14 KiB
[RT] Worth the Candle Chapter 26-27
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Author: u/OrangeBasket *
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URL: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11478249/chapters/26963748
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Score: 69
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Created: 2017-08-28T07:27:14
Post:
Comments:
u/josephwdye [+10] I love you (5 hours later)
The perfect way to start a day!
u/Ceins [+8] (9 hours later)
I find it quite arbitrary that leveling up won't cure the bone condition. Though thinking about it, has a lvl up ever cured any magical condition ?
u/Decht [+11] (13 hours later)
I think the closest he's come is when he levelled up on entering Silmar City, which cured the rat rot. That probably doesn't count as magical, though.
However, a level up did fully replace the parts of his fingers (including the bones) that were cut off by the thaum-seeker. Maybe he could solve his current problem by removing all of the drained bones prior to a level up?
u/696e6372656469626c65 [+3] I think, therefore I am pretentious. (15 hours later)
On the other hand, it's possible that the new bones he gets will still be drained.
u/Kuratius [+6] (18 hours later)
Cut off finger, drain finger bone, check what happens after level-up.
u/gommm [+8] (a day later)
Maybe if he hadn't gone to Kindly Bones, leveling up would have cured it. But he went there and put himself in position of having a new quest hook reminding the DM about it and giving him ideas.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+6] Fruit flies like a banana (a day later)
This will be explained in much detail later on.
u/nytelios [+6] (13 hours later)
Iirc the only affliction that didn't go away was Cowardice. So that might imply magical + mental effects won't be cured.
u/PM_ME_CUTE_FOXES [+1] (16 hours later)
It could just be that leveling doesn't cure major conditions i.e. missing an arm.
Drained bones is pretty major, considering they're a lifelong affliction and no one knows how to fix them.
u/Kuratius [+4] (18 hours later)
So are missing fingers.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (9 hours later)
Now I imagine Jun being a zombie and killing droplings. And when he bites one of them he levels, gets cured, only to be bitten again the next instant :D
u/None [+7] (6 hours later)
[deleted]
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+5] Fruit flies like a banana (12 hours later)
I am in Central Time Zone and usually post between midnight and 2 a.m. As the summary says though, the update schedule is basically "when I feel like it".
u/eternal-potato [+7] he who vegetates (13 hours later)
That's UTC-6:00 for everybody who isn't from the default country.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+7] Mouse Army (6 hours later)
That’s the real kicker there, the one that would make a true, serious conversation about ‘feelings’ painful for me and awkward for you, if we just laid everything out there like dwarves.”
Implications abound.
u/None [+9] (6 hours later)
[deleted]
u/alexanderwales [+15] Time flies like an arrow (12 hours later)
It's actually a 0 to 9 scale. A neat psychology trick is that people will answer 1 more readily than 0, even if they mean the same thing. Using a zero-based scale is useful if you want to coerce a certain answer. I believe Alfred Kinsey got flak for this because he used a 0-6 scale for heterosexual and homosexual preference.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+11] Mouse Army (6 hours later)
Yes. Fenn is having waayyyyyy to much fun with the gamifiction.
"Now flatter my tongue!". "Did that make my loyality go up?"
u/MolochHASME [+6] (23 hours later)
My current hypothesis is that the character sheet is actually some kind of soul magic.
There's haven't been any mention of soul mages. But since they are used for fuel and other stuff. I think if they exist it's week evidence that I'm right. If I'm right, encountering soul mages would be dangerous as they could probably spoof the loyalty points.
u/Calsem [+4] (21 hours later)
It's a bit worrying how nonchalant Joon is about killing people. The world may be a game, but it is one where the lives at stake are very very real.
Fenn makes a good point in that regard:
“Killing that gold mage is not our end goal. I know that’s probably the best path you to get another level up, and gods help us that might be necessary, but the thing we are actually trying to accomplish is getting Amaryllis back to us.”
Though she assumes killing is necessary for leveling up - but is that true? I would bet that Joon gets xp gain from winning diplomatic encounters as well.
u/Calsem [+3] (17 hours later)
Man I love this update schedule. Finished the entire story sunday and already have two more chapters to go through.
u/Kuratius [+4] (23 hours later)
After very careful consideration, and assuming no one is made to hold the idiot ball, the inevitable conclusion is that what the skin mage did is a retcon by the DM.
The other option would be that the skin mage is holding the idiot ball for plot convenience, which makes this part of the fic non-rational.
u/None [+12] (a day later)
I think there's a very big difference between "this plan is stupid" and "this plan is so stupid that it would have required the equivalent of divine intervention". People make the reputation/money trade-off all the time, especially against unsuspecting customers, and I have to think that was even more true in a time when there was no internet and reputation was more purely word of mouth.
His plan didn't even necessarily have to be "I'm going to extort you", it could have been "I am going to charge you for fixing this thing", which is what crooked car mechanics often do. The first thing that he did was say that he would have to look at the tattoo; he's badly off-script by the time he gets punched in the stomach, and I don't think he'd have to reveal that he fucked them, just that this is a problem only he can fix, mixed with a complex explanation about skin magic he could make up on the spot.
At any rate, I think there's enough information to maybe conclude that the plan wasn't particularly smart, but I don't think it's so not smart that you have to say that this only happened because god did it.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+6] Fruit flies like a banana (2 days later)
I like this explanation and have edited the chapter somewhat to incorporate it.
u/Kuratius [+2] (a day later)
His plan didn't even necessarily have to be "I'm going to extort you", it could have been "I am going to charge you for fixing this thing", which is what crooked car mechanics often do. The first thing that he did was say that he would have to look at the tattoo; he's badly off-script by the time he gets punched in the stomach, and I don't think he'd have to reveal that he fucked them, just that this is a problem only he can fix, mixed with a complex explanation about skin magic he could make up on the spot.
That's the best valid argument from anyone here that actually makes sense for the context he's operating in.
There's still a risk that they would have forced him to fix it for free (he botched the work after all, so the plan is still not very smart), but in your case his scheme might actually have been sustainable.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (a day later)
After very careful consideration, and assuming no one is made to hold the idiot ball, the inevitable conclusion is that what the skin mage did is a retcon by the DM.
Can you explain how you came to this conclusion?
u/crusher_bob [+3] (a day later)
Because the skin mage doesn't seem to have any defense against them walking in off the street, beating him up, and taking his stuff. And given his actions, that's exactly the consequence he should have expected.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+7] Fruit flies like a banana (a day later)
The tattoo mage did have access to not-insignificant magic in his skin.
If it helps, imagine it as a 5th level wizard trying to pull one over on what he thinks are probably commoners, only to have them come back and be much stronger than he had expected them to be, maybe a pair of 7th level characters, and found himself more scared by the prospect than he thought he would be.
And once all that's going on, he has access to magic, but that magic is an escalation, and they've already revealed that they are strong, fast, and have magic items, plus they seem really willing to straight up kill him. So using the magic of his tattoos is actually not a great idea, because it's likely to result in a full-on battle in his shop, one that he no longer thinks that he would win, especially because they're acting really unconcerned about it.
u/Kuratius [+1] (a day later)
It doesn't matter if they are commoners. The damage to his reputation alone should be enough to curb this behavior in the bud because it will create unfavorable situations for him. He lives in a city trying to do business, not in a lone hut away from civilization.
Right now the more favorable theory is a third actor that was forcing him to do it, but that third actor wouldn't have any motivation (excluding the DM), so it all falls apart.
u/eternal-potato [+7] he who vegetates (a day later)
He said he was trying to scrape up enough money to leave Barren Jewel permanently. If he believed that this extortion was one of the last few things he had to do to finally get enough to buy a teleport then his reputation is of no concern.
u/Kuratius [+2] (a day later)
I don't think that is a convincing argument for extortion. You need to add additional conditions like his escape being time sensitive etc. and make more and more excuses for why he didn't choose other options available to him. Purporting an extreme amount of time-sensitiveness means that they would have been one of his last customers. Therefore his best option would have been to extort them right after making the tattoo.
As it is, the story shows that he is still receiving customers and doing other work, not to mention he could never know when, if ever, they would actually try to retrieve the box from the tattoo. It could have happened a month from now and he would not have gotten shit for this effort if his escape is truly imminent. It could have happened a week from now and then he'd have at least 3 weeks to spend with a ruined reputation.
The tattoo mage is either an idiot or there's another factor at play, which I am calling "the DM".
u/LordOfCatnip [+1] (a day later)
ruined reputation
How would the tattoo mage's other customers find out about the attempted extortion?
or there's another factor at play, which I am calling "the DM".
That's not mutually exclusive with other options. A good DM would keep in-game events plausible, so there has to be an explanation for what happened, even if on some level it happened for game/story reasons.
u/Kuratius [+1] (a day later)
How would the tattoo mage's other customers find out about the attempted extortion?
Trivial examples include barging into his shop while he is serving a customer as has happened in the story already. Another one is telling people about it; word of mouth was clearly good enough to get them referred to him.
You have a lot of options there, and rival shops might even help you.
Ultimately, no amount of rationalizing makes his actions any less implausible.
That's not mutually exclusive with other options. A good DM would keep in-game events plausible, so there has to be an explanation for what happened, even if on some level it happened for game/story reasons.
The umbrella category is an entity whose powers and knowledge and motives essentially make them some kind of DM, even if that entity is the gamification system itself.
There isn't any way to save the tattoo mage's plan. It's just plain stupid.
u/696e6372656469626c65 [+3] I think, therefore I am pretentious. (a day later)
If Zeke's plan had gone correctly (i.e. if Amaryllis' party hadn't turned out to be an unexpectedly strong group of adventurers), he would have had a considerable degree of leverage over them. They can't afford to retaliate as long as he has control over the tattoo, so going and blabbing about extortion isn't an option from their perspective. If they wanted the teleportation key back, they would have had no choice but to give in to his demands, and it doesn't matter what they say about him afterward if he leaves Barren Jewel immediately after receiving the money.
This incidentally also provides sufficient justification for why he didn't extort them immediately after finishing the tattoo: he didn't need to. Without knowing exactly how powerful Amaryllis' party was, he had no reason to believe that they could just barge back into his shop and threaten him the way he did, which meant that he was free to make his demands at whatever time he considered most convenient. At this point, we could postulate a number of reasons why "immediately" wasn't the most convenient time... but that's largely irrelevant to the main point, which is that in Zeke's mind, this was a risk-free venture--once he completed the tattoo, he could do pretty much whatever he wanted from that point up until he gave them the code word, and there wasn't a thing anyone in Amaryllis' party could have done about it.
u/Kuratius [+0] (a day later)
Yup, that about sums it up.
u/PanickedApricott [+1] (a day later)
Is there such a thing as soul mages?
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (2 days later)
Yes, but I'm not sure that I mean the same thing as you when I say soul mage. They've been mentioned twice so far.
u/PanickedApricott [+1] (2 days later)
someone who works with souls or can otherwise gain power from souls. Perhaps even modify someones soul.