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

[Greymere]

Is this our first actual tie? I think it is. We've had some close calls before, but they always broke just before the voting period finished.

 

[Oblex]

[X] Gift her freedom.
[X] Gift her tools.

The former is my preferred option, I'll remove the latter if it stops freedom from winning.
I have more reasoning/thought but expressing/writing here is hard and I lack time. Short summary below:

- Inspiration. No. Leave Our Precious Softy Alone Thanks.
- Influence. Ah yes the force multiplier option. No.
- Tools. Distribute free guns to suspected terrorists. Still very bad but less bad than other options. We already know ash ghouls are easy to acquire anyway and they'll do that without us.
- Nothing. This is just inspiration^2. NO.
- Freedom. Permanently costs an action. Big ouch. Less stuff we can do. Most options over the current disaster and fits narratively with violet's controlling tendencies. We should've curbed this earlier, now we're paying for it. We'll keep paying for it unless we do something.

Edit: Softy's cult isn't perfectly wolf aligned, they don't want it all to end yet. There's an opportunity for us for us to push here and redirect it to something healthier/more normal. It will be hard but worst case is similar to the likely tools outcome anyway.
Likely tools outcome being that haven given terrorists guns they do terrorist things and then us as commission has to step in, cult gets killed/arrested, innocent casualties, softy implicated, have to use nepotism to try and bail her out. With freedom's failure this could happen in a less directly bloody manner but we would also be implicated.

Edit 2: Based solely off my knowledge of canon cultist simulator, the moth book appears to be about either the Long/Port Noon or The Painted River/The Vagabond, possibly both. The immortal Long can drink from the spring in Port Noon and forgetting/being forgotten and retiring there to live out their eternity in idle pleasures. This stops them from climbing the mansus. They do this to escape the otherwise Hour enforced inevitable fate of conscription or death. There isn't a river explicitly mentioned here to my recollection, but there is the special spring and Port Noon is built by the sea so presumably a river connects the two? Perhaps The Vagabond is facilitating/patronising the writer's escape, perhaps the Painted River is connected to Port Noon somehow?

Edit 3: Damnit @Talon Tiger Dino I meant that tools is bad but that's still better than influence. As in the difference between an isolated terrorist attack and handing control of the entire town to said terrorists, to become a terrorist recruiting centre to then affect the rest of Equestria. Still agree that freedom is our best option.

 

[Shaper47]

Furthermore, this missive seems to be surprisingly safe and tame, considering how old it is.

You should not expect this from other pieces of writing of this age.

Click to shrink...

Right, so I was kinda surprised at the lack of trait or other goodie from the book. 5+ books are special remember. But it seems the books safety had something to do about that.

Should probably remember to get more winter or at least have a personal max Winter influence at the same time as we go Even Further Beyond with Baldomare's lantern influence to get Moth 6.

 

[Witherbrine2671]

[X] Gift her inspiration

Knowing the line is important, that way we can make informed choices

 

[Talon Tiger Dino]

[X] Gift her freedom
[X] Gift her influence

All right, I've been convinced that just chucking murder rituals to Soft Sweeps miiiiight be subpar. Plus if we really shape this cult and can set Soft Sweeps to a higher involvement level, perhaps we can ask her with help reforming the Wolf, make that the big thing to help with. After all, the Wolf Divided is one of the few things Velvet cannot arbitrarily handle as an Hour, so best to get our ground game against him running as soon as possible.

Seriously, think about it, they are a weird Wolf therapy group, so turn them into a therapy group for the Wolf. It'll be the cult equivalent of turning some of his power into a particularly spicy pacemaker, it'll be great.

 

[Earth-Destroyer]

We cannot afford to lose out on an action when we are so close to to the final mission. The cult would not give us anything as we will win before it could possible pay off. The timeline for the cult being an overall positive is like 8-10 turns minimum. It two turns of nothing just to get the cult to minimum capability IE what the turn 1 cult was, then at least 3 mores turns to expand it to the point it can do well anything. When we are on track to win in 4-5 turns, it not even close to breaking even action wise.

Soft Sweeps can handle the town just fine, and frankly would be a better then mayor mare anyway.

 

[Greymere]

We cannot afford to lose out on an action when we are so close to to the final mission. The cult would not give us anything as we will win before it could possible pay off. The timeline for the cult being an overall positive is like 8-10 turns minimum. It two turns of nothing just to get the cult to minimum capability IE what the turn 1 cult was, then at least 3 mores turns to expand it to the point it can do well anything. When we are on track to win in 4-5 turns, it not even close to breaking even action wise.

Soft Sweeps can handle the town just fine, and frankly would be a better then mayor mare anyway.

Click to shrink...

We don't need them to be a huge, town-spanning cult. We need to make sure they make their entrance into the moonlit world in a well-controlled manner to avoid any accidental faceplanting into Wolf nonsense and to make sure we're giving Soft actual guidance and help instead of giving her something without any direction at all. We'd really like ritual support and some go-fers to dig up new expedition sites and look for new books. Soft's existing gathering should be just fine for that.

 

[Shaper47]

All right, I've been convinced that just chucking murder rituals to Soft Sweeps miiiiight be subpar

Click to shrink...

Chucking healing rituals on the other hoof is also part of the deal.

Besides don't you trust our daughter?

She can heal her little friends of any maiming or serious mental issues if she has healing rituals.

Plus if we really shape this cult and can set Soft Sweeps to a higher involvement level, perhaps we can ask her with help reforming the Wolf, make that the big thing to help with.

Click to shrink...

I'm pretty sure this falls under Inspiration.

How can you reform what you do not know afterall.

Seriously, think about it, they are a weird Wolf therapy group, so turn them into a therapy group for the Wolf. It'll be the cult equivalent of turning some of his power into a particularly spicy pacemaker, it'll be great.

Click to shrink...

I don't think things work like that.

It's Velvet's influence on the Wolf only, no other force in the world influences the Wolf.

After all, the Wolf Divided is one of the few things Velvet cannot arbitrarily handle as an Hour, so best to get our ground game against him running as soon as possible.

Click to shrink...

Maybe?

Shugs shoulders, we really don't know enough to say.

We know that Velvet can influence/corrupt the Wolf changing them but we don't know the details.

We need to either study the Stains or pick Inspiration or do another RA to find out more.