Post by Dex on Aug 5, 2016 7:37:19 GMT -4
I have decided to post a full thread because well shoutbox is temporary and this seems like a more fuller experience.
TAILS
Tails is known to be ignorant, it's the sort of person he is and that's how he rolls. He as a Ace of Void, is rather good at hiding, being ignorant and generally being better when not seen. As an Ace he is very good at Void which is about hiding, ignoring and not being seen. I would also have to say from what I've seen he is very much a social chameleon and that he is also very adaptable. Void players can also tend to think of everything as sarcastic, insulting or lies.
The reason he can DM so wonderfully is because he can think on his feet and can adapt to the many situations players cause. Tails also has The Null as his whisperings, they are silent but communicate through from what I've heard from Tails in another timeline by some emptiness, he didn't really explain it properly. Here are some of the abilities
[Null Set] This ability is an instant kill because it literally removes it from existence. However it has two main problems, it has an extremely long cooldown (A week's worth.) and you have to be right in the monster's face to use it. This carries the principle that the larger or more powerful the enemy, the more difficult it is to cast.(Voiding an underling would be easy but a Black King prototyped twelve times would likely kill you or send you to the void.)
[Midnight Shadow] Standard invisibility power that usually lasts from a few minutes to an hour, depends on how much pluck you are willing to spend. Rarely, Void Players will have a glitched pluck stat, meaning that this ability can be cast pretty much indefinitely.
[Sound of Silence] Gives the user stat bonuses as it you used a fraymotif, however there is no beat. Lasts for a random amount of time, usually in the range of three or so minutes. Will, on occasion, provide no stat bonuses, but will rather actually provide the user with a fraymotif, courtesy of the Null. You're welcome.
[Twisted Reality] Standard void attack. Basically it gives you a ball of the Null to throw around. On contact it can either explode, cut right through the target, latch on to the target, or do nothing. This scales pretty well but does pretty weak damage to anything larger in size than a basilisk, unless you are willing to expend extra pluck. This does not apply if you have glitched Mangrit stats for some reason.
[Dark Black] Provides you with a shadowy cloak, not much else. If your flummoxite stat is glitched, this will not provide you with shadow. Instead, you will receive a pretty rainbow cloud of sparkles around you. Yes, this will still work with [Running in Shadow].
[Running in Shadow] Works with [Dark Black]. This allows you to teleport much like a space player(If you steal my job as Mage of Space I will murder you Tails.), but effectively becoming a shadow, then using shadows to teleport around. This can be pretty exhausting and for some reason it is reliant on your sleep coefficient. Be warned, the more you use this ability, the lower your sleep coefficient will become, thus preventing you from casting the ability later. If you are very unlucky, this ability will not work roughly half the time. Yes, this means you will run into a wall every other time or so that you try to use it. I'm sorry(Not sorry.).
[Cloud of Unknowing] A weird ability that can prevent people from scrying. I'm not sure why you would ever want to use this. If your Seer is a Seer of Light or Coins, this ability will not work on them.
Warning: Do not use on our session's seer, unless you want to get very dead very quickly.
[Empty Head] This ability suppresses (Correction: Temporarily erases) emotions. Image [Ice Cream in the Veins] but taken to a whole new extreme. This ability could theoretically be used to cool down a berserk trigger if the circumstances are right. though I'm not sure why you would want to as this not only removes bad emotions, it removes good ones too. This ability very very rarely will stick on the target indefinitely, there is no cure for this as far as I know which means they will be stuck with an emotionless zombie for the rest of our session.
[My Hero, Zero] This ability is a simple defensive ability that will negate all damage done from a single attack. This is INSANELY BROKEN. This ability is scripted to modify damage stats, and if you use it in a certain way, there is no damage stat to modify which is bad. Casting this ability on itself or another instance of itself will result in the programming wigging out and as a result your pluck will become infinite and your cooldown times will reduce to zero. (Except for [Null Set] for some odd reason.) If Tails begins to grind through Atomyk Ebonpyres with ease, this is why.
[!@#$%^&*()] Not sure what this ability does only that when cast, this ability will summon a pumpkin into your game. A pumpkin. Nothing else will happen as far as I know, but we all know how many pumpkin related glitches there are. This ability has an insane Pluck cost, however, so it is very likely that this ability won't ever be cast in most sessions.
[Home Alone] This ability will create a very large explosion. I don't get it either. When the dust settles, nothing will be left around the area of effect but a lot of tiny houses where your enemies stood. I recommend burning these if you want some free grist. Sometimes, this will actually create a legitimate explosion, get out as fast as possible.
[Nothing Left] A very very very very dangerous berserk trigger. This will cause the Null to emanate from the caster in waves and everything around them will slowly begin to fade out of existence. I recommend a drop kick to the head immediately, or if this ability has progressed to far, abscond. This carries potential for a total session wipe, so Tails make sure that you are on good terms with your local neighborhood Other so you can make a quick escape if you need to.
TIM
Tim is known for being logical and a bit cold at least from my perspective, but he converts with Mind the opposing aspect Heart into something hideously like Mind. He is a Conqueror of Mind which means he converts the shards of his soul into one terrible collective Mind. Tim uses Mind to create his various RP characters' personas by turnings individual soul shards into one, this allows him to become one and strong enough to fuel a temporary change in his soul. Tim's soul turns into that characters soul but souls aren't supposed to be whole, they're supposed to be centillions of fragmented shards that are spread around infinitely and always connected even if they aren't in the same universe. By being infinite this allows every single hope, thought, word or memory possible be real, every moment the shards will shatter millions into millions of constantly growing new shards, the shards spread on infinitely throughout the omniverse shattering themselves into every atom.
Tim can turn his entire soul into a different soul temporarily and his soul can be incredibly strong but it doesn't develop an infinite individuality that will never die and will die. Tim's soul is like a star as the bigger, brighter and hotter it is, the life it has is short. A proper soul spreads infinitely and becomes an infinite amount of connected stars, allowing it to live forever. Tim wants to leave a mark on the world when in reality he just needs to fragment.
LEGO
Lego, a Prince of Law known to be angry and has an incredible boner for justice. Lego cares deeply but he has a code that people must follow with the essentials being, don't lie to me and don't act like you're above the law. The Prince class are known for destroying their aspect or/and destroying things with their aspect. Lego can pretty much discard the rules or destroy anything that stands in his way with them, chaining people down with restrictions and using the aspect that literally means "stop doing that" to destroy.
Law is associated with a distinct visual effect that looks like some kind of chain. Many Law abilities causes this effect to appear on the target so you can think of it as a game indicator that represents a strong concentration of Law.
A lot of time, you will see these chains when a Law Player like Lego is involved with a [promise]. The promises of Law Players are magical and binding for example a Sylph of Law could swear vengeance upon a PK upon which the chain will appear like a bracelet around their wrist, a Guard of Law could swear to protect someone upon which the chain would appear like a ring around his finger and a Muse of Law could influence a person to make a promise to himself, in which case it is that person that is marked with the chain through the powers of the Law Player. However with a Prince of Law could swear to destroy the Black King and a chain-crown would appear upon their head.
The chains bound to a promise are more than than just a reminder as the aspect of Law is empowering those that bear the mark. It gives them the strength and mental fortitude to accomplish what they decided to do and Law is all about binding people to their words and rewarding them when they walk in that direction.
The chains are typically associated with promises, many Law abilities will temporarily summon them as a visual effect. When you imbue the Law into something to make an object heavier (in fact it anchors the object in space), they appears all over the target. The chains also appear when you use the Law to lock a door, a chest or a computer in which case it feels like yellow police tape. The chains also appear when you create a rule to block outcomes with negative consequences or bad luck. They are also involved when you inflict a sentence, in which case they are like an explosive collar with an activation trigger. Either way, it's always the same chains, as the justice of the Law is uniform and applies to every individual.
Here are some abilities.
[Negative Aperture] Provides knowledge of dark spots that bring a negative karmic charge with them otherwise known as [geis]
The powerful dark spots that you need to avoid are like magical taboos so if you avoid them, you are certain to be blessed. If you make other people walk into them, you bring forth their downfall. It's like when you do something that leaves you with a bad feeling and then you suffer a string of bad luck and you're convinced it's all related. From the point of view of the Law, the magical taboo that you had to avoid is something called a [geis].
The most important warning that comes with Law divination is that it looks fucking silly to on-lookers. It all make sense from the point of view of the Law Players because they can see dark luck, you don't. From your point of view, you are hearing a garbled mess of superstition and doomsaying spouted by a tribal witch doctor but the Law is serious business as long as you respect the Word of the Law, good things are going your way.
[Unsheath'd] Law's strength on the battlefield mostly comes from something called [vows], [Unsheath'd] will teach Law Players the branch of Law manipulation that is related to vow-crafting. It's a Law power with a simple premise: you exchange a restriction in exchange for a strength, vows sharpen potential like a blade in exchange of specialization.
In return, this means that Law warriors are binary, they are a wraith of justice to a particular kind of foe and powerless to those who aren't on their agenda. They are nearly immune to one attack and weak to another. as the strength of the Law comes from forging rules that favors them but these rules need to be precise in order to be strong. Basically they say things like "My duty is X but not Y". The harder the decision, the better it is.
Whenever Law warriors are contrived to an unexpected situation, they need some time to switch their specializations. That's their weakness. They are akin to a wrecking ball. They punch through walls, but they need to stop slowly to change direction.
[Busting Makes Me Feel Good] I think this is the best counter-ability in the game, Lego just needs to land the activation conditions right. He has to predict exactly what an opponent is about to do and make it illegal so when their opponent steps on their grill, the Law Players smirk and make them eat [Busting Makes Me Feel Good] to the face. It's a typical set-up to karmic retribution so Law loves that crap and the more precise the rule, the more it hits like a truck.
It also means that unpredictable enemies foil their plans. I heard of a time that a Knight of Law attacked a Bard of Rain so the Knight created the vow "I fricking hate your blonde hair". Yes, that is a valid vow but the Rain Player's hair then changed color(They do that sometimes, don't ask.), and the Law didn't apply to him anymore.
[Ruling the World] Law Players that dips in heavy magical territory will have a field day with cursing as a curse is like the opposite of a blessing provided by Myth. The mechanic of a curse is to use luck manipulation to make something less likely to happen.
Technically, curses are something called [rules]. That's because they are not innately negative. They are just outcomes that are not allowed. For example he could destroy the chances of a person dying by making a rule like [you're not allowed to die]. [Ruling the World] will teach Law Players everything there is to know about manipulating luck toward opposing particular outcomes.
[Judge, Gavel and Executioner] A Law Player can also craft something that is serious business: a [sentence]. It's like when Myth Players free people of their burden to such an extend that they heal them. Law Players can create such a restriction that it kills.
A sentence is not a conventional attack as it doesn't hurt enemies but rather it is a condition that causes enemies to inflict an attack on themselves. It comes with a trigger like [you are not allowed to attack me] or [you are not allowed to run away] and it inscribes the target with the chain effect around a body part, like the neck or something. If the target decides to go against the Law, the chain goes BOOM and the enemy's head goes WOOSH in the air.
Here are some denizens.
Anubis loves to talk about things that you hate. He sends imps that have faces of people you love to your land and they often imitate them with creepy accuracy, making it slightly difficult to kill them due to what I suspect to be a moral buff on Lego. Anubis will proceed to take the form of people you love and make them insult you because from what Lego in another timeline gleaned, he found it funny.
Eunomia is what we call a tight ass. She constantly tells you that you are unworthy and references something you thought in your mind 8 years ago, mention something you did on a birthday and constantly berates you on the things you say. She has a slight angelic corruption so make sure not to touch her otherwise have fun in the Choir(The fire will take everything you have. The light will burn away everything you are.).
Themis is like a Jehovah Witness combined with the idiocy of a fundamental Christian and adds terrorism to the mix. The underlings she sends don't explode but they definitely terrorize the consort villages and in one timeline they had burnt down an important quest village. Themis constantly tells you that you're going to hell because you do not believe in [insert god here], she changes religions every couple of weeks to spite you and I heard in one timeline, she told Lego to believe in Cthulhu.
PAWZ
He is definitely a Knight of Coins, a very enjoyable aspect with a not so enjoyable class. Pawz is likely to break down in what I call "knight's syndrome" in which they just stop fighting and are in a very depressed state of mind but Coins is likely to soften the blow. The literal interpretation of Coins is in fact riches(Items that are imbued with Coins have a glittery or solid gold look.) and his whisperings the Fair attempt to give that fact to him but a more metaphorical meaning is also what Coins is known for:Self-worth(The aspect wants to lift up your self-esteem, recognize your talents and abilities and your worth as a person.).
The less important interpretations are abundance and generosity(The Fair tends to make Coins players very well endowed in terms of richness. Pawz will likely have a ton of grist, a ton of boondollars and huge pluck reserves from [Golden Ratio] so he likely has enough to share and the aspect definitely teaches you to be generous.), alchemy(I'm talking about the Genesis Game kind. Since this aspects deals with material wealth, it's no surprise that alchemization and grist fall under its jurisdiction after all grist is something you pay with to gain something of value.) and the other alchemy(I'm talking about the old-timey kind, you know those medieval guys that tried to make the philosophers stone and turn lead into gold? The ones that were basically chemists before chemistry was really a thing? Well it turns out Pawz owes them because Coins has an array of abilities that lets him create a bunch of cool chemical stuff.).
Pawz has a few notable abilities from coins.
[Midas Touch]:An early-game pluck-intensive ability that is going to be Pawz's friend. He can cast it on his hands and the next thing he touches turns into a 24 carat statue. If it can't turn them completely due to insufficient flummoxie/pluck/contact time then it'll at least disable part of their bodies. Issue is underlings are still considered alive just like how Rhyme's frozen enemies mess with the spawn-timer. They don't give any experience nor grist until properly offed so either break the statue, convert it to golden grist with [Glean] or melt the gold using [Aqua Regia].
[Pactolus]: Just in case you want to revert the transformation into gold that [Midas Touch] causes, this is the ability for you.
WARNING: While [Midas Touch] is learned in the early game, [Pactolus] is Post-Denizen. You've been warned.
[Golden Ratio]: This is why Coins players have a nearly bottomless pit of grist, pluck and boondollars. It costs a good chunk of pluck to activate, but it permanently multiplies Pawz's pluck regeneration factor, grist and boondollars by the golden ratio, which is 1.618, approximately. That alone is a relatively small boost, but you can activate it multiple times, leading to Pawz's pluck regeneration ratio spiraling out into a singularity. The catch is, the price to pay for activation also increases in the same way as the boost with each activation, so Pawz will eventually hit a point where you currently cannot afford the next upgrade.
[Glean]: Recycles an item into its worth in grist without the need of any equipment, at a very low pluck price.
[Ex Novo]: Makes a simple item that costs a small amount of grist appear out of thin air. Technically, every other creation ability Coins gets (IE the chemistry stuff) is a variation of this.
[Amalgam]: Fuses items into cool stuff. Kind of works like alchemy, except you have more control on the result, but can't get stuff that is too far removed from what you started with. For instance, [Amalgam]'s not going to make you a jetpack from Pawz's old school backpack and a rocket figurine, no matter how hard you try.
NOTE: Pawz, if you use it onto living beings, I will personally melt your bones. Trust me, it's horrible.
[Time is Money]: Passively drains your pluck and converts it to boons at a fixed rate. Very much worth its price in the early stages, when a boondollar is still considered a fortune, but eventually becomes worthless. At that point, turn it off.
[Payday]: Passively drains pluck, boosts the grist drops of underlings. Pawz can also decide how much pluck it drains, so it scales well.
[Gil Toss]: Expend X boons, then throw a single golden projectile that deals damage based on X. The more, the better. Doesn't expend any pluck and can get crazy strong if Pawz has a fat wallet to draw from.
[Vitriol]: Dumps a decent amount of undiluted sulfuric acid on an enemy. Simple enough.
[Aqua Regia]: Like [Vitriol], except it is a bigger quantity, can also be sprayed for better multitargeting potential, and notably melts gold and other noble metals, which is something [Vitriol] cannot do. For the chemistry nerds out there, it's a mix of nitric and hydrochloric acid.
[Azoth]: Like [Aqua Regia], except even bigger, pluck-costly and capable of eating right through any material that is not bedrock. I have no idea what it is chemically. I'm not even sure if the Genesis Game didn't just decide to screw science and make an acid with minus infinity pH.
[Therein Lye's The Secret]: This punny-named ability creates caustic lye, aka potassium hydroxide, a strong base capable of causing serious burns.
[Fulminating Gold]: Creates a small quantity of a gold compound also called fulminating gold. Why fulminating? Because it explodes vigorously with a good knock. Works hilarious wonders with [For the Fairest].
[All That Glitters]: Coats something in pretty, sparkly glitter. Imps are attracted to the stuff, for some reason. Dirt cheap to cast. Makes everything awesome, if you ask me.
[For the Fairest]: Makes an item be perceived as extremely precious and desirable, and visually solid gold or diamond-glittering. You can throw it in the middle of a bunch of imps and watch them kill each other for it. Or coat it in [Fulminating Gold] and enjoy the fireworks. You can also cast it on yourself if you want to attract enemies like a magnet - just make sure there are no sessionmates nearby, you don't want to attract the wrong kind of attention. *cough*
[Ever Brimful]: At the price of a hefty chunk of pluck and feeling utterly exhausted once it runs out, this late-game ability will temporarily make your pluck infinite, and your cool-downs nonexistent, for a time that can go from few seconds to a couple minutes, it depends.
HUGE WARNING: Do not *EVER* try to upgrade [Golden Ratio] while using [Ever Brimful]. Due to a minor bug it WILL create an endless loop that spirals out of all controls and ends with a Berserk Trigger and Pawz YOU WILL EXPLODE like something a Rage player crammed too much Purple Prose into.
[We Are Golden]: Gives you a heavy self esteem boost, lasting approximately six hours. Can make you pretty arrogant, but also boosts your ARC temporarily and your power as a result. It has a very long cooldown, though, approximately two weeks. Best saved for emergencies. Also works wonders for some mental disorders.
[Aimless Morning Gold]: Makes a person generous. Useful for solving arguments, from time to time.
WARNING: It should go without saying that using [We Are Golden] or [Aimless Morning Gold] on a Dust player is a CRITICALLY BAD idea. It might even end up causing a Berserk Trigger, a bit like how Rage will NOT tolerate being mellowed down by Rhyme's [Ice Cream in the Veins]. Trust me, I've seen both things firsthand. A Pawz from another timeline learned this at the price of his life. Please don't let it go wasted.
Coins is the aspect of abundance so in addition to having the highest number of abilities in the game (yes, higher than Life!) it also has more Berserk Triggers than average, at 3 while I've never heard of other aspects having more than 1 or 2.
[Riches to Ruins]: The absolutely crazy version of [Gil Toss]. It'll drain everything of worth you have Pawz - boondollars, grist, pluck, sylladex items, health - to fuel an insanely powerful projectile that delivers a hydrogen bomb-like explosion on impact. If you see Pawz starting to shine like they're turning into the Sun, run like hell.
[Gringott's Gold Grave]: This one is probably the least dangerous of the Coins BTs. It just produces a mountain's worth of gold items (generally a mix of weapons of abstrati of the caster, things they have in inventory and more cliché valuables like jewelry). It starts off with small stuff like rings, but it very quickly escalates into submerging everything in the vicinity in gold within few seconds, avalanche style. Either drop kick them to the head at the early stages, or get the hell out of there.
[El Dorado]: This one, on the other hand, is probably the most horrifying. It starts with a huge Coins ideograil symbol covering a very wide area, so that's your cue to get out of there this instant if you don't want to be PERMANENTLY get turned into gold like every single thing in its AOE. Skip the hug, skip the kick, contact with the player will deal the same effect. The most disturbing bit, however, is how Sburb still treats living beings turned into gold as alive.
Coins has some glitches but most are benign. Here are a few notable ones.
One of Coins' fraymotifs is just named "$$$$$$$$$$$" and it just sounds like a text-to-speech program set to Danish trying to pronounce five minutes' worth of "dollardollardollardollardollar". It doesn't give any boosts either. It's just annoying.
Scrying on a Coins player while they are charged with [Midas Touch] counts as contact and WILL turn you into solid gold. If you need to check on your Coins player, it's best to just send a message.
WARNING: This also applies to [El Dorado]. If you somehow know that something BIG is happening around your Coins player, it's worth being cautious and waiting until it's over before scrying.
The denizens of a coins player is varied.
Lakshmi: She's this beautiful four-armed silk-draped incredibly long-haired giantess covered in jewelry and stuff. She's relatively nice as far as Denizens go, I've heard. Still one mean jimmies rustler, though. Coquettish, petty and sharp-tongued, the whole package. She took Pawz in another timeline relatively little time to get to not wanting to kill her, though a lot to recover from the grief because "we were practically bffs okay?", I quote.
Pluto: Male, and much more of a jackass than Lakshmi, from what I've heard. Also gigantic, and sits on a huge throne made of melted valuables and gold-plated consort skulls. As a note, I've been told by Pawz in another timeline that he's a pretty honest dude. His word is his bond and all that stuff. So yeah, he might rustle your jimmies until they turn into plasma, but he won't betray your trust.
Hecate: Female. Kind of humanoid, but has a bunch of arms - like, a hundred of them - and they're all stick thin, spider style. She's also generally clad in a black-and-gold veil that doesn't let her face show. She embodies the more alchemic part of Coins. As a note, Pawz if you ever hear her chanting in some mystic language and summoning long shadow hands, you should stay away from her during those little rites she does. They carry a pretty substantial risk of Others corruption. And she will NOT take it well if interrupted.
Midas: Because of course the dude himself is a Denizen. He's apparently in the same jackass league as Pluto, and yes, he turns whatever he touches into gold, so be careful. If needed Pawz, imbue your clothes with [Pactolus] or something just as a precautionary measure.
LNG
LNG the Lord of Holograms can be a bit overpowered as it allows him to treat any situation like a holodeck. The limiting factor is due to the memory of what I quote from LNG "A computer that isn't a computer" but with the power to stop, run scenarios and make temporary objects it doesn't really matter. On a camping trip he created a simulation of a medieval castle with his and Purring's consorts in an all-out war because LNG's wolf consorts basically killed several of Purring's baby cat consorts. It was weird.
Various Hologram abilities below.
[Computer Stop Simulation] This projects a holodeck around the players and treats the landscape, the underlings and other players as holograms that have stopped. This affects everyone but the caster.
[Computer Run Simulation] A very weird ability that essentially allows the caster to designate a space for a holodeck and run simulations on it. Allowing him to turn even a tent on the outside into a castle on the inside(Quite literally.). This simulation however has safety protocols meaning the constructs cannot harm anyone. The pluck cost is relative to the power of the holodeck meaning a holodeck capable of running the universe will require more than can ever be had pluck but one capable of running medieval planet has a relatively small pluck cost.
[Computer Project Object] An ability that allows the caster to create an object(the more powerful, the more pluck-costly) of their choosing that will fade after a few hits. That means no Excalibur for you. Strangely enough if the object is magical it means the caster has to have a higher Flummoxie stat then it's magic stat.
[Virus] This ability summons a dangerous hologram as an ally but the hologram requires a constant of supply of pluck. The more dangerous the hologram is the more likely you will burn out your pluck reserves.
[Emotion Chip] A [Unite Synchronization](Purring and LNG teamed up) ability that pours all the emotions of the player targeted into a giant holodeck area with safety protocols disengaged. An angry person would create a volatile simulation often involving stars supernovaing, a demon incarnate or a giant dragon(actually happened). A happy person would create a simulation that would heal players and buff them like hell. You get the point.
[Morality Control] A [Unite Synchronization] psybuff ability that involves showing people the damage they are doing by their mentality that they need to realize that what they're doing. From what I've heard it solved Pawz's knight syndrome, so that's something right?
[Skill Download] This ability is more Matrix than Star Trek but it involves temporarily being a master of a certain skill like karate, drawing and more. This also works on other people because Tim apparently requested to be better at making themes which LNG accepted, I don't know if Tim actually got good because the timeline closed off for me.
[Safety Protocols Disengaged] A berserk trigger form of [Computer Run Simulation] that in essence is a growing holodeck with everything sucked into a simulation within it. The simulation is usually benign but occasionally the simulation can be quite dangerous.
Here are the denizens.
Vishnu:A total conspiracy-nut wearing the Federation uniform that will rave on about how the universe is holographic and that everything is fake. The conspiracies were ridiculous enough that it really rustled LNG's jimmies. It took him a long time to not want to kill him.
Morpheus:A winged jackass that infected LNG's simulations with annoying and sometimes dangerous viruses. The guy apparently raved on about how holodecks were a mere reflection of the power of dreams. This guy is also a Dream player denizen but is less annoying, LNG doesn't believe it.
There is apparently one more denizen but any attempts to contact timelines that LNG has the denizen are forced away. Weird.
XENO
As a Priest of Mist, Xeno is effectively every player and every player is Xeno. This causes him to mess with scrying abilities and allows him to shapeshift with [Dord Waltz]. The only thing that can see through the disguise is the denizen although they like to pretend they don't. Here are a few examples of abilities.
[Dord Waltz] The shapeshifting ability everyone knows mist for. The one that allows them to appear like they are gigantic monsters the size of planets, the one that allows them to become the size of atoms because fuck the laws of physics(Sorry, when things break physics it makes me angry).
[Smoke and Mirror] Is also another ability that Mist is famous for. It essentially allows the caster to copy other player's abilities but they have limited slots. There are also several aspects that you shouldn't copy: Void doesn't like existing so don't copy it, time-travel is a confusing mess that only makes sense for Time players so don't copy it, Space is generally okay but there are some abilities deeply connected to the frog breeding process for some reason so don't copy them, Rain is insanity and it's abilities are even more weird so don't copy it and the Hope ability [Dreams Don't Die] can't be deleted but the rest is okay.
[Reverberata] Mist players are made of many things so whenever they suffer an attack they turn into a cloud of these other things to avoid taking damage. This causes people to misread the durability of Mist players because they trade Pluck for defense. When Mist players run out of Pluck and actually start taking damage, that's your cue to grab them and get the fuck out of there because their real defense is all kinds of shitty. The objects that Mist players are made of are based on their personal interests from sweet-tooths turning into lollipops, insect-loving freaks turning into bugs and people that text 24/7 into text messages.
[Variations] Is a Mist berserk trigger that temporarily converts the environment into more [Reverberata] components adding to their cloud form. Soon you won't be looking at a cloud but you'll be looking at a storm. The objects might even form a humanoid frame to wreak havoc like Godzilla. You can't inflict a critical wound on [Reverberata] because to bring it down is to break it all.
BLUNDER
The Architect of Light which is essentially building things with their aspect. The aspect of Light means he can go like "Hmm.. I feel like I'm lucky enough that the building will poof into existence" then the building poofs into existences because crazy luck is a part of Light, though technically it is stronger when it is the separate aspect Fortune/Luck. There is also the knowledge part of Light otherwise known as, "Let's build a building out of knowledge" and suddenly the Shine goes like, "hell yeah" then it creates a weird building that looks like it's solid light. The Shine definitely likes Blunder due to his ability to just stumble onto things or blunder onto them.
Also don't play poker with a Light player. No seriously. What are you expecting? Even if Light Players swear to not use abilities, The Shine is going to passively increase their luck whether they want it or not.
The aspect of Light is very fast in fact, LeBlunder in another timeline told me he never used a teleportation ability because he RAN faster. This allows Light players to pull off all kinds of sick acrobatics that may or may not listen to physics.(I dislike this.)
Light players often get sickening optimism. There's a limit to how often you can hear "Everything's gonna turn out alright" without flipping out and it's really freaky when Players have a darkly mood at the start of a session and they're happy-happy-sunshine-in-your-face by the end of it. It's weird enough that Aspects have some effect on personality but this one takes the cake and then it takes that cake and adds to it another layer of rainbow sugary cream, a thousand candles, a mountain of glittery candies and a small edible unicorn on top.
It's not a very hidden secret: you can turn luck manipulation directly into a battle advantage by employing luck-based weapons. The Genesis Game has a piece of code that tries to run an exception to luck manipulation so that it wouldn't abuse the potentially ridiculous power of luck-based specibus allocations. However, this measure doesn't work properly because the extra line of code is shoddy. It was probably thrown in as an afterthought; it only blocks certain basic abilities. To be more exact, it prevent Players from directly buffing the luck of their Strife Specibus. It doesn't prevent them from personally accumulating luck, which is especially easy to snowball with the Architect class.
Here are some abilities.
[Let There Be] Is a good ability to have when traversing dark dungeons, underground mines or stuff like that. Word of warning, if you do the player command Song of Light then cast [Let There Be] they will conflict with each other but if you cast [Let There Be] then Song of Light it won't conflict. Go figure.
[Flare] It is one of the very few attack abilities Light gets.(That doesn't mean you can't free-style some up.) It basically takes all the light in the area and turns it into a giant fucking laser but it's not very efficient Pluck-wise so stick with Luck manipulation and save that laser for when you need it.
[Vision Omnifold] This basically allows them to have xray vision, thermal vision, life vision, emotion vision and whatever the fuck vision they want. This however costs more Pluck to maintain the more vision capabilities they have. This means they could get 20/20 vision and still have positive Pluck regeneration but if they have all the before mentioned vision, you won't have enough Pluck to run it for a millisecond.
[Dance of Thorns] Light players are the least dangerous to allies when it comes to berserk triggers. It's a super-buff for having perfect luck. It's especially useful for fighting opponents that have random attacks, teleportation or super-speed. The Light Player will get to block or avoid all their attacks by sheer coincidences, it's like dancing in a field of thorns and not getting a single scratch on yourself as a dance of thorns is a perfect performance.
Still, the [Dance of Thorns] is not completely safe. The problem is that luck is relative. Good luck for the Light Player doesn't mean good luck for everybody. For example: someone "coincidentally" blocking an attack with another person's face just because otherwise, the Light Player might get dirt on his/her shoes. That kind of "luck". Light's luck is usually better directed than that but not during a berserk spree, and especially with Titles on the active spectrum. It's better to appreciate the dance of thorn from far away or you'll get prickled.
Here are some denizens.
Hyperion is a total dick, he'll often speak at such speeds that you need to hear him again. If you ask him to repeat he'll then say "Do I need to sound out all the syllables for you?" and he'll proceed to very slowly say things as if he's talking to a retarded child. He'll proceed to do this for the rest of the session and constantly make jokes on your intelligence. It took Blunder a long time to not want to kill him.
Athena is a mastermind that will manipulate you. When Blunder realized that he was just getting manipulated, he got angrier. She proceeded to make everything she said either a lie or truth and caused constant suspicion. The underlings she sends to wreck his land are often smarter than the average land imp and can turn weapons against him. This has caused him to almost die a couple of times from a simple weak imp with a couple of real deaths in other timelines.
Apollo is an okay denizen but is annoying with his energetic personality. He'll often do incredibly dangerous things then ask Blunder to join in. He died always if he joined in but the activities always looked very dangerous, so only a couple of other timeline deaths happened. He will proceed to beg him and will provide reasons that sound completely absurd that it will be safe.
PURRING
Purring is a Oracle of Heart, someone who scrys with Heart. Heart Players like Purring walk a path marked by fragmented identity, changing personality and occasional soul collisions. Don't worry she isn't going to go crazy – well, not any more than every other person here but her sense of self is in for a ride. Heart players have some of the best emotional support abilities – scratch their back, they’ll scratch yours later.
Okay just for the record, the heart thing creeps me out so let’s just get this over with. The Aspect of Heart deals with identities or "souls", they have a lot of support tricks to help people come to terms with internal conflicts BUT their signature ability is to manipulate the "core" of things. It works like this: the Heart Players take an object and they plunge their hand through it as if it was made out of water with a lot of surface tension, they pull out the "heart" of it. It’s like a pulsating ball of shininess and they can manipulate it and put it back, like reprogramming.
So far it seems vanilla right?
That’s because you don’t know yet how it works offensively, it works on people. The signature offense ability [Weapon of the Heart] allows Heart Players is to plunge their hand into their own heart and rip a shiny thing out of it then they change the identity of that thing – from [feelings] to [weaponry]. It creates some pretty OP weapon actually, if you get past the fact that THEY PUT THEIR HANDS INTO THEIR CHEST. They’re made of solidified feelings and they dissolve after an attack, which is generally enough to kill a boss then they turn into light which returns in people’s chest.
That sounds awesome, right? Holy shit no it isn’t, my GOD, it is so DISTURBING to watch them rip out their heart because seriously, HANDS DO NOT GO INTO CHESTS and you know the worst thing? It’s when they SUPPORT you with that ability.
Purring had done this once in another timeline in a big fight because suddenly she was like "Hey, think of something really happy" and I’m like "Uh?" and then she plunged her hand INTO MY TORSO. I was like "GET IT OUT" and she was like "Nuh-uh". then she ripped out my chest-light-thing without even buying me a drink. She was like "Here, use this" while handing me some glorious magical schoolgirl weaponry. I am *not* cool with the heart-thing unless you WARN me in advance... Actually you know what? Fuck that. I am not cool with the heart-thing in *any* circumstances whatsoever. I don’t want any hands to go through my torso. It is strictly no-hand-penetration territory.
Here are some example abilities.
[What You Look Like on the Inside] An ability that involves changing your appearance like Mist does but based on your personality. A person that is really apathetic(Purring) would look like nothing special while a person like Pick would turn into a giant multicoloured bird.
[Art of the Heart] Turns your soul into a fighting style so with Purring due to her struggle with a soul collision with another her from another timeline she will start of sweet but eventually turn into a cold-blooded killing machine.
[The Pink Link] This ability allows Purring to scry for emotional connections between things. She could know how an insult might make someone feel or how a feeling could cause mass destruction for example.
This allows Purring to use people's souls like how fortune-tellers use crystal balls to tell the future. The shiny will show them future events and show them how to plan for them.
[Pink is The New Black] This essentially allows Purring to trap enemies inside her soul prison and subject them to damage. This has a pretty high pluck cost but it's pretty worth it.
Heart Players don’t really go berserk so when they channel their Aspect too much they usually end up with an identity crisis, I mean, that is total shit but it sure beats inflicting mass destruction if you ask me. In fact, despite looking unusual(DEMONIC), Heart abilities are pretty safe.
Sophia is really fucking intense. The underlings she sends out to Purring land will go like "Sophia Akbar!" and then explode. When Purring asked about underlings going full 9/11 in another timeline she said something along the lines of "You are unworthy of the land and my underlings are willing to die to damage you" in a mad voice. Sophia proceeded to criticize Purring for asking why her underlings went 9/11 by saying "You can't respect their choices? Of course you can't because you are unworthy" and similar things for the rest of the session.
Aphrodite is like the queen slut of sluts. The underlings she sends to your land won't attack directly and will instead MOBILIZE her consorts to attack her by seducing them. The consorts that haven't been seduced are generally quest NPCs but will show their distaste over the village's violence. In one timeline they went to Purring's dream moon and basically made the battlefield a whole heck more dangerous with consorts attacking Purring along with carapacians. When asked about why she is turning all the NPCs against her she'll merely scoff and say "They're only realizing you are unworthy".
Yaldabaoth is arrogant and will often say he is the real king of the land. His underlings aren't that special but he sends serpents with Doom-charged venom that will kill. In one timeline Purring got so sick of the venom that she grabbed one of the snakes, took out it's soul, turned it bronze and finally made it able to cure with a single look. She kept that snake throughout the session and it never failed to heal her.
NOVA
Nova is a Soldier of Spark, an aspect of sudden inspiration, sudden game-changers or sudden enlightenment that lasts for only half a second. This however means that he has to be quick on his feet and not hesitate to take advantages otherwise his ARC will go down a lot. So essentially don't hesitate and enjoy the Spark.
[Sudden Death] A one hit kill ability that allows the caster to kill any Underling with one hit but they can one hit them too. This technically isn't a one hit but a massive damage boost to both parties involved that it might as well should be.
[Flash Step] This allows the caster to move at 1% speed of light for half a second so essentially long enough to go 150000 meters with a single step. Costs quite a bit of pluck.
[Sudden Advantage] This gives the caster the luck of a Light player for half a second and when combined with [Flash Step] is able to attack 100000 times with lots of critical hits. Can be very pluck-costly.
[Sudden Pluck] This gives the caster enough pluck to for example cast any ability from Space(They can't but Space is very pluck-costly.) for half a second.
[Sudden Hope] A psybuff that lasts for half a second but stays with them for the rest of the battle.
[Sudden Knowledge] Gives the caster for half a second vision of all possible combat moves and their merits.
Here are the denizens.
Velox is an unpredictable denizen. The underlings she sends are often unique and each one is a challenge on it's own but for some reason she doesn't send as many. If you show one hint of hesitation then she will proceed to make fun of you because apparently that means you are an "undecisive mess" that is unworthy of the land.
Bariq is a very loyal denizen, to the previous land owner that died. He will take every opportunity to remind you that you aren't them and that you can never be them. The consorts of the land often reminisce about the previous land owner and I don't think the denizen persuaded them. You'll need to understand that he can't trust you because the person that he put his every spark of trust in, died before you can not want to kill them.
Zhayan is an impatient denizen. They are constantly putting you on terraforming quests and if you don't focus entirely on the quests and complete them immediately, he'll immediately start sending bigger underlings because apparently he "doesn't like your perfectionist attitude" because it's bad for the land. He cannot wait for anyone and is one of the few denizens to go out to the land to destroy stuff directly.
DUCK
As a Beast of Hope, he will have to go into what many call the Beast's major downside "The Primal Instinct". Essentially destroying Duck's hesitance, his rationality and calmness to be replaced with being unhesitating, instinctuality and a primal rage. They go fully into their aspect and in Duck's case it is Hope, he will go completely into denial as Hope is denial.
Hope is the concept of rejection or denial as it conceptually denies things and is physically interpreted as pushing things away so the Strife of Hope boils down to SPITE. It increases in strength in retaliation to the adversity that it meets because then it gets to reject and defy situations. For that reason, many Hope abilities are weird, unintuitive and backward so the aspect is also notorious for having some of the most broken minor abilities while its major abilities have too many activation conditions to be useful. Hope really just wants to spite you.
It’s probably due to Hope interferences: the attraction field that confines dreamselves to their dream kingdoms until they do the Dream Quest [Earn Your Wings] does not work on Hope Players. Duck flew right off his moon before the game even starts. I guess it’s a useful perk.
The aspect symbol that glows on your body (it’s called an [Ideograil] if you care) is also bugged for Hope. It doesn't stay on the skin so for one reason or another, the glowing mark will brand your clothing. The symbol slips over whatever fabric you’re wearing and stays there even after the ability is done.
It's not a problem when the aspect symbol doesn't appear over any clothed body parts. For example the basic "crushing force" ability, [Here Comes The Arm], makes the symbol appear on your palm. No problem here. The ability to scan people’s Pluck Meter [When Your Eyes Shine Just Like Mine] makes it appear on the eyes so no problem there either.
Once you learn [Light Up The Night], you’re gonna want to cast it at the start of every boss battle. It makes Hope’s ideograil appear huge and wide on your back. You’re going to brand ALL of your shirts with the big dopey white wings on the back.
Hope players are going to be clean and pretty while while everybody else is roughed up and dirty. You can blame their whisperings The Strife for that: they make up a really minor rejection effect around them so specks of dust and dirt won’t stick to them. After a big event they’re going to look like perfect little angels while everybody looks shit.
Don’t get into any debate with Hope players. They win the argument, alright? They just win. Let them win, please.
Here are some abilities.
[Eject] is an inventory management ability so what it does is pretty simple. It auto-ejects something from your Sylladex.
This is the most broken low-level ability in the game. Period.
I didn’t understand at first why Duck filled his high-yield Sylladex to max capacity with washing machines in another timeline. I knew that some people weaponize their Sylladex but I never expected that a simple sylladex trick like [Eject] could be so... drastic. Did anybody do play testing for that ability? It didn't occur to anyone that ejecting large items on-demand is ridiculously broken? I don't think Duck ever hit a single Underling, he just threw washing machines everywhere as if it’s like he had a personal railgun for household appliances.
Why would you need any other fighting ability than being able to throw washing machines with a finger snap?
I had another timeline where Duck alchemized titanium dishwashers. I don't think ANY situation ought to call for fifty titanium-reinforced dishwashers, that's too much for my brain. I saw Duck pull some crazy stunt once with [Eject], he ejected his entire sylladex’s worth of knives all at once. Well he used a modified version of [Eject], a custom ability that he called Gate of Something but you get the idea.
[There Are No Heroes Left in Man] is a buff that is also a taunt. That’s right, it’s a taunt that you fire at your own team mates. It imbues them with the Strife of Hope and makes them want to prove you wrong. That’s just... backward and weird.
[Light Up The Night] gives an all-around stat bonus that is inversely proportional to how much you feel hopeful. The bigger you are in a "OH FUCK" situation, the stronger it will boost stats in retaliation so when things are calm, it barely does anything since you aren’t contradicting any situation. Duck needs a trigger finger on that ability: as soon as something big and horrible happen, he can get off a [Light Up The Night] with maxed out efficiency. It's pretty much a signal flare.
[The Will Of One] gives a moral boost inversely proportional to low moral so Hope Players always want to wait until the last second to cast it. During our big battle with the Black King, Duck is probably going to sit on it forever and only fire it off right before everyone dieslike the hesitant shit he is, meaning that your moral levels will jump up and down like crazy.
[Here Comes The Arm] causes the caster's arm to be super-strong because denying something by crushing it makes so much sense.
[When Your Eyes Shine Just Like Mine] lets the caster see boss, player or special monster pluck meters because they can't deny you the privilege of seeing how much power you have, you'll just deny them back or something.
[Dreams Don’t Die] is such a powerful rejection-based defensive ability that it even blocks friendly abilities from helping the target, that’s some pretty intense denial effect. Keep that in mind Duck before your own denial manages to hurt you it also keeps you from getting wet at all when walking in the rain so useful for certain Lands.
[Hope Rides Alone] is a passive ability that basically negates the Audience Effect from the roleplay system so it makes Hope Players count as if they aren’t alone even when they are stranded. They have "Hope" with them, [Hope Rides Alone] is both a blessing and a curse. It gives an increased range for both positive and negative roleplay effects and it also means that Hope Players are much, much better at soloing the game since they don't need to actively seek an Unbreakable Union to obtain greater roleplaying advantages.
[Either Way It's All Gonna Burn] isn't broken but requires the ability [Cut Me Down or Let Me Run] first. The first ability lets you store all the negativity and damage that you receive while the second one lets you reject all of it and return the favor in your next action. So yeah. Basically, you want to cast [Cut Me Down Or Let Me Run] first and and then you HOPE TO BE BEATEN UP in order to power up [Either Way It's All Gonna Burn]. It packs one hell of a punch when you do it right.
Also, because of a weird bug, [Either Way It's All Gonna Burn] always auto-cast when the Hope Player dies. That rejects… a whole lot of hurt. When Hope Players go down, they often leave a crater behind.
[Sepulchritude] is supposed to be cast but it rejects being used. It has a billion activation conditions and it's impossible to meet them, ever. You might as well forget about it, it’s never gonna fire off.
Here are the denizens.
Pandora is too curious for her own good. The underlings she sends are often researchers instead of fighters but will defend the areas that you need to go to because "you would ruin the science at work here". These scientists underlings will report back to her and she will often berate you because "don't you hope that science makes everything better?" like a five year old.
Abraxas is like /fringe/ and /x/ had a baby. This guy basically does rituals all the time and they either have a chance of Angel corruption or Horrorterror corruption. His underlings have wands and staffs, did I also mention they dress up in really fucking stupid robes. Apparently the color of the robes indicate strength but Duck in another timeline had no time to check because he was using [Eject] to throw washing machines and dish washers.
Eris is basically the edgiest person and might even be edgier than Tim. She bitterly talks to you and says that you are "worthy" but she doesn't want to give up hurting the land. She sends psionic attacks onto random villages instead of underlings to cause chaos and strife. She constantly talks about how this land isn't worth being the owner of and how she is only having fun fucking it up.
ROCK
Rock is a King of Rage which involves commanding with Rage or "yelling". Rage is a misunderstood aspect like many other aspects, Rage's given name is sinuously related to its true nature. It doesn't help that Rage players strife in a manner that is intimidating. It makes people assume that Rage is a form of power over anger, this isn't wrong but it isn't the right definition either.
All players can randomly create items with elemental properties during their alchemy session so items alchemized with the aspect of Rage can have a devious influence on you. They basically make you want to use them more than normal so if it's a notebook it makes you want to write everything in it, if it's an instrument it makes you feel like playing music all the time and if it's a weapon you get the idea. Rage players like to be sneaky and give you Rage-loaded items on purpose.
Rage is the aspect of authority, control and influence so it boils down to changing [moods] to make things behave like you want. Conceptually, making someone angry is like making that person run blindly in a single direction of your choosing; that's how control works and that's what Rage means. The King of Rage dictates a direction to people then people just fall into places.
It's not exactly mind control and more like a form of power over events. Rage players can say "This should happen now," and then make it become true. The aspect of Rage will buff every form of action toward the direction that Rage ordered to happen. God Tier Rage players are often described as gods of wine and ceremonies; it's like they have a magic calendar and they write in it whatever is currently supposed to happen.
Rage has no problem with being focused into a specific target, even inanimate objects to make it comply to an order. Rage players can order a puzzle-locked door to open itself or force a thrown weapon to stop right in front of them and fall on the ground. Hell, Rage players are well known for going through more computers than anybody else simply because when they glare at their computer, it actually explodes.
Rage is the aspect of authority which means Rage players have to channel the concept of authority. They have to say stuff and really, really mean it and that involves a lot of yelling. At least it takes some yelling to recognize the feeling of how to tap correctly into the aspect so good Rage players can fuck with reality with just a whisper but you have to get there first.
If you try to block a Rage player on your chat client, they can speak to you anyway. If your chat client is offline and a Rage player wants to speak to you, your program will turn itself on to allow the conversation. When Rage wants something they get what they want. They're also pretty good at reproducing the bug that makes computers explode from afar, who knew that the internet was such a good Rage conductor?
Here are some abilities.
[Chorale For War] makes combat abilities more focused and powerful. Essentially causing them and the players around to go into what I call warrior mode with improved reaction time, faster reflexes and increased strength/speed depending on the weapon.
[Blackest Heart] makes enemies back away in fear and possibly other players.
[Waves of Wrath] turns a target into a game abstraction for a short period of time and that game abstraction has a single specific order to follow. In the case of stuff that is already a game abstraction, it overrides whatever it's currently programmed to do and gives it another duty. In either way it creates a new line of code that is violet, which means it has maxed-out priority so in the field of gamecode hacking, that line is called [purple prose].
Rage's ability to mess with code lines is similar to what Heart does although it works from a different angle. Heart is much better at reprogramming and inducing permanent changes. What Rage does is make things forget their current identity so I guess it's some sort of parallel and it's freaky how quickly you forget who you are when people are yelling at you.
There are some game abstractions that explodes when Rage gives them orders (especially crystalanths). You can do this with pretty much any item, it just takes some practice to get it right. Whenever you add a line of purple prose to an object which already had one, the game deletes the last purple line so if you overwrite too many of them at the same time, they start buffering before the game can delete them. The object will not know which line of purple prose to execute first and it'll take the easy way out by just shaking and exploding.
This is surprisingly efficient as a lot of Rage players exploit this for combat purposes. Plus it clears all the crap that is clustering your sylladex by just picking a junk item, imbue a lot of Rage into it and throw that into a monster's face. Problem solved.
[mIrAcLeS] is an alternate vision mode that lets Rage players see all kind of colorful auras around people. It's the ability to see "moods" or in other words, what people "feels like doing". When Rage players do shenanigans they swirl a finger and the palette of rainbow color that pores from everybody in the room will quickly change to a single unified color and that's what Rage is all about.
[Dark Carnival] is a mass-debuff berserk trigger that influences all targets in the area to feel helpless and let themselves get slaughtered. It's very weird, I know there are all kind of debuffs in this game that weaken enemies or even freezes them in time but who cares it still feels like a fair fight. When [Dark Carnival] makes enemies cry on the floor begging you to "get it over with", it does not feel right.
is a direct order to make stuff kill itself and when underlings beg you to kill them instead of them killing themselves, it feels really fucking wrong.
(I can't write the ability's name for some reason.)
Ares is a warmonger. If he is in your land he will encourage consorts to fight each other in a war of epic proportions. If you buy something from one consort village a hundred will consider you an enemy and if you hurt one consort of a village you hurt a hundred allies of that village. He doesn't send imps but the consorts will often attack you instead and essentially make you a part of the war.
Juno will essentially call every decision you make immoral and unfitting of an owner of the land. Did you alchemize ice-cream? You are encouraging people to be unhealthy! Did you sneeze? You are showing that you are weak and that you might die! She takes everything out of context and make you look bad.
Artist of Time, of course. Stories are important to you because stories are like time because they show a number of ordered events. Time also involves time-travel which is often necessary in sessions due to people fucking up shit. Because you rolled Time chances are you're the kind of person who dislikes being held accountable or you have no willpower to do anything anymore.
In either case, Sburb's a dick because Time is the aspect of responsibility because the success of an entire session and the lives of everyone in it, a thousand time over, depend on you. You cannot afford to be irresponsible or lay down and await death. It'll teach you to accept your burden of responsibility and move forward but don't be mistaken, if Sburb is trying to teach you maturity giving someone Time duties is one hell of a traumatizing way to do that. No one ever said the game was a good psychologist.
Time is one of the two cardinal aspects, together with Space so that means, most sessions have a Time player. Why? Because Sburb runs on an idiotic model of time that was probably written by the world's most intelligent equipe of typewriter monkeys on drugs.
In normal metaphysics that don't involve Sburb, you'd generally find two main models of time:
1) The Predestined One: where every event has already been written by God (or into causality, either works) and time-travel cannot change the past. If you go back in time, you'll end up doing what was planned anyway. Freedom of will is an illusion.
2) The Branched One: timelines exist and trying to time-travel will make a new branch on the tree of timelines or maybe all the timelines exist and every possibility is true in a parallel universe.
Either model generally tries to avoid paradoxes and they're both fine when taken by themselves. The problem is Sburb's time model is neither of those but a mishmash of the two that makes no sense and gives me an extra reason to want to throw whoever decided to code this thing out of an airlock.
3) The Sburban Mess: Sburb has a List of Things That Need To Happen. Let's call it the Skaian Agenda, for brevity so as long as those things happen all is well and anything that doesn't contradict any point in the Skaian Agenda is allowed to happen.
If any of those points is contradicted, the timeline and the players within it are flagged as doomed which means it's up to the Time player to go back in time and fix it. Then they will die as well as everyone in/from the offshoot timeline but all is well because the alpha timeline is saved and the corpse pile keeps getting bigger.
Additionally this time model instead of avoiding paradoxes includes them as a regular part of your everyday Time duties. It's not called Paradox Space for nothing but in any case time paradoxes come in two kinds:
1) Bootstrap paradoxes: Also called time loops, one example is ectobiology: You're sent to Earth via meteor, you grow up, you play Sburb, you perform ectobiology and you send yourself to Earth via meteor. It's a closed loop with no beginning or cause, it just is and the worst thing is Sburb actively embraces these. You'll find them everywhere so self-fulfilling prophecies are another example. Not to mention the messes that can happen with timetravelling chat programs but in any case, do not break these loops for instance, do not prevent ectobiology from being carried out because that will doom the timeline.
2) Grandfather paradoxes: Here come the dead 'pops. These are named after the famous paradox where you go back into the past and kill your own grandpa which would cause you to not be born in the first place. If you ever make one of these, congratulations you've just doomed the timeline and note not fulfilling what a prophecy said would happen is paradoxical too because a prophecy is basically time-traveling information from the future. Either that, or a peek directly into the Sburban Agenda.
To wrap it up in order not to doom the timelines you should:
- Never break a stable time loop.
- Never cause a grandfather paradox.
- Never contradict the Skaian Agenda.
Some time loops are easy to spot and it's pretty easy to go with the flow. You see yourself popping out of thin air and aiding you in battle? That's you from the future, after a while timetravel back into the past and do as you saw. Bam, loop completed. Just don't contradict it.
Others like the thousands upon thousands of prophecies stored in the Royal Libraries on Prospit and Derse are like invisible tripwires. Unless you spend time reading up (which I suggest you do), you will never know if you will doom the timeline by picking orange juice instead of apple juice as prophetized and that's one more bad experience for one of your selves. One more corpse in the pile but luckily some abilities and some other aspects can help you.
Grandfather paradoxes are another issue: doomed timelines aside, you can't change the past if you didn't see yourself appear from the future to save the situation the first time around. If you see a session-mate die then go back in time and prevent that from happening in front of the eyes of past-you who should then be the you that eventually timetravels back, you've created a grandfather paradox and doomed yourself, the timeline and everyone in it. So now your friend's dead. Move on, Time can't fix what has happened unless it happens to go against the Skaian Agenda; in that case it is exactly your job to fix the past.
The Skaian Agenda itself is a minor worry if there are no timetravel shenanigans involved. It'll just happen that every once in a while you will derail too much from the plan and a corpse or two will join the party.
Obviously you'll want to minimize the number of corpses invited to the party. There's a few things you can do if that is what you want:
1) Read up on prophecies on Prospit and Derse. It's kind of creepy how many freaking details are written in those but it's not like you won't either follow them (with awareness or not) or doom the timeline so it's better to have foreknowledge.
2) If you have a sessionmate who is Fate, Mind, Light, Law, Stars or to a lesser degree Life or Doom they can help.
- Fate can use [Rediscover Fusion] to tell you what to do to reach an outcome like "not dooming the timeline" or something.
- Mind can help you sort through scenarios with scrying abilities like [Neural Climb]. They also have the raw brainitude to tell you how to untangle very complex temporal messes.
- Law can use [Negative Aperture] to warn you in advance of things you should really not do like stumbling upon the invisible tripwires of prophecies.
- Light is similar to Law but arguably less useful. It can guide you towards optimal use of your powers to try to make sure things go well but they don't have as much knowledge of the metaphorical tripwires.
- Stars can tell you what outcomes and actions are attracted to a given anchor point so it's kind of a roundabout way of doing Fate's job.
- Life and Doom can craft prophecies.
One item that is pretty much a must for any Time player worth their salt is the uncreatively named Time Machine. It's basically a miniature version of your Scratch Construct that is imbued with [Stitch In Time]. Having one of those handy makes it a lot easier to manage your loops because it makes short-range time-travel a lot less pluck-draining. To obtain one, you can mess around with alchemizing stuff related to what your construct is or you could also occasionally find one in a dungeon on your land but this is in the middle-late game so I recommend the alchemy route but if you want a surefire, pretty easy way to make one all you have to do is get the captcha code of your Scratch Construct itself which is easily feasible with a captcha-camera or the right sylladex modus.
However, one IMPORTANT note: these items allow ANYONE not only Time players to time-travel. This can be a very, VERY serious issue as if it lands in the hands of someone who doesn't know the ins and outs of the delicate art of temporal manipulation and will proceed to repeatedly doom the timeline or even worse someone with bad intentions. I shiver at the thought of a PK that secretly owns one of those.
These dangerous items should under the right circumstances fall in the hands of a non-Time player as long as they're sane, careful, well-intentioned and know what they're doing.
- If you, Hygenist are dying/dead, handing down your Time Machine to the sanest, smartest person you know is a good idea.
Some final notes:
- Some titles are better than others as surrogate Time players. Mind players are especially awesome due to their very good understanding of "this could have happened if we made that choice" stuff and high brainitude but really all the aspects I mentioned are at least decent. Being a Seer or Sage is also a nice plus.
You might notice while exploring your land that you have some huge structure that resembles a music-related item floating above the ground a couple dozen meters. It is your Scratch Construct and it replaces the Earthsea Borealis while giving your land the function of an extreme emergency panic button.
The construct which can be anything from a turntable to a compact disc to a music box or an audio-cassette is meant to be scratched with a seriously, seriously hard object. You'll want something made of a material like corundum, diamond, titanium or just bullshit hard stuff like the enamel that covers the Quills of Echidna that stuff is basically indestructible. After you've dealt sufficient scratch damage to your Scratch Construct it will ascend towards Skaia and then, upon contact hard-reset your session. It'll get new players and you'll avoid dying and becoming a soul that wanders among the void inhabited by the Others. Sure you'll stop existing (not actually sure) but that can't be so bad right?
Like any other player you have a toolbox of abilities you can use in your burdening quest to ensure the session doesn't get screwed over while beating enemies to death with your specibus of choice. I'll give you a run-over of your main assets and it'll be a VERY boring and rather obvious list at least at first. You've been warned.
[Humphrey's Lullaby] Slows time in the area around you
[Moment of Pause] Freezes time in a radius but pluck-costly.
[Clockstopper] Like [Moment of Pause] except for one enemy only. More pluck-efficient and precise and t also has this cool red clock animation with roman numbers.
[Thank You For Your Valuable Time] Slows an enemy down and makes you faster.
[Time Out] Suspends you into a zone outside the rules of time to take a breather. When you're done just use [Time In].
[Sweet 16's Turned 31] Pretty pluck-expensive it supposedly speeds up time a bunch and makes enemies age into frailty which doesn't make sense because I don't think underlings actually age under normal circumstances? It's a temporary effect by the way.
[Stitch In Time] Time-travel into the past, short range (up to 1-2 days) and has a medium pluck cost.
[Chartreuse Rewind] Time-travel into the past, medium range (up to few weeks/one month) but has a pretty freaking high pluck cost.
[Years In The Past] Time-travel into the past, long range (I'm not even sure it has any hard cap) but it has a very, VERY high pluck cost.
[Back To The Future] Brings you right back to where/when you were before using any of the above abilities using fast forward and teleportation.
[Skip To The End] Zoom forward in time by accelerating it but short range (up to 1-2 days).
[Time On My Side]: A time-travel ability made for combat. Very short range (10 minutes) but very pluck cheap.
[Time Attack] Create and shoot red gears of any size you want. You can make a bunch of tiny ones and shoot them like bullets at high speed or two big ones to try and grind some bones.
[Split Second] Make two parts of an enemy move in time at different speeds and the result is that the enemy gets cut in twain if they move however it is very pluck-costly.
[Tomorrow's Greatest Hits] Charge your weapon with this ability and the next hit you deliver will make the enemy time-travel forward or backwards in time. You can basically punch an enemy into next week. The more the hit would have knocked them back, the more they time-travel so you'll want a bludgeoning weapon for this. BE CAREFUL with this it can cause terrible messes if used thoughtlessly.
[Chronoautopsy] Gives you the memories of a doomed time-clone by touching their corpse. You've basically always had this one but most people find out the traumatic way.
[Time Heals All Wounds] Makes the memories inherited from doomed time-clones feel distant, emotionally muffled and not yours. Basically it's there to save your psyche or else you'd be so fucked. This is transferable but you really want to generally keep it on yourself at all times.
[Time Trial] Share knowledge from ONE doomed time-clone with a friend. Unless you give them your [Time Heals All Wounds] they'll be susceptible to the psychological effects though luckily the effect fades in a day or two. It works surprising wonders for stopping PKs by sharing horrible memories though.
[Overbook] Get rid of any debuff by procrastinating and giving it to future-you. It might pop up right back in a bad moment though so be careful. It can be fatal if overused.
[Candles and Clockwork] Lets you get a look at the structure of spacetime. You'll be able to see the branched timeline structure and if you aim this at the Furthest Ring you'll notice that time there is majorly nonlinear AKA a nightmare nutjob.
[Look Into The Future] First think of a topic you want a vision of then activate this ability and expend X pluck. If available, Sburb will give you a 1 minute vision of the future related to the topic you were thinking about and the vision will be further into the future the more pluck you expended. It has a lower limit of few days and if it can't find anything relevant to that topic it'll either show you random bullshit or drain your pluck in vain. Try to use it wisely because the moment you've had a vision, that becomes inevitable. This is basically giving up your free will in exchange for foreknowledge.
[Eternity Served Cold] If you see Hygenist's eyes flashing rainbow colors and the Time ideograil rotate behind their head like a halo it's time to RUN LIKE HELL. The next living being they touch will spend a VERY long time isolated in an empty pocket dimension so it'll be one hour outside but tens of years inside. If they're not god tier they'll probably be corpses by the time they're back due to either starvation or old age. If they're god tier they will come back completely out of their mind in a way or the other. It's not a nice fate at all.
TAILS
Tails is known to be ignorant, it's the sort of person he is and that's how he rolls. He as a Ace of Void, is rather good at hiding, being ignorant and generally being better when not seen. As an Ace he is very good at Void which is about hiding, ignoring and not being seen. I would also have to say from what I've seen he is very much a social chameleon and that he is also very adaptable. Void players can also tend to think of everything as sarcastic, insulting or lies.
The reason he can DM so wonderfully is because he can think on his feet and can adapt to the many situations players cause. Tails also has The Null as his whisperings, they are silent but communicate through from what I've heard from Tails in another timeline by some emptiness, he didn't really explain it properly. Here are some of the abilities
[Null Set] This ability is an instant kill because it literally removes it from existence. However it has two main problems, it has an extremely long cooldown (A week's worth.) and you have to be right in the monster's face to use it. This carries the principle that the larger or more powerful the enemy, the more difficult it is to cast.(Voiding an underling would be easy but a Black King prototyped twelve times would likely kill you or send you to the void.)
[Midnight Shadow] Standard invisibility power that usually lasts from a few minutes to an hour, depends on how much pluck you are willing to spend. Rarely, Void Players will have a glitched pluck stat, meaning that this ability can be cast pretty much indefinitely.
[Sound of Silence] Gives the user stat bonuses as it you used a fraymotif, however there is no beat. Lasts for a random amount of time, usually in the range of three or so minutes. Will, on occasion, provide no stat bonuses, but will rather actually provide the user with a fraymotif, courtesy of the Null. You're welcome.
[Twisted Reality] Standard void attack. Basically it gives you a ball of the Null to throw around. On contact it can either explode, cut right through the target, latch on to the target, or do nothing. This scales pretty well but does pretty weak damage to anything larger in size than a basilisk, unless you are willing to expend extra pluck. This does not apply if you have glitched Mangrit stats for some reason.
[Dark Black] Provides you with a shadowy cloak, not much else. If your flummoxite stat is glitched, this will not provide you with shadow. Instead, you will receive a pretty rainbow cloud of sparkles around you. Yes, this will still work with [Running in Shadow].
[Running in Shadow] Works with [Dark Black]. This allows you to teleport much like a space player(If you steal my job as Mage of Space I will murder you Tails.), but effectively becoming a shadow, then using shadows to teleport around. This can be pretty exhausting and for some reason it is reliant on your sleep coefficient. Be warned, the more you use this ability, the lower your sleep coefficient will become, thus preventing you from casting the ability later. If you are very unlucky, this ability will not work roughly half the time. Yes, this means you will run into a wall every other time or so that you try to use it. I'm sorry(Not sorry.).
[Cloud of Unknowing] A weird ability that can prevent people from scrying. I'm not sure why you would ever want to use this. If your Seer is a Seer of Light or Coins, this ability will not work on them.
Warning: Do not use on our session's seer, unless you want to get very dead very quickly.
[Empty Head] This ability suppresses (Correction: Temporarily erases) emotions. Image [Ice Cream in the Veins] but taken to a whole new extreme. This ability could theoretically be used to cool down a berserk trigger if the circumstances are right. though I'm not sure why you would want to as this not only removes bad emotions, it removes good ones too. This ability very very rarely will stick on the target indefinitely, there is no cure for this as far as I know which means they will be stuck with an emotionless zombie for the rest of our session.
[My Hero, Zero] This ability is a simple defensive ability that will negate all damage done from a single attack. This is INSANELY BROKEN. This ability is scripted to modify damage stats, and if you use it in a certain way, there is no damage stat to modify which is bad. Casting this ability on itself or another instance of itself will result in the programming wigging out and as a result your pluck will become infinite and your cooldown times will reduce to zero. (Except for [Null Set] for some odd reason.) If Tails begins to grind through Atomyk Ebonpyres with ease, this is why.
[!@#$%^&*()] Not sure what this ability does only that when cast, this ability will summon a pumpkin into your game. A pumpkin. Nothing else will happen as far as I know, but we all know how many pumpkin related glitches there are. This ability has an insane Pluck cost, however, so it is very likely that this ability won't ever be cast in most sessions.
[Home Alone] This ability will create a very large explosion. I don't get it either. When the dust settles, nothing will be left around the area of effect but a lot of tiny houses where your enemies stood. I recommend burning these if you want some free grist. Sometimes, this will actually create a legitimate explosion, get out as fast as possible.
[Nothing Left] A very very very very dangerous berserk trigger. This will cause the Null to emanate from the caster in waves and everything around them will slowly begin to fade out of existence. I recommend a drop kick to the head immediately, or if this ability has progressed to far, abscond. This carries potential for a total session wipe, so Tails make sure that you are on good terms with your local neighborhood Other so you can make a quick escape if you need to.
TIM
Tim is known for being logical and a bit cold at least from my perspective, but he converts with Mind the opposing aspect Heart into something hideously like Mind. He is a Conqueror of Mind which means he converts the shards of his soul into one terrible collective Mind. Tim uses Mind to create his various RP characters' personas by turnings individual soul shards into one, this allows him to become one and strong enough to fuel a temporary change in his soul. Tim's soul turns into that characters soul but souls aren't supposed to be whole, they're supposed to be centillions of fragmented shards that are spread around infinitely and always connected even if they aren't in the same universe. By being infinite this allows every single hope, thought, word or memory possible be real, every moment the shards will shatter millions into millions of constantly growing new shards, the shards spread on infinitely throughout the omniverse shattering themselves into every atom.
Tim can turn his entire soul into a different soul temporarily and his soul can be incredibly strong but it doesn't develop an infinite individuality that will never die and will die. Tim's soul is like a star as the bigger, brighter and hotter it is, the life it has is short. A proper soul spreads infinitely and becomes an infinite amount of connected stars, allowing it to live forever. Tim wants to leave a mark on the world when in reality he just needs to fragment.
LEGO
Lego, a Prince of Law known to be angry and has an incredible boner for justice. Lego cares deeply but he has a code that people must follow with the essentials being, don't lie to me and don't act like you're above the law. The Prince class are known for destroying their aspect or/and destroying things with their aspect. Lego can pretty much discard the rules or destroy anything that stands in his way with them, chaining people down with restrictions and using the aspect that literally means "stop doing that" to destroy.
Law is associated with a distinct visual effect that looks like some kind of chain. Many Law abilities causes this effect to appear on the target so you can think of it as a game indicator that represents a strong concentration of Law.
A lot of time, you will see these chains when a Law Player like Lego is involved with a [promise]. The promises of Law Players are magical and binding for example a Sylph of Law could swear vengeance upon a PK upon which the chain will appear like a bracelet around their wrist, a Guard of Law could swear to protect someone upon which the chain would appear like a ring around his finger and a Muse of Law could influence a person to make a promise to himself, in which case it is that person that is marked with the chain through the powers of the Law Player. However with a Prince of Law could swear to destroy the Black King and a chain-crown would appear upon their head.
The chains bound to a promise are more than than just a reminder as the aspect of Law is empowering those that bear the mark. It gives them the strength and mental fortitude to accomplish what they decided to do and Law is all about binding people to their words and rewarding them when they walk in that direction.
The chains are typically associated with promises, many Law abilities will temporarily summon them as a visual effect. When you imbue the Law into something to make an object heavier (in fact it anchors the object in space), they appears all over the target. The chains also appear when you use the Law to lock a door, a chest or a computer in which case it feels like yellow police tape. The chains also appear when you create a rule to block outcomes with negative consequences or bad luck. They are also involved when you inflict a sentence, in which case they are like an explosive collar with an activation trigger. Either way, it's always the same chains, as the justice of the Law is uniform and applies to every individual.
Here are some abilities.
[Negative Aperture] Provides knowledge of dark spots that bring a negative karmic charge with them otherwise known as [geis]
The powerful dark spots that you need to avoid are like magical taboos so if you avoid them, you are certain to be blessed. If you make other people walk into them, you bring forth their downfall. It's like when you do something that leaves you with a bad feeling and then you suffer a string of bad luck and you're convinced it's all related. From the point of view of the Law, the magical taboo that you had to avoid is something called a [geis].
The most important warning that comes with Law divination is that it looks fucking silly to on-lookers. It all make sense from the point of view of the Law Players because they can see dark luck, you don't. From your point of view, you are hearing a garbled mess of superstition and doomsaying spouted by a tribal witch doctor but the Law is serious business as long as you respect the Word of the Law, good things are going your way.
[Unsheath'd] Law's strength on the battlefield mostly comes from something called [vows], [Unsheath'd] will teach Law Players the branch of Law manipulation that is related to vow-crafting. It's a Law power with a simple premise: you exchange a restriction in exchange for a strength, vows sharpen potential like a blade in exchange of specialization.
In return, this means that Law warriors are binary, they are a wraith of justice to a particular kind of foe and powerless to those who aren't on their agenda. They are nearly immune to one attack and weak to another. as the strength of the Law comes from forging rules that favors them but these rules need to be precise in order to be strong. Basically they say things like "My duty is X but not Y". The harder the decision, the better it is.
Whenever Law warriors are contrived to an unexpected situation, they need some time to switch their specializations. That's their weakness. They are akin to a wrecking ball. They punch through walls, but they need to stop slowly to change direction.
[Busting Makes Me Feel Good] I think this is the best counter-ability in the game, Lego just needs to land the activation conditions right. He has to predict exactly what an opponent is about to do and make it illegal so when their opponent steps on their grill, the Law Players smirk and make them eat [Busting Makes Me Feel Good] to the face. It's a typical set-up to karmic retribution so Law loves that crap and the more precise the rule, the more it hits like a truck.
It also means that unpredictable enemies foil their plans. I heard of a time that a Knight of Law attacked a Bard of Rain so the Knight created the vow "I fricking hate your blonde hair". Yes, that is a valid vow but the Rain Player's hair then changed color(They do that sometimes, don't ask.), and the Law didn't apply to him anymore.
[Ruling the World] Law Players that dips in heavy magical territory will have a field day with cursing as a curse is like the opposite of a blessing provided by Myth. The mechanic of a curse is to use luck manipulation to make something less likely to happen.
Technically, curses are something called [rules]. That's because they are not innately negative. They are just outcomes that are not allowed. For example he could destroy the chances of a person dying by making a rule like [you're not allowed to die]. [Ruling the World] will teach Law Players everything there is to know about manipulating luck toward opposing particular outcomes.
[Judge, Gavel and Executioner] A Law Player can also craft something that is serious business: a [sentence]. It's like when Myth Players free people of their burden to such an extend that they heal them. Law Players can create such a restriction that it kills.
A sentence is not a conventional attack as it doesn't hurt enemies but rather it is a condition that causes enemies to inflict an attack on themselves. It comes with a trigger like [you are not allowed to attack me] or [you are not allowed to run away] and it inscribes the target with the chain effect around a body part, like the neck or something. If the target decides to go against the Law, the chain goes BOOM and the enemy's head goes WOOSH in the air.
Here are some denizens.
Anubis loves to talk about things that you hate. He sends imps that have faces of people you love to your land and they often imitate them with creepy accuracy, making it slightly difficult to kill them due to what I suspect to be a moral buff on Lego. Anubis will proceed to take the form of people you love and make them insult you because from what Lego in another timeline gleaned, he found it funny.
Eunomia is what we call a tight ass. She constantly tells you that you are unworthy and references something you thought in your mind 8 years ago, mention something you did on a birthday and constantly berates you on the things you say. She has a slight angelic corruption so make sure not to touch her otherwise have fun in the Choir(The fire will take everything you have. The light will burn away everything you are.).
Themis is like a Jehovah Witness combined with the idiocy of a fundamental Christian and adds terrorism to the mix. The underlings she sends don't explode but they definitely terrorize the consort villages and in one timeline they had burnt down an important quest village. Themis constantly tells you that you're going to hell because you do not believe in [insert god here], she changes religions every couple of weeks to spite you and I heard in one timeline, she told Lego to believe in Cthulhu.
PAWZ
He is definitely a Knight of Coins, a very enjoyable aspect with a not so enjoyable class. Pawz is likely to break down in what I call "knight's syndrome" in which they just stop fighting and are in a very depressed state of mind but Coins is likely to soften the blow. The literal interpretation of Coins is in fact riches(Items that are imbued with Coins have a glittery or solid gold look.) and his whisperings the Fair attempt to give that fact to him but a more metaphorical meaning is also what Coins is known for:Self-worth(The aspect wants to lift up your self-esteem, recognize your talents and abilities and your worth as a person.).
The less important interpretations are abundance and generosity(The Fair tends to make Coins players very well endowed in terms of richness. Pawz will likely have a ton of grist, a ton of boondollars and huge pluck reserves from [Golden Ratio] so he likely has enough to share and the aspect definitely teaches you to be generous.), alchemy(I'm talking about the Genesis Game kind. Since this aspects deals with material wealth, it's no surprise that alchemization and grist fall under its jurisdiction after all grist is something you pay with to gain something of value.) and the other alchemy(I'm talking about the old-timey kind, you know those medieval guys that tried to make the philosophers stone and turn lead into gold? The ones that were basically chemists before chemistry was really a thing? Well it turns out Pawz owes them because Coins has an array of abilities that lets him create a bunch of cool chemical stuff.).
Pawz has a few notable abilities from coins.
[Midas Touch]:An early-game pluck-intensive ability that is going to be Pawz's friend. He can cast it on his hands and the next thing he touches turns into a 24 carat statue. If it can't turn them completely due to insufficient flummoxie/pluck/contact time then it'll at least disable part of their bodies. Issue is underlings are still considered alive just like how Rhyme's frozen enemies mess with the spawn-timer. They don't give any experience nor grist until properly offed so either break the statue, convert it to golden grist with [Glean] or melt the gold using [Aqua Regia].
[Pactolus]: Just in case you want to revert the transformation into gold that [Midas Touch] causes, this is the ability for you.
WARNING: While [Midas Touch] is learned in the early game, [Pactolus] is Post-Denizen. You've been warned.
[Golden Ratio]: This is why Coins players have a nearly bottomless pit of grist, pluck and boondollars. It costs a good chunk of pluck to activate, but it permanently multiplies Pawz's pluck regeneration factor, grist and boondollars by the golden ratio, which is 1.618, approximately. That alone is a relatively small boost, but you can activate it multiple times, leading to Pawz's pluck regeneration ratio spiraling out into a singularity. The catch is, the price to pay for activation also increases in the same way as the boost with each activation, so Pawz will eventually hit a point where you currently cannot afford the next upgrade.
[Glean]: Recycles an item into its worth in grist without the need of any equipment, at a very low pluck price.
[Ex Novo]: Makes a simple item that costs a small amount of grist appear out of thin air. Technically, every other creation ability Coins gets (IE the chemistry stuff) is a variation of this.
[Amalgam]: Fuses items into cool stuff. Kind of works like alchemy, except you have more control on the result, but can't get stuff that is too far removed from what you started with. For instance, [Amalgam]'s not going to make you a jetpack from Pawz's old school backpack and a rocket figurine, no matter how hard you try.
NOTE: Pawz, if you use it onto living beings, I will personally melt your bones. Trust me, it's horrible.
[Time is Money]: Passively drains your pluck and converts it to boons at a fixed rate. Very much worth its price in the early stages, when a boondollar is still considered a fortune, but eventually becomes worthless. At that point, turn it off.
[Payday]: Passively drains pluck, boosts the grist drops of underlings. Pawz can also decide how much pluck it drains, so it scales well.
[Gil Toss]: Expend X boons, then throw a single golden projectile that deals damage based on X. The more, the better. Doesn't expend any pluck and can get crazy strong if Pawz has a fat wallet to draw from.
[Vitriol]: Dumps a decent amount of undiluted sulfuric acid on an enemy. Simple enough.
[Aqua Regia]: Like [Vitriol], except it is a bigger quantity, can also be sprayed for better multitargeting potential, and notably melts gold and other noble metals, which is something [Vitriol] cannot do. For the chemistry nerds out there, it's a mix of nitric and hydrochloric acid.
[Azoth]: Like [Aqua Regia], except even bigger, pluck-costly and capable of eating right through any material that is not bedrock. I have no idea what it is chemically. I'm not even sure if the Genesis Game didn't just decide to screw science and make an acid with minus infinity pH.
[Therein Lye's The Secret]: This punny-named ability creates caustic lye, aka potassium hydroxide, a strong base capable of causing serious burns.
[Fulminating Gold]: Creates a small quantity of a gold compound also called fulminating gold. Why fulminating? Because it explodes vigorously with a good knock. Works hilarious wonders with [For the Fairest].
[All That Glitters]: Coats something in pretty, sparkly glitter. Imps are attracted to the stuff, for some reason. Dirt cheap to cast. Makes everything awesome, if you ask me.
[For the Fairest]: Makes an item be perceived as extremely precious and desirable, and visually solid gold or diamond-glittering. You can throw it in the middle of a bunch of imps and watch them kill each other for it. Or coat it in [Fulminating Gold] and enjoy the fireworks. You can also cast it on yourself if you want to attract enemies like a magnet - just make sure there are no sessionmates nearby, you don't want to attract the wrong kind of attention. *cough*
[Ever Brimful]: At the price of a hefty chunk of pluck and feeling utterly exhausted once it runs out, this late-game ability will temporarily make your pluck infinite, and your cool-downs nonexistent, for a time that can go from few seconds to a couple minutes, it depends.
HUGE WARNING: Do not *EVER* try to upgrade [Golden Ratio] while using [Ever Brimful]. Due to a minor bug it WILL create an endless loop that spirals out of all controls and ends with a Berserk Trigger and Pawz YOU WILL EXPLODE like something a Rage player crammed too much Purple Prose into.
[We Are Golden]: Gives you a heavy self esteem boost, lasting approximately six hours. Can make you pretty arrogant, but also boosts your ARC temporarily and your power as a result. It has a very long cooldown, though, approximately two weeks. Best saved for emergencies. Also works wonders for some mental disorders.
[Aimless Morning Gold]: Makes a person generous. Useful for solving arguments, from time to time.
WARNING: It should go without saying that using [We Are Golden] or [Aimless Morning Gold] on a Dust player is a CRITICALLY BAD idea. It might even end up causing a Berserk Trigger, a bit like how Rage will NOT tolerate being mellowed down by Rhyme's [Ice Cream in the Veins]. Trust me, I've seen both things firsthand. A Pawz from another timeline learned this at the price of his life. Please don't let it go wasted.
Coins is the aspect of abundance so in addition to having the highest number of abilities in the game (yes, higher than Life!) it also has more Berserk Triggers than average, at 3 while I've never heard of other aspects having more than 1 or 2.
[Riches to Ruins]: The absolutely crazy version of [Gil Toss]. It'll drain everything of worth you have Pawz - boondollars, grist, pluck, sylladex items, health - to fuel an insanely powerful projectile that delivers a hydrogen bomb-like explosion on impact. If you see Pawz starting to shine like they're turning into the Sun, run like hell.
[Gringott's Gold Grave]: This one is probably the least dangerous of the Coins BTs. It just produces a mountain's worth of gold items (generally a mix of weapons of abstrati of the caster, things they have in inventory and more cliché valuables like jewelry). It starts off with small stuff like rings, but it very quickly escalates into submerging everything in the vicinity in gold within few seconds, avalanche style. Either drop kick them to the head at the early stages, or get the hell out of there.
[El Dorado]: This one, on the other hand, is probably the most horrifying. It starts with a huge Coins ideograil symbol covering a very wide area, so that's your cue to get out of there this instant if you don't want to be PERMANENTLY get turned into gold like every single thing in its AOE. Skip the hug, skip the kick, contact with the player will deal the same effect. The most disturbing bit, however, is how Sburb still treats living beings turned into gold as alive.
Coins has some glitches but most are benign. Here are a few notable ones.
One of Coins' fraymotifs is just named "$$$$$$$$$$$" and it just sounds like a text-to-speech program set to Danish trying to pronounce five minutes' worth of "dollardollardollardollardollar". It doesn't give any boosts either. It's just annoying.
Scrying on a Coins player while they are charged with [Midas Touch] counts as contact and WILL turn you into solid gold. If you need to check on your Coins player, it's best to just send a message.
WARNING: This also applies to [El Dorado]. If you somehow know that something BIG is happening around your Coins player, it's worth being cautious and waiting until it's over before scrying.
The denizens of a coins player is varied.
Lakshmi: She's this beautiful four-armed silk-draped incredibly long-haired giantess covered in jewelry and stuff. She's relatively nice as far as Denizens go, I've heard. Still one mean jimmies rustler, though. Coquettish, petty and sharp-tongued, the whole package. She took Pawz in another timeline relatively little time to get to not wanting to kill her, though a lot to recover from the grief because "we were practically bffs okay?", I quote.
Pluto: Male, and much more of a jackass than Lakshmi, from what I've heard. Also gigantic, and sits on a huge throne made of melted valuables and gold-plated consort skulls. As a note, I've been told by Pawz in another timeline that he's a pretty honest dude. His word is his bond and all that stuff. So yeah, he might rustle your jimmies until they turn into plasma, but he won't betray your trust.
Hecate: Female. Kind of humanoid, but has a bunch of arms - like, a hundred of them - and they're all stick thin, spider style. She's also generally clad in a black-and-gold veil that doesn't let her face show. She embodies the more alchemic part of Coins. As a note, Pawz if you ever hear her chanting in some mystic language and summoning long shadow hands, you should stay away from her during those little rites she does. They carry a pretty substantial risk of Others corruption. And she will NOT take it well if interrupted.
Midas: Because of course the dude himself is a Denizen. He's apparently in the same jackass league as Pluto, and yes, he turns whatever he touches into gold, so be careful. If needed Pawz, imbue your clothes with [Pactolus] or something just as a precautionary measure.
LNG
LNG the Lord of Holograms can be a bit overpowered as it allows him to treat any situation like a holodeck. The limiting factor is due to the memory of what I quote from LNG "A computer that isn't a computer" but with the power to stop, run scenarios and make temporary objects it doesn't really matter. On a camping trip he created a simulation of a medieval castle with his and Purring's consorts in an all-out war because LNG's wolf consorts basically killed several of Purring's baby cat consorts. It was weird.
Various Hologram abilities below.
[Computer Stop Simulation] This projects a holodeck around the players and treats the landscape, the underlings and other players as holograms that have stopped. This affects everyone but the caster.
[Computer Run Simulation] A very weird ability that essentially allows the caster to designate a space for a holodeck and run simulations on it. Allowing him to turn even a tent on the outside into a castle on the inside(Quite literally.). This simulation however has safety protocols meaning the constructs cannot harm anyone. The pluck cost is relative to the power of the holodeck meaning a holodeck capable of running the universe will require more than can ever be had pluck but one capable of running medieval planet has a relatively small pluck cost.
[Computer Project Object] An ability that allows the caster to create an object(the more powerful, the more pluck-costly) of their choosing that will fade after a few hits. That means no Excalibur for you. Strangely enough if the object is magical it means the caster has to have a higher Flummoxie stat then it's magic stat.
[Virus] This ability summons a dangerous hologram as an ally but the hologram requires a constant of supply of pluck. The more dangerous the hologram is the more likely you will burn out your pluck reserves.
[Emotion Chip] A [Unite Synchronization](Purring and LNG teamed up) ability that pours all the emotions of the player targeted into a giant holodeck area with safety protocols disengaged. An angry person would create a volatile simulation often involving stars supernovaing, a demon incarnate or a giant dragon(actually happened). A happy person would create a simulation that would heal players and buff them like hell. You get the point.
[Morality Control] A [Unite Synchronization] psybuff ability that involves showing people the damage they are doing by their mentality that they need to realize that what they're doing. From what I've heard it solved Pawz's knight syndrome, so that's something right?
[Skill Download] This ability is more Matrix than Star Trek but it involves temporarily being a master of a certain skill like karate, drawing and more. This also works on other people because Tim apparently requested to be better at making themes which LNG accepted, I don't know if Tim actually got good because the timeline closed off for me.
[Safety Protocols Disengaged] A berserk trigger form of [Computer Run Simulation] that in essence is a growing holodeck with everything sucked into a simulation within it. The simulation is usually benign but occasionally the simulation can be quite dangerous.
Here are the denizens.
Vishnu:A total conspiracy-nut wearing the Federation uniform that will rave on about how the universe is holographic and that everything is fake. The conspiracies were ridiculous enough that it really rustled LNG's jimmies. It took him a long time to not want to kill him.
Morpheus:A winged jackass that infected LNG's simulations with annoying and sometimes dangerous viruses. The guy apparently raved on about how holodecks were a mere reflection of the power of dreams. This guy is also a Dream player denizen but is less annoying, LNG doesn't believe it.
There is apparently one more denizen but any attempts to contact timelines that LNG has the denizen are forced away. Weird.
XENO
As a Priest of Mist, Xeno is effectively every player and every player is Xeno. This causes him to mess with scrying abilities and allows him to shapeshift with [Dord Waltz]. The only thing that can see through the disguise is the denizen although they like to pretend they don't. Here are a few examples of abilities.
[Dord Waltz] The shapeshifting ability everyone knows mist for. The one that allows them to appear like they are gigantic monsters the size of planets, the one that allows them to become the size of atoms because fuck the laws of physics(Sorry, when things break physics it makes me angry).
[Smoke and Mirror] Is also another ability that Mist is famous for. It essentially allows the caster to copy other player's abilities but they have limited slots. There are also several aspects that you shouldn't copy: Void doesn't like existing so don't copy it, time-travel is a confusing mess that only makes sense for Time players so don't copy it, Space is generally okay but there are some abilities deeply connected to the frog breeding process for some reason so don't copy them, Rain is insanity and it's abilities are even more weird so don't copy it and the Hope ability [Dreams Don't Die] can't be deleted but the rest is okay.
[Reverberata] Mist players are made of many things so whenever they suffer an attack they turn into a cloud of these other things to avoid taking damage. This causes people to misread the durability of Mist players because they trade Pluck for defense. When Mist players run out of Pluck and actually start taking damage, that's your cue to grab them and get the fuck out of there because their real defense is all kinds of shitty. The objects that Mist players are made of are based on their personal interests from sweet-tooths turning into lollipops, insect-loving freaks turning into bugs and people that text 24/7 into text messages.
[Variations] Is a Mist berserk trigger that temporarily converts the environment into more [Reverberata] components adding to their cloud form. Soon you won't be looking at a cloud but you'll be looking at a storm. The objects might even form a humanoid frame to wreak havoc like Godzilla. You can't inflict a critical wound on [Reverberata] because to bring it down is to break it all.
BLUNDER
The Architect of Light which is essentially building things with their aspect. The aspect of Light means he can go like "Hmm.. I feel like I'm lucky enough that the building will poof into existence" then the building poofs into existences because crazy luck is a part of Light, though technically it is stronger when it is the separate aspect Fortune/Luck. There is also the knowledge part of Light otherwise known as, "Let's build a building out of knowledge" and suddenly the Shine goes like, "hell yeah" then it creates a weird building that looks like it's solid light. The Shine definitely likes Blunder due to his ability to just stumble onto things or blunder onto them.
Also don't play poker with a Light player. No seriously. What are you expecting? Even if Light Players swear to not use abilities, The Shine is going to passively increase their luck whether they want it or not.
The aspect of Light is very fast in fact, LeBlunder in another timeline told me he never used a teleportation ability because he RAN faster. This allows Light players to pull off all kinds of sick acrobatics that may or may not listen to physics.(I dislike this.)
Light players often get sickening optimism. There's a limit to how often you can hear "Everything's gonna turn out alright" without flipping out and it's really freaky when Players have a darkly mood at the start of a session and they're happy-happy-sunshine-in-your-face by the end of it. It's weird enough that Aspects have some effect on personality but this one takes the cake and then it takes that cake and adds to it another layer of rainbow sugary cream, a thousand candles, a mountain of glittery candies and a small edible unicorn on top.
It's not a very hidden secret: you can turn luck manipulation directly into a battle advantage by employing luck-based weapons. The Genesis Game has a piece of code that tries to run an exception to luck manipulation so that it wouldn't abuse the potentially ridiculous power of luck-based specibus allocations. However, this measure doesn't work properly because the extra line of code is shoddy. It was probably thrown in as an afterthought; it only blocks certain basic abilities. To be more exact, it prevent Players from directly buffing the luck of their Strife Specibus. It doesn't prevent them from personally accumulating luck, which is especially easy to snowball with the Architect class.
Here are some abilities.
[Let There Be] Is a good ability to have when traversing dark dungeons, underground mines or stuff like that. Word of warning, if you do the player command Song of Light then cast [Let There Be] they will conflict with each other but if you cast [Let There Be] then Song of Light it won't conflict. Go figure.
[Flare] It is one of the very few attack abilities Light gets.(That doesn't mean you can't free-style some up.) It basically takes all the light in the area and turns it into a giant fucking laser but it's not very efficient Pluck-wise so stick with Luck manipulation and save that laser for when you need it.
[Vision Omnifold] This basically allows them to have xray vision, thermal vision, life vision, emotion vision and whatever the fuck vision they want. This however costs more Pluck to maintain the more vision capabilities they have. This means they could get 20/20 vision and still have positive Pluck regeneration but if they have all the before mentioned vision, you won't have enough Pluck to run it for a millisecond.
[Dance of Thorns] Light players are the least dangerous to allies when it comes to berserk triggers. It's a super-buff for having perfect luck. It's especially useful for fighting opponents that have random attacks, teleportation or super-speed. The Light Player will get to block or avoid all their attacks by sheer coincidences, it's like dancing in a field of thorns and not getting a single scratch on yourself as a dance of thorns is a perfect performance.
Still, the [Dance of Thorns] is not completely safe. The problem is that luck is relative. Good luck for the Light Player doesn't mean good luck for everybody. For example: someone "coincidentally" blocking an attack with another person's face just because otherwise, the Light Player might get dirt on his/her shoes. That kind of "luck". Light's luck is usually better directed than that but not during a berserk spree, and especially with Titles on the active spectrum. It's better to appreciate the dance of thorn from far away or you'll get prickled.
Here are some denizens.
Hyperion is a total dick, he'll often speak at such speeds that you need to hear him again. If you ask him to repeat he'll then say "Do I need to sound out all the syllables for you?" and he'll proceed to very slowly say things as if he's talking to a retarded child. He'll proceed to do this for the rest of the session and constantly make jokes on your intelligence. It took Blunder a long time to not want to kill him.
Athena is a mastermind that will manipulate you. When Blunder realized that he was just getting manipulated, he got angrier. She proceeded to make everything she said either a lie or truth and caused constant suspicion. The underlings she sends to wreck his land are often smarter than the average land imp and can turn weapons against him. This has caused him to almost die a couple of times from a simple weak imp with a couple of real deaths in other timelines.
Apollo is an okay denizen but is annoying with his energetic personality. He'll often do incredibly dangerous things then ask Blunder to join in. He died always if he joined in but the activities always looked very dangerous, so only a couple of other timeline deaths happened. He will proceed to beg him and will provide reasons that sound completely absurd that it will be safe.
PURRING
Purring is a Oracle of Heart, someone who scrys with Heart. Heart Players like Purring walk a path marked by fragmented identity, changing personality and occasional soul collisions. Don't worry she isn't going to go crazy – well, not any more than every other person here but her sense of self is in for a ride. Heart players have some of the best emotional support abilities – scratch their back, they’ll scratch yours later.
Okay just for the record, the heart thing creeps me out so let’s just get this over with. The Aspect of Heart deals with identities or "souls", they have a lot of support tricks to help people come to terms with internal conflicts BUT their signature ability is to manipulate the "core" of things. It works like this: the Heart Players take an object and they plunge their hand through it as if it was made out of water with a lot of surface tension, they pull out the "heart" of it. It’s like a pulsating ball of shininess and they can manipulate it and put it back, like reprogramming.
So far it seems vanilla right?
That’s because you don’t know yet how it works offensively, it works on people. The signature offense ability [Weapon of the Heart] allows Heart Players is to plunge their hand into their own heart and rip a shiny thing out of it then they change the identity of that thing – from [feelings] to [weaponry]. It creates some pretty OP weapon actually, if you get past the fact that THEY PUT THEIR HANDS INTO THEIR CHEST. They’re made of solidified feelings and they dissolve after an attack, which is generally enough to kill a boss then they turn into light which returns in people’s chest.
That sounds awesome, right? Holy shit no it isn’t, my GOD, it is so DISTURBING to watch them rip out their heart because seriously, HANDS DO NOT GO INTO CHESTS and you know the worst thing? It’s when they SUPPORT you with that ability.
Purring had done this once in another timeline in a big fight because suddenly she was like "Hey, think of something really happy" and I’m like "Uh?" and then she plunged her hand INTO MY TORSO. I was like "GET IT OUT" and she was like "Nuh-uh". then she ripped out my chest-light-thing without even buying me a drink. She was like "Here, use this" while handing me some glorious magical schoolgirl weaponry. I am *not* cool with the heart-thing unless you WARN me in advance... Actually you know what? Fuck that. I am not cool with the heart-thing in *any* circumstances whatsoever. I don’t want any hands to go through my torso. It is strictly no-hand-penetration territory.
Here are some example abilities.
[What You Look Like on the Inside] An ability that involves changing your appearance like Mist does but based on your personality. A person that is really apathetic(Purring) would look like nothing special while a person like Pick would turn into a giant multicoloured bird.
[Art of the Heart] Turns your soul into a fighting style so with Purring due to her struggle with a soul collision with another her from another timeline she will start of sweet but eventually turn into a cold-blooded killing machine.
[The Pink Link] This ability allows Purring to scry for emotional connections between things. She could know how an insult might make someone feel or how a feeling could cause mass destruction for example.
This allows Purring to use people's souls like how fortune-tellers use crystal balls to tell the future. The shiny will show them future events and show them how to plan for them.
[Pink is The New Black] This essentially allows Purring to trap enemies inside her soul prison and subject them to damage. This has a pretty high pluck cost but it's pretty worth it.
Heart Players don’t really go berserk so when they channel their Aspect too much they usually end up with an identity crisis, I mean, that is total shit but it sure beats inflicting mass destruction if you ask me. In fact, despite looking unusual(DEMONIC), Heart abilities are pretty safe.
Sophia is really fucking intense. The underlings she sends out to Purring land will go like "Sophia Akbar!" and then explode. When Purring asked about underlings going full 9/11 in another timeline she said something along the lines of "You are unworthy of the land and my underlings are willing to die to damage you" in a mad voice. Sophia proceeded to criticize Purring for asking why her underlings went 9/11 by saying "You can't respect their choices? Of course you can't because you are unworthy" and similar things for the rest of the session.
Aphrodite is like the queen slut of sluts. The underlings she sends to your land won't attack directly and will instead MOBILIZE her consorts to attack her by seducing them. The consorts that haven't been seduced are generally quest NPCs but will show their distaste over the village's violence. In one timeline they went to Purring's dream moon and basically made the battlefield a whole heck more dangerous with consorts attacking Purring along with carapacians. When asked about why she is turning all the NPCs against her she'll merely scoff and say "They're only realizing you are unworthy".
Yaldabaoth is arrogant and will often say he is the real king of the land. His underlings aren't that special but he sends serpents with Doom-charged venom that will kill. In one timeline Purring got so sick of the venom that she grabbed one of the snakes, took out it's soul, turned it bronze and finally made it able to cure with a single look. She kept that snake throughout the session and it never failed to heal her.
NOVA
Nova is a Soldier of Spark, an aspect of sudden inspiration, sudden game-changers or sudden enlightenment that lasts for only half a second. This however means that he has to be quick on his feet and not hesitate to take advantages otherwise his ARC will go down a lot. So essentially don't hesitate and enjoy the Spark.
[Sudden Death] A one hit kill ability that allows the caster to kill any Underling with one hit but they can one hit them too. This technically isn't a one hit but a massive damage boost to both parties involved that it might as well should be.
[Flash Step] This allows the caster to move at 1% speed of light for half a second so essentially long enough to go 150000 meters with a single step. Costs quite a bit of pluck.
[Sudden Advantage] This gives the caster the luck of a Light player for half a second and when combined with [Flash Step] is able to attack 100000 times with lots of critical hits. Can be very pluck-costly.
[Sudden Pluck] This gives the caster enough pluck to for example cast any ability from Space(They can't but Space is very pluck-costly.) for half a second.
[Sudden Hope] A psybuff that lasts for half a second but stays with them for the rest of the battle.
[Sudden Knowledge] Gives the caster for half a second vision of all possible combat moves and their merits.
Here are the denizens.
Velox is an unpredictable denizen. The underlings she sends are often unique and each one is a challenge on it's own but for some reason she doesn't send as many. If you show one hint of hesitation then she will proceed to make fun of you because apparently that means you are an "undecisive mess" that is unworthy of the land.
Bariq is a very loyal denizen, to the previous land owner that died. He will take every opportunity to remind you that you aren't them and that you can never be them. The consorts of the land often reminisce about the previous land owner and I don't think the denizen persuaded them. You'll need to understand that he can't trust you because the person that he put his every spark of trust in, died before you can not want to kill them.
Zhayan is an impatient denizen. They are constantly putting you on terraforming quests and if you don't focus entirely on the quests and complete them immediately, he'll immediately start sending bigger underlings because apparently he "doesn't like your perfectionist attitude" because it's bad for the land. He cannot wait for anyone and is one of the few denizens to go out to the land to destroy stuff directly.
DUCK
As a Beast of Hope, he will have to go into what many call the Beast's major downside "The Primal Instinct". Essentially destroying Duck's hesitance, his rationality and calmness to be replaced with being unhesitating, instinctuality and a primal rage. They go fully into their aspect and in Duck's case it is Hope, he will go completely into denial as Hope is denial.
Hope is the concept of rejection or denial as it conceptually denies things and is physically interpreted as pushing things away so the Strife of Hope boils down to SPITE. It increases in strength in retaliation to the adversity that it meets because then it gets to reject and defy situations. For that reason, many Hope abilities are weird, unintuitive and backward so the aspect is also notorious for having some of the most broken minor abilities while its major abilities have too many activation conditions to be useful. Hope really just wants to spite you.
It’s probably due to Hope interferences: the attraction field that confines dreamselves to their dream kingdoms until they do the Dream Quest [Earn Your Wings] does not work on Hope Players. Duck flew right off his moon before the game even starts. I guess it’s a useful perk.
The aspect symbol that glows on your body (it’s called an [Ideograil] if you care) is also bugged for Hope. It doesn't stay on the skin so for one reason or another, the glowing mark will brand your clothing. The symbol slips over whatever fabric you’re wearing and stays there even after the ability is done.
It's not a problem when the aspect symbol doesn't appear over any clothed body parts. For example the basic "crushing force" ability, [Here Comes The Arm], makes the symbol appear on your palm. No problem here. The ability to scan people’s Pluck Meter [When Your Eyes Shine Just Like Mine] makes it appear on the eyes so no problem there either.
Once you learn [Light Up The Night], you’re gonna want to cast it at the start of every boss battle. It makes Hope’s ideograil appear huge and wide on your back. You’re going to brand ALL of your shirts with the big dopey white wings on the back.
Hope players are going to be clean and pretty while while everybody else is roughed up and dirty. You can blame their whisperings The Strife for that: they make up a really minor rejection effect around them so specks of dust and dirt won’t stick to them. After a big event they’re going to look like perfect little angels while everybody looks shit.
Don’t get into any debate with Hope players. They win the argument, alright? They just win. Let them win, please.
Here are some abilities.
[Eject] is an inventory management ability so what it does is pretty simple. It auto-ejects something from your Sylladex.
This is the most broken low-level ability in the game. Period.
I didn’t understand at first why Duck filled his high-yield Sylladex to max capacity with washing machines in another timeline. I knew that some people weaponize their Sylladex but I never expected that a simple sylladex trick like [Eject] could be so... drastic. Did anybody do play testing for that ability? It didn't occur to anyone that ejecting large items on-demand is ridiculously broken? I don't think Duck ever hit a single Underling, he just threw washing machines everywhere as if it’s like he had a personal railgun for household appliances.
Why would you need any other fighting ability than being able to throw washing machines with a finger snap?
I had another timeline where Duck alchemized titanium dishwashers. I don't think ANY situation ought to call for fifty titanium-reinforced dishwashers, that's too much for my brain. I saw Duck pull some crazy stunt once with [Eject], he ejected his entire sylladex’s worth of knives all at once. Well he used a modified version of [Eject], a custom ability that he called Gate of Something but you get the idea.
[There Are No Heroes Left in Man] is a buff that is also a taunt. That’s right, it’s a taunt that you fire at your own team mates. It imbues them with the Strife of Hope and makes them want to prove you wrong. That’s just... backward and weird.
[Light Up The Night] gives an all-around stat bonus that is inversely proportional to how much you feel hopeful. The bigger you are in a "OH FUCK" situation, the stronger it will boost stats in retaliation so when things are calm, it barely does anything since you aren’t contradicting any situation. Duck needs a trigger finger on that ability: as soon as something big and horrible happen, he can get off a [Light Up The Night] with maxed out efficiency. It's pretty much a signal flare.
[The Will Of One] gives a moral boost inversely proportional to low moral so Hope Players always want to wait until the last second to cast it. During our big battle with the Black King, Duck is probably going to sit on it forever and only fire it off right before everyone dies
[Here Comes The Arm] causes the caster's arm to be super-strong because denying something by crushing it makes so much sense.
[When Your Eyes Shine Just Like Mine] lets the caster see boss, player or special monster pluck meters because they can't deny you the privilege of seeing how much power you have, you'll just deny them back or something.
[Dreams Don’t Die] is such a powerful rejection-based defensive ability that it even blocks friendly abilities from helping the target, that’s some pretty intense denial effect. Keep that in mind Duck before your own denial manages to hurt you it also keeps you from getting wet at all when walking in the rain so useful for certain Lands.
[Hope Rides Alone] is a passive ability that basically negates the Audience Effect from the roleplay system so it makes Hope Players count as if they aren’t alone even when they are stranded. They have "Hope" with them, [Hope Rides Alone] is both a blessing and a curse. It gives an increased range for both positive and negative roleplay effects and it also means that Hope Players are much, much better at soloing the game since they don't need to actively seek an Unbreakable Union to obtain greater roleplaying advantages.
[Either Way It's All Gonna Burn] isn't broken but requires the ability [Cut Me Down or Let Me Run] first. The first ability lets you store all the negativity and damage that you receive while the second one lets you reject all of it and return the favor in your next action. So yeah. Basically, you want to cast [Cut Me Down Or Let Me Run] first and and then you HOPE TO BE BEATEN UP in order to power up [Either Way It's All Gonna Burn]. It packs one hell of a punch when you do it right.
Also, because of a weird bug, [Either Way It's All Gonna Burn] always auto-cast when the Hope Player dies. That rejects… a whole lot of hurt. When Hope Players go down, they often leave a crater behind.
[Sepulchritude] is supposed to be cast but it rejects being used. It has a billion activation conditions and it's impossible to meet them, ever. You might as well forget about it, it’s never gonna fire off.
Here are the denizens.
Pandora is too curious for her own good. The underlings she sends are often researchers instead of fighters but will defend the areas that you need to go to because "you would ruin the science at work here". These scientists underlings will report back to her and she will often berate you because "don't you hope that science makes everything better?" like a five year old.
Abraxas is like /fringe/ and /x/ had a baby. This guy basically does rituals all the time and they either have a chance of Angel corruption or Horrorterror corruption. His underlings have wands and staffs, did I also mention they dress up in really fucking stupid robes. Apparently the color of the robes indicate strength but Duck in another timeline had no time to check because he was using [Eject] to throw washing machines and dish washers.
Eris is basically the edgiest person and might even be edgier than Tim. She bitterly talks to you and says that you are "worthy" but she doesn't want to give up hurting the land. She sends psionic attacks onto random villages instead of underlings to cause chaos and strife. She constantly talks about how this land isn't worth being the owner of and how she is only having fun fucking it up.
ROCK
Rock is a King of Rage which involves commanding with Rage or "yelling". Rage is a misunderstood aspect like many other aspects, Rage's given name is sinuously related to its true nature. It doesn't help that Rage players strife in a manner that is intimidating. It makes people assume that Rage is a form of power over anger, this isn't wrong but it isn't the right definition either.
All players can randomly create items with elemental properties during their alchemy session so items alchemized with the aspect of Rage can have a devious influence on you. They basically make you want to use them more than normal so if it's a notebook it makes you want to write everything in it, if it's an instrument it makes you feel like playing music all the time and if it's a weapon you get the idea. Rage players like to be sneaky and give you Rage-loaded items on purpose.
Rage is the aspect of authority, control and influence so it boils down to changing [moods] to make things behave like you want. Conceptually, making someone angry is like making that person run blindly in a single direction of your choosing; that's how control works and that's what Rage means. The King of Rage dictates a direction to people then people just fall into places.
It's not exactly mind control and more like a form of power over events. Rage players can say "This should happen now," and then make it become true. The aspect of Rage will buff every form of action toward the direction that Rage ordered to happen. God Tier Rage players are often described as gods of wine and ceremonies; it's like they have a magic calendar and they write in it whatever is currently supposed to happen.
Rage has no problem with being focused into a specific target, even inanimate objects to make it comply to an order. Rage players can order a puzzle-locked door to open itself or force a thrown weapon to stop right in front of them and fall on the ground. Hell, Rage players are well known for going through more computers than anybody else simply because when they glare at their computer, it actually explodes.
Rage is the aspect of authority which means Rage players have to channel the concept of authority. They have to say stuff and really, really mean it and that involves a lot of yelling. At least it takes some yelling to recognize the feeling of how to tap correctly into the aspect so good Rage players can fuck with reality with just a whisper but you have to get there first.
If you try to block a Rage player on your chat client, they can speak to you anyway. If your chat client is offline and a Rage player wants to speak to you, your program will turn itself on to allow the conversation. When Rage wants something they get what they want. They're also pretty good at reproducing the bug that makes computers explode from afar, who knew that the internet was such a good Rage conductor?
Here are some abilities.
[Chorale For War] makes combat abilities more focused and powerful. Essentially causing them and the players around to go into what I call warrior mode with improved reaction time, faster reflexes and increased strength/speed depending on the weapon.
[Blackest Heart] makes enemies back away in fear and possibly other players.
[Waves of Wrath] turns a target into a game abstraction for a short period of time and that game abstraction has a single specific order to follow. In the case of stuff that is already a game abstraction, it overrides whatever it's currently programmed to do and gives it another duty. In either way it creates a new line of code that is violet, which means it has maxed-out priority so in the field of gamecode hacking, that line is called [purple prose].
Rage's ability to mess with code lines is similar to what Heart does although it works from a different angle. Heart is much better at reprogramming and inducing permanent changes. What Rage does is make things forget their current identity so I guess it's some sort of parallel and it's freaky how quickly you forget who you are when people are yelling at you.
There are some game abstractions that explodes when Rage gives them orders (especially crystalanths). You can do this with pretty much any item, it just takes some practice to get it right. Whenever you add a line of purple prose to an object which already had one, the game deletes the last purple line so if you overwrite too many of them at the same time, they start buffering before the game can delete them. The object will not know which line of purple prose to execute first and it'll take the easy way out by just shaking and exploding.
This is surprisingly efficient as a lot of Rage players exploit this for combat purposes. Plus it clears all the crap that is clustering your sylladex by just picking a junk item, imbue a lot of Rage into it and throw that into a monster's face. Problem solved.
[mIrAcLeS] is an alternate vision mode that lets Rage players see all kind of colorful auras around people. It's the ability to see "moods" or in other words, what people "feels like doing". When Rage players do shenanigans they swirl a finger and the palette of rainbow color that pores from everybody in the room will quickly change to a single unified color and that's what Rage is all about.
[Dark Carnival] is a mass-debuff berserk trigger that influences all targets in the area to feel helpless and let themselves get slaughtered. It's very weird, I know there are all kind of debuffs in this game that weaken enemies or even freezes them in time but who cares it still feels like a fair fight. When [Dark Carnival] makes enemies cry on the floor begging you to "get it over with", it does not feel right.
is a direct order to make stuff kill itself and when underlings beg you to kill them instead of them killing themselves, it feels really fucking wrong.
(I can't write the ability's name for some reason.)
Ares is a warmonger. If he is in your land he will encourage consorts to fight each other in a war of epic proportions. If you buy something from one consort village a hundred will consider you an enemy and if you hurt one consort of a village you hurt a hundred allies of that village. He doesn't send imps but the consorts will often attack you instead and essentially make you a part of the war.
Juno will essentially call every decision you make immoral and unfitting of an owner of the land. Did you alchemize ice-cream? You are encouraging people to be unhealthy! Did you sneeze? You are showing that you are weak and that you might die! She takes everything out of context and make you look bad.
Artist of Time, of course. Stories are important to you because stories are like time because they show a number of ordered events. Time also involves time-travel which is often necessary in sessions due to people fucking up shit. Because you rolled Time chances are you're the kind of person who dislikes being held accountable or you have no willpower to do anything anymore.
In either case, Sburb's a dick because Time is the aspect of responsibility because the success of an entire session and the lives of everyone in it, a thousand time over, depend on you. You cannot afford to be irresponsible or lay down and await death. It'll teach you to accept your burden of responsibility and move forward but don't be mistaken, if Sburb is trying to teach you maturity giving someone Time duties is one hell of a traumatizing way to do that. No one ever said the game was a good psychologist.
Time is one of the two cardinal aspects, together with Space so that means, most sessions have a Time player. Why? Because Sburb runs on an idiotic model of time that was probably written by the world's most intelligent equipe of typewriter monkeys on drugs.
In normal metaphysics that don't involve Sburb, you'd generally find two main models of time:
1) The Predestined One: where every event has already been written by God (or into causality, either works) and time-travel cannot change the past. If you go back in time, you'll end up doing what was planned anyway. Freedom of will is an illusion.
2) The Branched One: timelines exist and trying to time-travel will make a new branch on the tree of timelines or maybe all the timelines exist and every possibility is true in a parallel universe.
Either model generally tries to avoid paradoxes and they're both fine when taken by themselves. The problem is Sburb's time model is neither of those but a mishmash of the two that makes no sense and gives me an extra reason to want to throw whoever decided to code this thing out of an airlock.
3) The Sburban Mess: Sburb has a List of Things That Need To Happen. Let's call it the Skaian Agenda, for brevity so as long as those things happen all is well and anything that doesn't contradict any point in the Skaian Agenda is allowed to happen.
If any of those points is contradicted, the timeline and the players within it are flagged as doomed which means it's up to the Time player to go back in time and fix it. Then they will die as well as everyone in/from the offshoot timeline but all is well because the alpha timeline is saved and the corpse pile keeps getting bigger.
Additionally this time model instead of avoiding paradoxes includes them as a regular part of your everyday Time duties. It's not called Paradox Space for nothing but in any case time paradoxes come in two kinds:
1) Bootstrap paradoxes: Also called time loops, one example is ectobiology: You're sent to Earth via meteor, you grow up, you play Sburb, you perform ectobiology and you send yourself to Earth via meteor. It's a closed loop with no beginning or cause, it just is and the worst thing is Sburb actively embraces these. You'll find them everywhere so self-fulfilling prophecies are another example. Not to mention the messes that can happen with timetravelling chat programs but in any case, do not break these loops for instance, do not prevent ectobiology from being carried out because that will doom the timeline.
2) Grandfather paradoxes: Here come the dead 'pops. These are named after the famous paradox where you go back into the past and kill your own grandpa which would cause you to not be born in the first place. If you ever make one of these, congratulations you've just doomed the timeline and note not fulfilling what a prophecy said would happen is paradoxical too because a prophecy is basically time-traveling information from the future. Either that, or a peek directly into the Sburban Agenda.
To wrap it up in order not to doom the timelines you should:
- Never break a stable time loop.
- Never cause a grandfather paradox.
- Never contradict the Skaian Agenda.
Some time loops are easy to spot and it's pretty easy to go with the flow. You see yourself popping out of thin air and aiding you in battle? That's you from the future, after a while timetravel back into the past and do as you saw. Bam, loop completed. Just don't contradict it.
Others like the thousands upon thousands of prophecies stored in the Royal Libraries on Prospit and Derse are like invisible tripwires. Unless you spend time reading up (which I suggest you do), you will never know if you will doom the timeline by picking orange juice instead of apple juice as prophetized and that's one more bad experience for one of your selves. One more corpse in the pile but luckily some abilities and some other aspects can help you.
Grandfather paradoxes are another issue: doomed timelines aside, you can't change the past if you didn't see yourself appear from the future to save the situation the first time around. If you see a session-mate die then go back in time and prevent that from happening in front of the eyes of past-you who should then be the you that eventually timetravels back, you've created a grandfather paradox and doomed yourself, the timeline and everyone in it. So now your friend's dead. Move on, Time can't fix what has happened unless it happens to go against the Skaian Agenda; in that case it is exactly your job to fix the past.
The Skaian Agenda itself is a minor worry if there are no timetravel shenanigans involved. It'll just happen that every once in a while you will derail too much from the plan and a corpse or two will join the party.
Obviously you'll want to minimize the number of corpses invited to the party. There's a few things you can do if that is what you want:
1) Read up on prophecies on Prospit and Derse. It's kind of creepy how many freaking details are written in those but it's not like you won't either follow them (with awareness or not) or doom the timeline so it's better to have foreknowledge.
2) If you have a sessionmate who is Fate, Mind, Light, Law, Stars or to a lesser degree Life or Doom they can help.
- Fate can use [Rediscover Fusion] to tell you what to do to reach an outcome like "not dooming the timeline" or something.
- Mind can help you sort through scenarios with scrying abilities like [Neural Climb]. They also have the raw brainitude to tell you how to untangle very complex temporal messes.
- Law can use [Negative Aperture] to warn you in advance of things you should really not do like stumbling upon the invisible tripwires of prophecies.
- Light is similar to Law but arguably less useful. It can guide you towards optimal use of your powers to try to make sure things go well but they don't have as much knowledge of the metaphorical tripwires.
- Stars can tell you what outcomes and actions are attracted to a given anchor point so it's kind of a roundabout way of doing Fate's job.
- Life and Doom can craft prophecies.
One item that is pretty much a must for any Time player worth their salt is the uncreatively named Time Machine. It's basically a miniature version of your Scratch Construct that is imbued with [Stitch In Time]. Having one of those handy makes it a lot easier to manage your loops because it makes short-range time-travel a lot less pluck-draining. To obtain one, you can mess around with alchemizing stuff related to what your construct is or you could also occasionally find one in a dungeon on your land but this is in the middle-late game so I recommend the alchemy route but if you want a surefire, pretty easy way to make one all you have to do is get the captcha code of your Scratch Construct itself which is easily feasible with a captcha-camera or the right sylladex modus.
However, one IMPORTANT note: these items allow ANYONE not only Time players to time-travel. This can be a very, VERY serious issue as if it lands in the hands of someone who doesn't know the ins and outs of the delicate art of temporal manipulation and will proceed to repeatedly doom the timeline or even worse someone with bad intentions. I shiver at the thought of a PK that secretly owns one of those.
These dangerous items should under the right circumstances fall in the hands of a non-Time player as long as they're sane, careful, well-intentioned and know what they're doing.
- If you, Hygenist are dying/dead, handing down your Time Machine to the sanest, smartest person you know is a good idea.
Some final notes:
- Some titles are better than others as surrogate Time players. Mind players are especially awesome due to their very good understanding of "this could have happened if we made that choice" stuff and high brainitude but really all the aspects I mentioned are at least decent. Being a Seer or Sage is also a nice plus.
You might notice while exploring your land that you have some huge structure that resembles a music-related item floating above the ground a couple dozen meters. It is your Scratch Construct and it replaces the Earthsea Borealis while giving your land the function of an extreme emergency panic button.
The construct which can be anything from a turntable to a compact disc to a music box or an audio-cassette is meant to be scratched with a seriously, seriously hard object. You'll want something made of a material like corundum, diamond, titanium or just bullshit hard stuff like the enamel that covers the Quills of Echidna that stuff is basically indestructible. After you've dealt sufficient scratch damage to your Scratch Construct it will ascend towards Skaia and then, upon contact hard-reset your session. It'll get new players and you'll avoid dying and becoming a soul that wanders among the void inhabited by the Others. Sure you'll stop existing (not actually sure) but that can't be so bad right?
Like any other player you have a toolbox of abilities you can use in your burdening quest to ensure the session doesn't get screwed over while beating enemies to death with your specibus of choice. I'll give you a run-over of your main assets and it'll be a VERY boring and rather obvious list at least at first. You've been warned.
[Humphrey's Lullaby] Slows time in the area around you
[Moment of Pause] Freezes time in a radius but pluck-costly.
[Clockstopper] Like [Moment of Pause] except for one enemy only. More pluck-efficient and precise and t also has this cool red clock animation with roman numbers.
[Thank You For Your Valuable Time] Slows an enemy down and makes you faster.
[Time Out] Suspends you into a zone outside the rules of time to take a breather. When you're done just use [Time In].
[Sweet 16's Turned 31] Pretty pluck-expensive it supposedly speeds up time a bunch and makes enemies age into frailty which doesn't make sense because I don't think underlings actually age under normal circumstances? It's a temporary effect by the way.
[Stitch In Time] Time-travel into the past, short range (up to 1-2 days) and has a medium pluck cost.
[Chartreuse Rewind] Time-travel into the past, medium range (up to few weeks/one month) but has a pretty freaking high pluck cost.
[Years In The Past] Time-travel into the past, long range (I'm not even sure it has any hard cap) but it has a very, VERY high pluck cost.
[Back To The Future] Brings you right back to where/when you were before using any of the above abilities using fast forward and teleportation.
[Skip To The End] Zoom forward in time by accelerating it but short range (up to 1-2 days).
[Time On My Side]: A time-travel ability made for combat. Very short range (10 minutes) but very pluck cheap.
[Time Attack] Create and shoot red gears of any size you want. You can make a bunch of tiny ones and shoot them like bullets at high speed or two big ones to try and grind some bones.
[Split Second] Make two parts of an enemy move in time at different speeds and the result is that the enemy gets cut in twain if they move however it is very pluck-costly.
[Tomorrow's Greatest Hits] Charge your weapon with this ability and the next hit you deliver will make the enemy time-travel forward or backwards in time. You can basically punch an enemy into next week. The more the hit would have knocked them back, the more they time-travel so you'll want a bludgeoning weapon for this. BE CAREFUL with this it can cause terrible messes if used thoughtlessly.
[Chronoautopsy] Gives you the memories of a doomed time-clone by touching their corpse. You've basically always had this one but most people find out the traumatic way.
[Time Heals All Wounds] Makes the memories inherited from doomed time-clones feel distant, emotionally muffled and not yours. Basically it's there to save your psyche or else you'd be so fucked. This is transferable but you really want to generally keep it on yourself at all times.
[Time Trial] Share knowledge from ONE doomed time-clone with a friend. Unless you give them your [Time Heals All Wounds] they'll be susceptible to the psychological effects though luckily the effect fades in a day or two. It works surprising wonders for stopping PKs by sharing horrible memories though.
[Overbook] Get rid of any debuff by procrastinating and giving it to future-you. It might pop up right back in a bad moment though so be careful. It can be fatal if overused.
[Candles and Clockwork] Lets you get a look at the structure of spacetime. You'll be able to see the branched timeline structure and if you aim this at the Furthest Ring you'll notice that time there is majorly nonlinear AKA a nightmare nutjob.
[Look Into The Future] First think of a topic you want a vision of then activate this ability and expend X pluck. If available, Sburb will give you a 1 minute vision of the future related to the topic you were thinking about and the vision will be further into the future the more pluck you expended. It has a lower limit of few days and if it can't find anything relevant to that topic it'll either show you random bullshit or drain your pluck in vain. Try to use it wisely because the moment you've had a vision, that becomes inevitable. This is basically giving up your free will in exchange for foreknowledge.
[Eternity Served Cold] If you see Hygenist's eyes flashing rainbow colors and the Time ideograil rotate behind their head like a halo it's time to RUN LIKE HELL. The next living being they touch will spend a VERY long time isolated in an empty pocket dimension so it'll be one hour outside but tens of years inside. If they're not god tier they'll probably be corpses by the time they're back due to either starvation or old age. If they're god tier they will come back completely out of their mind in a way or the other. It's not a nice fate at all.
