Pfft. Don't forget, I'm the one who, barely half a dozen posts above, has been making dire predictions of this Quest turning into a WH40K grimderp-fest, and by the voters consent no less! I certainly have no faith at all in your assurances that we will be protected from it by mere bureaucratic constructs and social contacts, given that we are currently living in an era where centuries of both are being gleefully torn asunder in service to xenophobic demagogues.
That said, you can't deny that the "momentum", at least for the battle in front of us, is on our side.
We should be able to use the SL's single-minded focus onto Calypso to our advantage, like delay and mend with Calypso while our fleet eradicates SL ships.
Pfft. Don't forget, I'm the one who, barely half a dozen posts above, has been making dire predictions of this Quest turning into a WH40K grimderp-fest, and by the voters consent no less! I certainly have no faith at all in your assurances that we will be protected from it by mere bureaucratic constructs and social contacts, given that we are currently living in an era where centuries of both are being gleefully torn asunder in service to xenophobic demagogues.
That said, you can't deny that the "momentum", at least for the battle in front of us, is on our side.
Destroying war-fleet ships with the Power of our Soul isn't against the strictures we'd been given. On the one hand, they might not care, and they already sent one fleet auxilliary for us -- we just now destroyed it. On the other hand, if the Shiplords start visibly ignoring their own rules, that might kick off that everyone-against-the-SLs war they should be worried about.
As to longer term consequences and worries about direction, I wouldn't worry so much. This is going to change parts of humanity, but the larger part of it is how others will see you. The social constructs put in place by the Elder First, and built upon by Amanda and the other Restorers were designed specifically to prevent humanity going Terran Empire/Imperium of Man, and it will take a lot more than this to damage them.
You say that like going full emperor of mankind is a bad thing. After video of that purify moment gets out, I think Amanda might find her face on some stained glass soon enough.
BTW, I'm finally on spring break after a busy few months at law school so I finally managed to catch up with this story.
@Snowfire I just want to say that I'm super impressed by the job you've done on this story so far. I've seen so many good quests die early I honestly wondered if this quest would even make it to the shiplord battle, much less beyond it. I'm so glad to see you've come this far. You're doing a great job with a complicated original world. Keep it up!
With that said though, I'm totally confused over what just happened. Can someone explain really simply what the Medicament was, why it nearly drove us insane and what we just did to it? I think I missed something important...
With that said though, I'm totally confused over what just happened. Can someone explain really simply what the Medicament was, why it nearly drove us insane and what we just did to it? I think I missed something important...
Medicament is a repair ship. Like 'critical battle damage to new' repair. It's, like the other SL ships, a nano-bio tech conglomerate; now we know where the tribute is used (the adult population). Amanda's focus is mending; the Medicament is the remains of humans forcefully wed to nanotechnology, made to serve their slayers, and who knows what happend to their souls. In short, the conceptual opposite of 'mend to what it should be'. We just applied a pure concept 'purify', based on Amanda's intent and understanding of this concept, towards the Medicament, boosted by the intent/awareness of all humans witnessing the battle (which would be the vast majority of Sol).
It's heavily implied, but I don't think that has even once been stated. I could see @Snowfire going 'trololol' in the background as he watches our worst expectations build on each other.
With that said though, I'm totally confused over what just happened. Can someone explain really simply what the Medicament was, why it nearly drove us insane and what we just did to it? I think I missed something important...
The Medicament vessel is a combat cleric capable of mending damage in the field. It's not usually part of a Tribute Fleet. It's usually part of what the Shiplords send when they get serious.
It nearly drove us insane because the Shiplords use nanobiological engineering to construct their ships, and the way they do it feels extremely alien to human Practice.
Amanda just had a full-blown Limit Break, her soul pushed past her tolerances to where the entire power of her Practice (and she's one of the strongest Potentials alive) decided it was going to lash out with no holding back, no thought for collateral damage, no sense of self-preservation, just POWER. Amanda was able to use her power as a Speaker of Practice to channel that into a focused effect.
It's heavily implied, but I don't think that has even once been stated. I could see @Snowfire going 'trololol' in the background as he watches our worst expectations build on each other.
You say that like going full emperor of mankind is a bad thing. After video of that purify moment gets out, I think Amanda might find her face on some stained glass soon enough.
It comes down to the way Amanda sees it. Power corrupts, no matter how good you are, it will corrupt. She's fought with herself many times over the years about the power she's been given temporarily. More to the point, the 40k Imperium of Man and the Terran Empire are both broken societies, far more than our own. Repression is rife, personal freedoms and actual functional education of the world you live in is has been horribly distorted, etc.
Amanda would never want to lead the world into something like that, which is why she's so absolutely adamant that she will relinquish her emergency powers the moment the battle is over. Hopefully before anyone can try to make them permanent. If she has to, she can suffer faith, but only so long as it's not blind.
BTW, I'm finally on spring break after a busy few months at law school so I finally managed to catch up with this story.
@Snowfire I just want to say that I'm super impressed by the job you've done on this story so far. I've seen so many good quests die early I honestly wondered if this quest would even make it to the shiplord battle, much less beyond it. I'm so glad to see you've come this far. You're doing a great job with a complicated original world. Keep it up!
Welcome back, and thank you! I've seen much the same, and one of the things I've been absolutely ruthless about is brutally murdering any new ideas that have come into my head since I started this quest. I really love the universe that I've built and you've all helped me shape, and I want to keep this story going to a satisfying conclusion. I was a bit worried myself, to be honest, but honestly the Grand Diplomacy phase after the battle is probably going to be the make-or-break point.
I could be overstressing though, I thought that about the battle sections when I was working towards them, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
With that said though, I'm totally confused over what just happened. Can someone explain really simply what the Medicament was, why it nearly drove us insane and what we just did to it? I think I missed something important...
The correct answer is a mix of @MTB's and @Coda's. It's not so much that Shiplord vessels feel extremely alien to Practice, the Medicament was simply an outright perversion of Mending. Amanda was able to control her initial reaction to that, but then one of the Restorers in the Two Twenty Three flew straight into the nanobiological soup that the Shiplords use to construct their ships and her soul freaked. With considerably more power available to her than is normal (note her Practice score is currently 50, not the 30 on her character sheet), which she channeled into a Word to stop it turning a considerable portion of both sides into a mixture of wreckage and subatomic dust.
There is a reason I linked this as relevant music:
It's heavily implied, but I don't think that has even once been stated. I could see @Snowfire going 'trololol' in the background as he watches our worst expectations build on each other.
Scary question if the answer is: Tribute Fleet < Regular Fleet < War Fleet, because that would mean we missed until now the 'Regular Fleet' part of the SL's assets.
No, IC you have what Vision got out of their databanks on the subject before their AIs got serious and kicked her and Marcus the fuck out.
Further, IC, you have very little understanding of Shiplord nomenclature, and the less 'relevant to current survival' data will only be looked over by Insight focused after that battle.
Which does not mean there will be enough left to defend from a second incursion with regular fleet support...
or that there will be enough left to even make it worth defending from the perspective of potential allies :O
huh, and here I thought it was a war fleet analog of an unarmed logistics ship, something they brought along but didn't take into battle because it was too fragile. I mean even the most badass fleet around is going to have some unarmed ships hauling fule.
huh, and here I thought it was a war fleet analog of an unarmed logistics ship, something they brought along but didn't take into battle because it was too fragile. I mean even the most badass fleet around is going to have some unarmed ships hauling fule.
Only if you don't have a non-entropic energy source. We don't know what the SL use ...
And perhaps the SL don't have such ships in the War Fleet because any WL ship has such capabilities.
