Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 26: The Clown, the Self-Aggrandizement, and the Metawankery
Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 26: The Clown, the Self-Aggrandizement, and the Metawankery

"Hello, Earl."

I turned to find him leaning on the side of the nearest barrier, wearing the purple suit and clown makeup that Valerian had warned me of. His lips were stretched even wider than his slopped-on whiteface and crimson-smeared clown mouth and he was cleaning his nails with a scalpel. Without looking. And without slicing his fingers open, which suggested some disturbing things.

"Hello, Flufflec," I said as calmly as I could. I stood and turned to face him. "It's good to see you."

"Why, Earl," he said, pushing himself upright with his shoulder and sauntering closer to where I sat at the center of the Eagle's Nest. (Yes, okay, it was a crap name for a sealing research facility that was planted firmly on terra firma. Whatever, I thought it sounded cool when I first named it and the fact that Oli and Val went to such efforts to convince me that it was not cool doesn't need to be discussed.)

"You never call, you never write," he continued, ignoring my parenthetical mental ramble despite my sense of certainty that he knew exactly what it had been. "And I do mean never. Write."

I smiled slightly and shrugged one shoulder. "The internet connection from this world is garbage and the roaming charges for transdimensional phone calls are off the hook. What brings you here?"

"My essential nature, bird duke. I've never concealed my goal."

"Still pushing the Armageddon Initiative, huh?"

"Someone has to."

"Out of curiosity, are you voting that as a joke or are you serious?" My eyes twinkled, lips quirking as I handed him the opening.

His head tipped, getting it. "What else can I say but..."

"Flufflec.response," we said together.

He stopped about ten feet away, eyeing me and cleaning his nails again.

I gestured to the scalpel. "Is that practice xor are you actually omniscient like Val thought?"

"Ah ah," he said, wagging a finger. "No cheating."

"Fine. Which of the following options are you using in order to clean your nails like that without hurting yourself: total omniscience, limited omniscience, a bloodline ability or other physical boost, extensive yet mundane practice, or something else?" I asked. "Please specify all that apply."

"My, my, my," the evil clown said. "So serious...why? Whyever would I share that key piece of information, bird duke? I'm not a comic book villain."

"Sure, but you also didn't put your plan into play thirty-five minutes ago," I said. "On account of we're still here. I figured it was worth a shot. Seriously though, why are you here?"

"I considered the best way to motivate you to resume writing."

"Wait...you want me to continue writing? Like, writing Chosen for the Grave back on EnoughSpeed?"

"I am not so self-referential, dear bird duke. No, I wish you to finish all the tales you have left incomplete over the years. The Tinker's Daughter, Dungeon Crawler You!, The Patchwork Realms, that tale about the corpsicle who was forcibly uploaded, dropped into a half-ogre death knight character on an MMO, and used as gold farmer on pain of deletion. A more satisfying conclusion to Team Anko instead of that drivel you forced upon us. All of it."

...

...What.

Were we about to have a Misery situation here?

"Uh, well, sure. I mean, they aren't all dead-dead. I plan on continuing DCY, definitely. And I wouldn't mind getting back to Patchwork Realms. I even went back and re-read it to get the groove back." I winced. "Holy crap it was shit. It had—"

"Tch." He snapped his fingers together in a 'close your mouth' gesture. The other hand was holding a scalpel at the ready so I shut my mouth.

"Readers have disagreed. Regardless, intentions are lovely, updates are what matters," he said, gesturing with the scalpel.

"I'd love to get back to those but I didn't stop by choice. I ran into a wall on all of them. They were either too derivative or just didn't go anywhere. I couldn't keep going."

"I suspect you will reacquire the ability if given...sufficient motivation."

That wasn't ominous at all.

"I considered what might constitute proper motivation," Flufflec continued. "It took some time, but I have finally acquired inspiration."

This was very not good. What would someone who used a psychotic murderclown as their avatar consider good motivation? Torture? No, I couldn't write if I was too busy screaming in pain.

Blackmail? My mind flashed through all the things that would make valid blackmail information on me. There wasn't much...some intrusive thoughts that I had never acted on or shared with anyone and would never act on because they were repellant to my conscious self. Besides, those were deniable. Various personal failings that would be cringe-inducing if put in front of others but they wouldn't be disastrous.

Bribery? An offer to bring me home would honestly need consideration instead of being an immediate yes the way it would have a decade ago when we first got here. A way to communicate with our former world would be good but it was integral to the thing he was bribing me to do, so it wouldn't count as the bribe. Money? Riches? I was doing pretty well for myself in this world... I didn't need money and the people I cared about were well taken care of. Helping people I cared about back in the real...back in the other world, that might be a good line.

"What did you have in mind?" I asked carefully.

The murderclown grinned at me, a fully psychotic Heath-Ledger-esque expression that chilled me to the bones. "Allow me to introduce a new friend." He gestured widely and space and time were slit open.

A man stepped through. At least, he looked like a man. Sort of. Parts of his face kept unattaching, drifting out a bit, and then being sucked back into place. He had dark hair and chestnut brown eyes. Three eyes, not two, arranged in a downward-pointing triangle. His hands were vague and fuzzy, as though I were suffering double vision several times over. I couldn't tell how many fingers there were and I think the number might have been changing.

He was wearing a bright yellow poncho, made of no material that I recognized, with edges and folds that didn't quite fit into this reality. They cut at spacetime with every movement, leaving tiny screams and bleeding papercuts in the tapestry of the world every time the 'man' shifted. Which, fortunately, he didn't do very much. He was statue still, face blank, like a doll.

His head turned. Well, no, it didn't turn. It did a jump-cut; one moment he was facing me, then he had turned his head a hundred degrees to look at Flufflec. The rest of his body hadn't moved at all, making it look as though his neck had broken.

"Meet Josh," the clown said.

"5CrEEeec<h|-|HH—" The man stopped when I collapsed to the ground, clutching my bleeding ears and vomiting.

He coughed and tried again. "Testing, testing, one, e, pi...is this better?" The voice was angles and screwdrivers stabbed through eyes.

I was too busy dry heaving to respond.

"Some," Flufflec said. "Less eldritch reverb, if you please." His ears were also bleeding, as were his eyes, but he didn't seem to care.

"Hmmmm... red muscle fiber, yellow eyeballs, red muscle fiber, yellow eyeballs, red muscle fiber, yellow eyeballs. Yes, that seems better."

I retched out the last little bit of my spleen, used a quick water jutsu to clear my mouth, and pushed myself up to a seated position, leaning hard on one arm.

"Josh?" I asked.

His face split into the wrong smile. "Yes! That's me. Josh In Time." He frowned. "Wait. In or Out? I'm In right now, so I'm Josh In Time, but if I go Out then I would be Josh Out of Time. Would I still be me?" He pondered for a moment, then shrugged and smiled brightly. "Oh well! Anyway, just call me Josh!"

"Riiight. Okay, what can I do for you, Josh?"

"Well, see, Flufflec here summoned me and we got to talking and I'll be goshdarned if he didn't start making a whole lot of sense! He told me about all of you and your stories and they just sounded so gosh-darned wonderful that I needed to see them for myself. And I checked and they gosh golly whillikers sure were great! Hey, can I take your name away from you?"

"What?"

"You don't take the name itself, Josh," Flufflec corrected. "You ask him to write it on something and you take that instance of the name. He keeps the name afterwards, you only get the one instance of it."

"Oh, really? Huh." Ponder. "What do you do with the instance?"

"Put it on a wall, or in a drawer. Obviously, you would need to make a wall or a drawer, first."

"Hm. I suppose that could be fun. Interesting challenge, keeping a thing from dissolving. That would give it some real bragging rights, you know? Okay, what do I have him write it on?"

"Paper is typical. Or a book, or sometimes a body part." He paused and then added. "Preferably your own." Another pause. "While still attached."

"OOOH!" He was suddenly right in my face, leaning in so close that 'eye contact' was about to take on a whole new meaning. "Can you sign my throat?"

The top of his head flipped back to reveal that he did not mean sign the outside of his throat.

"Uhhh—" I was cut off by Flufflec's pen dropping right into my hand, thrown with omniscient precision.

"We'?" Josh demanded, pointing at his throat with both hands. "Si' i'!"

I took the pen and signed the not-a-man's throat. What else was I to do?

Signing squishy throat flesh shouldn't have worked, but Flufflec's pen wrote perfectly. I carefully did not think about that. Instead, I handed the pen back, holding it with the tips of my fingers so as not to risk getting any Josh-goop on me.

Josh zipped back a few feet, stood erect, and his head flipped around into normal human position again. He worked his jaw back and forth, licked both ears (really got inside them too, like he was checking for ear gold, ew), and smiled.

"Thanks! That'll be fun to show around."

"Welcome?" I said, somewhat weakly. Honestly, what did you say to this? "So...where are we?"

"Josh got his autograph and now is going to help motivate you to resume writing."

"Okay, look, I don't want—"

Josh spun in a circle, pinched his nose, blew out his cheeks, and crossed his eyes. A window opened in front of me and I looked through into a Starbucks cafe, logo visible and everything.

I looked through the window at one specific person. One very familiar person.

The window had opened directly in front of him, less than arm's reach away. He was looking down, probably at a laptop, but it was below the bottom of the window.

"Josh, as you must know, is able to manipulate probabilities and causation," Flufflec said. "Here's the deal: you write one hundred words for one of your unfinished stories, he steps on a Lego." He gestured towards the person in the window.

I looked at Flufflec in disbelief. Then at Josh. Then at the window. Then back at Flufflec. I asked the only thing that mattered.

"Barefoot?"

"As the day he was born. He will—"

"Shut up and give me that pen back."
 
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In case it was unclear: the reason I said that it might be worth sticking around for another update was because we were discussing if we were going to change the strength of the pool. Didn't want y'all to run off to the southern islands right before we told you that actually it was better than you thought.
 
@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped

Any chance we can get answers on these? They're going to directly impact planmaking this cycle.

Pinging also @eaglejarl @Velorien

Is there an alteration to the party's chakra budget from this?

Before it was 900 excees CP, now since that was roughly 500 from Mari and 400 from cost reduction (player estimate). I'd expect that to go up to at least 500 cost reduction for a 25% increase in effect. But since Noburi gets a bigger benefit from the pool I could see the cost reduction jumping to 600.

Bringing up the total overflow to 1000CP or 1100CP

How long does Yuno have left on her Consequence? It's been 16 (subjective) days since she was hurt, so does Noburi estimate she has about ~1 week left? He estimated about 3 weeks with regular care and she's been receiving it.
 
[X] Sealing SOP: Runemaster
  • Always do a prep day to test difficulty first.
  • Always use DoB tracks if available, offtrack easier projects if they are not.
  • Rerolls to Hazou's intuition, default is -9 or worse. Unless he's working on something he's confident won't fail even then.
    • If >3 FP, reroll for extra progress on Medium or higher Runes and Jounin or higher seals.
  • Buy to:
    • 1 FP if single-tracking.
    • 2 FP if dual-tracking.
    • 3 FP if Hazou thinks a project will likely fail on a -6 or worse.
    • 4 FP if prepping a project intended to be rerolled on a -3 or worse.
  • Abort projects if Hazou thinks they will likely fail on a -3 or worse after using full prep and DoB, not counting invokes.
  • After the first roll, adjust prep days, rerolls, invokes, and DoB usage based on Hazou's intuition.
  • Seals:
    • Trivial/Genin: Neither prep nor DoB.
    • Chuunin: One of 5 days prep or DoB.
      • With notes or significant veterancy: 3 days prep, no DoB, or no prep w/ DoB
    • Jounin: Both full prep and DoB, reroll -3 or worse.
      • With notes or significant veterancy: reroll as normal.
    • Jiraiya: Don't research.
      • With notes or significant veterancy: Both full prep and DoB, Invoke, reroll -3 or worse.
  • Runes:
    • Trivial: Neither prep nor DoB.
    • Easy: One of full prep or DoB
    • Medium: Both full prep and DoB.
    • Hard: Don't research, attempt to find easier version.
      • With veterancy: Both full prep and DoB, reroll -3 or worse, Invoke.
 
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I looked through the window at one specific person. One very familiar person.

[...]

"Here's the deal: you write one hundred words for one of your unfinished stories, he steps on a Lego."

[...]

"Barefoot?"

"As the day he was born. He will—"

"Shut up and give me that pen back."

I like to believe that this is the person that the Eugene character is based off of :p
 
Chakra Budget

With Pool

Hazou has 1000 (extra) + 315 = 1315 chakra to spend each day.

On infusion days:

Hazou spends 275 (Rune A) + 350 (Rune B) + 207 (SC + 5 Clones) + 480 (SC for 6 blocks) = 1312 chakra => 0.6 FOOM Mult and 9 additional blocks to use

On rest days

Hazou spends: 188 (SC + 4 Clones) + 1120 (SC for 14 blocks) = 1308 CP => 1.4 FOOM Mult and 0 additional blocks to use.

On prep days while running 2 total tracks he spends:

207 (SC + 5 Clones) + 1040 (SC for 13 blocks) = 1247 CP => 1.3 FOOM Mult and 2 additional blocks to use, usually on reading notes.

On prep days while running 3 total tracks he spends:

207 (SC + 5 Clones) + 880 (SC for 11 blocks) = 1087 CP => 1.1 FOOM Mult and 0 additional blocks to use. With 228 additional chakra remaining Hazou can cast SC 1 additional time to help Noburi research.

On travel days (note that he has only 3 hours per clone, so each clone can only get a single training block):

300 (SC + 10 Clones) + 207 (SC + 5 clones) + 800 (10 SC for 10 blocks) = 1307 => 1.0 FOOM mult and 5 blocks to spend (notes only)

Without Pool

Hazou has 500 (extra) + 315 = 815 to spend.

On infusion days:

Hazou must go into debt to afford 350 (Rune A) + 350 (Rune B) + 175 (SC + 5 Clones) = 975 CP, 15 additional blocks to use.

On rest days:

Hazou spends: 250 (SC + 4 Clones) + 560 (SC for 7 blocks) = 810 CP => 0.7x FOOM Mult and 7 additional blocks to use.

On prep days:

Hazou spends 275 (SC + 5 Clones) + 480 (SC for 6 blocks) = 755 CP => 0.6x FOOM Mult and 13 additional blocks to use.

On travel days (note that he has only 3 hours per clone, so each clone can only get a single training block):

300 (SC + 6 Clones) + 480 (SC for 6 blocks) => 0.6 FOOM Mult and 0 additional blocks)

Once notes are exhausted I'd have him drop down to 9 additional blocks to use for scribing/off-tracks and go up to 0.7x mult for training.
 
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Could we give up a Shadow Clone for a day or two, so Noburi can teach us Mednin? Or on one of our DoB rest days? If the issue is not enough time, let's carve out the time.
 
[X] Action Plan: The Long Haul
Word Count: 299
Intended Duration: 2(?) subjective months (43 days solar) or until we run out of projects to dual track
  • Sanity check all Uplift
  • Research - until Yuno heals
  • Leave the grotto, travel west, loop around Bear and camp on the far side.
  • Set up a research base
    • Place a TR140 far underground with ELF explosives, only the top ~25-30m is above the surface. Build the base there.
      • Defended by Kagome's trap array/SCSA/SSSA/skyslicers
      • Send out Yuno SCs to scout any nearby chakra beasts and/or nests.
      • After ~1 subjective month. Displace a few hundred miles -- keeping Bear between Uplift and the EN
        • ES the ground to cover the AoE of the TR140 so that it looks natural
  • Research
    • As XP becomes available raise the following:
      • PS -> 31
      • Mednin 0 -> 10
      • Sealing -> 54 (spend 40 Notes XP)
      • PS -> 32
    • Dual track runes, follow the Sealing SOP
    • Complete Force Domes and Iron Earth. As projects finish, do (not necessarily in this order)
    • Research the Trivial and Easy ones first (potentially with a Medium thrown in for a bit to match cycle length)
    • Follow the chakra budget. Read notes when chakra is unavailable.
    • When notes are finished, scribe seals.
    • Once the pool effect ends, redo all previously difficulty checked runes, starting with the Great Seal and the ones listed above.
  • Kagome
    • Research Banshee Fuckers
    • If time remains, prep/research non-Air Dome based skywalkers
      • Suggestions: Force Dome, Earth Dome, and 5SB based all seem potentially viable.
      • He's not to proceed if it seems dangerous.
  • Noburi
    • Continue to research SC interactions with your bloodline, and teach Hazou Mednin.
      • Teach him the jutsu once he completes SC research
 
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[X] Action Plan: The Long Haul

@Sir Stompy
Could we add some version of the following...
  • Skyslicers involved in the trap arrays, just in case (for ease of QM bandwidth, if nothing else. We have a lot of trap-relevant seals)
  • If Noburi judges SC safe for him to learn, buy SC 1
 
[X] Action Plan: The Long Haul
  • Kagome
    • Research Banshee Fuckers
    • If time remains, prep longer-duration skywalkers and work on those
    • Alternatively, have him build the team skysliders with Arachnid silk.
Should we also add Icarus-proof skywalkers to his research queue? I think it's an important seal to have, given the strategic implications of having flight while half the Akatsuki doesn't. We could alternatively add it to Hazou's research queue on a third track, but either way I think it needs to be in the plan.

If we want to handle it ourselves, we'd probably need to be more specific, testing things like Earth Dome skywalkers or 1SB skywalkers individually. On balance, for wordcount reasons, I think I'd prefer if we took over long-duration skywalkers so that Kagome could exercise his best judgement there (it also ties into the whole thing where, we respect his sealing skills and trust him to have good ideas on his own with the skills to follow through on them. We aren't just handing him a filled-in specifications sheet, we're just giving him a goal that we believe in him about.)
 
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[X] Action Plan: The Long Haul

Should we also add Icarus-proof skywalkers to his research queue? I think it's an important seal to have, given the strategic implications of having flight while half the Akatsuki doesn't. We could alternatively add it to Hazou's research queue on a third track, but either way I think it needs to be in the plan.

If we want to handle it ourselves, we'd probably need to be more specific, testing things like Earth Dome skywalkers or 1SB skywalkers individually. On balance, for wordcount reasons, I think I'd prefer if we took over long-duration skywalkers so that Kagome could exercise his best judgement there (it also ties into the whole thing where, we respect his sealing skills and trust him to have good ideas on his own with the skills to follow through on them. We aren't just handing him a filled-in specifications sheet, we're just giving him a goal that we believe in him about.)
We might want to add Force Dome-based Skywalkers to the list of possibilities.
 
[X] Action Plan: The Long Haul

Should we also add Icarus-proof skywalkers to his research queue? I think it's an important seal to have, given the strategic implications of having flight while half the Akatsuki doesn't. We could alternatively add it to Hazou's research queue on a third track, but either way I think it needs to be in the plan.

If we want to handle it ourselves, we'd probably need to be more specific, testing things like Earth Dome skywalkers or 1SB skywalkers individually. On balance, for wordcount reasons, I think I'd prefer if we took over long-duration skywalkers so that Kagome could exercise his best judgement there (it also ties into the whole thing where, we respect his sealing skills and trust him to have good ideas on his own with the skills to follow through on them. We aren't just handing him a filled-in specifications sheet, we're just giving him a goal that we believe in him about.)
It's likely a jounin seal and impossible to off-track. I don't think the ROI is good for doing this on Hazou. It's not a top priority like defense and sensing is for me.

We can ask Kagome to work on it after he finishes BFs.

That's the last novel seal I want to suggest to the QMs.
 
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