[LP CYOA] Epic

[Azira]

B. You learn of the Gieloth's purpose here, and the extent of their capabilities. Why did they come? What do they want? What is the organization of their civilization? Do they have factions? How powerful are they? How long do they live? As Sekhenun is an accomplished researcher of her people, you will come to know more about the Gieloth than even most Gieloth themselves.

...

B. Sekhenun weaves together some fragments of Pahnrath's knowledge and explains to you how to use that knowledge - manipulation of light. You can now absorb light from a limited area, allowing you to cloak yourself in darkness or temporarily blind others. There may be future applications of light manipulation as you develop this power.

We need to know more about the Gieloth. We have the voices to brief us on our own purpose, but as to the Gieloth, it seems we can find no better source than the one we're currently interviewing.
And as for the power, being able to bend light is Awesome. Lasers and invisibility seem plausible, given time. What's not to like here?

 

[Kipeci]

While the first B is still better than the first A, I don't see how a history lesson on the Gieloth outranks hacking into their global communications and locations. It's like we're choosing one lecture over Internet access; in all probability, being in their communications would give us a decent knowledge of what we need to know about Gieloth. Also, knowing their locations would really help us to find any shying away from being publicly worshipped. We only discovered the Egyptian ones on a fluke; don't expect the rest of them in the world to be that easy to find, especially since they'll get the hint if we keep killing off the more obvious ones.

 

[XenomorphII]

2. C sounds like a terrible idea. I mean great we have this sword that makes us awesome, but it takes a part of us, and neither we (nor Sek) seem to know what that will do or mean for us. Also give it some time and that sword will become a crutch, and you can bet that someone like Naram (or any other enemies we make later on) will find out about it and make sure it disappears from our side. It will likely become something we become dependent on (at least in the context of dealing with other powers) and it will become a terrible weakness for us.

 

[m4davis]

BC

 

[Kipeci]

You heal the rib, it doesn't matter that it takes a part of us. We've lost a hand in the past for no benefit to speak of and had no bad effects, a rib for an awesome weapon is a much better trade.

 

[Baltika9]

You heal the rib, it doesn't matter that it takes a part of us. We've lost a hand in the past for no benefit to speak of and had no bad effects, a rib for an awesome weapon is a much better trade.

Yeah, but it's a part of us. We lose it, someone like Shulgi recovers it, and may learn our abilities from it, or study us through it, as it is a part of our body. Too much a risk, and besides that it could honestly become a crutch, and we would become useless with it. The smart man develops his own skills and uses crutches as a last resort.

 

[Urist McLurker]

BB

About 2. C, from what I've understood, it'll enhance our abilities when we have it with us. It'll only be a weakness to us if we become dependent on it; perhaps such a weapon would be best used as a trump card, kind of like an adrenaline shot to our powers rather than something we have to rely on to keep going. When shit gets serious, Honourblade is brought out and suddenly we're much more powerful; able to deal with anything.

I can also see it being useful for something like healing. Lost both our legs? Carry Honourblade with us to heal faster.

Of course I'm pretty terrible at understanding anything so maybe I've misunderstood the whole thing. Though I believe 2.B is a far better choice regardless.

 

[Kipeci]

So how about we don't lose it? Our strength and marshal prowess should be sufficient to hold onto our damn sword like every other weapon we've had. I would think also think that our powers-- caving in faces and mind rape-- are pretty evident from what they've seen.

We can already beat them to a pulp without the sword physically, but we can't stand up to them in other categories other than maybe a mind rape supreme. Is it a crutch? Maybe, but it's better for a man with a broken leg to use a crutch rather than to try to support himself on his injury. Without this, we're useless in categories other than our specialties, true, but light magic won't improve that fact. Besides, we'd probably ditch levelling up in light magic even if we do get it, so we may as well get something that covers our general bases instead of devoting ourselves to a specialized magic we're highly likely to ditch.

 

[Esquilax]

This is a good point, Kipeci. It's also occurred to me that it seems possible that Naram, or another immortal like him, will attempt to find another relic of power in an attempt to summon these masters of ours. And if/when they do come, they are probably going to be very, very pissed off at us. Having a powerful weapon of our own would give us the might to stand toe-to-toe with one of these so-called "masters" should they be summoned here.

Besides, I hardly think that the weapon is a crutch - it's an empathic weapon, like Dakkon's Karach blade. It's no more a crutch than Mjolnir is a crutch for Thor, honestly. Still, losing it (or more likely, having it stolen from us) could prove to be a serious drawback for us. If some of our life force is tied to the weapon, that's a huge weakness.

That being said, I don't think we'd ditch light manipulation just like that. I can see a ton of great uses for it down the road. One of Ean's few weaknesses in combat is his lack of ranged attack. Once he closes in, he's an absolute terror as Sukhenun found out, but he can't really do anything from afar at the moment. It's not a serious problem right now because he compensates for it with speed, but being able to fire lasers from our eyes would be pretty helpful against an opponent that we have trouble reaching.

 

[Collage]

I'm voting C for the first choice, though I'm open to flipping to B. Being able to tap into the Gieloth communications network seems like a great way to keep track of them, but also what's going on around the world. We'll be able to tell when big things are going down around the world.
For the second choice, B seems the most powerful by far.

CB

 

[Baltika9]

Looking forward to the "Is that your Honourblade, or are you just happy to see me?" interactions with Sukhenun in the future.

 

[Helly]

As far as I'm concerned, we should take the blade: It's obviously a reward for being an honest, comrade-protecting tough sob.
I really don't see what kind of stuff we can do with a darkness spell. It's not like we're some kind of ninja, and we won't be able to see shit ourself.
Blinding power could be nice, though, but are we talking about a single person spell (like taking the light out of their eyes) or more of a blinding light zone-effect stuff ?

 

[XenomorphII]

As far as I'm concerned, we should take the blade: It's obviously a reward for being an honest, comrade-protecting tough sob.
I really don't see what kind of stuff we can do with a darkness spell. It's not like we're some kind of ninja, and we won't be able to see shit ourself.
Blinding power could be nice, though, but are we talking about a single person spell (like taking the light out of their eyes) or more of a blinding light zone-effect stuff ?

I would imagine it starts as just us, but bearing in mind what happened in our battle with the beast that used this power, it was able to shield its charioteers in darkness, that with practice we could use the ability to cover armies. Also depending on how powerful we become in manipulating light, we might be able to create entire fake armies/cities/whatever else, since all sight is based on light, allowing us to really fuck with anybody who tries to fight us (their scouts would see troops everywhere and the only way to verify if they are real is to get too close to survive if they are).

 

[Zero Credibility]

As far as I'm concerned, we should take the blade: It's obviously a reward for being an honest, comrade-protecting tough sob.

This.

 

[Bloodshifter]

CC The ability to hear other tentacles and start our tentacle hunt WORLD WIDE does not intrigue you people? And A "living" weapon? how awesome is that

Treave Bro: (do we share some sort of link to this weapon of is it just a dumb brute)

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Aw - I wanted a portable tentacle brothel...

1)
a. The nature of the conflict and our masters will reveal itself in time. This would be a wasted choice.
b. We can already kill the gileoth. Knowing the intricacies of their biology isn't that useful at this point - though maybe if we are ever in a position to want to exterminate their species with a virus or some such.
c. Very useful in the short and long-term. Being able to tap into an enemy's communications can greatly aid in a war effort:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine

2)
a. Extremely useful. The ability to permadeath the other immortals would make us dangerous indeed. (It's unknown granted, but we may even be able to use it to kill our "masters" should the need arise.) Also knowing how to make the poison may help us to know how to counteract it.
b. A whole new power for us to master - though it sounds a bit weak to begin with.Maybe we can fire lazer beams in the future tho...
c. lol Vorlourn would be pleased - but we wouldn't be if we ever lost the sword. The description says it grows in power as we do. Would an enemy be able to use that power if we were to lose it to them?

My vote is CA. edit: i'll flop to CB if CA doesn't have the votes. Must avoid honourblade (sorry Vorlourn).
(my vote flopped to CB with the low CA vote)

Access to the gileoth communications would let us know where they are and may even help us keep tabs on the other immortals as they interact with them. The poison would eventually give us an advantage over both of the other immortals that neither of them can yet match. We just have to make sure and keep that vial well-hidden...

edit: Just because we haven't invested in body manipulation much until now doesn't mean we won't at some point in the next 10,000 years. Immortal, remember? Besides, in the future we may find a way to make the poison without body manipulation.

 

[Baltika9]

b. We can already kill the gileoth. Knowing the intricacies of their biology isn't that useful at this point - though maybe if we are ever in a position to want to exterminate their species with a virus or some such.

B. You learn of the Gieloth's purpose here, and the extent of their capabilities. Why did they come? What do they want? What is the organization of their civilization? Do they have factions? How powerful are they? How long do they live? As Sekhenun is an accomplished researcher of her people, you will come to know more about the Gieloth than even most Gieloth themselves.

You only considered killing them. However, it allows us to learn much, much more about them. It enables us to know our enemy: their motivations, their strengths, weaknesses, societies, traditions, etc. Besides, they don't necessarily have to be enemies, I'm starting to see a possibility for cooperation, if not an uneasy alliance here.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

They eat people. Shetentacle just told us that and was unrepentant. I don't know about you, but "allying" myself will someone who views me and everyone like me as food sounds a lot like subservience.

edit: and just because she's reasonable doesn't mean the others will be too.

 

[Esquilax]

The Honourblade is clearly the strongest ability on the table, but the most high-risk. Couldn't we simply use our improved skill at body manipulation to meld our hands to the blade? If it improves our skills significantly, reconstituting it into our flesh and then revealing it when it's time to fight seems like a good idea. It sure as shit makes it tougher to take it away from us that way.

The biggest problem with 1C) is that we probably won't understand a lot of the communication between the Gieloth. We can get at stuff like emotions through telepathy, but we don't have the context to understand their culture, their hierarchies, their mission on this place, what they're doing with human beings, etc. Figuring all that shit out will be like playing a game of broken telephone in Chinese - we just don't have the appropriate context to understand them at the moment.

However, if we pick B, given Sukhenun's position among her people, we can learn a lot. Sure, we won't know about the nature of our "masters", but we can learn a lot of stuff about what their purpose is on Earth, whether some of them can coexist with us, that sort of thing.

 

[Baltika9]

They eat people. Shetentacle just told us that and was unrepentant. I don't know about you, but "allying" myself will someone who views me and everyone like me as food sounds a lot like subservience.

edit: and just because she's reasonable doesn't mean the others will be too.

She also said that she could subsist, in essence survive, on beings other than humans. There's a lot of ways to go about this, but in the long run, we could bend the Gieloth to work for us, not with us, some way (strong-arm, mindfuck, mind rape, mindcontrol, persuasion, decisions will be made when we're at the point). The thing I'm trying to relay is we can make use of the Gieloth, as an asset.

Edit: the term "alliance" is there to make them sleep better at night(if they do sleep). Besides, we don't know if they will be amenable to this sort of deal, they might, or might not. That is why we need to know them: with knowledge, we can manipulate them, or work with them, as the situation presents itself.


TL;DR: We can't be sure that they're "hurrdurr we eatz hoomanz cuz lawlz. DERP!" That is why we need to know more about them.

 

[CappenVarra]

The Honourblade is clearly the strongest ability on the table, but the most high-risk. Couldn't we simply use our improved skill at body manipulation to meld our hands to the blade? If it improves our skills significantly, reconstituting it into our flesh and then revealing it when it's time to fight seems like a good idea. It sure as shit makes it tougher to take it away from us that way.

Please remove the image of Ean with Jensen-like blades sliding out of his forearms for takedowns (only they're a part of him and made from his rib and have a volournish personality and god taketh a rib from Adam and maketh him a wife - a deadly roofling wife sheathed in his fucking forearms) from my mind, it's disgusting!

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

snip

I see what you are saying.

Bending an entire alien race to our will sounds a little far fetched at this point. Who knows how vast their power is or how many worlds they've conquered.

As I said, perhaps in the future we'll be able to use this knowlege against them or to work with them or whatever, but presently it provides very little tangable benefit - other than knowing more about their intentions which I'd assume that 1.C would help us with anyway (kinda hard not to learn about someone's motives when you can hear what they say in secret). 1.C Gives short and long term benefits.

edit: tho i'll admit that b was my second choice, so I can't fault you for picking it.
edit2: what Kipeci said.

 

[Kipeci]

Even if you want to only peacefully interact with the Gieloth, C is still better because it allows you to communicate with any one of them around the world without needing to disturb their operations and draw in their enemies by searching for them. We can probably learn a decent amount of B in the course of using the ability that option C gives us. We don't need the specifics about Gieloth biology and history for a while, but C gives us an invaluable ability to access their positions and communications for whatever we decide to do.

 

[Stygian Lurker]

AB

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

XenomorphII AB
Baltika9 BA
Smashing Axe CB
CappenVarra BB
Esquilax BC
Kipeci CC
Arpad CC
Zero Credibility BC
m4davis BC
Urist McLurker BB
Collage CB
Bloodshifter CC
Lambchop19 CC
Stygian Lurker AB
oscar AC
TOME CC
ScubaV CC
newcomer CC
1) a3 b6 c9
2) a1 b6 c11