Spinning things out into their own little pocket universe that we send speeding away might make a good alternative
Shards of a Broken Sun [Deprecated; see link in final post for remake]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover Sci-Fi
I gotta ask do we have any idea why the Septentriones showed up and smacked down those angels?
Well then. Seems like the Septentriones are attacking the angels, at least if they come across them. Depending on their response to this, they might serve as a distraction for each other. Though considering the damage humans did to them, we may have established ourselves as the larger threat. And as far as the cleanup options go, depending on how much firepower is needed to take out the higher ranks of angels (since those are probably the only ones to survive), greater numbers might be sufficient to handle that, so the army might have that under control.
[X] Research the Septentriones, learn everything you possibly can about them.
[X] Check on Utau and Su. Make sure they're all right.
[X] Help with any number of infrastructural problems. The power is mostly down, the trains aren't running, …
[X] Help Fumi stabilise and improve the Dragon Seal.
If we can get infrastructure together it should help with getting out early warnings for any attacks we get advance warning about, not to mention would probably help with making the evacuation go smoother. We'd want to check on the others after the whole combining thing, see if they're doing all right afterwards. And they might be able to help with the research into the Septentriones, which might help speed that up once we find enough out to have multiple leads. And we're going to want the Dragon Seal stable, that goes without saying. And improving it might lead to being able to throw up a harmonizer effect to allow lighter arms to be effective against demons and weaken them in turn.
Edit: ^ About why they attacked the angels, I'm not quite sure. I suppose that would depend on the specifics of their goal. If it's to finish off humanity, they might have thought the angels would not entirely kill them off. If it's to destroy the Dragon Seal so the world's destruction can be completed, they might have thought the angels would keep the seal up. It'd be pretty useful for other stuff as well, so I can see them not destroying it.
[X] Research the Septentriones, learn everything you possibly can about them.
[X] Check on Utau and Su. Make sure they're all right.
[X] Help with any number of infrastructural problems. The power is mostly down, the trains aren't running, …
[X] Help Fumi stabilise and improve the Dragon Seal.
If we can get infrastructure together it should help with getting out early warnings for any attacks we get advance warning about, not to mention would probably help with making the evacuation go smoother. We'd want to check on the others after the whole combining thing, see if they're doing all right afterwards. And they might be able to help with the research into the Septentriones, which might help speed that up once we find enough out to have multiple leads. And we're going to want the Dragon Seal stable, that goes without saying. And improving it might lead to being able to throw up a harmonizer effect to allow lighter arms to be effective against demons and weaken them in turn.
Edit: ^ About why they attacked the angels, I'm not quite sure. I suppose that would depend on the specifics of their goal. If it's to finish off humanity, they might have thought the angels would not entirely kill them off. If it's to destroy the Dragon Seal so the world's destruction can be completed, they might have thought the angels would keep the seal up. It'd be pretty useful for other stuff as well, so I can see them not destroying it.
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We don't have any special ability in organizing the cleanup efforts, so I think we should focus on the Septentriones and Dragon Seal.
[X] Research the Septentriones, learn everything you possibly can about them.
[X] Help Fumi stabilise and improve the Dragon Seal.
I really have no idea who we should let know about this.
[X] Research the Septentriones, learn everything you possibly can about them.
[X] Help Fumi stabilise and improve the Dragon Seal.
I really have no idea who we should let know about this.
I'm thinking we should let Dojima know, at least. He's going to have to deal with whatever repercussions end up reaching Inaba, and he is going out of his way to help us out, so we could at least let him get an idea of what he might have to deal with later. Maya might also notice something we don't. So I'm thinking those two, at least.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
She isn't, but she could be. One or two Bureaucracy charms would help with this, and you could just barely pull off injecting the requisite skills as well as the charms in what remains of your quick-learn slots. If you really want to.
That's something that a sufficient understanding of SMT lore should let you work out for yourself. If no-one with that particular skill shows up in the next day or two, a vote for figuring it out is sure to succeed.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Well, the Septentrions are the "Agents" of Polaris, the administrator of the world. Angels are traditionally agents of Law, who usually seek to subsume a world into their big hiveminded glory-thing. I can imagine that Polaris would rather that not happen.
While both sides of this are willing to destroy humanity to make a new one more to their liking, Polaris seems to consider the resulting humanity having free will to be slightly important, or at least is willing to take their opinion into consideration as long as it results in something different. SMT Law already has a distinct plan in mind, and free will is pretty irrelevant to it. So, while their immediate goals are similar, after that they'd be noticeably at odds. And considering neither needs the other around to succeed, I can see them going at it if they cross paths just to cut the other down before they start being a direct problem.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Oh, and while I remember...
XP Update:
8 XP (Storyline: Fumi's kidnapping)
+50% (Audience participation bonus)
+25% (Relationship bonus)
= 14 XP
=> 66 banked / 117 total
Nothing completely urgent is happening right now, so you have a chance to spend it. Think about it.
New character sheet is coming with the next update, whether or not you spend anything; https://docs.google.com/document/d/...Er0nx5sukAfMvggjM/edit#heading=h.jr3wuhn30lmy is accurate enough for now.
XP Update:
8 XP (Storyline: Fumi's kidnapping)
+50% (Audience participation bonus)
+25% (Relationship bonus)
= 14 XP
=> 66 banked / 117 total
Nothing completely urgent is happening right now, so you have a chance to spend it. Think about it.
New character sheet is coming with the next update, whether or not you spend anything; https://docs.google.com/document/d/...Er0nx5sukAfMvggjM/edit#heading=h.jr3wuhn30lmy is accurate enough for now.
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Quick-learn rules
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Six points. For convenience:We have a lot of experience now!
Shame that our chief bottleneck so far has been training time
How many high-speed Charms do we have left?
The first dot of any ability costs two, subsequent dots one. Attributes are untrainable in this manner. Since these are mental alterations, you'd need to convince Amu that it's worth it. Some are more personality-related than others; Resistance is almost all physical, while bumping Socialize would be... odd.
Excellencies cost two-thirds of a point. Other charms are one each.
You can push it if you want, but try not to break her ability to speak again.
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What does Hardness do again?
What's the rules on bumping up the Charas add-ons for Skills again?
And we really need to decide whether we want to do this via the War route or the Archery route. I'm fairly sure the rules will let us get Ran to a +3 Archery so if we have that and sink one point into it we can have have 5 Archery 5 or lower Charms, or 6 Archery 4 or lower.
War would probably need to have at least one point sunk into it, so either 5 War 4 Charms or 4 War 5 Charms.
And we already have the 2nd War Excellency as well, so... *Shrug*
I also just realized we don't have a surprise negator... well shit. And only 2 dot Awareness which means even if Baughn allows Reflexive Sidestep to be a surprise negator Awareness Charm we couldn't get it, its a 3 dot one I think. The only one I know is a 5 dot as well.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Any ability that counts as in-theme for the Chara is favoured, for the purpose of XP and time calculation. Amu would not be able to use any dots bought in this way except when merged; it simply increases the Chara's bonus. The Chara herself, however, can.
It has no particular effect on the cost in terms of fast-learning points, however the Charas can train independently of Amu. This may be useful later.
Also, reminder: Craft(Vacuum) is available for purchase. It's a pretty esoteric skill, to be fair; for most purposes it's a specialisation of Craft(Reality), but it allows for weirder things than the generalised skill does.
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ω₁
The Long Count
Ah, right. The angel army is likely YHVH sending in reinforcements for Kagutsuchi.
I hadn't really considered the intersection of the SMTIII and DeSu 2 plots, but it does look like Polaris (or whoever is actually fielding the Septentriones) and YHVH aren't exactly on speaking terms. Useful.
For the first part, which everyone seems to have forgotten:
[X] "Why, is it security-sensitive?"
- [X] If it's not, anyone can watch who wants to (even Nanako, if her father's OK with it).
- [X] If it is, keep anyone who doesn't have a clearance (that is, anyone whose last name isn't Kanno or Hinamori) from watching.
- - [X] Maya can't watch the whole thing, but take snapshots that that don't have our people in them and ask her about them: the armies of angels, the Septentriones, those two fighting each other.
[ ] Inquire after Utau and Su. They'll be able to point us to what most badly needs fixing.
[ ] Help Fumi stabilize and improve the Dragon Seal.
[ ] Help with infrastructure, preferably by using the Dragon Seal.
- [ ] If we can bleed off some of the excess energy that those warheads dumped into the system in ways that help the infrastructure effort, that would be awesome. Can we make simple "pseudo-seals" that the dragon seal or supporting infrastructure can detect and dump energy into in specified ways until the system's down to a stable state?
- [ ] If pseudoseals aren't an option, try to use the energy to more tightly enforce K-physics in areas where the angel army is advancing/attacking, thereby reducing their effectiveness.
- [ ] If even that isn't an option, can we just make a fake sun?
[ ] Help Fumi stabilize and improve the Dragon Seal.
[ ] Help with infrastructure, preferably by using the Dragon Seal.
- [ ] If we can bleed off some of the excess energy that those warheads dumped into the system in ways that help the infrastructure effort, that would be awesome. Can we make simple "pseudo-seals" that the dragon seal or supporting infrastructure can detect and dump energy into in specified ways until the system's down to a stable state?
- Power plants can be augmented by, or temporarily replaced with, Zio-like effects.
- If they scale down and you can tweak the current/voltage appropriately, they'll even work to replace small batteries for power tools.
- Gravity-reduction, inertia-reduction, or even straight-up force effects will help in moving rubble and increase evacuation speed.
- Emission of light (directed and/or undirected) will help generally, since there's still no sun in the sky.
- Directed amplified focused phase-locked high-energy emission of light will probably help against the enemy, if we can pull that off.
- There are probably other things that could help. Get some input from someone who's working on that right now.
- [ ] If even that isn't an option, can we just make a fake sun?
They shouldn't be too simple, or else random doodles across Japan will suddenly start sparking or shining or burning. (Unless we can ping on intent, which would be pretty awesome.) They shouldn't be too complex, either, though, or else they'll be too difficult to reproduce. There's a lot of reasonable middle ground.
Explain them as 'energy reception targets', which is basically what they would be. "Magic is real. This isn't magic." (Even if that's a lie.)
Preferably they can include fields in which you can write the desired voltage/current/newtons/lumens/emission-wavelength. Provide some suggested values with the data sheet, since even in Japan most people probably won't know lumens from lemons or newtons from figs. "Make sure to write neatly. The computer still has to read your handwriting." (Even if that's a lie.)
If we have time (we won't), we can build safety features in, like separating the seal into "device" and "switch" circles that can be connected by a line shaped in any convenient way: the device seal will be inert unless the line is unbroken and the switch is in contact with a living human being. (Hey presto! That piece of scrap metal is now a ray-gun.) We don't need to make them random-civilian-safe, let alone childproof, but we should at least try to make them safe for people who are used to dealing with high-energy equipment.
Explain them as 'energy reception targets', which is basically what they would be. "Magic is real. This isn't magic." (Even if that's a lie.)
Preferably they can include fields in which you can write the desired voltage/current/newtons/lumens/emission-wavelength. Provide some suggested values with the data sheet, since even in Japan most people probably won't know lumens from lemons or newtons from figs. "Make sure to write neatly. The computer still has to read your handwriting." (Even if that's a lie.)
If we have time (we won't), we can build safety features in, like separating the seal into "device" and "switch" circles that can be connected by a line shaped in any convenient way: the device seal will be inert unless the line is unbroken and the switch is in contact with a living human being. (Hey presto! That piece of scrap metal is now a ray-gun.) We don't need to make them random-civilian-safe, let alone childproof, but we should at least try to make them safe for people who are used to dealing with high-energy equipment.
[X] While you're working on the seal, have somebody who isn't you, but who can figure out what questions to ask, talk to Maya.
- [X] Preferably over a video link or something, so they won't do something stupid like threaten use of force and thereby make her uncooperative.
- [X] She's definitely opposed to at least one of the groups involved here (Septentriones or angels). Utau+Su can probably tell which from her reaction, even just from a video recording.
And... before I go trawl the Exalted corebook, what do people think about this?
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Exa will inform you that, unless it's missed something critical, this cannot possibly be YHVH. The distance between adjacent bubbles is significantly more than a light-day.
It's not energy from the warheads, exactly.
Imagine space-time. Okay? Now, the demons are wandering holes in space-time; they ignore Kagutsuchi's rules and substitute their own. There is an interface, which is mediated by Kagutsuchi—its local nodes, not the sapient entity—but it's generally low-energy.
Nuking them, to a zeroth approximation, is equivalent to saying "No, damn it, you don't get to do that"; suddenly you're asking Kagutsuchi to cause a massive change of state in something that isn't part of him at all. This is costly.
The dragon seal started tearing itself apart afterwards because the nukes left the network damaged, and the automatic compensation Fumi had built into her programs got into a bad state where they triggered resonant feedback. If you detonate a nuke in mid-air where there are no demons to affect, then there will be no effect on the network at all.
Exa has some of the information needed. I'll rule that it's possible, but only up to one dot ATM.
Some of your other ideas are quite neat, but Fumi hasn't even thought about it; deciding how difficult it is is an action that would in itself take time, so I can't answer it here.
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Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
Hardness acts as a "you must be this tall" for dealing damage to something. If your raw damage isn't above Hardness, the attack doesn't deal damage at all (if your damage is merely below their soak, you just do ping damage - which is usually one die, or more if using an Overwhelming-tagged weapon like a surfboard-knife or railgun crossbow or something).
ω₁
The Long Count
... that sounds a lot like IPP, actually. (Or its dual, I suppose, if there's a difference.)
At any rate, the relevant portions of the vote have been removed; I'll have to think about it some more. Would the pseudoseal idea be feasible anyway, though? (At least if the network weren't so stressed?)
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
It's pretty much the same effect. Kagutsuchi as a whole is not fundamentally different from IPP as a charm, just somewhat bigger. Everyone wants to make their own rules.
Fumi would argue that it'd be better to teach people traditional magic, now that Kagutsuchi isn't making such an effort an exercise in futility. Amu would worry about the potential downsides.
Off the top of their heads:
- Traditional magic (Magatsuhi manipulation) has a wider range of abilities, and is far better understood.
- Seals could potentially be kept under central control.
- Magic will keep working whether or not the seal's network does.
- But is, literally, casting from SAN points. The only magatsuhically active part of a normal human is their mind, and whereas you can build up parts that aren't also responsible for thinking, you don't start with them. Unless you're Amu.
- Magic requires you to understand what you're doing. (Fumi and Amu both make this argument, with opposing intentions.)
You're out of Fumi's area of expertise, and far out of Amu's. Even if you weren't, this is a new concept to everyone involved, and experimentation might be needed; not even Exa has seen anyone using Craft(Creation) yet.
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ω₁
The Long Count
Summary: pseudoseals are Law, real magic is Chaos? Or alternatively, real magic is practicing a longbow for decades whereas pseudoseals are mass-produced guns...
Traditional magic is almost certainly the best way to go in the long term, both so that we can study it properly as a branch of physics and to reduce single-point-of-failure-ism; but in the short term, we really need magical effects all over the place. Alas, as you note, "short term" is probably sooner than we can rig up those effects to happen.
Actually, that gives me another idea. Those holes all have individual boundary conditions, right? How much control do we have over the metric at the boundary? Any time a spell is cast that affects K-space from inside one of those bubbles, the metric of the interface could distort. Maya (and Teddy and peoples' Charas, if those are also holes) can still walk around and so forth; but we'd force the angels (and maybe Septentriones) to use area-effect spells where they wanted to use cheaper targeted versions, and possibly even interfere with the effects of things like Tarukaja (depending on how it works) by throwing off their ability to fly in a straight line if they're using it.
If that's too complicated, we might still be able to slow their advance by just throwing an extra factor of 2 in there. Or split them up and screw with their formations, by randomly slowing each one down by a factor of 2 or 3 or 4. It wouldn't affect their reflexes or anything, but it would affect how far they could travel in an hour.
Traditional magic is almost certainly the best way to go in the long term, both so that we can study it properly as a branch of physics and to reduce single-point-of-failure-ism; but in the short term, we really need magical effects all over the place. Alas, as you note, "short term" is probably sooner than we can rig up those effects to happen.
What, was Exa not watching when we were playing billiards?
Actually, that gives me another idea. Those holes all have individual boundary conditions, right? How much control do we have over the metric at the boundary? Any time a spell is cast that affects K-space from inside one of those bubbles, the metric of the interface could distort. Maya (and Teddy and peoples' Charas, if those are also holes) can still walk around and so forth; but we'd force the angels (and maybe Septentriones) to use area-effect spells where they wanted to use cheaper targeted versions, and possibly even interfere with the effects of things like Tarukaja (depending on how it works) by throwing off their ability to fly in a straight line if they're using it.
If that's too complicated, we might still be able to slow their advance by just throwing an extra factor of 2 in there. Or split them up and screw with their formations, by randomly slowing each one down by a factor of 2 or 3 or 4. It wouldn't affect their reflexes or anything, but it would affect how far they could travel in an hour.
Been sayin' that for months
And both lead to hilarity when Craft Charms are considered.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
I kind of want to grab Craft: Vacuum, if only because we'd be able to actually potentially exploit that to reclaim lost ground, or other silliness.
Anyway, we have six "Upgrade Points". I'm still not sure what we should spend them on for best effect though--figuring out what our medium and short-term gameplans though would be a good idea.
Anyway, we have six "Upgrade Points". I'm still not sure what we should spend them on for best effect though--figuring out what our medium and short-term gameplans though would be a good idea.
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ω₁
The Long Count
Except for the part where it's not really a complete vote, you mean?