I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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In population specifically. I should have written it as 'a large portion of the Hading's population'
NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)
- Thread starter I.F. Ister
- Start date
- Original Fantasy Action
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- norse mythology (mythology) original xianxia cultivation western cultivation ask sirihand did your mother tell you anything? discussion pleases yggdrasil farming gloating gets people killed granary management hubris is a coward's word you will die norsemen do not die when they are killed the qm has a bad memory the qm is bad at math viking courtroom drama (legal drama) vikings
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Fair.
I can't wait to get involved in politics and get embroiled in the life of a hersir and jarl, only to fuck off in our next life and leave the responsibility to someone else, once we're bored of the Hading Management System.
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It probably happens pretty quickly after becoming Hersir, honestly. We can easily retire as Halla as soon as the Dorri Plotline and the War Arc are done (we also have stuff in Vestfold and one more trip to Wessex, but I highly doubt Dorri gets finished before we do those).
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I mean, depending on how long the Dorri stuff takes it'll still be awhile, I think? Weren't we told the youngest we could swap would be at 16? That's like 10 years out even if we go for our first borns. I'd rather not time skip things, since I'm a big anti fan of timeskips, so we'd presumably get some time of ruling and making changes before swapping.
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We have the option of a time skip when we're done with IF's planned plots for Halla. We can, of course, choose not to take that.
I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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Personally, I would prefer if you did take it because I'm 100% certain that this quest would die if I had to spend next year on Halla's bit as well. I like NQ a lot, but the mechanics desperately need the fine-tuning that comes with NQ2.
We also got Vestfold and whatever is going on with the Witch King.
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I suspect a majority of us would also prefer that, honestly.
I mentioned Vestfold, and we were told the Witch King was probably a 'next generation' problem.
Honestly we should have bargained a bit more, as much as he could be specialize in Theology he could teach us the Trivium and the Quadrivium. Or maybe even ... Beekeeping?
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Okay then.
I hope we have enough time to tie up several loose ends and explore the side characters a bit.
Also, i really want to see that Tournament.
For our next character i would vote either Sigurdr or Steinulfr.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
I still want to see the rest of her kids get born. Like, the further she goes, the more potentially inheritable traits she gets, you know? We have a few more rolls of the dice left in us.
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Oh, we've still got some time and plotlines left in us. I think we definitely have time for the tournament, exploring side characters...a whole bunch of stuff, really. What I suspect we don't have is more than a few years left after killing Dorri. Which was the original conversation starter. I expect that, after his death, the war arc is our only major arc left (since, unless he dies way quicker than expected, I think our other plot arcs will get resolved first), which will not take us too many years to get through.
Like, I would be shocked if we don't play Halla another 5 years or so at a minimum (barring death), but I'd also be surprised if the War Arc takes us more than 3 years after Dorri's death. Those are a minimum and a maximum, mind you...we might actually play Halla until our oldest kids come of age if resolving the Dorri situation takes longer than I expect it to and the war is on the longer end of expectations. Another 10 and 1/2 years is not impossible by any means.
But I don't think most of that time will be spent as hersir if we're talking longer timelines. Which was the original topic of discussion.
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If hope that when the timeskips comes we get a choice of how Halla actualy dies.
Maybe choosing between the options of "killed by the Witch King" or "killed by Jotnar seeking revenge" or something like that.
GildedSergeant
Tarnished Gold and Rattling Bones
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My impression was that she'd still be alive, acting to us as Steinarr did to Halla. But, I might just be misremembering that.
Yeah, I'd like it if Halla was in the background, doing cool shit, at least for a decent portion of the sequel.
On a purely practical level from the perspective of what works best from the quest, there's a lot more narrative oomph you can squeeze out of Halla if she's alive. It gives Fister the option to have her show up and save the day, or act as the wise mentor figure, or pull a heroic sacrifice. Not to mention the feeling of suddenly being cut adrift when Halla is no longer around, similar to what we went through with losing Blackhand and Steinarr in short order (although we got Blackhand back later). That only works if she's around at the start.
Plus I want a Cool Quest Mum, that sounds awesome. Imagine Halla just flying around, doing insane crafting projects in the background, enjoying her golden years with Abjorn. We pop back every so often and discover she's built a new kind of Norse Armour that is the size of a Gundam, and flown it to the North Pole to fist-fight the elves who are holding Father Christmas hostage.
On a purely practical level from the perspective of what works best from the quest, there's a lot more narrative oomph you can squeeze out of Halla if she's alive. It gives Fister the option to have her show up and save the day, or act as the wise mentor figure, or pull a heroic sacrifice. Not to mention the feeling of suddenly being cut adrift when Halla is no longer around, similar to what we went through with losing Blackhand and Steinarr in short order (although we got Blackhand back later). That only works if she's around at the start.
Plus I want a Cool Quest Mum, that sounds awesome. Imagine Halla just flying around, doing insane crafting projects in the background, enjoying her golden years with Abjorn. We pop back every so often and discover she's built a new kind of Norse Armour that is the size of a Gundam, and flown it to the North Pole to fist-fight the elves who are holding Father Christmas hostage.
I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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I'll call voting in an hour
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So, not all directly vote focused, but I have three relevant questions:
1. As I mentioned previously, our 'share' of the whale would be 41 Whale Bone and 1500 Food. You said we gain 50 Whale Bone and 90 Food. That's fine if Food is fairly cheap right now...is 155 Food 12 oz. of silver or less? If so, that's a more than reasonable deal, if not then we should maybe get a little more Food. Food prices have varied wildly so it's hard to tell whether this is a reasonable deal we'd make.
2. We rolled 21 successes on a Silver-Tongue check for recruitment last time we traveled that never got used (the other roll wound up getting used for both attempts, which made both fail, which made sense narratively). Can we use that on one of our current recruiting efforts or was the roll wasted?
3. Are the Slavic nobles still with us or have the already been dropped off? Not having a scene involved is fine, but knowing which of these is true seems relevant.
So, as we're waiting for the vote to close, I thought I'd share some thoughts and ideas I had for medium to near-term research. A couple I've brought up before, but I think it's somewhat urgent now that we get this to work.
1. Tinder Blade Aura
So, we have Tinder Blades, right? And it's cool, but basically only in the rare situation that we're disarmed. But what if we summoned a Tinder Blade over one of our swords, or over Sagaseeker? That might get our weapons a cool flaming aura, doing extra damage. Now, our weapons are not necessarily completely flameproof, so we might want to experiment with runes similar to the fire resistance runes on our armour, or, even better, something to the effect of "I am strengthened by fire".
Since there's an action cost inherent in changing runes around, could experiment with how this works first by trialling them on one of the weapons we make for our huscarls - even better if one of them has a Hugareida which is vaguely fire-related, as they will be able to make use of the runes themselves.
2. Firestorm-Boosted Flame-Tending Blade
So, we know that Firestorm is really cool for attacking large groups of soldiers, as we discovered on the beach. However, we also know that someone with a higher Firestorm Hugareida than us can combat this, at least partially. (There's even a bit about Logi being called in to put our fires out when we were first experimenting with Unleash Inferno and Flamecalling.) This is problematic, because as the number of warriors on the other side increases, the probability of there being someone higher ranked in Firestorm than us approaches one.
But you know what can't be cancelled by having a higher Hugareida rank? The Flame-Tending Blade, because it's a Finale and part of a Martial Style rather than a Hugareida, not to mention linked to our bloodline. If we can use Flamecalling and Unleash Inferno to harness fire in our vicinity as an energy source, then we can either charge the FTB more quickly, or make it more powerful, or have a wider area of effect, or some combination of all of those things.
So I think that very carefully and at a small scale, we should experiment with this, using a Rewrite to Alloy them if need be. Ideally we'd do this at the beach or somewhere where there is not a lot of flammable stuff around and we can fire it over water.
3. Delayed Action Or Stored Tricks (for Incendiary Charges)
There are certain tricks which would become vastly more useful if we could store them in objects and trigger them remotely. Our Brazier Bombs, for example. There has to be some solution here using sedir or runecraft. Even if it's not actually storing a Trick but just approximating the effects via other means, that could suffice for many purposes.
In particular, if we had a large source of fuel prepared, then some incendiaries which we can lay in advance and trigger remotely would allow us to use this fuel source as a ready-made energy source for Flamecalling into our Unleash Inferno/Firestorm-Boosted FTB. This removes one of its major stumbling blocks, which is needing a large source of fire readily to hand, and allows us the potential to vastly increase the amount of fire we have access to.
1. Tinder Blade Aura
So, we have Tinder Blades, right? And it's cool, but basically only in the rare situation that we're disarmed. But what if we summoned a Tinder Blade over one of our swords, or over Sagaseeker? That might get our weapons a cool flaming aura, doing extra damage. Now, our weapons are not necessarily completely flameproof, so we might want to experiment with runes similar to the fire resistance runes on our armour, or, even better, something to the effect of "I am strengthened by fire".
Since there's an action cost inherent in changing runes around, could experiment with how this works first by trialling them on one of the weapons we make for our huscarls - even better if one of them has a Hugareida which is vaguely fire-related, as they will be able to make use of the runes themselves.
2. Firestorm-Boosted Flame-Tending Blade
So, we know that Firestorm is really cool for attacking large groups of soldiers, as we discovered on the beach. However, we also know that someone with a higher Firestorm Hugareida than us can combat this, at least partially. (There's even a bit about Logi being called in to put our fires out when we were first experimenting with Unleash Inferno and Flamecalling.) This is problematic, because as the number of warriors on the other side increases, the probability of there being someone higher ranked in Firestorm than us approaches one.
But you know what can't be cancelled by having a higher Hugareida rank? The Flame-Tending Blade, because it's a Finale and part of a Martial Style rather than a Hugareida, not to mention linked to our bloodline. If we can use Flamecalling and Unleash Inferno to harness fire in our vicinity as an energy source, then we can either charge the FTB more quickly, or make it more powerful, or have a wider area of effect, or some combination of all of those things.
So I think that very carefully and at a small scale, we should experiment with this, using a Rewrite to Alloy them if need be. Ideally we'd do this at the beach or somewhere where there is not a lot of flammable stuff around and we can fire it over water.
3. Delayed Action Or Stored Tricks (for Incendiary Charges)
There are certain tricks which would become vastly more useful if we could store them in objects and trigger them remotely. Our Brazier Bombs, for example. There has to be some solution here using sedir or runecraft. Even if it's not actually storing a Trick but just approximating the effects via other means, that could suffice for many purposes.
In particular, if we had a large source of fuel prepared, then some incendiaries which we can lay in advance and trigger remotely would allow us to use this fuel source as a ready-made energy source for Flamecalling into our Unleash Inferno/Firestorm-Boosted FTB. This removes one of its major stumbling blocks, which is needing a large source of fire readily to hand, and allows us the potential to vastly increase the amount of fire we have access to.
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Tinder Blades is actually not sword conjuration. That's Smolder Sword. Also, we actually lack Smolder Sword (and Tinder Blades, for that matter). Making our weapon flaming is certainly cool and I'm down with trying to figure out how but this method may not be our best bet...too many steps from here to there.
This seems valid to experiment with for our anti-army needs, yeah.
This would be nice if it works. Hmmm. I dunno if we can do at-will remote triggering, but we might be able to use runes as, effectively, a fuse, with the pigment preventing a fire from lighting the incendiary and then it going off when the pigment wears off...
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My thoughts on Halla and inheritance and next main characters:
I'd prefer Halla to die, for a myriad of reasons.
The first one is simple: Charred Soul, the basis of the quest and main character status was always advertised as being based on death. It Makes sense for the passing of the Charred Soul and the status of one of her children as heirs to it still follows that. The quest was advertised in its first posts as 'you will continue after death with the knowledge passing down', after all.
The second is more about primacy: I don't really want Halla around stealing heat with how cool she is. Because she is really cool, she's really talented and strong, and one of the best smith's on the planet as far as we know. She's making strides in making new cultivation technology. I wouldn't want to have her pause all that and retire to be like Steinnar, only showing up a couple times to be badass, because I don't feel it fits. But I also wouldn't want her around making strides off screen.
The third is more personal: I think her death will be more interesting and impactful if it comes while she is still Our character. If we die in an epic battle while we control her that will be a really cool scene and a fun time. If she dies once she's a side character I feel like it'd be less cool. I want us to be in control when she makes the final fight that ends her life.
And the fourth is most simple, kind of building off number 2: I don't really want her around as a safety net for people to vote to go rely on for help if things get bad. I mean I'm sure we can all agree the best parts of Boruto are when the Naruto era characters all show up to throw down and solve every problem by being OP, but I don't think it'd be cool as a MC thing for us to be doing.
The fifth is simplest: Halla dying to someone or something is great motivation. Built in.
I'd prefer Halla to die, for a myriad of reasons.
The first one is simple: Charred Soul, the basis of the quest and main character status was always advertised as being based on death. It Makes sense for the passing of the Charred Soul and the status of one of her children as heirs to it still follows that. The quest was advertised in its first posts as 'you will continue after death with the knowledge passing down', after all.
The second is more about primacy: I don't really want Halla around stealing heat with how cool she is. Because she is really cool, she's really talented and strong, and one of the best smith's on the planet as far as we know. She's making strides in making new cultivation technology. I wouldn't want to have her pause all that and retire to be like Steinnar, only showing up a couple times to be badass, because I don't feel it fits. But I also wouldn't want her around making strides off screen.
The third is more personal: I think her death will be more interesting and impactful if it comes while she is still Our character. If we die in an epic battle while we control her that will be a really cool scene and a fun time. If she dies once she's a side character I feel like it'd be less cool. I want us to be in control when she makes the final fight that ends her life.
And the fourth is most simple, kind of building off number 2: I don't really want her around as a safety net for people to vote to go rely on for help if things get bad. I mean I'm sure we can all agree the best parts of Boruto are when the Naruto era characters all show up to throw down and solve every problem by being OP, but I don't think it'd be cool as a MC thing for us to be doing.
The fifth is simplest: Halla dying to someone or something is great motivation. Built in.
AeonIlluminate
The power of friendship and aggressive landscaping
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What about a Trick like Tinder Blades that we teach Sagaseeker, as we know he can learn tricks and use Stoker State, where as we swing him around trying to stab/slice people, he spits out Tinder Blades that then curve around and fly towards the enemy, forcing them to defend against that on top of us trying to impale them or they let them hit and they constantly take chip damage.
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This shouldn't be an issue since we're going to Constantinople next life and she won't be able to help us there.
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I strongly disagree with #1, but that's a personal preference thing. For this, I've mentioned before that having a 'what is Halla researching' thing as a turn option along with what our new character is doing seems potentially very fun and interesting to me. And not particularly focus-stealing. Halla would be doing R&D while our new PC actually goes out and does things...R&D is fun, but it's not as compelling as going out and doing important stuff.
If Halla dies while we play her, she dies while we play her, the discussion is more about if we retire her. So her dying out of our control is inevitable after that. One way or another. Unless we go with my above 'What's Halla researching?' suggestion, in which case her research might kill her while under our control in a sense.
This I feel is just largely not a real problem on an objective level. The consensus of just about everyone is that our next character will be going places and adventuring, likely joining the Varangian Guard. They will be nowhere near Halla most of the time, which makes her ability to interfere with our actual adventures verging on the nonexistent.
That's true whenever it happens, and a lot less frustrating and annoying if it happens when our new character is actually powerful enough to do something about it. Like, all it motivates us to do if we're 16 and have no chance against whatever did it is 'get stronger' and we don't need additional motives for that. I don't think anyone necessarily expects Halla to die in bed, but my own preference is that she not die offscreen in ways we can't impact purely because our new character has come of age.
Like, that's really what the discussion is about: If Halla dies in play then she dies in play. The discussion is about what happens if we decide to swap to a new character and Halla is still alive. Does she die just due to us wanting to play a new character? My answer is a very definitive 'No.'
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I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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Sorry, got distracted, voting is now closed