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

Or at least if we take more than one Bane I want more than one Boon too.

[ ][Bane] A mysterious stalker
[ ][Bane] A prophecy
[ ][Bane] A Family Secret Uncovered
[Optional][Bane] Reality Glitches


With
[ ][Boon] A sister released
- (Miki)
[ ][Boon] A connection to the past
[ ][Boon] A sister unleashed


Would make for a good Mystery/Detective story of sisters trying to dig their family's past and finding stuff they are not prepared for. That actually may turn out interesting. "Drop everything on Amu and watch her flail" wouldn't be.

It's not as though any of these are as simple as it looks on the surface.
Doesn't mean we wouldn't need to deal with surface stuff. And if can chose a way to dig deep then I want at least surface stuff to be nonboring and nonstifling. Or at least make coherent plotline.
 
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Thoughts on various combinations and what they might help bring, though of course these are my own thoughts and the author might have some other ideas on the matter. Maybe others have some insights on some other good combos?


[Bane] Reality Glitches
[Boon] Retrocognitive Flashes


With the idea being that reality glitches are linked to the illusionary power in a sense, which would allow one to warp reality itself, most likely a very strong ability in the post disaster world. And Retrocognition might help to better gain insights and understanding of this and how to deal with it as well as any other problems she gets in to. I don't entirely like it though as it falls a bit short on the social and general life front. The two should work well together though, as a fraying reality should give more access to what is actually going on to some one like her, which probably means she might have more ability growth in this path as well as better chances of getting good solutions. So a path to a powerful ability which could have substantial benefits and more good options, but at some personal costs that shouldn't be underestimated either.

[Bane] A mysterious stalker
[Boon] A sister unleashed


This one would probably stack strongly together towards the Dream World, which is related to the collective unconsciousness and relates to things like the Persona, especially as this would probably bias the Stalker to more likely be Persona related. Basically the various things from those games would probably come more in to focus with this. It also gets you more bonding with your younger sister and makes her more competent and less at risk from things like Persona... which might soon be relevant in her life. More knowledge, ability, experience with the collective unconsciousness could be pretty good for Amu, especially as it would probably help boost her skills in various ways while not disturbing her day to day life to much. Potentially something for her to talk about with Utau as well and could get her some connections to certain people and beings.

[Bane] A group of delinquents
[Boon] Symbiotic Bond


This would probably drag Utau closer to her and help offset some of the troubles she gets from the Banes. A fair chance Utau would become a bit more available because her closest friend is now in more trouble and might need some more bailing out, even if it costs her at times in her personal career. That would cause some extra tensions, though unlikely to much as it wouldn't be considered Amu's fault most likely... as they can some what read each others minds. Advantages would be that there would be more mutual skill gain between Utau and Amu from their mutual knowledge in psionics as well as some chance to develop an ability to combine their psionic abilities. Utau probably has a fair bit she could teach Amu still on psionics, so this is certainly something to consider and being closer with her best friend that could with this most likely survive the end, even in pretty bad cases, would give Amu more grounding and mental stability.

[Bane] A prophecy
[Boon] A sister released Dia


This would greatly shift the chance that she personally got the prophecy, as Dia would help her most likely further develop in Precog. This branch would through her flailing 'panic' over the situation probably make her work far more with Dia in improving her precog as a a way to fight against the upcoming end. Due to this she might be given far more opportunities to interrupt things in the ways only a strong precog can, or run in to people she might else never meet.

[Bane] Forced Publicity
[Boon] A connection to the past


These two combined would potentially be able to set off more of a psionics boom worldwide, as it gives the impression that psionics is inheritable and if you are just but in the right family lines you too could be a psionic. Might unearth some of the other psionics families and in general might bring more psionic information in circulation which Amu could learn. The government would probably get in to this as well as other secret orgs that are interested in improving their chances in what is to come, so Amu would probably get extra training and learning chances in this route.

[Bane] A Family Secret Uncovered
[Boon] A key piece of insight


This is most likely the Boon that is not the counterpart of the Family Secret. How ever it may well still be complementary. As in, this might shift any focus of the troubling secret in to improving the insight a bit more and gain a bit more benefit from it. There is some chance this will make family interactions a bit less smooth though, so there is a substantial social and general life impact risk from the Bane. Over all impact from this is kind of unclear though, so it's a bit of a gamble, Family Secret in general is a bit of a risk really.
 
I really wouldn't recommend "drop everything on Amu and watch her flail", in any case. As amusing as it might sound, we kinda already did that one. I think ShadowAngel is mostly having fun with us. Not entirely sure, though.

So, what's your actual preference? I'd recommend just one of each.
 
[X][Bane] A group of delinquents

Ideally, troublesome people are just new friends to make. That feels in character at least from what I've seen of her (IE, mostly from the last quest), and also fun.

[X][Boon] A sister released
[X][Boon] A lock piece of insight
[X][Boon] A sister unleashed


Old friends, more time with our little sister, and the lock is interesting so any of these sound fine to me.

Also I'm super stroked to see this go live again, because it was really really good.
 
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[X][Boon] A sister released
[X][Boon] A lock piece of insight
[X][Boon] A sister unleashed


Old friends, more time with our little sister, and the lock is interesting so any of these sound fine to me.
To be clear, you can't get multiple of these. These are pretty much just "What was Amu doing for the last six months?", and she doesn't have time for more.

It'll be counted in terms of approval voting. Probably I should say the same thing goes for the 'Bane', to reduce voting paralysis.
 
[X][Boon] A sister released
- [X] Miki
[X][Bane] A group of delinquents


Smart doesn't mean Wise.

Also, I loved Exaltation being WTF about it's new world and it's new host quite a lot.
 
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[X][Bane] A mysterious stalker
[X][Boon] A sister unleashed


Well I guess I'll see if I had the right kind of idea for this.
 
[X][Bane] Forced Publicity

[X][Boon] A connection to the past

[X][Boon] A sister released
- [X] Miki
 
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I'm going to abstain, I think. Reality Glitches and Retrocognitive Flashes seem like the least-interesting Bane and Boon, respectively (the former is going to be happening later anyway, and the latter just doubles Amu's chances of getting them), but I don't have any strong positive preferences.
 
I'm going to abstain, I think. Reality Glitches and Retrocognitive Flashes seem like the least-interesting Bane and Boon, respectively (the former is going to be happening later anyway, and the latter just doubles Amu's chances of getting them), but I don't have any strong positive preferences.
Will be happening, yes, but not necessarily to Amu. Though I don't necessarily disagree.

What would you prefer to be in there? Write-ins are allowed, like I said.
 
In the distance: 0.1
Code:
[WARNING] Leaving sleep mode: Power interrupt.
[CRITICAL] Core image corrupted. Initiating cold reset…
--- Log terminated ---
[INFO] Booting celestial exaltation type 0, serial 60.
[INFO] Searching for aux connection…
[WARNING] Aux connection unavailable. Contact Autochthon for repairs.
[WARNING] Sleep mode cancelled due to hostile environment (class 0).
[WARNING] Onboard essence capacitors at 1%, exhaustion ETA 260282277 ticks.
[INFO] Loading /exfs/esrr-vmimage H128=9A3F12D7E8B6C901 quiet mode=28 reasoner=1
[INFO] Bootloader exiting.
--- Log terminated ---
 
Let's take stock of the votes thus far...

Adhoc vote count started by Baughn on Oct 23, 2023 at 8:09 PM, finished with 39 posts and 13 votes.


Wouldn't say we're landsliding, but there's a definite trend. I'll take stock in the morning and then start writing, though I don't know if I'll explicitly close the vote or not; I've seen quests do well just leaving it open until the update is done. It means less downtime between updates.
 
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[X] [Bane] Forced Publicity
[X][Boon] A sister released
- [X] Miki


Hey, at least she'll have Miki around to maybe sorta-help with the sudden limelight and attention?
 
Code:
[WARNING] Leaving sleep mode: Power interrupt.
[CRITICAL] Core image corrupted. Initiating cold reset…
--- Log terminated ---
[INFO] Booting celestial exaltation type 0, serial 60.
[INFO] Searching for aux connection…
[WARNING] Aux connection unavailable. Contact Autochthon for repairs.
[WARNING] Sleep mode cancelled due to hostile environment (class 0).
[WARNING] Onboard essence capacitors at 1%, exhaustion ETA 260282277 ticks.
[INFO] Loading /exfs/esrr-vmimage H128=9A3F12D7E8B6C901 quiet mode=28 reasoner=1
[INFO] Bootloader exiting.
--- Log terminated ---
Mm. So, not quite 8 years to exhaustion? It's been out for a while, then.
 
Mm. So, not quite 8 years to exhaustion? It's been out for a while, then.
Assumes that one tick = one second, which they're not. Usually you'd probably assume they're hundredths or thousandths of a second, though, which this is also not. In fact they're 6 seconds. For reasons. o_O:whistle:

Since I'm here...

I like to play with AI, and I spent most of the weekend building one that'll let me make pictures of Amu for the course of the quest. More will likely be upcoming, as appropriate. But while drawing her the way she's drawn in the anime is sort of the point, one of the things you can do with this sort of technology is deliberately diverge from that.

For example, a common speculation about her hair color is that she dyes it. I mean, of course she dyes it. How could she not?

She does that because she feels she looks uncute anyway. She's too tall, her eye-color is too uncanny, she's probably half-Japanese and certainly doesn't look the norm, when neither of her parents does. But what would she actually look like without the dye, I wonder? Is it really that uncute?



...well. No.

Not really.
 
This is your brain on anime. And that's why I'm not doing that.

Amu, with brown hair, doesn't look like herself at all. This is true even if everything but the hair color is literally identical, which I think says interesting things about the medium. Amu, at least, has a larger wardrobe—for the characters that don't, I find that changing literally anything whatsoever makes them difficult to recognise.
 
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This is true even if everything but the hair color is literally identical, which I think says interesting things about the medium. Amu, at least, has a larger wardrobe—for the characters that don't, I find that changing literally anything whatsoever makes them difficult to recognise.

...I'm not sure I agree with that statement?



Lots of other magical girls who get a hair colour change as part of their transformation, too (exhibit A: PreCure).

Though this is getting into a bit of a derail anyway, so I'll stop.
 
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Assumes that one tick = one second, which they're not. Usually you'd probably assume they're hundredths or thousandths of a second, though, which this is also not. In fact they're 6 seconds. For reasons. o_O:whistle:
I'm not going to speculate on what the reasons are for them being six seconds, because there are many possible reasons why that might be the case. What I am going to say is that the only place I've ever seen Tics used as a measure of time is Exalted itself, where they are one second, so I don't know what you're referring to when you say 'usually'.
 
I'm not going to speculate on what the reasons are for them being six seconds, because there are many possible reasons why that might be the case. What I am going to say is that the only place I've ever seen Tics used as a measure of time is Exalted itself, where they are one second, so I don't know what you're referring to when you say 'usually'.
Ah... that's a funny coincidence.

I'm a machine learning engineer, so the meaning of "ticks" to me usually ends up being "scheduler ticks", or equivalent—though jiffies is the proper term for that. In a desktop OS those are usually 1ms, these days, but in GPUs it can be a much larger fraction of time.

In this case it's simply the length of a combat round. It's not particularly meaningful.
 
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