Birdsie has given us a substantial amount of Discord information on the Absurdity pill, and it sounds extremely promising:
"(The characters may have) Significantly to extremely higher (power level) than your own at the moment; somewhat higher, even if you took a very good combo of options here aimed at enhancing immediate power.
That said, there are some caveats. You cannot wholesale invent a fictional character from nowhere, as seen in cases of people trying to monkey around in that fashion in the past; it must have an established identity as a character. It should be kept in mind you'll mostly be constrained to characters from Drethiri fiction, as that's most of what Dorian has consumed. This can include fairy tales (The Mask That Had No Name, the Mask Hydra and the Maidens,) or more "modern" novels, as well as vague awareness of characters you've picked up on the Street.
This doesn't work on real or historical characters unless a version of them exists in a sufficiently fictional account. Jesus Christ would only be summonable if you were from a world where the vast majority of people believed he's fictional; if from a world of faithful Christians, this wouldn't work.
If Dorian were from Earth, he could consume Absurdity to summon a weaker Superman, but not Elon Musk. He could summon Black Adam from the 2022 movie, identical in every fashion to that movie's portrayal of that character, but not summon Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson."
He has also confirmed that Dorian knows of characters with the requisite power level, versatility and agreeableness to effectively maximize the value of the Absurdity pill, aided in part by the pill naturally influencing its creations to be positively disposed to its ingestor. Given these disclaimers, Absurdity seems like absurdly good value, and unambiguously the strongest option for our upcoming Somber fight.
[X] Plan Absurdity
-[X] Take Absurdity, New Soldat-Stero; save one Cures to Cancer and two Chill Pills [-16,999]
-[X] Take the X-Ray Vision Pill [+2000]
-[X] If Linneas can think of any fictional characters from his world with the requisite combination of versatility, power and benevolence, have him tell Dorian their stories to expand our potential remit. We are especially interested in powerful archmages, clerics, or others that are both cooperative and have potent spiritual healing and buffing abilities
-[X] Use the following safety procedures for the X-Ray vision pill: if Dorian's Absurdity choice has super-healing or defensive buffing effects, take Absurdity first, then wear Crimson Lost and have Linneas encourage your fortitude and regenerative powers while the Absurdity creation buffs you. Only then ingest the X-Ray vision pill. If Dorian's Absurdity choice lacks such versatility, take New-Soldat-Stero, then X-Ray Vision, then Absurdity. Briefly brainstorm with Linneas on ways to use the Chill Pill to mitigate the X-Ray Vision Pill, wearing Theatre Child during that time. Some potential solutions might be: simply consuming a Chill Pill beforehand; merging a Chill Pill with New Soldat-Stero via the Hammer to grant New Soldat-Stero the 'fire resistance' attribute at super-soldier magnitude; merging a Chill Pill with a mask that produces an aura of Combustion Resistance which Linneas or the Absurdity creation wear while we take the X-Ray Pill; merging both Chill Pills with Crimson Lost before we wear it, etc. The players aren't specifically versed on what the Hammer can create or how but hopefully one of the above tactics will have outsized impact compared to the Chill Pill alone. Perhaps Dorian can divine such outcomes via a hastily constructed Screentime while Linneas hypes him.
-Consider if merging the shards of the Arcanist with Absurdity (or with the Mask itself) might allow us to give the Mask With No Name Japhris' prior Arcanist powers without the downsides of Fixation. Arcanist's still an 80+ Potential Mask, after all. Or maybe we can merge a Chill Pill with the Arcanist to make a chill version of the Arcanist that is much less intense and potentially dangerous. Or perhaps even merge a Cure For Cancer with the Arcanist to excise its unnatural mental influence aspect and prevent its influence from continuing to metastasize... the Hammer's supposed to merge according to our intentions; it's just unclear how literal versus metaphorical such merges can be. The characters would have experimented with it and know.
-[X] If Dorian and Linneas think it's a good idea, have one of them take Silver Edge in order to do some of the experiments from plan Science and Knuckles they think are promising. This would mostly be the case if one of the following are true:
*Merging two Chill Pills with the Hammer produces a linearly stacking or superlinear stacking effect, or at the very least is >150% as good as a single Chill Pill
*Dorian can test this by fusing the merged Chill Pill with a Mask and wearing the Mask to evaluate it, or by creating a crappy Screentime Mask, predicting results
*If they let us take free Drawback pills without consuming them, we could use those as experimental materials as well
No longer constrained by the disappointing harridans of this material realm; now all fiction will be our canvas.
Dorian Croft... shall make anime real.
