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Wormwood (A Worm/Pact Quest)

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asdfasdf said:



at this point with few votes and us not knowing enough about how this story is going to work to actually choose anything yet(that'll change once you get into the swing)you should just write what you want to/what makes sense to keep it moving. if you don't do something you risk this dying on you and I like this. quests always have this problem with a slow start too. need readers to be active, need to be active to get readers.

this is why I don't like quests, the authors always seem trapped by them. too dependent on readers choosing something the author can/wants to work with, never understood their point really. from the small bits existing you seem to write this well enough you don't really need us for inspiration so it can't be that...?

and then theres the transparency issue all quests have. I mean so far most of the votes are people who keep copy/pasting the magic thing even though you say in the comments that we can't actually do that.(quests seem to run into bandwagon problems fairly readily) blake would know what was possible so we're mostly just introducing user error and a bit of out of context knowledge to skew things.
(or for an example from another angle: how the first choice had us totally blind to what it meant and felt left to random guessing beyond what that would be from our character(for example I thought we were choosing our companions not ourself(and picked evan+greeneyes over rose) and the bonzi..how would we know that meant a guardian alt continuity blake?(i'd have guessed it'd throw us in with that hostile book girl before figuring that. part of a batch of bogymen)
why would the fallen accidentally succeed in summoning us? i'd have guessed adapts either way and expected the symbolism involved to just change their reactions to it actually working.) not a criticism on you so much as on the system in general

(and the other problem...hopefully you get the right handful of starting readers or they'll badger you into something dumb(usually involving convoluted shipping and turning every single character into a lesbian harem regardless of plot, personality, species, gender, or established orientation) which either leads to author abandonment or is desperately accepted to keep the story alive. luckily you managed to avoid being infested for now ;))

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honestly it ...seems really dumb of epoch to not explain shit and ask you to fight just now...he seems to have read some version of pact somewhere? too many of blakes fights played for keeps to just tell him "we're under attack" and throw him into it blind.

I'd pick interference since blake doesn't know enough to do anything else and have it end well. (then again thats never stopped him before...especially towards the end. but hes not stupid and the blitz choice risks flanderizing him, he's been careful too.)

nothing to write in for that other than maybe demanding additional info along the way...but i don't want to get this story bogged down in another choice so soon.

[X] Run interference. Epoch can get his Circle out, if you provide the opportunity. Stay with Tarfeather and Ariel. Distract the opposition and prevent them from stopping Epoch.
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and to help with the other votes:

if you go with charge in I'd take evan for the escape talents but leave greeneyes since she doesn't really have good non lethal options by the point her acid skin gets mentioned strike that, it specifically says that would go badly in her description. we'll just have to ask her to stay back and only fight when she has to(speaking of which somebody had better mention something about the machete of ruin we're just casually asked for being a problem) and your clarification post has them telling us they don't want to kill the wards. but out of context knowledge says that firebird master guy is there and skitters been popping pigeons before they could explode which could go badly for....everyone. :/ better leave him here

for sneaking...how exactly does going in through the roof or basement even work physically? we don't fly or teleport. and why would approaching from the back help? its not like they're expecting reinforcements from a specific place or they'd be attacking there too. that option's sub choices just confuse me :)
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WE know that but 'we' don't. the adapts might but nobody thought to tell us that and they seem to assume we're better at this than them and will follow our lead.
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EDIT

oh, nevermind then. somehow i missed a page. just ignore all that
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The only part of that I need to ignore is the vote. The rest of it was well thought out and insightful. I appreciate the criticism and I'll go ahead and give a couple of points for the excellent analysis/nitpicks.
 
Alright. Status update.
The next chapter is written and just needs to be edited. If anyone is willing to beta, I'm all-too-happy to take the assistance. Either way, it should be up in the next couple days.

As for the scavenger hunt, it was so close that I'm going to go ahead and announce...
3 Winners!
Congratulations to @asdfasdf, @NemoMarx, and @devas. The spirits are pleased!
Prize-wise, you each get to ask one question that I promise - to the best of my ability - to answer truthfully. (As the technical winner, @devas gets to ask two.)
 
NemoMarx said:
How did the adepts get the text they used to call us up?
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They stole it.

Moving on-
What? That's not good enough? Fine.

There was a certain parahuman in Denmark, with a power somewhat similar to Clairvoyant's. She triggered about fifteen years ago and freelanced briefly as The Visionary. Her career wasn't very long, and the parahuman soon quit, finding the work unsatisfactory. She tried to return to a normal job, abandoning her powers, but that...
Didn't work.
The Visionary continued to help the Danish government with various crises, giving information on hostage takers, finding kidnapped children, searching through rubble for survivors, etc.
But even still she felt unfulfilled, so she turned her Gaze outwards.
And she found worlds to explore. Worlds that she could then in turn share with her own world. All went swimmingly, and she finally felt happy with life - at least until she committed suicide after getting too invested in the wrong story.
Before she died, she wrote many books - some familiar to us, some unique - based on the tales she glimpsed in other worlds. They weren't bestsellers (The Visionary wasn't a very good writer, all told) but most agreed that the plots were solid. One of these stories was that of Maggie Holt. The actual series is... different from Pact, though hints of truth leak through.
Those hints of truth were one of the things that inspired Epoch, Wyrd, and Thistle back when they were just starting the Adepts. It was somewhat difficult, but they managed to steal The Visionary's notes on what she witnessed - from the 'perspective' of Mags/Maggie. That's the First Text.
 
Wasn't Maggie Holt a huge bestseller in canon Worm? I remember it being described as Worm's Harry Potter.

edit - I am corrected below. My mistake.
 
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tricholysis said:
Wasn't Maggie Holt a huge bestseller in canon Worm? I remember it being described as Worm's Harry Potter.
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It's mentioned in canon, people discuss it, but we don't have any real idea of popularity, other than one of the wards (Vista?) reading it.

So it could be some niche title. It's probable it's the Harry Potter equivalent or close to it, although it didn't get a (mentioned) movie and that would imply it wasn't as much of a popular work as HP.
 
NemoMarx said:
It's mentioned in canon, people discuss it, but we don't have any real idea of popularity, other than one of the wards (Vista?) reading it.

So it could be some niche title. It's probable it's the Harry Potter equivalent or close to it, although it didn't get a (mentioned) movie and that would imply it wasn't as much of a popular work as HP.
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In this Quest, it's fairly popular, but too dark (and wordy of the stilted) to be Harry Potter popular.
It's closer to Dresden Files really.
 
Mithrandir said:
Prize-wise, you each get to ask one question that I promise - to the best of my ability - to answer truthfully.
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I don't actually know what I should ask.

Mainly because I don't know what has already been established and I'm afraid of retreading known ground.

Also, I'm somewhat unfamiliar with Pact (although I'm keeping up with Twig-which I heartily recommend-and on the second to last arc of Worm).

I guess for now I'll ask one of my question: is Magic an Out of Context Problem for Entities, Precog and so on*? If not so, meaning Magic has already been encountered and understood by Entities, are there any powers which interact with it directly (i.e. Power-on-Magic interaction instead of Magic-on-Power interaction, which we already know can happen).

*actually, this is more me begging you to not make Magic a special snowflake Precog-proofing spackle, like I've seen far, far too many fics do.
Seriously, why everybody and their Mother thinks that neutering Contessa & Ziz and busting open Dinah's skull (and, in especially egregious versions, Lisa's) is a good mystifies me.
Why waste a chance to figure out the implications of things? Bah.
 
devas said:
*actually, this is more me begging you to not make Magic a special snowflake Precog-proofing spackle, like I've seen far, far too many fics do.
Seriously, why everybody and their Mother thinks that neutering Contessa & Ziz and busting open Dinah's skull (and, in especially egregious versions, Lisa's) is a good mystifies me.
Why waste a chance to figure out the implications of things? Bah.
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This would require the shards to quantify magic first. Which is... Well. If they could do that then the cycle wouldn't really be a thing.
 
chocolote12 said:
This would require the shards to quantify magic first. Which is... Well. If they could do that then the cycle wouldn't really be a thing.
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There's compromises. Maybe they've observed it, understand what the magic does, but can't replicate it. Or like, they've observed practitioners, but not the spirits, so they're really bad at copying it (and magic systems are different on each planet subtly, so the shards don't build up as much useful info as they'd like.)
 
devas said:
I don't actually know what I should ask.

Mainly because I don't know what has already been established and I'm afraid of retreading known ground.

Also, I'm somewhat unfamiliar with Pact (although I'm keeping up with Twig-which I heartily recommend-and on the second to last arc of Worm).

I guess for now I'll ask one of my question: is Magic an Out of Context Problem for Entities, Precog and so on*? If not so, meaning Magic has already been encountered and understood by Entities, are there any powers which interact with it directly (i.e. Power-on-Magic interaction instead of Magic-on-Power interaction, which we already know can happen).

*actually, this is more me begging you to not make Magic a special snowflake Precog-proofing spackle, like I've seen far, far too many fics do.
Seriously, why everybody and their Mother thinks that neutering Contessa & Ziz and busting open Dinah's skull (and, in especially egregious versions, Lisa's) is a good mystifies me.
Why waste a chance to figure out the implications of things? Bah.
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Is Magic an Out of Context Problem? In a way, yes. They've never run into Pact-verse Magic.
But, there's some nuances.
I can confirm that Magic is not immune to precognition. You haven't derailed Contessa merely by existing, the Simurgh can definitely see you, Dinah's as fine as can be expected, and Tattletale would get weird readings off you (what else is new?).
The Entities can't really see the spirits, but they don't need to. Just like a practitioner might see a curse as an anchor dragging on the cursed one's connections, an Entity might see the cursed one as altering the atomic spin of atoms around him in a detrimental way.
Magic can affect Science, and Science can affect Magic, and each can murder the other.
As a final thought, though, you could theoretically break the connection between you and various Shards...
 
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Mithrandir said:
But, there's some nuances.
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I've thought of what to ask for my second question! :)
(And I've gone through the whole thread (thank god it's still short-ish) and checked that it hadn't been asked yet)

Is Myrddin a wizard? By that I mean, do groups aside from the Adepts already know magic, and might there be magic users (or beast, or incarnations) around masquerading as capes?

It would be fun if Skitter had inadvertently kicked the ass of an actual dragon, at the start of her career.
 
devas said:
I've thought of what to ask for my second question! :)
(And I've gone through the whole thread (thank god it's still short-ish) and checked that it hadn't been asked yet)

Is Myrddin a wizard? By that I mean, do groups aside from the Adepts already know magic, and might there be magic users (or beast, or incarnations) around masquerading as capes?

It would be fun if Skitter had inadvertently kicked the ass of an actual dragon, at the start of her career.
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I'll try to answer this a bit more in-depth later (I'm currently experiencing computer difficulties - this is on my mobile) but... yes and no.
This is not a fusion, but the spirits do exist, even if they never got organized in this world.
In other news, the next chapter - which I had planned to put out tomorrow - has been delayed due to aforementioned technicsl problems. Shouldn't be more than another week, tops.
 
Two bits of good news: my computer is back up (so I'm editing), and Wormwood now has a Banner!

Anyway, to finish answering your question, Myrddin was not technically a wizard. More on that in a moment.
There's still spirits around in the world of Worm, they just... well they never got off the ground very far from the supernatural side of things. They never coalesced or formed the habit of inhabiting beings. There is no Seal of Suleiman bin Daoud, no system of and Others (as you know them) are quite rare. Rare enough that the number of them masquerading as capes approaches zero (not all of them would have the motivation to do so anyway). Lung may be a dragon, but he's hardly a dragon.
There are a few ghosts around, sure, but less then you would expect; most fade pretty quickly, too.
There's no bogeymen, no faeries, no goblins - as you know them. What few Incarnations exist are weak and largely passive. The Abyss never came into contact with Worm, and it has no resident Angels or Demons.
Myrddin started out as a normal cape, but his obsession with being a wizard led to some strange habits. Habits which - in time - led to him gaining a bit of wizardry, which was a big reason for his versatility.

Now I believe that only @asdfasdf has their question left - though they may choose to save it for later.
 
I wonder if Myrddin suddenly wizarding was taken as some sort of expansion of his parahuman powers? Capes don't grow like that unless it's explicitly part of their powerset. Maybe it's just smaller, more subtle stuff, though, like cutting connections to lose people.
 
Myrddin's powerset was already complicated. Opening a few new options - several of which only modified his existing abilities - didn't make headlines.
 
Oh, hey, this quest looks interesting.

We should eat Hero's ghost. Well...eat may be the wrong word here. We should make an deal with his ghost. Power for (eventually) getting rid of the Endbringers.
 
Ridiculously Average Guy said:
We should eat Hero's ghost. Well...eat may be the wrong word here. We should make an deal with his ghost. Power for (eventually) getting rid of the Endbringers.
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I think for a bogeyman, eat is the correct thematic for absorbing a ghosts power.

But he'll end up as a bird in our chest, so it's not too bad. Probably a really cool bird, too!
 
Bound together by shared promises, bound together by shared friends, the way we go about this shared battle will potentially be key.
 
I have no clue what Pact is but damn this captured me. The moment my exams are over I need to really get into this, sounds amazing. Watched.
 
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