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

Reader mode
Alectai said:
You're hype? I'm more quivering in fear at all the bullets that keep bouncing around us.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

At least we know that they are bullets to be dodged, and not just Lilly bleeding out wondering what that loud bang was. Gosh, can you imagine where we'd be without [Ladder]? We'd have been lucky to make it to the barn to outlast the Wolf attack, we'd have gotten dragged off by a sociopathic Lord with no recourse, and Zach's and Myah's violent deaths would have just come out of nowhere.

Slyvena said:
My original idea was a Pithe-heavy playthrough, which would have resembled more archetypal magi-warrior stories. But votes and dice have led us... elsewhere.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

What, like if we had picked [Brave Blood] in Chapter 1.1? Well, no 3-week coma for a start, but Yolun would have been pissed off at us for running off, and getting our first level would have been much harder without formal training. Hell, Mathew had already gotten paid and he still was skeptical until Lilly showed him the improved strength and stamina we already had from [Dream]. I think part of the trick is that [Dream within a Forest] is an exceptional Ethos even by itself (so gaining attention was practically inevitable), and I'm sensing a bit of a cultural theme that female Essence users are viewed as a bit more...exploitable than a Pithe-primary would be. Not to mention that Lilly's enhanced perception is so very, very key to her skillset at this point, that it's difficult to imagine what she'd be like without it.
 
Yeah, honestly, the big thing that's been keeping us afloat is how stupidly good Lilly's Perception is. Even [Rapid Iterator] going full 'Inescapably invisible stealth mode' was foiled because it couldn't block against Concordance, Essence, and Pithe at the same time.

Like, the only Ethos she has that doesn't give her some kind of Enhanced Perception is [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock].

Yeah though, I'll admit that if I had noticed this quest earlier, I'd have stanned hard for [Brave Blood] early on myself, because it's a step towards Full Paladin, and I always advocate for Full Paladin.

But nobody said a Paladin can't operate on lifeforce and empathy instead of DEUS VULT now, did they?

Anyway, here's hoping we can squeeze our next Ethos out soon, Flow effects remain a serious danger in how we have no real answer to them and how a lot of the scariest fuckers we've run into make ready use of it to grease the wheels, Mana takes too much wind-up to be valuable while we're still reeling from crisis to crisis, and Oath...

Okay, Oath could be really cool too, I'll admit. I wonder if we're going to get a Flower based Oath Ethos in the upcoming update, and that's what the teasing about a Contract is all about?
 
Last edited:
Slyvena said:
Making a seedling permanent would be a huge undertaking. It is also what is often referred to as a Boon when Dungeons do it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Hmm Mindstate Lily mentioned that she could consume deific fragments to get a Boon, though she could get something far greateri with time and preparations. I assume this is what she meant.

If Lira knew the full extent of Lilly's powers I'd bet they would send everything they could've get her now. Like for instance, Boons and Artifacts on demand that you don't have to fight through a dungeon for. Not to mention her unparalleled potential. No wonder Evaclial was so worried, people will eventually figure stuff out and when they do, Lilly will be in even more danger (and also have a lot of opportunities)
 
GlassMask said:
Hmm Mindstate Lily mentioned that she could consume deific fragments to get a Boon, though she could get something far greateri with time and preparations. I assume this is what she meant.

If Lira knew the full extent of Lilly's powers I'd bet they would send everything they could've get her now. Like for instance, Boons and Artifacts on demand that you don't have to fight through a dungeon for. Not to mention her unparalleled potential. No wonder Evaclial was so worried, people will eventually figure stuff out and when they do, Lilly will be in even more danger (and also have a lot of opportunities)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah.

Getting a Flow Ethos that we can use to reduce our heat accumulation is going to be very important, but that's a problem for Future Lilly.
 
The write-in option for the Major Slot has me thinking. Could Lilly use it to rig something up to connect and protect Bloomlings specifically?

This probably wouldn't help Zach, but shielding Lilly's mom is still an issue, and if Lilly can long-distance communicate to steer Marigold into problems on her way to Harmuph, that could free up some breathing room.

This would also probably require visiting the Hillock first though, or at least uninterrupted access to study Lilly's mom.
 
Kymecho said:
The write-in option for the Major Slot has me thinking. Could Lilly use it to rig something up to connect and protect Bloomlings specifically?

This probably wouldn't help Zach, but shielding Lilly's mom is still an issue, and if Lilly can long-distance communicate to steer Marigold into problems on her way to Harmuph, that could free up some breathing room.

This would also probably require visiting the Hillock first though, or at least uninterrupted access to study Lilly's mom.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

We might be able to safely detach the Divine Shard with Dissociation and re-associate it to us with Relations.

Hopefully it wouldn't require a Major Slot to do this though.
 
Alectai said:
We might be able to safely detach the Divine Shard with Dissociation and re-associate it to us with Relations.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Sounds plausible, just gets me wondering how Flower would react. Mindstate Lilly didn't give that any consideration that I recall, but I think Lilly should try to avoid any more potentially unfriendly cosmic attention.
 
Kymecho said:
Sounds plausible, just gets me wondering how Flower would react. Mindstate Lilly didn't give that any consideration that I recall, but I think Lilly should try to avoid any more potentially unfriendly cosmic attention.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I think Flower doesn't especially care about how we achieve "There can be only one!", only that someone does.

Or there's more to it, it's hard to attribute motivation to an eldritch abomination when the only bit we've gotten is that it's super territorial, strong enough to throw down with a sublet of the Maw, and a gigantic ego whore based on their title and who countersigned the creation of {Primordial Chassis}
 
Last edited:
Alectai said:
Getting a Flow Ethos that we can use to reduce our heat accumulation is going to be very important, but that's a problem for Future Lilly.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

If [Overlooked Maiden] came up again, I could see the argument for it (particularly since Lilly's 13th birthday would be the start of another war, apparently). The main thing that I would want from it is the ability to turn it off for some people. If we end up trying to aim for Revolutionary Lilly, it's going to be a bit hard for potential allies to take us seriously if they keep viewing us as "a harmless little girl". If we get lucky, we may be able to adjust it so that we could have a masked identity that we use for our public endeavors, but nobody is able to connect it to us once the mask is removed.
 
Silverking said:
If [Overlooked Maiden] came up again, I could see the argument for it (particularly since Lilly's 13th birthday would be the start of another war, apparently). The main thing that I would want from it is the ability to turn it off for some people. If we end up trying to aim for Revolutionary Lilly, it's going to be a bit hard for potential allies to take us seriously if they keep viewing us as "a harmless little girl". If we get lucky, we may be able to adjust it so that we could have a masked identity that we use for our public endeavors, but nobody is able to connect it to us once the mask is removed.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Imposition can probably help with that...

I'm starting to see the texture of how we can start making headway now. I can see why Ev'aclial considered getting a Foundational Ethos to be a damn near wincon in and of itself.

Of course, as we also have to keep in mind, Ev'aclial was wrong about the Winning Strategy (Since her thinking was that the winning strategy was to bunker up, go full hermit, and ride the storm out in secret--but we know on a meta level that this is explicitly a fail state based on the literal introduction of the story.
 
Yeah, we really need to consider not just sources but approaches when we look for new Ethea. We don't have time for bad options.
 
TheBiggerFish said:
Yeah, we really need to consider not just sources but approaches when we look for new Ethea. We don't have time for bad options.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Agreed, the stuff I'm talking about is "If we're otherwise torn, go for X".

Like, I don't think anyone is going to disagree that our choices so far have all been pretty good? The only questionable pick so far has been Melded Carapace (And that's something that'll come in handy once we have some actual gear), and Bedrock has been clutch so far.

So first, we pick what we think we'll need to solve our problems. But if in doubt, cleave to a Flow if we can just based on how it's likely a major component of the social control going on in this setting, and being able to identify that we're being mindfucked might dodge a lot of crises.
 
...Are we going to have anything that's better than -- ...actually, Melded Carapace might well come in clutch if we can Imposition it together with esoteric defenses so that we can shove those sorts of attacks to hit our hardpoints.
 
TheBiggerFish said:
...Are we going to have anything that's better than -- ...actually, Melded Carapace might well come in clutch if we can Imposition it together with esoteric defenses so that we can shove those sorts of attacks to hit our hardpoints.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah, combining it with our overall defensive package to effectively force all incoming attacks to strike at our strongest points, while possibly allowing us to project conventional armor upwards as part of it. But I wouldn't want to play with that until we've gotten a solid Grasp on it, and that's waiting for us to actually get armor that helps.
 
Eh, if there's a Flow Ethos that has clear perception or defensive use, I could understand going for it. However, grabbing any Flow Ethos and assuming it's going to help defend against Flow might be a mistake. A Flow Ethos might not necessarily have good defensive use against Flow just because it is Flow, and Flow doesn't feel like a real word anymore.

Also, we should keep in mind that Mana can do basically anything. It's limited to the conceptual focus, but conceptual powers can be stretched to ridiculous lengths. For example, the "Nature" focus of that Sorcerer we saw earlier could be stretched into mind shields via "preventing alterations to the natural mind-state" or some such.

Also Mana Ethos can adjust their powers on the fly, which is very good if we're up against a particular very dangerous enemy that we know some of the capabilities of (like say, Waters or Senus). Just pre-prep a counter. Being able to adjust powers also gives Cleaver of Fortune a lot more to work with.

My point is Mana is awesome and should not be overlooked just because of panic about Flow. And I'd like to remind you that Mana Ethos are considered the most dangerous by some metrics, and our Mana perception is just as bad as our Flow perception.

Oath has to be consensual outside inversion, so if we're talking about a purely defensive standpoint Oath might be lower priority unless the Oath power in question has specific use that we need.
 
Mana ethea are also extremely powerful at high level and the longer we put it off the longer that will take. And if I'm not mistaken our ethea gain is and will slow down. We probably can't cover everything even with Lilly's abilities, so something that is both powerful and flexible provides good bang for our buck.
 
Deuterium Dawn said:
Mana ethea are also extremely powerful at high level and the longer we put it off the longer that will take. And if I'm not mistaken our ethea gain is and will slow down. We probably can't cover everything even with Lilly's abilities, so something that is both powerful and flexible provides good bang for our buck.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The problem is that Mana Ethae take time and energy to get up to that point.

And we are Very much reeling from crisis to crisis right now.

I don't say you're wrong, but if it's a choice between a middling Flow Ethos and a really good Mana Ethos that we won't be able to use this arc, the former is probably the better choice.

One exception though, if we do get Sorcerer again and can use Deific Magic... Well, that changes things.

But yeah, Oath is also high priority, so we'll have to see what's on the table when something rolls in. If my bet's right and Flower slid an offer in, I imagine it'll be one that solves all of our problems today in exchange for getting caught up in whatever their bigger plan is.
 
Last edited:
Getting dissolution soon should be great for satisfying defensive needs.
Just being able to nope attacks would be great on its own even without more esoteric uses.
 
If we get a mana ethea, I would not be surprised if Marius would end up as our tutor. Simply because he is nearby and Captain Martin knows he is a loyal learned man,
 
We actually know enough to qualify for a unique Mana Ethos already. Quickwrit Stennovoker wouldn't show up if we didn't have skills to utilize it. I won't say there's not a kernel of truth to the concerns that we would have issues utilizing a Mana Ethos out of the gate, but we can probably get useful things done just based on what we already know.
 
Mana was one of the few innate source we had available, if very low, before we had any Ethea - along with Freeform Oath that I mentioned earlier. I don't know know if that's a result of Dad's attempts of teaching Lilly to take over the profession, some inherited aptitude, or just coincidence but it was there along with our Tier 1 Neophyte Rune Smith before the story started.

Don't know if that would translate to any advantage upon hypothetically obtaining a Mana Ethos though.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Back
Top