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B, then C. Secure the hostages then unleash something that would make the Esper War look like a footnote. If any part of the city besides the slums remains intact, that's a failure.
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Dec 7, 2022 20:19
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Felinoid posted:B, then C. Secure the hostages then unleash something that would make the Esper War look like a footnote. If any part of the city besides the slums remains intact, that's a failure. 
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Dec 8, 2022 04:04
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Felinoid posted:B, then C. Secure the hostages then unleash something that would make the Esper War look like a footnote. If any part of the city besides the slums remains intact, that's a failure. Yeah, this seems good.
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Dec 9, 2022 00:43
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B seems like the obvious priority. Besides, Zekiye and Minna are my favorites so far, and Zekiye had more screentime in the last update.
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Dec 12, 2022 14:17
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18. The Bottled Esper A) Zekiye should lead the infiltration. [0] B) Ziqiya should locate the Mysidians before the fighting starts. [10] C) Rekha should go loud and melt a hole in the wall. [1] TooMuchAbstraction posted:Rekha: reflect on your past. Do you really want to go here? Yeah. Good question. Your heart feels like it's jumping against the gorge of your throat. A few days ago... You're berthed in the squirreliest bunk you could find aboard the Side Bet, an adjunct room for a noble's servant, branched off a chamber that feels so big it sets your hair on end. The satchel is clutched against your chest as you drift off to sleep, Carbuncle resonating peacefully between the leather and your chest. When you click loose the clasp and open up the flap, you can see the magicite casting a faint ruby light over its new bedfellows - nine blue-gilted 5,000 gil coins. You've counted them again and again. They seem real, as far as you can assess that. Jadate didn't stiff you. The opera's director counted out your wage as if it meant very little to her. It probably didn't. You're rich. Or, no: before you had the money you would have said that 45,000 gil made you rich. Now that you've lived around rich people, though, you understand that that's not it. Rich people have as much money as they need. When they imagine running out of cash, they don't imagine themselves starving - that doesn't happen to them no matter how much they spend. Their poor is a different poor. You only have this much. Nine little coins, each of them a key to safety, security, a meal. Treasure. You huddle your body around the satchel, and sleep fitfully. A few hours ago...  The reek of ozone sinks around you like a blanket, as familiar and as warm, and you realise for the first time in your life that Vector's omnipresent smog obscures your sightlines. That used to feel safe; now there's a momentary lurch in your stomach as you dream up what might be waiting in the alleyways. You meet a kid you used to run with, who gave you a split lip once over fouling up his begging spot, only he's not a kid now. He's dressed in a scraggly military police uniform and shoos you off, glancing over his shoulder, after he's done quizzing you about where you've been. Vector was packed to the gills with street kids, not long ago. Children of families who couldn't feed them - homeless kids, parentless kids, kids who had a place to sleep some nights and not others. You formed gangs and cadres that changed with the weathervanes, passed down cutpurse knives from careless adult to scoundrel to hungry greenhorn, played in the backalleys where you were less likely to get scared off by the soldiery. They aren't here now. It's stupid - you saw a lot of them hauled into Magitek Research in the same cohort as you. You stopped seeing them after some of the injections didn't take, and didn't fool yourself into thinking they'd been discharged as unsuitable. Others got sent off to postings on other warfronts, artillery pieces, like you. All the same, you kind of expected that when you came back, conquering hero, rich enough to buy dinner for a hundred nights, they'd be back, too. All the little kids and gangly teens and gaunt faces you grew up with, scrapping and gulling and swearing eternal friendship and forgetting that you had, are gone. The ones who lived through it became toothsome and mean. Like you have, you guess. Only you felt a lot better about that when you were around soft northern people who didn't get it. Then, you could live in the illusion that there were still people back home who did. [CHECK: Anger, Bravery & Curiosity] [The sum of Anger, Bravery & Curiosity is greater than Rekha's Fear.] Rekha finds that she cannot stomach retreating into the empty streets.  You're never gonna address her as 'Queen Zekiye'. You couldn't point to Figaro on a map if someone paid you to try.  Not just the raw fact of it - but which Espers it was made of. How it was made. Why your pulse jumps and your eyes roll when you pull the magic forward. You imagine Dr. Cid's harried smile, his assurances that it would be fine. All the kids it wasn't fine for. She looks at you as if seeing you for the first time.  You are now Ziqiya of Mysidia. You con the fortification, the sleek network of drainage pipes and service gantries that crown its brutal walls: you pick a point to climb to, and Minna slings and pins the rope as she clambers up. With age, you breathe a little faster than her as you enter the ventilation sash.     You are heartened by the levity, but cannot bring yourself to engage in kind. You ghost down stairways, signalling to each other as you reconnoiter passageways. Despite her brash jest, Minna is serious and silent when there is any real chance of discovery. The complex smells of acid, bleach, and ferrous metal, an omnipresent splinter to your concentration.  Nasreen's hands reach out to clasp yours, her thick gloves so hauntingly reminiscent of home and peace. You slip one off and touch her palm.     The locks on the cells are easily broken. You conjure a bloom of acid inside their mechanisms; you are no archmage, but this is enough for Minna's prodigious strength to set to work. You stand watch at the door as she heaves the locks bodily out of their housings, perching back to hammer one particularly recalcitrant cell door with a front kick that sets the walls shaking like drums. To watchful ears, you hope, it sounds indistinguishable from the grind and thump of the facility's mechanical heartbeat.         Nasreen embraces you, and you feel a dreadful knot of shame at the fact that this, of all things, occasions an embrace. Of course she probably imagines a heroic battle - not you unable to master yourself, slaying a surrendering foe. She can never know about the red rage of that moment, part of you thinks. Honour is not prized in Mysidia - black magic is an art filled with lures and poisons, inextricable from its nature - but mercy and control are. You violated both those virtues in your vengeful grief, and that fact feels corrosive, weakening your straight spine and confusing your once-clear apperception. You hold your wife and try to dispel these trailing guilts. It is impossible to say what she would think of them - you yourself do not know what you think. Every recrimination meets with a justification which, in turn, feels flimsy and false. It is good that Palazzo is dead; it is bad that you slew her helpless and begging; it is good that Nasreen is withdrawn from her attention; it is unbearable that your idea of yourself as canny and virtuous has been splintered down the trunk. With dozens of weary Mysidians in your train, your movements are more constrained - a devoutly hoped for circumstance, but a difficult one. Following your route back, you are forced to divert down the corridor at the oncoming thunk of magitek armour. You slip into a laboratory, hoping for its disuse, and bite back the exclamation of dismay that wants to out at the sight of Imperial researchers staffing its gantries. Heavy machinery still thunks behind you, closer in the adjoining hallways now. There is little room for your train of escapees; crowding behind you, Nasreen and the Mysidians are bundled into a narrow antechamber, and to make space for them, you are forced to drop, as silently as you can, behind a scanty railing.              Cid leaves. You dearly hope the scientist will too - but she does not, spending several more minutes fiddling with the valves and oscilloscopes at the base of the tank, her face pinched at the mouth. Eventually, she taps a few buttons, haltingly, and a judder of vapour plumes from the top of the tank as the liquid holding the imprisoned deity begins to sublimate. One of the Mysidians gasps - for it is a holy sight - and the woman turns and sees you just as the trapped Esper's eyes blink open.   The tank's front half slides down, opening a little aperture that perhaps the Esper had been meant to speak through. But she does not speak - instead, bending like a contortionist, she squirms through the tiny aperture, moving like a knotted rope, and launches herself at the distracted scientist. Her eyes are alive with cold passion. Not a word's parley is spoken; her nails of hard horn pull for the scientist's face and eyes, catching in her hair. The Esper does not seem doughty, though - the researcher is holding her own, batting back the willowy arms with stark alarm. The Esper's voice is plaintive and lilting. Out of the tank, she resembles a nymph or naiad, with just a hint of unruly, animal cast around the ears and temples.  The scientist, labcoat tangled around her knees, does not shriek or waver. Her hands are locked around the Esper's wrists in a severe deathgrip for her life.  What will Ziqiya do? A) Help the Esper. Piety demands it, and the Empire is your sworn and most hateful enemy. B) Aid the scientist. Nasreen's safety, and that of the black mages who yet live to follow you, is paramount. Android Blues fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Mar 7, 2023 |
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Mar 7, 2023 21:22
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Hell yeah this is back! A - Help the Esper. - the scientist could be lying anyway and we can get the keycard off her body.
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Mar 7, 2023 22:30
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A) Help the Esper. Let's help this fellow captive of the Empire escape along with us.
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Mar 7, 2023 23:12
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A) Help the Esper Scientist really has nothing to offer here, and we're in position to make more allies with our jailbreak.
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Mar 7, 2023 23:22
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Aid the scientist. The safety of your wife is paramount. You proved that much when you killed Kefka. You'll make a deal with the enemy if it means that your family escapes from this hellish machine.
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Mar 8, 2023 02:18
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Help the esper. While I agree that the whole "safety of the wife" thing is top priority here, there's the issue of not knowing if you can trust the scientist to follow through with her end of the bargain. Besides, Ziqiya already did one terrible thing for Nasreen's sake (which, uh, she may or may not tell her about), and while "help the enemy fend off one of my gods" is probably not as bad as "skewer surrendering foe," but if you want to balance those scales, you should probably think about which pan your deeds are being sorted into. Plus there's the whole "who knows what terrible things the scientist will do if you help them and let them go on with it." I mean, this doesn't necessarily need to end up with a nerdkebab or what have you, but if that's what it takes to save the Esper from the scientist, oh well, poo poo happens.
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Mar 8, 2023 12:59
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I don't trust either of them, so why not do something even more risky and demeaning. C - Try to snatch the keycard out from the melee and scarper
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Mar 8, 2023 15:14
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Yay! Happy to see this is still going, you're doing a great job here. Help the Esper, by which I mean kill the enemy. She can tell herself she feels shamed and conflicted now that she's seeing her wife, but Ziqiya has crossed the Rubicon and no small mercy here will bring her back. She's in to burn the Empire to the ground, and it will probably end badly for everyone.
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Mar 8, 2023 18:07
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Help the esper. Whether the scientist lives or dies (and honestly, dead is probably better, they’re hardly helpless) you can always pluck the keys from their pocket.
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Mar 10, 2023 04:43
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Help the esper.
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Mar 10, 2023 05:08
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C: Snatch the keycard and escape. The scientist cares not for you, and her promises are worth nothing once the Esper is stopped. The Esper might prove a valuable ally, but after being held captive by humans for so long, she may view your assistance as an ulterior motive and betray you at the first chance anyway.
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Mar 10, 2023 07:51
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Gonna split the forthcoming chapter into a few parts since it's turning out Huge. Should be this coming week!
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Jun 9, 2023 22:27
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Jun 9, 2023 22:56
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Was worried this was dead. Glad to see I was wrong! Also:
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Jun 9, 2023 23:15
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Jun 10, 2023 03:02
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Just found this thread and read through it, and I’m loving it. No clue how I missed this.
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Jun 13, 2023 01:26
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19. The Urchin's Gauntlet A) Help the Esper. Piety demands it. [7] B) Aid the scientist. Nasreen's safety comes first. [1]  Shall expedience drat you wholly? It shall not. You lunge forward, and grab the scientist's flailing arm in a punishing lock, driving it behind her back. The Esper stills as if to pounce -  - and there is a blinding flash of light. It fades slowly, and as it does, you feel the Imperial scientist stiffen in your arms. She pulls away from you with a grace she did not possess moments prior and, sensing the work of this ex patria divinity, you let her go.    She flexes on the scientist's tip-toes, letting the labcoat drape down around her, and arches her fingers as if checking the reach of her arms.     She sings a few notes, cutting through the scientist's clipped affect and into a clear soprano. Minna cocks her head.   She stares penetratingly at Minna for a few moments, bright eyes creasing around a fleeting thought.  It is not yours to know the minds of Espers: piety takes you so far, but then exigency must steer.  She ferrets ink-stained fingers into one of the labcoat's pockets, and draws up a stamped iron passcard.   You are now Zekiye Lexos Figaro.  The thump of pistons. Tiny fragments of magicite, like glass raindrops, are lowered into the casing of magitek armour on the assembly line. So little of an Esper goes into those bulky, ridiculous suits: the electrolytic converters that generate magic operate painlessly, at the pull of a lever. It's the same essential process as substantiating magic into your bloodstream, just less painful and less difficult, but looking at those frail shells, insulated from the feeling of holding power in your hands, in your blood, you don't feel envy but a pale dislike.  Guards. To be expected, after you melted a hole in the facility's exterior wall. They probably don't realise the full extent of the danger they're in.    Rekha opens up the stars, and, as always, you watch with a sense of detached wonder. It's so very easy for her - and you can trace the signatures of the magic she leaves behind her, but it's like writing with someone else's ink, having to pen a missive without touching the inkwell's deep black borders. Nalaal flows in with her knife, cutting through the buckles on a guard's armour, dropping them incapacitated to the ground. You know she's choosing not to kill them, which is unwise, but you can't bring yourself to complain about it. At least one of the pair of you has some of father's kindness in her.    The Gaia Gear's a good find here. All treasure in Beyond Chaos is randomised, but it's also weighted to story progression, so the powerful items you'd normally find in the Magitek facility are shuffled to different big deal items.  Not all of them are terribly useful - the Flame Sabre is a nice Magic boost, but Zekiye usually has better uses of her turn than swinging with it - but the Gaia Gear provides valuable insurance against enemy formations that have rolled into party-sweeping Earth elemental moves. Jadate shrugs on the runed waistcoat, a manufactured sample piece from the Empire's magitek production lines, over her travelling clothes.   A patrol of magitek walkers rounds the corner, heralded by little scutwork automatons who are whistling out an alarm at your presence. You wheel directly into them, knowing you have to shut them up - and in the same instant a blue-white radiance fills the corridor. The faint outline of a vast sword falls in lightbox silhouette along the path of Nalaal's knifestroke, and for a second you see the vast metal-clad arm behind your sister's motion, occluded to strokes of value by its own stern light. The machines are cinder-spewing wreckage when the light fades, and Nalaal gives you a sheepish smile, as if to apologise for carrying the family birthright so well. It isn't necessary. You're glad she's here.   You're moving quickly, in the open. Ziqiya should have rescued the Mysidians by now, and hopefully she hasn't raised the alarm, but you can't possibly say how many of the facility's guards are triangulating towards you right now. Every second counts. Felinoid posted:B, then C. Secure the hostages then unleash something that would make the Esper War look like a footnote. If any part of the city besides the slums remains intact, that's a failure. You are now Rekha Halfpenny. You remember this part: they took you through here about a week after they picked you up, once they'd fed you, given you clean clothes, made you answer some questions.    Zekiye can grab the Empire's Esper rocks, you guess. You don't care about that at all, even though you feel a grudging little pluck of resonance from Carbuncle, stored in the satchel hanging by your chest. It's been just a few months since Magitek Research grabbed you, loaded you up with raw power, and pointed you at Vector's enemies - countries and rebel groups you'd never heard the names of until you were on a boat north, listening to the soldiers gossip. Now, somehow, magnetically, you've spun around to point at them.  You wanna see Dr. Cid. He was the ringleader of the whole thing. You only met him once or twice - he was short with you, gave you orders, and you were just grateful to be eating so you nodded your head and marched to the beat. This time, with some backup in your corner, he'll have to feel like you felt. You could make him explain this whole lousy racket - what they stuck you with, why it was kids off the street, what happened to the rest of them. Or you could just give him an earful and blow his lab to bits. The Returners probably wanna do that anyway. You're still turning it over in your head. The thought of melting it all down feels jagged, but painless. You guess that's the position Jadate's put you in. Now that you're not thinking about your next meal, now that you have enough gil that you don't have to beg and scrape if you don't wanna, you can chase a hair and get yourself into trouble that actually means something. Jury's out on whether she did you a favour or not, but you at least know that you'd rather be here than ferreted into a hidey-hole in Vector, figuring out a way to spend your gil that meant living well and not just starving slower. When you tried that on for size this morning, you could feel the streets looming up under you with a big sign reading TOMORROW stamped all over them.  You remember the Esper stones like lacquered charcoal, their centres glowing in faint ebbing colours, racked up and arrayed here. But there's nothing here but empty cases.       The more magic Kefka had, the more she wanted. You can hear that in Zekiye's voice - arch disapproval at the lack of self-control. You try to figure if you feel that in yourself. You don't think you do.  The sight makes you shrink back against the wall. You've seen things in your life, of course you have, blood and bruises and broken bones, but never something like this. It's a graveyard without the headstones.  The Esper lunges at you before you can finish tamping down the fear. Trails of flame dance at her floating feet, but she looks like a candle about to go out. You hear Nalaal try to shout out something, we're here to help, but the magic is already flowing off her in aggrieved waves, and it hits you all with force that bends the air. She's at the end of her life, you can tell that, and she's decided to make someone pay for it.   Jadate plays the Vanishing Flute, and Lord Ramuh's lightning crackles up the walls of the confined chamber. She sees him and yells out furious disbelief. You guess she thinks it's a trick - some final Imperial indignity. Or maybe she just hates the old man to begin with. You don't know how Espers think about each other.   Fire erupts around Nalaal. The metal panelling melts under her. An ashy shadow climbs the wall as the rubber between the panels bubbles and blackens.   Almost as quickly, a second burst of blossoming flame booms around Zekiye, and the queen - who you'd started to kinda like - is reduced to a heap on the floor, her clothing smoking.   You lift your tensing arm, lead-like and heavy, and feel the heat surge through it as plasma blossoms around the Esper. You melt the air and dare her to stand through it.  She flows through it like water, regarding you with silver eyes. That tweaks something in your chest.   She plucks at her harp, and tongues of flame burst up through the gaps between the panels. The cramped room's air is hazey with heat: the edges of the dress Jadate bought for you in Jidoor are singed, and your legs feel like they've been dipped in metal. Jadate's hand tries to find you, and you can see that she's unsteady on her feet, her skin broken by burns.   Jadate sings a few pitchy, panicked notes, and illusory water flows through the chamber, bringing with it a sense of momentary coolness. It passes over the Esper so lightly that the flames trailing at her heels don't so much as gutter.  Clean Sweep does nothing here. Siren rolled immunity to Water. Not a good time for Jadate to waste a turn! Power crackles down your forearms, and the metal panels beneath you warp and curl at their edges. Flame forms a corona at the edges of your hair, bolts of molten blue pouring off you like steam, as if your whole body is melting and turning into something else. You feel like a clenched fist, swinging at the world, not for safety or to show off but because maybe the world deserves to get hit.   Flame erupts around Siren, molten metal fountaining where the panelwork below her drifting feet buckles and rises with the heat of your magic. Her hair rises back from her sculpture-like face, and you can see faint beads of sweat on her cheeks and brow. You can feel your pulse like a punch, and you know you could up the temperature. You could make this whole place melt, buckle, and crack open.     This is a scary fight for multiple reasons: not only does Siren cast Fire 3, but she's immune to Lightning, meaning the second half of Rekha's one-two punch just doesn't land. We pull through, just, on the back of how strong Rekha is anyway. With the paired Earrings, Firewall does just enough damage to smash through Siren's defenses before she can wipe the party. Normally, this fight has two phases: here, Rekha's final attack blasts through the second phase before it starts, so Maduin doesn't show up to dance, but to simmer things down.      The statuesque Esper, taller than a person could be, looks dreamy-eyed for a moment. Then she collapses into light.   The Esper has a snub nose, broad and bat-like, and hooked ears that twist upwards as he smiles.  And then, as if he'd been on the verge of saying more, his body twists into runnels of dusky light, and a brown-black piece of magicite drops into Nalaal's outstretched hand.    She looks at you worriedly, and she can tell she's thinking you shouldn't be seeing any of this. It's clearly taking all she has not to hector Zekiye for letting you come - but, as Zekiye could tell her, there wasn't any letting. The Returners need you. You just proved it. If it wasn't for you standing stiff just now, letting the magic roar out of you, they'd have been swept out of here as little piles of ash.   You find a sealed door in the rear of the garbage pit, and melt it open, flickering blue plasma turning the metal to steam.    Metal security automatons drop down from the ceiling, like half-baked puppets, as you follow your wandering memory towards Cid's lab.   A sequence of beep codes starts up, the green eyes of Cid's personal security system pulsing, and fans built into the staircase kick up an ominous whir. Cutting dust fills the stairwell: high pressure, the kind of gizmo they use to put a shine on metal, re-routed to keep intruders away from Cid's lab.  Your eyes are jammed closed. You shared out potions after the horror show in the trash furnace, but the places where your burns are freshly healed getting sandblasted still doesn't feel bearable. You sweep out your arm and tense its muscles, hear the space rip around you. When you're able to open your eyes, what feels like minutes later, the stairwell is empty but for a few fragments of metal casing. These guys are terrifying. Multiple wipes and resets on this staircase. You'd really hope the Gaia Gear would absorb Sandstorm, but it's an untyped move, so it cleaves straight through. A good example of how Beyond Chaos can throw monstrous formations at you just by shuffling abilities on the same tier!  Top of the stairs. Here goes. Your muscles are tensing and un-tensing, and you can feel the magic just behind the veins of your wrists, ready to surge out and break the world to bits. It's never been this ready to go before. You were so afraid of this place - so afraid of everything. Now the fear's eased off a bit, and behind it there's a flood of anger so fierce you can feel your instinctive desire to hide, to protect yourself, drowning and not surfacing. You're cutting through this place. It's wet paper, a joke, not the stomach-churning nightmare that took you up a few months ago.  You try to focus. Maybe this is stupid. Maybe you're going crazy, like Zekiye's supposed to go crazy from her magicite infusions. But you don't think so. You think you're someone who's been kicked who finally has the chance to kick back. You've seen it in other street kids: you've even done it, here and there, ugly little moments of anger that didn't mean anything big, swooping someone's mark, talking trash just to talk it. Maybe it's time to do it in a way that'll make all of Vector sit up and find out you exist. What does Rekha want? A) Answers. Rein it in with Cid: you could find out what happened to the other street kids he took, how your magic works, how you can control it. That's all you want. Then you can let Jadate and the Returners take the lead on getting out of here. B) Payback. You're angry, you know that - but it doesn't feel like a liability for once. You're going to give Cid a piece of your mind, and then you're gonna howitzer him - and every part of his life's work you can reach. C) Safety. It's been a long trip, but you've proven you can be a serious problem for the Empire if you're mad at them. Maybe Cid could be convinced that it'd be better if you were on his side, and as a big deal to be kept happy, not a tool. It'd pang your conscience a bit, but really, what are Jadate and Zekiye gonna do about it?
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Jun 18, 2023 14:46
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NiftyBottle posted:Just found this thread and read through it, and I’m loving it. No clue how I missed this. Heck yeah! Always love to hear this.
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Jun 18, 2023 14:47
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I don't remember getting a new character at this point...?  Uh, A I guess.
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Jun 18, 2023 15:31
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Yeah, let's go with A here.
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Jun 18, 2023 15:52
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This feels like a B situation to me. Also, if it’s not too much trouble, would it be possible to differentiate between in-character narrative and out-of-character observation? Like italics or brackets or something? It caught me a couple times reading and trying to work out what’s what. (I think I might’ve mentioned this a while back?) Either way, still fantastic writing!
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Jun 18, 2023 16:47
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B, payback. There's no redeeming the head of Magitek Research, orchestrator of so many horrors both at home and abroad. He's gonna find out just what happens when you arm an abused child with nuclear weapons. Let's turn Vector into a testament to the fury of magic.
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Jun 18, 2023 19:22
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I like the thought of answering A, but really, that's assuming he has any idea how any of this poo poo works or what he's doing. For all we know, he learned that pumping dead god slurry into kids means that yeah, they die horribly, but some of them live long enough to be useful before they're ripped apart by the magic they can't contain, and didn't bother investigating any further. For the same reason, negotiating for safety doesn't seem like it's going to go very well. Can you trust any of them to hold up their bargains, especially those made at gunpoint? No, there's only one thing you can do here, and it's to make sure nobody ever has to go through the poo poo you did ever again. Burn it to the loving ground.
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Jun 18, 2023 20:45
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A) Answers... perhaps followed by a slightly-modified B Rekha doesn't have to be the scared, desperate orphan kid any more--and she doesn't have to let anger born of fear rule her. She can cool down for a moment. Get herself some answers. Come out of this whole thing stronger. And then Cid can watch as she burns this facility to the ground. (Gotta give him something for his cooperation. Let him live... but let him lived as scared as she once was.)
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Jun 18, 2023 21:59
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Yeah I gotta go A then B. Try to get whatever closure you can, and then light this place the gently caress up. Cid's personal fate is unimportant, though I doubt Rekha would shed a tear if they got caught up in it.
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Jun 19, 2023 03:08
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GunnerJ posted:I don't remember getting a new character at this point...? It's "Setzer." I just looked back through the last couple updates (since tbf it has been a hot minute), and we never actually heard of/named "Setzer" during the entire opera sequence. Given that this is a narrative that has killed Kefka it makes sense if a couple things are a little out of order. PepperedMoth posted:A) Answers... perhaps followed by a slightly-modified B This
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Jun 19, 2023 05:38
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Gonna jump on the A then B train. Also, can I just say how much I love the visceral punch of how you write magic? Everything in that Siren fight was fantastic! Also, every time you describe Rekkha’s cosmic tear power is eldritch and mighty. I also just love the line You feel like a clenched fist, swinging at the world, not for safety or to show off but because maybe the world deserves to get hit.
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Jun 19, 2023 08:34
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every update is a joy to read, your writing is very good AB! quote="PepperedMoth" post="532605293"] A) Answers... perhaps followed by a slightly-modified B Rekha doesn't have to be the scared, desperate orphan kid any more--and she doesn't have to let anger born of fear rule her. She can cool down for a moment. Get herself some answers. Come out of this whole thing stronger. And then Cid can watch as she burns this facility to the ground. (Gotta give him something for his cooperation. Let him live... but let him lived as scared as she once was.) [/quote] voting this as well
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Jun 19, 2023 13:31
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Some notes on this update: The mechanics very much inform the narrative here. Rekha is a wrecking ball, and she's also the only reason some of these fights are beatable without meticulous strategy. Siren rolling Fire 3 is ludicrous, and the only reason we pull through is because Rekha can plunge massive amounts of damage into her and skip the fight's second phase before the party gets cooked. Same deal with the Trappers rolling Sandstorm: there are three of them per encounter, they can all open a turn with this party-sweeping disaster, and if the RNG decides to do that instead of attacking, we only live through those fights if Rekha gets to hit QuasMud or Nalaal rolls Stunner (less reliable!) before the second Trapper acts. There's a massive difficulty spike here, and it's often where permadeath runs meet their grisly end. You start to get more powerful equipment, you have access to Espers and spells, but in exchange the scope of abilities enemies can randomise into vastly broadens. Usually your run will have strong points it can exploit: for us, there are loads of neat utility and clever gimmicks Zekiye, Jadate and Nalaal can pull off, and they could get through these fights with a lot of resets, but Rekha is the obvious ace in the hole. There aren't many bosses that can stand up to Earring-boosted Firewall into Plasma - as we see here, Siren has Lightning immunity so Plasma does nothing (neither does Ramuh, making Jadate really miserable in this fight), and Rekha is still able to scrape a victory just by whacking her at 50% power. People may remember that the Espers you battle here in standard FF6 are Shiva and Ifrit. Beyond Chaos randomises who shows up for a tonne of Esper encounters, replacing their combat sprites, tinting their overworld sprites, and swapping out their dialogue, and there isn't too much to speak on there other than I think it's really neat. It's certainly an interesting way to meet Maduin! We also have a new party member! We'll be doing a party selection and Esper bonding vote shortly, having been locked into the opera gang since Zozo, and she'll be on the docket for that. BassMug posted:Gonna jump on the A then B train. Thank you so much! I've been thinking loads about how FF6's magic works as I've been writing this story, and where I'm at with it is that for someone like Rekha, magic would be almost totally physical. She has an immense amount of magicite penetrating not her just blood but her musculature, and harnessing it is physical exertion, learning how to move her muscles and tense her ligaments so that things Happen. With her magic, I want to give the sense of an immense physical stressor that she's learning how to work through. There's an emotional component as well, but understandably, Rekha is so alienated from herself and from the world around her that she's only starting to get to grips with that. There's an element of this for every mage we've met - in the base game's setting and in the curveballs Beyond Chaos has thrown us, the idea of magic as cerebral doesn't work so much. You have people constantly fiddling around with magicite and gaining fantastic powers, or inheriting magic as a birthright, which says to me it's about instinct, feelings and physical exertion more than it's about scribing runes and memorising spells. Zekiye has a huge brain, and that influences the ways she tries to use her magic, but it's still about her body accessing the limited store of Esper juice she's been able to electrolyse into herself. Ziqiya uses hand forms and sequences to cast her spells, which is a more disciplined approach, but those are a mnemonic means of accessing her Mysidian heritage, rather than something anyone could learn. Trying to give every mage's magic a different vibe while sticking to these same core principles has been a fun challenge! Antitonic posted:This feels like a B situation to me. This is something I've mulled, and I'd really like to do it to accommodate people, but ultimately it just sorta breaks my flow to write that way. There's something about snapping between game mechanics and narrative and letting each inform the other that is deeply satisfying to my brain, so it's a process thing. But I'm really glad you're enjoying the story, and I hope it's not too distracting! SMaster777 posted:It's "Setzer." I just looked back through the last couple updates (since tbf it has been a hot minute), and we never actually heard of/named "Setzer" during the entire opera sequence. Given that this is a narrative that has killed Kefka it makes sense if a couple things are a little out of order. Good eye! I was mulling how to play this character for a while. I knew I didn't want to run even a variation on the base game's Setzer plot, and mechanically, you don't actually add this character to your combat party until you leave Vector, so I realised she could be someone you meet up with there. The fact that her colour palette and clothes look a bit like Cid's lab gear made me focus in on Imperial scientist, and I built the little dilemma from the last update from there. (I was considering running the Setzer plot straight very early on in the story, but once we met Rekha I knew things had to shift sideways in that regard. Cascading changes cause further changes, is one of the biggest things I've learned from writing an emergent narrative!)
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Jun 19, 2023 13:37
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biosterous posted:every update is a joy to read, your writing is very good AB! thank yooouuuu ;-;
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Jun 19, 2023 13:41
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Thanks for the look at the process! Super cool to hear how artists go about their work.
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Jun 19, 2023 15:11
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I love the idea of an esper in a human suit hanging out with the party. What an ethical casserole.
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Jun 19, 2023 15:30
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Hello I didn't know that this was here, but now that I do I'm devouring it at a rapid pace. This is some good stuff. I'm gonna throw my hat in for A because I think answers are important.
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Jun 20, 2023 04:41
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She's never really seemed all that concerned with answers before, I don't know why she would be now. Voting B.
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Jun 20, 2023 18:19
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PepperedMoth posted:A) Answers... perhaps followed by a slightly-modified B Yeah, this is good.
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Jun 20, 2023 19:37
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OzFactor posted:She's never really seemed all that concerned with answers before, I don't know why she would be now. Voting B. To some extent this is us being given the opportunity to guide how Rekha develops as a character. Android Blues has been very good about making our decisions make sense in context. We've already seen how her interactions with Jadate have made her more aware of the greater context that she's operating inside of, for example. So if you vote A, then presumably there will be some inner dialog and character development (and perhaps added worldbuilding) that leads to A making sense. That said, my vote remains as it was when I posted earlier. Cid is basically Dr. Mengele in this continuity, so he should not be given any opportunities. He's a hideously unethical war criminal in vanilla FF6 as well, and about all I can say in his defense there is that his crimes remain vague and off-camera.
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Jun 20, 2023 19:47
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