[LP CYOA] Epic

[aleam iacis]

So BB would have worked. BA made Senya give in to his growing dark side which is giving him headaches, I guess? Also seems like it may have sickened Erika and made her think he was wrong about us, at least a bit.

 

[Baltika9]

B, time to start building favors and connections, and getting our karma meter back up while we're at it
On a side note

You stare at Nusku, who had his back to you.

“I will have so much fun with them. I’ll breed those Gutians with dogs and see how they pant at my feet!” Nusku giggles gleefully, and begins elaborating the number of inventive ways with which he will torture the Gutians. Though at first horrified, you begin to feel a dull anger instead numbing your feelings. All that is left is anger, disgust… and hunger.

Such a… thing… such an ugly thing. How could I permit it to live?

The rage you felt on a few occasions before returns slowly, simmering beneath your cold eyes. Nusku’s back was open.

Are you okay? Edem looks at you, his expression that of concern tinged with a slight bit of fear.

You do not reply.

Well… anytime you’re ready.

You feel the knots binding you loosen. You drop your façade. Nusku senses your disappearance, and turns to look at you. His eyes widen as he sees you are still there – unbound. Just what you wanted; you want him to look you in the eyes before you devour him. Nusku fumbles with his belt, trying to draw out his dagger, but you move far faster and crush his hand in your grip. He screams. You slam your fist into his body, knocking him to the ground. Straddling him, you begin to rain down blows upon his head. Blood and dark goo spatters your fists. The stunned Gieloth has no time to focus for his psychic attacks. Instead, he croaks out to Edem for help. No help comes.

Edem stands at a safe distance, watching the murder of his compatriot with no expression on his face.

You do not care. You rip into Nusku, savoring the sensation of the squirming black tendrils between your fingers, and you eat.
When you finish, you realize Edem is nowhere to be found.

Just like dear old dad.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Wow. Senya was a stone cold badass for a minute there. Come a long way from the weak nerd he was at the start.

A - Time to build more connections. Plus combat frames? Has someone been looking at our wishlist or what?

 

[TOME]

A - Combat frames. Plus it is a little more invisible than protecting national idol.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Yeah, talk about being recognized.

 

[Rex Feral]

B

 

[Baltika9]

Well, not such a tremendous concern, the only ones who recognized Senya were Rose, Babs and the cultist girl that listened to Keiko's detailed descriptions of Senya's machismo. I'm sure we will be fine with people that know absolutely nothing of us, the only risk is of Naim showing up to spoil the party (and even then, he may play stupid like when he allowed us to get away); the reason I am voting for B, though, is because it will most likely have us deal with supernatural, rather than technological, opponents. And since we're trying to get in touch with our Gieloth heritage, level our powers and understand what the hell is going on with our boy and how to control it, I think that should be right up our alley. Plus, protecting this idol may give us opportunities to get our karma meter back up by doing good deeds, get us some humanity points back and show Erika that we aren't going down shitter morality-wise, as opposed to going into a criminal hideput and engaging in more grimdarkery.

Also, this will be better for building our political contacts for when we clear our name and find Kyrie, kind of like Ean having a dual persona as Runi and then revealing it at the right time for maximum benefit, to build upon that and increase our subsequent popularity. Sure, she's not a politician, but she is a celebrity (probably a popular one, seeing as she'll be starring in the Grettest Film Evar) and her favor may help us out in the long run.

Speaking of intel, this excursion of ours netted us some pretty sweet materials: a Staff of Teleportation, The Codex Gieloth and someone's (Sekhenun's? Remember, she was the head scientist under Ean and continued tinkering with teleportation for a long time after his disappearance) research notes; whatever our next mission turns up, we should use it to maximize our standing in the agency, not because I want to kiss-up to Azo, but because getting greedy will bite us in the ass

“I see. Well, I wish I could give you some rest, but we received some bad news this morning.”

“What is it?”

“Ten thousand people committed group suicide overnight, leaping from various tall buildings around Higashi. They posted about their intention on 7ch shortly before doing so. All of them were prominent members in that community.”

“I see. What do you need me to do, sir?”

“Nothing much. This is a serious job for the veterans. We already have a lead. Someone with the online handle of Cyber Jack claims responsibility. Of course, it could be just a wacko aiming for internet fame, but we aren't ruling anything out for now. I have other duties for you to do, since most of our men are busy tracking down this Cyber Jack.”

bullshitting them will be easy, but if we don't build a solid rep, we won't get access to the bigger and more involved missions and, hence, we may lose out on important clues (maybe even miss a cue as to Kyrie's trail) and that's never good.

Oh, and I wouldn't be worried about CF's, since we're working for the government, I'm pretty sure that they'll give us one if we need it; that, and we still have the Onuris we highjacked and hid in Hispalis.

P.S.: that psychotic rage was rather unsettling, even moreso than Gallardo's drugged-up necrophilia (by the way, treave, was that always a planned aspect of the character, or is it a parody of all the jokes we made at his expense?)
This is some Mengele-level shit, we'd better learn to control it quickly. Meditation, maybe?

 

[Azira]

A
Combat frames? Don't mind if I do.

 

[ScubaV]

Wow, that got dark. You guys wanted killing, you got some mofuckin' grimdark killing.

Current choice: I don't see how this is even close.

A - Did I read combat frames?
B - Lame choice for lamers.

A

Damn crazy Master proxies and their sacrifices...B

Flippity flap A

 

[TOME]

The chief thinks I should be able to handle an assignment of this magnitude, as I'm not expected to bring down the entire organization by myself.

Baltika9, think of the rep when we do bring down the entire organization by ourselves

 

[Kipeci]

A, obviously.

But I'll flop for the lulz.

 

[Baltika9]

I'm more concerned about this Cyber Jack fellow, the mass sacrifices he provoked (I remember Naram sacrificing ten thousand people to bring a Master into his body) and the rep we'll build by milking info on him on our next assignment.

Really, we're leaning heavily to the supernatural side, I don't understand why we should care about robotic upgrades and stolen CFs that we can obtain ourselves (not to mention we have one stashed away somewhere). We don't need those things now, we can instead focus on unlocking esoteric powers like telepathy, lightning and psionics an' shit.
Edit: Ah, here we go

When you asked if the god was in Ankida, Runikylos shook his head. He had a palace within the wastelands of Olympus, where no one ventured. Ten thousand labourers had been brought there to construct it, and then one by one walled into the pillars as a living sacrifice, and also to keep the existence of this palace a secret.

 

[Storyfag]

B, as per Baltika's reasoning. Even though I would prefer to completely focus on the other world - ask the cultist girl what they learned about the place, read the book, etc.

Flopped to A

 

[Esquilax]

Great reasoning from Baltika.

B it is.

Flopped back to B

 

[ScubaV]

Fine, I'll flop even though I really don't want to.

 

[Zwist]

Yeah, good reasoning there baltika. If its not a decoy of course. Still: Floppity.
Also, we got some meta info in the snippet. I really did not want to act upon that, but now there are other reasons: Neutralising the guy able to hack into our boss' brain is a pretty big priority.

 

[treave]

There is nothing supernatural about the Gieloth, immortals and the Masters. I thought that much should have been obvious by... what... a couple hundred pages ago? It's not that kind of setting. Also, I'll just point out that the ten thousand sacrifices was after the Master had been summoned. The Master came through the portal that Sekhenun opened. It's fine to jump to wild conclusions, but perhaps you might want to double-check the information again before you do so, since it looks like everyone is going to take what is said at face-value because it sounds plausible.

As for the 'psychotic rage', I hope my writing isn't that bad that people could mistake that for some sort of uncontrollable berserking impulse ala Ean. It's always been part of the character and has been hinted at for some time.

 

[Baltika9]

"Supernatural" was a figure of speech, bro. Maybe "superhuman" would have been more accurate, since summoning fire and cutting reality apart is unusual. "Esoteric?"

Also, I'll just point out that the ten thousand sacrifices was after the Master had been summoned. The Master came through the portal that Sekhenun opened. It's fine to jump to wild conclusions, but perhaps you might want to double-check the information again before you do so, since it looks like everyone is going to take what is said at face-value because it sounds plausible.

Well, you did mention that masters need human sacrifices to manifest in our reality

When Marduk succeeds it will bring down a lot more attention from the guys behind the immortals, which means that they may attempt other things.
Quickly create many more immortals first, by spreading out the powers of those that currently have them and then having them go into hiding until they are collectively strong enough (Ean got a defective batch of voices which he works with as equals, Shulgi has conquered his voices, Naram follows his voices)
If that fails get the immortals to sacrifice humans to create more avatars
If that fails possibly wipe the planet

and there was another one that said "the more, the better," although I'm having trouble finding it now (I vividly remember writing "man, fuck these guys"); so, yeah, that begs the question of "why did the Naram-Master sacrifice those lives?" Esquilax mentioned something about bringing those monsters into our reality.

As for Senya's little "episode," it's not an insult to your writing skills. That just was "fucked up," as Gallardo would say. Speaking of him

even moreso than Gallardo's drugged-up necrophilia (by the way, treave, was that always a planned aspect of the character, or is it a parody of all the jokes we made at his expense?)

 

[Esquilax]

and there was another one that said "the more, the better," although I'm having trouble finding it now (I vividly remember writing "man, fuck these guys"); so, yeah, that begs the question of "why did the Naram-Master sacrifice those lives?" Esquilax mentioned something about bringing those monsters into our reality.

I don't want to look for the exact quote, but basically the gist of it was this: for a Master to manifest in our dimension, it needs to displace sentient lives to make its transition between dimensions possible. The more human beings are "displaced" (i.e. killed), the closer the Master is to the original power that it has on home turf. The monsters were probably a product of interplanar meddling by Naram-Master in its effort to become a god among gods. Not sure about the last one though.

As for the choice itself, yeah, we have to be careful about metagaming leading us astray. It's easy to come to some pretty wild and inaccurate conclusions that way, and I'm worried that might be the case here. I think it's important to keep in mind that just because there might not be an obvious esoteric link between the CF's in the choice in A, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. After all, I hardly think any of us expected busting a kidnapping ring to turn into an interdimensional cultist clusterfuck.

A does seem like an obvious opportunity for a lot of useful contacts and probably clues to Kyrie's whereabouts from people in the criminal underworld.

 

[treave]

Well, he needed to prepare the world to turn into a sphere. For that he needed to construct his palace, which served as a focal point. The labourers were sacrificed for that. Nah, was being tongue in cheek about the writing. It's pretty clear as to what happened, but why exactly might be less obvious.

 

[Baltika9]

A does seem like an obvious opportunity for a lot of useful contacts and probably clues to Kyrie's whereabouts from people in the criminal underworld.

Why do we want criminals on our side over a public figure, though (and what makes you think they know of Kyrie's whereabouts?), if we'll be going into straight-laced politics later on (Imperial Confederacy of Man, forwards! "Emperor in name only," suckers), we'll need all the political favors we can get. If we wanted to life a life of crime, then we should have chosen the Tom Hagen option, too late for that now, we either snitch them out and confiscate the goods, or bring their house down and confiscate the goods.

Considering that we're leaning towards the esoteric, why would we need their augments? Although appropriating the CFs for our future cultist death squads is an interesting option.

And I think B is the slow and quiet option that will turn into "oh goddammit"

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Senya's butchery is all cuz we picked the gieloth book, isn't it?


Also, guys, B just leads to:
1. Us getting seen on TV and exposed.
2. Us getting so knee deep in this cyber-jack BS that we can't see the big picture (again) and get screwed over because of it (again).

Don't forget that our goal is to secretly built our contacts and connection so we can find out about the big picture - not to mention Kyrie. Investigating the disappearances was a good start at gaining perspective. We have the eye-crested book (gieloth), we learned how to shatter people all at once, we gained a valuable cultist ally, and we now know about the mirror world and have a way to travel there at will (We kept the rod that works - right, treave?). A will give us even more contacts so we can find out what really is going on in this world and possibly more tools to fight with (combat frame? illegal cyber weapons? who knows).

We got into this mess (and allowed the downfall of the oldest monarchy on the planet) by trying to be the hero at every opportunity. Let's go for the option that gives us some perspective this time, rather than hollow praise that will doubtless cease once we are inevitably betrayed by our government "allies". Again.

Besides, do we really give a damn if more japanese than usual kill themselves?

 

[treave]

Oh, B will have CFs too. Naim needs stunt pilots to beat up.

 

[aleam iacis]

Baltika, I think a CF could take most Gieloth's and most immortals. Most powers are not directly super effective. The only time Ean really used as much force as we could get regularly piloting a CF were where at Tjaru (or one of those battlegrounds) where he crushed one Gieloth into a pulpy ball and was terribly weakened, and then when he hit a fault line to get rid of another and lost his powers for a few decades(would have been centuries except for Sekhenun/voices).

Ean was strong because he was a good warrior, a good leader, and used his powers to maximum tactical effect. Without his sekh-blade or part of Vajra even at his peak strength, I doubt he could beat a decently well piloted (Jean level, let's say) CF in open combat unless he made excellent use of the terrain and his tactical abilities to hit a weak point or overused one his abilities (energy spear/telekinesis) to the point of collapse/exhaustion. So a different immortal of his age/strength would likely fail, since Ean was both one of the most powerful and an expert at battle.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Eh, high-level telekinesis could rip off a cf's jets or plain crush it into a ball of scrap. Shooting fireballs, hurling boulders, lighting ala Nabu. Ean wasn't very creative with the use of his powers til the end.

Moot point since it looks like cfs will be in store either way. The real retarded thing is thinking a celebrity will be a more useful ally than a massive smuggling organization loaded with weapons, tech, and probably high-level connections if they're able to smuggle entire CFs.

Whatever. Codex gonna codex.