Emma Barnes, Princess (Worm/Princess the Hopeful)

Snow · Sep 29, 2015

1986ctcel said:
Apparently its supposed to be a "redemption arc" where we start out all extreme and building up a civilian vigilante movement to drive out the villains with Taylor as our anchor/morality pet who holds us back from escalating before we start redeeming ourselves or something according to ES.

Yeah, not really my thing. I'd probably prefer Taylor's role in such an arc. If Storms wins, I'm probably out too.

Navrin said:
If it wouldn't put far too much work on the GM I would be really happy in this split into two quests. One where non-Storms wins and another where Storms wins. Preferably with people sticking to voting in one of the two branches at a time to prevent them from converging or other undesirable behaviour.

Well, this would be nice. But yes, probably too much work. But maybe if we're lucky someone else will feel inspired to make their own Princess quest?

CptTagon · Sep 29, 2015

1986ctcel said:
Apparently its supposed to be a "redemption arc" where we start out all extreme and building up a civilian vigilante movement to drive out the villains with Taylor as our anchor/morality pet who holds us back from escalating before we start redeeming ourselves or something according to ES.

Has he read the Storms section (starting on page 303)? They don't seem to have any use for morality if it means you wouldn't fight something. Earth Bet suffers under Hard (Wo)Men enough, we don't need to add another nut soaked in the blood of the innocent she claims to protect to it.

Sol Mark-1 · Sep 29, 2015

I have been wondering what symbol would be used if one of the actual Radiant Queens, became a Twilight Queen.

I wonder what was the original symbol, and powers of the Twilight Queens, before their "change"?

A Storm is like a deconstruction of a Shonen Protagonist, the ones it brings an Image is the Punisher, and Guts from Berserk after the Eclipse.

Tears are like Caouldron, they can become worse than them.

Mirrors reminds me of Mary sue characters from Fanfiction, I found them as the one with worst fates, some are good persons.

Scoot Summers · Sep 29, 2015

There's already too much "let's just kill people" problem solving methods in Worm fanfics/quests.

[X] Grace (Choose Presence or Manipulation for one Transformed Attribute dot)
-[X] Presence
[X] Hearts

Omegahugger · Sep 29, 2015

CptTagon said:
Has he read the Storms section (starting on page 303)? They don't seem to have any use for morality if it means you wouldn't fight something. Earth Bet suffers under Hard (Wo)Men enough, we don't need to add another nut soaked in the blood of the innocent she claims to protect to it.

Since he was apparently one of the writers, I assume that he has.

Sol Mark-1 said:
I have been wondering what symbol would be used if one of the actual Radiant Queens, became a Twilight Queen.

I wonder what was the original symbol, and powers of the Twilight Queens, before their "change"?

According to TVtropes, this actually happened. The Courts of Tears, Storms and Mirrors were originally the Courts of Wands, Cups and Pentacles (not neccesarily in that order).

That also makes "Swords" no longer stand out like a sore thumb.

Navrin · Sep 29, 2015

Somebody is actually writing up an article on the courts of Pentacles, Wands, and Cups if you're interested.

Also, to the best of my knowledge, Earth Scorpion was involved early on, but after he stopped (possibly forming his own fork, I don't recall) the game diverged a fair bit. Quite possibly including Storms.

EJH · Sep 29, 2015

[X] Grace (Choose Presence or Manipulation for one Transformed Attribute dot)
-[X] Presence
[X] Hearts

1986ctcel · Sep 29, 2015

Aleph said:
One of the things I note in favour of Storms over Hearts, character-arc-wise, is that Storms starts Emma off in a relatively bad place from which we can play her slowly, haltingly and arduously moving upward, with false starts and slipping down every now and then as appropriate. It's a storyline where a lot of the conflict comes from within, and the setting will, hopefully, reflect and support that.

Hearts, by contrast, starts us off in a rather better place, which, uh... from a narrative point of view, not only means that the conflict will be largely external and the setting will reflect and support that by grinding our faces into it, but it also means that she's starting out in a much better place, and thus has a lot more leeway for her character arc to take her downwards. If you start at the bottom, you can either claw your way up or spiral into a mindless monster (we can hopefully avoid the latter through roleplay). If you start towards the middle of the top, there's a lot less "up" for you to move towards, and a heck of a lot more "down".

... also, bluntly, I like the narrative of someone starting at the bottom of the moral ladder from the bottom and climbing to the top by dint of sheer determination and a long and involved series of learning from mistakes a lot more than that of someone starting near the top of the moral ladder and either blithely staying there or, worse, moving down it as they're forced to compromise with an ugly and cynical universe.

Huh this is actually making me contemplate changing my vote anyone else?

Navrin · Sep 29, 2015

1986ctcel said:
Huh this is actually making me contemplate changing my vote anyone else?

Not in the slightest. Somebody who blows up (occupied) office buildings, murders people to build Goalenu, and kills anyone who becomes Darkened regardless of circumstances is not somebody I want to read about at all. At any point in the storyline. Stormites are extremely unpleasant people and need to be limited by an outside force to keep the damage down.

At least Tears are trying to protect their people; Storms are merely consumed by hatred and rage against the Darkness.

1986ctcel · Sep 29, 2015

Navrin said:
Not in the slightest. Somebody who blows up (occupied) office buildings, murders people to build Goalenu, and kills anyone who becomes Darkened regardless of circumstances is not somebody I want to read about at all. At any point in the storyline. Stormites are extremely unpleasant people and need to be limited by an outside force to keep the damage down.

At least Tears are trying to protect their people; Storms are merely consumed by hatred and rage against the Darkness.

And people (such as you and me as well as all the Hearts/others voters and even a few of the Storms voters) quite likely aren't going to vote for that kind of shit plus Taylor will be there to hold us back (Taylor telling other people to not escalate

)

SB/SV/QQ are pathological white knights when they aren't being vindictive assholes lets give them a little benefit of the doubt?

Navrin · Sep 29, 2015

1986ctcel said:
And people (such as you and me as well as all the Hearts/others voters and even a few of the Storms voters) quite likely aren't going to vote for that kind of shit plus Taylor will be there to hold us back (Taylor telling other people to not escalate )

SB/SV/QQ are pathological white knights when they aren't being vindictive assholes lets give them a little benefit of the doubt?

... give them the benefit of the doubt to go against accepted character, turn down power, and be merciful towards unnamed extras? Consistently? You have a LOT more faith in the voters than I do.

Omegahugger · Sep 29, 2015

Navrin said:
... give them the benefit of the doubt to go against accepted character, turn down power, and be merciful towards unnamed extras? Consistently? You have a LOT more faith in the voters than I do.

You'll have to explain that one to me. Nowhere I've seen was it said that Furies gained in power from atrocities.

In fact, since they still seem to be affected by Sensitivity, such things would if anything be a problem.

1986ctcel · Sep 29, 2015

Navrin said:
... give them the benefit of the doubt to go against accepted character, turn down power, and be merciful towards unnamed extras? Consistently? You have a LOT more faith in the voters than I do.

Given that the SV thread is split nearly 50/50 between Storm and Hearts and the SB/QQ threads are overwhelmingly in favor of anything other than storms I don't think we have to worry much

Omegahugger said:
You'll have to explain that one to me. Nowhere I've seen was it said that Furies gained in power from atrocities.

In fact, since they still seem to be affected by Sensitivity, such things would if anything be a problem.

they might mean Goleanu and making people sworn and shit (which has a good chance of killing them thanks to Tempesta damaging them as much as its wants when used)

Omegahugger · Sep 29, 2015

1986ctcel said:
they might mean Goleanu and making people sworn and shit (which has a good chance of killing them thanks to Tempesta damaging them as much as its wants when used)

The long list of Madoka Quests has assured me that SV at least is pretty good at not turning random people into monsters even if it benefits them.

Navrin · Sep 29, 2015

Omegahugger said:
You'll have to explain that one to me. Nowhere I've seen was it said that Furies gained in power from atrocities.

In fact, since they still seem to be affected by Sensitivity, such things would if anything be a problem.

Refraining from killing innocents because they'd be collateral damage breaks Tempesta's ban. There goes a core bit of power. Refraining from killing Darkened breaks Tempesta's ban. Not killing people because they'd be useful Goalenu parts is giving up power. Heck, killing everyone on team Raven is demanded behaviour.

1986ctcel said:
Given that the SV thread is split nearly 50/50 between Storm and Hearts and the SB/QQ threads are overwhelmingly in favor of anything other than storms I don't think we have to worry much

they might mean Goleanu and making people sworn and shit (which has a good chance of killing them thanks to Tempesta damaging them as much as its wants when used)

Even when the quest just involves an amoral creature instead of an actively evil one atrocities happen all the time in pursuit of shinies in the quests I've observed. I don't trust them very far at all. Especially since a lot of Hearts will be dropping the quest if Storms wins and many Storms-supporters actively want to make things worse.

Also, yes, Tears is bad. They perform a lot of horrible actions to protect their people. However, sane Ravens would be closing up all of the Taints their actions create so that their farming operations can continue longer with massively decreased loss-of-life (on their side, of course), This doesn't undo the damage by any means, but it negates the self-sustaining part. And they'd be bloody good at it, too, since composure and resolve are prized attributes and one of the best ways of closing Taints involves those two attributes. Not to mention knowing exactly where the resulting Taints would be.

And I'm not supporting being a member of Tears; just that they'd be a hell of a lot better than Storms, least interesting characters in the entire book.

Omegahugger · Sep 29, 2015

Navrin said:
Refraining from killing innocents because they'd be collateral damage breaks Tempesta's ban. There goes a core bit of power. Refraining from killing Darkened breaks Tempesta's ban. Not killing people because they'd be useful Goalenu parts is giving up power.

No, that doesn't break Tempesta. Showing mercy to a member of Darkness or someone who harmed our loved ones would (and not killing them due to civilians does count as showing mercy), but the latter case is typically where voters are at their most viscious anyways. And there's no rule that states that Tempestra has to cause collateral damage. If we can kill the Dark Forces without it, that's all fine and dandy. We just have to not let collateral stop us (which voters rarely do no matter what they play as)

And that isn't even a heavily penalty we would pay, we'd just lose access to Tempestra for a day. Since we'd already either broken off from combat or finished it by that point, we could easily just lay low for a while or rely on other incantations for that time.

1986ctcel · Sep 29, 2015

Navrin said:
Refraining from killing innocents because they'd be collateral damage breaks Tempesta's ban. There goes a core bit of power. Refraining from killing Darkened breaks Tempesta's ban. Not killing people because they'd be useful Goalenu parts is giving up power. Heck, killing everyone on team Raven is demanded behaviour.

Even when the quest just involves an amoral creature instead of an actively evil one atrocities happen all the time in pursuit of shinies in the quests I've observed. I don't trust them very far at all. Especially since a lot of Hearts will be dropping the quest if Storms wins and many Storms-supporters actively want to make things worse.

Also, yes, Tears is bad. However, sane Ravens would be closing up all of the Taints their actions create so that their farming operations can continue longer with massively decreased loss-of-life (on their side, of course), This doesn't undo the damage by any means, but it negates the self-sustaining part. And they'd be bloody good at it, too, since composure and resolve are prized attributes and one of the best ways of closing Taints involves those two attributes. Not to mention knowing exactly where the resulting Taints would be.

And I'm not supporting being a member of Tears; just that they'd be a hell of a lot better than Storms, least interesting characters in the entire book.

Eh fuck Alhambra they're selfish assholes especially all that shit about "taking back the rebellious provinces" and thinking they're SO much more important then everyone else.

Navrin · Sep 29, 2015

1986ctcel said:
Eh fuck Alhambra they're selfish assholes especially all that shit about "taking back the rebellious provinces" and thinking they're SO much more important then everyone else.

Well, yes; they're antagonists for a reason. I think their reason for being antagonists is a LOT more sympathetic than Storms, though, and a hell of a lot easier to actually work with.

Prediction: Stormite Emma will be dead or Dethroned within a month of in-game time.

Omegahugger · Sep 29, 2015

Navrin said:
Prediction: Stormite Emma will be dead or Dethroned within a month of in-game time.

Vote for it, read the story and we'll prove you wrong~<3

It is not like Hulk is the first Avenger to fall, after all.

1986ctcel · Sep 29, 2015

Navrin said:
Well, yes; they're antagonists for a reason. I think their reason for being antagonists is a LOT more sympathetic than Storms, though, and a hell of a lot easier to actually work with.

Prediction: Stormite Emma will be dead or Dethroned within a month of in-game time.

I think they're stupid since they wouldn't HAVE to be antagonists if they're just MOVE THEIR FUCKING CITY but nooooooooooooo it would make everything they sacrificed meaningless and not really necessary

Navrin · Sep 29, 2015

Omegahugger said:
Vote for it, read the story and we'll prove you wrong~<3

It is not like Hulk is the first Avenger to fall, after all.

Hulk is really, REALLY good at staying alive. Basically every single part of Tempesta's power encourages behaviour that decreases life expectancy markedly. Both from immediate violence and from Belief plummeting from horrific actions.

Especially since Emma's dicepool for breaking points will be very, VERY small.

Resolve + Composure = 4. +1 for Circle. -5 for premeditated murder. Chance die right there. That alone (which will be called for often unless they deliberately break Tempesta's ban a LOT) will drop Belief down to 3 or even lower. Then there's the nigh-inevitable Serial Murder that'll be showing up.

1986ctcel said:
I think they're stupid since they wouldn't HAVE to be antagonists if they're just MOVE THEIR FUCKING CITY but nooooooooooooo it would make everything they sacrificed meaningless and not really necessary

To be fair, there are a LOT of known and unknown dangers to moving their city. Their lives are in a MUCH more precarious position on Earth or even the Underworld (Where they'd honestly be a LOT better off). Moving their city to either position would entail ludicrously huge amounts of social change and a move from the very known dangers they're currently dealing with to a bunch they have little experience with and even more they cannot find out about until they're there.

Omegahugger · Sep 29, 2015

Navrin said:
Hulk is really, REALLY good at staying alive. Basically every single part of Tempesta's power encourages behaviour that decreases life expectancy markedly. Both from immediate violence and from Belief plummeting from horrific actions.

Especially since Emma's dicepool for breaking points will be very, VERY small.

Resolve + Composure = 4. +1 for Circle. -5 for premeditated murder. Chance die right there. That alone (which will be called for often unless they deliberately break Tempesta's ban a LOT) will drop Belief down to 3 or even lower. Then there's the nigh-inevitable Serial Murder that'll be showing up..

Collateral damage does not count as premediated murder, nor does killing creatures of Darkness or crimes of passion.

Hell, if we really want to avoid collateral damage, we simply aim to give Emma mainly single target skills. Voila, now the enemy have to actually take civilians hostage for us to have collateral damage and even then it'll be easier to manouvre around.

We alsodon't have to take the self-damaging abilities if we don't want to. We can go all out defense on the skill treeif it strikes our fancy.

Navrin · Sep 29, 2015

Omegahugger said:
Collateral damage does not count as premediated murder, nor does killing creatures of Darkness or crimes of passion.

Killing DARKENED is murder. So is killing Ravens. You did notice that that behaviour is expected, right? It's not "extremist" behaviour. It's at the core of the freaking philosophy that Emma would be diving headfirst into.

Extremist Stormite behaviour would be things like annihilating entire cities because they're "lost causes", preemptively murdering people who'd try to stop you from murdering people, and killing off non-Darkened because it seems likely that they will become Darkened at some point in the future.

And the others are still pretty bad Belief compromises that will help Belief drop rather quickly in the beginning.

Omegahugger said:
Hell, if we really want to avoid collateral damage, we simply aim to give Emma mainly single target skills. Voila, now the enemy have to actually take civilians hostage for us to have collateral damage and even then it'll be easier to manouvre around.

We alsodon't have to take the self-damaging abilities if we don't want to. We can go all out defense on the skill treeif it strikes our fancy.

And yes, that build is... theoretically possible. I don't see it happening, though. SB/SV/QQ in general seem a LOT more interested in killing things quickly and efficiently than anything else. And the core Tempesta powers all involve minimizing personal survivability in exchange for more firepower.

And no, I don't intend to read what happens if Storms wins because I loathe the idea of reading a Stormite's actions.

1986ctcel · Sep 29, 2015

Navrin said:
Killing DARKENED is murder. So is killing Ravens. You did notice that that behaviour is expected, right? It's not "extremist" behaviour. It's at the core of the freaking philosophy that Emma would be diving headfirst into.

Extremist Stormite behaviour would be things like annihilating entire cities because they're "lost causes", preemptively murdering people who'd try to stop you from murdering people, and killing off non-Darkened because it seems likely that they will become Darkened at some point in the future.

And the others are still pretty bad Belief compromises that will help Belief drop rather quickly in the beginning.

And yes, that build is... theoretically possible. I don't see it happening, though. SB/SV/QQ in general seem a LOT more interested in killing things quickly and efficiently than anything else. And the core Tempesta powers all involve minimizing personal survivability in exchange for more firepower.

And no, I don't intend to read what happens if Storms wins because I loathe the idea of reading a Stormite's actions.

And if losing your vote means we wind up doing that stuff?

Navrin · Sep 29, 2015

1986ctcel said:
And if losing your vote means we wind up doing that stuff?

Then I'll be doubly glad I am not reading it. If I was participating and things were so bad that I was literally the tie-breaking vote, or my arguments were needed to prevent that from happening, then my enjoyment of the story would be negative.

If it goes Stormite then this will be yet another of the hundreds+ quests I'm ignoring because they're far darker than I like or just don't interest me.

Also, one "cheerful" little fact... there is no lower-bound of age to become Darkened, and younger people generally have much lower defences against it than older people.

Also, yes, I am very aware that my opinion that Storms is both the most morally reprehensible Court and the least interesting set of characters is entirely subjective.

Lord Ultimus · Sep 30, 2015

So, where are we now?

Storms-36
Hearts-36
Swords-5
Spades-4
Tears-4
Mirrors-1

So, appropriately enough, we have an actual tie between Storms and Hearts. We also have 12 hours ~~until dawn~~ until the vote closes. So all you people who voted for something else, I'm sorry to say you have no real chance of winning. You guys should try to vote for either Storms or Heart, I should say.

Anyways, the last 12 hours starts now!

Salbazier · Sep 30, 2015

Navrin said:
Somebody is actually writing up an article on the courts of Pentacles, Wands, and Cups if you're interested.

Link?

Omegahugger · Sep 30, 2015

Navrin said:
Also, to the best of my knowledge, Earth Scorpion was involved early on, but after he stopped (possibly forming his own fork, I don't recall) the game diverged a fair bit. Quite possibly including Storms.

Sorry, didn't notice this edit before now.

Anyways, this is what he had to say on the subject (also made after my post):

Given I wrote the vast majority of the Tears, Storms and Mirrors pages the OP linked to and basically rebuilt the Twilight Queens into their current form [1], I can pick out elements from any of the Twilight Queens to support my argument. If I wanted to, I could argue that we should be playing Mirrors because the seer elements provide something the Radiant really need, and in many places Mirrors is counted among the Radiant. And that through Mirrors, Emma can learn to channel her queen bee instincts productively and that with the drive, we really can make her better and that as she grows, she can learn other Invocations so she can use Mirrors for her unique talents without letting it define her.
But I wrote the Twilight Queens so all of them are entirely playable - even as part of a Radiant party, as a dark magical girl working with the PCs - so of course I know that all of them can be played as flawed heroes. Especially on their own for a young Twilight Noble, they can be quite hard to tell from a just-starting Radiant. Because that's what the Twilight Queens are - they're foils to the Radiant (and thus like a lot of foils, they're broadly more interesting than the thing they're foiling).
[1] And that's why Queen of Mirrors is a strange seer living at the end of the rainbow who's constantly looking for the True Queen and who's sacrificed her own agency in the obsessive desire to find the one person who can make things right, rather than what certain other people wanted which is that she's a spoilt brat who wants people to be her playthings.

1986ctcel · Sep 30, 2015

Navrin said:
Then I'll be doubly glad I am not reading it. If I was participating and things were so bad that I was literally the tie-breaking vote, or my arguments were needed to prevent that from happening, then my enjoyment of the story would be negative.

If it goes Stormite then this will be yet another of the hundreds+ quests I'm ignoring because they're far darker than I like or just don't interest me.

Also, one "cheerful" little fact... there is no lower-bound of age to become Darkened, and younger people generally have much lower defences against it than older people.

Also, yes, I am very aware that my opinion that Storms is both the most morally reprehensible Court and the least interesting set of characters is entirely subjective.

Or people just split the vote like now.

Navrin · Sep 30, 2015

Salbazier said:
Link?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uQ6WdvYM-yfrxGAf4MIv6Fo-ETFWY2GLeD6J5rPCAr4/edit

There you go. It's still in initial writing steps so it's not even close to completed, but you might find it interesting.

1986ctcel said:
Or people just split the vote like now.

I... don't understand what you mean. As far as I can tell, either my vote/argument is needed or it won't change the result.

I don't want to participate in a quest with that kind of power struggle going on every round. I don't want to argue with people about which points are best. (Which isn't to say that I'm good at avoiding doing so, of course) I'm a LOT more interested in quests where my contributions are along the lines of providing ideas that are accepted, refined, or rejected and it's largely a united group deciding upon things. That's a lot more fun to me.

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