I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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Hey everyone, I'm really sorry but I had an absolutely horrible night and I'm not going to be able to do any writing today. Just a lot of life happening at once.
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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No worries, take all the time you need. I really hope things get better for you going forward.
I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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Alright, small update. I'm doing better, managed to unfuck most of the situation, so we'll be able to return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. Hurray!
I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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that's a good idea. Unfortunately, I don't have them anymore either.
I forgot about your armband's existence, to be honest
'A self-sabotaging of your ability to gain orthstirr. If you do not believe yourself worthy of orthstirr, then you will not earn it.'
0~0~0
And with that, I hit the hay
Edit: whoops, disregard that first, now deleted, bit
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I don't think it would've been relevant anyway. It's designed to protect against direct magical attack of various sorts and spiritual attacks/predators which were not the problem we wound up having (we prepared for an anti-wizard fight because that seemed to be Horra's area, and it was, but we wound up fighting the minions without the wizard).
EDIT: Actually, going over it, the exact wording on the arm-ring is actually based on our Beaconlight Campfire Trick, so (given that exact words matter) the actual dividing line on whether the arm-ring will help vs. Abysslings is whether they'd be the sort of creatures effected by that Trick. If they are, it should help defend against them, if not then it wouldn't. Still dunno if Abysslings count, and still worth a try, but realized the criteria I was thinking of was wrong.
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It didn't sound like it from what we were told. Like, it's poison that always results in True Death when it kills rather than Bodily Death, not instant death poison no matter how little you receive, or he wouldn't have been nearly as dismissive of the smaller ones. EDIT: And Torsten has apparently had liquor brewed of it at least once to boot. Not healthy but apparently not instantly fatal.
Also, relevantly, light scares away the small ones but attracts the big ones, and all our ranged attacks right now make light. So...that's definitely a factor. We're gonna want to use Ignition really selectively and make tracks real quick after doing so.
Actually, that does bring up a point:
@Imperial Fister does using the Storm Iron of Sagaseeker for lightning damage make an actual flash of lightning, and if so how bright is it?
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Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Do we think that Dressed in Rags will have any effect in our run? Will we be able to recover Orthsirr, or are we pretty much on, burn Orthsirr to stay awake mode, making the entire mission an endurance/stealth run? How does burning Orthsirr to stay awake work, anyway?
Also, did we unlock a relationship with the people we played a part in saving the life of, specifically Wolfwind, Hardir, Veny and Hasvir? Do Knappr and Hod still have a grudge against us, assuming they're even alive? Did we learn of their fate(s)?
If we get light sources we should get multiples of them, because that way we can basically use them as decoys to draw attention away.
Also, did we unlock a relationship with the people we played a part in saving the life of, specifically Wolfwind, Hardir, Veny and Hasvir? Do Knappr and Hod still have a grudge against us, assuming they're even alive? Did we learn of their fate(s)?
If we get light sources we should get multiples of them, because that way we can basically use them as decoys to draw attention away.
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We shouldn't need Orthstirr to stay awake. We're hopefully doing this within a couple of days at most, start well rested, and have literally inhuman willpower and physical endurance. We can probably stay awake for at least a week on Hamr and Hugr alone. I dunno if Dressed in Rags will have an effect, though we should probably try, and we don't know if Orthstirr can be recovered there, either.
I assume we just don't know yet for a lot of that and will get a Relationship Update after the Aki situation is resolved.
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Have we spoken to Steinarr about what we're about to do or are we deliberately not telling him?
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- Bretonnia
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If I remember correctly, eitr is the stuff that is used to torture Loki, and is also what Jormungandr uses to kill Thor...
So we probably don't want to get hit with the stuff that can kill Thor. I doubt that these things are comparable to the World Serpent in terms of power, and we know Tuskpuncher managed to survive it, but it's still eitr at the end of the day.
I'm not sure about Dressed in Rags, but I think our orthstirr will refill? It refilled in Lotharingia, which is definitely not apart of Norse lands, so we should be able to refill our own orthstirr ourselves, I believe, unless Ginningagap prevents that somehow.
So we probably don't want to get hit with the stuff that can kill Thor. I doubt that these things are comparable to the World Serpent in terms of power, and we know Tuskpuncher managed to survive it, but it's still eitr at the end of the day.
I'm not sure about Dressed in Rags, but I think our orthstirr will refill? It refilled in Lotharingia, which is definitely not apart of Norse lands, so we should be able to refill our own orthstirr ourselves, I believe, unless Ginningagap prevents that somehow.
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I think we're focused on Aki and not thinking about that. I don't think we're deliberately keeping it a secret, but we may not have mentioned it, depending.
We 100% do not want to get hit and should keep our Perfect defenses available to avoid exactly that, I'm just saying a single hit isn't instant death.
I suspect we'll be able to, but Ginnungagap is a weird place, so I prefer not to make assumptions.
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- Bretonnia
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The response wasn't aimed at you in particular, I was just giving an example of what eitr can do. We know that it doesn't instakill, given the Elephant Merchant is alive, but we definitely don't wanna get hit by an Abyssling either way.
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I'd give us 50-50 odds of making it back.
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Not exactly, I think it's the most dangerous thing we have done (and maybe are likely to do), not that we can do. There's a big difference there. Like, we could behead ourselves and that's probably worse, we're just not going to.
I think our odds are a bit better than that. Our odds of actually dying have just always been really low before (I'm pretty sure we could've retreated, taken some nid, and survived literally every previous battle, certainly all the ones since we got EWC, unless we got really unreasonably unlucky within a single round, and even then several had ally-based interrupts) and now they're not so much.
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If she dies but in a last act of defiance manages to throw Aki out of danger, that would a pretty great end to her saga.
Though it would be really annoying to loose (or not get to fully use) the Seidr reward we earned from the Seeress.
CedeTheBees
Probably high right now
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- Somewhere
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She can talk to Blackhand, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to have her teach Halla through Sigurdr.
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I disagree, particularly because we have yet to write down or provide any warnings about the Enemy or true Norse cultivation - which is the important first step in our NorseQuest.
The danger summoned by speaking about cultivation is scaled to the speaker.
If Halla dies we will reincarnate as one of our kids (probably Sigurd) at either age 12 or 16 (our choice).
A danger scaled to a 12 year old. A danger scaled to a 12 year old when we can have the likes of Steinarr (unless he dies by old age in between) and Hallas other friends.
And iirc we told Abjorn about Hallr.
That means we'd be backed by Abjorn with "My 12 year old son is saying he inherited his mothers memories (who told me at the time that she inherited her Grandfathers memories). He can also tell me details about things only his mother should know".
One essential truth that Halla probably doesn't realize about the cultivation saga yet:
Halla is not the protagonist.
Halla is a protagonist.
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A death here we can't avoid by just playing this smart would be really disappointing for a few reasons, most notably that the risk we're taking here, while technically a choice, in practice is an enforced risk due to offscreen stuff that it feels like we had little ability to effect. Okay, technically, we could've gone with Aki instead of Hasvir, or not had him come along at all, but he had two of our huskarls protecting him and had pretty readily survived fairly high level combats before (not, y'know, effected them hugely, but survived), so there were no real flags that it was super high risk bringing him. We had also very much not been informed it was much worse for your fylgja to die than for you to do so (and thus that protecting him was a vastly higher priority than other people), and were not given a chance to spend Reward Dice to effect his chance of death either one.
I'm not actually complaining about any of this as of yet, mind you, because this doesn't actually look like a suicide mission to me, and I have no objection to us needing to go on a sidequest with manageable risks to help Aki out, that seems fine. But if it kills us in some unavoidable, unfair, or ridiculously overpowered manner the way we were forced into it becomes a really serious feel bad moment in retrospect.
Like, Halla is 100% gonna die sometime, which is fine, but for her death to feel meaningful, she should die because of real choices we made as Questers, whether poor combat tactics or going the wrong route in cultivation or whatever, not because something happened offscreen that we had no way to effect, y'know?
I really don't think that kind of unfair death is gonna happen (I'm pretty sure if we die on this mission, it will be because we make bad tactical choices on the mission, which makes it no different from every other combat scenario), but it would suck if it did.
I'm not actually complaining about any of this as of yet, mind you, because this doesn't actually look like a suicide mission to me, and I have no objection to us needing to go on a sidequest with manageable risks to help Aki out, that seems fine. But if it kills us in some unavoidable, unfair, or ridiculously overpowered manner the way we were forced into it becomes a really serious feel bad moment in retrospect.
Like, Halla is 100% gonna die sometime, which is fine, but for her death to feel meaningful, she should die because of real choices we made as Questers, whether poor combat tactics or going the wrong route in cultivation or whatever, not because something happened offscreen that we had no way to effect, y'know?
I really don't think that kind of unfair death is gonna happen (I'm pretty sure if we die on this mission, it will be because we make bad tactical choices on the mission, which makes it no different from every other combat scenario), but it would suck if it did.
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Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Fylgja deaths not only killing you but making your life in Ginnugagap living hell on top of making it super hard to regenerate you makes using Fylgja in combat situations absurdly risky.
Especially since combat Fylgja aren't actually that much better than a trained warrior, especially when you consider the potential given by noncombat Fylgja (Owlgacha!) that you're giving up for this.
Of course, Aki wants to be a warrior..
(Did Aki even know Reinforce-Shield?)
Especially since combat Fylgja aren't actually that much better than a trained warrior, especially when you consider the potential given by noncombat Fylgja (Owlgacha!) that you're giving up for this.
Of course, Aki wants to be a warrior..
(Did Aki even know Reinforce-Shield?)
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In fairness, some of the options for Fylgja bonuses at 4 and 7 are likely bonkers for combat. Shield Owl was fairly hardcore and that was only arguably even a combat option, and the weaker of the two. So the upside is likely very real even if the downside sucks.
Wouldn't have helped, you need armor or a shield to use it on and his fylgja was not wearing armor.
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Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Everyone in Norse society is a hero of their own story in a very literally true way.
The Norse are a people of Heroes.
You still need tricks to actually capitalize on it though. All the raw stats won't save you if you can't exploit it.
I don't think he knows Reinforce/Hone, either. Reinforce needs Mastery of Reinforce-Shield to learn, too.
I thought you could just Reinforce-Shield over your body?