scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/2v49y9.md

Bah. The Two Year Emperor Ch85 "Hints of Dawn" is posted over on GreenDogPress.

• Author: u/eaglejarl *

• URL: http://greendogpress.blogspot.com/

• Score: 9

• Created: 2015-02-07T19:40:17

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u/eaglejarl [+4] *

Got tired of waiting for Fanfiction.net to get their act together, so I posted it over on GreenDogPress, my vanity publishing shop which I really need to get set up with its domain name and a nicer theme with better organization. Offtopic: If anyone else has original fiction that they would like to sell, I'm happy to host it on GDP. No charge, no commission, just trying to make people's life easy. You'll just need to get yourself a way to take payment and do delivery -- I suggest signing up for SendOwl and Stripe, but it's up to you. EDIT: "Read the excerpt" in this case actually means "read the rest of the chapter"

u/Kuratius [+5] *

Uhm, why exactly is it a green dog and not any other color?

u/eaglejarl [+15] *

It's not any other color because it's green. It's green because it reflects light waves that have a wavelength of roughly 510 nanometers.

u/MoralRelativity [+2] *

LOL

u/JanusTheDoorman [+3] *

;_; Between this and The Waves Arisen, Worm, and Ra I'm starting to feel like this is /r/crapsackworlds. This has generally been lighter than the others, but geez.

u/eaglejarl [+7] *

Does it help if I say "Hints of Dawn" is code for "hey look, things are starting to get slightly better"? :> In seriousness, I've done enough kicking the cutie to establish my cred, it's time for new stuff, some of which will be making the world better. Which doesn't mean bad things won't continue to happen, of course.

u/xamueljones [+3] My arch-enemy is entropy*

Well, how can you best show off your rational skills in a Utopia? The worse off a world is, the more impressive it is when you manage to improve (read: optimize) it.

u/eaglejarl [+1] *

Late response: it occurs to me that what I should have said to this is "you want to read a crapsack world? Go read Baby Blues". ;>

u/JackStargazer [+3] Primordial Apologist*

Holy shit. I didn't realize how insanely effective dust of sneezing and choking is on high level characters. Even if you save, you still suck for 5d4 rounds.

u/eaglejarl [+3] *

Yep. It's about the only way to quickly take down someone who's been through the FLEA. At least, the only way I'm aware of. FLEA-graduates will make every save on a 2 or better (1 is an auto fail) so anything that allows a save doesn't work on them. Of course, it's a guaranteed takedown against anyone and it's a lot quieter than a sword fight, so I figure it works well for the way drow would fight. Especially if combined with a Silence spell.

u/JackStargazer [+1] Primordial Apologist*

To be fair, it still doesn't work on sufficiently paranoid people. An active Foresight spell makes you immune to surprise, which allows you to Celerity-TimeStop any attempted offensive action. With a Caster Level of 24 (20 + Practiced Spellcaster), it should last for 4 hours per cast. a 60th level character with infinity gold should have quite a lot of bonus spells of 9th level to deal with that issue. Alternatively, a Contingency effect specifically against dust of sneezing and choking (casting Heal, which immideately ends stun effects among its other effects) would also function.

u/eaglejarl [+1] *

You can beat that with multiple attackers. Celerity gives you a readied action, thereby allowing you to preempt the one attacking you. So, the sequence goes:

1. Bob prepares a readied action: "throw dust at BBEG if he casts a spell"
2. Al attacks BBEG with the dust
3. BBEG uses an immediate action to cast Celerity, preempting the attack
4. Bob's readied action preempts the casting of Celerity and he dumps his dust

u/JackStargazer [+2] Primordial Apologist*

Hmm. Well, you could use nested Contingencies. Create a Contingency spell that casts a Contingency spell which triggers when someone uses a readied action to perform some offensive action against you, iterate N times. Contingency X triggers, you no longer have an active contingency effect, this casts Contingency X+1 and so on. Iterate N times, where N is a number sufficiently large that nobody will be able to effectively preempt you, and have the N+1th contingency cast Celerity.

u/eaglejarl [+1] *

Hm. The wording on Contingency isn't clear on whether Contingency can cast a Contingency. I can support either side of the argument from what I see, and I'm honestly not sure which answer is correct. Regardless, you need to cast both the Contingency and the other spell at the same time. A FLEA-graduate is probably a Wiz20/Sorc20/Archivist20. Wiz and Sorc can cast the 6th level Contingency, archivists cannot. Between your Wiz and Sorc classes you have 40 slots from 6-9th level, all of which can load Contingency. If you wanted to burn your entire high-level spell list for a day you could have an N=40 chain of Contingencies; they would last for 20 days(1) and then you'd have to do it all again. You can't use scrolls to increase N because you 'activate a scroll', you don't 'cast a spell from a scroll' and Contingency requires that both spells be cast at the same time. You also can't use Rings of Spell Storing because those can't cast 6th level spells. So, at least under 2YE rules, I think you're limited to N=40. So, as long as you aren't attacked by 41 guys equipped with Dust of Sneezing and Choking, you're fine!

(1) I'm pretty sure that when a spell has a duration of "1 day/level" there is RAW stating that that refers to caster level, not total level. Caster level is defined as level in the class you used to cast the spell, so 20, not 60. I can't find the quote, though. Oh, wait, I just realized -- the condition to set on the Contingency would be "Activate one round before you expire, or whenever anyone takes an action that would harm or incapacitate me." The outermost Contingency would activate after 20 days and then the N-1 one would last for another 20 days. Yeah, that's sounding pretty good.

u/JackStargazer [+1] Primordial Apologist*

Plus there is no way to vary it, say to only use 6 layers if you have 5 opponents, so you are going to be wasting resources everytime it triggers. It also takes the 40 spell slots again to recharge. Effectively countering it would involve a two waved attack, with the second not being sprung until after the first has failed. Lots of ways to get life redundancy as well, clone spells, contingent true resurrection (There are completely and utterly broken rules in one of the Complete books for crafting contingent spells, with no practical limit for number of effects aside from crafting time, xp and money.) even simulacra for a poor man's ice assassin.

u/Mraedis [+2] *

Holy mother of...

u/bulls55 [+2] *

I just realized something, couldn't Suze just admit to the authorities that she was the one that commited the murder at the FLEA a few chapters back and that Ellen had nothing to do with it. She is death afterall it's not like they can just arrest her, plus she could just resurrect the she killed. You'd think two people with enhanced intelligence could have come up with something so simple.

u/eaglejarl [+3] *

There's a few reasons that didn't happen:

• At the time, Ellen wasn't enhanced
• Suze has been too busy going crazy and starving to death to think about things like that.
• Suze doesn't actually know that Ellen is a fugitive from Flobovian justice.
• Ellen

u/bulls55 [+2] *

Those reasons make sense but it doesn't change the fact how odd it was that during their third meeting and going through the FLEA and being taken to the drow caverns Ellen didn't even once think to go "hey Suze since you're here would you mind clearing my name since you personally know the emperor of Flobovia and are the one that actually commited the crime I am being charged with". The idea is simple enough that a non enhanced person could have thought about it and going through the FLEA her wisdom and intelligence she should have been smart enough to realize it would have made things easier in the long run even if she didn't plan on going back to Flobovia.

u/eaglejarl [+2] *

Ellen isn't worrying about getting her name cleared right now because (a) she's got much bigger problems and (b) she knows that there's something weird about her legal problems and just wants to stay away from them until things calm down a bit.

u/MoralRelativity [+2] *

I seem to recall a hint somewhere that the authorities are not looking for Suze because of that murder but rather for some other reason. Maybe Jake is trying to find/help her?

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