70 KiB
[RT] Worth the Candle, ch 110-112
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Author: u/cthulhuraejepsen Fruit flies like a banana*
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URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11478249/chapters/35546412
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Score: 177
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Created: 2018-07-17T01:51:11
Post:
Comments:
u/sparkc [+55] (26 minutes later)
Fenn’s willingness to just shoot arrows at people is equal parts hilarious and disturbing.
Also, you know how the popcorn variety serial fiction takes every opportunity it can for the protagonist to blow everyones minds with there seemingly impossible awesomeness? You know, the 'A is clearly impossible! No one has ever done blah blah blah' protagonist proceeds to do said impossiblity and then everyone's jaw drops? Well that sort of thing is so much more satisfying when it's used sparingly and it's why i love every moment of Devil Valencia speaking 'unknowable' truths, dissecting water-sack-tendril sign language and leaving everybody speechless.
Also also, did anyone else feel sorry for Masters? He made the wrong approach, and i have no qualms with how Joon dealt with him, but you can see the chain of reasoning that led to his choice of actions and the poor guys been spending the last 500 years living a lie, waiting for this moment, at least in part for altruistic reasons, and he completely fucks it up.
u/Law_Student [+23] (2 hours later)
If you want people to trust you then you can't betray that trust, Masters. You'd think someone that old would understand that, but I guess his desperation not to let June get away before he got his answers led to him doing the very things that ensured he wouldn't get his answers.
I suppose it's not all over, though. Masters is still alive, and the team could conceivably be willing to speak to him in the future if he was under their power instead of the other way around.
u/akaltyn [+14] (15 hours later)
Fenn’s willingness to just shoot arrows at people is equal parts hilarious and disturbing.
A casual reminder that she has pretty much zero regard for the lives of strangers, and an ability to kill at will
u/GeeJo [+12] Custom Flair (a day later)
A standard tabletop-rpg player character, then.
u/DCarrier [+18] (5 hours later)
Also also, did anyone else feel sorry for Masters?
I mostly just feel sorry for the people that end up in the hells. Everything else is pretty minor in comparison.
u/CouteauBleu [+49] We are the Empire. (7 hours later)
"Man, that chapter was so sad. I could barely read it, with how horribly these poor people were being tortured!"
"What? When did that happen? The group was going to a movie night! It ends with them lounging in the grass, gazing at the stars!"
"THERE WERE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE BEING TORTURED WHILE THEY DID THAT"
u/DCarrier [+12] (7 hours later)
I can generally ignore it if it doesn't come up, but I'm a lot more concerned when they kill hundreds of innocent Tuung who are going to be tortured than when they just knock out someone who tried to kidnap them.
u/CouteauBleu [+7] We are the Empire. (7 hours later)
Yeah, I wasn't making fun of you.
u/renegadeduck [+11] picky but enthusiastic (20 hours later)
I keep forgetting about the torture thing. I’ve been rolling my eyes at the Christian concept of the afterlife for too long. Turns out my mom was right — they got stuck that way.
u/xartab [+2] (7 days later)
I also got this thing where I've had to listen to religious mythology stated like facts so often that now I get a bit of a pavlovian "PU-LEASE!" every time it's mentioned, and this unfortunately had the side effect of making me scepticise to fiction that shares those same elements. I'm assessing it, but it's kinda bothersome.
u/eaglejarl [+9] (9 hours later)
I don't recall -- is there anything inherently bad about the hells themselves, or is it purely that there are devils/demons there and they torture people? If it's just non-human monsters torturing you, then that is a clearly solvable problem: Valencia is able to eat them, so there are almost certainly other ways to eat them. Find enough of those ways, combine them, eat all the bad guys. Voila, the hells aren't so bad anymore.
On the other hand, if the place is a lake of fire then there's not much to do.
u/Flashbunny [+8] (22 hours later)
Valencia's ability to eat them appears to have come about from a loophole in her non-anima status, caused by the Game system requiring she be a "real" person and rewriting reality to make that happen. As the Game is unique to Juniper and Uther and this was done by the Loyalty system (which has an extremely limited number of slots, to the point I doubt they even could get another non-anima in there) it is very possible she's unique in this regard.
Of course, finding ways to improve her rate of consumption might be possible.
u/None [+3] (2 days later)
She seems to be growing in consumption power as Juniper grows in regular power.
u/RMcD94 [+1] (10 hours later)
Beyond hells not being bad it makes the non-hell world pointless.
u/LazarusRises [+1] (a day later)
I guess we don't know for sure, but if demons and devils are responsible for torturing souls, then Valencia is working on this problem almost constantly.
u/DCarrier [+5] (a day later)
She could spend her whole natural life on it and she won't make much of a difference. And wasn't she not doing it unless she needed to for self defense or for the sake of a joke or something?
u/akaltyn [+9] (15 hours later)
re the demonstration of skill, it also helps that the protagonists are going up against other groups who are also competent and well organized. E.g. the team we just met in this chapter. Means that it feels like serious threats, and so makes their skills seem more meaningful. Those "oh my god you di the amzing forbidden technique" moments aren't effective because they often rely on everyone else being thoroughly uncreative and incompetent
u/vaniver [+1] (8 days later)
Also also, did anyone else feel sorry for Masters? He made the wrong approach, and i have no qualms with how Joon dealt with him
Eh, I do have qualms, that basically echo Mary's issue with how Fallatehr was handled (and Mary's complaint about how this was handled!), especially given that Joon considered behaving in the same sort of way towards Doris Finch. There seems to be a huge split in how he deal with companions and non-compansions, and this makes sense, except that he doesn't seem to view non-companions in a symmetric way. That is, he's open, honest, and trusting towards companions, and highly closed and manipulative towards non-companions, and then judges non-companions for not treating him like a companion. If he met a copy of himself, I expect it would fairly reliably end up with one of them killing the other rather than them cooperating.
(Like, imagine one of Uther's servants stumbling across Joon's doorstep, and saying "uh, I feel uncomfortable, how about I leave and we'll slowly coordinate some meeting on neutral ground?". Would Joon say "sure, seems reasonable, you seem scared and I don't want to scare you" or would Joon use the duress he's unwilling to respond to?)
u/xachariah [+51] (7 hours later)
It looks like Raven is getting setup to be a significant character.
With Uther, she was 1200 years old, or 12 in human terms.
500 years later puts her right in the Juniper Smith strike zone.
u/None [+15] (9 hours later)
That part seems weird to me. How can someone who is 1200 years old act like a child. It seems to me that what makes a teenager immature is little to no meaningful responsibility and the lack of life experiences, good or bad. Raven was an enforcer of a giant empire which I assume makes you grow up fast. Maybe all it means is that she had the hormones of a teenager. Great chapter.
u/akaltyn [+23] (15 hours later)
Joon mentioned that that species learns more slowly, but not at a hundredth as fast, so that probably means that they can do some things more quickly than others. So perhaps they are developing mentally in some ways, but with their body lagging behind.
Now I think about it in that way someone with hundreds of years worth of skills and experience, but the mental architecture and emotional respones of a teenager would be downright terrifying.
I can imagine Uther taking advantage of her emotional immaturity to have her as a loyal enforcer/minion. But her father Masters having grown up with others of their species regards her as an emotionally undeveloped child
u/GeeJo [+8] Custom Flair (a day later)
I can imagine Uther taking advantage of her emotional immaturity
Given the story beats so far with regards to Uther, I thought you were taking that sentence in a different direction.
u/sparr [+8] (16 hours later)
Maybe it's about hormones? 100 years is plenty of time to get used to teenage-stupid-making hormones, but you wouldn't be immune to them, and if they last a thousand years (age 11 to 21, or 1100 to 2100) you'd probably develop plenty of bad habits.
u/JiggyRobot [+4] (11 hours later)
For the most part, I would assume its just biologically speaking.
u/-main [+9] (9 hours later)
There is one companion yet to be found. The real question is though, how is she a princess?
u/icesharkk [+5] (11 hours later)
Maybe her dad bought her a tiara? Or she secretly married Uther
u/kaukamieli [+5] (a day later)
They have their own nation. They can just declare her royalty.
u/Croktopus [+1] (2 days later)
huh. how is kuumy doomy a princess? cuz i figure shes gotta be right
does just being on the council of arches kinda count as a princess at this point? or maybe the sword that was her original personality was somehow princessy
u/derefr [+3] (5 days later)
Owned by a king (Uther), which is sort of like being the daughter of a king? (oh hey ewwww) Or, promised to a number of lords? Or, is at least partially made of regal raiments?
u/Croktopus [+2] (5 days later)
so, soskanna was an intelligent sword whose purpose was to kill the king of palman. so my theory is like, the original intelligence was a daughter of a king of palman, and something happened that resulted in some sliver of her personality being put into the sword (especially the part that wanted to kill the king)
u/JiggyRobot [+9] (10 hours later)
Wow. Putting it in those terms, no wonder Raven's dad wasn't super pleased with her going off adventuring.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+44] Fruit flies like a banana (6 minutes later)
To my surprise and delight, we've reached the $500 per month goal on Patreon earlier today, so the publicly-available worldbuilding document will be released sometime in the next few weeks when I can squeak in the time to get it finished (I'm not prepared to stand by that deadline). Thanks to everyone who donated!
u/Law_Student [+10] (2 hours later)
Thank you for another three great chapters in a great story!
u/mustyoldgoat [+7] (16 hours later)
So, that means things have more than doubled since April. Which is good growth. From the numbers, it takes about a year from here, consistently publishing (and reminding people of your Patreon [which this "thank you" does a great job of]) to get to the ~$3,000-$4,000 USD mark. Weirdly, support is currently dying off for authors at about the $5,000 USD mark. I don't know whether that is just the number of people reading right now, or what people do not feel comfortable giving above that amount (armchair speculation says it might be the amount people are comfortable with authors making from their work). In a few months you might want to do something interesting to encourage a few of us to level up into the ten dollar club.
u/mojojo46 [+7] (a day later)
I think when you see that an author is making ~$5k a month, you think "huh, they're doing ok for themselves; my $2 won't really make much difference" and then you are less inclined to donate. At least, that's the bias I think I have. I think the best solution to this is to have multiple channels of donations, with Patreon only serving as the consistent monthly donation.
u/None [+3] (5 days later)
I think Wildbow does something like that - he has a Patreon (with $4900 per month, go figure), and he also has a separate donation thing for extra chapters.
u/derefr [+1] (5 days later)
armchair speculation says it might be the amount people are comfortable with authors making from their work
Feels like there should be an option on Patreon et al to only show marginal month-over-month change in donation revenue, and hide absolute monthly donation revenue. (Sure, you could calculate it if you tracked the amount each month, but the point is that having the absolute number right there beside the subscribe button seems to act as a deterrent, so less “right there” is better, even if it’s still accessible.)
u/nytelios [+1] (7 days later)
Patreon stats don't seem to suggest a plateau at about 3-4k.
Though I suspect that sluggish growth might be due partly to:
audience isolation: web serial authors rarely do marketing or promotions. Spreading awareness of a serial is limited to word-of-mouth (which can be quite limited depending on which communities the recommendations circulate in), aggregator websites (TopWebFiction, AO3) or forum discussion vectors (reddit, SpaceBattles, DLP, etc.). At some point, each community reaches diminishing returns, and combined with the fact that most of these audiences are used to free works, it's not surprising there aren't that many hugely financially successful web serials.
release incentive models: certain approaches are correlated with bigger growth spikes. Usually those models are intended to spur and funnel invested readers into higher priced tiers of Patreon (so-called whales) so they can satisfy their cliffhanger insanity. If you compare the three biggest web-serial earners, Wildbow seems to have much less growth spikes than puddles4263 or pirateaba. My guess is because a bonus chapter upon reaching a goal is much less incentivizing at the individual patron level than reading several updates ahead. Paywalling releases is a proven business model in the web-serial-adjacent community doing translations for Chinese web novels, where a translation team earns as much as $10-20k/month. Chinese web novel one / two
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u/WalterTFD [+46] (11 hours later)
One thought I've been having:
The DM as he presents himself to Juniper is a simulationist. He has set things up, he's letting them run.
The DM as he must have been during Uther's time was narrativist as all get out, with Uther coming through literally hundreds of skin of his teeth situations.
The DM tells Juniper that Uther used to cheat on behalf of the players, and it totally undermined the game, if you knew he'd bail you out even on dumb risks, then pretty soon everything was dumb risks.
I think the DM is running the game for each of them in the manner that they DM'd. Juniper is living in a crazy world where naming the wrong actor may kill you, while Uther has endured decades of kafabe victories whose lack of real stakes drove him nuts.
u/Nimelennar [+22] (11 hours later)
Speculative spoilers here.
u/abcd_z [+8] (a day later)
I dunno, I just assumed the DM was closer to an author self-insert than June was.
u/mojojo46 [+6] (a day later)
I just sort of assumed the DM 'wasn't' Juniper in the sense that 10-year-older Juniper with added god powers 'isn't' Juniper, and also has vested psychological reasons to clearly signal as a different, if similar, person.
u/phylogenik [+5] (2 days later)
My working assumption since before the DM-focused chapter was that the DM was a future (or current) Juniper trying to work through his psychological hangups (incl. e.g. residual anguish over Arthur's death) by simulating a game where he, as a self-insert, is undergoing the healing journey of maturity and self-discovery that is confronting a series of challenges tangential to the Arthur (and related) questlines.
It seems like something the Juniper of the story would do, given his love of DMing -- recognize his downward spiral, dissociate himself (from his character/representation of himself), and explore how that character would behave in all these different scenarios in order to better understand himself and his motivations.
Is it still Doylist if the story has multiple layers? (I guess DMing a campaign where you're the only player is just telling a story to yourself)? I guess a more Watsonian take is that it's not so much that the DM is some sort of future Juniper, but more that Juniper is the DM with his memories wiped.
Thus, there is no Arthur-DM and we instead have the omphalos hypothesis -- the world was instantiated when Juniper stepped foot in it (or maybe just before).
u/PresentCompanyExcl [+2] The Culture (3 days later)
But why is he simulating conscious beings and putting them in pain. He said he wouldn't do that kind of thing, so maybe 1) they are perfect actors 2) hell is fake and they are let out afterwards 3) he no longer has the same morals
u/phylogenik [+1] (3 days later)
I guess in this pet-theory I'd lean closer to 1), or that they're not even conscious entities acting at all but just illusions that appear to be conscious (plausible in-story given these latest chapter). The Juniper of the story is the only conscious entity, if even.
(and ofc the DM would lie to Juniper to make sure he continues to behave realistically, because realizing solipsism could have profound psychological effects that wouldn't be useful for the healing process)
u/derefr [+1] (5 days later)
Maybe Aerb’s creator-God, and “the DM”, are separate beings? I.e.
Aerb was created (and Joon thrown into it) by Some Jerk.
Said Jerk also created a demiurge DM abstraction to sit there manipulating fate re: Narrative flow, in order to make the game more game-y.
Somehow the DM demiurge either gained sentience and decided to help Joon; or there is a strange loop where Joon eventually ascends in power enough to usurp the DM role (but not the creator-God role), and so can act backwards to help current Joon, but only through actions the DM demiurge was designed to perform.
u/DRMacIver [+11] (14 hours later)
I suggested last time that the DM for Uther's "campaign" was (directly or indirectly) Joon during his dark period after Arthur's death, and that's a lot of why Aerb was such a hell for him. I've since done a reread of the story, I think the timeline for this checks out pretty well.
In particular most exclusions occurred during Uther's time on Aerb, many of the worst of them are from Joon post-Arthur, and Arthur's descriptions of Aerb rather line up with Joon's description of his DMing while lashing out at people.
If that's true, the big difference between the DM for Joon and the DM for Arthur is that Joon is no longer providing him with fuel for the campaign...
u/WalterTFD [+3] (15 hours later)
The DM can pretty clearly play fast and loose with Time, so I'm not super convinced by this, but it is certainly a possibility.
u/DRMacIver [+3] (15 hours later)
Yeah, the chronology isn't a smoking gun for sure, but it's canon that most of the exclusions happened during Uther's active time (Exclusion #16 happened while he was active) and that a lot of them came from Joon post-Arthur's death ("a frightening number" came from the Manxome Foe campaign).
u/CouteauBleu [+9] We are the Empire. (19 hours later)
Oh wow, that's brilliant.
If that's true, it sheds an interesting light on the GM's line:
"I don’t need you," he replied. "I could fix every single problem in Aerb myself, if I wanted to, and Aerb has an enormous surplus of problems at the moment. I don’t want to fix Aerb though; I want you to do it."
u/mojojo46 [+19] (6 minutes later)
Don't forget you can show your support for cthulhuraejepsen's writing by donating on Patreon, if you so choose. :)
u/sparkc [+5] (50 minutes later)
u/elevul [+5] Cyoria Observer (a day later)
Been doing that for years, since the moment I finished the Superman story.😁
u/Kuratius [+16] (5 hours later)
Yo, I heard letting someone into your soul is a way to show you trust them.
u/CouteauBleu [+6] We are the Empire. (7 hours later)
Our hero is acting a bit selfishly at the moment.
u/akaltyn [+11] (15 hours later)
He's shifting more and more into designated hero territory. Not necessarily evil, but he's definitely acting mostly in terms of self interest, with not a huge degree of self awareness. Fenn is totally right that he doesn't think of her as a equal person
u/TheColourOfHeartache [+5] (a day later)
Designated hero is when the story treats a charachter as heroic despite their actions being questionable at best. I don't get the feeling that this story has that kind of blindness.
u/LazarusRises [+7] (2 days later)
Something like "Hero complex" is more accurate--Juniper treats himself as if his actions are justified no matter what. He even acknowledgdes it in one of these chapters, when he catches himself making retroactive justifications to Fenn.
u/FormerlySarsaparilla [+15] (14 hours later)
I really hope Joon doesn't back down on the democracy argument. Group voting is important, as is respecting vote outcomes, and I get that a big part of the story is going to be Joon overcoming some of these implicit biases toward dismissing his teammates but that vote was bullshit. There was no way to even know if what they were perceiving was accurate, and leaving a team member behind on the basis of a nebulous luck sense is inexcusable. It didn't really seem plausible even- Mary had to know that all of them leaving would have been an open-ended narrative risk. Walking away from a hot situation even for a minute while saying "She'll be fine" is A) also dismissive, in a much more callous way, and B) just asking for a kick in the ass.
u/None [+9] (a day later)
I disagree. Mary's choice to retreat seemed rational, there was no way to know if the Juniper who claimed to be using soul sight was in fact real. Leaving the exclusion zone to check who is real and plan seems smart.
Having a vote in life or death situations is foolish, there is a reason why all armies insist on a clear chain of command and executing orders without question. Seconds matter. Having a vote when an unknown amount of the members are compromised is close to suicide.
u/WalterTFD [+7] (3 days later)
"Having a vote in life or death situations is foolish, there is a reason why all armies insist on a clear chain of command and executing orders without question. Seconds matter. Having a vote when an unknown amount of the members are compromised is close to suicide."
So much this. They need to decide, stat, whether Mary or June is in charge when we are in round time.
u/adgnatum [+6] (2 days later)
You're right about the vote. Lots of pressure. Also consider the interplay when Juniper gave Valencia her measure of authority.
Juniper touched on why leaving and staying were both... less-than-appealing ideas. No fair omitting one.
From his own position he has the best reason to stay, with the confidence that his allies are not trapped or presently being deluded. Splitting the party is bad, but it isn't infinitely bad, and sending one part away from trouble (while not a terribly common outcome in games) has merit.
Mary exerted considerable power by picking two choices (everyone leaves/stays) for the vote. No time to discuss other options? What a coincidence!
u/adgnatum [+6] (a day later)
Agreed.
I kept thinking to myself that it was absolutely idiotic to stay in the face of whatever was happening, and I also kept thinking to myself that it would be an act of supreme cowardice and betrayal to leave Valencia behind. I thought that for the whole time the portal was closing, until it was so small that I couldn’t possibly have fit through it.
This doesn't read as self-centered to me at all, nor thoughtless.
What sort of unconscious thoughts might drive this? Oh, I don't know, being the one with the extra sense? A game layer that tries to punish cowardice?
Or, from another angle, what sort of emotional strength would be needed to square all that away on a short time scale?
Based on the current set of chapters, it also seems like he didn't hear anything back through the portal from them. Maybe that was just from the emotional stun.
u/generalamitt [+10] (23 hours later)
I am disappointed that solo mode wasn't really a thing, I was hoping for Jun to be on his own for a while, as much as I love the gang I feel like having him working alone could be a refreshing change for the story, the group long discussions before every little decision can get exhausting.
u/None [+8] (23 hours later)
Long time lurker, first time reader. Huh, yet another woman that knew Arthur and didn't like him. I'm wondering >!if he's Fel Seed. I know Fel Seed came in a later campaign, but Arthur seems to treat people, especially women, as disposable. Fel Seed isn't that hard of a name to make up.!<
u/None [+1] (5 days later)
Do we know when Fel Seed showed up in Aaerb?
u/Argenteus_CG [+1] (7 days later)
I really, really doubt it. Arthur clearly wasn't the greatest dude ever, but I get the impression that Fel Seed is a whole other level of horrible. I don't remember much of the specifics regarding him, but his domain is described as being "worse than the first 6000 hells", as I recall. Arthur/Uther did a lot of questionable things, but nothing that seems to be hinting at him being an evil of that magnitude.
The one thing that seems to point maybe in that direction is "you know his weakness", but I'm not sure Juniper DOES know Arthur's weakness except insofar as Juniper IS Arthur's weakness.
That said, even if Arthur ISN'T Fel Seed (I doubt he is), I do think there's a strong chance Juniper will be forced to kill Arthur when they meet.
u/None [+5] (7 days later)
Something that's bugging me is Arthur repeatedly shows some downright questionable views of women (makeup is a lie, categorizing girls instead of talking to them, the whole sims thing) and his time on Aerb seems to have taken all those bad tendencies and made them worse. It's starting to become a pattern that doesn't look coincidental. He starts believing that people on Aerb don't matter and growing numb to their pain; you see that in both the mirror and him going over Groundhog Day with Bethel.
The "City of 1000 brides" sounds suggestive of his disregard of women and growing callousness.
u/adgnatum [+7] (7 hours later)
and all I was doing was making up stories to make myself feel better, arguing positions that I was thinking up as they came to me, rather than what I’d actually felt or thought at the time
Hence the discussion maxim to give your true reasons rather than your best persuasions. I'm not always the best with that one.
He could have faked it. He obviously didn’t, but --
This got lost in the discussion for narrative reasons, but i think it's worth some attention here. Just being in the exclusion zone (to-do: find boundaries) forces these considerations. The problem of an untrustworthy communication channel doesn't go away just because there wasn't anything wrong at that moment after all. It wasn't obvious then.
I briefly toyed with the idea that Masters was spoofing the apparent race of the renacim and getting away with it as long as the soul-body consistency checked out. Maybe another time.
“Not imps?” That was short for imperials, though the slang dated back to the Second Empire and was rarely used. That was an oddity to be tucked away for later examination.
Like now. I know Solace is the last druid, but maybe a similar effect brought them here now? Something old.
For the record, Cloud Gate was the mental model I was already drawing in. Writing: success.
Having around Valencia seems like a useful way to avoid endlessly failing to trust anyone. It's a considerable improvement from the rather intractable issues in the Fallatehr encounter.
“Me too,” said Amaryllis. “If the world is going to end in five years … it seems likely that we’re going to have to be the ones to do something about it, the way things have been going.”
“We’ll probably all be dead before then,” said Fenn.
“True,” said Grak.
What brought this on? Just the end-of-world prediction? Seems disproportionate.
Discussing the nature and profile of the Dungeon Master with untrusted parties in any capacity seems really difficult. It touches on several of the fourteen points and is hard to ground in any demonstration. This is the lens through which the rising horrors won't go away by themselves without Juniper.
u/CouteauBleu [+13] We are the Empire. (19 hours later)
What brought this on? Just the end-of-world prediction? Seems disproportionate.
Might be the time they almost all died fighting thaum-seekers. Or the time they almost all died fighting a gold mage. Or the time Fenn almost died fighting Amaryllis's cousin. Or the time one of them sort of died breaking a soul mage out of prison. Or the time they almost all became mind-controlled fighting a soul mage. Or the time they almost all died fighting an army of frog people. Or the time they almost all died breaking into a haunted house. Or the time they almost all died because Joon said the wrong name.
u/ProfessorPhi [+5] (9 hours later)
Tbf, silver bean instantly brings up cloud gate.
u/adgnatum [+2] (a day later)
But in my brain! I didn't even remember the string "cloud gate", much less where I was getting this mental picture from.
u/derefr [+2] (5 days later)
A lot of the time it’s just called “the bean” by locals. There are memes about it. You could know it through those and not even know the real name.
u/akaltyn [+6] (15 hours later)
and all I was doing was making up stories to make myself feel better, arguing positions that I was thinking up as they came to me, rather than what I’d actually felt or thought at the time
Hence the discussion maxim to give your true reasons rather than your best persuasions. I'm not always the best with that one.
Also confirms exactly what Fenn was complaining about, that he's dismissing her and not treating her as an equal. He's approaching the argument in terms of how to win or mollify her, not honestly communicating.
u/icesharkk [+2] (11 hours later)
Yeah I didn't know what the bean was called but the Chicago bean is specifically what I thought of.
Next arc will showcase a siege weapon shaped like a giant "free" stamp (oh Cleveland you're so lame).
u/derefr [+1] (5 days later)
Like now. I know Solace is the last druid, but maybe a similar effect brought them here now? Something old.
Observation: Egress sounds like an expo of Chrono Trigger’s Epoch. (Which was also effectively a shiny metal bean, until it got wings grafted onto it.) Maybe it can travel through time? But perhaps, so as to not break the story... only forwards in time, and not past the Infinite Library time-boundary?
u/Escapement [+10] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (an hour later)
Valencia is great. I like that she basically took out Masters solo, probably. Though I will not be 100.00% that she's not Masters in disguise until we get a POV section of her, to be honest.
So, they're in a ship that Juniper helped make the ideas for, right? So... maybe Juniper worked out how to pilot it for his game, and can apply that knowledge to steal their ship and get somewhere safer?
New characters! Neat!
u/None [+23] (an hour later)
[deleted]
u/Nimelennar [+11] (11 hours later)
Valencia has to at least be cognizant of what's going on in that room, or her Loyalty wouldn't have leveled.
u/signspace13 [+5] (7 hours later)
Masters could potentially fool soul sight if he knew she was Non-anima (which he does), he could deliberately make sure soul sight saw nothing, it's probably the only way he could fool it actually, but he didn't even know that soul sight is what Joon was using.
u/icesharkk [+6] (11 hours later)
I made that argument last thread and was tightly shot down. Masters knows Joon has an extra sense so from his perspective. Prior probability is it's an entad whose function masters doesn't know and therefore can't fake. He would need another leap of logic to specifically assume it reads the soul. So it's unlikely that masters is faking soul sight based only on the idea that Valencia is nonanima.
u/Makin- [+11] homestuck ratfic, you can do it (7 hours later)
That would imply Joon gets to pilot a cool flying device before the story's climax, which seems kind of unlikely at this point.
u/icesharkk [+2] (11 hours later)
Doh
u/akaltyn [+2] (15 hours later)
Huh? I feel like im missing a reference here?
u/WarningInsanityBelow [+13] (16 hours later)
Joon knows how to fly a helicopter, there were several helicopters in the story but he did not get to fly one, Joon has remarked that this is surprising since his backstory contains such an obvious hook for allowing him to fly a helicopter.
u/None [+7] (16 hours later)
Juniper wanting to pilot a cool flying device but being unable to do so has occurred two times so far - at the confrontation with the gold mage at the desert fortress, and at the fight against a few helicopters worth of enemies in the forest.
He think since his father is a helicopter pilot, and he can pilot one as well, that it ought to happen eventually. A Chekov's skill, basically.
So Makin- seems to think this is a running gag that will only be subverted in the climax. I'm not that sure about it, but it certainly makes sense.
u/derefr [+3] (5 days later)
I don’t know about climax, but the usual game design trope for video-game RPGs, is that you’ll never get a new mode of transportation that allows you to go more than three new places, because it ruins pacing. So you basically will only ever get unlimited free-travel using a Cool Ship, right when you’ve already just finished entirely exploring the surface of the world the Hard Way.
u/None [+2] (5 days later)
This is a tabletop RPG, not a video game one, but I can see how it translates. Yeah, that makes sense.
u/matematikaadit [+4] (9 hours later)
My brain dump after finishing the chapters.
Is Fenn luck sense compromised when they're inside?
If no, what caused it to ring? Why it was on 11/10 scale?
Are they still safe now, luck wise?
Still no new quest?
Will Joon be okay for the next level up?
u/CCC_037 [+10] (11 hours later)
Fenn's Luck and Juniper's Luck won't always ping for the same things.
Let's say that they reach a corner; around the corner is an assassin who really really hates half-elves but won't attack a human. Fenn's Luck will warn her not to go round the corner; Juniper's won't.
u/None [+3] (13 hours later)
So if she hadn't left she would have died and he lived?
u/CCC_037 [+8] (14 hours later)
Can't say that for sure. Luck sense is very low-bit-rate. It's possible that, had she stayed, she would have killed Spear Lady and robbed them of a valuable ally - for example.
u/-main [+5] (9 hours later)
If no, what caused it to ring? Why it was on 11/10 scale?
I assume it noticed Uther's other friends showing up, and their plan B, and their general level of combat ability.
u/JustLookingToHelp [+3] (14 hours later)
If they'd encountered those others so soon after illusion shenanigans, I think odds are very high that plan B is called.
u/WalterTFD [+1] (11 hours later)
I think it was 11/10, because Uther's old crew are more powerful than the main characters, and depending on how the talks shake out, may execute them.
u/Prezombie [+4] (4 days later)
Binge read the entire series over the last few days, and boy are my arms tired.
I've gotten pretty annoyed about how much terrible litrpg is being published lately. Shallow protagonists by authors who think that increasing stats equals character development, often just as shallow plot, lazy world building, often times terribly unbalanced or just bad game design it the stats thing is something everyone gets, or is terribly overpowered with no real stakes being far of macguffins of even more power/freedom. It's gotten to the point where I found a decent looking premise isekai book about a trio from Earth swapping places with the big bad demon of another world, but after a bland opening chapter where they get sperated, one gets turned into a wizard and saves a pirate boy from a mob, and then gets to see a character sheet, I just dropped the book there.
Meanwhile, worth the candle has deftly used all the overused tropes to make something fresh. This story is the Evangelion of litrpg, isekai, and arguably harem fantasy/comedy, decon/reconing pretty much every trope in the genres, and will hopefully live on in many hearts after the fad of giving hero protagonists character sheets dies off.
The only major logistics for of the world I see is the confusing nature of how the Pendrag family managed to acquire to many entads that can specifically only be passed down by blood inheritance. Entads are basically randomly dropped onto Aerb, with only a fraction of them being especially powerful with no major downside, so it's rather unfeasible to expect anyone to have more than one good entad that they could only bequeath to their child. With ten generations of a tightly knit court specifically marrying for entads, they would still have has to average an intake of several entads a year. Something just didn't add up to me.
Aerb's Cosmology is rather curious, a giant hex with opposite edges being adjacent makes a tiling plane, but it raises the questions of how the edges were determined, as without a clear border line, the effective edge of the hex could be anywhere. If the border is set by custom rather than evident cosmology, it raises the question of if it's even possible to prove there is only one hex. It could be that each tile is an independent but identical hex, or it could even be some form of the many worlds setup, with each hex different but only by so little that you would have to travel across unfathomable copies to find a difference that was noticable.
On a similar vein, the boundless depth is said to get wider as it gets deeper. This raises the question of how wide can it get, does it slow to a convergence, or get as wide as the hex itself, or somewhere even wider? Also, how deep of a column of air do you need for it to become opaque? I can't help but think that much sir being heated at noon each day would create a pretty brutal updraft.
When Joon made a checkers game in basic, it said that it didn't support kinging or bubblegum. Despite thorough searching, I can't find any reference to what the bubblegum in that sentence refers to, plz explain.
The exclusion zones are a fun, curious, and existentially terrifying phenomenon. One detail that I'm dreadfully curious about is, what shape are the zones? Spheres or 3d stadiums would be my first hunch, but If they're hexagons, that possibly offers an interesting insight into the overall nature of Aerb itself... For that matter, what skill has the label of excluded #1? Looking at the first few exclusions could offer some interesting theories on the principle. Gestalting skills was #4, I wonder what those first three are, possibly to do with world building? Exclusion magic being exclusion #0 would be quite amusing.
The exclusionary principle says that some zones have a set magic/physics that is excluded elsewhere, while others are also locked to a specific person as well. What evidence exists for this to be the case? What rules out the hypothesis that the only difference is that the second type is one the original causer decided to stay because they have mastery over the space?
On the nature of the exclusion zone borders, do they simply block the excluded magic from exiting, or do they at times act as more substantial walls? Eg. Can glass cross the glass fields border in either way, can a zombie cross the risen lands border (does it act like a wall, a vaporizer, or simply stop moving?), can those with a personal zone leave the zone at the cost of losing the unique magic (something that wouldn't be likely done volentarily, but it could be a humane way to deal with a zone), or are they locked in, perhaps by the same "wrap around to the other side" system the hex works on?
The Ice magic exclusion zone was from Arthur making Ice-9, wasn't it?
It's rather curious as to what exactly the exclusionary principle covers, instantly obviously threats to the entirety of Aerb make sense, but the more borderline ones raise the question of some of the equivalent threats that weren't excluded. Why [Redacted], but not the Actual Cannibal? Why Manifest and the goblin, but not the soulraping elf?
Sapient beings have souls, demons and devils are sapient. I can't help but think that the way to reach the magical singularity is to use soul magic to convert six billion demons into skill points.
And that's not even touching on the hinted yet totally untouched areas of questions about the gods.
u/None [+3] (5 days later)
These are some very good thoughts! I will try to answer to a few of them.
how the Pendrag family managed to acquire so many entads that can specifically only be passed down by blood inheritance
I think similarly to what happened with Kuum Doona - the Pendraigs got entads transferred to them, then somehow bound them to their bloodline.
while others are also locked to a specific person as well. What evidence exists for this to be the case?
From chapter 75:
Murder in Duplicate - As soon as it was discovered by a precocious young girl, the ability for a person to duplicate themselves was excluded to a thousand square miles and that single person.
So the game layer itself says it.
u/Prezombie [+3] (5 days later)
Ah yes, the game layer would be treated with higher regard than the secondhand source of the book on the subject. It does seem to be a slight contradiction, or perhaps a poor wording, as it's also sourced that each doris has her own soul, which then implies that only a single doris can perform the duplication feat, since after duplicating herself, she wasn't a single person anymore was she eh?
u/None [+1] (5 days later)
Whether two indistinguishable clones are the same person depends entirely on perspective. I don't think this is a contradiction. Maybe poor wording, but I don't think there is any simple way to phrase this which very clearly allows all Dorises to duplicate herselves, but not anybody else.
u/MuonManLaserJab [+2] (11 days later)
Sapient beings have souls
Valencia doesn't, so no.
u/None [+6] (an hour later)
[deleted]
u/meterion [+30] (3 hours later)
lol that’s the kind of answer that would swiftly lead to a few extra Fenn-induced breathing holes.
“Oh, what’s that? You voted to abandon Val? Well she hadn’t voted yet so I just wanted to grab her real quick so she could vote on that too.”
I can totally see him doing that though, it’s amazing how skilled he is at pissing off literally everyone around him—even a paragraph long flashback features Bethel offended on Ropey’s behalf. If I didn’t know better I would’ve thought his SOC was in the negatives.
u/None [+7] (3 hours later)
[deleted]
u/meterion [+4] (9 hours later)
Well, there’s not avoiding a bad situation, and then there’s actively making it worse. In either case, the vote was already 4-1 so it was already as good as decided, since Fenn was saying she would only stay with Joon if she’d known he would’ve ignored the vote. To avoid listening to a majority vote on a technicality would have pissed them off even more, I think.
u/CouteauBleu [+12] We are the Empire. (7 hours later)
That would be arguing in bad faith, and a super infuriating thing to say.
Like, obviously if you're making a vote about whether to rescue a teammate, you can't ignore the outcome of the vote because "lol the girl we're supposed to rescue hasn't voted". Joon's teammates made a judgment call ("this is too dangerous, we'll rescue Valencia later") and Joon disregarded it.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+3] Fruit flies like a banana (25 seconds later)
Typos here, please.
u/adgnatum [+2] (2 hours later)
had hijacked by sense of sound
my
u/Inked_Cellist [+1] (24 days later)
Fixed, thanks!
u/natron88 [+2] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (3 hours later)
112:
When all you had was godly combat ability, every solution seemed like it could be solved with combat.
It seems like it should be "situation."
u/Inked_Cellist [+1] (24 days later)
Fixed, thanks!
u/Kerbal_NASA [+2] (8 hours later)
ch. 111
given that Bethel had stayed as home.
as -> at
Also I couldn't find a definition of "recognizance" online that made sense to me in the phrase “You’re under your own recognizance to shoot her.” from ch. 110. edit: though to be clear I understood the sentence fine on first reading it (even without the follow up sentence which also made it absolutely explicitly clear).
u/-main [+7] (9 hours later)
given that Bethel had stayed as home.Are you sure this is incorrect?
u/Kerbal_NASA [+3] (11 hours later)
Heh yeah, I guess Bethel is one of the few subjects that could make that a grammatically correct sentence, but given the context:
Amaryllis glanced back at Grak, their resident expert on entads given that Bethel had stayed as home.
And the fact that Bethel was back at home, and her entad expertise wouldn't be effected by the form she took, I'm pretty sure it was meant to be "at".
u/eaglejarl [+1] (9 hours later)
"Your own recognizance" means "you are under some obligation or covenant, but trusted to fulfill it without outside compulsion." It's usually used in a legal context: "you are being released on your own recognizance until the trial." In this case it means "I trust you to decide whether or not to shoot him, without any outside input."
u/Kerbal_NASA [+1] (11 hours later)
hmm, this sound like something that makes more sense when you have familiarity with phrase being used instead of putting the literal definition of the words together. Because to me this would imply that the obligation is "shoot her if you want to shoot her" which isn't really an obligation. But its still metaphorically resonant in a way that makes me feel like it fits with the way the phrase is typically used (even if I've never seen it actually used before).
(Also, to be clear, there's enough context there that the meaning would still be clear even if "recognizance" was replaced with "sdfsdgjthtb").
u/Inked_Cellist [+1] (24 days later)
Fixed, thanks! I left the "recognizance" as is though.
u/nytelios [+2] (23 hours later)
109
frowning for what seemed like
it might have beenthe first time. (redundancy)110
Pallida’s eyes went wide. “ What? ” (extra spaces before/after What?)
112
theHeshnel began manipulating
u/Inked_Cellist [+1] (24 days later)
Fixed, thanks!
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (18 hours later)
Chapter 110
had spooked Fenn and shook/had spooked Fenn and shaken
" Are you - Extra space
" What?" - Extra space
as part of either/either as part of
then raised foot/then raised my foot
and watched the health meter/and I watched the health meter
Chapter 111
a bit of spectacle/a bit of a spectacle
their sheathes/their sheaths
Chapter 112
much worse the wear for/much the worse for wear for
u/Inked_Cellist [+1] (24 days later)
Fixed, thanks!
u/Badewell [+1] (21 hours later)
It had seemed unconscionable to leave Val behind, but now it was seeming just as bad that I had left
Should be "stayed"?
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Motion is relative. Staying when everyone else is going could be called "leaving" the party.
u/LazarusRises [+3] (a day later)
Can someone summarize the movie code for me? I understand that using Earth films is a fairly solid encryption since Masters couldn't know which films each of them have seen (though, even then, magic), but I don't understand how they used that to encode messages.
u/adgnatum [+7] (a day later)
Sure. Imagine dividing a square into 9 smaller squares and writing down the first nine letters in each. To specify a square, you need to know if it's left/center/right and if it's top/middle/bottom. If you know those two things, that's a letter. To get 26 letters you imagine stacking these squares in groups of three, so that you also have front-inside-back. (9*3 = 27 > 26, so there is an extra square; don't worry about it.)
Now to turn movies into any of those three dimensions. A made up movie title is (let's arbitrarily say) left/top/front, a movie that they never watched but discussed is center/middle/inside, and a movie they saw is right/bottom/back. So if you agree that the first movie is the left-right axis, the second movie is the top-bottom axis, and the third movie is the front-back axis, you can uniquely specify one letter with three movies.
Now imagine you're Masters, and by tampering with the protocol you make someone rotate their imaginary square (so that the first movie is front-back, let's say). They'll get different letters from the same movie titles. They won't get words; they'll get garbage. But at least now they know there's an illusion.
u/adgnatum [+2] (a day later)
Now putting on my attacker hat. If Masters is really good at this then there are some things he might notice. If someone uses a movie as a made-up word it probably is made up for everyone. And inversely, if someone has seen a movie then maybe others have at least discussed it. There is a penalty for repeating (non-)movies.
If this sounds like fun, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad.
u/adgnatum [+2] (2 days later)
There is one other thing: Timing. ...I'm still assuming linear time, because time travel makes a real mess for this. (Unicorns, though. The exercise of waiting a few minutes at the right times is left to the reader.)
I need to make sure that everyone is who they say they are.
The most damaging thing an attacker could do is impersonate everyone to everyone else, such that no two parties actually communicated but trusted that they had.
There are other attacks. Another is to impersonate absent parties well enough to fool to all present and give no hint that the illusion persists.
A slightly less damaging variant on either attack is to fool some fraction of the group and leave the others aware of the ongoing illusion.
Solace, you should have enough, given movie nights. Some small amount of repetition is allowable
Repetitions carry risk, but they're nearly unavoidable for Solace's use.
An attacker could manipulate when everyone started their messages so that rather than sequentially communicate and avoid duplicates, they all communicate at once without hearing each other. Now the attacker has several encrypted phrases with presumably standard frequency distributions on the letters and no one thinks they should have heard anything yet.
Everyone just gave a message and expects a response, so the attacker has very little time. All an illusion needs to do is stall. Maybe their new associates interrupt with a question; a delay from outside the system is dangerous.
If the delays vary, the attacker now has a few guesses in order to fool at least one person. Wrong guesses alert that person, but no one else knows a message has even been transmitted. However:
Grak began.
This helps the defenders because everyone wants to know if they can trust what they heard about the wards they're in. It's a mostly non-arbitrary choice who should go first. Imagine everyone being told they should go first. (If you're in a hurry you can skip imagining Grak, since he didn't need to be prompted in the chapter. I won't tell him if you won't.)
Arguably, having common knowledge of being in the ward is an unqualified victory for the defenders, but only arguably, so let's keep going!
The attacker can also try changing the sender/recipient of a message.
Keep in mind that everyone in the party expects an encrypted message, even if the attacker changes it. In some cases the unencrypted message may be a known-unknown. (Does Fenn think she knows whether Mary and Grak watched Fight Clown?)
If the message seems suspect to the recipient and they react overtly with any of: facial expressions, shouts, or cleartext the discrepancy may be from the meaning or the non-common movies. Because movies were primarily watched in pairs, this seems like a strength of the system, but a watched movie is probably not also a fake movie in another context. It's still weak information to the attacker. Concerns along these lines probably led Amaryllis to say this:
I want one short, coherent message from everyone, ideally something personal. If there’s any doubt, we can ask questions and give responses to each other.
The protocol wasn't fully specified by the text, but presumably if anyone encountered an incoherent message, they wouldn't overtly react to it, but would send a garbage message that will definitely seem like another protocol failure no matter what an attacker does with it (and it won't have the right letter distribution).
u/GeeJo [+1] Custom Flair (a day later)
How would he know they were using it as a made-up word, though? They don't speak aloud the results they get.
u/adgnatum [+2] (2 days later)
Solace, you should have enough, given movie nights. Some small amount of repetition is allowable
The more repeats there are, the better frequency analysis works. The protocol includes the character set, so it's no secret. The language would be a guess, but not a hard one. The group's overall communication is limited in a real way by the number of movies in common. They just didn't need to say very much.
u/rrssh [+3] (18 days later)
ded fic
u/RMcD94 [+2] (9 hours later)
Would killing the next Uther Penndraig in the cradle be the rational thing to do, if you believed that it would prevent the world from spiraling out of control? I worried that Masters might think the answer was yes
Isn't it?
Edit:
since I held no illusions that the Dungeon Master would spare my life, nor that we would win in terms of raw power.
Why? Everything we've seen suggests the DM will never kill the main character.
u/CaptainMcSmash [+13] (10 hours later)
Well, yes, but belief isn't certainty.
Here are the options and their results.
A) Kill the Chosen One = 50%(?) Chance of ultimate evils stopping in their tracks. 50%(?) Chance of no Chosen One being there when the ultimate evils stir.
B) Don't kill Chosen One = Guaranteed ultimate evils arriving, but the Chosen One is there to help and he has a track record of always winning.
The rational choice is B since it offers better odds of survival. Millions dying as collateral damage is still better than all 17 billion dying.
u/Izeinwinter [+9] (a day later)
That is not how it works - Uther disappeared, and the threats currently lined up, did not go away, but were put down at great cost by the natives of Aerb - thus, nobody is expecting the things that are already in motion to stop. What they are hoping for is to avoid further escalation
u/WalterTFD [+1] (3 days later)
A) Kill the Chosen One = 50%(?) Chance of ultimate evils stopping in their tracks. 50%(?) Chance of no Chosen One being there when the ultimate evils stir.
I feel like the obvious objection is that you can't kill the Chosen One. Like, anyone who knew Uther should know that trying to "kill him in the cradle" just means that killing an assassin as a baby becomes part of his legend. Dude didn't lose, full stop.
u/RMcD94 [+1] (10 hours later)
When you frame it like that you could choose 0.00001% as the odds. But people don't actually operate on making every decision to minimise the chance of the world being destroyed, or even the very real chance in this world of being infinitely tortured (everyone should be committing suicide and having the soul immediately captured). You wouldn't be able to kill anyone on the off chance they might be the chosen one.
Your track record of always winning is just as much as belief as A. If you believe they'd always win then you must believe that it's their fault. So eliminating them is the right choice since then there are no more evils, or getting them to disappear ala Uther.
u/CaptainMcSmash [+1] (11 hours later)
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. What do you mean by .00001? If you mean if either circumstance has those odds, well then the answer becomes obvious since you now have near certainty in knowing what happens in either case and can choose correctly.
People don't base normal decisions on minimizing extinction because that isn't a factor in normal decisions. When the decision literally revolves entirely around extinction, all rational actors will choose to minimize those odds, the fact some people actually want to kill the next Uther is irrational I think.
The appearance of the chosen one is unique in the extreme, as in only Uther and the friends named in that list. The risk of accidental killing is basically non-existent and not a factor.
Well no, as was explained in the previous chapters, some people believed Uther was delivered in their hour of need and without him they would have all fallen, only some thought it was his fault.
u/RMcD94 [+1] (11 hours later)
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. What do you mean by .00001? If you mean if either circumstance has those odds, well then the answer becomes obvious since you now have near certainty in knowing what happens in either case and can choose correctly.
Apologies for not being clear enough.
If you have a 99.9999% certainty that killing the chosen one does nothing, you still can't do it because the utility of the other side is infinite, if the alternative is that the world ends then that outweighs every decision.
People don't base normal decisions on minimizing extinction because that isn't a factor in normal decisions. When the decision literally revolves entirely around extinction, all rational actors will choose to minimize those odds, the fact some people actually want to kill the next Uther is irrational I think.
Everything is a factor, the world is a web connected by countless strands. Every action you do has an effect, even through the butterfly effect of bumping atoms about. As long as there's a nonzero chance (which it is because it's easy for things to be infinitesimal) then all your decisions are dwarfed by the apocalypse.
The appearance of the chosen one is unique in the extreme, as in only Uther and the friends named in that list. The risk of accidental killing is basically non-existent and not a factor.
Well no, that's completely wrong since you have a single sample you can basically make zero assumptions. We have no idea who Julian was before hand, he could have been anyone. At the very least we know that Uther was someone completely ordinary prior to becoming the Chosen One. Regardless it might be basically non-existent but it isn't non-existent. We have no guarantee that Uther knows who the next Chosen One will be. Even if it's really small odds (and no one is a position to even guess what the odds are) that Uther is wrong then again you're up against the infinite value of extinction.
Well no, as was explained in the previous chapters, some people believed Uther was delivered in their hour of need and without him they would have all fallen, only some thought it was his fault.
If Uther was delivered by the hour of need and cannot fail then you should still attempt to kill the next chosen one. If you succeed then they weren't the chosen one and you've saved everyone confusion that could cost extinction, and indeed could be a ploy by various forces (ie when the big bad comes up and everyone just lets the Chosen One deal with it), and if you fail then what's the problem?
u/CaptainMcSmash [+1] (12 hours later)
Obviously 100% certainty is best when it comes to the fate of the world but if that's not a possible choice and it's 99.9999% survival and .00001 extinction, then refusal of the 99.9999% based on non zero chance at extinction isn't rational, that's suicidal insanity. But that's all hypothetical I suppose. The point is, in lieu of a certain survival choice, the best odds - keeping the chosen one alive - is preferable.
That isn't rational. My choice to have bacon rather than toast this morning may have had a non zero chance to end the world, but that obviously isn't a sensible conclusion. Refusal to act based on non zero extinction odds like your imaging is refusal to ever act, period.
Sample size of two. In 500 years, the only instance of a plausible chosen was Joon, the guy on the list. There has never been anyone else like Uther, ever, until now. Safe assumptions don't always require large sample size much like if you strike a match and produce flame, you don't need to do it a hundred times to confirm, once, maybe twice is enough. Also same point as my 2nd paragraph about non zeros and action.
Attempting to kill someone so uniquely powerful, righteous and heroic that they could be mistaken for the chosen one is a poor decision because if they aren't the chosen one, you are probably losing a lot of men and resources to kill someone who would oppose the Apocalypse in return for literally no gain. If he is the chosen one, you just die.
u/RMcD94 [+3] (12 hours later)
Obviously 100% certainty is best when it comes to the fate of the world but if that's not a possible choice and it's 99.9999% survival and .00001 extinction, then refusal of the 99.9999% based on non zero chance at extinction isn't rational, that's suicidal insanity.
Is it? When the downside is extinction isn't any action or inaction to avoid extinction rational? No matter how unlikely it is. It's irrational to not weigh infinite values as infinite but that's how people actually function. See: Christians and heaven irl. Getting to heaven is an infinite positive but you don't see even people who believe in heaven acting like it. There's no one killing babies to make sure they go to heaven even though that's the most moral and self sacrificing action anyone could ever take.
It's like Pascal's Wager
My choice to have bacon rather than toast this morning may have had a non zero chance to end the world, but that obviously isn't a sensible conclusion.
Well no, if taking bacon instead of toast increased the odds of the world ending and you knew that I think you'd agree that that's irrational. The real scenario is that you wouldn't know whether it was toast or bacon that raised the chance.
Refusal to act based on non zero extinction odds like your imaging is refusal to ever act, period.
Isn't that a classic scenario with a lock up of purely rational actors? Entirely logical computer based sapient beings locking up due to some irreconcilable solution.
Sample size of two. In 500 years, the only instance of a plausible chosen was Joon, the guy on the list. There has never been anyone else like Uther, ever, until now. Safe assumptions don't always require large sample size much like if you strike a match and produce flame, you don't need to do it a hundred times to confirm, once, maybe twice is enough. Also same point as my 2nd paragraph about non zeros and action.
The thing about assumptions is that they are beliefs. You started this conversation by arguing that it was wrong to trust and make decisions from a belief. A belief with a much stronger sample size (the entire life of Uther versus the entire history of the world).
Attempting to kill someone so uniquely powerful, righteous and heroic that they could be mistaken for the chosen one is a poor decision because if they aren't the chosen one, you are probably losing a lot of men and resources to kill someone who would oppose the Apocalypse in return for literally no gain. If he is the chosen one, you just die.
True.
u/UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 [+3] (17 hours later)
Hmm. Chapter 79 has
“This is true,” nodded the Dungeon Master. “But I have to say it’s more likely than not that you’ll never get to figure out whether you can live with that paranoia, because you’ll fuck up and die somewhere along the way.”
“Die to an obstacle that you’ve placed in front of me,” I said.
“Or one of your own making,” he nodded. “You probably don’t believe me, but I’m not really putting any active effort into screwing you. I set up the characters and the obstacles, I give a few nudges here and there, and then I wait for your choices, and the choices of everyone else. I’m a watchmaker, paying attention to how the watch is running but not sticking my fingers in too often.”
I folded my arms across my chest.
“I don’t want you to fail, I want to take some joy in seeing how you react, in seeing you run off the rails, in succeeding against bad odds, in dealing with your teammates -- I want you to win.” He stopped and watched me. “I’m not going to bend over backwards so you can win though,” he said. “I’m barely going to bend at all. It’s one of the things I wanted to let you know.”
I thought he very explicitly told him "you can die here", but this isn't quite as much as I remembered
u/LupoCani [+7] (22 hours later)
You might die, and one of the things I really wanted you to know was that if that happens, I’m not going to save you. They’re called stakes.
That's more clear-cut, no?
u/RMcD94 [+1] (19 hours later)
Well I mean, whatever he might say he didn't kill Uther one, we haven't heard a single story of any other IRL characters being brought into the world and dying so it seems like he's more concerned with bringing him almost to death repeatedly.
If he dies permanently at a point that's not satisfying from the in-universe DM's narrative perspective I will be surprised.
u/MadMax0526 [+1] (5 hours later)
Famous last words.
u/None [+1] (16 hours later)
plot only gets more interesting from here. great job
u/CouteauBleu [+1] We are the Empire. (19 hours later)
“I don’t think that was very smart,” said Valencia. “I was the one who silenced him, when I heard him trying to use me like that. I’ve been waiting here because there was a banging sound outside, then gunshots. Was that just you?”
Hahah! Called it.