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Magical Girl Escalation Taylor (Worm/Nanoha)

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kokuenDG said:
So that means that killing Eidolon is still an option? I would hope so; while I personally wouldn't go for that option in times of strive that may be our best chance at rendering the Endbringer threat null and void.
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Killing Eidolon didn't stop the Endbringers in canon, so that would be a murder that is pointless.
 
Silently Watches said:
Yes, but while the Endbringers' reserves are finite, they are still huge, enough that taking one down is going to be a major undertaking. I'm not making the game that easy.
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Then again, without the Endbringer shard, they might not escalate the way Eidolon's subconscious might cause them to. Not sure how to explain the changes in their behavior now; they might even scale down a bit so as to remain "worthy opponents" to a depowered Dadversary.
 
Prester Fred said:
Then again, without the Endbringer shard, they might not escalate the way Eidolon's subconscious might cause them to. Not sure how to explain the changes in their behavior now; they might even scale down a bit so as to remain "worthy opponents" to a depowered Dadversary.
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You have no idea how much I want to tell you the answer to this. :)
 
Hah, SW that's genius. And that very special brand of genius that makes you wonder why it hasn't been done already.

I do wonder though, if you hate writing Endbringer battles, why have you made winning them the win condition?
 
Silently Watches said:
Scion absorbed Eden's body and then blew himself up, which means all the shards are scattered. That, in turn, means the Endbringer shard is no longer connected to the other shards that it needs to manifest new Endbringers, and as a result it can only work with the resources it has already deployed.
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Does this mean that the Endbringer system no longer has enough resources to deploy the other seventeen? Meaning if we kill these three, that's it, the Endbringer Wars are over? It sounds like it, but with something that serious, I'd like to make sure.
 
B.B. Rain said:
Does this mean that the Endbringer system no longer has enough resources to deploy the other seventeen? Meaning if we kill these three, that's it, the Endbringer Wars are over? It sounds like it, but with something that serious, I'd like to make sure.
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That is what he is saying.
 
Manic Dogma said:
Hah, SW that's genius. And that very special brand of genius that makes you wonder why it hasn't been done already.

I do wonder though, if you hate writing Endbringer battles, why have you made winning them the win condition?
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That's the victory condition because without an entity cycle to end, the collapse of human civilization and then our extinction as a species is approaching. I think the canon timeframes were 20-something and just over a hundred years, respectively.
 
You know how green-link never showed up to answer the questions on the barriers here, well on another quest on SB he just popped up and
green-link94 said:
Atreidestrooper is the one who translated most of them i just provide the sources. And the barrier leaving behind the damage done inside does in fact show up in series second episode infact and the Wolkenritter barriers do the same and the final one created during the battle with Reinforce is kept up until the damage from the battle has been repaired.

Edit: I'm also reorganizing my magic dictionary thread so there won't be so many images.

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And that explains the discrepancy in that at least. I know SW already made his ruling on Bounded Fields, but since this got answered I figured I'd put it up here.
 
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That confuses me. So their Barrier somehow breaks off this area from normal spacetime so that it doesn't affect those not in there, but you can't do the same for scenery? And how does not being able to sense the caster give you immunity to energyblasts blowing through your position. That's not even going into how the damage apparently only appears (as having already occured) when the field drops, which means that for the duration of the fight, the caster was also keeping up a tangible illusion in normal space that somehow prevented the very real buildings being destroyed from affecting anyone?:jackiechan:
 
Firedon said:
That confuses me. So their Barrier somehow breaks off this area from normal spacetime so that it doesn't affect those not in there, but you can't do the same for scenery? And how does not being able to sense the caster give you immunity to energyblasts blowing through your position. That's not even going into how the damage apparently only appears (as having already occured) when the field drops, which means that for the duration of the fight, the caster was also keeping up a tangible illusion in normal space that somehow prevented the very real buildings being destroyed from affecting anyone?:jackiechan:
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I think its more like... use Coil as a kinda-sorta example. They split an area off from normal space-time but are able to exclude living beings, except when the split is dropped they merge instead and all the damage that occurred in the split area overwrites the real-space area.

Something about the way the barrier is constructed means its easier for the Barrier-Space to overwrite the Real-Space when its remerged, but it is possible to keep the Real-Space version of the environment with higher level barriers... in canon. Here we just start out with the latter flat-out.
 
ShadowAngelBeta said:
I think its more like... use Coil as a kinda-sorta example. They split an area off from normal space-time but are able to exclude living beings, except when the split is dropped they merge instead and all the damage that occurred in the split area overwrites the real-space area.

Something about the way the barrier is constructed means its easier for the Barrier-Space to overwrite the Real-Space when its remerged, but it is possible to keep the Real-Space version of the environment with higher level barriers... in canon. Here we just start out with the latter flat-out.
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... Nope, my brain is still ':confused:', QM's ruling makes more sense.
 
ShadowAngelBeta said:
Over what? I really can't simplify it anymore, because at that point I'd be going "It works, period."
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Well, with that second explanation it does make sense to me. Except for the reintegration. Because it'd make way more sense/sound way less energy expensive to simply let that part collapse/drift off and shunt the people back into normal time than to impose the separated barrier space onto the real world. And given that being able to force people into this barrier when they are unlikely to want that seems to be a core part of the spell, just reversing that sounds like it shouldn't be that hard.
 
... guys. I just remembered something really bad.
Without Cauldron to keep the large groups like the Protectorate supported and really destabilizing Parahumans eliminated, human civilization doesn't need the endbringers to rip itself apart. Wildbow quote 1, quote 2. Bolded emphasis is mine.

Absent Cauldron's meddling, there's no PRT for one thing. There's no Suits, no Red Gauntlet, no Elite Sentai group or whatever I called them, no Elite; all groups that Cauldron set up or supported. Groups are formed but can't sustain themselves past tight Undersider-like groups of 5-10 individuals. Conflicts are more tightly contained and devastating, recovery is slower, and an area that ends up lost or fucked doesn't get the backup needed to revive. Such areas are abandoned or occupied by whatever groups are willing to make do with the aftermath/ongoing occupation by X gang or Y high-level threat.

Non-parahumans in the West end up taking a more aggressive stance against parahumans, as certain voices aren't silenced, and without the Protectorate as an example, things are just more anti-parahuman around the world as a whole. Heroes are fewer and farther between than in conventional Worm - you've got an awful lot of shades of grey and people doing their damndest just to get by. The Chevaliers and Miss Militias of the world are staying right where they are, in small town X or Turkey-occupied Kurdistan, and they're helping their town/country and only their town/country. For the most part, parahumans are taking over where they can take over, and because the population is so hostile, they're forced to be a little ugly or harsh to quell dissent, or they're nice and constantly watching their back/focusing far too much on just keeping things functioning.

Assuming that Cauldron's operatives maybe killed Eden but then just sat on their hands/died, the Endbringers don't exist, the cauldron vials aren't spread out, and there's less of the really powerful parahumans here and there who're capable of acting decisively. Gates to other worlds are left open, feeding into Cote D'Ivorie, spitting out more than a fair share of Case-53 like monsters, only in a very tightly occupied space. If West Africa survives, it's either as a world power or as a mutant-occupied area. If they find Eden's corpse, well, you've got a whole other mess, because they're going to be less careful and organized about it. Assuming they don't accidentally revive Eden, there's going to be a lot of failed doses.

Further, the major threats that Contessa and Number Man deemed too dangerous to leave alone weren't necessarily eliminated (either because Contessa herself didn't pay a visit, or because Cauldron didn't contrive to have said parahuman put down), so there's more Ash Beasts, Blasphemies, Sleepers and the equivalent roaming around.

There's no Parahuman Containment Center, so there's no place to put the really dangerous villains. What do you do with the villains who can't be killed, like Gavel? You maybe try to wrangle some giant-killers like Flechette/Foil, but how many of those guys are there, really?

You're talking about infrastructure, but quite honestly, infrastructure wouldn't survive the 90's. By the mid-2000's, getting food from the agricultural states to the areas with the highest population density (ie. New york) is a struggle, because of bandits, threats, organized crime, disorganized crime and more. Things come to resemble the theoretical Edenverse, but you don't have Eden shoring up the population by putting tinkers and capes capable of reviving areas anywhere particular (you also don't have her sabotaging). Scion ends up playing a pretty big role in keeping society alive, more than before, with keen attention to the biggest threats and only those threats.

By March 2011, half the world is struggling, and the other half is controlled by powerful figures of the Glaistig Uaine class. Richter and his AIs might have a hand in keeping eastern Canada going, but his attention is focused on New York, which is a clusterfuck of the Nth order. A coalition of villains occupy Brockton Bay, including Marquis, the Butcher Queen and the Little Doctor, while outside parties want a piece of that pie. Every second city has a major threat in or near it - not quite on the level of an Echidna or Nilbog, but bad enough that it's hard to put down.

It isn't hopeless, but it's grim. Points of light in a broad swathe of darkness. There is a way out, nobody's actively trying to stop them from finding it, but it's an uphill battle every step of the way.​
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Parahumans are naturally inclined toward conflict, because that's why they have powers in the first place - the entities want to test the powers. A great many parahumans are great balls of neuroses and they've got passengers in their heads that may be nudging them a little one way or another, powers that aren't necessarily controlled or easy to manage, or unfortunate implications.

What happens is you have agencies trying to get capes on board and entice them to their side - they offer money, benefits, training, gear, whatever else. But each parahuman you bring on board constitutes a risk to what you're building. In canon, the Doctor is pulling strings and seeding groups with cauldron capes, which provides a steady body of capes, and Contessa is devoting attention here and there to controlling crises and removing threats/dissent. Once you have that stable body, and you're handling all of the big problems (we see Cauldron discussing the fact that they have to stop doing just this around the time of Number Man's interlude), you have a stable organization that can survive the loss of two or three key members, and you only need to step in every couple of weeks/months to keep things more or less running smoothly. Then you've got bastions of strength for humanity and civilization.

Without Cauldron, you run into problems where all it takes for your new organization to fall apart is one incident, one bit of drama, one nutball cape crossing a line. You lose trust, your faction fragments in half, and the individuals involved in this crisis are very powerful - your government or organization or whatever has to devote horrific amounts of resources to understanding, mediating and controlling the problem. And it keeps happening. The larger your group, the higher the rate of incidents. It's a struggle to get off the ground, and once you've actually made it, you're one disaster away from crumbling and having it all be for naught.

By and large, big groups aren't so sustainable, without outside help and a strong example to show it's worth the effort.
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Now, I know what some of you are going to say. 'But the Protectorate and Triumvirate's still around.' Absolutely. But the safety net of Doctor Mother/Contessa is now gone. Simurgh can blow the lid on Cauldron/Triumvirate, either with Noelle or some other plan of hers, and eliminate the Protectorate/PRT as that positive, stable organization. At that point, we start seeing Wildbow's scenario for a Cauldron-less world begin to occur.

Shard-powered humanity doesn't need Scion or Endbringers to kill it. The shards' conflict libido enhancing a majority of parahumans' own mental traumas are enough to spell the doom of human civilization. Humanity is now on a knife-edge of progress or destruction.
 
Firedon said:
Well, with that second explanation it does make sense to me. Except for the reintegration. Because it'd make way more sense/sound way less energy expensive to simply let that part collapse/drift off and shunt the people back into normal time than to impose the separated barrier space onto the real world. And given that being able to force people into this barrier when they are unlikely to want that seems to be a core part of the spell, just reversing that sounds like it shouldn't be that hard.
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I think... My explanation for that would be that the Barrier-Space and Real-Space overlay each other. And I said "kinda-sorta like Coil" because neither of them is a simulation.

Dammit, I don't have the words for this. Both exist, both a are occurring, but the Barrier-Space is... delaying the reaction of Real-Space to their fight.

So they can't just drop it like it didn't exist, because it very much does. ...My guess would be that they use a spatial separation to keep living material out of the Barrier-Space, but can't do the same with non-living material lest they make the Barrier-Space nothing more than a vacuum (and collapses big-crunch style, except not really because that's not how the big-crunch works), so instead its separated temporally from Real-Space, hence ending up like a delaying effect rather than a true space-time separation. Which would also lead to a decent explanation for the higher-end barriers due to them needing the calculations and mana needed to copy all the non-living material.

Maybe. I'm getting a bit lost in my own head on these thoughts now, I can't tell if I had something and took a wrong-turn somewhere or if this works alright.
 
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@Always Late
Also, Number Man's likely dead too. And he was the one that funneled money to hero groups that couldn't support themselves well:

Interlude 21.X Number Man said:
The King's Men were in debt. Easy enough to manage an anonymous donation, keep them afloat for another two months.
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So, some hero groups might not exist at this time (or maybe reformed into different ones that might have different members for another try) due to the financials.
 
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