the lines of "Lilly is untied to the tapestry that is Concordance" but to me that also implies that she's immune to fate stuff which is pretty much the opposite of what we know. Indeed, Lilly's dreamstate when she takes [Cleaver] suggests much the opposite: "You look behind you through time and see that the course of your life has been a single line of causality, each action and reaction destined from the start, choice an illusion. You look in front of you, this is true no more. The line of your fate widens out in a stream, a river and eventually flows into an ocean of pure possibility. You are outside the context of prediction, beyond the machinations of schemers or planners. Your life, your future, will be your own. And no one else's." (1.5) If anything, taken at face value, prior to [Cleaver] and a connection to Concordance there was some predestination stuff going on with Lilly's (and presumably everyone else without a Concordance power's) fate. Taken literally, it would suggest that absent a Concordance ability, you are entirely at the whim of predestination (and the whim of other Concordance users.) ...This... isn't inconsistent with what we know, even the Boundless Ethea is heavily implied by Evie to be part of Flower's plan.
Ply the Line
No, not the power so much as the actual words again. "Ply." Now to me this evoked the imagery of well lines/strands (specifically fishing lines for whatever reason but I digress) and on its face I think this is a very plausible reading. However, to double-check my thinking here I went and pulled up a dictionary definition to double-check alternate meetings and well, well "(artificial intelligence, combinatorial game theory) In two-player sequential games, a 'half-turn' or a move made by one of the players." I'm already too deep into my programming based model of the world to just ignore this. So let's give two competing ideas on how Ply the Line, the power, might work by using each of the definitions there.
Ply, as in a strand: This was closer to my working theory *checks clock* about 10 minutes ago. Let's run with the line imagery that appears to be Lilly's closest perception of the Concordance. If everyone's (and probably everything's, but for ease let's just stick with people) fate is represented by a line, let's imagine them running in parallel in the medium of time, all flowing towards the future. Absent a connection to the Concordance, your fate line is just that, a line. With one, you can either play with these lines to make them take different paths, or even untangle the line into strands that branch down endless future possibilities representing different future choices. The spreadsheet tells us that Lilly's intuition is gravitating towards Critical Pivot (a subpower under Ply the Line) being less about altering the odds to fall in her favor and more about specifically relating to people's choices going in her favor more likely than they should. So under this interpretation it's more like Ply the Line can exert a gravitational "weight" on the lines of people near Lilly and entwine them to make a stronger rope that adds momentum and resists interference to reach Lilly's desired endgoal.
Ply, as in the AI/game theory term: Okay, the more time passes, the more I'm falling in love with this interpretation but you're basically watching me form it in real time here so I've not rigorously tested it against much yet so there may be a glaring flaw here or there or everywhere. Right now my biggest catch is my thoughts are going more down the lines that I'm actually explaining The Ladder instead. in fact, I feel like this theory holds up best if you think of every power level iterating on the previous. So let's just roll with this. What happens is that the fate lines of the objects in question are all subject to an analysis a few plys (steps) deep on all their junctures. Ladder returns this as advice on the optimal course of action. Contention Prognosticator returns this as a very specific warning (perhaps specifically to points where the Line is terminated, likely by Lilly's death.) Sample Space ensures that Lilly runs the ideal scenario she is capable of in the simulated run of the various possibilities ahead of her. That Lilly can only operate these powers for very brief periods of time is not just because of inefficient use of her powers, or that it would be broken (though both help) it's just straight-up a computationally difficult problem. Think Chess or Go AIs. They're good, but the games still aren't solved. Now imagine trying to solve something as complex as an entire world? Even just a brief or directed inquiry from Lilly would be an extremely demanding task, throw her inefficient grasp of her powers and it's even worse.
Concord
More "well I'm just going to look at the word itself" here. Agreement or an index showing where in a book each thing can be found (with a specific application in computational linguistics.
) Oh boy, another one where I could play either-or. I won't go as lengthy as with Ply the Line but broadly I think you could say Agreement works in the sense of "reality is more subjective and the Concordance is the agreed upon version of reality that, by that agreement, becomes real" or "Almost literally it's a convenient index that the Powers-That-Be/someone with enough power/grasp can ping the right keyword on and get back the associated context on it." Given that Mindstate!Lilly employs it in almost the exact fashion as the latter interpretation in 2.1 (and it leans into my growing "It's a Girl's Lines and Bubbles
Okay, so I'm pretty pot-committed to the idea that Lines refer to "timelines" in the sense that you can plot the past, present, and future of everything in the world on a line. Because people are born without Ethea, they are born without a connection to Concordance, and by Lilly's own perception of her history pre-[Cleaver] as an illusion of choice entirely at the whims of fate and/or Concordance users it can be inferred that there is a kind of predestined/natural fate for everyone. In practice, however, with Concordance Ethea I suspect it has become far less simple because now you have a bunch of people out there who can mess around with the lines, their own and others. such that even those who remain unconnected to Concordance can have their paths knocked off course. There may be a kind of gravitational effect that tries to pull them back to how it should have been (Lilly describes moving the ant's time of death as arcing its path towards its termination point), but shove something hard enough and you may well send it out of the metaphysical orbit and the powers-that-be just have to deal with the fact that they'll have to edit their assumed future history to account for a change of that magnitude. They may not care if the change is as seemingly insignificant as "some ant that Lilly Silas came across will now live two days longer" because that's the equivalent of, well, an ant trying to push the mountain that is history, but "Flower's Boundless Ethea project just gained the means to break from its predestined fate and is a free actor now" just might. Bubbles... Bubbles are the mystery here for me still. I've considered a wide spectrum of interpretations here (Bubbles rising/falling from the "sea" as the things Concordance users can emit that nudge lines, injecting a "bubble" into a line to explosively fracture it as a High Fracture type maneuver, etc.) but nothing I'm satisfied with.
All right, I can tell I've exhausted my mental energy and my thoughts have turned into a thick sludge and my momentum is gone. I actually wanted to flesh a few more things out, even add a subheader for talking about Fracture and Tension, but I tried and well... it was just a jumble of words... well more than usual. Gonna call it a post here.
There is that, yeah. I was willing to chalk it up to wordplay in my single-minded pursuit of confirmation bias
- Location
- Europe
I would go for the "twist together" meaning. What was just a simple line is now something twisted and hard to grasp which can follow strange paths, and we can use that to our advantage. Then through {Critical Pivot} we choose the way that we think is most beneficial to us; the limit may be that our starting point and the final result are probably unaffected by this power and will happen anyway. If we wanted to change the last, we would need to use {Imposition of Intent}.
I can see how it could have been beneficial for this battle.
I can see how it could have been beneficial for this battle.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I don't think that's accurate. The powers that be are running some sort of Plan in the melange layer, with timetables going as far as fourteen millennia into the future (compare the Foundational Ethos that gives access to the second Integration stage and estimates that common rollout for that feature across the entire melange layer is thousands of years in the future: ).
[Championed Uplift | 0000-A, 2nd Integration Stage Initializer] (Foundational): (Legend)
Tailored placement; should be attuned only to one identified Premium Integrator at a time. Provided identity fracture trials do not result in a decohered subject, the sponsored Integration Vector can have its layer-limiters removed. Weavers are reminded that inducing Melange bleedthrough on a subject who has failed their trials may irretrievably scatter your Divinity, the trials are there by definition to test compatibility before the fact. We have patched most loopholes and if we catch you, you'll be Identity-Wiped at best (all your Vectors will also be moved to the back of the queues when you reincorporate.). Current projections before widespread 2nd Stage Initialisations can be reliably applied without prior testing; fourteen Millennia. :::GEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION ONLY::: :::IMMEDIATE RECALL MANDATORY:::
Tailored placement; should be attuned only to one identified Premium Integrator at a time. Provided identity fracture trials do not result in a decohered subject, the sponsored Integration Vector can have its layer-limiters removed. Weavers are reminded that inducing Melange bleedthrough on a subject who has failed their trials may irretrievably scatter your Divinity, the trials are there by definition to test compatibility before the fact. We have patched most loopholes and if we catch you, you'll be Identity-Wiped at best (all your Vectors will also be moved to the back of the queues when you reincorporate.). Current projections before widespread 2nd Stage Initialisations can be reliably applied without prior testing; fourteen Millennia. :::GEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION ONLY::: :::IMMEDIATE RECALL MANDATORY:::
My assumption is that Concordance/the Concord is a literal agreement between the Demons and Angel as to what reality is, which is why weaving something into the Concord made it both more permanent and more fragile, as then it could be attacked by others, unlike the impermanence of the melange layer that mostly resisted both of their powers.
Also: clearly {Ply The Line} uses ply in the sense of getting someone drunk, the reason it's not been working great for Lilly so far is that she doesn't have access to the top-shelf alcohol.
(I agree that it's probably meant in the "twisting together" kind of meaning, since it's been mentioned that Concordance users can bring together things that have no business of influencing one another. We should try using it to bring the fate lines of two people together for better results imo)
Edifier
Trusted within thoughts.
- Location
- Court of Moon Wizards
It might be a good idea to start using {Ply The Line} casually, try using it along our mundane actions and adventures.
In an effort to get the level of [Cleaver of Fortune] to 5 and to get a grasp on it's potential so the next time Lilly is in a clutch situation she can incorporate it in her plans. 5 gives {serendipity}, the concordance equal to {holistics}. Supernatural luck, much like {Critical Pivot} but if it follows the theme of holistic, it'll be concordance coming to meet Lilly halfway.
An [AC] vote perhaps.
In an effort to get the level of [Cleaver of Fortune] to 5 and to get a grasp on it's potential so the next time Lilly is in a clutch situation she can incorporate it in her plans. 5 gives {serendipity}, the concordance equal to {holistics}. Supernatural luck, much like {Critical Pivot} but if it follows the theme of holistic, it'll be concordance coming to meet Lilly halfway.
An [AC] vote perhaps.
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- Location
- Europe
... Let's not use a concordance power that is probably visible to other concordance users randomly wherever we go. Especially not one that needs time to recharge.
The concordant juice would probably be better used by {The Ladder} and the warning power we have.
The concordant juice would probably be better used by {The Ladder} and the warning power we have.
- Location
- Ekaterinburg, Russia
Just to bring the bubbles directly into discussion. You may note that lines are between bubbles.
Looking at Tension there are two primary things it might apply to. The lines, whether they are loose or taut. And the surface tension of the bubbles.
Looking at "lines between bubbles" there are two betweens possible, and they are orthogonal, geometrically speaking. One is - the lines lay between two bubbles and connect them. Visual cue: O-O. The other is - the lines lay between two bubbles and strive to stay clear of them. Visual cue: O|O.
Keep in mind nothing says that only one interpretation of between is correct.
Now if we assume bubbles represent sets of possible future... Bubbles within bubbles and bubbles around bubbles would represent subsets, and supersets of possible future, like "Lilly getting to Harmuph" is a set, "unharmed" is a subset, and "Harmuph invaded by Rapid Iterator creatures" is a superset where they may also be a set of futures where Lilly dies, or where Lilly does not ride out.
Assuming Concordance use is about Lines and the O-O interpretation is valid, then Make Lines, Follow Lines and Lines Between Bubbles is about making a path to a specific subset of futures, is about actually doing what is necessary to achieve that specific subset, and Lines in general are something like opportinities to reach a desired subset of futures. In that case Leave the Lines and come back quickly is maybe about retroactively changing some event, some Gravitic Juncture, and cautions about the difficulty and danger of such.
Growing and Shrinking bubbles represent the odds of a subset of future happening.
Subsuming bubbles, not actually bubbles, and there must be bubbles... If bubble is a metaphor they are not actually bubbles. There must be bubbles if bubbles are possible futures aka nothing should cause the Future to stop existing (the world must keep spinning, there must be futures if not the desired ones). Not totally sure how subsuming bubbles would happen.
Edit: For more specific Line = Concord:
High fracture Makes Lines that connect to specific futures.
Low fracture Follows Lines between future sets that already exist.
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I will say that I wouldn't be too shocked if it is partially or fully solved at the highest levels, but what I mean is Lilly isn't granted access to that much CPU power (or insert appropriate metaphor here) to run [Cleaver] on right now so it's a computationally difficult problem with her available resources. Perhaps if sufficiently leveled (likely well beyond the intended limits) or Evie/Tower/something lifts some restrictions she can escalate her privileges high enough to do so, but a relatively low level [Cleaver]? I can't imagine they'd be handing out something that powerful out of the box.
Edifier
Trusted within thoughts.
- Location
- Court of Moon Wizards
I think the solution is to get a secondary Concordance power that lets us directly manipulate fractures and tension. To a much higher degree, with hopefully a greater resource pool to pull from as well.
Yet I feel like Tension is directly connected to the soul, so there may be an inherent resource cap. The ethea need to grow and take up a greater portion of the soul.
Tho, an ethos may hold functions that allow a soul so spool up more tension... hmm.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'm not sure how safe getting more Concordance Ethea would be. The biggest gain we got in Essence was when we picked up [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock], which was kind of the opposite in how it approached Essence to [Dream Within The Forest], as it moved our Innate Essence source from Non-existant to ---SH and Inner Awareness from --L to H-. The opposite kind of Concordant power to [Cleaver Of Fate], which deals with predicting the future, would probably be something like [Temporal Redeemer], which focuses on changing the past. That'd mean we'd have to navigate around paradoxes we'd be at risk of producing ourselves, which to me sounds like a quick ticket to Instant-Death roll town. Personally I feel like we'd be best served just leaving it at one Concordance Ethos and using out Ethos choices to round out our control over the other sources by doubling up on them to cover more aspects.
oh, since I was just checking the Ethos list: @GlassMask I think it'd be reasonable to add that both [D̵̘̹́͝iss̷̝̰̿͌oĺ̷̤̪͑u̷͕͚̓tio̶͕͉͐̀n of ̵̝͆̌ th̴͈̋̒e̷͈͆͌ Se̸̯̺̎l̵̻͙̎f] and [Foṟ̴͍̇m Fr̵̠̂̓ạ̷̾cture] likely draw on Maw as a Source. That's of course not been officially confirmed, but it fits what we know about the origin of the Boundless Ethos subskill, since that came from the same source as [Foṟ̴͍̇m Fr̵̠̂̓ạ̷̾cture]
Edifier
Trusted within thoughts.
- Location
- Court of Moon Wizards
I think it'd be this one. It's approach is the opposite of Cleaver. It approaches the future in the way of removing undesirable outcomes from the equation. While Cleaver of fortune creates desirable ones through Lilly's will and determinism. It would allow for Cleaver to start a few consequence cascades with ply the line, and then it could be steered with limited coordinates. Giving a much greater control over... how the dice fall.
Actually, I've got no idea. Temporal redeemer, time loops. That might work even better.
On a third thought. Most, if not all, can synergize with Cleaver. Like Ladder will start pinging past events if we get a high fracture high tension power. Noting on which things in the past to change for aiding the situation in the present.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
I considered that one as well, but it's pretty evil sounding, ngl. The way it talks about "too much free will" is rather creepy. Also I don't think it removes negative results as such, but influences on the result. Insofar it would be a good counterpart to [Cleaver Of Fortune], since Cleaver seems more geared towards creating new connections (ie how we convinced Captain Martin to help us out by drawing on knowledge we had no way of knowing) as opposed to [Limited Coordinate], which destroys connections to give us a clearer analysis and more control over the whole situation.
I think the difference in approach between [Cleaver of Fortune] and [Limited Coordinate] is probably something like Cleaver helping us convince Martin to aid us, while Coordinate would have given us the knowledge to make it so that Senus is absent for our confrontation with Waters, thus making the showdown less dangerous, or making it so that Waters doesn't even hear of our exploits in the first place somehow, thus avoiding it alltogether.
Edit: both seem similar in approach in that they are future oriented however, insofar I think [Limited Coordinate] is probably less dangerous to us, but would in return broaden our control over Concordance less than [Temporal Redeemer] which is aimed at the past.
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[Limited Coordinate] struck me as a way to maximize Lilly's influence by trying to isolate the system as much as possible to avoid unwanted external interference and putting Lilly alone as much in control of a situation as possible. Additional factors add complexity and uncertainty after all. To be overly simple, imagine flipping a coin when there's heavy wind. Sure, given all the inputs (toss strength, rotation, gravity, coin weight, etc.) you should be able to still determine beforehand which way it will land, but the wind makes the situation more complex, and from the perspective of the person tossing the coin, is something of a random variable outside of their control here. What if there's a gust mid-toss? The direction shifts slightly? Heck, it's just another factor to throw in regardless. If you could engineer a situation in which there was no wind at all it'd be easier to game the situation for your desired result and that's one less factor outside the coin tosser's control meaning their relative influence on the result has grown. In fact, its use of technical terminology makes it a bit more straightforward to understand given our recent confirmation of Juncture Sense's sitrep reports.
|Upcoming Gravitic Juncture: 16 Seconds| Silas Family {{Slaughter}}, Liatris and Lilly Silas {{Fragment Harvest}} Event |Current Pre-Factor: 84%| |Current Post-Factor: -7%| Concord Node 'Lilly Silas' capable of circumvention? Yes. Gravitic Actor Factor: 58%
The current circumstances are too complex with too many moving parts; the equation must be simplified. Number of autonomous actors and relative gravitic weight can be efficiently whittled down with optimised application of existing leverage at appropriate juncture points.
We know now that the Gravitic Actor Factor represents how much influence Lilly has on the outstanding 16% leftover from the Pre-Factor (Actually, @Slyvena just to confirm - in your info post you cite the number as 12% and I assumed that was a typo. ...Was it or is there obvious math I'm overlooking to get the 12%?) [Limited Coordinate], I think, would have, or at least encourage, Lilly take actions prior in order to increase that percentage - this situation seems likely to be largely a Lilly v Valerie situation such that I would expect the two of them comprise the lion's share of the full 100% so this specifically may not be the best example, but maybe a non-negligible percentage is allotted to Zach if the situation somehow triggers his Ethea awakening right now and that introduces more chaos. [Limited Coordinate] would likely act in a manner to have removed that factor from the equation - perhaps by making a harder push to get Lilly to remove his ability to receive an Ethea back when that was raised to her. Or, in a more darker take, literally eliminating people whom it judges can/will play a role in an event in order to help ensure more of the control is in Lilly's hands' alone.
The whole concept of the [Limited Coordinate] also bears a striking resemblance to Madam Silva's bit on divination defense, to the point where I honestly wonder if they're connected and hearing her explanation applied a positive modifier to Lilly being eligible for it that update.
Aside finding a powerful individual with the right abilities, there is not a lot you can do to directly contest divination. Save for this. Avoid connective mediums; leaving things you own or people you cherish close to those who look for such things is just making it easy. You can never fully remove yourself from this threat as you would need to step outside creation itself to be untouchable. But anything with strong literal or symbolic attachments to you is a vector for diviners of all sorts to scry or even directly reach out and target you.
Madam Silva right there is basically saying the philosophy that [Limited Coordinate]'s description is alarmingly close to what she considers ideal Concordance defense - Isolate yourself from attachments as best you can. Both Silva and Coordinate explicitly refer to mediums. Silva speaks of connective mediums - and this sounds a lot like what Senus was doing with that rose, by the way. In giving it to Lilly it represented a connective medium between them. There definitely appeared to be more to it given the troubling impressions we were getting from it before Evie told us to burn it with fire but I definitely think that was part of it. And more generally she implicitly notes that complete isolation from connective mediums is impossible because reality (I assume she refers to the Melange Layer) itself serves as one for all things in it - though it definitely appears that trying to use something that broad as the focus would be grossly inefficient for an attacker to try to use compared to a more personal link. That Coordinate speaks of efficient use of mediums to set up "transfer bottlenecks" sounds like it can actively clog up these connections to help keep potential actors from interfering by hindering their ability to connect themselves to an event to influence it.
|Upcoming Gravitic Juncture: 16 Seconds| Silas Family {{Slaughter}}, Liatris and Lilly Silas {{Fragment Harvest}} Event |Current Pre-Factor: 84%| |Current Post-Factor: -7%| Concord Node 'Lilly Silas' capable of circumvention? Yes. Gravitic Actor Factor: 58%
The current circumstances are too complex with too many moving parts; the equation must be simplified. Number of autonomous actors and relative gravitic weight can be efficiently whittled down with optimised application of existing leverage at appropriate juncture points.
We know now that the Gravitic Actor Factor represents how much influence Lilly has on the outstanding 16% leftover from the Pre-Factor (Actually, @Slyvena just to confirm - in your info post you cite the number as 12% and I assumed that was a typo. ...Was it or is there obvious math I'm overlooking to get the 12%?) [Limited Coordinate], I think, would have, or at least encourage, Lilly take actions prior in order to increase that percentage - this situation seems likely to be largely a Lilly v Valerie situation such that I would expect the two of them comprise the lion's share of the full 100% so this specifically may not be the best example, but maybe a non-negligible percentage is allotted to Zach if the situation somehow triggers his Ethea awakening right now and that introduces more chaos. [Limited Coordinate] would likely act in a manner to have removed that factor from the equation - perhaps by making a harder push to get Lilly to remove his ability to receive an Ethea back when that was raised to her. Or, in a more darker take, literally eliminating people whom it judges can/will play a role in an event in order to help ensure more of the control is in Lilly's hands' alone.
The whole concept of the [Limited Coordinate] also bears a striking resemblance to Madam Silva's bit on divination defense, to the point where I honestly wonder if they're connected and hearing her explanation applied a positive modifier to Lilly being eligible for it that update.
Aside finding a powerful individual with the right abilities, there is not a lot you can do to directly contest divination. Save for this. Avoid connective mediums; leaving things you own or people you cherish close to those who look for such things is just making it easy. You can never fully remove yourself from this threat as you would need to step outside creation itself to be untouchable. But anything with strong literal or symbolic attachments to you is a vector for diviners of all sorts to scry or even directly reach out and target you.
Madam Silva right there is basically saying the philosophy that [Limited Coordinate]'s description is alarmingly close to what she considers ideal Concordance defense - Isolate yourself from attachments as best you can. Both Silva and Coordinate explicitly refer to mediums. Silva speaks of connective mediums - and this sounds a lot like what Senus was doing with that rose, by the way. In giving it to Lilly it represented a connective medium between them. There definitely appeared to be more to it given the troubling impressions we were getting from it before Evie told us to burn it with fire but I definitely think that was part of it. And more generally she implicitly notes that complete isolation from connective mediums is impossible because reality (I assume she refers to the Melange Layer) itself serves as one for all things in it - though it definitely appears that trying to use something that broad as the focus would be grossly inefficient for an attacker to try to use compared to a more personal link. That Coordinate speaks of efficient use of mediums to set up "transfer bottlenecks" sounds like it can actively clog up these connections to help keep potential actors from interfering by hindering their ability to connect themselves to an event to influence it.
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- Location
- Dragyxx
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Overall, Concordance looks like something we want to be very careful about dealing with, but simply cannot afford to just ignore. We already know that 'death by paradox' is apparently a serious risk for high-fracture concordance users, to the point that it is an established strategy for dealing with them (send in another Concordance user of your own, hopefully of lesser value, and hope the mess paradoxes them both out of existence). But at the same time Concordance appears to be very powerful when applied, though often with the restriction that it simply isn't safe to use it more than a little.
We probably shouldn't rely on [sample space] as much as we have been, as it apparently isn't as infallible as it pretends to be. Still a good panic button, but from what Martin said those used to dealing with Concordance users will know to try to get us to spend it early, or to set up a situation where it backfires and we get unhappened. In fact, it sounds like using Concordance on Concordance is just asking for trouble in general, though if we actually get a second Concordance Ethos, I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible to link the two together and get more than the sum of the parts. Though we might risk the old problem that when you get too good at manipulating timelines... you suddenly realize that you've removed your own free will by locking yourself onto one 'optimal' path, which may well not be the one you wanted.
We probably shouldn't rely on [sample space] as much as we have been, as it apparently isn't as infallible as it pretends to be. Still a good panic button, but from what Martin said those used to dealing with Concordance users will know to try to get us to spend it early, or to set up a situation where it backfires and we get unhappened. In fact, it sounds like using Concordance on Concordance is just asking for trouble in general, though if we actually get a second Concordance Ethos, I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible to link the two together and get more than the sum of the parts. Though we might risk the old problem that when you get too good at manipulating timelines... you suddenly realize that you've removed your own free will by locking yourself onto one 'optimal' path, which may well not be the one you wanted.
- Location
- Somewhere.
Also, has anyone else noticed how we're actually hearing Integration Vectors deliver pitches? Or possibly their Weavers. Ever since Evac'llial did the thing, at least.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
How do you mean? Something like [A Loyal Steed] is obviously tailored to us, it's Unique after all, but all Ethea were addressed at us in their introductory text from the start.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Y'know, reading back to the first Evie interlude, I wonder what was the very clear link that was missed.
Yet at the same time missing the very clear link that was suggested this chapter.
- Location
- Somewhere.
Yeah, but like...Back at the beginning, Lilly was doing most of the talking in those. Look at stuff like Namesake.
Now, she isn't.
...I think it's also a function of rarity, in a way? In that Cleaver of Fortune sure did the thing even when we were starting out.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
I really don't see it. It's always been a second person/narrator talking to or about Lilly, with the obvious exception of something like [Dissolution of the Self], which speaks much more directly in its threats.
(Also: I'd love to see a non-canon interlude that explores how shit goes off the rails if we picked up [Form Fracture] or [Dissolution of the Self] when they were offered. I don't think they'd be long
)
Edifier
Trusted within thoughts.
- Location
- Court of Moon Wizards
Lilly is like a goddess, isn't she. Saving the day just like that, as of it where nothing at all. Now with a flow ethos that thrives on heroics, for the sale of making followers.
The first to witness her in actions, boosted by the new ethos, are here family. Personally saved was well.
I wonder what it must have felt like to witness Lilly dismantle Valerie, save them, and abduct her.
Now boosted by the flow ethos too. Assuming it has a passive effect that matches said flavour text, might not.
I bet what'll happen is that the moment Lilly gets closer Valerie's clothes will attack, the ones ordered to protect.
Lilly will become a blender. But that ain't enough to down a demigoddess.
But then rest state will probably reduce the trauma of the family.
The first to witness her in actions, boosted by the new ethos, are here family. Personally saved was well.
I wonder what it must have felt like to witness Lilly dismantle Valerie, save them, and abduct her.
Now boosted by the flow ethos too. Assuming it has a passive effect that matches said flavour text, might not.
I bet what'll happen is that the moment Lilly gets closer Valerie's clothes will attack, the ones ordered to protect.
Lilly will become a blender. But that ain't enough to down a demigoddess.
But then rest state will probably reduce the trauma of the family.
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