The Streetwalker's Guide to the Hierarchy
- Thread starter Birdsie
- Start date
[X] Scout the Source
wolfy has conviced me that this is a good course for us to take, and i would like to know more regarding the mechanics of barakah.
so i say lets gamble.
otherwise i would go for
[X] The Erudite's Court
wolfy has conviced me that this is a good course for us to take, and i would like to know more regarding the mechanics of barakah.
so i say lets gamble.
otherwise i would go for
[X] The Erudite's Court
Zampano
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- Location
- Simping for DSB
If Barakah has some kind of disadvantage or balancing effect, we can only really investigate it now; after we gain thousands of fates via Court (or Entrance) we will be fully ensnared in the narrative of the Caliphate.
[X] Scout the Source
Also, I think that Grand Entrance is being misinterpreted:
It is worth considering the implications of "wishcraft" given that Dorian's original magic system is extremely dependent on material access. If the Djinn can provide immediate wealth they may also be able to provide more esoteric reagents for mask crafting as well. The first thing that comes to mind is to ask for a tangible dream object like the "violet grape" that we received from the Marchwarden.
(I do like Erudite Court tho, so I won't complain too much about the early bandwagon)
[X] Scout the Source
Also, I think that Grand Entrance is being misinterpreted:
Dorian will be targeting criminals, essentially. These Djinn are going to be the ones doing stereotypical "monkey's paw" type of absolutely unfair wish interpretation: You ask your GM for a wand of fireballs and get a wand made of fireballs that explodes immediately.
It is worth considering the implications of "wishcraft" given that Dorian's original magic system is extremely dependent on material access. If the Djinn can provide immediate wealth they may also be able to provide more esoteric reagents for mask crafting as well. The first thing that comes to mind is to ask for a tangible dream object like the "violet grape" that we received from the Marchwarden.
(I do like Erudite Court tho, so I won't complain too much about the early bandwagon)
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- Location
- Louisiana
[X] Scout the Source
Sure why not
Sure why not
Rihaku
The Internet
Nah, we can just coil it away.
In general, the meta-level argument is the one I find most compelling for scout the source - "here's an ormulum mystery you want to explore" fits the travelogue purpose of the quest and is unlikely ro be punished by the gm. However, if rolls are involved things could still go quite badly, and we've already risked much with first the Lions fight (almost died) and then Cerebrospinal in order to get to this commanding position. I just don't see Dorian undertaking this venture while his own Barakah is so low as to be a nonentity against Caliph-level threats that might be guarding the relevant secrets here, especially when he has no leads and we dont even know if he would like the Caliph. It's purely a meta level play and the dice would be well in their rights to punish such arrant risk taking, especially multiple times in a row as we've done.
Why would Dorian not acquire some Barakah before trying to scout the source, if that is something he actually finds relevant to his mission of overthrowing Drethir? If there turn out to be heavy downsides to Barakah he can always Coil them away. At least with some Erudite scholar Barakah he would be actually inclined to discover mysteries in the context of the world narrative, and Musurov even more so.
I don't think that we are likely to run into Caliph level threats(unless Dorian being a Visceralist sneaking around ends up with having to face the man itself, but this is unlikely to work out that way even with all destiny stuff around). If people behind Caliph were anywhere near as powerful as he is, he wouldn't be needed. I expect most actual opponents to be in "legendary Djinn" range of 50-100k souls(or to employ such Djinns) which, while overwhelming, should still be in Coil range.
Also from more of a OOC perspective I don't think that result would be "haha, you made a wrong choice! die!" like SV thinks these things usually work out. There will be choices and chances to do tactics on our part. Even with Facelessness thing we had a consolidation vote where we were asked are we really going to shotgun ourselves in the face with pure anti-ego beam. We said yes.
But yeah, for me meta stuff is the main thing here. I think that Court is fine low risk option and I think that Source is fine and fun some to high risk option, but since story is offering the thread more than once, why not pull it? Although I wouldn't mind if Court won instead, just gaining stuff with no fuss is fine too.
Also from more of a OOC perspective I don't think that result would be "haha, you made a wrong choice! die!" like SV thinks these things usually work out. There will be choices and chances to do tactics on our part. Even with Facelessness thing we had a consolidation vote where we were asked are we really going to shotgun ourselves in the face with pure anti-ego beam. We said yes.
But yeah, for me meta stuff is the main thing here. I think that Court is fine low risk option and I think that Source is fine and fun some to high risk option, but since story is offering the thread more than once, why not pull it? Although I wouldn't mind if Court won instead, just gaining stuff with no fuss is fine too.
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I was going over potential failure states and stumbled upon an interesting question. Consider the situation where Caliphate is similar to FMA Amestris. Caliph is akin to Wraith, so fully bought in with the conspiracy despite his limited shelf life, and behind him is a even more powerful being that wants to devour the continent to ascend. In this case, what would we want to do OOC? Would we prefer to have Dorian ignore all of this and just get what utility we can and fuck off before we get entangled with that bullshit, or do we instead want to be a positive even if it might cost us utility or allies or even just lead to us dying?
What do we prefer, utility or ability to bring a positive change? And this is an actual question for you guys, if given a choice to steer Dorian towards just pure gain or a positive change that would prove to be a overall net negative to his power without him realizing it, which one would you prefer?
What do we prefer, utility or ability to bring a positive change? And this is an actual question for you guys, if given a choice to steer Dorian towards just pure gain or a positive change that would prove to be a overall net negative to his power without him realizing it, which one would you prefer?
HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
Except for avoiding risks? And it's not like understanding how it functions doesn't fundamentally improve our ability to make it synergize with things. Maskmaking, for example, is basically a Tinker power.
Unless it's a subtle trap. Or one that protects itself from Dorian's intervention, like the Carelessness that Execration turned out to be.
Frankly, a trillion fates on the enemy side wouldn't necessarily be a big risk, because uncovering their dark secret is more congruent with heroic narratives. I think the risk is more along the lines of us angering someone and getting thrown out.
I was just thinking of FMA - specifically, Von Hohenheim in Xing - as an aesthetic for the lion-themed superhero plan. @Birdsie, is an immortal alchemist aesthetic too conventional to get the full benefit here?
HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
Let's see. Erudite's Court does a fair bit of uplift, and wrenches our Kingship toward more hands-of-a-healer than it's currently going, which seems like a very good idea.
I want to see if we can spread Andrei's magics around, incidentally - at the very least getting Fulminance for ourselves would give us another, hopefully less emotionally-overcharging, route to mental transhumanism. But I think sand and water control would be very valuable for these people, and Fulminance helps a lot with electrical tech. Perhaps we can get some help making a portal back to Demimonde?
But I really don't want to leave Scouting the Source entirely alone. I think we could have Mask do it; that's well-suited to its nature.
However. I also note that @Birdsie thought we could get a lot of value from becoming a doctor by day and a superhero by night. So here's a more colourfully-formatted version of @Acolyte's plan; I hope it preserves the original spirit.
[X] Plan Mysterious Masked Hero
-[X] By Day: The Erudite's Court
-[X] By Night: Fight Crime and Investigate the Government
Probably everyone acts as default for the Erudite's Court by day, with the possible exception of the Lions. Use Dorian's best judgement as to whether they're better kept as a nocturnal mystery.
By night, FIGHT CRIME. The lions get bandana-Masks, probably; if they're specifically focused on keeping their identities secret from non-allies and nothing else, it's entirely plausible (and very funny) for them to be public bodyguards by day and also unidentified lion-heroes by night.
While crimefighting, look for hints of crime or conspiracy that can be traced back to the government.
More specific tactics:
*Craft a teacher's, electrician's, or technologist's mask for Andrei's uplift project. The Taurean, if nothing better comes to mind.
*Make a forensic detective mask, for investigation. The Midnight Oracle may be enough here, but something with tracking and postcognition would be better, and we can have different teammates wearing different things.
*Make sure everyone has radio earpieces; the Hammer can add this functionality to the Earbuds if they don't already have it.
*Consider carrying the entire stall with the miniaturist's mask and setting up in a circuit through the city, both easing access for the disabled and not needing to defend it as heavily while crimefighting. Dorian has a better idea of the situation on the ground than I do.
*Do get sleep; Viscerality and Arcanism should be able to reduce the need for it by several hours, but going fully without seems bad for Dreamlessness at minimum and probably for judgement in general. Also, most criminals sleep too.
I want to see if we can spread Andrei's magics around, incidentally - at the very least getting Fulminance for ourselves would give us another, hopefully less emotionally-overcharging, route to mental transhumanism. But I think sand and water control would be very valuable for these people, and Fulminance helps a lot with electrical tech. Perhaps we can get some help making a portal back to Demimonde?
But I really don't want to leave Scouting the Source entirely alone. I think we could have Mask do it; that's well-suited to its nature.
However. I also note that @Birdsie thought we could get a lot of value from becoming a doctor by day and a superhero by night. So here's a more colourfully-formatted version of @Acolyte's plan; I hope it preserves the original spirit.
[X] Plan Mysterious Masked Hero
-[X] By Day: The Erudite's Court
-[X] By Night: Fight Crime and Investigate the Government
Probably everyone acts as default for the Erudite's Court by day, with the possible exception of the Lions. Use Dorian's best judgement as to whether they're better kept as a nocturnal mystery.
By night, FIGHT CRIME. The lions get bandana-Masks, probably; if they're specifically focused on keeping their identities secret from non-allies and nothing else, it's entirely plausible (and very funny) for them to be public bodyguards by day and also unidentified lion-heroes by night.
While crimefighting, look for hints of crime or conspiracy that can be traced back to the government.
More specific tactics:
*Craft a teacher's, electrician's, or technologist's mask for Andrei's uplift project. The Taurean, if nothing better comes to mind.
*Make a forensic detective mask, for investigation. The Midnight Oracle may be enough here, but something with tracking and postcognition would be better, and we can have different teammates wearing different things.
*Make sure everyone has radio earpieces; the Hammer can add this functionality to the Earbuds if they don't already have it.
*Consider carrying the entire stall with the miniaturist's mask and setting up in a circuit through the city, both easing access for the disabled and not needing to defend it as heavily while crimefighting. Dorian has a better idea of the situation on the ground than I do.
*Do get sleep; Viscerality and Arcanism should be able to reduce the need for it by several hours, but going fully without seems bad for Dreamlessness at minimum and probably for judgement in general. Also, most criminals sleep too.
[X] The Erudite's Court
HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
I can sort of see that. If you have any insight on how it's broken, that would be useful too. (My best guess is a combination of color scheme and lack of clear thematic focus? Maybe it should have us be mysterious healers of the sick during the day, not really charging money but asking for rumors.)
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HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
Man, thread discussion seems dead this vote. The vote literally specified that we could do multiple options if we could present a reasonable way to combine them! It was specified in the previous threadmark, true, but the most recent threadmark was a consolidation.
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- 1
counterpoint- from discord, we have this quote:
If Barakah is narratively neutral, we need to consider not just whether our (hypothetically Heroic) narrative wants to uncover dark secrets, but also whether the enemy's narrative (perhaps evil-conspiracy-laden? Perhaps taking a responsibilities-of-a-ruler approach?) wants them to be discovered! We don't get a type advantage just because heroes are a common narrative out here in real life. According to an evil-conspiracy narrative, the narratively-fitting result is that they learn about our investigation, then have to either deflect us through the classic implausibly wide conspiratorial control of everything in the nation, or kill us; the latter, if we're not powerful and important enough to make them really pay attention and form a proper antagonist. Against a responsibilities of a ruler approach, something similar happens- we are killed to protect the nation from unrest.
If they have a trillion fates, I'd imagine their narrative expectations would only weigh all the more strongly, and ours nearly not at all- rather than care about what our story says, we care about what we look like from their perspective, and how that affects what they might do. (This is one thing the night crime-fighter plan does well at-the conspiracy narrative may want to kill the mysterious-folk-hero-crime-fighter, but the cached perspective at least says they struggle with that rather than do so perfunctorily. A responsibilities-of-a-ruler approach will still kill the folk hero but mayyybe try to convince them with words first.).. Obviously, they don't have a trillion fates, but this applies as well to a lesser degree when it comes to less-fated-but-still-impressive people we'll actually encounter, if we don't build our Barakah up heavily first.
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HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
Ah, Discord. My nemesis, not by choice but by the brutal nature of the incentive structures we find ourselves in.
This makes excellent sense, so I think the way to go if we want maximum gains here is to not charge for healing but rather to ask for rumors of evil to fight (though we can probably accept favors in limited fashion).
New formulation; I really hope people are still watching enough to switch if they like it. (Approval voting's fine!)
[X] Plan Wandering Sage
-Travel the city, healing the sick, the lame, the blind, and so forth. Do not charge, prompt donations, or accept donations the donor can't afford. Do ask for information: others to heal, curses and malevolent hauntings to resolve, crime the watch won't or can't deal with, what the city's like, what the government is like, why they think the Caliph is cursed, the circumstances of the moirometer's invention, and so forth.
-Make healer's masks for the local doctors; it's better for the people if the healing isn't fully dependent on your continued attention, and it's better for our legend if our contribution lasts. Ideally these should promise healing to all who have need, even those without capacity to pay; if this can be made a part of the masks themselves, it would be preferable.
What's there to talk about? Court is no risk feel good you just gain stuff option. Sure it might not get the Caliph blessing and it might not uncover shit, but ultimately our overall urgency level is very low so getting low reward option is fine. You could make the argument that taking the easy road now would make Surirah conquest harder, but again we lack urgency so that argument wouldn't do much.
And yeah we can do whatever, but that also means that we are ironically limited because as "do whatever" directly translates into "whatever GM actually wants you to do" at which point you are better off just kicking back and letting your character do the thinking for you.
Although it might be good to try and push? If we go for the Source and manage to get all we want out of it(most notably true favor of Caliph), we will be empowered to conquer Surirah faster which in turn might mean opportunity to either conquer Thadirayat(which should yield major Viscerality gains, and Viscerality is pretty good) or delve deep into Sijiin(basically Lovecraft shit). While we have opportunity to just kick back and enjoy Promenade without worrying too much, it is also a great opportunity to go hard if we want. Why not take it?
HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
Well, part of it is that it's a choice of narrative as well as tactics. I want to uncover the mysteries here! But I also want the Kind Red King to not be a deeply ironic title.
Though I got the impression that title is purely a result of the Somber fuckery that happened, as it's reflected in the new theater/brother mask, and the barakah blessing of kindness seemed to appear at the same time and is specifically about "putting on masks literal and metaphorical".. and given it's specifically the Kind Red King's Countenance it might actually imply that it's some kind of deception at heart (as the forgiveness was also just 'playing along' with the Somber effect)
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I wonder if we could play with Musurov's powers a bit. Use Coil to transform the least useful one(probably water one) into Barakah manipulation power for example.
I'd really like we we could upgrade Arcanist into generic meta magic mask(similar to how Glass was) so Jephris can become generic magic/mystic girl, to contrast technologically focused Musurov.
Also if Barakah measuring devices is semi-common, we might get one and hammer it into our earbuds to improve its ability to understand Barakah. Maybe?
I'd really like we we could upgrade Arcanist into generic meta magic mask(similar to how Glass was) so Jephris can become generic magic/mystic girl, to contrast technologically focused Musurov.
Also if Barakah measuring devices is semi-common, we might get one and hammer it into our earbuds to improve its ability to understand Barakah. Maybe?
HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
I think it would be easier to turn them into General Weather Control or General Psionics. We should definitely look into getting him full Mentalism, anyway.
Hmm. I think it's more like Mad Scientist (Morozov), Royal Wizard (Japhris), Court Jester (Mask), Royal Herald (Linneas), and Lions (Lions).
@Birdsie, I would really like us to have a vote on what to do with the Arcanist soon. And several other tinkering things, but especially that one. Probably we could use it to boost the Artificer's Face to the 70-point level, for example?
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