*Laughs in pegasus and Moth*
Well, I said
normally.
I doubt a pegasus would be enough. The Moth explicitly
burns once reaching for the Glory.
...an ALICORN, though...
The first one kinda loses coherency if we know nothing can really damage/change Glory and the second is scary as fuck because there is also the theory The Forge-of-Days and Sun-in-Splendor being behind the Glory-lock, if they got out(since Glory seems to be the most popular path) and managed to eat Harmony, we would have at least one(or Glory forbid it TWO) Hour-Alukites AND Harmony would be dead... Velvet would need a time machine even more than she does now.
To be fair we don't KNOW for certain that nothing can damage/change Glory.
What would mortal cultists know of that? The only ones who might have an actual idea of if that's possible would be, in my opinion, the Egg Unhatching and, most of all, The Sun In Splendor, who
explicitly "came from the Glory".
and, to be fair, if anyone could do it, the FORGE Hour whose whole thing is destruction, creation and change would be the best equipped to do it.
Especially if helped by the Hour closest to the Glory.
So, yeah, I could see it being possible from the Sun in Splendor, the Forge of Days, or more likely
both working together.
As for the Hours-Alukites thing... That's one of my guesses about why they sealed themselves behind the Tricuspid. To stop themselves from eating Harmony, potentially their "child".
That said... I never really understood WHY an Alukite Hour would be that dangerous.
Mareinette doesn't seem significantly worse than some other Names. Sure, she's a monster, but she's a monster from an age of monsters.
In any case, I doubt that the moment we open the Tricuspid we get a "game-over" from these two hours running out and eating Glory... but then that has me wonder
what happened to them.
Did they "
Beat" the compulsion that leads to the Crime of the Sky? It's been a long time, and if no other Hour is alive, and that Law as all others is the Will of the Hours... couldn't they have managed to change it?
Did they die? Did they become weak enough that they can no longer gather the power needed to do it?
I totally agree that 145 bits is a lot of bits. But this is where I think obvious costs (bits) are being weighed way, way, more heavily over severe, non-obvious costs (the Expedition's downside risks).
Fascination is 2 AP if we don't want it to severely impact everything else we do, or 20 bits + Mareinette AP, or 55 bits + AP with a MitL.
Dread is probably roughly as bad.
(Okay, Mareinette being OP at IotH with the Edge artefact does make them a little less scary.)
But we have 2 HP!!!
Keep in mind that even failing at an obstacle does not necessarily mean we instantly suffer.
Sometimes that triggers a SECOND roll for negative consequences I think.
We can probably tank Fascinations and Dreads to some extent, rolling enough to avoid them, and as you said Mareinette (or to some extent even Selene with an Heartifact) are good at Incision.
Probably Biedde too, actually. Though Mareinette is still the best.
We knew that nothing could block the way to the Glory, because the very point of the Mansus is the climb. And yet...
To be fair, there ARE ways. we know of "outsider blood trait", but that's very explicitly only ONE possible way.
It's just that NOBODY know any of the other possible ways, and finding them would likely be the life's work of a genius the likes of Velvet or more.
For all we know something like " a ritual with a country's worth of experienced cultists powering it" would also work, but nobody could ever manage to get THAT many people to a good enough level to help. That would make it "technically" possible too.
