Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]

[PistachioCookies]

Persona/Shadows theorycrafting:

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The Overgrowth informational had this to say in regards to Shadows and Personas:

You'll probably have expected a 'persona' or 'shadow', but these are not part of the baseline mind-design, and in many cases—young children, especially—do not exist. When they do, they're defensive responses to that person's interactions with the outside world; as such, they're highly personalised. It's possible, though unlikely, for a perfectly ordinary human being to nevertheless never develop a persona or a shadow, even when embedded in modern society. If you raised one on an isolated island it'd be far more probable.

When they do exist, they're typically subsections of the 'administrative' grouping, but- remember that said grouping isn't a person. If ejected as a Shadow, it'll normally stay connected enough that it's still capable of using everything in the non-administrative sections of their mind, but the connections are weakened; and, lacking a coherent set of choices, insanity is the inevitable result. It's impossible for a Shadow to act sanely when they're missing the skill to predict that their actions won't lead to the world they wish to live in.

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Furthermore, the QM also mentioned this before, when the mechanics of Overgrowth were being discussed about 10 pages ago:

It also may be helpful to distinguish between a persona and a Persona.

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Which essentially means that this quest has decided to.... very much complicate the way that souls/minds work in this world, by giving them a lot of different moving parts.

As of the current Overgrowth informational, what we're currently looking at on a broad level is that minds in the quest work like this:

• "Natural Base Mind" - This is the apparent baseline-human ordinary 'consistent design' mentioned at the start of the informational. Includes 'World Modelling', 'Administration', ' Sensory' and 'Maintenance' control centers. Alongside whatever countless smaller peripheral systems and component bits that Baughn mentioned they comprise. All humans have these.
• "Artificial Outgrowths" - This includes Overgrowth, personas and shadows with small-letter "s" and "p". We got told small-letter personas and shadows get formed artificially when people interact with each other, seemingly like how friction on skin forms calluses. We don't know what causes Overgrowth yet. People apparently didn't have it prior to Ikuto Tsukiyomi, or at least not enough to use psionic abilities with it.
• "Remote Brain Extensions" - Includes Charas, Personas and Shadows with capital "P" and "S". These are still typically linked to the rest of the mind in some way, but apparently more separate than linked. In the case of Shadows, not linked enough to remain sane and controllable. In the case of Personas, separate enough to be capable of physically manifesting a Jojo-stand-like avatar and saying 'I am thou' to the user. In the case of Charas, can remain separate enough that it can lead to cases like Miki fully splitting off from Amu (if they are not reabsorbed back into user).

Charas are artificially made, still no clue how, would have to ask Tsukasa. Personas and Shadows seemingly get formed when small-letter shadows or personas get "ejected" (or rejected) by someone. Seems like they all take a chunk of Overgrowth with them when they split off, or at least have access to it through whatever tenuous link to the base mind they retain.

Charas eat up a dot of Overgrowth when formed, so either they are made from Overgrowth or permanently take over and "quarantine" a segment of it when they get made. I'm inclined to think it's the former, as Amu apparently notes that kids whose Hearts' Eggs are destroyed don't show psionic abilities, which means whatever a Chara does to Overgrowth when they are formed, it's permanent. Them being made from Overgrowth would be a lot simpler an explanation than some sort of "permanent lockdown" that fails to expire even when they are destroyed.

The latter is still possible, I can even think of explanations that would allow it to fit, they just wouldn't be the simplest explanations.

 

[quantum lurker]

They're the product of a literally intelligent process

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...interesting (looks at the old quest askance)

Charas eat up a dot of Overgrowth when formed

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Technically, we don't know this yet (could be two dots for all we know), but it does seem likely given the mention of Dreamwalking being needed to construct cognitive parts of minds, and how Charas are physically tangible due to Telekinesis (which requires Overgrowth to use)

(At what cost to herself?)

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The thing we can reasonably confirm is that Amu lost the opportunity to gain the dots her Charas had, although Amu would likely not care, and I don't either (I don't think Psionic skills can give multipresence, not even a budget form of that)

 

[PistachioCookies]

(I don't think Psionic skills can give multipresence, not even a budget form of that)

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Although Astral Projection arguably allows someone to do a budget form of that, if you allow still having to actively focus on it (and not truly split your attention) to count as "multipresence".

 

[veekie]

Depends on the chara! "By default"... no, not even really that; it's barely a fifty-fifty mix.

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Hmm, not sure I'm articulating accurately enough. Lemme try again on that angle.

-A chara is formed around an intimacy(exalted term) of their original child, and takes with them variable amounts of the original's other relationships, and associations. As the original source is all mixed up themselves, the degree is inconsistent unless the creation method can access their detailed soul structure. This means that charas can start out from anywhere between a full person with complete constellation of functional concerns beyond that core intimacy, to just a talking intimacy.
--They can grow beyond their starting point, though this can be more or less difficult depending on how complete they are as a person. Hard to grow if you're just a chunk of love for sweets after all.
--They are not normally antagonistic to their origin, most of them just seek to have their origin fulfill the chara's core purpose. Which makes them about as obsessive as much as elevating an Intimacy into a Motivation should. As they also care about other things they won't just do it come hell or high water.

-A Shadow is formed around a nearly full, rejected identity of the person. All the rejected and suppressed concepts bundled together. This makes them far less sane than a lone roving idea,since all the bits involved in fitting into broader society are excluded and all the bits rejected by a given vision of society are bundled in there. This also makes them out of touch with reality, since people rarely actually reject facets of themselves that agree with experienced reality without some kind of major malfunction.
--They can grow, but find it difficult to interact meaningfully as a ball of suppressed fury, so they mostly don't unless forced in some way. Teddie's gotten to full human by losing a lot of self identity in the process first to be able to make friends at all.
--They tend to be antagonistic to their origin, as the origin is a direct obstacle to their purpose. Most of the time they can't actually do anything about it beyond provoking their origin self, until the "You're not me" part.

 

[Quine]

It is, I suppose, time that Gondor calls for aid.

This should be fun~

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Time to get some more insight into Ami and Hikaru. I wonder what Hikaru and Utau are like with each other these days, given their awkward history.

It's kind of amazing how much aid these kids can call for. When Amu catches Kana up on all the events she missed, Kana's probably going to be thinking things like "wait, the president of a megacorp showed up at our house to be your backup asskicker?" Or "you placed one phone call, and in minutes, the chief of a government agency showed up with an armed task force to resolve a situation personally?" Or "oh god, what's Naomi going to think about all this?"

 

[Skelm]

Amu has drunk deep of the power of friendship, for someone who isn't a magical girl

 

[PistachioCookies]

Or "oh god, what's Naomi going to think about all this?"

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She probably thought that before Amu arrived, the moment she failed to handle Yui's Dreamwalking and everything went pear-shaped.

If Naomi hasn't come home to see this mess, that means she's probably got worse things to think about. If she has and ended up getting sucked into the domain, then she's already had a week to fume about it.

Either way, it's probably fine.

 

[Ryumancer]

Amu has drunk deep of the power of friendship, for someone who isn't a magical girl

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i mean, you say that, but she pretty much is (or at least was) one.

 

[quantum lurker]

"oh god, what's Naomi going to think about all this?"

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Amu: "Kana, don't worry about it: If Hikaru is a part of Manticore, me and Utau would never have lived long enough to come meet you"
Kana/Naomi: "..."
(Pretty sure that if Hikaru didn't change his mind after Amu's actions to restore his mental health at the end, they would all have reached a Bad End lol.
As for the government agency part... I guess Amu has connections? )

 

[Baughn]

Amu: "Kana, don't worry about it: If Hikaru is a part of Manticore, me and Utau would never have lived long enough to come meet you"
Kana/Naomi: "..."
(Pretty sure that if Hikaru didn't change his mind after Amu's actions to restore his mental health at the end, they would all have reached a Bad End lol.
As for the government agency part... I guess Amu has connections? )

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Yeah. Probably…

Although, at least in context of this quest, Hikaru's mind was somewhat familiar to Amu. She'd already met the "embryo"… dozens of times?

She wasn't thinking in those terms consciously, you understand. Not back then. But she did have sufficient reason to believe a healed Hikaru wouldn't harm her, even if it wasn't something she could articulate.

 

[quantum lurker]

Fire
Ice
Wind
Lightning
Psychic
Nuclear
Light

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no-one here has elemental powers or weaknesses, so it doesn't really matter. Instead you're rolling a party that's 100% focused on physical force and debuffs, if you can call 'mind crush' a debuff. Resistance to physical force isn't unknown, especially later in the games-

It's usually pretty rare, and you won't see it here

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@Baughn If I take these names entirely too literally, would it be feasible to create physics(Psionics)-based replicas of these things to benefit from elemental advantage (through Stunts, that have baseline dot requirements to execute properly)?

Eg: Lore 2/Illusion 2 to create a budget laser box and use it after digging up some basic schematics, or good weather + Lore 1/Range ?/Illusion 3 to create a cheap laser out of sunlight and lens focus

It doesn't matter now due to us being over-levelled for this fight, but it probably will in the future (a certain Demi-Fiend awaits us in the future).

Integrity is the stat used to resist unnatural mental influence in combat. Being well-integrated, having a consistent and well-functioning mind that runs self-checks, is how that's implemented in this story.

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My understanding of this was more the capability to remain functional under various degree of mental stresses (external or otherwise), and thus passing through various crises without gaining the mental equivalent of maluses would increase (prove?) your Integrity.

Though it's true that said understanding does not cover self-sabotage, so perhaps it needs to be updated?

 

[Baughn]

My understanding of this was more the capability to remain functional under various degree of mental stresses (external or otherwise), and thus passing through various crises without gaining the mental equivalent of maluses would increase (prove?) your Integrity.

Though it's true that said understanding does not cover self-sabotage, so perhaps it needs to be updated?

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That is also the case, but "UMI in combat" is the example that's up and centre in the sourcebook.

Here, I've extended it to include internal UMI-like effects. Probably helps that I'm professionally into cognitive engineering.

 

[PistachioCookies]

Here, I've extended it to include internal UMI-like effects. Probably helps that I'm professionally into cognitive engineering.

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.....Some might call it over-engineering.

In Exalted, souls are a lot simpler than what we've got here. In Exalted, the soul has just 2 parts, Hun (higher) and Po (base). Roughly analogous to mind vs heart (logical mind vs base emotion/instinct).

That's it. No other sub-parts, outgrowths or remote extensions. As far as I'm aware, the split between them only even matters when it comes to undead. Something about ghosts being meant to be the leftover Po of a dead soul after the Hun has passed on. Integrity protects them both from being forcibly changed by other things, whether it's some Performance-based attack appealing to base emotion or a logically-oriented Socialize argument, at least as I understand it.

In this quest? We have 3 broad archetypes of mind components with a whole bunch of undisclosed sub-components. Including "remote extensions" like Charas and Shadows that, due to their degree of separation, can be targeted seperately from someone's base mind. So does Integrity cover these extensions too, or just the base mind? If just the base mind, would someone hijacking a remote extension (i.e "hacking" a Chara) allow them to bypass Integrity? Does it cover outgrowths too? Only some outgrowths like little-letter personas and shadows? Or also protect against someone trying to destroy your Overgrowth?

Miki having more Integrity than Amu implies that 'no', Integrity is probably not shared between Charas and their owner (unless the Chara is fused with the owner rather than detached). Overgrowth needing Integrity to control it implies that, no, Integrity probably doesn't protect it either and if the base mind comes under attack to the point of straining Integrity, the owner will likely lose control of the Overgrowth as a result (due to needing to focus on defending the base mind rather than spending it reigning in Overgrowth).

Of course, given how complicated souls are here, I also wouldn't be surprised if the ruleset turned out to be equally as complicated with a whole bunch of nuances and exceptions that realistically make it boil down to QM's decision for any particular scene.

For instance, the 'Maintenance' portion of the base mind that, in real-life, would be a physical body mechanism separate from anything to do with the brain and is related to someone's ability to regenerate flesh wounds, is probably not covered by Integrity. I would bet it's supposed to be covered by Resistance instead.

 

[veekie]

I kind of suspect for a Chara the Integrity score is probably one of the core conditions of becoming a full person rather than a walking, talking idea. Probably coupled to relationships and ideals independent of their core concept.

Probably has to start making Integrity checks to stay intact if the original dies or is cut off.

 

[quantum lurker]

I also wouldn't be surprised if the ruleset turned out to be equally as complicated with a whole bunch of nuances and exceptions that realistically make it boil down to QM's decision for any particular scene.

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Well... I do understand the appeal of going in-depth in the world building and logical reasoning,
especially when you are trying to fit it into a setting almost made of exceptions to the rules presented (and exceptions to the exceptions), and then crossover it with another setting that has notable exceptions, and...

That, and the QM needs to figure out how the settings fit together, so you can extrapolate for likely outcomes in a freeform writein quest especially when metaphysics gets involved

(Also, for the longest time I thought UMI was a Shugo Chara thing, instead of Exalted - Unnatural Mental Influence, whoops?)

 

[PistachioCookies]

Well... I do understand the appeal of going in-depth in the world building and logical reasoning,
especially when you are trying to fit it into a setting almost made of exceptions to the rules presented (and exceptions to the exceptions), and then crossover it with another setting that has notable exceptions, and...

(That, and you need to figure out how the settings fit together, so you can extrapolate for likely outcomes in a freeform writein quest especially when metaphysics gets involved)

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I don't exactly hate it, it just kinda made me go WTF for a long moment when I saw how many moving parts there were meant to be for minds in that informational.

I can see why this level of detail might be necessary given the setting of this quest - both in the fact that involves Persona and that the actual world it's taking place in is seemingly more cognitively-driven than physical, especially with the confirmation that "a significant percentage of human minds are no longer dependent on a physical substrate".

But it does gets finicky when you start trying to apply Exalted stats to it, as I don't think Integrity was ever meant to consider the case of what would happen if disparate parts of a person's own soul started fighting each other (AFAIK that isn't really a thing there). Without any precedent to work off, it makes it difficult to gauge the outcome of interactions between these many different mind components. Which is a little annoying, as impressive as I can say the level of world-building detail is for minds (or cognitive engineering, I guess).

I say this, bearing in mind that the informational definitely didn't contain all the details, as we have no clue yet how Exaltation shards or Charms would interact with the whole thing and which parts of the mind would be affected. There is still more complexity to the setup that we've yet to find out.

 

[Quickshot0]

But it does gets finicky when you start trying to apply Exalted stats to it, as I don't think Integrity was ever meant to consider the case of what would happen if disparate parts of a person's own soul started fighting each other (AFAIK that isn't really a thing there). Without any precedent to work off, it makes it difficult to gauge the outcome of interactions between these many different mind components. Which is a little annoying, as impressive as I can say the level of world-building detail is for minds (or cognitive engineering, I guess).

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I guess looking at the inhumans in exalted might be more of a guide? Don't for instance the primordials have some unusual three soul shenanigans going on? And if Amu goes to far down her soul development paths we already know her humanity can come in to question, as in would she still be considered a human. So one can wonder if the soul structures now allows for a sliding scale between various entities.

 

[PistachioCookies]

Yeah, but they're... y'know.... inhuman.

I mean, I had a shower thought at one point that Amu might have been some part of I AM from the First Age. But the idea of her being a mini-Autochthon didn't really cross my mind at any point, much less a Yozi.

Well I mean I guess Su got called a demon by the thing possessing Amu but since Charas are artificially made, I don't feel like psionics are likely to be mini-Yozis.

 

[Skelm]

Primordials themselves aren't really mechanical entities with stats, at least not in a useful way. Malfeas does not take actions by rolling a dice pool against a difficultly, nor does he have an Integrity score. The better comparison would be Third-Circle Demons, which have subsouls but can still interact mechanically as individuals (necessary because PCs can summon them), and Internals who can create subsouls, but in both cases there's no mechanical system for resolving conflicts with or between your own subsouls. This, like making good decisions, is on some level a thing everyone has to do the hard way, no matter how powerful they may become.

 

[Quickshot0]

Of course, but my point was more that with this system one can model more then just humans, but also the inhumans. Everyone and how the relate to each other could potentially be some what understood. So rather like in other games where they're a complete black box, we might actually have some insights on the others kinds of minds here.

 

[Baughn]

Of course, but my point was more that with this system one can model more then just humans, but also the inhumans. Everyone and how the relate to each other could potentially be some what understood. So rather like in other games where they're a complete black box, we might actually have some insights on the others kinds of minds here.

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That's most of the reason it works like that, yup. Otherwise I'd be happy to delegate them to black-box modelling, but it's just way too likely we'll get some inhumans here. Like the one Nero is currently writing about.

 

[PistachioCookies]

Of course, but my point was more that with this system one can model more then just humans, but also the inhumans. Everyone and how the relate to each other could potentially be some what understood. So rather like in other games where they're a complete black box, we might actually have some insights on the others kinds of minds here.

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That's most of the reason it works like that, yup. Otherwise I'd be happy to delegate them to black-box modelling, but it's just way too likely we'll get some inhumans here. Like the one Nero is currently writing about.

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I feel I need to point out that Exalted has inhumans and it manages that "problem" without having all of them needing to share interoperable or possess equivalent "soul parts".

Primordial/Yozi's souls are demons (not Hun or Po). Raksha just flat out don't have souls. They can be understood (and interacted with) without them all sharing mind or soul components with humans or human analogues.

Not to metion, the narrative effect of having inhumans share human parts is to make them all partially human.... which would somewhat defeat the purpose of them being inhuman, unless you are deliberately trying to write a world where everything is meant to be partially human.

 

[quantum lurker]

They can be understood (and interacted with) without them all sharing mind or soul components with humans or human analogues.

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I think the problem here is that black-box modelling is too inconsistent/arbitrary, and does not suffice when a not-insignificant part of the plot will likely revolve around dealing with said inhuman beings carefully to obtain desired results?

...especially when Mind Control and Empathy are literally skills here, and when these skills will likely have null or negative effect if they were actually black boxes - remember the discussion about cognitohazards? (Like how offensive break-everything Biokinesis is unlikely to work on Shadows or Demons because I doubt they have biology, and we are probably toast if our esoteric Psionic skills don't work too when Physical Resist starts coming up)

Not to metion, the narrative effect of having inhumans share human parts is to make them all partially human.... which would somewhat defeat the purpose of them being inhuman, unless you are deliberately trying to write a world where everything is meant to be partially human.

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Well, convergent evolution is also a thing, and yet we don't call different species the same species even while they have similar 'components'?

 

[Quickshot0]

Another issue is that in this reality each group do not necessarily stay strictly with in their kind of soul only. Thus humans can become inhuman and an inhuman could become human.

 

[PistachioCookies]

I think the problem here is that black-box modelling is too inconsistent/arbitrary, and does not suffice when a not-insignificant part of the plot will likely revolve around dealing with said inhuman beings carefully to obtain desired results?

...especially when Mind Control and Empathy is literally a skill here, and when these skills will likely have null or negative effect if they were actually black boxes - remember the discussion about cognitohazards? (Like how offensive break-everything Biokinesis is unlikely to work on Shadows or Demons)

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I mean, you wouldn't expect that Mind Control or Empathy SHOULD work on everything. I know Persona does have robots with actual minds and Personas, but in general, if you were fighting a Mind Controller, you'd think drones ought to be a good counter to them. To me, the existence of inhumans too inhuman for Empathy or Mind Control to work on doesn't really seem like something that ought to be considered wholly taboo.

It would actually be easier to deal with them if we had clear indication Mind Control would not work flat-out (i.e. because it's a robot) as opposed to wondering whether Mind Control targeting someone's 'administration center' (i.e. bodyjacking) would fail because theirs might have offloaded it into some remote phylactery-like construct, whereas Mind Control targeting 'sensory system' (i.e. perception hacking) would, because 'sensory systems' are not unique to humans.

Another issue is that in this reality each group do not necessarily stay strictly with in their kind of soul only. Thus humans can become inhuman and an inhuman could become human.

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You generally do not expect that sort of thing to be commonplace enough to warrant a full set of mechanics to lay out the process.

If you are, you are running a game (or at least writing a setting) that encourages this sort of thing to be done on a consistent basis, on account of there being a predictable, replicable system for mass-reproduction of the phenomenon.

Demi-Fiend was meant to be an exception within his series, not the rule.