Okay, I will note on EM that one part of it is straightforward to model. The size of the liquid air floods.

So air flows in at a known volumetric rate, liquifies, and flows outward again.
Inflow speed = mach 1 at some temperature, ~300m/s
Inflow surface area (bold for half sphere) = (300m radius)^2 * 4pi / 2 = 565,000 m^2
Inflow volume = 300m/s * 1,131,000 m^2 = 169,500,000 m^3/s

Volume reduction of air when it liquifies = air density / liquid air density = 1.29/870= 0.0015
Outflow volume of liquid air = 0.0015 * 169,500,000 m^3/s = 254,300 m^3/s

Right, so we have about 254k cubic meters of liquid air per second. Or, if spread over a square kilometer, a depth of 25 centimeters per second. So how far does the flood reach, from that? Well, that gets a little tricky. We could just guess a depth and then say the flood covers so-and-so kilometers per so-and-so, but lets be a little more rigorous.

What inhibits the liquid air flood? Well, it will touch warm ground and boil away, so it has to cool any ground it passes over. But the ground doesn't conduct heat all that well and the near-surface has only so much heat to contribute, so eventually it cools enough to pass over. So the liquid air finds a obstacle in the form of warm ground, and some of the air must boil away to cool that ground to pass over it, until eventually the ground is cooled to such a depth that it is no longer a relevant source of heat.

Energy to boil 1 kg of liquid air: ~200,000 joules/kg
Energy to boil 1 m^3 of liquid air: ~200,000 j/kg * 870kg/m^3 = 174,000,000 j/m^3

The amount of soil it has to cool is tricky to calculate. In part, it is a flood, so it will be churning topsoil while also simultaneously boiling on contact with that soil. And it could get complicated, with liquid air flowing into soil and then boiling after reaching non-frozen soil and that gas formation causes churning...

So lets look at permafrost. Permafrost is when the thermal mass and low conductivity of the ground averages out the yearly temperatures, so some portion of the soil below a certain depth is always frozen. You have a active zone at the top, which can freeze and unfreeze over the year, and below that it stays frozen. We can use this to eyeball how much work the liquid air has to do; if soil is deep enough to be frozen year-round, it's probably deep enough that it's thermal content is irrelevant to the much colder liquid air flood over the course of a few weeks. Permafrost depth varies depending on a few factors, but generally is a couple meters. Lets call it three.

Specific heat of soil: ~2 joules/gram/kelvin (significant variance)
Density of soil: ~1.4 g/cm^3
Specific heat of soil per cubic centimeter: 2 j/g/k * 1.4g/cm^3 = 2.8 j/k/cm^3
Specific heat of soil per cubic meter: 2.8j/k/cm^3 * (100cm)^3 = 2,800,000 j/k/m^3

Furthermore, soil contains water, which will freeze and release energy.

Water content of soil: varies significantly, assume ~10%
Water per cubic meter of soil: 10% * 1,400 kg/m^3 = 140kg/m^3
Heat of fusion of water: 333j/g, 333,000 j/kg
Heat of fusion of the water in one cubic meter of soil: 330,000 j/kg * 140kg/m^3 = 46,200,000 j/m^3

So, we need to create a temperature gradient from liquid air temperatures to normal soil temperature, across a depth of 3 meters of soil. This will be a linear gradient, so the average temperature drop will be one-half of the maximum. Furthermore, water will only freeze if the temperature drops by enough. The total temperature change is ~-220k from a room temperature of 20c, so we can assume that ~90% of the water along this temperature gradient freezes.

Energy to reduce the temperature of the relevant soil depth by the average temperature change: 110k * 2,800,000 j/k/m^3 * 3 m = 924,000,000 j/m^2
Energy to freeze the water in this region of soil: 90% * 46,200,000 j/m^3 * 3m = 138,600,000 j/m^2
Sum: 924,000,000 j/m^2 + 138,600,000 j/m^2 = 1,062,600,000 j/m^2

So we can expect soil to absorb around 1 gigajoule of energy per square meter from the liquid air flood. This means that each cubic meter will (eventually) boil away:

Energy to boil 1 m^3 of liquid air: 174,000,000 j/m^3
Energy required to fully cool a square meter of soil: 1,062,600,000 j/m^2
Depth of liquid air you have to pour onto soil to fully cool it: 1,062,600,000 j/m^2 / 174,000,000 j/m^3 = 6.1m

So we can reasonably assume any particular patch of land is thoroughly demolished, and no longer poses any particular obstacle to liquid air flowing over it, after it has boiled away ~6 meters of liquid air. Over the short term this number will be lower, but this is a good estimate for determining the long-term maximum size of the liquid air flood.

How much does this slow the flood? If it is required to pay the entire heat tax upfront, then...

Depth of liquid air you have to pour onto soil to fully cool it: 6.1m
Outflow volume of liquid air: 254,300 m^3/s
Square meters covered per second: 254,300 m^3/s / 6.1m = 41,700 m^2/s
Square kilometers covered per second: 41,700 m^2/s / (1000m)^2 = 0.0417/s

Of course, in practice, it does not have to pay the entire heat tax upfront. The more liquid air is flowing over any particular area of land, the less the heating from below is relevant. Near the EM Nuke itself, when first activated, the heating effect is likely small enough that fluid velocity is uninhibited. On the other hand, a greater flow of liquid air means greater disruption of the soil. If soil is dispersed throughout the liquid air by turbulent forces, then not only does it have no choice but to pay the heat tax immediately (as the surface area of contact is immense), but the total tax is increased as it has to cool the entirety of the displaced soil to the lowest temperature in addition to the undisturbed soil.

If, for instance, it physically displaces 3 meters of topsoil, the heat imparted onto the liquid air by this soil will be equivalent to that calculated above, and so the rate of expansion will be similar. As the actual amount of soil displaced will vary greatly by nuances of the flood that are difficult to calculate, it is also difficult to determine the actual rate of flooding near the start of the EM Nuke. Nonetheless, it may be slowed significantly, as the outflow is expected to be extremely turbulent and travel at potentially mach speeds, and so could potentially displace many meters of soil.


But the flood stops eventually; a infinite-duration EM Nuke would not just freeze the entire planet. This is because heat is getting added to any given patch of land... by the air, and sunlight. Ambient air is warm and will convey heat to the ground, and sunlight will constantly add heat to the system when it hits the ground and/or the cloud layers above the ground. So eventually the liquid air flood will be halted because it has covered such a area that the total energy received from sunlight is sufficient to boil it all and match the production rate.

Power from insolation per square meter, global average year-round: 340 j/s/m^2
Power from atmospheric heat transfer to the ground/liquid air flood: screaming in fluid dynamics = 0
Energy to boil 1 m^3 of liquid air: 174,000,000 j/m^3
Liquid air boiled per second per square meter of ground by sunlight: 340 j/s/m^2 / 174,000,000 j/m^3 = 0.0000020 m^3 boiled per m^2 of land per second (m^3/s/m^2, or m/s)
Per square kilometer: 0.0000020 m^3/s/m^2 * (1000m)^2 = 2m^3/s

Outflow volume of liquid air: 254,300 m^3/s
Square kilometers of land that will fully boil all of the outflowing liquid air: 254,300 m^3/s / 2m^3/s = 127,200 square kilometers
Radius of a circle with a area of 127,200 square kilometers: 201km


So, this puts a bound on the size of the liquid air flood. The average energy from sunlight is sufficient to cancel out the cooling effects of the EM AoE and boil all the liquid air across a circle with a diameter of 400 kilometers, and before that point the flooding will be slowed by the fact it is forced to extract heat from the soil it passes over. Heat transfer from the surrounding air contributes AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, and wind effects are neglected.

So as you can see, it... uh. What was I talking about at the start of this?
 
So, this puts a bound on the size of the liquid air flood. The average energy from sunlight is sufficient to cancel out the cooling effects of the EM AoE and boil all the liquid air across a circle with a diameter of 400 kilometers, and before that point the flooding will be slowed by the fact it is forced to extract heat from the soil it passes over. Heat transfer from the surrounding air contributes AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, and wind effects are neglected.
201 kilometers happens to be almost exactly 125 miles (124.896 exactly), so here's a representation of the area affected if we trigger one centered on the O'Uzu rift. I recall it to be at the southern tip of the island, and the scale given for the map is given in increments of 25 miles, so:



The main thing that comes to mind is that a lot of the liquid air will be rushing over seawater rather than disturbing ~3 meters of topsoil, and I don't know how that would interact with your calculations.
 
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Seawater is a lot more difficult to cool than topsoil, it would shrink the AoE substantially.
Agreed, water is both a liquid and has one of the highest specific heats of any common substance. The floor would be greatly impeded by trying to freeze the turbulent ocean, and while it would probably form a solid surface of ice eventually... well, I think its safe to assume that Moon or those other islands don't get flooded.
 
But they aren't going in and negotiating with Oro. They like Shikamaru and Kabuto can advice they're relevant real player but they don't get a seat at the table where the decision are made
Nara's role is advisor. They aren't gonna be able to force of personality or physically force others to obey them. If people listen to them, it'll be because they respect them. Unless they are really desperate and do something like threaten Nara clan secede from Leaf, which I guess they might do
 
so, quick recap:

Nagato tried to enforce world peace via weird Ninshu ritual. No one involved will explain the details to us, leaving us skeptical that it would outperform Uplift as a long-term strategy, or even be a good idea.

Nagato did, however, go to great lengths to minimize direct harm. He could have guaranteed the EN would stay off his back by and ~guaranteed his success by triggering a world war or unsealing horrors. He chooses not to.

Nagato also called the Akatsuki, a group including Hidan, "his friends". We have no fucking idea why Hidan was part of this project, or what he contributes, but we do know he has cheerfully massacred at least thousands of helpless people. Nagato calling him a friend is taken as evidence that Nagato is morally bankrupt, and isn't trustworthy to entrust world peace to.

Hazou, who has a cleaner moral record, thinks it would be better if he took over and sheaparded in world peace instead of Nagato. He and his family prepare to fight the Akatsuki over which prophet of peace will claim power.

Hazou teams up with his uncle Orochimaru, Hidan's main compitition for "greatest monster in the setting". Given the massive power imbalance, this means sceding an unknown ammount of control over the furture to Orochimaru. Attitudes of "even if Oro seizes power, it's better than Pain" circulate the hivemind.

Hazou suggests kidnapping Moon's ninja to increase his odds of victory, and exterminateing tens of thousands of civilians cover their tracks. Orochimaru redily agrees.




.......that unknown ritual is scary, and I'd much rather try Uplift's strategy, but I'm not sure why the playerbase seems so sure whe have the moral high ground over Nagato. Or that Nagato is so monsterous and unreasonable that any sacrifice is justified if it's in the name of thwarting him.
 
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.......that unknown ritual is scary, and I'd much rather try Uplift's strategy, but I'm not sure why the playerbase seems so sure whe have the moral high ground over Nagato. Or that Nagato is so monsterous and unreasonable that any sacrifice is justified if it's in the name of thwarting him.
Oh, well I would say that's because we don't, it's just useful for Hazo to say that. Ultimately we're siding with Hazo because he is our avatar.
 
Seawater is a lot more difficult to cool than topsoil, it would shrink the AoE substantially.
Agreed, water is both a liquid and has one of the highest specific heats of any common substance. The floor would be greatly impeded by trying to freeze the turbulent ocean, and while it would probably form a solid surface of ice eventually... well, I think its safe to assume that Moon or those other islands don't get flooded.
Is it? It has a much higher specific heat capacity than soil, true, but it's also an almost completely flat surface, and liquid air is less dense than water so it would flow over the top without issue. Unless you're modelling the ocean as being turbulent enough because of the storm that the waves impede flow a lot? But this is going on for weeks, you don't need that thick a layer of ice to cut the ocean off from wind locally, and I don't think Buggy's insolation calculations account for the fact that sea ice has a very high albedo so the energy it absorbs will be considerably reduced.

Energy to boil 1 m^3 of liquid air: 174,000,000 j/m^3
I'm not sure this holds. You got this from the latent heat of vaporization of liquid nitrogen, I assume (which seems to be something on the order of 200 kJ/kg - can you recommend any good sources for this kind of data, by the way?) and the density of liquid air; but that doesn't account for the energy needed to heat the liquid air to boiling point if it's below that, or (more importantly) the energy that the still-cryogenic-temperatures gaseous air will continue to absorb as it warms. The specific heat capacity of gaseous air is apparently almost exactly 1 kJ kg^-1 K^-1 (ignoring pressure-related effects because I am not equipped to deal with those), so every cubic meter of liquid air that boils off produces 870 kg of gaseous air at ~-200 C which as it warms to ~0 C from the ocean will absorb 200*870*1 = 174,000 kJ = 174 MJ, which is actually exactly the same number as you get from latent heat so I don't know which you originally used.

Regardless, this approximately doubles the energy needed, though of course once the air is gaseous heat transfer to it is going to be limited; but it's cold and therefore dense, so it should mostly stay at ground level rather than rising and mixing into the atmosphere where it could draw heat from other areas.

Huh. You know, thinking about it, I think you might get outward-flowing winds at ground level, from this. If gaseous air keeps forming from boiling liquid air, and it doesn't naturally rise because the air above it is warmer, but more and more of it keeps boiling off, where else is it going to go than out?

... This raises the further thought that, with a Superchiller lasting for weeks, some of the still-cold air that boils off from the flood might be sucked back into the rune's AOE, which would lower the average temperature of the intake. In the short term that would make the flood able to flow further, but in the long term, it might actually weaken the effect? If the incoming flow becomes cool enough for the air to freeze and not just liquefy, that might fill up the AOE with solid air, which would limit the storm (at least if we put the rune at ground level), and the melting points of oxygen and nitrogen are only 35 and 15 K lower than their boiling points. Something to keep in mind.
 
201 kilometers happens to be almost exactly 125 miles (124.896 exactly), so here's a representation of the area affected if we trigger one centered on the O'Uzu rift. I recall it to be at the southern tip of the island, and the scale given for the map is given in increments of 25 miles, so:



The main thing that comes to mind is that a lot of the liquid air will be rushing over seawater rather than disturbing ~3 meters of topsoil, and I don't know how that would interact with your calculations.

Leaf/Fire Country Proper is protected by the geographic barrier of the Tea/Fire/Noodle Crescent, and the mountains (which already block weather patterns) therein. Which of course, further complicates things.
 
Agreed, water is both a liquid and has one of the highest specific heats of any common substance. The floor would be greatly impeded by trying to freeze the turbulent ocean, and while it would probably form a solid surface of ice eventually... well, I think its safe to assume that Moon or those other islands don't get flooded.
Liquid nitrogen is notably less dense than seawater, but liquid oxygen is a bit more, and dry ice upwards of 1.5x as dense. If hurricane-force winds and concomitant wave action (plus cracking from thermal stress) prevent the water ice from forming a solid seal, I'd expect to see the nitrogen separating and spreading out like a sheet of oil, leading to a layer of cold nitrogen-rich air asphyxiating people in boats far beyond the visible danger zone, while near the core of the hellstorm rivulets of liquid oxygen laden with CO2 "silt" sink through cracks until they're encapsulated by just enough water ice to be well insulated and neutrally buoyant, creating a sort of "underwater hailstones" which potentially clot into frozen columns all the way down to the ocean floor. When the LOX and dry ice boil off, those columns might pop back up as mile-high icebergs shot through with weird caves where the ballast used to be.
 
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Is it? It has a much higher specific heat capacity than soil, true, but it's also an almost completely flat surface, and liquid air is less dense than water so it would flow over the top without issue. Unless you're modelling the ocean as being turbulent enough because of the storm that the waves impede flow a lot? But this is going on for weeks, you don't need that thick a layer of ice to cut the ocean off from wind locally, and I don't think Buggy's insolation calculations account for the fact that sea ice has a very high albedo so the energy it absorbs will be considerably reduced.
Hmm. On one hand, yes, good point about the albedo. On the other hand, ice has a higher heat of fusion than soil by a lot, and a higher thermal conductivity, and the bottom of the ice will be a fairly constant temperature. And there will be tides and waves that serve to break up thin ice. It's hard to say.

I'm not sure this holds. You got this from the latent heat of vaporization of liquid nitrogen, I assume (which seems to be something on the order of 200 kJ/kg - can you recommend any good sources for this kind of data, by the way?)
A few different sources cite LN2's heat of vaporization as around 200 or slightly below that. Similarly oxygen is around 210ish. So I just rounded to 200, as LN2 is the majority of liquid air.

...that doesn't account for the energy needed to heat the liquid air to boiling point if it's below that, or (more importantly) the energy that the still-cryogenic-temperatures gaseous air will continue to absorb as it warms. The specific heat capacity of gaseous air is apparently almost exactly 1 kJ kg^-1 K^-1 (ignoring pressure-related effects because I am not equipped to deal with those), so every cubic meter of liquid air that boils off produces 870 kg of gaseous air at ~-200 C which as it warms to ~0 C from the ocean will absorb 200*870*1 = 174,000 kJ = 174 MJ, which is actually exactly the same number as you get from latent heat so I don't know which you originally used.

Regardless, this approximately doubles the energy needed, though of course once the air is gaseous heat transfer to it is going to be limited; but it's cold and therefore dense, so it should mostly stay at ground level rather than rising and mixing into the atmosphere where it could draw heat from other areas.
I did neglect the energy required to heat the liquid air to it's boiling point. EM Nuke does not seem to cool liquids, only gasses, so the liquified air should be more-or-less exactly at it's boiling point, and regardless it cannot be a particularly large amount of energy because if it was any more than 15 kelvin colder, as you said, it would be solid. And it isn't.

I also neglected the energy required to heat the cold air. I actually neglected atmospheric effects entirely, as they are too tough to calculate because I do not have a PHD and a supercomputer handy. I would expect that the air above the flood will be pretty turbulent and will mix significantly. The large storm probably helps in this case, by creating a great deal of mixing with the massive and circulating heat sink that is the atmosphere. And regardless the thermal interaction with the ground will be minimal, because the liquid air will form a barrier that inhibits contact between the cold gaseous air and the ground.

Really, the effect of cloud cover is probably much more significant, as this process may or may not produce a lot of fog and clouds and those will interact with sunlight.

Huh. You know, thinking about it, I think you might get outward-flowing winds at ground level, from this. If gaseous air keeps forming from boiling liquid air, and it doesn't naturally rise because the air above it is warmer, but more and more of it keeps boiling off, where else is it going to go than out?

... This raises the further thought that, with a Superchiller lasting for weeks, some of the still-cold air that boils off from the flood might be sucked back into the rune's AOE, which would lower the average temperature of the intake. In the short term that would make the flood able to flow further, but in the long term, it might actually weaken the effect? If the incoming flow becomes cool enough for the air to freeze and not just liquefy, that might fill up the AOE with solid air, which would limit the storm (at least if we put the rune at ground level), and the melting points of oxygen and nitrogen are only 35 and 15 K lower than their boiling points. Something to keep in mind.
That's not how EM Nuke works by our understanding. Incoming air is magically and instantaneously set to X temperature, where X is, in this specific case, between the melting and boiling point of nitrogen. Non-gasses are not affected. The idea of a EM Nuke modified to produce solidified air has been raised already, and its closer to a exotic regenerative barrier technique than a destructive nuke.
 
Or that Nagato is so monsterous and unreasonable that any sacrifice is justified if it's in the name of thwarting him.
Most people point to Hidan and assume if Pain was genuinely friends with him and included him in the group, the group must be evil.

I've never been all that taken with the argument, but it's the one I hear repeated most often. Apologies if I misunderstood it.
 
Liquid nitrogen is notably less dense than seawater, but liquid oxygen is a bit more, and dry ice upwards of 1.5x as dense. If hurricane-force winds and concomitant wave action (plus cracking from thermal stress) prevent the water ice from forming a solid seal, I'd expect to see the nitrogen separating and spreading out like a sheet of oil, leading to a layer of cold nitrogen-rich air asphyxiating people in boats far beyond the visible danger zone, while near the core of the hellstorm rivulets of liquid oxygen laden with CO2 "silt" sink through cracks until they're encapsulated by just enough water ice to be well insulated and neutrally buoyant, creating a sort of "underwater hailstones" which potentially clot into frozen columns all the way down to the ocean floor. When the LOX and dry ice boil off, those columns might pop back up as mile-high icebergs shot through with weird caves where the ballast used to be.
This is very interesting and evocative. My main thought is that oxygen enrichment of the liquid air is possible, but likely only by boiling off the nitrogen preferentially. The fluid is a homogeneous mixture under turbulent conditions so separation of the nitrogen and oxygen by density is very unlikely. I am not sure if you are saying that this is what you expect to happen or not.

Second, the proportion of CO2 is very small, around 0.04%. Argon is a significantly larger fraction around 0.9%, larger than even water vapor usually. And it has a boiling point close to liquid oxygen, and a greater density. So I expect it'd be a mixture of liquid oxygen and liquid argon. Water ice slit would be a much greater fraction than CO2 slit. Although water ice would float on liquid oxygen/argon, whereas dry ice is similar density/denser, so maybe not much water ice floating in it.


Until it powers down and all that solid starts turning back into gas, at which point it's like an asteroid made of azides.
Liquid air isn't explosive. The oxygen content is a potent oxidizer, but the nitrogen content is not reactive. If the rune shutting down magically heats up all the ice then it is definitely a massive explosive hazard, but otherwise it will just sit there and be very cold for the next few years.
 
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Interesting concerns to bring up five minutes to midnight. All of this is of course moot by the simple fact that evil is not an inherent quality or a switch that exists in the human brain, but an emergent consequence of living competitively in a resource constrained environment. Kin preference, power hierarchies, and the infamous "us vs them" meme exist in creatures as simple as bacteria.

Uplift seeks to improve the factors that give rise to great evil and suffering, instead of deploying an untested and questionably revocable (indeed, assumedly not so since it is untested) world-changing brainwashing adjacent magical effect of unknown functionality, effectiveness, and definitely unknown side effects.

"We are the same, you and I" is a trite and tiresome trope at this point, and I blame its recent-ish pop culture prevalence (where it is not an obvious joke any more) for a lot.
 
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That's not how EM Nuke works by our understanding. Incoming air is magically and instantaneously set to X temperature, where X is, in this specific case, between the melting and boiling point of nitrogen. Non-gasses are not affected. The idea of a EM Nuke modified to produce solidified air has been raised already, and its closer to a exotic regenerative barrier technique than a destructive nuke.
Sorry, I'm confused; this was not my impression of how Elemental Mastery works. My understanding was that Elemental Mastery doesn't set air to a fixed temperature, it cools air by a fixed amount.
Jutsu said:
The user can raise or lower the ambient temperature of a fixed area by up to 5 °C/level over the course of 2 rounds (a few seconds). The insides of objects and creatures are not affected directly. This can be used to create Aspects such as "Warm and Toasty", "Unpleasantly Hot", or "Painfully Cold."
Though it does say later:
Jutsu said:
The caster can choose the final temperature that the affected area will reach and (obviously) can choose how long they concentrate. If they stop concentrating they cannot start concentrating again. All other aspects of the jutsu, including duration, cannot be altered.
So is it just that the final temperature of the Elemental Mastery effect is limited at a set distance from the initial temperature, but cannot change thereafter?
 
Sorry, I'm confused; this was not my impression of how Elemental Mastery works. My understanding was that Elemental Mastery doesn't set air to a fixed temperature, it cools air by a fixed amount.

Though it does say later:

So is it just that the final temperature of the Elemental Mastery effect is limited at a set distance from the initial temperature, but cannot change thereafter?
That is my understanding; Elemental Mastery sets ambient air temperature to so-and-so temperature, selectable within a range determined by how much you've levelled the jutsu. There is a 'warmup' period during which the ambient temperature gradually transitions to the set temperature, but after that point it just magically locks the air temperature in it's AOE at the set point.

If it was just cooling air constantly without caring about temperature, it would either not be able to keep up with the inflow of air during the EM nuke effect or it would overshoot and start freezing air solid, inhibiting the effect. The region between those two is so small (~15 degrees) that it seems unlikely to me that it functions in this manner.
 
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Likely not keeping up with thread for a while, despite the high-stakes decisions, due to RL busyness, but
- Updated my fork of Known Seals with superchillers (kami save us).
- Looking forward to the rift battle, even if I miss much of the final prep for it
- I tend to just make spreadsheets about it instead of saying so outright, but - I like this quest! There's almost nothing else like it, and I've been having fun here for a long while. I am impressed by the QMs commitment to both versimilitude and just keeping it going over the long hall without losing its way or sacrificing quality, and I'm impressed by the players' collaboration and ingenuity (and not just when it comes to WMDs)
 
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