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Esquestria: The House of the Sun - A pony cultist experience

Reader mode
Sveta08 said:
Ha!

Don't lie to me. Or maybe don't lie to yourself.
Look back. No, no seriously, look back with me a moment. When? When have we and the thread ever considered The Filthy family anything more than an ends to a mean?

We met them and greeted them because we wanted bits. We worked with them because we wanted social influence. We consider helping the family so they would trust us.
We were happy that we found a broken marriage so that it wouldn't hurt us when we split it apart. When we found how wretched Spoiled was, people all but rejoiced! Here, we have someone who was our Moth Sacrament, and we would miss nothing about them!

There is exactly one person that we are sad for, and that's Silky. Because she made friends with Tiara, and how this will impact her might ripple on to our own life.


This?
This is exactly what we have wanted from the beginning. People treated as tools.

I don't agree with it, and I don't like it, but I recognize where we are. What the plan is.
We sold this "Talking to the Riches to be friends" coin a long time ago. It's just now that it's coming due.
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Trust me, you cannot convince the rationalist crowd to vote for socials without hammering on the material benefits ad nauseum. And at least in my case, I had thought that Marinette pretending to be Velvet would involve her, well, acting like an uncanny valley Velvet. Something more akin to the time she briefly became a Mary Poppins expy, not her just radiating grail vibes so intensely the parents ignore her drooling on their crying child. I still don't feel bad for Spoiled though; when your own daughter is more willing to call her teacher mom than you you know you've screwed up. I just feel bad that they'll keep their crappy loveless marriage as-is on our Name's advice.

AuthorTransient said:
Well, we can always choose to start caring about them now and not use the Leash. But the plan will need a little restructuring.
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Or you could just vote for one of my plans. Plan Spreading Ourselves Thin Always Gets Us Punished an Plan Wrap-Up are guaranteed to be 100% Leash-Free! And comes with useful Influences!
 
OurLadyOfWires said:
But anyways. My point is that, despite all of that, this quest has still been absolutely plagued by AP hell. Any claims that "things could have gone differently" carry the unspoken "at the expense of something we did". And I personally like the current Velvet, WITH her regrets (and I mean the non-Wolf ones) to the point that I am happy where she currently is.
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Gegh. You strike the right balance. It always feels like if we just had one more turn with where we were, at any point in time, we would be able to catch up.
It's good that we can't just do everything. Makes us have to choose, have to prioritize.

I like the Velvet we have here. Liked it enough that I hopped on even at the very tip-tail end of the other place. Liked it enough to keep checking on it despite the quiet, and to join here.

Here... we want to be perfect. But we can't. And every step keeps getting hit with "To handle this, you need to do something you are less comfortable with doing right now."
That... that pull? That tug between what is good, what is helpful, what is right and what is... clean? Wrong word, but close feeling.
I love it. Over the moon about it.

I'm happy. Just... man.
 
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spiderhellian said:
Yeah, agreed.

But when it comes to the Wasn'ts, I am exceedingly curious what the chance of running into Rarity/a Mane Six character was on that first "explore the town" action!
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Ah yes.

I have an excel sheet called "Event Roll Mechanics", and the rolls for social encounters is on the very first cell, since it was literally the first thing I had to come up with for the first plan/vote :V

Stuff has already been vastly changed. But still, the chances we had back then were (and this is verbatim from this ancient note):
80-100 Mane 6 (roll dice for whom)
60-80 figure of power (mayor, filthy rich, etc)
40-60 named character related to the 6?
20-40 convertible overachiever
0-20 convertible underachiever

Man my mechanics got a lot better over these last... (checks dates) four years. Ahahahahah.
 
Oh, also, when will we get the expedition for looting the absolute crap out of organized crime? We got a treasure map and everything!

EDIT: It's a book. We got to read it to unlock it. Maybe on the turn following this one we just sit down with Lantern stuffing us to the gills and study everything in a massive binge.
 
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OurLadyOfWires said:
Stuff has already been vastly changed. But still, the chances we had back then were (and this is verbatim from this ancient note):
80-100 Mane 6 (roll dice for whom)
60-80 figure of power (mayor, filthy rich, etc)
40-60 named character related to the 6?
20-40 convertible overachiever
0-20 convertible underachiever
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Hahahahaha 21%! A 3% chance of meeting Rarity in particular!

Funny how it all works out :V

Thanks for sharing! That spreadsheet must be such a cool perspective on the quest.
 
I'm probably too late to influence anything, but I want to know what would happen if we had Selene visit Luna's dreams, rather than spying on Windy. But maybe that's something we can do in the epilogue, depending on what OurLadyOfWires wants to write.
 
Steady Gaze said:
I'm probably too late to influence anything, but I want to know what would happen if we had Selene visit Luna's dreams, rather than spying on Windy. But maybe that's something we can do in the epilogue, depending on what OurLadyOfWires wants to write.
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Well Selene is Luna and Luna is Selene, so it'd just be lucid dreaming.

Now then:
6 Artifacts
3 Books of Worth
+74 to Studying if under the Influence
3 Book Studies or 2 Artifact Studies per Action

We hypothetically only need 4 Actions to slam all of our stuff out of the way. More realistically we'll need to spend 2 Book Studies on the Moth Tome, but we could just leave the Knock Book untouched as an Emergency Baldomare Gift, so that works out. Be a blisteringly quick turn for our Winged Wires to write though.
 
Hello everyone!

I've been following this quest as a lurker for over a year now, and though it may be somewhat late, I want to participate in it regardless. Very few stories have gotten me to buy a game that it's based in, much less in a genre I'm unfamiliar with and had no reason to believe I'd come to enjoy as much as I have.

That said, I have some thoughts I'd like to share.

A path to an ending has finally revealed itself with All In, but I think one of the things we're missing is that we don't have a defined, clear picture of when to commit. We want to shore up our resources in Name friends and sacraments, but the questions of which ones (of the latter, really) are needed and how difficult the expedition will be are standing questions that would probably direct the rest of the quests decisions.

It's more or less a given that we'll have Baldomare scry, but given that this is an endgame expedition, I'm expecting a pretty high resistance value to Tapestry. It'd be expensive, but I'd suggest a LV4 Lantern reagent when possible, or even using that LV4 artifact if/when it becomes most convenient. Every interval of 20 is going to matter. The more info we can get on the expedition, the better we can prepare ourselves preemptively.

I wouldn't prepare for this on this turn given that I'd prefer Forge's Redemption now, but I'd want to do this next turn for certain.

It's a bit late to think of a plan myself, but I'll consolidate my thoughts on current plans tomorrow.

I hope everyone has a wonderful night.
 
Talon Tiger Dino said:
We hypothetically only need 4 Actions to slam all of our stuff out of the way.
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If we have a Lantern influence there's also stuff like studying things in the Mansus or our stains.

Though I'd rather have things arranged so we'd be studying with Lantern Level 5 and Lantern influence.

Just get a lesson next turn and the influence the turn after along with a Sacrament.
 
Pittauro said:
It's subjective, but permanent brainwashing is not THAT far off from murder for me.
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Having a high Grail lore and a close relationship with someone should already rate as mind control. This Sacrament is just formalizing the deal.
While other personal Sacraments include murder, murder, three murders, and a different flair of mind control aimed to only deeply traumatize someone. And the other Grail Sacrament is murder and cannibalism, with expectations for more down the road. Because both Mareinette really won't be satisfied with just one instance and the action itself indicates PC's character realignment on what's is acceptable. (That's why I was baffled by some statements upthread in the vein of 'let's befriend Mareinette with just a single sacrifice and thus solve her problem forever', because there definitely would be some further expectations to maintain this friendship)

So morally it's very middle of the pack, together with the Moth one, less clean than the victimless Sacraments, but still far from the 'murders with extra steps' kind of Sacraments, miles less reprehensible than the alternative. Its problem is our dearth of Minions and no clear recipes to obtain more.
 
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[X] Plan Spreading Ourselves Thin Always Gets Us Punished

[X] Plan Wrap-Up
 
OurLadyOfWires said:
I wanted to write a Cadance POV from her own wedding, but I feared I wouldn't make it good enough. I am glad you shared this with us, it was great!

And the ritual was SICK! I wish you had given us a bit more context about it, because now I am curious about what that was about.
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The idea was to have a massive ritual that will give you a space to farm influences. Kind of another take on what it means to have the attention of the laws, it would draw a vague attention of all of them, and let you impress them much easier, to get whatever influence you want. Or influences. So basically anyone could go in there and leave with a few weak ones, or if they know what they are doing and do high symbolism things, a few strong ones.

Its why the secret histories option doesnt work, because SH influences dont work to my understanding. Also, the woods are substituting here for the sacrifices, I don't think i can justify something where anyone accidentally do lore stuff that hard without these circumstances.

Its kind of convoluted way to get at what I want, and i havent even written the payoff yet. Candace quest is suddenly going to have a bunch of boosts they have no idea to deal with. And 3 influences before they even know what lore is, which I think would be very funny.
 
des-pair-2 said:
I would vote for the non-leash leading plan, if detectives kept an eye on the Changelings, not foreign threats.
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If it was earlier in the voting cycle I would have made the change for you, but this far in I am hesitant to change something that the other voters may want untouched.
 
Steady Gaze said:
I'm probably too late to influence anything, but I want to know what would happen if we had Selene visit Luna's dreams, rather than spying on Windy. But maybe that's something we can do in the epilogue, depending on what OurLadyOfWires wants to write.
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Wait, I must be really out of it: I meant have Selene visit Twilight Sparkle's dreams, to give her therapy, agh 😂.
 
Steady Gaze said:
Wait, I must be really out of it: I meant have Selene visit Twilight Sparkle's dreams, to give her therapy, agh 😂.
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I think Velvet is currently trying to respect Twilight's wishes to leave her alone. I could see Selene or Cadence trying to do something about it on their own time (or Velvet eventually changing her mind), but she currently feels too guilty to order anyone to get near her.
 
OurLadyOfWires said:
Seeing what could have been, and what (to be honest) I had somewhat envisioned at the very beginning of the quest, is actually very, very wholesome.

I always wanted to flesh out Starry more. I really thought you would jive well with Copper. And Windy was always meant to be the "practical jokester" uncle. To see all of that, and more, here was really great.

So, honestly, thank you for sharing this.

And hey, lose the "silly". These were awesome! And take them off spoilers if you like. These are bona-fide good quality stories!

--------

And here as well. Lose the spoiler, and strike out the "silly". This was also very nice!

Your comment about "only" writing 2000 words as well. I get that feeling, every now and then. But really, don't worry about it. More cake is always more cake! I manage to feel proud about stuff that is even shorter (1.8k words), so don't sell yourself short.

Thank you for sharing this as well. Also, if you have a better title in mind for all three of them, let me know and I'll change it.
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Thank you. These have been wonderful to hear. I mainly did the spoilers out of respect to the discussion going on, but I've removed them. Thank you for the encouragement, and I'm glad that I was able to reflect your intentions so well!

For the first two... I might call those "The Velvet Tower" since it's a far more 'build high' version of our Velvet's 'build wide' thing.

The last one might as well be named after the Stallion himself, "Ashen Weaver". I do wonder if people actually want to see more of that one, since I wouldn't mind writing more Omakes following him. Whether he climbs the Mansus or not I'm not sure. I know he's DEFINITELY on a 'Harmony Victory' run, though. Which, combined with the Mansus entry trick, was the main reason I gave him Moth as the first Lore he encountered.
 
Sveta08 said:
Ha!

Don't lie to me. Or maybe don't lie to yourself.
Look back. No, no seriously, look back with me a moment. When? When have we and the thread ever considered The Filthy family anything more than an ends to a mean?
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Click to shrink...
Pitt did say that Velvet considers a friend. Not the thread.

For as much as we may be in part Velvet's 'subconscious', she does have a personality separate from this chaotic gaggle.
 
[X] Plan Spreading Ourselves Thin Always Gets Us Punished
 
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You, know, considering that the thread generally doesn't want to use Mareinette for people we actually want to befriend genuinely (last I checked)...

OurLadyOfWires said:
--[] In Ponyville
---[] You now have a better grasp of the merchants in Ponyville, having had several letters of introduction sent around in your name. But what would you like to do next?
----[] Meet a few of them, and ingrain them to your cause.
----[] They are bit handlers, and that means they are a source of income. Try to discuss with them about alternative sources of (legal) income.
----[] Something else. (WRITE IN)
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We had a couple of old options from before about the merchants. They're not listed anymore, but iirc Bird said before that they're still valid options to take. This would probably be a social thing that can abuse Mareinette's +90 to social stuff, right?

Since we should probably use the Grail Name for her specialty while we still have her.

Or maybe we could just keep sending her out to make new contacts until we finally meet the other two Elements.
 
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