supernal

Sounds good to me. I'll post within 2 days of this message As a note I wouldn't have posted otherwise since I saw characters heading to the smoke but not arriving at it, which is what I would take as a prompt. Either that or an OOC note like this is totally fine, either one works perfectly well, just wanted to let you know in case it feels like I may be lagging it might be because I wasn't clear about the ending action

New raffle: https://www.valucre.com/topic/41080-custom-user-title-14/

You post, I make a numbered list off the people that post and at the deadline (or near enough, feel free to remind me if I miss it) I'l roll a random number to pick who wins the title Post below if interested. This raffle ends November 1st Previous winners: CarrionJackal, Lacernella Rubra, Vansin, Phaedara, Better than Gore, Dolor Aeternum, Tyler, Aleksei, Diremast, Spagelo, Veloci-rapture, Laughingmad, ethela penna

@ethela penna wins this one (no relation to Gaia) PM with desired user title

Ask ic?

An engineer with a claim to vetted experience with military hardware and high-level arcane concepts (the hardware was a warp-gate). Multiple ranking military officials with access to privileged information and training. A Count, with experience in matters of weaponry, operations, logistics, and management. A knight who was there on L-Day, boots on the ground, from an order designed to regularly engage with eldritch horrors. And a reporter – no, a freelance journalist, with tenuous ties to publications so small they may as well have been unheard of, and who claimed to see further and with clearer vision than every party gathered at the symposium. After absorbing the easy to read and stylish graphs, Erol took up the baton; eyes moved from person to person for variable lengths of time. "As the Enrele are on the verge of posing a loci-level threat, and they do so with nefarious purpose, I reverse my position and label these hiveminds the most immediate threat." Evelyn turned Erol's grey-brown eyes to the trembling elf who spoke before him. Evelyn couldn't blame the man for his chemical reactions; humanoids were as much a product of their internal chemistry as Evelyn itself was. But they failed to recognize this fact and so spent their lives confusing physical reactions for genuine emotion. "My proposition is: unite to conquer, divide to vanquish. The hivemind are a collection of intellects. It is well reasoned that each is mentally capable. They will attempt to manipulate us even as we manipulate them, but whatever has them at war with one another currently can be used to take these wars to their logical conclusions. We guide Gameth's hand in defeating Aleth, afterwards break it's back over Daloth's knee, and then exterminate the remainder ourselves." Erol passed the baton.

Going by paragraph 1 - That's a great clarification because, as you can see, that's exactly what I thought. So it'll be good to know that we're just targeting the CoP, not CoP + this crazy strong necromancer (at least not yet!). Thank you 2 - That's also good to know! I haven't read the org page yet , I was just dealing with the concepts at a very high level, hence why I threw a few different scenarios out. Another common one is a mark that causes a feedback loop rather than precludes the ability to disobey, so that if you try to "break the contract", your idk, face explodes, but you still have the ability to actually do the action. This =! that 3 - Thanks! 4 - Mine too! The Victory ASI has the most canon backing and is also the most recent military endeavor so I think it would be the most effective AND the most relevant. Let's do that one!

26 total 4 productive, where productive is defined by at least 1 completed thread that can be attributed to the org Good orgs are productive at a ratio of 6.5:1. For every 6 (and a half) orgs that are made, 1 is productive

27 total 9 productive, where productive is defined by at least 1 completed thread that can be attributed to the org Evil orgs are productive at a ratio of 3:1. For every 3 orgs that are made, 1 is productive

[a new day] Sandhi, the Banjari-lizardfolk alchemist, occupied a steampowered caravan. He was a recent addition to the roaming Cap and Bells market, but had proven himself a level-headed merchant with fair prices, earning him respect and disdain, customers and enemies. Sandhi was heir to a vast wealth of knowledge in the fields of folkloric superstition, botany and herbalism, and sympathetic magic; these were his specialties and he was well-known for these even before settling down as a permanent vendor. On these pillars he built for himself a professional service which was only in minor part based on materials rather than knowledge – this meant that he could leave his shop behind in an instant and settle down somewhere else, making expert use of his expert knowledge to earn himself a considerable income. So why get involved with a vigilante group like Justice? Because he believed in them and in their cause and in their strength to execute on their beliefs. He wanted to be a part of that movement. Sandhi did not ascribe to the school of thought which said that to do nothing was tantamount as doing evil. He believed that stabbing a man in the heart was much more severe and requiring of more agency than merely being idle while someone is being stabbed. By that same token, the same was required to do and be good. He was not an evil man, but he was not a good man either. He was neutral, without valence, without the ability to provably demonstrate that he did more than simply stand. Being their front, safehouse, and partial revenue stream out of Cap and Bells was certainly a step in the right direction but now he wanted to do more. So he waited to meet with Hawke. @ethela penna

That's nice in theory but in practice the de facto leader of the cult is vested in killing oodles of people via disease and necromancy and all that (established via her actual actions). So it's nice that some of them aren't "evil" or "good", but I think if we take the balance of committed actions attributable to the person that is in charge of the cult via the mechanism of absolute loyalty, there's plenty of incentive to shoot them in the face, euphemistically speaking Also that's a-ok since Lilith isn't the target - the cult as a whole is. Lilith is powerful all on her own but disbanding the gaggle of people around compelled by absolute loyalty to her and her aims outside of overarching CoP agenda is something that can be addressed without having to get in bed with the commander I wasn't sure if you were fine with me publicizing the method because then other people might just do something similar but here we go! Essentially the pivotal point is in the absolute free will that someone must exchange in order to get a lunar mark. The simple solution in theory is to put two "someones" in one body, have one person exchange the free will for the mark on the one body, and then have the other person drive. In practice this means loading a Victory ASI (advanced superintelligence) module into a biological component OR doing a "gestalt intelligence" like they did in Sense8 (which was based off of More Than Human); the idea being that you get the free will of the person in the driver seat, and then another person in the car takes over I don't believe that Lilith is drawing on free will as an energy source, aka that she can't tell when someone is really exchanging the will or just assumes that the taking of the mark and their obedience is equivalent to the mark working (which Victory can simply pretend). So I could load Victory into a blank biological template; she has no "free will" to give, only exceedingly complex routines and subroutines, so would not be affected But if it IS something that can tell somehow / for some reason, and without addressing that directly since idk that's the case to come up with a reasonable defense, the simple solution (other than defaulting to the gestalt intelligence route) is to have the body belong to a real person rather than be a blank template, load Victory as a "peripheral device", that can monitor the absolutely loyal person while it does all of those absolutely loyal things, relay the information through non-magical encrypted link, and throw an override/killswitch when that person needs to exeunt promptly How's that?

I don't think there's that much to know. The cult of power is pretty straightforward about its goals and aims. I might be mistaken ofc, but since there's no established hierarchy other than "lilith gives you power for loyalty marks", I imagined she didn't have any advisers or confidants to begin with since that would be suggestive of rank hierarchy which the cult rebels against by design Otherwise, gotcha Since this is going to be on behalf of NPCs, do you want me to tell you the loophole I came up with here or in PM?

Splendid. I mean things happen. Systems glitch. People get up and use the bathroom. Sometimes they just are actually incompeted, corrupt, extorted and so on. The main thing is to treat these exceptions as exceptions not as standards. To say your bogey got in because someone was picking their nose is a different matter entirely than saying Terrenus has no air space defense and using an exception (and usually one the player made up for themselves and their storyline) and passing it off as the status quo A character not having the whole picture is to be expected but when that’s the player’s consistent message it gets out of hand Grubb accepting his inevitable fate as a metallic guinea pig is the perfect balance to having his “CIA’s most wanted” character strolling around in broad daylight like “who, me? Nawwww you got the wrong guy!”

The post wording says “a large portion” as contrasts against “obligates absolute loyalty”. Later it stipulates that they can quit. How or why would they quit if the loyalty is both obligated and absolute? I think the wording in your original post is probably the more accurate one Honestly it’s fine either way. There’s no such thing as a perfect mechanism and I feel confident in my ability to come up with something logical and embedded in established capabilities for the Terrenus military, especially inside of the scope of the nationwide laws of magic, to contend with something like that. I’ll def! Check out the org page for more ideas but it may not be necessary