The problem with this thinking is that all it does is leave us right back where we started in terms of vote potential. We have no idea if the Sword of Damocles is about to fall on us (figuratively or literally, I wouldn't actually put it past you)
Oh no, see it's less that you have no ground, and more that you're not standing on it.
Realize this here, if you assume Cecellia is the only one with the answer, then the person to ask is? Nixus.
Why? Because he has shown to be in direct contact with her, and unlike her, you KNOW he's on your side. And if he has no answer, THEN you ask her.
The best part is that you don't even have to give a shit about being secretive, BOTH your current allies know about Cecellia. They just don't know the other knows. So you can either play them with this knowledge, or use them as allies.
If your current way of gathering info is bad, get a new way, I always say.
Will going stealth or going hard totally melt our faces? Is the strange catgirl going to throw us off of a flying fortress for no apparent reason?
This is actually a really good line of questioning.
The rules are helpful. The rules didn't prevent us from accidentally Cecelia.
They actually would have if you had fucking listened to them instead of ignoring them literally five minutes after reading them.
You can't blame that one on me.
TL;DR, I literally can't trust a single word any character has ever said or take anything at face value, so if I even want to try to analyze a post, it's like decoding an enigma machine. At this point it's easier to just take an educated guess and pray.
It's less that you can't trust it, and more that you need to look beneath the surface to understand what you can trust. Which I'll give you is hard, but it becomes a lot easier if you decide who isn't lying.
Fragment for instance, told you the tea was poisoned. As far as you know, he has yet to lie to you. Perhaps mislead you, yes, but not lie to you.
You weren't actually punished for believing Butcher would kill you. Hell you weren't punished for the tea thing, you had no say in that. There's no logical reason Aeternam wouldn't drink the tea after following him to his own dimension where there is no one to hear you scream, so she did.
If you're going to survive, you need to figure out who isn't going to fuck you, and trust them at-least as far as you can throw them. Suddenly their allies become those you trust, and their enemies, those you don't. Simple as that.
So who do you trust? Nixus? Probably, but you don't keep up casual conversation with him often. Which is perhaps healthy, given in a lot of ways he is a part of you. Talking to yourself is bad mmmkay? As far as you know his only ally is Cecellia, and you.
Cecellia? You've literally had more dialogue screen-time with her than pretty much everyone else combined. By now you should be able to know if you trust her. If so, who are her allies? As far as you know at the moment, Nixus and Forgotten.
Do you trust Rose? Her allies are Fragment, and through off-screen info you know she's at-least on talking terms with Butcher. You also know Forgotten respects her opinion.
Forgotten? You know he respects Rose, and yet simultaneously hates her master. You know he's allies with Sieg, supposed allies with the 2nd, though his relations with Cecellia bring that into question.
Your character trusts Sieg, though whether that should be redacted or not is up for debate. There's nothing really to or against an ally spot with him, except that he trained you. You have no idea who his allies are, though you know he at-least tolerates Forgotten, and from the Butcher side story it is implied he doesn't hate Butcher.
What about Butcher? His allies are very vague. You know he gets along with Rose, and his mentor is the 2nd. But then, she hasn't approached you about Cecellia yet. So does that imply he hasn't told her, or that she doesn't care? If his statement that the infection needs to be killed out is from his mentor, you can assume she at-least takes it seriously unlike Forgotten. But then, why hasn't he told her? Does he not trust her? And if he doesn't trust her, what does that say about him?
You need to pick your battles. Realize that you're currently an ant surrounded by hives. You need to pick one, you're not strong enough to stand alone.
Decide who you can trust, and then work from there. Because if you just assume you can't trust anything, you will die without allies. Even if you choose wrong, you'll still know more than if you don't choose at all.
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Not continuously, but there have been votes I have sunk more time into than updates, and I'll thank you not to arrogantly presume to know my thoughts and deeds better than I. Far more work goes into most of my votes here than is committed to text.
I suppose I can give you in particular that, mister team leader. But I was honestly referring more to the whole team than just you. Regardless I do agree you put a lot of effort into this.
But then, it should also be noted you keep up with a lot of numbers as well, and there's now way that doesn't take a large amount of time.
Maybe on the offer. Send me a pitch.
I will do so, probably either later today or tomorrow. I am rather busy at the moment after-all.
Given that Forgotten made a point of looking at our cecilia-altered eyes when mentioning it, and has done that multiple times to indicate her, he at least seems to believe that she is responsible.
Good catch, I had thought that detail had slipped people by for some strange reason. It was rather blatant, was starting to worry I had you all looking for hints so hard you missed the roadblocks.
my guess would be that she is stabilising us in some way, slowing or stopping our degradation.
But then, what could she be doing? I wonder if anything she's done has shown up on the stats page... Hmm, alas, it's probably not important.
Although actually on reflection, believing a death killer to be significant on that scale would not be unreasonable. ( hard numbers notwithstanding.)
Agreed, yet another possible hitch that caused me to come right out and say "not it!"
I repeat, if I'm going to mislead you, I'm going to do it intentionally damn-it!
i call bullshit. Recall your chidings of "it's basic chemistry" back inthe holy fire incident?
Technically speaking, it is. But if I recall, I didn't honestly expect you to jump to that. Hence why you only took like 20 damage when I very well could have killed you. You caused a chemical reaction explosion in your soul. It was mostly a learning experience, and it did damage to your enemy as well. Gave a chance for you to learn about quite a few things, actually.
"Everyone is lying about everything", "each failure entails the next", "there are no good outcomes", "what is this thing called 'knowledge'?", "you are always about to tread on a landmine you should have seen coming using insane troll logic".
None of those are entirely fair, but neither are they entirely unfair, and they serve to illustrate the general tone of the quest.
They're also not true.
"Everyone is lying about everything" is plain out not true at all. Actually, I can say for a fact there are three characters that without even looking back at the text, have never lied to you, despite being given the chance.
That isn't to say there aren't more, simply that if I give the game away there won't be a game XD
"Each failure entails the next"
Most of your failures are entirely unconnected, actually. Though I like the idea.
"There are no good outcomes" can technically be considered true, if only because there really aren't any bad outcomes either. Aside from maybe doom.
At-least that you know of. I will admit though that there not being some underlying meaning doesn't help morale. But I assume that the entire rest of SV has me covered. If you want a happy ending, I can send you quite a few stories.
"What is this thing called 'knowledge'?" is both true, and untrue. It's unfair because there hasn't been all that much inquiry. I suppose Forgotten didn't help with that, but in general your character was basically added into a new setting a week ago. If you knew everything, I'd be terrible at my job XD
On the other hand, it is fair to an extent, because it has been over a year and not knowing shit after a year is bad for morale. Which is the main reason I actually answer questions when asked at-least most of the time.
On the other hand, "you are always about to tread on a landmine you should have seen coming using insane troll logic" is simply wrong.
I assure you in the place of the player I would have used the hints to get past a good half of this shit with actual logic.
The problem isn't that the logic is insane or trollish, the problem is that I came into this expecting people who understood how to integrate a certain type of logic that is barren. That isn't even your faults, it doesn't make you stupid or anything. It's a logic gained through a type of experience, and one I idiotically forgot not everyone has trained.
Which is why I have given the offer to you that I will be working on later. Because I understand how frustrating that is, because I had to go through it myself when I was learning it. I simply forgot, as time tends to vague all lines.
Also, you can't be burnt out Skew, we just took a month off XD
I think it's more that you want to see some positive result from your efforts, which I assure you can occur rather soon.
I'll give you a spoiler that Nightingale has had forever now.
All of these missions in the "tutorial" are designed to introduce one potential partner that can aid you after you "graduate." Whether they stay alive is obviously up for debate.
But there is one in this mission. Work with that as you please.
---
If we could also get an indication of how long Butcher's effective range with his gun is likely to be relative to the vampires' sensory range, that would be good.
I can actually give you that free.
The range of the pistols aren't overly large, but Butcher extends the range by being a generally good shot. The fact that the guns don't have recoil is also kind of helpful.
It's unlikely he could straight up snipe one, but his aim shouldn't be a liability in combat.
I may be misremembering, but didn't say almost everyone he taught died?
That's more because he believes in trial by fire than anything. Isabella does too, actually, but she's a little better at the whole "this is a good idea"/"this is a bad idea" thing.
I believe he is competent, as a Death. As a mentor? Hell, no. I may be misremembering, but didn't say almost everyone he taught died? Speaking of which, he hasn't actually taught us anything, has often simply not bothered to give us basic information, and thrown us in situations we aren't ready for (remember the last mission, where you said we had only 30% of surviving?) and, oh yeah, don't forget about the whole "if you don't kill enough, you will die" that he didn't tell us about even when were already supposed to be dead or on the brink, Butcher had to. And his excuse for not telling us, is because he thought Rose told him to, which implies that he needs advice on how to mentor. If you think about it, if we hadn't found out like Forgotten planned for us, we would have made totally different plans, that probably would have involved minimizing the fighting, and thus danger, instead of maximizing it. The exact OPPOSITE of what we needed. Which just makes him seem even more incompetent.
Where, in this entire quest, have we got any indication that Forgotten is a competent mentor? That he might have a soft side, sure, that he is a great fighter, absolutely, but competence as a mentor? Even the option for was first introduced as masochism mode and "pick this if you want to die." None of that speaks in any way to him being competent as a mentor.
To be fair, the last mission was Fragment's fault. And he hasn't really gotten much of a chance. The only real time he's had he gave to Sieg because he was far too busy to give you twelve hours of undivided attention. Which to be fair, Sieg shouldn't either, but he's a huge slacker.
As for Rose giving him mentor advice? She's in charge of the mentor program sooo.... It's less that he needs her advice, and more that he knows she's better with people. He's not going to not take advice when it is given by a superior.
Though in this particular case, he really shouldn't have taken her advice so literally XD
Her exact advice, given you'll probably never see it mentioned again... Actually I can do a quick side-story moment with this scene. I'll be posting that later.
The whole masochism mode though is a good argument. In general that was more the trial by fire thing, but it does indeed apply.
The point is that you're right, but he's still competent enough to remember basic shit THAT important about the mentors. You have to be accepted as a mentor, it's not just given, which means memorizing a bunch of shit. Though I suppose you wouldn't know that as it has never come up. It has been implied though. Very vaguely.
It should be noted Forgotten is forgetful, but not that forgetful.
Omfg. Sendi I think I had a realization. I'm sitting here at work and wondering why this all went the way it did, and I realized when I first met you I had the same problem thinking the way you do. Now I always have a general clue as to what you're up to, but they don't have that advantage. And even then this quest has thrown me for a loop a few times as well.
So while I understand their frustrations, I don't exactly share in them. I think it would be easier for then to participate in this quest of they knew how you worked a little better, but this quest is too slow moving to do so. A conundrum if I've ever seen one
I actually realized that earlier today, and I have offered to try and work with Skew on it.
If it works with him, I'll be trying it on a larger scale. As I said, it IS logic, but it's a trained logic. It's one you have to learn. It's an artform. It's one of those things you're better for learning, but don't realize it exists because it shouldn't, before it is thrown in your face.
This is vaguely why I thought from the beginning that you should be in charge of basic planning, not Skew. But Skew stood up, and you sat down.
I was waiting for an update if I'm being honest. I myself realize that I'm pretty crap at plans or whatever, like there was a Jojo quest on here that I was invested in but the quest required pretty smart plans and its hard to place my thoughts on the keyboard(or my phone). So it sometimes feels easier to delegate to someone else because I know others are smarter than me when it comes to stuff like this.
Sorry if I'm not an active participant (Same to
@Nightingale )
Meh, I always found it's easier to plan when you have someone to bounce off of. I'd help you but, kind of GM.
)