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

[Simon. Andersen]

Hey

Baughn

I think, I may had misunderstand something.
I thought it's was a new vote, about whatevere we should disguising the car or take an another one.
If I had knowing about that, than I would had just vote for these three here.
[][Party] Amu, Midori, Utau
[][Approach] Psychic Wardriving: Pile into the family car. Use psionic abilities to check the house and surroundings while driving past. Tell Utau to try and put up Illusions to change the numberplate and color of the car.
[] Bring Hikaru's ward stone.

 

[PistachioCookies]

So you can hop away in a way no one but some what competent psychics could follow anyway. And you could get somewhere public fairly quickly like that as well.

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Our good friend Saaya took quite of bit of effort to carry away from the battlefield, even with us enhanced psionically.

Now, while I forget exactly how much Saaya was conjectured to weigh back when we were discussing it, something tells me she does not actually weigh more than Amu's mother.

That's not to say that Amu couldn't perform while weighed down with someone heavier, but something makes me doubt it would be a particularly spectacular performance.

Yeah, I was meaning very much the same 'passive boost' the other Guardians got from being around Amu (Who was wearing the locket), not taking the key for ourselves / actively invoking it.

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You know, with that in mind, that does mean Amu still can get a boost to all her psionics just by being around Utau. Which means she can still get Illusion 2 the moment Utau comes nearby with her Dumpty Key, even if she doesn't realize it.

Would have been nice to know there actually was a riskless way to hike her Illusion earlier, oh well, ship's sailed now.

 

[Baughn]

You know, with that in mind, that does mean Amu still can get a boost to all her psionics just by being around Utau. Which means she can still get Illusion 2 the moment Utau comes nearby with her Dumpty Key, even if she doesn't realize it.

Would have been nice to know there actually was a riskless way to hike her Illusion earlier, oh well, ship's sailed now.

Click to shrink...

It isn't that sort of boost, and wouldn't do that. But… wait and see, you'll get a demonstration shortly.

 

[Quickshot0]

Our good friend Saaya took quite of bit of effort to carry away from the battlefield, even with us enhanced psionically.

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Kind of, but on the other hand she could jump from quite a height... and she was capable of carrying her and moving fairly rapidly still after performing two miracles like things in quick succession and using a reasonable bit of willpower. So it's kind of hard to really say that this represents the maximum she could do when near fully rested. Especially as one could definitely create a stunt with willpower usage if need be to push her limits in such a case. So I'm kind of doubtful it would be that unspectacular either. Also didn't in series Ikuto at one point carry her as well?

 

[PistachioCookies]

Yeah, but Ikuto was like twice her size and 16-17 years old, meanwhile Amu was 9-10 presumably even smaller than she is right now at 13.

....OK, that's an exaggeration, but he was still bigger and heavier than her.

 

[Quine]

While we wait...

Amu's memory of being Ran and Su likely extends to remembering Ran and Su's side of performing a Chara Change. With that experience and 2 dots each in Empathy and Mind Control, I wonder if Amu would be capable of performing chara changes, in the chara role rather than as the subject of the change. Could be a way to let other people borrow her skills, or give other people a taste of her perspective.

---

I wonder what kind of Perception+Medicine+Biokinesis we'd need to have a good shot at curing cancer. Properly trained, it seems like Amu would be able to do a much better job than traditional treatments.

I also wonder what kind of range we have on Biokinesis, and how that scales with Mental Range.

---

We don't have any Craft ranks on our character sheet. @Baughn, would we eventually start needing, like, Craft (Glamour) or something for more advanced illusions? Or does the Illusion skill itself cover that?

 

[PistachioCookies]

Chara-Change is basically an involuntarily-triggered personality swap (or I guess it could be voluntarily triggered if someone knew the trigger condition and purposely set themself up for it).

Sure, I guess with enough Mind Control you could trigger a personality swap in someone, but..... is that really much different from just plain old brainwashing?

 

[Quickshot0]

Yeah, but Ikuto was like twice her size and 16-17 years old, meanwhile Amu was 9-10 presumably even smaller than she is right now at 13.

....OK, that's an exaggeration, but he was still bigger and heavier than her.

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Certainly true, though if we're being fair to the situation, then there is just no way to jump that high with out psionic powers in the first place. So to a good extent this is probably all just psionics really, rather then any kind of physical strength, it's hard to make sense of Yaya's strength otherwise either. And if we look in those terms Amu has only been getting psionically more powerful since then. Just as Utau really (the substantially older girl) who would be there as well.

So while what you say is true, I personally do not think it is what really determines the ability to do such things.


PS, Amu was a rather tall girl for her age, and if one had to guess, she probably still is.

 

[Quine]

Chara-Change is basically an involuntarily-triggered personality swap (or I guess it could be voluntarily triggered if someone knew the trigger condition and purposely set themself up for it).

Sure, I guess with enough Mind Control you could trigger a personality swap in someone, but..... is that really much different from just plain old brainwashing?

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Kinda? It wears off basically instantly, unlike regular brainwashing, and it's got that skill transfer aspect. It's not the kind of thing I'd want to spring on someone without consent, but I can see possible cases where someone would be interested in seeing what it's like.

 

[Baughn]

We don't have any Craft ranks on our character sheet. @Baughn, would we eventually start needing, like, Craft (Glamour) or something for more advanced illusions? Or does the Illusion skill itself cover that?

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They (can) overlap. Craft skills are for long-term projects; if you're crafting an illusuion that requires days to weeks of work, then yes, a crafting skill would very likely be involved. Anything you can't jot down the description for in five minutes, basically; crafting is the set of skills that translate a high-level specification to (say) a set of airplane schematics, and then to a physical airplane.

Which, yes, at Illusion 3 creating a fully functional airplane is absolutely a possibility. It'd be real in every respect... and would require actual engineering skill to make functional. Which is where the crafting/lore ratings come into play.

 

[Quine]

They (can) overlap. Craft skills are for long-term projects; if you're crafting an illusuion that requires days to weeks of work, then yes, a crafting skill would very likely be involved. Anything you can't jot down the description for in five minutes, basically; crafting is the set of skills that translate a high-level specification to (say) a set of airplane schematics, and then to a physical airplane.

Which, yes, at Illusion 3 creating a fully functional airplane is absolutely a possibility. It'd be real in every respect... and would require actual engineering skill to make functional. Which is where the crafting/lore ratings come into play.

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Cool. I don't think we'll dedicate the time to that sort of thing any time soon, but maybe later, with Craftsman Needs No Tools and caste/favored ability training times to speed things up, or if we find a project worth doing that we can count as training time...

 

[Quine]

Hey, wait...

Which, yes, at Illusion 3 creating a fully functional airplane is absolutely a possibility. It'd be real in every respect... and would require actual engineering skill to make functional. Which is where the crafting/lore ratings come into play.

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If we could create a "real in every respect", fully functional airplane with Illusion 3... what would it take to just make a fully real pile of valuable raw materials? Like gold, or rhodium or something?

...how long until someone else does that? Like Ami, or someone we've never heard of in Mexico?

 

[Baughn]

Hey, wait...

If we could create a "real in every respect", fully functional airplane with Illusion 3... what would it take to just make a fully real pile of valuable raw materials? Like gold, or rhodium or something?

...how long until someone else does that? Like Ami, or someone we've never heard of in Mexico?

Click to shrink...

An interesting concept! Wouldn't you like to know?

...Illusion 2. Ami could do it right now. With the caveat that, if you don't get it right, it might evaporate in a couple of days. Or months.

 

[PistachioCookies]

If we could create a "real in every respect", fully functional airplane with Illusion 3... what would it take to just make a fully real pile of valuable raw materials? Like gold, or rhodium or something?

Click to shrink...

Probably mostly time, I'd imagine.

Even with her current stats, Amu can make things tangible if she has a Chara to give her a specialization in it like Su's cookies. The same specialization could be used to make metal cooking utensils and then you just need to melt them down for metal. If she can still use Miki, the fine arts specialty would allow for stone, possibly precious stones or even gold statuettes.

Would not be surprised if many of Lulu's magic gems were conjured by the lady herself.

The only issue is that we know it takes, what, 1 hour to make anything that lasts (and possibly with chance of not actually being permanent as has been pointed out) and I assume the quantity would not be very large - maybe a tray of cookies' worth in mass, going by what we know about her making cookies.

Unless it's like, cut diamonds or actual gold, it probably wouldn't be worth all that much. And ontop of that, she'd need to spend extra time trying to sell it. Even if it was diamonds or gold, good luck trying to find someone willing to just buy a bag full of diamonds or gold bars from a 13-year old kid with no bank account, asking for payment in cash. Not be impossible to find ways around the problem, but it would take extra time.

If Amu needed money fast, it would honestly probably just be quicker to ring Hikaru and ask for a loan from Easter.

Or maybe Ami to help her Dreamwalk and kill shadows in the metaverse, if this works like Persona, they drop fat stacks of cash and rare materials too.

 

[Baughn]

Or maybe Ami to help her Dreamwalk and kill shadows in the metaverse, if this works like Persona, they drop fat stacks of cash and rare materials too.

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I feel comfortable in saying that the stacks of cash are a game design abstraction, and they'd do no such thing in this quest.

Su's cookies only take a couple of seconds, and are completely stable (otherwise eating them would be terrible), but that's because she's using a template. It's not a feat that's accessible to anyone who isn't a Chara… until illusion 3.

 

[PistachioCookies]

I feel comfortable in saying that the stacks of cash are a game design abstraction, and they'd do no such thing in this quest.

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Shame. Exotic materials are still a thing though, judging by what Ami was able to pull out of it to make that birthday present.

Funnily enough, Tadase might be able to make solid gold more easily than Amu. His default costume comes with a golden scepter and a crown. Assuming he can make them last permanently, he could just melt them down and reshape them into ingots.

Of course, Tadase's family is already pretty damned rich, so if money was a concern he'd probably just offer a loan to Amu (or offer to negotiate a loan from Tsukasa to Amu).

 

[Baughn]

Shame. Exotic materials are still a thing though, judging by what Ami was able to pull out of it to make that birthday present.

Funnily enough, Tadase might be able to make solid gold more easily than Amu. His default costume comes with a golden scepter and a crown. Assuming he can make them last permanently, he could just melt them down and reshape them into ingots.

Of course, Tadase's family is already pretty damned rich, so if money was a concern he'd probably just offer a loan to Amu (or offer to negotiate a loan from Tsukasa to Amu).

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Money is not, of course, a concern. Amu is a scholarship student, but she didn't need to be—her family is solidly upper middle class, defining "middle class" as "her parents do, technically, still need to work". Which in her father's case means getting up at five to hike to a good spot where he can lay in wait, but-

It's what he likes to do, you know?

Amu's mother is the person in charge at her workplace, and can work from home whenever she needs to; which ends up including whenever Amu or Ami need her to. Or Miki…

I could make the point that it's easier to be good parents when you have that much leeway. As Saaya demonstrates… that isn't enough.

As for Tsukasa, he's a highly capable precog. I doubt I need to explain that one.

 

[Quine]

An interesting concept! Wouldn't you like to know?

...Illusion 2. Ami could do it right now. With the caveat that, if you don't get it right, it might evaporate in a couple of days. Or months.

Click to shrink...

Huh.

Even with her current stats, Amu can make things tangible if she has a Chara to give her a specialization in it like Su's cookies. The same specialization could be used to make metal cooking utensils and then you just need to melt them down for metal. If she can still use Miki, the fine arts specialty would allow for stone, possibly precious stones or even gold statuettes.

Click to shrink...

I knew we could make things tangible. It just wasn't clear until recently that Illusion 2 (or any level of Illusion) could make things fully real. Even with Su's cookies, making those is partly Biokinesis. I've been thinking permanent illusions would still be fundamentally different from real matter in some way, but apparently they're not, or at least they don't have to be.

The only issue is that we know it takes, what, 1 hour to make anything that lasts (and possibly with chance of not actually being permanent as has been pointed out) and I assume the quantity would not be very large - maybe a tray of cookies' worth in mass, going by what we know about her making cookies.

Click to shrink...

1 hour isn't the time required to make something permanent. It's the approximate breakpoint where keeping a temporary illusion up that long would be about as exhausting as making something permanent.

Unless it's like, cut diamonds or actual gold, it probably wouldn't be worth all that much. And ontop of that, she'd need to spend extra time trying to sell it. Even if it was diamonds or gold, good luck trying to find someone willing to just buy a bag full of diamonds or gold bars from a 13-year old kid with no bank account, asking for payment in cash. Not be impossible to find ways around the problem, but it would take extra time.

If Amu needed money fast, it would honestly probably just be quicker to ring Hikaru and ask for a loan from Easter.

Or maybe Ami to help her Dreamwalk and kill shadows in the metaverse, if this works like Persona, they drop fat stacks of cash and rare materials too.

Click to shrink...

I'm not just thinking about this as a way to make money, though it is a way to make money. I'm thinking more about the broader implications.

Rhodium is the rarest and most valuable precious metal in the world. Real-world global rhodium production is only about 30 metric tons annually. That's small enough that even a single psion with the right specialty could make up a significant fraction of the entire world's rhodium production, or even outproduce all conventional rhodium production if they're good enough.

Or consider, say... fissile materials. A psion could probably make U-235. People are not going to be happy about that kind of power lying in the hands of random teenagers. (Fissile materials probably don't need to be permanent, depending on what happens to temporary illusions that undergo nuclear reactions - in fact, temporary might even be better.)

Even without powers like mind reading or mind control, psions who can do this sort of thing would be major strategic assets for any nation. They'd transform or obsolete entire industries, reduce dependence on foreign supplies of key resources, provide easy access to nuclear materials, and more. Making sure things that need to last do last would be an issue, but it would be an issue that people would be highly motivated to solve.


I wonder if anyone is already doing this. For example, Manticore might try selling psionically-produced materials to augment its budget. Japan consumes a lot of rhodium - maybe some of that is coming from Manticore in this quest?

 

[PistachioCookies]

Money is not, of course, a concern. Amu is a scholarship student, but she didn't need to be—her family is solidly upper middle class, defining "middle class" as "her parents do, technically, still need to work".

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At least, money isn't a concern until we need to bribe someone with more than what their boss is paying them.

If it comes down to interrogating someone (i.e. captured Manticore agents) I figure it could be 50-50 odds whether voters will want to go for the invasive mental penetration, versus just paying them off. I kinda have my doubts about anybody having an appetite for pursuing "traditional" interrogation methods even if it's JPs doing it instead of Amu directly. Though I could be wrong.

For a bribe, I'd expect an attractive offer would need to be in the 7 digits (in dollars, it would be 9 digits in Yen) to look enticing. Not the sort of money Amu's family could pony up on quick notice.

If we were reluctant to go to JPs or Easter for whatever reason or they refused to sponsor the cash, we might actually need to start churning out bags of gold bars by hand.

Rhodium is the rarest and most valuable precious metal in the world.

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Rhodium may be one of, if not the most valuable MUNDANE substances in the world.

The moment you bring in magic, psychics and psionically-generated substances, you're bringing in a whole host of even rarer, more exotic materials. Like the stuff Ami made Amu's birthday present out of, or whatever the hell the Humpty Lock and Dumpty Key are made of.

Can guarantee you, a Magatama is rarer and more valuable than rhodium. I don't know how many grams Kailash weighs, but I seriously doubt rhodium goes for between 150,000 to 450,000 Macca for the equivalent mass.

 

[Quine]

The moment you bring in magic, psychics and psionically-generated substances, you're bringing in a whole host of even rarer, more exotic materials. Like the stuff Ami made Amu's birthday present out of, or whatever the hell the Humpty Lock and Dumpty Key are made of.

Can guarantee you, a Magatama is rarer and more valuable than Rhodium. I don't know how many grams Kailash weights, but I seriously doubt rhodium goes for between 150,000 to 450,000 Macca for the equivalent mass.

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Sure, but those also almost certain to be way harder to make. I don't think Illusion 2 is going to cut it. (Also, it's not clear the materials are what make those things special, aside from the moonlight shard.)

Do we actually know the moonlight shard has anything to do with Illusion? Ami got that from a dreamwalk. It's not clear pulling things out of a dreamwalk is an application of Illusion. If it does involve Illusion, I expect trying to replicate the shard with pure Illusion is still going to be harder than pulling it out of a dreamwalk.

 

[PistachioCookies]

I think she got the base material from the metaverse via Dreamwalking, then used Illusion to "craft" it into a shape suitable for a birthday present. Though what I mean is - if you can put a psychic to work doing, say, what Lulu is doing, which is making stuff like anti-Demon grenades and/or mind-altering jewelry that nobody without psionics can make.... would you really want to just have them churn out mundane materials?

Would seem like a waste of a good psychic, at least to me if I had to decide what I wanted a psychic sweatshop to churn out.

 

[Quine]

I think she got the base material from the metaverse via Dreamwalking, then used Illusion to "craft" it into a shape suitable for a birthday present. Though what I mean is - if you can put a psychic to work doing, say, what Lulu is doing, which is making stuff like anti-Demon grenades and/or mind-altering jewelry that nobody without psionics can make.... would you really want to just have them churn out mundane materials?

Would seem like a waste of a good psychic, at least to me if I had to decide what I wanted a psychic sweatshop to churn out.

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Sure, Lulu can make anti-demon grenades... but regular people can make regular grenades, and those work too. Might need a Harmonizer or something depending on what kind of state Kagutsuchi is in, but the demons at the school incursion died just fine to thrown sticks. Also, she needs gemstones to work with. I'm not sure one of her grenades would actually be more valuable as a grenade than the base gem.

Personally, I'd be a lot more worried about a teenager who can produce enriched uranium than I would be about the stuff Lulu does.

 

[PistachioCookies]

Sure, Lulu can make anti-demon grenades... but regular people can make regular grenades, and those work too. Might need a Harmonizer or something depending on what kind of state Kagutsuchi is in, but the demons at the school incursion died just fine to thrown sticks.

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You know as well as I do that was just an example.

Look at all the exotic materials listed in Persona 4. While it may not be clear exactly what stuff like "Mobius Sand", "Klein Bottles", "Soul-Death Steel" or "Living Metal" do, the implications just from their names suggest that stuff is all far more physics-defying, valuable and dangerous than the equivalent mass of enriched U-235.

There's probably something that can rip open reality breaks that is manufacture-able either directly by a psychic or from materials only a psychic can produce. And I'd be a lot more worried about someone having that than nuclear material.

EDIT:
I'll put it this way - Hikawa could be using his demon-summoning skills to make himself rich by negotiating with the summoned demons for opals or amethysts or aquamarines or whatever, instead he's currently using said skills try and trigger the world-ending ritual called Conception.

Nuclear material is kinda small potatoes to that. We wouldn't be in half as much trouble if the man was summoning demons for uranium and if he only had nuclear weapons at his disposal, most of the world would have a better chance of surviving that at least.

 

[Quine]

You know as well as I do that was just an example.

Look at all the exotic materials listed in Persona 4. While it may not be clear exactly what stuff like "Mobius Sand", "Klein Bottles", "Soul-Death Steel" or "Living Metal" do, the implications just from their names suggest that stuff is all far more physics-defying, valuable and dangerous than the equivalent mass of enriched U-235.

There's probably something that can rip open reality breaks, manufacture-able either directly by a psychic or from materials only a psychic can produce. And I'd be a lot more worried about someone having that than nuclear material.

Click to shrink...

Again, I think that kind of stuff is going to be way harder to make than regular materials. Sourcing it "naturally" is likely to be more efficient, and it's not clear if psionic powers are actually necessary for that. Dreamwalking is a psi skill, but other methods of accessing cognitive realms don't seem to require powers, and there might be other ways to produce it. If sourcing those materials "naturally" does require psi powers, they're probably different powers - different psions have different specialties.

EDIT:
I'll put it this way - Hikawa could be using his demon-summoning skills to make himself rich by negotiating with the summoned demons for opals or amethysts or aquamarines or whatever, instead he's currently using said skills try and trigger the world-ending ritual called Conception.

Nuclear material is kinda small potatoes to that. We wouldn't be in half as much trouble if the man was summoning demons for uranium and if he only had nuclear weapons at his disposal, most of the world would have a better chance of surviving that at least.

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I don't think demon summoning actually requires psi powers. I'm pretty sure anyone with the tools can do it.

I think this might be one of the root causes of our disagreement - different ideas of who can do what, and how efficiently. I look at the prospect of one kid outproducing the entire world rhodium industry, and think, "wow, that's a massive capability". You think "why not have them do something else". I think "why not have someone else do the something else".

 

[PistachioCookies]

I think this might be one of the root causes of our disagreement - different ideas of who can do what, and how efficiently. I look at the prospect of one kid outproducing the entire world rhodium industry, and think, "wow, that's a massive capability". You think "why not have them do something else". I think "why not have someone else do the something else".

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I get the feeling it's also a difference in what we imagine the history and background of this crossover world is actually like.

Given this is an SMT world, assuming that Raidou Kuzunoha is still canon to its history, that would mean occult organizations like the Kuzunoha clan have been around Japan since at least 800 AD. The Abrahamic religious organizations in the West obviously for even longer. That means materials with supernatural or magical properties would have been a part of the world for an equally long time. Even if anyone with "the right tools" might be able to summon demons, not everybody has the ability or knowledge to make those tools. AFAIK, the Kuzunoha Clan's demon summoning tubes were only made or makeable by Kuzunoha clan members, other summoners had to use other means.

If such things were around 1200 years ago, there would've been other occult-related materials that were rarer or more valuable than gold too then. Rarer for sure, on account from not actually being available anywhere on Earth, but coming from other planes. It's just not many people would have known they existed because if we go by SMT logic, this occult side of the world would've always been hidden from the public. Demons would've been the stuff of myth and nothing more.

But there would always have been stuff rarer than the rarest mundane materials and my assumption is that - yes, there WOULD actually have been occult sweatshops that made money dealing in the production and manufacture of such things, catering strictly to occult clientele. And making a boatload more bank than they ever could churning out mundane materials.

Or possibly, just don't usually have time to waste making mundane stuff, because while rhodium can be sourced from mundane mines, if you don't have all your mages cranking out the exotic sorcerous metals you need for those Dragon Stream Broadcast Tower machinery, there's nobody else in the world who will be able to supply the necessary materials.

And those Dragon Stream towers really needed to be set up yesterday.

EDIT: Again, "Dragon Stream Towers" is just an example - today, it's Dragon Stream Towers, yesterday it was Humpty Locks and Dumpty Keys, the day before that, it was Magatamas, the day before that (before they figured out how to make cellphones do it) it was COMPs, the day before that it was Demon Summoning Tubes, etc.

There would always have been some occult item or equipment requiring rarer-than-rhodium occult materials that only special people could produce and it would've been a waste to have them make gold or diamonds when they were the only ones who could produce the materials needed for those latest, state-of-the-art occult artifacts that everybody needed and would pay more than anyone would for the equivalent mass of rhodium.