[LP CYOA] Epic

[Baltika9]

Esquilax: Agree to disagree. As good as 2B is, and it is good, 2C seems better to me: it's the most secure choice that takes advantage of every resource that we have on the battlefield (which is not much, granted) and backs itself up. If we bust in and kill Zeus and get his body out of there (throw the fucker off the cliff, we're on top of one) our psychic blank status will allow us to sneak away and pick it up on the bottom. I'm wondering if we can't pull off a battlefield assassination. If we have no time to hide him, okay, we still have Edem in the room and Ares charging up the hill, plus two thirds of Vajra in our hands, which means he lost (I also really want to speak to the guy, find out what his motivations are, he intrigues me). Then there's this:

Quick, ask me whether the toxin will actually work on something with the job description "Avatar of the Masters"!

Sek still has the statuette, unfortunately.

She's being a bad girl again?

You guys should just come up with something that'd be persuasive enough. It doesn't need to be much, she will take the excuse you offer, but she won't easily let herself be sent away 'just because it's too dangerous'.

I've got something persuasive right here:

I'm warning you, woman, go home.

Seriously though, we may even be able to turn her into an asset. Have her LARP a dying Greek soldier, put on some bloody armor, get the weapons and have her relay a message to Ares, something along the lines: "Great Ares, it was the heathen Runi that did this to us. He fell upon us from ambush, shunning manful combat like the dog that he is and ran on to lick his masters' boots. But his reward was to die and be...eaten by that...monster that assaults our Gods even now. He also asked to tell you this: "r00fles."

What I'm getting at is if we give her something important to do, she will do it and, even better, not have her pride battered. Best of both worlds.

Edit2: Or, what ScubaV said. Of course, we're still running the risk of her bumping into Ares. Poor girl's fucked whatever she does, in some cases literally.
treave, are there no other paths off Olympus?

And I think we should be ready for Zeus' consort to throw a spanner in someone's works.

 

[ScubaV]

Treave, quick question: will the toxin will actually work on something with the job description "Avatar of the Masters"?

Idea for Iltani: cut our palm and drain some blood into a waterskin or something. Tell her that we don't have time to explain, but that we need her to deliver it to Sekhenun as fast as possible. It seems like a convenient excuse and if worse comes to worst maybe we can spend the next ten thousand years regenerating from a few red blood cells.

 

[Esquilax]

Esquilax: Agree to disagree. As good as 2B is, and it is good, 2C seems better to me: it's the most secure choice that takes advantage of every resource that we have on the battlefield (which is not much, granted) and backs itself up. If we bust in and kill Zeus and get his body out of there (throw the fucker off the cliff, we're on top of one) our psychic blank status will allow us to sneak away and pick it up on the bottom. I'm wondering if we can't pull off a battlefield assassination. If we have no time to hide him, okay, we still have Edem in the room and Ares charging up the hill, plus two thirds of Vajra in our hands, which means he lost (I also really want to speak to the guy, find out what his motivations are, he intrigues me).

We don't have light manipulation and Hera is right next to him. Let's have a rundown of potential assassination targets at Olympus:

Marduk - Killing him is our entire purpose here. It won't be easy, but circumstances are never going to be as easy as they are now and we have the element of surprise working in our favour. However, there's the question of "... and then what?" We kill him, take his piece of Vajra... and then what? We'll be caught in between Zeus and Hera on the mountain, and Ares cutting off our retreat.
Shamash - This tilts the odds in favour of the Olympians. It would slow down Marduk's progress enough for Ares to get here, but then what would we do if the Olympians won and we're sitting there with our piece of Vajra? Zeus is no more our friend than Marduk is.
Edem - He's the closest thing we have to an ally. I'd love to warn him about Ares so that he can pull back to safety and uses his psionics to sic Ares on Marduk when the time is right. Considering the effort we're taking in reassembling Vajra, we may not have time. I hope Sek placed another tracker on us before we left Babylon, maybe we'd be able to work together easier that way.
Hera - Makes Marduk's job even easier. Hera will buy time for both Ares' arrival and for us to gather the pieces of Vajra, don't touch her.
Zeus - This is paints a bullseye on us. Worse yet, Marduk might be able to devour Zeus anyways. Even if that doesn't happen, we'll be right in the line of fire - how are we going to deal with Hera's psionics, not to mention Marduk and Shamash since we've exposed ourselves? We can't easily escape with Ares probably at the bottom of the summit. (i.e. same problem as Marduk)

Maybe my analysis is wrong here, perhaps somebody else has a different take. Storyfag, you seemed to like the idea of going after Shamash, maybe he could explain why. But from my perspective, I don't see the benefits of assassination on any of the targets for the reasons I mentioned. Because of that, we need a different strategy: use the chaos of the battlefield, our blank presence, and our telekinetic abilities to our advantage by taking Zeus and Marduk's components of Vajra while they're distracted. Once Marduk devours Zeus, we'll even the odds with a reassembled Vajra. With a properly guided intervention by Ares and Vajra with us, odds are good.

Getting the pieces of Vajra seems like the best bet and it's consistent with our actions. We brought Ares here to (1) save Egypt and (2) to use as bait against Marduk if he were to get too powerful.

Yeah, I'll go with ScubaV's suggestion regarding Iltani.

Edit: Or actually, what about this: tell Iltani to find a place to hide or to play dead so she can keep an eye out for Ares. When he reaches Olympus, she would wait until the coast is clear, then light a bonfire as a signal to warn us of his arrival. It'd let us know how close Ares is to our position, and it would eliminate the risk of her getting caught and killed. He isn't much of a telepath, so it would work.

A dead Iltani and the Ean rage that would follow would be a disaster here, so we need to keep her alive.

 

[Baltika9]

However, there's the question of "... and then what?" We kill him, take his piece of Vajra... and then what? We'll be caught in between Zeus and Hera on the mountain, and Ares cutting off our retreat.

Would you be so kind as to tell me why we need to fight him? All we need to do is outrun him. Also, we'll have two Alpha-=level psykers running down the cliff. His Psy-fu is not stronger than Ean's and it certainly isn't stronger than Edem M. Junior's. We can just push him out of the way and run like a cheetah, or whatever our running speed is comparable to. Theoretically we could try to communicate with Edem ourselves and rush Marduk yelling "OLYMPUS!" at the top of our lungs, for morale. And then run like hell. Or jump off the cliff. Also, we should eat Marduk. Not devour, but eat. Like we did with everyone else.

treave: can't Ean just telekinetically launch poisoned arrows at Zeus? Because that sounds like a good idea to me.

Edit:

A dead Iltani and the Ean rage that would follow would be a disaster here, so we need to keep her alive.

Actually, Ean happens, everyone dies doesn't sound all that bad. Not the best option, but certainly not the worst.

[This Iltani discussion is getting stupid]

Why thank you, I try my best.

 

[Computer Gamer Refugee]

Guys, Iltani is not some mamby-pamby WASP. This is the warrior daughter of a warrior king, in a time when living past 30 was a ripe old age. She will be no stranger to death and if she comes along and sacrafices her life to save us it will be no stain on our honor or hers.

Let her come along. She will probably die, but that is not nearly the hardship then as it is in the 20th century.

Seroiusly this was even before the time when grabbing and killing one in ten of your own soldiers was considered an accecptable form of punishment.

Hell live or die, she will have made it into legends.

 

[Baltika9]

Guys, Iltani is not some mamby-pamby WASP. This is the warrior daughter of a warrior king, in a time when living past 30 was a ripe old age. She will be no stranger to death and if she comes along and sacrafices her life to save us it will be no stain on our honor or hers.

Let her come along. She will probably die, but that is not nearly the hardship then as it is in the 20th century.

Seroiusly this was even before the time when grabbing and killing one in ten of your own soldiers was considered an accecptable form of punishment.

Hell live or die, she will have made it into legends.

She has also been raised to books and academia, to be a governor, not a warrior. Sure, she knows how to use a sword, but she won't be able to compare to a professional soldier, not to mention an Immortal. Her death would be worse than meaningless. Killing eveyone is not the worst option, but I'd rather get the best one available.

 

[treave]

Treave, quick question: will the toxin will actually work on something with the job description "Avatar of the Masters"?

It'll work on the host.

As for paths down Olympus, you took the easiest one up. There's definitely other ways down which involve traversing wild terrain.

 

[kazgar]

http://www.myspace.com/trailofdead

As for paths down Olympus, you took the easiest one up.

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead

 

[treave]

Well, let me know when you guys have reached a consensus. I might adopt another style after this chapter: I write the update, give you guys a day or two to discuss, and then I provide the CYOA options after checking your discussions. That would be a better balance I think.

 

[TOME]

Esquilax: Why wait till Marduk devours Zeus? I just don't get that part. It is what Marduk is trying to achieve, it is what makes him ûber powerful. Zeus and all the other immortals on Olympus aren't the same kind of threat to us and to humanity. We know that if we do nothing, Marduk will defeat Zeus and Hera. We also know that fighting against Marduk is winnable. So why not go straight to Zeus and take him out and get rid of his corpse someway, either by eating it or carrying it away? We can let Marduk then kill rest of the immortals and do what ever he wants next. Marduk devouring Zeus is the only thing that we need to stop here now and nothing else. Everything else is secondary at this moment.

I do like your Iltani idea though. Just tell her to run to nearest town after setting up that fire.

 

[Baltika9]

To reiterate: seems to me that the only way to prevent the Masters from getting psyched out mashing the big red button is to kill Marduk before he gets to Zeus. That means ambushing Marduk on the battlefield with Edem.
treave: can Ean use telekinesis to pump Zeus full of poisoned arrows?

 

[treave]

Uh, right now I strongly suggest you guys stick to the outline I gave (feed, don't feed, how you go up the mountain - charge or sneak, Vajra, and what to do with Iltani) because you're discussing how to take down Marduk and Zeus and what happens when you do, and unfortunately you don't even know how things are going to be when you get there given the plan (or current lack of) you guys have for going up the mountain. Remember, you guys are still going up the mountain, you aren't there yet, no guarantee that you are going to get there before Marduk, no guarantee Shamash is going to obediently let you devour him while fighting side by side with his liege, and definitely no guarantee that you can sneak up on Zeus, given that you've never seen him before and never been to his palace.

That should make things easier to decide?

 

[Baltika9]

How about telepathically contacting Edem, can we do that?
Edit: according to the circumstances, a battlefield ambush on Marduk with Edem's help is our best shot.
That means sneaking up to their position, avoiding the fighting. Have Iltani do her thing with the beacon, and run to town once Ares gets a good distance from her and keeping our Vajra fragment. Any power boost is good, beside, Marduk has one too so we have to take every advantage we can get. And I strongly suggest that Ean yells "Olympus" until his voice breaks. I don't want to be confused for a pincushion. Also, once we're in there, we might want to project an Immortal's presence.
Edit: Esquilax 's new C, but keep the piece of Vajra. I've made my decision, so I'm ready. To everyone who's been quietly observing, get the votes in, I want to finish the motherfucker and go home. We have some important shit to do.
Although I imagine Sekhenun will be none too pleased that Zeus survived, and I think she wants him out of the picture not just because. Remember, there are two more steps before the exterminatus. And Iltani should just go ahead with the bonfire plan and head to the village once Ares passes her.

 

[treave]

You'll need to get closer to the battle to pull that off. You're not a very strong telepath, and he can't find you either.

 

[Esquilax]

OK I see, I've been putting the cart before the horse. treave, would not feeding have consequences for Ean other than power loss? I mean, would Ean be more likely to lose control and feed on anything in sight?

Okay, with the info that treave mentioned, your plan sounds a bit more plausible, Baltika9. If we kill Zeus (and I stress the "if" part), we can't go back where we came from because that would just leave us sandwiched by Marduk and Ares. However, a distraction from Ares and a fight between them will cover our retreat. We'd probably encounter Artemis/Athena in the wilds.

So it amounts to this. Our immediate action will depend on what we intend to do long-term:

A) Send Iltani back to Babylon with our fragment of Vajra, since we won't be needing it for what we're doing and we want her to get back safely. Then sneak through the battlefield with the intention of making our way towards Zeus.

B) Send Iltani back to Babylon with our fragment of Vajra, since we won't be needing it for what we're doing and we want her to get back safely. Once we reach the battle, go charge into Marduk's forces to stall him.

C) Sneak into Marduk's ranks, getting close enough to reach Edem so that you can formulate a plan together telepathically. This risks having the big man notice us, but we might be able to work something together. In this plan, bring Vajra, and tell Iltani to find a place to hide so she can keep an eye out for Ares. She can alert us by lighting a bonfire at the bottom of the mountain for us after Ares has passed. She hasn't seen him before, but it shouldn't be too hard to recognize the inhumanly fast, solitary man coming up the mountain.

Edit: Baltika9, what about something like this:

Don't feed (wastes time), send Iltani back to Babylon with Vajra. The piece that we have is barely able to stay within our robes, if it flies off, Marduk will know we're here. We don't need strength now, we need cunning. So what we'll do is make our way towards Edem and telepathically ask him to stall Zeus by warning him of Ares' arrival. Once Ares finds and attacks Marduk, we jump into the fray and kill both of them and Shamash with Edem's betrayal aiding us. After this, we should feed on Shamash (but not Marduk) and make our way toward Zeus.

 

[treave]

You're unlikely to lose control just yet, but if you get pushed into a near death situation with a high level of hunger you might go berserk(er), which has its advantages.

 

[Baltika9]

Esquilax: Good idea. I dub this plan...option D. If we go berserk, it will be good timing, only we must, must warn Edem to get away as far as possible if that happens. Like, run a mile away.

 

[Esquilax]

Esquilax: Good idea. I dub this plan...option D. If we go berserk, it will be good timing, only we must, must warn Edem to get away as far as possible if that happens. Like, run a mile away.

Fortunately, with Ares serving as a useful distraction/meatshield, a timely betrayal from Edem, and the element of surprise on our side, we can come out of this one relatively unscathed. But yeah, this is much better than the previous plan of trying to pickpocket the other pieces of Vajra from Marduk and Zeus. That plan depends entirely on Marduk doing the exact thing we came to stop in the first place, so it's completely counterintuitive.

I'm sure that most of the voters don't want sift through a wall of text so I'll alert everyone if they want to change their vote: newcomer Kipeci ScubaV Bloodshifter Azira Lambchop19 Smashing Axe TOME Kukulkan Tigranes

For those of you who don't want to read all that shit in the last page, I don't blame you. The previous plan was this:

Sneak through the battle, waiting for Marduk to unleash his trump card on Zeus. At that point, use your telekinetic abilities to take both Zeus and Marduk's pieces of the Vajra. With a fully assembled Vajra, you'd stand a fighting chance against Marduk.

However, given a lot of the new info treave gave us, it doesn't seem really bright or very feasible, since the upcoming choice is more about how we approach Marduk's army and with what tools (i.e. charging/sneaking, feed/don't feed, bring the Vajra fragment/Don't). The previous plan also doesn't really give us an idea on what to do about Iltani.

Given that we don't have light manipulation and the presence of our Vajra fragment on the battlefield might result in Marduk getting wise to us or trying to get our piece, it's best not to bring it along and attract his attention before the time is right. We also know that depriving ourselves of feeding is only really a disaster scenario if we're close to dying - but luckily, with Ares' intervention, that'll be his job. So the new proposal is this. Fuck it, let's call it D:

D: Don't feed because we can't afford to waste any time, then send Iltani back to Babylon with Vajra in tow. The piece that we have is barely able to stay within our robes, if it flies off, Marduk will know we're here. We don't need strength here, we need cunning. So what we'll do is make our way towards Edem and telepathically ask him to stall Zeus by warning him of Ares' arrival. Once Ares finds and attacks Marduk, we jump into the fray and surprise Marduk's forces.

After this, we could feed on Shamash (but not Marduk) and make our way toward Zeus' palace along with Edem as our backup bro. We'd also be able to pick off Marduk's Devourer fragment.

D


Baltika9: Why would we do that? Ares is coming by anyways, he can rally the Greeks himself. All we need to do is sit back and then take Marduk and Shamash by surprise when the time is right. Besides, I don't want the Greeks to be in good shape after this.

If we decide to play it safe and stop only at killing Marduk, perhaps we can simply return to Babylon. I suspect that Zeus won't be in a position to attack us for a while with his entire country in shambles and half of his pantheon dead.

 

[Baltika9]

Also, we should pretend to be an Immortal and yell "Olympus". Hopefully they mistake us for Ares. That will inspire the remaining Greek soldiers. I insist.
Esquilax: Unless it interferes with our fighting abilities, why not? After we jump Marduk we can start projecting the presence. The more edges we have, the better. And a motivated army is useful. Besides, imagine their faces when we turn around and start slaughtering them. It will be priceless.

 

[treave]

To be clear, this is because you're on a battlefield. Killing on a battlefield doesn't go against Ean's sensibilities (luckily, or he'd never be able to fight again without risking eating everyone), so he'll only really lose control if he was, for example, struck with immense fear from some source, causing his control to slip. If the terror twins are around at this point they could easily push him over the edge.

Anyway, the usual "eat the bad" feelings still apply.

 

[ScubaV]

Alright, I guess D sounds fine. This is why I didn't want total open choices. Hopefully the new plan will work better.

 

[Tigranes]

OK, D, and exactly as ScubaV says.

 

[Storyfag]

Alright, I guess D sounds fine. This is why I didn't want total open choices. Hopefully the new plan will work better.

This^

 

[Kukulkan]

D it is.

 

[Bloodshifter]

D seems good of course only if we shapeshift out of our Runi costume and pretend that we are not an invisible presence we can give a telepathic "signal" off to show that we are human right? (even immortal is fine)