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The Practice War [Complete]

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Blue Skies
  • Apocrypha
    • This is largely thanks to @Pyro Hawk. Imagine the scene taking place sometime after 3BoS.


    Blue Skies

    "I have good news and bad news," said Amanda, speaking as loudly as she could.

    The sirens and screams were distracting, Mary thought. They made it hard to hear Amanda. She glanced up at the blue sky, frowning at the unnatural, angular clouds.

    "I think I can guess the bad news," she hazarded. "What are the good news?"

    "I found the 'reboot' button."

    "Have you pushed it?"

    "Not yet, but--"

    Five minutes passed.

    "I have bad news, good news, and really bad news," Amanda said. "The bad news is that it looks like the OS got corrupted and now it's stuck in a reboot, load OS, crash cycle."

    "--Explains the psychedelic, flashing sky, and the statues. Thanks for getting me out of that, by the way."

    "The good news is it's possible to re-install the OS, and that should fix the entire problem. The really bad news is that it looks like our license for the OS just reached its cap, and the last time we could acquire new licenses was several million years ago. Also we'd need FTL to go there, and the First still isn't working. "

    "...Give me some good news."

    "I'm not sure if it counts, but we've been contacted by a Shiplord AI that was still hiding in our communications software somehow. It's confused by the state of the solar system, and is offering a bootleg copy of SecretOS so they can resume sending invasion fleets."

    Time, questionably, passed.

    "More bad news. Apparently when reality installed the other OS, it then updated some drivers. And those drivers are incompatible with SecretOS, so... it works perfectly fine for about half an hour at a time. Then it stalls, crashes, reboots, crashes halfway through the reboot and then works perfectly fine, for about half an hour before reality rolls back to its state 31 minutes earlier."

    "At least we've fixed the issue with automatically installing updates."

    "Yes, but that took you nearly half an hour and--"
     
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  • Apocrypha
    • Sightsear said:
    alternatively, it's just a very fancy spirit bomb.
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    Regular Fleet arrives. Amanda speaks 'Mend'.
    Simon_Jester said:
    Hm. So we've probably got durability enhancement, repair enhancement, and Focus enhancement in general.
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    If extended, for the fleet. That's why Snowfire is putting on a brave face and crying in the corner when he thinks nobody looks.
    Baughn said:
    "Yes, but that took you nearly half an hour and--"
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    Processing personal experience?
     
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    DragonParadox said:
    Just saw the last update (with the forum change I must have missed the alert) Great work as always @Snowfire. I'm curious to see what it is about Mender's Soul that provoked such a strong reaction.
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    It was a combination of factors, really. The Circles now know a little more of what they really are, and that's a big piece, but they also knew that Amanda was preparing for the battle to come. She went to them first to get help, after all. Veda helped Amanda create the design she used, but as part of that and her Focus, she (Veda) was able to see that to become the sort of thing that it truly could, Amanda would need help. So she went back to the Circles, they stole a bunch of techniques from Project Insight in terms of focusing and collection, and Veda acted as a physical nexus for it on the day.

    The reason Mender's Soul got such a reaction on a personal level is because it's Amanda taking her Focus and bringing it closer to who she is, in every way that implies. That's the source of the passive effects she's noticed. Improved durability, finer senses, a very slight extension in her ability to use Practice in some ways. But that's just the passives. The active effect, well, I'm not going to spoil. But consider this. The Mender's Soul was a project designed to make Amanda stronger, on a very personal level. It's done some of that just by existing, but right now, that just isn't needed.

    Practice has always had a degree of seeming intelligence in how it acts, and its shown a marked tendency to go only far enough except in the case of Miracles and the occasional Trance. What Amanda did here, with the help of the Circles, was forge an artefact for use in battle. Given how Practice often responds to the intent of its user, it shouldn't be altogether surprising that said artefact will remain dormant until such time as battle is upon the world.

    Of course, when that day does come, well. Amanda's looking forward to it...maybe a little too much.
     
    Snowfire said:
    Practice has always had a degree of seeming intelligence in how it acts, and its shown a marked tendency to go only far enough except in the case of Miracles and the occasional Trance. What Amanda did here, with the help of the Circles, was forge an artefact for use in battle. Given how Practice often responds to the intent of its user, it shouldn't be altogether surprising that said artefact will remain dormant until such time as battle is upon the world.
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    What it also tells us is that Practice has an almost incurable need for drama, even to the extent of handicapping its users. After all, it's a well-known adage that the more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in war, and yet this particular Artifact has decided to perclude any practice, um, with Practice, outside of the big fight, for fear of ruining the surprise. :D
     
    TheEyes said:
    yet this particular Artifact has decided to perclude any practice, um, with Practice, outside of the big fight, for fear of ruining the surprise. :D
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    I mean, that's certainly one way of looking at a QM getting vengeance on his never to be sufficiently damned dice via teasing his questers :V

    More seriously, there are reasons for this, and Amanda is working on trying to work with whatever the hell what she's done will let her do. It's just she had it for all of three months and has a very busy schedule with no real time allocated to mess around with the damn thing.
     
    It wouldn't be the first quest I've seen where the protagonist altered themselves to be significantly more, ah, colloquially speaking 'holy,' at the cost of being significantly less human...
     
    Simon_Jester said:
    It wouldn't be the first quest I've seen where the protagonist altered themselves to be significantly more, ah, colloquially speaking 'holy,' at the cost of being significantly less human...
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    we are not becoming like our focus. we are making our focus more like ourself. we are actively changing our focus to better suit our desires. this is a way more important upgrade than it looks like at first glance, both for our capabilities and the future capabilities of all Potentials.
     
    All I know is, when you talk about A being brought closer to B, "in every way that implies..." that doesn't necessarily mean that B gets to be an unmoved mover while A does all the moving.
     
    Snowfire said:
    It was a combination of factors, really. The Circles now know a little more of what they really are, and that's a big piece, but they also knew that Amanda was preparing for the battle to come. She went to them first to get help, after all. Veda helped Amanda create the design she used, but as part of that and her Focus, she (Veda) was able to see that to become the sort of thing that it truly could, Amanda would need help. So she went back to the Circles, they stole a bunch of techniques from Project Insight in terms of focusing and collection, and Veda acted as a physical nexus for it on the day.

    The reason Mender's Soul got such a reaction on a personal level is because it's Amanda taking her Focus and bringing it closer to who she is, in every way that implies. That's the source of the passive effects she's noticed. Improved durability, finer senses, a very slight extension in her ability to use Practice in some ways. But that's just the passives. The active effect, well, I'm not going to spoil. But consider this. The Mender's Soul was a project designed to make Amanda stronger, on a very personal level. It's done some of that just by existing, but right now, that just isn't needed.

    Practice has always had a degree of seeming intelligence in how it acts, and its shown a marked tendency to go only far enough except in the case of Miracles and the occasional Trance. What Amanda did here, with the help of the Circles, was forge an artefact for use in battle. Given how Practice often responds to the intent of its user, it shouldn't be altogether surprising that said artefact will remain dormant until such time as battle is upon the world.

    Of course, when that day does come, well. Amanda's looking forward to it...maybe a little too much.
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    So from a certain perspective Amanda has created a micro-miracle that is micro-miracle that is repeatable under specific circumstances. I wonder if it's worth studying in to see if we can figure out something on the deeper 'will' of Practice.
     
    Simon_Jester said:
    It wouldn't be the first quest I've seen where the protagonist altered themselves to be significantly more, ah, colloquially speaking 'holy,' at the cost of being significantly less human...
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    From my reading the protaganist has altered holiness to become like themselves at the cost of it being more human/less holy.
     
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    The Tale of Snowfire The Not So Wise - Dangerous Miracles
  • Media
    • And here we have the next section of this piece, and the last one for now until someone chooses to burn an Omake coupon on it. Coming to you live from the West Coast of Scotland, looking out into the rain – fortunately I'm inside. As before, be warned of the minor insanity that is my stream-of-thought writing in these sections and be on the lookout for minor infohazards :V

    I'm sure you're all too crazy to need to worry, though. So without further ado, let's get into it.

    Hello, IKEA? I need to buy a cabinet.

    I ended up binging several CK2 quests for mechanics before I finalised this section, before settling on an Ulthuan Quest style dice allocation system. In retrospect this might have been a poor choice, but I also saw it as the one which was most fair to yourselves as the leader of a species preparing for an all-out war for survival in a decade. Limiting your action count for each theatre of government just seemed very wrong with that in mind, and I couldn't really see another system that was suitable. So I just ran with it, despite how bonkers it made some later turn posts due to option bloat.

    But before we could get into that? Amanda needed Ministers to run the various governmental agencies. Although a most of the possibilities I offered to you would have been available in different ways, the questers at that point chose to double down on…I'm not sure I can call them mystery boxes, but let's call them the more unconventional choices in every case. Had the dice not been so kind, a few of those choices could have had severe downsides. Marcus, for example, always had the possibility of being reduced to a single action for a turn if things went poorly. Vega, too, could have turned into a, if not damaging, but difficult drain on your resources if she'd racked up consecutive failures in attempting to form a Miracle.

    And of course, here again the dice rolls in the early quest came back to haunt me. I've mentioned it since then, but there was a relatively high chance that had you not pursued the actions you had, that Mary would have attempted suicide as a teenager. You got to her soon enough that this never came up, and given your focus on the Circles they probably would have been able to stall her collapse into self-loathing, but she'd have been a very different person without Amanda's direct involvement in her life.

    But as it stood, she was there, and no one was going to even try to get in the way of her application to act as your Minister of Science. So you had someone who's even now probably the most brilliant biological member of humanity alive in terms of scientific prowess. I'm not even going to try to count the number of major developments she was involved in during your term as President. But with your cabinet decided, two positions by dice roll, we were ready to begin.

    First Steps

    Your first turn was an excellent start, and yet in some ways almost unexceptional. Your average was high, and you scored a crit success that proved quite helpful in the long run, but the real victory was increasing your action count by so much. There was also very efficient application of Practice dice with reasonable rolls to boost actions that would open up infrastructure expansion with a respective increase to dice count.

    It also revealed the meddling, though not the presence, of the Shiplord subnet in doing what it could to meddle with humanity's development. This wouldn't end up being all that vital, given what was to come, but it did at least open your eyes to the possibility of covert action. If not the source it was coming from.

    Regardless, it was a firm foundation to work from, and you had much more where that was coming from.

    The Proven Miracle

    You second year went by with some rather more interesting development, as you started to delve into whatever was causing you issues within EarthGov administration with both Amanda's charisma and the full capacity of the Ministry of Security. Not all it went as you'd hoped, but you didn't get any catastrophic failures either, so I think you were mostly content at the time.

    You finally gave Lina and the War Office some resources to work with to start building up in preparation for the Tribute Fleet's return, as well as orbital infrastructure and shipyards to support them. Amanda also began making some serious progress towards the foundation that would eventually lead her to Speaking and even beyond. But all of this was window dressing, really, for what the first Interlude of the quest covered.

    The first Miracle I'd ever shown on screen has stuck with me for quite a long time, and showed the true breadth of what Practice could do when fully unleashed upon the world. It also acted as a point of morale that what had once been was not over with the realisation of the coming of conflict. It gave you a base on Mars that was far more than you'd hoped for, access to certain secrets I'd intended to remain hidden for much longer – or permanently. But it also drew attention to Amanda, attention you'd not realised was anywhere near so dangerous, and that would move against you in force in the year to come.

    I'd always planned to have the Subnet involve itself in your Presidency on some level, but never so early. Unfortunately, the act of returning Skylark to existence left me with little choice.

    Kingslayer

    Turn 3 was dominated by the Consequence and Kingslayer interludes, which I posted in swift sequence so as to not make the cliffhanger extend too long. Amanda's experience the previous year in trying to put Practice into words saved her here, that and her natural skill as a Potential of Mending. The shot she took should have killed her, and did have significant consequences, but also opened the door to something that would eventually be a major factor in victory at the Second Battle of Sol.

    The attempted assassination of Amanda Hawk sent the entire star system into a state of high alert, especially when the platforms responsible were deduced to be of cybernetic origin. There was always the possibility that they could have been confused IC for something else, as humanity had reasonably advanced cybernetics at that point, but the Ministry of Security ended up developing exactly what you needed for the next turn in a support for Network based intrigue.

    You also got a second Miracle, with your space elevator, something that was never really mentioned afterwards because it wasn't all that relevant to future actions. If Earth ever does get attacked, though, the fact that the system will pretty much resurrect itself so long as one of its base stations still exists will be a point of note. In addition, the expansion of Mars began, and you also started the search for the Elder's Vault, though that wouldn't be explored until Amanda was fully healed.

    The year came to a close with an awareness of victory, but also (I feel) a considerable awareness of how vulnerable you could be and that there was a very capable enemy out there that you absolutely had to address. As covert wars go, this one would be relatively bloodless, but none of us knew that then.


    This is quite a bit smaller than the one before it, but there's really less to cover in the early turn posts then in the actual into and opening to the quest. Still, I hope this gives you something of a window into how I was working this through in my head as I went, in my own way. If people do want to see more of this, then as I said, you'll need omake coupons. I have enjoyed the process of writing them, though, so I'd definitely not be against doing more. If people want, I can skip forward a bit to a specific area of the quest too, though I wanted to at least get the intro and opening turns done before I offered it.

    @Coda I hope this satisfies your desire to see some of the behind-the-scenes stuff that was going on!
     
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