Also real ironic that if Windy stuck around he would have had a Wolf cult to get some Wolf philosophy and join.
eh, he doesn't have the right mentality to join THIS specific wolf cult.
Also he knows enough of the Lores and the eldritch that his first thought would likely be "this is Velvet's backup cult, isn't it?"
What a waste, we have sacraments we could use sacrifices for you know daughter.
...not where my mind went at first, but it's not like you're wrong.
Is this a Moth-aligned wolf cult? One pegasus removed a eye to see better, Soft sweeps doesn't know what she's doing, Amor is woodcarving without looking at what she's making...
Very much so, yes.
Huh. I guess the therapy group is becoming corrupted at a significantly swifter rate than I was expecting. I thought it would take at least another Wolf or two to start killing ponies, yet they have been doing it with just Evil and Paranoia. At this rate, I could see them destroying most of the country by Wolf 6, even if we never unleashed the seed in Soft Sweeps.
Also, it's interesting that she seemed to have been sleepwalking for this. How long has this been going on?
In their defense, they only seem to kill their own and ONLY when they're "too far gone".
considering how depressed and maybe even suicidal some of them were before their group started... it might even still be a net positive.
The problem is once they start to cause troubles for those OUTSIDE of the group, which I imagine is likely to happen with the 4th wolf if we get that far.
Also, accidentally a whole pack of band new Mansus seekers, we'd better get on with things before they start climbing around in the Stairs. The Old Wolf isn't waiting for us to mosey our way through the game anymore, another player's hit the field. On the other hand, the Fields will probably pose quite the effective barrier to this lot, serenity being particularly tempting to those burdened by grief.
We probably want to check out the whole of the Ashen Wastes before they do. If there's something like a heirloom-tier wolf artifact,
we don't want them to get it!
Having gone back and read through both the chapter that directly dealt with the revivification and the latter chapter where Soft had her mission and met Cantrip, I feel confident in asserting that Soft is entirely present. It wouldn't be much of a Wolf-wish if we didn't get exactly what we asked for after all, and a wholly-present Soft Sweeps being slowly hollowed out and corrupted by our actions would be so much worse, no?
We know in the local cosmology that death isn't a simple cessation, therefore a particularly ambitious/abhorrent working could certainly retrieve a wayward soul. Especially if the death was, recent.
So, inside our daughter is two agendas, her own and The Wolf's. Issue is, Soft is playing with a significant handicap in that she doesn't know there's a contest on at all, she can't win if she doesn't know she's fighting.
a good way to put it.
Though I'd add it's not really even her contest to compete in. It's Velvet's, with Soft being just the potential casualty.
it's by
VELVET'S ACTIONS that the Wolf will become stronger. not by Soft's.
Soft does feel... dead with how I have read it. Not that she is dead, or that she might not have agency, but that she... She is different. Different in a way that isn't wolf like.
I disagree.
Keep in mind, Soft went through life-changing amounts of tragedy, to the point she
killed herself.
And then
we brought her back, and gaslit her into it having never happened.
and, of course, the Wolf has slowly and slightly corrupted her too. It seems completely fair and reasonable character progression to me.
What do you mean, Silky's Cult is one of Velvet's greatest threats. She has devout followers, one might even call them "crusaders," she has a base of operation out of the public eye on Apple land, and from all the scenes with her we can tell she's steadily subverting all of our Names. She's already made a ton of progress with Axe.
She's also recently joined the Colonel's ranks as the latest Pawn of Biedde, and would you look at that
her little sister is an Alicorn Princess!
in the
story that wasn't, where we didn't summon Baldomare and she was summoned by Copper instead the second time, Baldomare even offered to not go after our family if I remember right!
Not unless Questionable Questing of all places takes offense to the pony cultist quest. Hopefully we can manage to avoid doing anything so exciting.
I can't imagine it happening here. Isn't there plenty of mind control and slavery quests and stories on this forum? Mareinette herself would probably stop and take notes from some of those!
Wondering how people will think on the therapy group now. Wondering how much of that information will seep into people's decision making.
On the flipside, if the Bureau was here they would most likely arrest Soft Sweeps as the leader of the creepy agony-murder cult.
I don't know... technically speaking they did nothing illegal.
Well, outside of killing the "too far gone" cult members. We can assume this was not the first time.
Which, sure, it's bad... but Nobody outside the group is likely to ever find out, as they're all people who "lost everything" and they're all each other's alibi.
It could be solved as simply as them saying "he decided to leave to get a new life elsewhere".
I hope it's the Stone version. The Gods-From-Stone were mostly cool. At the very least, there seemed to be considerably less deliberate malice and divinely sponsored/rewarded cannibalism.
I don't know if I believe it.
THe Mansus is a reflection of the Wake, and the Wake is a reflection of the Mansus.
Saying that the Gods from Stone were less cruel than the Gods from humanity's time is a lot like saying that the world was better before civilization was born. That humanity inherently made the world worse (or in this case, ponykind).
But... what value could humanity or ponykind put in a world
without them in it? Why would you ever worship a time when we lived in caves, didn't have writing or agriculture, no cities, just a nomadic lifestyle of hunting and gathering?
Well, there's admittedly a question of what the Carapace Cross were like...
I disagree — We've just been given a ratio for how confidant actions translate to Velvet actions! It's lower than this! Look at the challenges we've had with finding effective actions for Rarity (who we mostly use for bits) and Fluttershy.
eh, it's all in how we use them.
Biedde is perfect for guard actions, Baldomare to find stuff (new expedition sites, scrying rituals), Mareinette COULD do lots of things for us if we trusted her enough for them, and so on. And all of them can give us lore lessons and influences
They're as good or even BETTER than Velvet actions..
in very specific niches.
It's just that we often don't need those niches, admittedly. Though with our starting to do Expeditions that's likely to change.
I think we're better off focusing quality over quantity for the most part, it's worked well so far.
All of that said, I also agree we shouldn't delay Glory stuff too much. If the quest ends with it, then we've won, and if it doesn't we at least likely get Long status, which is a massive buff all of its own. Maybe it would give us a "General Bonus" comparable to the Names to replace our "mortal" stats? Considering Mortals cap at 20, having Longhood reward you with something like a general +25 would be considerable and makes a lot of sense.
in any case, either turn 20 or 21 we should finish the Outsider Search. I say maybe 21 instead of 20 only because of how many urgent things we have to deal with between book lvl 6, Frangiclave, SH (and maybe Knock and Edge) Sacrament, heal the scar, and so on.
And beyond all of that is the fact the Glory is within reach, every action that isn't helping us win is an action put towards losing. Some losing actions are better than others like dealing with Copper and Windy but making more useless friends is firmly not in that category. I get that some of you guys want to focus on Harmony but that's gonna take soooo much time to get off the ground and if the Master's visit has taught us anything it's that time is against us, the longer we play the more chances we get to fuck up. Our last fuck up cost the world an RA, I do not want to stick around long enough to do so again.
harsh, but true.
I'm not convinced Glory is insta-win, there might be more stuff beyond it (I'm still waiting a Sun-in-Splendour or Forge-of-Days sized surprise beyond the Tricuspid), but it's not like we CAN work on Harmony stuff right now anyway except for Memory of Light, which is kinda something I want her to do anyway because she doesn't have that many good alternative uses for her actions.
Do we?
We require "the blood of an outsider" in order to quench the Crucible-Lock.
We know that there is an outsider "in Canterlot" and we have a task to determine its location.
We do not know what that location is.
We do not know for certain what the outsider is.
We do not know what will be necessary to access the outsider.
We do not know how to acquire the blood of this outsider.
We do not know if acquiring the blood of the outsider will be immediately hazardous.
We do not know if said hypothetical hazard would endanger our family (in which case Velvet will not do it)
Not to mention one of the most important things of all, we don't know if there's going to be an Apostle run. I personally would bet on it, and I'd really like to leave myself something other than a Moth-scented dumpster fire of a kingdom to work with.
finding the location is as simple as spending 2 to 4 Velvet/Confidant actions on the search.
Now,
killing the Outsider is definitely not going to be EASY, admittedly.
as for what/who it is... It's near certainly Discord. The question is if he's still stoned, AND if we can somehow kill him without removing the certification.
...Actually... maybe we should hurry. If we find Discord soon, we might be able to steal the statue, prepare some kind of ritual to depower him and make it easier to kill him, and have everything ready before the stone prison fails.
If
he gets free first, that makes things SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult.
This is all assuming he's NOT free yet, but that Celestia just moved him away.
as for apostle run... I expect a follow up, but I doubt we'd be giving up control of Velvet. Why would Velvet ever leave the Wake? If she becomes a Long she'll likely stay there and continue doing things herself.
The actions we need to take are in order: find the Outsider, get the Blood, find a place to bring the Blood to in the Mansus, break the Lock, pass through the Tricuspid Gate.
more or less true.
Actually it's possible that Discord might get free at some point (if he isn't already), and that could make things much harder for us in trying to kill him.
Find the Outsider we know how to do.
find a place to bring the blood is also something we know how to do, it's an action we already can take!
GETTING the blood is still a ???, but my guess is that Outsider search will unlock an expedition site to steal Discord's Statue, and then we'll likely have to create a ritual to allow for the safe murder of Discord.
After that... well, if there's more obstacles beyond the Tricuspid, we won't know until we get there.
I'm still all for continuing the other two paths, but that's mostly because... they don't really require THAT much investment right now?
Jade for Memory of Light (Harmony), SH Sacrament and tower exploration for Moon. and I want the Sacrament anyway for personal power, so that's not really much of a cost to me.
So then, all we have to do is get into Canterlot Castle (ourselves unless you want to trust a Name with the key to Glory?) get to the vaults capable of securing him, employ whatever technique that allows us to capture his blood, and then get out again unscathed and undetected so that we can find a place to go to sleep so we can enter the Mansus.
Simple.
How do you propose we do this hypothetical thing?
That's actually really simple, if not easy. It's just going to be an expedition where we'll want to use multiple Names, not particularly different from Frangiclave one I imagine.
and it's not like we can really improve our odds much beyond what they are right now, when we have most of the Names and are about to reach all-4. We can get some Sacraments maybe, and the Forge or Winter Names (if we deal with Copper), but that's kinda it.
Or we deal with Daybreaker first, and then have Luna give us the statue herself... though I expect Discord to get free first if we go that route.
So... What I'm hearing...
Is we need to have Velvet look for the outsider.
or followers. Baldomare specifically gets a +80 to that roll after all, and we only need 200 total progress.
Oh for sure! I was okay not doing it this turn because given that we lacked a way of reaching 200 this turn (eg with Baldomare scrying Frangiclave) it's okay to leave it for next.
But I would like to give it some focus next turn.
I'd rather get the Sacrament first, especially if we're giving ourselves the SH Influence next turn, but we'll see
