It's not that people without Odr don't have thoughts, it's that those thoughts don't influence the world.
I thought for a while that it was weird, that the Idea comes from Renown, it seemed backwards--but on further consideration, it actually made a lot of sense.
Lots of people can have ideas, but those ideas only have weight if people listen to them. Until then they're just idle flights of fancy.
And, when presented with an empty clearing that is her soul, not at least fortifying the place is just kinda dumb. Like, I sort of expected her to not have a farm, which would be defensible with this reasoning I guess, but having neither a house nor fence/walls is much harder to justify
Not in a negative "she's a terrible person" way, but in a 'she travels and couch surfs and never stays in one place too long' way. She doesn't seem to have any inclination to put up roots, she wants to always have that freedom of movement, so why would she ever assume to build something permanent and unchanging in her soul? It makes more sense for her to not do so, and to instead look into ways to expand the territory wider instead of building up something.
Obviously she was wrong when she did so, we know that quite well. She should have built things up and putting down that solid homestead is a requirement to being good at Odr cultivation. But I hesitate to call it her negative personality traits causing her problems there, because I hesitate to call 'not wanting to settle down ever' a negative personality trait?
And that's the trait that I think fucked her up here, not her views on humanity as animals.
Not in a negative "she's a terrible person" way, but in a 'she travels and couch surfs and never stays in one place too long' way. She doesn't seem to have any inclination to put up roots, she wants to always have that freedom of movement, so why would she ever assume to build something permanent and unchanging in her soul? It makes more sense for her to not do so, and to instead look into ways to expand the territory wider instead of building up something.
I mean, it's literally her soul and travels with her everywhere. Lidrun strikes me as the sort of person who probably does want a bed to sleep in...not building such a thing for herself when given the opportunity strikes me as the result of contempt for builders rather than just not wanting to settle down. After all, anything built in her soulscape would travel along with her.
Obviously she was wrong when she did so, we know that quite well. She should have built things up and putting down that solid homestead is a requirement to being good at Odr cultivation. But I hesitate to call it her negative personality traits causing her problems there, because I hesitate to call 'not wanting to settle down ever' a negative personality trait?
It's definitely reckless to push ahead without understanding what you're doing and the consequences thereof, if nothing else. I listed her negative traits that resulted in this as contempt and recklessness...this is the recklessness part.
Refusing to consider that the cultivation system might be based on things other than her personal desires and abilities is definitely not a particularly positive trait, and related to the people as animals thing, IMO. Her situation isn't because she thinks of people as animals, but it's based in the same arrogance and contempt that lead to that attitude, along with a heaping helping of recklessness, I think.
So, while its kind of interesting to read the arguments on whether or not Lidrun is the way she is due to her personality or the world she lives in... not really catching me.
With an actual sea.... could we get a water cycle going?
Could there be plants that grow without Odr if we know more about plants?
Could we, somehow, make fishes (or something close to them) from our spirits?
And if we are at the spirits... Hel, the Norse culture says the world is alive and full of spirits.
So, i am kinda curious, how many evolutions would it take (probably from the explorer?) to have worker spirits that do stuff, like rain or grow plants or take care of animals?
And on a more... cautious note: would it be worth it to hire a spirit to live/work in our soul? Do we dare it?
I mean, was building things in the soulscape actually intuitive, though? It's not like she's been getting hints from IF. Assuming that how the soul is managed is a personal, unique matter is not that out there. Why classify it as recklessness instead of mere ignorance?
I mean, was building things in the soulscape actually intuitive, though? It's not like she's been getting hints from IF. Assuming that how the soul is managed is a personal, unique matter is not that out there. Why classify it as recklessness instead of mere ignorance?
Because she rushed to do the next stage before doing, seemingly, anything. Thinking 'this place is empty, I should change that' is pretty intuitive. Exactly how one changes it might vary, but it seems like she didn't do anything.
I mean, was building things in the soulscape actually intuitive, though? It's not like she's been getting hints from IF. Assuming that how the soul is managed is a personal, unique matter is not that out there. Why classify it as recklessness instead of mere ignorance?
"You have a patch of land that's all yours, what do you do with it?"
The logical answer is "You develop it and make it productive". You make a shelter, protect it from pests and predators, and see about preparing some natural resources.
But, like, it's also your soul. Unnaturally changing it seems pretty stupid, especially when you don't know why it looks like this. Even when that hurdle is overcome, maybe civilization would actually weaken it, and making it more wild and nature-like is better. Maybe this patch of land is symbolism for something else, like where power is coming from, or something. Again, is it actually intuitive?
But, like, it's also your soul. Unnaturally changing it seems pretty stupid, especially when you don't know why it looks like this. Even when that hurdle is overcome, maybe civilization would actually weaken it, and making it more wild and nature-like is better. Maybe this patch of land is symbolism for something else, like where power is coming from, or something. Again, is it actually intuitive?
It's intuitive that you need to do something and that trying to become more powerful before doing the right thing might be bad. A careful and reasonable person will try and figure out what the right thing to do is, maybe finding another more experienced Odr cultivator and seeing if they can get info out of them, or trying things to alter the space and seeing what works and resonates.
Now, it's technically possible Lidrun did all that and got screwed over anyway, but I doubt it. I think she just blazed ahead at full speed ignoring the fact that you definitely want to do something with an empty plot of land.
His hand presses against Lidrun's face as he pulls the stolen words from her soul. White, silky strands of wispy energy trails from his fingers as Lidrun's convulsions fall flat as her breathing evens out. With a flexing of the hand, he crushes the secret between his fingers as the shadows swallow Lidrun, depositing her beyond the limits of Jurgdby.
This is just a theory, but when I remembered this scene, and my own plan to expand the loot table with knowledge, it clicked.
The surviving steelfathers that jumped Blackhand? They most likely tried to loot his memory/soulspace too. At least, it seems like a strong possibility.
Now, it's just a theory, but if they came prepared enough to kill Blackhand.... They might have also prepared something similar to Sten's soul trap to bind Hallr's soul long enough to scour it for knowledge.
No idea if that's the reason he doesn't know many things about cultivation or not, but it's possible.
Perhaps he scattered himself to escape that trap, hence the shards, but, again, that's just a theory.
Again, this just late night theorising, so please do take it with some salt.
...but we do know knowledge can be taken, souls can be trapped and that skalds can make twists and that the Norse are very adaptive/inventive people.
I do not recall, but how long will Blackhand tag along in Charred Soul, again?
[X] Charge him 1600 oz. of silver and 400 oz of silver worth of whetstone (at Jurgdby market rates) for 950 units of Healing Clay and 50 of Restful Clay, Along with laying out our thoughts on the Blood Infusion thing and if he can give us some insights as to how we can properly make use of it ourselves.
[X] Charge him 1600 oz. of silver and 400 oz of silver worth of whetstone (at Jurgdby market rates) for 950 units of Healing Clay and 50 of Restful Clay, along with his advice on the next step of our Odr Cultivation journey
[X] Charge him 2000 oz. of silver for 950 units of Healing Clay and 50 of Restful Clay, along with his advice on the next step of our Odr Cultivation journey
[X] Charge him 2000 oz. of silver for 950 units of Healing Clay and 50 of Restful Clay, Along with laying out our thoughts on the Blood Infusion thing and if he can give us some insights as to how we can properly make use of it ourselves.
[X] Head to the Shapecrafter's den
[X] Make sure to tell him the context in which we discovered the Drysalt/Dorri connection (our father's murder).
[X] Charge him 1600 oz. of silver and 400 oz of silver worth of whetstone (at Jurgdby market rates) for 950 units of Healing Clay and 50 of Restful Clay, Along with laying out our thoughts on the Blood Infusion thing and if he can give us some insights as to how we can properly make use of it ourselves.
0~0~0
A sturdy wooden door serves as the entrance passageway to Luthinn Limpwrist's den. A trail of smoke slips free of a squat chimney's grasp as the sod walls hold the world at bay. Stepping up to the front porch, your instincts mumble something about 'being watched' in the back of your mind. Lifting your knuckles to the wood, you take a deep breath before proceeding forward.
The door slides open before you get the chance to knock as wood unpeels to reveal a plate-sized eyeball staring unblinkingly. The pupil expands and contracts as it lingers on your face, cataloguing your appearance for future review as a shuffling noise can be heard from beyond the limits.
Behind the open door is a hulking, hunch-backed, wart-faced man with his knuckles dragging across the floor. One of his eyes is concealed with a brow like melted wax as his other peeper peers upon your face with a suspicious narrow.
"I don't know you," his mouth lacks more than a few teeth as he grunts. "Who are you, why are you here?"
"I'm Halla Sunshine," you banish the instinctual revulsion that threatens to crawl up your spine. "And I'm here for shapecrafting."
Immediately, Luthinn's face warps from a suspicious glare to a 'friendly smile' as he coaxes you in. The story behind his kenning is obvious as his limp hands flop around bonelessly. "In that case, come inside and have a seat!"
You have to duck as you enter his abode, the roof low-hanging and ever-so-squishy. Stepping carefully over scattered tools and chunks of meat piled across the ground, you find yourself sitting across from the shapecrafter. The seat is oddly comfortable with a lot of cushions and a soft surface.
"So," Limpwrist folds his fingers together as best he can as he peers eagerly, "what shall my hands do to your body?"
...Okay, that's creepy.
What do you want done? First is 20oz silver, second is 40oz, third is 80oz, and so on. You, as Halla, can have a maximum of 17 Shapecraftings done to you.
[ ] Write in
17 fucking slots, good god, it's one slot per point of Hamr and Hamr Infusion, right?
Oh yeah, with regards to our Question, what was the info we got with regards to the Blood Infusion @Imperial Fister ?
Anyway, that aside, I'm tentatively in favor of working on our Reflexes here. 20 + 40 + 80 + 160 + 320 + 640 is probably a good budget for us, totalling up at 1280ish Silver, which is easily covered by the money we just made while still leaving us some in the pocket for later. (Another one would cost us another 1,240, which might be a bit rich for our blood right now)
So I'm thinking... 3 Offensive Tuned Reflexes, and 3 Defensive Tuned Reflexes, which can functionally put our Sustained Basic Spam up to some pretty fearsome levels. 1 base, +3 Reflexes, +2 Sunshine/Skyfire, and then we can buff them up further with a Sharpen/Fortify and a Stoked (X) for 3 more dice.
That gets us up to... 4 Orthstirr per Basic, but each of those Basics is rolling 11d6 + 7. That's a terrifying number for that level of orthficiency. And it's good enough that we're still building up Stoked Pool in the process, we can push it up to 12 if we want to break even, or even higher if we have a decent sized Stoked Pool.
-5 Jurgdby Whetstones (80 oz. silver each, when used to sharpen a weapon, provide the effect of the Sharpe Trick (+2d6, +2 Damage) to the next hit with that weapon without damaging the weapon)
Very interesting! Slight typo (Sharpe instead of Sharpen as i assume it should be) aside, this seems like it can be a minor first round advantage for most, but would be *very* good for either massed mooks or for ranged weapons--having an extra sharpen for 'free' on every arrow or throwing dagger or whatnot would be quite nice, even if it would be a decent bit of extra work in character
As I worked out, this gets us to a Basic efficiency around 11-12 dice at 4 Orthstirr a pop (Depending on if our focus is to build up momentum or maintain zero sum Stoked Dice), that's enough to straight up run over entry level Norsemen who aren't going full nova.
This is especially deadly with Threadcutter, given how that uses Basic Attacks for its lead-up hits. But we really need to be in the habit of reserving more Basic Defenses too.
I strongly disagree with this. We don't always want or need those dice. We always want speed. I also think this probably too heavy an investment. 640 for s ahapeshift slot when we could spend half an action for the same effect? Our actions are not worth 1280 silver, I don't think.
We can do this arrangement with our actual slots on turns when it is useful.
@Imperial Fister can we buy these for Abjorn as well? Would he be on board?
I strongly disagree with this. We don't always want or need those dice. We always want speed. I also think this probably too heavy an investment. 640 for s ahapeshift slot when we could spend half an action for the same effect? Our actions are not worth 1280 silver, I don't think.
I mean, let's be fair, while Stacking Speed is nice, there's a lot of ways to just ignore it.
I know you hate Basics with the fire of a thousand suns, but that doesn't mean they're bad, and this is basically giving +3 dice to all of our Basics, forever.
Well according to our character sheet we have 3,244 silver oz and 151 gold (what's the conversion rate? 1:100? We sho8uld also have another 1600 form this sell but I'm not sure if this if it was added or not.
So assuming my conversion rate for the gold oz is correct we can get like 8-9 shapeshifts before we cant afford it.
The question then is what shapeshift do we want and keep in mind that those are permanent things that are always activated so that might have repercussions on day to day life.
I know you hate Basics with the fire of a thousand suns, but that doesn't mean they're bad, and this is basically giving +3 dice to all of our Basics, forever.
