115 KiB
[RT] Worth the Candle, ch 105-107 (Notes/Warder/Beast) (Start Book VI)
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Author: u/cthulhuraejepsen Fruit flies like a banana*
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URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11478249/chapters/34742762
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Score: 200
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Created: 2018-06-20T23:14:25
Post:
Comments:
u/XxChronOblivionxX [+79] (an hour later)
Okaaaay, I'm officially on edge. Congratulations, I guess, seeing Amaryllis react with utter terror and be absolutely confident that they will all die if he shows up really drove home how the joke has become a very very horrifying reality. The true final boss has revealed himself, though making him beatable may rob him of the mystique.
On to Grak, very good scene. Explains a lot, and seeing him break down crying at the memory of his dead home does a lot to let me empathize with a gruff no-nonsense character who I've never gotten attached to very much.
u/sicutumbo [+38] (4 hours later)
Yeah, Grak's scene was really good. It explains a lot of his character, when previously he was one of the less interesting characters comparatively, explained in universe because he was reluctant to share much about his past with Joon. I teared up when he mentioned what happened to his home.
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+5] (4 days later)
The true final boss has revealed himself, though making him beatable may rob him of the mystique
The obvious "solution" to this is to get him to say his own name, and subsequently choose to kill and eat himself. That way, he stays unbeatable.
u/XxChronOblivionxX [+9] (4 days later)
I don't think he ever speaks, he just shows up and kills everyone. There is nothing that can force him to do anything else.
My guess is that he is indeed killable, but only through specific circumstances. Remember, in the song in question, he was successfully killed. The MC of the song 1) escaped Shia's pursuit, 2) snuck up on him, 3) stabbed him in the kidney with his knife, 4) left him assumed dead, 5) decapitated Shia with an axe. I think at least the last one will be the key to actually hurting him. This is, again, contingent on Shia actually being killable.
Goddammit cthulu, this is such a weird paragraph you've made me write.
u/icesharkk [+2] (4 days later)
Making a horror boss beatable always destroys the mystic. That's why Cthulhu video games keep failing.
u/sparkc [+71] (17 minutes later)
I've got to appreciate how you took a silly meme and used it to put me on the edge of my seat. The moment Amaryliss' eyes went wide and she told everyone to stfu i felt my heart start racing.
And in today's most unimportant observation:
some of it I guess I would also attribute to Jorge (blegh)
My first thought upon reading this was perhaps the reaction was one of jealousy on Junipers part but then there was no mention of a reaction from Juniper at the time Valencia actually mentioned her date with Jorge. Seeing as Juniper appears to be retrospectively narrating this story, i'm guessing in the future Jorge shows himself to be a creep of some sort.
u/None [+23] (2 hours later)
[deleted]
u/Noumero [+8] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (6 hours later)
"Her"? As in, Amaryllis' waifu?
u/AStartlingStatement [+12] (6 hours later)
Yes.
u/1337_w0n [+3] (2 days later)
I too am disappointed; I was totally shipping Val/Mary.
u/signspace13 [+2] (23 days later)
What makes you think this Jorge thing will go anywhere? Val/Mary has way more setup and Mary has already stated to be more than a little homosexual, even if she isn't entirely homoromantic.
u/1337_w0n [+1] (23 days later)
That's a good point. Honestly though, unless best girl Amaryllis reverts her diminished libido, it won't happen anyway.
u/signspace13 [+3] (23 days later)
She only reduced romantic and sexual attraction towards Joon in particular, not towards everyone, she has also immersed herself entirely in earth culture (primarily romantic fiction) for almost a year, I imagine she is healthily interested in sex and romance, just not in either with Juniper, because soul fuckery.
u/CouteauBleu [+11] We are the Empire. (5 hours later)
I think that might just be that his name sounds like a homophone of a Harry Potter character.
u/ZeroNihilist [+18] (16 hours later)
If he has a twin called Phred I'm sold.
u/matematikaadit [+2] (a day later)
Be careful with your wish, GM is listening.
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+6] (2 days later)
Did you hear that if you say "/u/cthulhuraejepson", there's a 60% chance that he'll come in the next hour and kill the most of the conversation and the topics that invoked it? And if you say cthulhuraejepson cthulhuraejepson cthulhuraejepson, then he's guaranteed to come?
On a related note, upon rereading the chapter, we can conclude that either Juniper is not retrospectively narrating the story, or that he neutralises Shia Lebouf - he writes down the name nine times (0.4^9==very low, he probably wouldn't even get past ^5) in that chapter alone.
u/chaos-engine [+1] (3 days later)
Lol, good catch. Or he wrote it after exiting Aerb
u/nytelios [+8] (17 hours later)
Is Jorge pronounced on Aerb as George or the typical Spanish "or-HAY"?
u/Croktopus [+6] (20 hours later)
i mean i assumed it was spanish. the homophone comment really confused me
u/Sparkwitch [+2] (a day later)
I'm going to guess, since Joon is narrating, it's the Midwestern American pronunciation of that spelling: HOR-hay.
u/adgnatum [+2] (3 days later)
I think what really got to me (between the laughing) is that the 40% majority-survival chance required nothing happening.
u/honoredb [+54] (4 hours later)
The most clearly munchkinable magic item Bethel has is probably the Repeated Crossbow's unlimited ammo of any non-magical type. Mary can make a gun that shoots only silver bullets, now you have unlimited silver to trade for gold to pay Grak (and fund the nation). I assume Grak would object to just creating gold directly. I wonder if Valencia counts as non-magical--you could probably craft a cannon that can only fire non-anima of her size (requires a sentient to operate it from the inside, malfunctions in the presence of a soul), and duping her could let her harrow hell.
u/Iwasahipsterbefore [+40] (6 hours later)
Oh my god I love the idea of duping Valencia. That's fantastic, grade a munckinery.
u/CouteauBleu [+19] We are the Empire. (8 hours later)
now you have unlimited silver
Presumably the ammo fades over time in some way; if it were that easy to munchkin, they'd probably have already used that trick with Fenn's duplicator arrows.
u/GeeJo [+7] Custom Flair (22 hours later)
Would they? The arrows were an extremely limited resource that acted as a massive force multiplier. Meanwhile, they haven't been short on cash since hitting Aumann.
Why throw away a resource you need for one you don't?
u/Makin- [+14] homestuck ratfic, you can do it (a day later)
Using the cannon to dupe a demon vessel looks like the fastest way to get excluded, so I hope they don't try.
u/PanickedApricott [+10] (a day later)
there is precedent for duping being an exclusionary act too.
u/honoredb [+10] (a day later)
Other stuff Bethel could try:
- Make her outer walls immaterial for half an hour (Evanescent Armor), then expand them as far as possible (Anyblade). Hopefully a continuous, quantitative increase in her sensorium is less unpleasant than abrupt qualitative ones. If she can be a "house" containing all of Aerb, she can easily kill almost anyone she wants using her various other powers.
- If Aerbian physics is like ours, I don't think she could quite split atoms with 5 pounds of force. Probably best not to try it though.
- Have a bone mage interrogate a prisoner by draining their skull of KNO through their teeth, then use the Wishes ability to undo the harm to the prisoner.
- Use the Everflask for secure communication. Bethel and a spy agree beforehand on a code mapping hypothetical drinks that the Everflask can't make yet to messages ("n parts dandelion wine to 1 part year-old whiskey means the prince is hiding in sector n"), and the spy communicates by mixing the appropriate drink and getting someone to "consume it for the purposes of pleasure, sustenance, or health". Whereupon Bethel brute-force tries to make all 32 agreed-upon drinks until one of them works.
- Orb of Brilliance + Sunlight Mirror = Lasers??
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+7] (4 days later)
If Aerbian physics is like ours, I don't think she could quite split atoms with 5 pounds of force. Probably best not to try it though.
Nukes are excluded.
u/PurposefulZephyr [+8] (15 hours later)
The most clearly munchkinable magic item Bethel has is probably the Repeated Crossbow's unlimited ammo of any non-magical type.
I assume Grak would object to just creating gold directly.
Isn't gold magical, though? Gold mages use it, and it's something like entity to them:
SOC important for many magics. Obvious in retro that gold mage would rely on it, 1 part TK control via CUN, 1 part POI as social interaction with gold (entity-like) (why not CHA? J unhelpful). Also soul value-based? F could have answered.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+46] Mouse Army (an hour later)
Sooo how do you warn an entire clinic and its insane inhabitants about an infohazard? Not really insane, but, you know, dreamskewered.
theres this infohazard, you might all randomly die, be sure to write your will
you need to kill every dreamskewered person that remenbers Ace of Base or the internet
we need to do this extremely experimental procedure on all of your dreamskewered. You see, we have this fancy memory eating entad sword, and need it to eat some specific memories. No, we dont know how to control it. No, we can't tell you what this is about.
Edit: Oh my, and how about bringing instantaneous mass media into a world with info hazards. Holy shit. Talk about weapon of mass destruction, and you can make it selective too via tailoring it to broadcasts.
u/WarningInsanityBelow [+22] (3 hours later)
Talk about weapon of mass destruction, and you can make it selective too via tailoring it to broadcasts.
that also kills anyone involved in its creation or authorized its use.
u/abcd_z [+30] (3 hours later)
This one, sure, but Shia LaBeouf isn't the only infohazard on Aerb.
“Infohazards,” I said with a nod. Of course Aerb had infohazards, why would it not? One of the Thirteen Horrors I had a quest for was [REDACTED]; that was his name given in both the quest text and the description I’d read in The Exclusionary Principle, Seventh Edition, complete with brackets. It was heavily implied that he got more powerful the more you knew about him. To me, that hadn’t implied an entire class of memetic threats, especially because he was in an exclusion zone, but apparently I should have just assumed that Aerb would contain every single thing I had ever thought of, so long as it was at least loosely within the genre.
u/Mr-Mister [+2] (10 days later)
Different levels of infohazad though - Shia's is what I guess you could call a comhazard, but [REDACTED] is most probably a cognitohazard.
u/abcd_z [+16] (a day later)
you need to kill every dreamskewered person that remenbers Ace of Base or the internet
"There's this memetic trigger that will kill anybody who says it."
"Okay, so how do you want to prevent this?"
"I want to kill everybody who could possibly say it."
"Um..."
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+2] (4 days later)
It also kills bystanders.
u/CouteauBleu [+9] We are the Empire. (5 hours later)
A magical compulsion not to say any actor's name would do the trick.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+10] Mouse Army (9 hours later)
Would work, but kinda dangerous. You give away the class of dangerous words - and in case the magic ever wore off trough any of a myriad reasons it could be trouble.
u/nytelios [+9] (4 hours later)
The quest doesn't seem hard, since the known/outed dreamskewered are conveniently and inconveniently gathered in one location. Inconveniently, since the nature of the infohazard means it's most likely to be bandied between fellow dreamskewers. Conveniently, since Joon can easily draw on oblique references that any dreamskewer who's familiar with Shia LaBeouf can recognize (and if they're too old to recognize the name, all the better) and nip the bud on the likeliest ground zero.
One question is how the infohazard triggers. Does the summoning occur only if you complete the entire name? Or is uttering just "Shia..." with the name in mind sufficient? Because it's way easier to explain to fellow dreamskewers if he can truncate the name.
u/nytelios [+11] (14 hours later)
Edit: Silly me. I forgot the hazard part of infohazard. Most of the above assumes sharing exactly what the infohazard is with the dreamskewered (with the assumption that they would never use or share that knowledge), whereas the goal is minimize the risk any unhappy lab rat dreamskewered would decide to abuse that knowledge.
So a blanket ban on any celebrity's name from Earth from any time (to hinder dictionary attacks)? That might be sufficiently wide to dissuade casual rebels and terrorists-to-be. They should probably lie about the effects of the taboo and evoke something familiar to Aerbians like "you'll suffer for the rest of eternity" in case any scientists get nosy.
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+1] (2 days later)
So a blanket ban on any celebrity's name from Earth from any time (to hinder dictionary attacks)?
That record player is the problem (that it's possible to make one, I mean), though - it means that a sufficiently-planned independent martyr can plan a LaBeouf-bomb, if they know how it works (but not the name) and are willing to kill themselves and a dream-skewered or two.
u/rumblestiltsken [+1] (3 days later)
You can't just ban celebrity names. Telling them there is a celebrity name info hazard is just a code, if anyone guesses his name because you said that, then you are dead along with them.
u/nytelios [+2] (5 days later)
The exact conditions for how Shia identifies the source or degrees of connection aren't clear: is ordering someone to learn the name from the phonograph the same as ordering them to use it? Is an oblique reference from Earth that doesn't actually teach them the name (since the dreamskewered already know it) the same as introducing them to the name for the first time (i.e. knowledge of Shia as a threat required)?
If the conditions are very broad (e.g. just sharing the existence of the infohazard), there will be a risk no matter how they choose to let the dreamskewered know. Only way to avoid the risk is to act out of pure self-interest and just ignore the chance of an accident.
u/LazarusRises [+10] (18 hours later)
I was thinking about it, but it's actually fairly easy:
Go to the Athenaeum. Tell them "There's an extremely dangerous infohazard that the dream-skewered may be vectors for. We can't be more specific or it might spread to you. It is very important that, upon the discovery of a dream-skewered, you tell them that communicating the name of the main actor in Transformers comes with a very high chance of mass fatality, beginning with the one who communicated it."
Also, why in the everliving fuck did that dead guy go to all the trouble of recording the name and playing it back? Why not let it die forever?
u/awesomeideas [+25] Dai stiho, cousin. (19 hours later)
"Hey you! Dream-skewered kid!"
"Yes?"
"Communicating the name of the main actor in Transformers—”
"Shia LaBoef?"
[60% chance of extreme murder]
~~
"You are being gagged so as to prevent a catastrophe. Communicating the name of the main actor in Transformers comes with a very high chance of mass fatality, beginning with the one who communicated it. If you agree not to mention it, nod your head."
[Nods]
[Ungaggs]
"Yeah, I don't know who that is anyway. Never saw Transformers." [Goes to group therapy two months later] "Anyone remember, oh what was the name, Shia LaBoef?"
[60% chance of extreme murder]
u/Mr-Mister [+3] (10 days later)
It's the ultimate rusShian roulette.
u/GeeJo [+23] Custom Flair (18 hours later)
Also, why in the everliving fuck did that dead guy go to all the trouble of recording the name and playing it back? Why not let it die forever?
If he had, Joon would have just caused a TPK.
DM post-facto meddling, same as Valencia's armour.
u/ArisKatsaris [+11] Sidebar Contender (a day later)
you tell them that communicating the name of the main actor in Transformers comes with a very high chance of mass fatality, beginning with the one who communicated it.
So you tell them the means to conduct a mass suicide bombing, so anyone with depression among them can easily take out a thousand people alongside themselves? That's safe for you?
Also many people (including me) have heard of him only via the 'Actual Cannibal' thingy, and had no idea what movies he'd played in.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+7] Mouse Army (18 hours later)
You see, humans are stupid. While that would work in a perfect world, in any realistic scenario you have just increased the possibility of the massaker occuring.
u/LazarusRises [+3] (18 hours later)
True. In that case you communicate the danger to a few high-ranking Athenaeum employees, who keep an eye out for dream-skewered with memories of the right time period. Telling everyone outright is probably not the best option, but there are ways to make it less likely if people know about it.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (18 hours later)
Yeah, its probably going to be something like that.
u/CoronaPollentia [+3] (a day later)
Because sometimes there really is a threat bad enough that you're willing to sacrifice yourself, a chain of proxies, and everyone in the general vicinity, to kill beyond hope of ressurection.
u/LazarusRises [+1] (a day later)
That I understand. But he went out of his way to record it, thereby preserving it.
u/matematikaadit [+2] (a day later)
Also, why in the everliving fuck did that dead guy go to all the trouble of recording the name and playing it back?
Probably someone doing experiment, record it, but killed in action. Or the recording itself is actually the experiment. Well, it proves success since Amaryllis get to know the infohazard.
u/abcd_z [+4] (3 hours later)
Ace of Base
...wait, what?
u/docarrol [+10] (5 hours later)
Ace of Base
...wait, what?
Ace of Base was a musical group popular in the 90s and early 00s. Anyone who remembers them, is also from recent enough period in Earth history to possibly know the name Shia LaBeouf (he got his acting start in the mid-90s). Ditto for people familiar with the internet.
You can't say or otherwise communicate the name, so to identify people who probably know it or are capable of knowing it, you have to use other cultural/historical mileposts. E.g. by asking about stuff from the same time period as Shia LaBeouf.
u/Takashoru [+1] (a day later)
You can't encode the letters or words, but I think you can encode the references. "The name that comes after 'Actual Cannibal'"; "The star of the live-action Transformers movies and Holes". These would work and be safe, given Joon's reference in figuring out what the words were, and his subsequent explanation of what they mean didn't trigger it.
u/abcd_z [+2] (2 days later)
"What, you mean Shia LeBeouf?"
"Oh, God."
u/ZeCatox [+1] (5 days later)
Let's gag them first v__v /
u/abcd_z [+2] (6 days later)
Oh, that's your solution to everything. :P
u/Croktopus [+4] (21 hours later)
i mean, they already have radio
u/matematikaadit [+4] (a day later)
Sooo how do you warn an entire clinic and its insane inhabitants about an infohazard?
If verbal or written communication can't be used, but just thinking the name is okay, I think you can use Bethel's telepathy ability (the Soskanna sword entad) as a medium to tell people the infohazard.
u/CouteauBleu [+6] We are the Empire. (a day later)
Why would you tell anyone the infohazard? You don't want to spread it, you want some sort of magical compulsion that's specific enough to be unintrusive, and wide enough that hostile agents can't immediately deduce the "kill everyone horribly" word from it.
u/DCarrier [+8] (10 hours later)
I was thinking just tell them not to mention Earth actors (or even Earth names) ever.
Edit: Oh my, and how about bringing instantaneous mass media into a world with info hazards. Holy shit. Talk about weapon of mass destruction, and you can make it selective too via tailoring it to broadcasts.
You could program the operating system to take a hash of every string passed to it and every string passed out, compare it to a list of variations of the Actual Cannibal's name, and stop anything that matches. If that's not sufficient and even having his name in memory can summon him, you can use homomorphic encryption so that everything is encrypted during computation, and it deletes any mention of the Actual Cannibal before decrypting.
u/MaddoScientisto [+13] (14 hours later)
Amaryllis explicitly said encryption wouldn't work so the moment somebody tries to program a rule for it everyone dies (assuming computers, etc)
u/CouteauBleu [+3] We are the Empire. (15 hours later)
Hashing might work though, since it's one-way (eg you can't deduce the name from the hash).
u/GeeJo [+9] Custom Flair (18 hours later)
Problem being that the Council of Arches would be the ones ordering that.
As Juniper/Amaryllis, is it worth the chance that you're wrong and SLB murders the entire party, preventing any future good you could do (and, you know, killing you)?
After all, every single one of the military R&D teams that worked on weaponising SLB also thought they had a clever workaround. And they're all dead.
u/DCarrier [+1] (21 hours later)
Then how does thinking it not work?
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (10 hours later)
you are already thinking about internet/digital computing. Since Aerb is behind in technology and assume radio/TV, filtering really doesn't work anymore.
Its a real headscratcher.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+44] Champion of Justice and Reason (4 hours later)
We should start making "in Soviet Russia" jokes, except with Aerb instead.
For instance:
In the world of Aerb, unicorns are all sex abusers.
In the world of Aerb, there are nine thousand hells.
In the world of Aerb, Shia Labeouf is an actual cannibal.
u/None [+40] (6 hours later)
In the world of Aerb, harvesting souls of the dead is the morally correct thing to do.
u/GeeJo [+34] Custom Flair (18 hours later)
In the world of Aerb, automobiles are powered by abortions.
u/thrawnca [+6] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
In the world of Aerb, it's normal for candles to consume the blood of the holder.
In the world of Aerb, there are beings who would literally consume and destroy the world, if they weren't mysteriously locked away in prisons that no one can understand or duplicate.
In the world of Aerb, there are people outside those prisons who can rewrite your brain by shaking hands with you.
u/JackStargazer [+38] Primordial Apologist (15 hours later)
Uh, I know everyone's talking about the infohazards, but...
and Arthur was the God of Stories Without Endings.
Is this not kind of important?
u/None [+3] (17 hours later)
[deleted]
u/JackStargazer [+11] Primordial Apologist (17 hours later)
I mean, I can't help but feel like this is the reason Uther never had a chance to rest.
It also makes me think that Arthur might actually be the DM.
u/None [+38] (an hour later)
[deleted]
u/None [+23] (2 hours later)
[deleted]
u/vaegrim [+12] (10 hours later)
The song implies that once you lose the leg you can just 'do' jiu-jitsu.
u/Dent7777 [+2] House Atreides (a day later)
A lot of jiu-jitsu is very hard with one leg, so its a little hard to understand why. 9
u/adgnatum [+11] (5 days later)
“Wouldn’t you just use some ninjutsu to dodge the attack?” asked Fenn.
“Not all fights are possible to win without getting hurt,” said Valencia.
You ever get the feeling the author is waaaay ahead of us?
u/ricree [+4] (2 hours later)
Healing magic makes that less of an issue than it otherwise might be.
u/ZainRiz [+1] Dragon Army (4 days later)
The same person doesn't necessarily have to do both things.
Valencia could do the Ji-jitsu (she just needs to find to right demon to eat), while Joon could lose the leg and use soul magic to bring it back quickly (or Grak could lose it and hope the deer is feeling generous again
u/GeeJo [+13] Custom Flair (4 hours later)
I browsed the comment section between the stats-chapter and the Grak one, and this thread made me very confused.
u/awesomeideas [+1] Dai stiho, cousin. (19 hours later)
Valencia has an axe now, but she's not going...
u/abcd_z [+32] (an hour later)
Oh, man, I have been waiting for Juniper to meet up with the dream-skewered for a while now. If I had been in his shoes, it would have been the first place I went. I just love the feeling of showing off insider knowledge, you know?
u/dalitt [+19] (3 hours later)
I bet they'll meet a dream-skewered companion -- possibly someone from Juniper's D&D group?
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (a day later)
Not arthur. Not Tiff - we already had that with Bethel. Leaves only the murderhobo munchkin person.
u/dalitt [+3] (a day later)
Actually, my guess would be Maddie, about whom there’s been a lot of foreshadowing.
u/C_Densem [+1] LessWrong (than usual) (a day later)
Who?
u/dalitt [+6] (2 days later)
Maddie is the younger sister of one of the D&D group members (Craig, IIRC); if I'm reading the flashbacks correctly, Juniper had an ill-advised relationship with her after he and Tiff broke up and before he arrived in Aerb.
u/None [+12] (6 hours later)
Yeah, hes been weirdly uncurious about the dream skewered, given that they provide an unexplained link to earth. If we buy the simulation/dungeon master hypothesis then are these npcs that just happen to have earth knowledge or other earth people who have been transported/copied?
u/HPMOR_fan [+3] (14 hours later)
I've been waiting for that too. But practically it's better to wait until he's more established because he could attract attention. I'd love for him to go dressed as Santa and give presents out of his backback.
u/matematikaadit [+6] (a day later)
I'd love for him to go dressed as Santa and give presents out of his backback.
aww... that's so cute and nice... too bad the backpack is already sacrificed to Bethel.
u/HPMOR_fan [+2] (a day later)
Well, they could still do something similar with Bethel's help.
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+2] (2 days later)
Yes, and Sable.
u/Badewell [+32] (2 hours later)
Fuck me infohazards are scary.
I didn't realize it was a Shia-bomb for a bit and thought that Joon's memories of what got Mary into red alert status had been stolen or something... god damn it fuck infohazards.
That is a rough quest too (assuming you don't just make dream-skewered kill on sight). Mary says there have been about a thousand dream-skewered, so extremely roughly call it anywhere between 5 and 100 currently known of. Even assuming you do a good enough job of impressing that no, no it is not a joke if you say Stanley Yelnats three times everyone dies, now you have just have smart bombs instead of time bombs argh argh infohazards.
u/None [+9] (2 hours later)
[deleted]
u/Escapement [+25] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (3 hours later)
Maybe. But just this update we saw Bethel trying to get a magic item to work by saying all sorts of words in order to try to trigger it. If someone tries to do that exhaustively, they might very well try all standard words and start trying permutations of syllables or phonemes, at which point it's just a matter of time before they and anyone around them dies of Shia LaBeouf. So, if anyone else in the world is stupid enough to try to spend time triggering artifacts, you'll see a few Shia LaBeoufs constantly being (very briefly) rediscovered, at the very least.
u/alexeyr [+1] Steersman (9 days later)
Is Bethel murderable by SL?
u/Munchkingman [+56] (3 minutes later)
Shia LaBeouf.
Shia LaBeouf...
...
Shia. LaBeouf.
u/WarningInsanityBelow [+43] (3 hours later)
Dammit, depending on how exactly it works that also got cthulhuraejepsen. I really wanted to read the rest of WtC.
u/abcd_z [+32] (3 hours later)
Well, at least it's not that stupid Candlejack meme. It's from the cartoon Freakazoid, and apparently when you say his na
u/Makin- [+25] homestuck ratfic, you can do it (10 hours later)
Worth the Candlejack, the name finally makes se
u/eroticas [+5] (16 hours later)
Juniper should definitely avoid saying candlejack or the names of any memetic hazard fiction from Ear
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
[deleted]
u/zonules_of_zinn [+1] (4 days later)
i don't know the meme but didn't you ju
u/KarlitoHomes [+26] (4 hours later)
Well Juniper writes it down in the chapter, so that implies that either SLB is eventually defeated or that Juniper eventually returns to Earth to write the whole story. Obviously, the latter seems pretty likely since I'm here on Earth reading it, but that line of reasoning might be a little too meta.
u/Noumero [+33] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (6 hours later)
Why are we like that? The moment anyone mentions an infohazard, all rationalists crowd around and start chanting about it, eagerly asking to be affected, then telling as many people as possible.
Gosh, just look at me! Mentioned
fourfive in a single comment.
u/NebulousASK [+23] (12 hours later)
This is why it's so important that several of us are very good at counter-memetics.
For instance, I'm very proud of the people who identified the real infohazard right away and quickly replaced it with the entirely harmless idea now known as "Roko's Basilisk." The replacement is even viscerally frightening enough, and treated with enough caution, that it spreads with little awareness that it is a replacement.
u/Xtraordinaire [+6] Team Glimglam (15 hours later)
Because faux info hazards are fun. Yes, you heard me.
The chapter spells out Shia LaBeouf's name 9 times. It's safe. Probably.
Anyways, Shia LaBeouf, Shia LaBeouf! Weeee!
u/None [+1] (22 hours later)
Well, it is still entirely possible that we live in a universe where writing/saying/storing Shia LaBeouf has a 60% chance of him appearing and murdering everyone, and it just hasn't happened so far.
A "little" unlikely, but possible.
u/meterion [+5] (6 hours later)
Do you know what the infohazard that’s not actually described in the /r/rational comment link is supposed to be? I also want to know what it is lol
u/CouteauBleu [+8] We are the Empire. (8 hours later)
I'm guessing it's something like:
The Game!
Today is tongue awareness day.
Seriously, real-life infohazards are about as cool as real-life superheroes and real-life Quidditch.
u/dismantlemars [+3] (20 hours later)
I was actually quite surprised, it seemed to be the first thing I'd actually consider a real infohazard I've heard of. Turns out I was already infected though, but assuming you can become infected just by being told about it as others in this thread claim, then I think it qualifies as a real infohazard.
It's something I've always been infected with, so it doesn't feel that bad to me, but I imagine for someone newly infected, it could be at least a little unpleasant for a while, until you get used to it.
u/meterion [+2] (10 hours later)
Hey as someone who played quidditch in college I resent that!! Quidditch teams have great parties.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+3] Champion of Justice and Reason (18 hours later)
Play the game in a swimming pool on noodles and change the rules slightly, that makes it more thematic.
Seeker seeks buried treasure aka diving for pool rings Keeper is the keeper of the treasure hoard. Chasers chase enemy ships to steal their treasure and bring it back to their keeper. Beaters are like chasers except they try to attack the enemy ship by throwing bludgers (cannon balls) into it.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+3] Champion of Justice and Reason (18 hours later)
I just lost the game.
u/crivtox [+1] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (a day later)
Well there is also the McCollough effect witch is annoying and can last a long time.
u/Noumero [+5] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (6 hours later)
I do. I also don't want to actually disseminate it, since it is real, if relatively tame. PM u/SvalbardCaretaker about it.
u/sicutumbo [+28] (6 hours later)
Similar to a comment in the thread you linked, it seems like you could kill the entire r/rational community by putting a slow acting contact poison on a book labelled "Descriptions of infohazards", and then wait a week for it to be shared to and by everyone.
u/meterion [+3] (17 hours later)
Yeah, 3/10 hazard rating from me, I already had pre-existing knowledge of it. I can see how it would be uncomfortable for someone unfamiliar with it, though.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+3] Mouse Army (a day later)
Wow, you give it a 3/10? I'd rate it as 0.5-2, with two only for the temporary torture. Interesting.
u/meterion [+2] (a day later)
I think we are just using vastly different minimum thresholds. For a 1-2 rating I would think of things that just cause temporary mild discomfort like manual breathing or where to rest your tongue. A 0.5 rating would be ridiculously mild negative utility like being aware of inappropriate Wilhelm screams in movies you otherwise enjoy.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (a day later)
I see. Yeah I dont really classify those as real CH's, or maybe as a 0.01 or so.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+7] Mouse Army (9 hours later)
Hey, carrier of the infohazard here. I have become a bit more strict with deseminating it. Please read the following disclaimer. Think hard, and then PM me:
My infohazard has a chance to make you feel otherwise unfelt pain. Based on responses, you have 5% to already be infected, 20% chance that it works and produces mild pain.
5% chance of, quote "extreme negative response - something akin to torture. The ensuing week - pretty shitty."
u/CouteauBleu [+10] We are the Empire. (15 hours later)
You could just put it in rot13 or some other encryption and say "Read the following disclaimer before decrypting this" instead of being so dramatic.
u/GaBeRockKing [+8] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (16 hours later)
5% chance of, quote "extreme negative response - something akin to torture. The ensuing week - pretty shitty."
This must be anextremely bad pun.
u/Killako1 [+2] (18 hours later)
Nope, just had a pretty bad week. My sleep fucked me something fierce.
u/GaBeRockKing [+2] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (18 hours later)
Because of the infohazard, or for unrelated reasons?
u/Killako1 [+2] (2 days later)
the infohazard
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (a day later)
As the person who infected Killako1 and talked about it with them, because of the infohazard.
u/Xtraordinaire [+1] Team Glimglam (16 hours later)
Noice, I'm immune to those.
u/Green0Photon [+4] Student in Cyoria, Minmay, and Ranvar (19 hours later)
I kinda don't know if you're just fucking with us, but is there a way to sort of hint about it without actually causing the infohazard? Kinda like that earlier SCP link, where you can vaguely describe the thing without actually spreading the infohazard?
In actuality, I don't want to know it. But I can think of things that act like temporary infohazards that aren't bad, like knowing where your nose is in your vision or feeling yourself breathing or eye floaters. Is it like that? Or is it scary fiction I don't want to think about, like Cordycepts or any SCP?
Is there any chance I could come across it in the wild or by myself? What if I search for infohazards?
I'm curious especially about the 5% already infected. Where does that number come from?
Can I know how that negative response happens that's like torture without knowing the infohazard? I have no clue what could possibly cause that.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (20 hours later)
Hey, congrats on withstanding your curiosity!
Is there any chance I could come across it in the wild or by myself?
Yes, by all means. Its a "natural" thing. Though I doubt it would be considered infohazard anywhere except here. Its a 0.5 to 1 on the scale, maybe spiking to 2 due to "torture" response.
5% has gone up to 10% over today, based on three natural carriers (as opposed to one). Sample size still small.
The very negative response seems to be on the very far right side of the bellcurve, my response was a one time pain experience.
u/Green0Photon [+2] Student in Cyoria, Minmay, and Ranvar (20 hours later)
So no hints or descriptions remotely related to the topic?
I'm not withstanding my curiosity, but rather trying to get you to satisfy it without actually subjecting myself to the infohazard.
Come on, give me something here.
Is it sleep paralysis and the phantom thing I've heard people see? Is it knowledge of a super scary statistic that keeps you up at night? Is it the knowledge of the infohazard that you're telling us, causing to feel "pain" from the overwhelming curiosity?
Oftentimes it's possible to describe the infohazard without spreading it. There's an SCP that causes people to forget about it, but you can remember what it's not.
Also, that other one about breaking your thumb ligament is enough without seeing the picture to satisfy curiosity.
Can you describe it in any way without spreading it? If you really are worried, PM me the ideas around the infohazard, but not the infohazard itself. I'd really rather not get it.
I swear, it feels like you're priming us away from what it could be.
Uggggghhhh! I can't think of what could possibly be natural that could cause pain for a week. The only method would be if the pain was already there, but people just started to pay attention to it until they forget about it.
Can it be spread through text alone? Or a picture? Sound? Video?
I vaguely remember a real cognitohazard, that had something to do with red and green lines or something.
Please satisfy my curiosity slightly! I beg you!
Edit:
5% chance of, quote "extreme negative response - something akin to torture. The ensuing week - pretty shitty."
This must be an extremely bad pun.
Is it an a pun that's the infohazard? Or is it knowledge of actual shit that makes the week bad? Is it literal pain, like shit I stubbed my toe/stepped on a Lego/have a cut, but worse?
Ugh!
Edit 2:
Was the pain from a response from someone doing something after learning it, like face-desking too hard?
u/Xtraordinaire [+3] Team Glimglam (20 hours later)
See, you're already in pain!
Since I have willingly exposed myself I can tell you more in, say, a week.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (20 hours later)
I really dont think I can give a much better description without outright telling. Its knowledge, not some crazy infohazard concept. Its not something abstract like a statistic that keeps you up at night. I'd rate the stastic at about 0.01 or so, thats only barely and technically an infohazard.
It sometimes causes pain, spreadable by text alone, and about 10%ish people are natural carriers. I give you a single sentence, you say "neat" or "huh" and are infected.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (a day later)
Okay, I have trouble believing that reading text can cause physical pain. You've said the pain is minor and I would like to check my assumptions, so hit me.
u/RMcD94 [+1] (5 months later)
Shouldn't you be publicly spreading it?
Proving that info hazards do exist and so you should be wary of them seems much better than this. If literally the only cost is a week of pain that's so inconsequential.
Regardless pm me.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (5 months later)
Well I am not in the habit of walking around and swinging at peoples hands with hammers. Randomly bringing it up/deliberately spreading it is a bit too similar to my tastes.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (20 hours later)
Just saw your edit. Its literal pain. Its not a trick like headbanging because of puns. Its the real deal. As real as you get at infohazard levels 0.5-2.
u/Killako1 [+3] (10 hours later)
Oh yeah, that was me.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (10 hours later)
So you already PM'd me that you feel fine nowadays. Do you regret asking for the knowledge?
u/Killako1 [+3] (18 hours later)
No, actually. It’s something about knowing and experiencing everything I can know. I don’t know how to put it into words but having a shitty week is a small price to pay for knowledge.
u/crivtox [+2] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (a day later)
that reminds me of the McCollough effect witch is not painful but annoying and long lasting.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (a day later)
I have the effect described thusly:
I write you two sentences. You read them, you say "huh" or "neat". You are infected, and have the chance for pain. No illusions or puns or catchy tune style.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (21 hours later)
PM me?
u/Takashoru [+1] (a day later)
sounds like a haiku, but with words, instead of syllables.
u/None [+2] (9 hours later)
I asked about it, and it caused me some discomfort for a day, but I'd say a setup (PMing a person to get it) influenced that too.
u/sicutumbo [+4] (6 hours later)
Do... Do you not know what an infohazard is? Why would you want to know the content of the infohazard? Half the word is HAZARD. Meaning danger. The entire purpose of the label is to make people want to not know the content.
u/meterion [+15] (6 hours later)
Because I’m skeptical about how “powerful” infohazards actually are in the real world, at least where the danger is inherent to knowledge itself and not people trying to kill you for knowing it (e.g. state secrets, witness killing, etc). If anything aren’t I being a good rationalist by actively seeking out information to disprove my hypothesis?
The closest thing I’ve seen to a Serious Business Infohazard is that one infographic showing you how to snap a tendon in your thumb in two simple steps, which is not too impressive since there’s plenty of ways to fuck yourself up easily.
u/sicutumbo [+10] (6 hours later)
Well, there are two possibilities:
The information is not an infohazard, either through it being incredibly weak or just not one in the first place. So it's not interesting, because the interest was in the property of it being an infohazard.
It is one. You now know a legitimate infohazard, willingly. Congrats.
To me, this seems like sticking your hand on a hot stove to see if it hurts. Sure, it's technically in the name of science, but the result is either boring or harmful, potentially lethally so. Or maybe a label on a bottle saying "Danger, do not open!". Either way, I just don't see the reasoning in hearing someone say "I know an inforhazard and am willing to share!" and immediately asking about it.
u/meterion [+12] (7 hours later)
From my values, the first possibility is more like:
- It’s not an infohazard, but a decent amount of people think it’s enough of one that they go to the effort of some information control, which makes it interesting to me simply by the virtue of being taboo. I wasn’t impressed with the hazard levels of Roko’s Basilisk, either, but I found it a rather cute idea.
The hand-on-stove analogy is weak because the premise and results are mundane and well-known. The exotic mystery of it is appealing, like if someone discovered some basilisk-y sound you could listen to that would make you feel pain, but is still completely unknown to the layman. There’s literally no healthy outcome from doing it but I damn well would, because hell yeah that sounds dope.
But I guess you gotta be the type that would want to try getting taxed just to see what it would feel like to find the appeal.
u/vaegrim [+10] (10 hours later)
If you've never experienced pain before, the first time you do so is fantastically novel. This novelty feels important to the curious, and curiosity has a natural reward system built right in.
Likewise; if you've never experienced an infohazard before, it doesn't seem surprising to seek one out even if you predict you'll be unhappy with the specific consequences because you expect the reward of novelty to outweigh the harm of the hazard.
u/zonules_of_zinn [+2] (4 days later)
i've never been unhappy with knowing an infohazard.
u/Xtraordinaire [+5] Team Glimglam (16 hours later)
It is one. You now know a legitimate infohazard, willingly. Congrats.
You're forgetting the biggest one. You now know legitimate infohazards exist. Which I don't. Paying 5% chance of a extreme pain + 20% chance of weak pain is a fair price.
u/Noumero [+2] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (7 hours later)
Well, in that particular case it was quite likely that the infohazard wasn't lethal or very hazardous at all, since it was transmitted from one human to another, as well as because its current bearer was willing to transmit it to consenting people (as opposed to being terrified of the idea, or alternatively disseminating it as widely as possible for mass chaos purposes).
The rest is just estimating how harmful it could possibly be, how much potential harm you're willing to suffer in the name of your curiosity, and how likely you think it is that someone would try to weaponize it later on (i. e., whether you need to vaccinate yourself).
True infohazards are unheard-of, and existence of one would have massive implications. I wouldn't say that you can't fault rationalists for jumping at the chance to confirm it — it was, in fact, unsafe — but it's perfectly understandable.
u/CouteauBleu [+4] We are the Empire. (8 hours later)
showing you how to snap a tendon in your thumb in two simple steps
Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ewwwww.
u/meterion [+4] (10 hours later)
Now the knowledge will tempt you forever, mwahahahahaaa
[spoiler](#s “it doesn’t actually work tho so don’t worry”)
u/CouteauBleu [+6] We are the Empire. (11 hours later)
Wait, you have to apply external pressure on your thumb? That's lame, I thought it was a special thumb movement that you constantly had to remind yourself not to perform.
u/meterion [+7] (12 hours later)
Nah, the idea is this:
With a starting position of your arms in front of you, palms together
Rotate your wrist so your thumb is pointing upwards(or as close as it gets)
Bend thumb as far as possible and wrap fingers around it to secure in place (I.e. the way that will break your thumb if you try to punch someone)
Quickly snap your wrist in the opposite direction as quickly as possible.
Since your thumb-to-wrist tendon/ligament is already tightened with your thumb bent as far as possible, putting extra strain on it will make it snap. Or at least, that’s the intended result.
u/MaddoScientisto [+2] (14 hours later)
Great, just knowing that this exists made me incredibily paranoid about my thumbs, infohazards are real
u/CouteauBleu [+4] We are the Empire. (8 hours later)
Same reason people go in haunted houses or try to summon demons. They're curious and they don't actually expect that it'll turn out they're horror movie protagonists.
u/Noumero [+4] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (16 hours later)
To be fair, horror movie protagonists are usually H-zombies, so actual people likely wouldn't turn out to be them.
u/CouteauBleu [+2] We are the Empire. (16 hours later)
Do you want to start a dozen threads full of jokes about horror movies and philosophical zombies? Because this is how you get jokes about horror movies and philosophical zombies.
u/MereInterest [+1] (2 days later)
I know of P-zombies, but not H-zombies, and google is rather unenlightening here. Do you have a link for further context?
u/Noumero [+1] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (2 days later)
It's from Yudkowsky's Guide to Intelligent Characters, or more precisely from here. Real-life people try to honestly achieve their goals, even if their decision-making is often irrational and muddled. H-zombies on the other hand, or Hollywood Zombies, are character-puppets of the plot. They only make an appearance of pursuing whatever personal goals they have, but actually their actions are optimized towards drama and plot convenience. H-zombies are impulsive, non-introspective, genre-blind, or selectively stupid, as plot demands.
u/Croktopus [+4] (8 hours later)
Yeah no way I'm clicking on those links. You could probably keep any secret from me just by calling it an infohazard. Even knowing how improbable it is that an infohazard could actually exist, how is my life gonna improve by knowing them.
Cordyceps was enough for me to know that I do not dig that shit
u/awesomeideas [+1] Dai stiho, cousin. (18 hours later)
I saw that I commented asking for the Randall's Basilisk, and was vaguely indignant about not being PMed.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+27] Mouse Army (12 hours later)
Re: velocity mage induction. The bottomless pit might provide a cheap way for all of our group to get inducted. A streamlined dense lead-torpedo, big enough that terminal velocity gets high enough, and you teleport out.
u/Kilbourne [+6] (16 hours later)
Is personal velocity retained during teleportation?
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+5] Mouse Army (16 hours later)
A good question! We don't know that. Aerb doesn't rotate, so no need for inbuilt momentum shedding.
u/Kilbourne [+6] (16 hours later)
A glide-suit and a rod of iron combined with the Hole would be a good way for a once-in-three-hours mass driver cannon, if so.
u/Veedrac [+2] (16 hours later)
Shouldn't be a problem; slow down by jumping out, and using a parachute after a while.
u/nytelios [+6] (17 hours later)
Got an idea that depends on how munchkin-able Bethel's momentum ability is:
Crown of King Momentus: I can transfer momentum from one object to another. I can also sense all momentum within my walls, and to one hundred feet outside them.
If "object" can be a person, she could push Joon up to absurd speeds within the confines of her house (providing enough space with Pikel's Gap). Transferring the muzzle velocity of a heavy cannonball (even easier if the momentum can be stacked) to Joon while creating a relative vacuum is more than enough for 600 mph.
u/Veedrac [+12] (17 hours later)
you had to move, without magical assistance, faster than the benchmark
u/nytelios [+3] (18 hours later)
Ahh, slipped my mind. I wonder if their secret is purely technological or if they found a loophole in what's considered magical.
u/kaukamieli [+2] (a day later)
The world has a god like figure who can see everything, so I don't think there are loopholes that he does not want there to be.
u/nytelios [+2] (a day later)
That implies the sort of omniscience and/or game design that doesn't fit the emergence of new exclusions.
u/kaukamieli [+2] (a day later)
He likes creating stories, which explains that.
u/icesharkk [+1] (4 days later)
Weak evidence for the dm being Joon or Arthur
u/nytelios [+1] (5 days later)
IIRC, there are hidden exclusions not known to the world at large. Whether they were all caused by Uther for some sort of story, I don't know.
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+2] (2 days later)
Moving without magical assistance? That's easy, unless it's chronic protective magic - just accelerate with magic and then turn the magic off for a sec. Unless it's a typo and /u/cthulhuraejepson actually meant accelerating without magical assistance.
u/Takashoru [+1] (a day later)
get Val to push you
u/Xtraordinaire [+6] Team Glimglam (23 hours later)
Won't work, terminal velocity is only 200km/h, a bit more if the skydiver assumes an aerodynamic pose a-la superman. They would need to craft an aerodynamic capsule and probably power it with some SRBs. But yeah, it could work.
u/JackStargazer [+2] Primordial Apologist (16 hours later)
Does teleportation preserve velocity?
u/robryk [+26] (2 days later)
The backpack is probably safe, but J & co. have no way of knowing.
A few chapters back the backpack refused to provide a printout of Urban Dictionary entry for "basic bitch". Lo and behold, that entry mentions Shia LeBeouf:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Basic%20Bitch
E: Actually, why can't they request the backpack to provide "X without any mentions of a person with initials SL"? If they can't trust the backpack to actually follow the requests, they cannot use it at all. If they can, this is a method that should make any requests safe.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+10] Mouse Army (3 days later)
What an awesome catch! Well done.
u/nhdaly [+6] (3 days later)
Woahhhhhhh
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+3] Mouse Army (5 days later)
And at times, requests for webpages would simply fail for no clear reason, with a little note saying something like, “no printout of the Urban Dictionary page on ‘basic bitch’, sorry”
"at times" - probably more often than Shia Lebouf only justifies. Lots of infohazard potential.
u/Ironsides1985 [+1] (7 days later)
Nice catch!
u/SpeculativeFiction [+25] (2 hours later)
You know, I love the idea of infohazards (read this whole set of connected short stories, it's great), but I've got to wonder how anyone knows the percent chance of the trigger word working.
If they know he's summoned 3/5 times, and is guaranteed to arrive if you say his name three times, that implies they had people try to summon him multiple times, and write down data.
That doesn't jive with the idea that he appears, kills anyone with knowledge of his name, or who handed off knowledge to his summoner, as well as hundreds of other people.
On another note, If I were Joon, I'd take great care to not say the names of other infohazard memes from Earth. Bloody mary, biggie smalls, Cthulhu Fhtagn, etc.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+18] Fruit flies like a banana (3 hours later)
Amaryllis says:
“I heard it from a phonograph playing in the middle of nowhere on a loop, recorded by a dead man who had heard it from others who were also dead,” said Amaryllis. “That’s the only safe way to learn it.”
That's a fairly wide loophole that you can drive experimental models through.
u/SpeculativeFiction [+13] (4 hours later)
Sure, but it implies six or so entirely new groups found:
A shitload of dead bodies. Dozens to hundreds.
Records about the word, and that saying it will summon an unbeatable murderer who will kill everyone who said the word, and the people who told them it, and the people who ordered them to say it, even without knowing the word. (I suppose this may have only happened with the very last group, but it seems like most would know about it by the nature of the experiments)
Then decided to commit suicide by researching it.
I guess Amaryllis did say
“Not all the time. Sixty percent, maybe.”
Which means there aren't weren't that many experiments, but there were at least 6 different groups that had that little self preservation.
I suppose her kingdom has a lot of assholes with power running around, so it's possible they could blackmail people in killing themselves for science, but there's not a lot of incentive there. The assassination thing, sure, but just getting the success rate? Why bother?
In the case of some poor smuck saying it by accident, who would record what caused it? Or more importantly, how many times they said it without dying horribly? All you get from that are positive reports.
I'm probably just overthinking this. Amaryllis probably gave out a random percent chance of death, knowing that the words didn't work every time. Anyone making up the estimation would err on the side of caution, even if they only said the word twice (one dud, one "success"), and say 60% chance of death, rather than 50%.
Regardless, I'm looking forward to the next chapters. I'm curious how this will all go so very wrong for Joon and Co.
Edit:
“None of it is paranoia,” said Amaryllis. “We’ve tried to harness him in the past. It always ends with everyone dying.”
I suppose they could have tried mind controlling him, or using Entads that can somehow control a person on him. I guess I can plausibly see several groups trying different things to get a tame weapon of that power.
u/None [+22] (6 hours later)
I would guess every group who willingly summoned him had some kind of solution to the problem they were prettysure would work, so dind't think they were committing suicide. But after a great number of attempts people wised up and assumed he was unbeatable
u/CouteauBleu [+5] We are the Empire. (15 hours later)
It does seem like they would have needed SCP-level personnel casualties to get enough data that Amaryllis can state with confidence what the rules are.
If this were the Second Empire, it would make sense, but Amaryllis is implying that the experiments were fairly recent (a bunch of her cousins died), so I think it's a little implausible they'd have kept experimenting past the second or third occurrence of "The guy showed up, killed the test subject, killed everyone in the testing facility, resisted every single magic we threw at him, destroyed several irreplaceable military entads, killed the highly-trained soldiers wielding them, then worked his way up the chain of command until he killed the head of the research program" for the sake of curiosity.
u/GeeJo [+13] Custom Flair (18 hours later)
They're not doing it out of curiosity. It's weapons research.
u/eroticas [+4] (2 days later)
I think they figured out that Shia kills everyone who hears it and immediately decided to weaponize it against enemies who they want dead. Then they realized it kills everyone in the causal chain, not just everyone in earshot. But once you have the phonograph and figure out that you can break the casual chain linking yourself to the Shia it's not even a particularly ineffective weapon. Therefore you can weaponize it as a workable suicide weapon. All of this is enough repetition to figure out that it doesn't happen every time.
u/Izeinwinter [+8] (3 days later)
Heck, they have in fact found a working use for it - That is why Amaryllis knows it. The high echelons of their government all know it, which is a horrifying insurance policy against kidnapping. - They learn about it from a phonograph. No back lash there. They elect to use it on their own recognizance - so no chain of command for him to work up. High collateral damage to any innocents nearby, but also pretty much guaranteed death to the people responsible.
- This may be where they got the data about odds of a single utterance being successful - if Amaryllis is not an extreme outlier in terms of what kind of person the court educates, I can easily see a kidnapped princes and princesses of the realm taking notes even as they are committing mass-murder/suicide.
u/icesharkk [+2] (4 days later)
Ah now that is a rationalist reason to have the phonograph and continue telling people.
u/WarningInsanityBelow [+14] (3 hours later)
If they know he's summoned 3/5 times, and is guaranteed to arrive if you say his name three times, that implies they had people try to summon him multiple times, and write down data.
Yes, data is recorded, scientists die, new scientists gather this from the notes that the previous team left behind. This is possibly repeated a couple of times.
u/None [+7] (4 hours later)
As the others have said, you're allowed to record information about him, assuming you exclude his name. That means information persistence is possible, with very high casualties.
u/CouteauBleu [+5] We are the Empire. (7 hours later)
From next month onwards, every new resident of the Athenaeum of Speculation and Scrutiny is given a list of things they're not allowed to say, ever, for every reason, that might trigger the apocalypse, and has to swear a binding oath not to say them or write them down.
What does the list include?
I'd say:
Anything SCP-related (though SCP pages usually blank out their supposed infohazards anyway).
Anything derived from Lovecraft's works.
Famous actors whose name starts with S.
The Game.
Descriptions of Rosko's Basilisk.
u/icesharkk [+2] (4 days later)
And candlejack of cour
u/ketura [+3] Organizer (3 hours later)
CANDLEJACK
u/sicutumbo [+24] (4 hours later)
Something that other people have probably noticed before me, but I somewhat recently noticed on a read through: CRJ basically dropped health as a relevant stat as the story progressed. I actually like this, because it felt somewhat intrusive and took me out of the moment, but it is noticable when you compare latter fights with the early ones.
Would the Shia Labeouf thing be the way to kill Fel Stead or whatever the name is? Both are described as being unkillable killing machines, so setting one against the other seems like it would lead to profound breakthroughs in science.
I'm also wondering how Aerb first discovered that the words "Shia Labeouf" repeated three times killed everyone around. Like, how did anyone say those syllables those number of times, accidentally, and then manage to record the process in the only way that they can be recorded?
Edit: it's really lucky that Amaryllis didn't pull up, say, a list of the most popular movies of the 2000s in the months in the time chamber. Holes was fairly popular, and he's been in a number of big movies in addition to that.
u/docarrol [+8] (5 hours later)
I'm also wondering how Aerb first discovered that the words "Shia Labeouf" repeated three times killed everyone around.
I was assuming it was another dream skewed, or possibly more than one. Even if 60% of them got killed, you only need one survivor to pass on enough for a line of research.
Heck, it might even have been Arthur himself, if he found a way to cheat his way around the killing/communication restriction.
u/sicutumbo [+7] (6 hours later)
But, how would that work? 60% of the time, nothing happens, and no one knows that they were close to death. 40% of the time, the knowledge dies with them, if they even realize what they did wrong. All it would really result in is a warning that some guy randomly kills lots of people around dream skewered people, mostly from America.
The only way I could see it working is if someone had some form of danger sense, and was near the dream skewered person while they said his name, and knew to connect the name with the potential summoning, and that the 60% is in fact random and not just lack of information of hidden variables (i.e. saying his name with different inflections guarantees his summoning or makes it never happen if the name is only said once). But the only form of danger sense I can think of in WTC is elf luck, but that would just have the elf avoid the skewered person entirely, and wouldn't give them any information on what caused the slaughter that happened.
Edit: Maybe an elf who has luck strong enough to see an hour into the future happened to be near a dream skewered person, without their luck telling them to avoid the person (??? No idea how that would work) and then their luck tells them not how to avoid death, because death is inevitable, but how to convey the warning onto others? Luck gives elves information they have no way of knowing, so it's about as plausible as anything else.
u/docarrol [+8] (6 hours later)
But, how would that work?
Well, there a few possibilities I can think of, but the most likely that springs to mind is something fairly similar to what we just saw in the chapter. A dream skewed says the name out loud in front of an audience, but nothing happens.
One or more of those people then later repeats the name, where someone else could see the action, but not hear (or read, or...) the name being said, and this time it did summon him. Now you have one slaughter, one witness of the summon, and one or more people who know the name, but haven't repeated it yet, for whatever reason. A slaughter, but the knowledge didn't die with the person who said the name (or wrote it down, or whatever).
Since infohazards are a thing in Aerb, it's not inconceivable for someone to connect the dots from that, or a surviving dream skewed who got the "joke", then someone set up a research project to see if it can be weaponized, before they realize just how dangerous it is.
It may have taken more than one cycle of failed summons, followed by slaughters with surviving name-knowers for someone somewhere to have worked this out. Possibly a steady drip of dream skewed making the same mistake, getting themselves and everyone around wiped out for some unknown reason, before someone somewhere got "lucky" enough for the events to line up.
u/ketura [+22] Organizer (3 hours later)
This chapter has me practically vibrating with tension, but only one question haunts my mind.
If Shia LaBeouf was a randomly-spawning lunatic infohazard madman
I'm not sure which is more terrifying.
u/Makin- [+12] homestuck ratfic, you can do it (18 hours later)
“He’s standing behind you, fully naked, his beard drenched in blood,” I said.
So 1.
u/teedreeds [+7] (16 hours later)
I like the idea that he's just a casual immortal in one of the hells, looking for someone to invent movies on Aerb and only occasionally spends time on Earth.
u/GeeJo [+1] Custom Flair (19 hours later)
He'd likely show up as described in the flashback, which means bearded.
u/None [+22] (an hour later)
[deleted]
u/KarlitoHomes [+45] (an hour later)
The best bit was the revelation that Bethel is constantly tasting everything around her.
u/SpeculativeFiction [+25] (2 hours later)
Including the inside of objects. That's pretty disgusting.
u/KarlitoHomes [+48] (2 hours later)
Isn't it nice how she provided Amaryllis with a 3D false-color image of her baby without commenting on its flavor?
Seriously though, no one tell Fenn about this.
u/DCarrier [+5] (10 hours later)
Including the inside of your large intestine.
u/sicutumbo [+13] (16 hours later)
She is far more involved in any sex within her than Fenn knew.
u/Gr_Cheese [+21] (15 hours later)
I'm going to be sorely disappointed if we don't see ACTUAL CANNIBAL SHIA LaBEOUF show up in this quest -- I mean, logically, this is the highest level quest Juniper has received (since he's done squat since leveling), and it's just to warn the patients at the Athenaeum of Speculation and Scrutiny not to mention ACTUAL CANNIBAL SHIA LaBEOUF?
It seems too easy...
It seems too... innocent a quest...
It almost seems like the prelude to a horror movie starring ACTUAL CANNIBAL SHIA LaBEOUF!
u/elysian_field_day [+21] (17 hours later)
Also seems to take place in a mental institution. what a coincidence.
u/WalterTFD [+12] (19 hours later)
In all honesty, I dunno what else they expect to have happen. You are going to visit several hundred people locked in an institution, and inform them of their power to kill everyone around them and themselves, then ask them not to?
u/Gr_Cheese [+7] (20 hours later)
You raise a good point, using ACTUAL CANNIBAL SHIA LaBEOUF to threaten your way to freedom seems like a pretty good tool if you're in a tough spot.
But I'm more surprised that ACTUAL CANNIBAL SHIA LaBEOUF hasn't already visited the institution by accident. I was under the impression there were hundreds of dream-skewered being studied there over many years. And although ACTUAL CANNIBAL SHIA LaBEOUF wasn't a household name, he was pretty famous.
u/GeeJo [+3] Custom Flair (22 hours later)
He might be famous, but it's not like there's much reason to bring him up in casual conversation.
We also don't know the spread of time periods or geography the dream-skewered cover. A Uighur cowherd from 1750 isn't going to be much of a risk.
u/rabotat [+1] (a day later)
Not to mention their therapy may include not talking about Earth, accepting it isn't a real place and re-integrating into Aerb society.
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+1] (5 days later)
using ACTUAL CANNIBAL SHIA LaBEOUF to threaten your way to freedom seems like a pretty good tool if you're in a tough spot.
Well, not exactly - the moment you show you're willing to kill yourself to inflict ACTUAL CANNIBAL SHIA LaBEOUF on people, they have a major incentive to attempt to kill you faster than you can say "SHIA LaBEOUF", preferably before you even realise they're killing you.
u/Escapement [+21] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (an hour later)
Shia LaBeouf...
This is amazing. A great start to the new book!
u/abcd_z [+29] (an hour later)
I wonder if Aerbian Shia LaBeouf could be defeated by following the exact sequence given in the song: strangling him with jujitsu, announcing you've defeated him, waiting for the Shia Surprise, then decapitating him with an axe.
EDIT: eh, probably not. Aerbian reflections tend to be altered from the source material.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+10] Champion of Justice and Reason (4 hours later)
The fact that the original song is probably altered could mean that the original song works but no one on Aerb knows it, hence why no one has been able to use it to defeat him - they were using the wrong lyrics...
u/abcd_z [+15] (4 hours later)
I don't think anybody knows the song, period. I think somebody just stumbled upon those two words "Shia LeBeouf".
u/eltegid [+4] (a day later)
Given that he can be invoked by saying his name thrice, he seems to be based more on the group playing the game than on the song, right?
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+23] Fruit flies like a banana (5 hours later)
u/ArisKatsaris [+1] Sidebar Contender (a day later)
Um, do the rules imply that paper bags is the one thing that can trap Shia Labeouf?
u/fortycakes [+2] (a day later)
u/ketura [+3] Organizer (3 hours later)
I have watched that video probably hundreds of times, and I've never noticed the guy with a red mohawk near the end. What a deep piece of art, truly the Ulysses of our generation.
u/CouteauBleu [+19] We are the Empire. (16 hours later)
I really like the character development on Grak. I think a lot of his quirks probably make a lot more sense on re-reading, when you realize he's not a stoic introvert, but a severely depressed extrovert.
“Jorge and I are going on a date,” said Valencia as she came into the common room and flopped down in a chair.
That... does seem a tiny bit premature. Valencia is still learning to process social situations without demons, she still hasn't read any other book besides Harry Potter, Jorge has strong incentives to try to manipulate her for information, and ultimately, she kind of has the mentality of a 13-years-old.
Ah well. At least we might learn more about Jorge and the other uniquities characters through her.
“I don’t particularly care if you have sex,” said Bethel. “Hundreds of people have had sex in my rooms.”
That's interesting. I'm trying to figure out how many people have lived in her before she went recluse, and it seems the answer is "quite a lot".
I mean, she had a reputation for being haunted, but on the other hand, she could just outlast that reputation by a few decades, and remain inhabited just by being a nice house near a large metropolis.
“Well I’d rather not have an adventure just for the sake of it,” said Fenn. “But speaking of adventures for the sake of it, can we finally play Arches? We’re all here, we’ve got nothing better to do, I’ve had my campaign ready for ages, and I know that Juniper’s got stuff ready if we want to play his. Mary?”
Aw, I had hopes there.
By the way, I hope we get to see Bethel play DM. Superpowers aside, she kinda has the no-nonsense personality for the job.
"Anyway, Jorge and I were eating, and-"
"It's your turn, and I have filled myself with poison gas. If you want the antidote, start playing the damn game."
Bethel elected not to come with, which I think we all saw coming. [...] For what was planned as a day trip, and one where we probably wouldn’t need overwhelming firepower, that didn’t seem worth it.
YOU IDIOT!
u/GeeJo [+10] Custom Flair (19 hours later)
I mean, she had a reputation for being haunted, but on the other hand, she could just outlast that reputation by a few decades, and remain inhabited just by being a nice house near a large metropolis.
It's not like her being known as a haunted house would stop teens from sneaking out there to have sex. It would actively encourage it, in fact.
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+1] (5 days later)
Ah well. At least we might learn more about Jorge and the other uniquities characters through her.
“I don’t particularly care if you have sex,” said Bethel. “Hundreds of people have had sex in my rooms.”
Speaking of which, if Valencia gets pregnant, is the resulting baby also a non-anima? Is it also an anti-infernal?
u/None [+16] (4 hours later)
[deleted]
u/CouteauBleu [+9] We are the Empire. (15 hours later)
No. If she prints a page from the SCP website, she's going to explode because memetic antimatter brain centipedes will [DATA EXPUNGED].
u/Takashoru [+7] (a day later)
The backpack specifically did not provide an Urban Dictionary page that contained SB's name. This may suggest that it will not allow the dissemination of an info-hazard, or it may just protect the DM as the creator of the information.
Depending on which one it is, you might be able to rule out certain Earth memes as infohazards by attempting to retrieve them from the backpack.
u/CouteauBleu [+6] We are the Empire. (a day later)
I don't think they could actually use that method. Unless they have a safe-ish infohazard they could conjuring from the backpack. Otherwise, it boils down to "try using this method, and if it doesn't kill us, it's safe".
u/Takashoru [+2] (a day later)
You're not wrong, but it might still be better than Joon stumbling across one again unprepared.
u/Mandabar [+3] Worth the Candle (2 days later)
Are you suggesting that SLB should kill the DM if he didn't prevent that info being provided?
That's hilarious to think.
u/Takashoru [+2] (2 days later)
I'm sure he wouldn't actually be killed, but I imagine he might not want to have to make an exception.
u/icesharkk [+1] (4 days later)
Nah the DM could just dereference himself as the originator of the information. Remember Valencia is referred to as a nul pointer acception
u/Takashoru [+2] (5 days later)
If you're talking in a programming context, dereference is not what the DM should be doing. Erasing a pointer to himself would possibly work.
u/cactus_head [+2] (3 days later)
Relevant SCP: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1247
u/Green0Photon [+29] Student in Cyoria, Minmay, and Ranvar (2 hours later)
Considering the whole Shia LeBeouf thing, if Juniper did anything remotely SCP, which is plausible, then everyone's kinda fucked.
u/ricree [+48] (2 hours later)
There was one listed in the campaign notes:
Long Stairs - One of the rare campaigns set on Earth. Idea came from the internet, both in original concept, and with a lot of the setting details and conceits being similar to SCP works (especially trying to nail the feel of mission reports). Ran it twice, once as a meditation on American involvement in the Middle East, the second time post-Arthur as more of a “run friends through the thresher because of personal problems”.
The second playthrough seems especially worrisome.
u/meterion [+22] (6 hours later)
The other part where he mentions a campaign inspired by Fine Structure is ESPECIALLY WORRISOME because he’s then almost certainly familiar with qntm’s SCP work, and if there’s an antimeme entity on the scale of 55555 lurking in Aerb... they are so fucked. Especially since the local Foundation-equivalent Uniquities has nowhere near the resources to deal with potential K-class events.
Doing a quest with SCP-inspiration would be hella cool to read, though.
u/None [+4] (2 days later)
qntm’s SCP work
Holy shit, the guy who wrote RA also did stuff for the SCP project? How haven't I found this yet?
E: I just looked it up, and unsurprisingly I already read a good portion of these, because they're great.
u/Green0Photon [+18] Student in Cyoria, Minmay, and Ranvar (3 hours later)
Welp.
That's where all the info hazards on Aerb are from (or many anyway). I wonder if an SCP organization itself actually exists. This part Juniper totally forgot/ignored.
Also, the campaign notes was the only part of the notes I actually skipped. :|
u/GeeJo [+28] Custom Flair (4 hours later)
That's where all the info hazards on Aerb are from (or many anyway). I wonder if an SCP organization itself actually exists.
Something like...Uniquities?
u/CouteauBleu [+7] We are the Empire. (5 hours later)
Oh yeah. I feel like we're going to run into a lot of infohazards in this book. All the better to distract us from the mind-destroying horror of bureaucracy and government-building!
u/abcd_z [+10] (4 hours later)
“Obviously those specific ones can’t be here on Aerb, because I know about them and no horrible fate has befallen me yet, but just to be safe I’m not going to ever write them down or say them.”
u/Croktopus [+13] (7 hours later)
Jesus. Fucking chills still. Grak is gonna end up killing Shia LeBeouf
u/GeeJo [+12] Custom Flair (19 hours later)
He already has a stump hand, after all.
u/valeskas [+13] (14 hours later)
if it was magically modifying their minds instead of just acting as a gauge of what they thought about me
In ELEVATOR facts chapter, Fenn got loyalty bumps on Inge Carter and Tova Feidlimid deaths, while thinking that it was a case of elf luck.
Does it count as evidence of modifying minds?
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+2] (5 days later)
Does it count as evidence of modifying minds?
Weakly perhaps, but plenty of alternate explanations. Like the rush of a shared experience, and relief that the hoomin was reliable enough to not fuck things up and get her killed.
u/PanickedApricott [+12] (20 hours later)
Well according to the rules of Actual Cannibal [REDACTED] [REDACTED] power scales with the number of opponents but not the power of the opponents. He can gain new abilities at will through "[REDACTED] surprise" at the cost of health which can be regained for every kill with no upper bound.
Seems like Shia could be killed by a small group of powerful individuals. I wonder where they can find something like that.
u/PathologicalFire [+6] (a day later)
You forgot to redact it! Now we're all gonna die!
u/PanickedApricott [+5] (a day later)
I've a heavy laptop and my phone, wallet, and keys. I saw him as wisps in my peripheral vision. Moments where I think I see him but when I look directly at him he's not there. I'm in my car all the seats are down. I'm making sure not to look away from the inside of the vehicle and paying close attention to my peripheral vision all the while wondering what horror I have just become responsible for.
u/rabotat [+1] (a day later)
From what I understand it scales to threats and is completely invulnerable and unstoppable.
u/FireHawkDelta [+24] ** (5 hours later)
On a more uplifting note, they should try putting Larkspur's helicopter into Bethel's anyblade-expanded closet. If it has any enhancements that help with flight, we'll be one step closer to having a Final Fantasy-style airship. This is necessary for WtC to be an epic.
u/This_Douchebag [+10] (a day later)
“She’s still salty about the Surface Sheath variant,” said Fenn with a laugh.
“Because it was bullshit,” said Amaryllis. “The whole fucking thing, and yes, I’m still quote salty unquote about it. We were specifically fucked by a black swan.”
Could someone remind me what they're talking about here?
u/matematikaadit [+8] (a day later)
It's the incident with the tattoo mage in Barren Jewel.
As Surface Sheath itself: from chapter 30
Surface Sheath: An object pressed against the tattoo will skin into and become part of the magic of the skin, allowing it to be retrieved later by pulling at the edge of the tattoo. Object must be inserted within thirty minutes of tattoo completion. Required size depends upon the size of the object to be stored.
The variant that they talked about is the one where you need a keyword to retrieve the object.
u/matematikaadit [+10] (a day later)
paging /u/cthulhuraejepsen, probably brief or very short mention in the chapter to remind the reader? Maybe something along "the tattoo mage in Barren Jewel accident" in Joon head or something.
I didn't remember it too until I search through the chapters.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+2] Fruit flies like a banana (4 days later)
Okay, I'll change it to need less reference.
u/Rorschach_Roadkill [+18] (10 hours later)
Oh Jesus, poor Grak. Somehow it didn't click for me that having a warder would be an extremely pragmatic thing for an underground dwarven village. Da didn't just run away from da nad family and social obligations, da deprived da nad community of one of its most vital institutions. This really explains a lot.
Also, I keep forgetting the scale of Aerb. If the majority of a billion dwarves live in strongholds of a couple of thousand inhabitants, there are hundreds of thousands of Darili Irids - that's just staggering.
Great few chapters, thanks CRJ. May blood never drain fast from your stump leg.
u/TheKingleMingle [+8] (23 hours later)
It still bugs me that Juniper's response to "you don't have infohazards on Earth?" was "No" and not "not that i know of"
u/rabotat [+2] (a day later)
I wonder what would happen if he said bloody mary, or bettlejuice.
u/chaos-engine [+1] (7 days later)
Amaryllis: "I SAID NO PROPER NOUNS! Our chance of dying just went up 2x"
u/rabotat [+1] (7 days later)
I don't know that is evidence of anything, I was saying that Earth has joke infohazards, like bloody Mary.
So I'm wondering if any of those are real on Aerb.
hell, not just infohazards. Breaking a mirror, seeing a black cat, stepping on a crack, who knows what superstition could be real there.
u/tjhance [+7] (4 hours later)
I had never heard of the Shia LaBeouf cannibal thing, but i googled Shia LeBeouf and found he was a real life actor, and then I was very confused for a while...
still, great chapter! :D
u/None [+8] (18 hours later)
Robe of Tongues
Oh god why
u/GeeJo [+3] Custom Flair (19 hours later)
What were they even hoping to pull off by adding that to the entads in the closet?
u/Izeinwinter [+3] (20 hours later)
A house that cooks meals for them? Or just a bigger sensorium overlap with inhabitants, for reasons of practicality and theory of mind - Taste and food is very important to biological life.
u/None [+7] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+1] (5 days later)
so it obviously was first introduced by someone dream-skewered.
Nonsense. Half the point of Aerb is that things analogous to earth are independently invented/found.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+12] Fruit flies like a banana (39 seconds later)
Typos here, please. I have a fairly sizable backlog, but my wife is going to be taking care of it as part of my father's day present.
u/Flashbunny [+8] (13 hours later)
“Barriers won’t work,” said Amaryllis as she put on the immobility plate. She was speaking fast, almost breathless. “Wards won’t work. Obstructions won’t work, raw killing power won’t work, magic will be shrugged off or only partially successful, no known entad can stop him, and he scales to any threats. On the first invocation of his name there’s a sixty percent chance he’ll appear, and if he does we’re absolutely fucked -- no Juniper, don’t write anything down.”
Not a typo, but at this point, Amaryllis hasn't asked Juniper if it's a name or a word.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+3] Fruit flies like a banana (4 days later)
I changed that, mostly for flow, as it would be reasonable to assume that the context of the word as Juniper used it was a name.
u/tjhance [+4] (57 minutes later)
though the metric appears to be years per volume
should this by volume*years? I expect if she builds the room to have more volume, you would get less time out of it?
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+3] Fruit flies like a banana (2 hours later)
Hrm, yes. Fixed, thanks.
u/Takashoru [+1] (a day later)
No, I think it was correct originally. If the quantity is years/volume, and you multiply it by a volume of the room, you get the number of years of time it can provide.
u/None [+3] (4 hours later)
Not sure if this is a typo, but in Ch. 106
A flip had been switched
Should be "A switch had been flipped"?
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+2] Fruit flies like a banana (4 hours later)
Yup, fixed, thank you.
u/adgnatum [+2] (5 hours later)
think I was making things about myself
things up
It was a little unfair to Fenn, because archery was her personal domain of excellence, but Fenn had pretty much every other advantage there was to have
I can't tell if this is intended or not. The structure implies that the one having every other advantage isn't also going to be Fenn.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (4 days later)
Fixed the first one.
As to the second:
- Pitting them against each other in melee combat is unfair to Fenn, because her domain of excellence is archery rather than melee.
- However, Fenn has almost every physical advantage there is to have in a fight, short of raw skill.
I'm not sure which part of the wording is causing problems; let me know.
u/adgnatum [+1] (5 days later)
I think I'm unwittingly playing a trick on myself and now you by taking the sentence out of its context, which is the sparring. Even so, I think I'm not entirely mistaken here. It's unfair to Fenn because of Valencia's ability, and the sentence is a bit weird because it has Fenn's name twice.
Maybe the fix is as simple as "she still" or "even so, she":
It was a little unfair to Fenn, because archery was her personal domain of excellence, but she still had pretty much every other advantage there was to have.
u/eroticas [+1] (an hour later)
sheilds
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+2] Fruit flies like a banana (2 hours later)
Fixed, thanks.
u/This_Douchebag [+1] (2 hours later)
Heavy Armor 20, Thaumic Defense: When wearing heavy armor, add you half your skill to any defense rolls made to defend against magical attacks, attacks using magical effects, entad attacks, or attacks using entad effects, even when this is unreasonable.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+2] Fruit flies like a banana (4 hours later)
Fixed, thanks.
u/JustLookingToHelp [+1] (2 hours later)
In Grak's narrative, switched a flip - > flipped a switch.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+2] Fruit flies like a banana (4 hours later)
Fixed, thanks.
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (3 hours later)
Chapter 106: “I am sorry that … that all of your efforts at being a good midwife for Amaryllis came to tess than we had hoped.”
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+2] Fruit flies like a banana (4 hours later)
Fixed, thanks.
u/Sparkwitch [+1] (3 hours later)
We were specifically fucked by black swan.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (4 hours later)
Fixed, thanks.
u/GeeJo [+1] Custom Flair (4 hours later)
I'm unsure whether:
with something that’s single state, single die
should be 'single stat, single die' or not, in describing simple games.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+2] Fruit flies like a banana (4 hours later)
Changed that, thanks.
u/nytelios [+1] (4 hours later)
106
exhorbitant > exorbitant
“and even then, they were extremely rare” extremely rare repeated from previous paragraph
107
He’dHe's arbitrarily strong
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+2] Fruit flies like a banana (5 hours later)
Fixed those, thanks.
u/Kerbal_NASA [+1] (21 hours later)
ch. 106
there was a good chance that you’d end up hoist by your own petard
hoist -> hoisted
He knew a fair amount of Anglish, though couldn’t actually speak or read it
I was confused by this sentence. Was it intended as something like "...though not enough to actually speak or read it"? Maybe the "actually" already makes that clear enough and my brain is just being weird, but the way my brain naturally parsed it was that he could write and understand spoken Anglish but couldn't speak/read it (which doesn't make much sense to me).
u/nytelios [+1] (a day later)
Yeah, the 2nd part also confused me, but it seemed like it might be possible so I double checked. Apparently it can happen with receptive bilingualism or when knowledge of the language isn't overlearned yet.
u/Kerbal_NASA [+1] (a day later)
Huh, that's interesting and makes sense. Though even with that, I'd just say "couldn't actually speak it" unless there's also some way of being able to write the language without the ability to read it (at which point I give up on understanding brains hahaha).
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (4 days later)
In that particular idiom, "hoist" is the past participle of the obsolete verb "hoise". See here.
In reference to Grak's Anglish ... it reads fine to me either way, but I have no strong opinions on changing it to something that parses better for other people. The intent with regard to him being able to read it was that he was capable of doing something more like a laborious word-by-word translation of Anglish into Groglir, rather than actually reading the Anglish itself; knowing a fair amount of Anglish means understanding some of the differences between their languages in terms of structure, having memorized a few key phrases, and knowing a small handful of words.
u/Kerbal_NASA [+1] (4 days later)
Ah, interesting, thanks for the clarification and teaching me about hoise.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Chapter 106
its sheathe/its sheath
weilded/wielded
Chapter 107
ninjitsu/ninjutsu
or alternately/or alternatively
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (4 days later)
Fixed those, thanks.
I'm keeping "alternately" though; Google's dictionary lists that usage as being specifically North American.
u/Laborbuch [+1] (2 days later)
Typo
ch 107
Suddenly, your idle conversation is interrupted when one of the windows rattles suddenly,”
bad wording
I returned to my seat at well
as well
Ha-Lunde
Ha-lunde (based on uses in previous chapter)
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (4 days later)
Fixed those, thanks.
u/major_fox_pass [+1] (an hour later)
Ch. 106:
It was international news as written for dwarves, a combination of imperial politics, major incidents, and the occasional fluff piece, as produced for the billion or so dwarves that lived on Aerb, most of whom were in isolated dwarfholds just like Darili Irid.
u/PresentCompanyExcl [+6] The Culture (21 hours later)
Seems like that Goblin library might be a good place to look for library magic.
u/ForMyWork [+4] (4 hours later)
Hot damn, this was and is surprisingly stressful. Now I'm wondering how on earth they are planning on dealing with this.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
On Earth? They don't even plan to visit.
u/ForMyWork [+1] (a day later)
As in the expression "how on earth" similar to "how the hell". I wasn't actually referring to Earth :P
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Ah, solving Hell's problems, on the other hand, may be possible.
u/ForMyWork [+1] (a day later)
:3
u/TempAccountIgnorePls [+4] (20 hours later)
Oh my God we're having an infohazard arc. /u/cthuluraejepsen, you are a mad genius and I love you.
Also, I'm weirdly proud of myself for recognising the Library of Kel'e'thar
u/ben_oni [+5] (a day later)
u/cthulhuraejepsen, are you raiding the Munchkinry threads again? Or are you secretly u/RustyRhea?
u/GeeJo [+7] Custom Flair (2 days later)
This...yeah.
I'd be honestly surprised if RustyRhea wasn't a throwaway for this exact purpose. It's too specific.Not that there's anything in the least wrong with it. Asking with a primary account would end up a spoiler, and it makes sense to perform a basic sanity-check before throwing in something like this. It's the entire purpose of those threads to do things like this.
I guess we wait and see if the aetheric layers come into play for another worldbuilding point.
u/JiggyRobot [+4] (a day later)
With Valencia and that armor, does that essentially make her immune to damage now? I guess narratively it makes sense for her to be hard to hurt, since she is also much harder to heal. Still seems overpowered though.
Also, with the name Valencia the red and both that armor and the blood axe floating around it definitely sounds like the DM had a particular theme in mind.
u/thrawnca [+3] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Kinetic damage only, iiuc (based on how it calculates damage), and it's possible that there are limits.
u/PM_ME_CUTE_FOXES [+11] (5 hours later)
It seems like I'm in the minority, but -- I feel like using a dead meme for a plot point is kind of... uglier or more garish than the rest of Aerb. Feels tacky.
Just my two cents. I did still really enjoy the chapters.
u/meterion [+15] (11 hours later)
I do like the layers of meta in it—ACSL is terrifying in his “origin story”, ridiculous to a Terran audience, then terrifying to Aerb, then ridiculous in a terrified way to Joon and co. when they realize his origins.
But otherwise it is much more of a “lol get this reference???” kind of Easter egg than everything else the DM’s done so far. Even the author anagram was at least somewhat obfuscated.
u/KarlitoHomes [+12] (18 hours later)
The in-text justification for why ACSL exists on Aerb is not that he's a silly internet meme, but that Juniper and Co. played a microrpg based on said meme.
u/meterion [+5] (19 hours later)
Sure, it's just to me it crosses the line from "heavy inspiration" to "blatant plagiarism" in terms of Terran cultural material. Pretty much everything else in Aerb introduced so far is either made solely by the DM, adapted from Joon's campaigns, or somewhat hidden easter eggs from Terran culture (the Kinsey book anagram).
Since it's said that Joon ran conventional campaigns, it would be like them coming across an enclave of Yog Sothoth cultists, assuming he played Call of Cthulhu at some point. If the DM is borrowing material that Joon didn't come up with, he at least makes a token effort to disguise it.
I wouldn't have any complaints if there was an inhuman monster that would kill all those who named it, known to few as the Haal sou Beif, that would be totally in line with what the DM's done so far. Not even trying to hide the connection to Terra, not so much.
u/PM_ME_CUTE_FOXES [+2] (19 hours later)
Yeah, that's what I was trying to get across, thanks!
u/jaghataikhan [+3] Primarch of the White Scars (15 hours later)
Author anagram? Trying to figure out what cthulu are Jenson rearranged is haha
u/meterion [+6] (15 hours later)
Haha, I mean when Amaryllis realized the author of that "Here's how to have sex with every species on Aerb" book was an anagram of that Terran author of sexuality books. It happens in the time room, but not having luck trying to ctrl-f it.
u/jaghataikhan [+6] Primarch of the White Scars (17 hours later)
Ah, I remember now, Kinsey!
I can see where you're coming from, but I actually find this idea interesting - the theme of either Aerb pulling stuff from Jun's subconcious (in warped form)(ie nothing he conciously put in a campaign, but stuff that he was aware of) or even more scarily stuff from Earth that he didn't even know about showing up warped (potentially via the same link that draws other dream skewered?)
u/WalterTFD [+5] (19 hours later)
They are not doing adventuring anymore, and are in fact playing their own RPG instead of the DM's. Shot across the bow to get them to fly straight again.
u/dalitt [+1] (4 days later)
I think this was sort of necessary for the DM to railroad them onto the Straddling Worlds quest -- for the railroading to work, the threat had to have some relationship to Earth and the dream-skewered.
u/Anderkent [+4] (4 hours later)
I narrowed my eyes slightly at that. She could have killed Fallatehr with it, when she’d been captured by him, just before he’d touched her soul. Shia LaBeouf would have killed her, but he’d also have killed Fallatehr too. Understanding dawned on me as I thought back to what she’d said about that misadventure. ‘Suicide comes in many flavors’, she’d said.
Anyone remember / can find this scene? I tried some basic searches but couldn't find it.
u/tjhance [+5] (5 hours later)
suicide is discussed in chapter 73 but not in those words... couldn't find anything else. Maybe Juniper is just recounting the story that Amaryllis told him off-screen?
u/None [+4] (20 hours later)
Judging by the mention in the chaptel, I guess there will be no new Glimwarden until Juniper escapes Aerb.
u/ArisKatsaris [+5] Sidebar Contender (a day later)
Is Juniper's soul-editing able to remove individual memories? Can he edit people into forgetting the "Shia Lebouf" name?
u/bacontime [+7] (a day later)
Chapter 63
“I don’t get how it’s possible,” I said. “Is memory not part of the soul?”
“It is,” said Fallatehr. “Though it’s nearly inaccessible to attempts at manipulation.”
Chapter 70:
I suspected that Fallatehr wasn’t telling the whole truth, [...] because it was possible to look at and presumably alter memories, even if the interface for that seemed lacking.
Chapter 72
“Memories are difficult to work with,” said Fallatehr. “Difficult, but not impossible. Your memories of what you have seen and felt of your own soul would suffice, for my purposes.” He held up a hand as I opened my mouth to offer the obvious objection. “I would not need to touch your soul. With your skill as it is, you would be able to transfer those memories into the soul of an intermediary, who would then go to visit me, on another continent, as Amaryllis suggested.”
Chapter 73:
"If you could reverse what you have done and erase our memories --”
“No, memories are nigh-impossible to work with like that, even when freshly made, at least if attempting to manipulate them through the mechanism of the soul,”
So putting this all together, memory reading and transfer is well within the domain of soul-magic. Memory editing is extremely difficult. Selective memory deletion is likely not possible, except maybe with a repeat of that skill sacrifice trick.
u/1337_w0n [+3] (2 days later)
I am reminded of this general munchkinry thread entry.
u/DaystarEld [+5] Pokémon Professor (4 hours later)
Man, as soon as SCP was mentioned as inspiration for some games I was sure a terrifying infohazard threat would show up at some point. That it turned out to be Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf is as hilarious as it is oddly perfect, given the world's conceit.
u/Ironsides1985 [+2] (a day later)
For the curious, here is were I found the rules for Actual Cannibal Shia Labeouf. https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/35fpdj/system_actual_cannibal_shia_labeouf/
u/chaos-engine [+1] (7 days later)
This is amazing!!!
u/LupoCani [+2] (3 days later)
Whew, finally caught up from Grayscale.
Registering a prediction: Uther, having a game layer, had the same level-up compulsion with no way to manage the resulting addiction. Some actions, like dropping into the boundless pit, were taken largely in pursuit of ever more hard-to-obtain fixes.
Come to think of it, there are a few good reasons for something like this not to be true. (Also, I didn't do the least bit of checking for similar guesses) Still, I'll be damned if I call a plot point and without proof again, so I'm erring on the side of caution.
u/HaramDatingSim [+2] (4 days later)
Well, that explains the inclusion of a Medium Armor skill in the system, a bold move that I haven't seen anyone try to pull off since Morrowind (if you played Morrowind, you know why).
Retroactively funny that Amaryllis chided Joon for picking redundant armor skills. Turns out that Medium Armor exists solely and entirely for the purposes of making a mega-armor build with all three skills.
Possible further virtues: Medium armor usage also grants skill gains in heavy/light Use whichever armor skill is highest while wearing medium armor All Medium Armor virtues also work while wearing non-medium armor Add Unarmored to the pile, just for shits and giggles? Add the skill ratings together?
Well, that last one looks like it would be a trap. A sneaky way for the DM to modernize the system and get rid of the unfashionable Medium Armor skill while maintaining simulationist deniability by making some poor fool get the skill - and himself - Excluded.
u/Biondi27 [+2] (5 days later)
Does anyone have an idea if the whole level up addiction thing will be concluding soon? The last description of the dopamine surge left me feeling very uncomfortable and rather squeamish.
u/None [+1] (9 hours later)
[removed]
u/TwoxMachina [+1] (15 hours later)
Pazuzu isn't a bad thing. To players, that is.
But if you're the DM... :P
u/awesomeideas [+1] Dai stiho, cousin. (19 hours later)
Juniper needs to wipe everyone's memories about this. They do have an axe that eats memories...
u/licorice_straw [+1] (a day later)
Has there been any author discussion on how many books there will be or roughly where we are in the arc of the story? Just want to know for expectation setting!
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+1] (4 days later)
Let's talk about that magic:
- To become a velocity mage, you had to move, without magical assistance, faster than the benchmark, and then maintain it for a short period of time. It went up with every velocity mage that was inducted into the ranks. Due to somewhat short-sighted expansion of those ranks during the Second Empire, that meant going more than six hundred miles per hour, and there was presumably some secret to it, because that was really, really fast.
- Vibrational Magic was locked to a magic item, which was tightly controlled by the Athenaeum of Sound and Silence, and besides that, rate limited. It was frustrating, because all I needed was a tap on the head, but there was a long line of people waiting in front of me, all of whom had gone through the training necessary to actually utilize the magic.
- Revision Magic required being revised backward by a year, which was far more than enough to kill a person, since your body spent that year taking in and expelling matter. The Athenaeum of Claw and Clocks had a collection of entads that would keep you stable, including the Thousand Rings of Stability, but it still meant giving up a year of your life, the so-called “lost year” (as memories were lost too), and obviously it took a lot of time and power from an existing revision mage to do the revision.
- Still Magic required visiting a temple and meditating there for a week, which wouldn’t have been too much of a problem, except that the temple was deep underground, and controlled by the Athenaeum of Sound and Silence.
- Water Magic was a bloodline magic, and all I really needed was a teacher, who we’d already contacted and was on her way to come see us. The strict combat utility wasn’t all that promising, but the weather control aspects would help a lot on the Isle of Poran.
- Fire Magic we could do too, but hadn’t. About 1% of the time someone was burned alive, they would awaken horribly scarred but otherwise fine, with the barest powers of a fire magus. If you had sufficient magical healing, you could take someone to the brink and then heal them back as many times as it took for the fire magic to trigger.
So, numbers 1, 3, and 6 basically just require munchkinry, and numbers 2, 3, and 4 require politics.
Velocity magic seems like a problem for Amaryllis and technology, and possibly the house making itself a vacuum tube (think about it for a sec: complete knowledge of its internals and being able to arbitrarily apply 5 pounds of force means it could just use a Maxwell's Demon approach! Or a boring smelly tedious plebian old-fashioned compression system). Acceleration would be useful to have, because it would shorten the necessary length of the tube. Being able to cast the prince's-whatever 6-second invincibility spell would be useful for safely escaping afterward, but probably optional.
So, vacuum tube or just a giant rocket. In fact, if possible they should just invent an edible odd-tasting (so that it counts as recreation - give the recipe to some chef and say "make this exactly, and serve it as a drink", and voila!) rocket-fuel, if possible, and have Bethel generate it, to save costs. Or not, I don't know if that's a problem.
Revision magic requires time, which they have plenty of, stored in a chamber. If they could do the entire thing in there, then they lose basically nothing (soul mages are effectively immortal to aging, AIUI, so losing the lifespan isn't a problem for Joon, neither is the time, nor memories of spending a year in the chamber.
The question is: are those entads portable? If they are, then with politics they could just borrow them for a few hours (or however long an in-the-chamber year is, plus setup etc), accompanied by a revision mage to help do the thing.
Fire magic is... already sorted? Either way, consistent fire damage, consistent healing, hopefully not too much time, and they've got it.
#2 seems straightforward - find someone they can bribe/blackmail into handing over their place in the line. Finding 50 people who are willing to delay their ascension for 3 months might be easier than finding one person who's willing to go to the very back of the line.
#4 sounds like it's a matter of paying huge tuition fees.
But, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Do we even need to traditionally unlock the magics? Perhaps a soul scaphism plus levelling would be enough to stay on level one, once the scaphism wears off. At that point, you simply need to find someone with one level, then peel off a level or two and then attempt to grind the shit out of that skill - perhaps live combat with the skill would make it level faster? Really, the biggest sacrifice would be finding souls of people with the relevant magics. If that's trivial, then (assuming June still retains the soul scaphism ability) there's basically no loss in attempting to unlock the skill the easy way.
Plus, with the twin souls etc, unlocking one for June should make it possible for companions to easy-unlock them by roughly the same method.