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Seonid

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Seonid last won the day on February 8 2019

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About Seonid

  • Birthday October 2

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  • Member Title
    Lorekeeper of the Edassan Tomes
  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Ogden, Utah
  • Interests
    Physics, religious studies, writing fantasy/sci-fi, and everything Brandon!

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  1. So I might have just accidentally mapped out the whole planet of Edassa...

    1. A Joe in the Bush
    2. Seonid

      Seonid

       And now I'm stuck with 4 continents and 2 subcontinents I didn't know I needed.

  2. No. Was there a prohibition on passing shattered shards? If that had been brought to my attention, I would have reversed the ruling (at least, as of a few days into the game). Passing shattered shards is essential to make Adonalsium Reborn even remotely possible.
  3. Actually, given a cycle of delay, it would have been possible to get every single faction to win, if everyone was willing to get the Joe Cloud the Adonalsium Reborn condition. It was almost possible to do so as of Day 8, without a delay, but Survival had ended up alone on Taldain, and therefore couldn't pass their Shard to anyone. The delay would have been required to get players into the correct constellation of world positions for shard passing. A mismatch between day actions and night actions would have posed an interesting challenge, but things cold have been set up such that a single player could be killed during the night turn, simultaneously leaving the Utility Company in dominion over 3 worlds and passing the last shard to Joe Cloud (assuming appropriate investments had been made). I...may have thought that out in a little too much detail. Regardless, well played to everyone. From a GMs perspective, this has been the most fun of all the Shard games I've run. I enjoyed watching the asymmetric win conditions, and really enjoyed watching the politicking going on between different factions. In retrospect, I don't know that i would have made many changes. Probably would be a good idea to check win conditions only at the end of the night, to avoid the severe complexity of trying to match day actions and night actions. Hoid's kerfluffle with the Shard stealing was likely the biggest problem point. Because so many of the win conditions relied completely on the actions provided by a single shard, the ability to steal shards was much more of a negative play experience than it might otherwise have been. I don't have any good ideas to balance that at the moment - maybe it's best to leave Hoid to his diplomatic devices. To the Stewards: if you hadn't already been set on Power over Death by the time we does the grand reshuffling, Joe and I would have edited Endowed and Oathbound - your commentary on that was on point. Finally, thank you so much to @A Joe in the Bush! This game would not have been possible without him. Seriously, by the end, he was doing the lion's share of the work. Give him all of the upvotes and kudos you can find. He still probably deserves more than that.
  4. Aftermath: Theosis The Age of Autonomy was not, as many past histories have suggested, an era of complete and total separation between the Shardworlds and their Shards. Worldhopping was forbidden, of course. Interplanetary trade was stifled. But the memory of the Shardic Wars was deeply ingrained in the Cosmere-aware populace of the Realms, and despite Autonomy's edicts, they built structures designed specifically so that such a thing could never happen again. Of these, the Conclave of Shards was the most potent deterrent to war. The representatives of the Shardic powers met there and negotiated all throughout the Age of Autonomy and up through the beginning stages of the Final Shardic War. Transcripts and recordings of their last meetings are instructive as to the efficacy of such institutions to maintain order in the absence of cultural supports. By all accounts, the Conclave worked exactly as it had been intended to. Even in the last weeks before the war became total, even after the meetings and representatives were publicly factionalized, the Conclave members met, attempting to negotiate their way out of a war that seemed increasingly inevitable. As late as a single day before the final breakdowns, Conclave negotiators had identified ways for the factions to reconcile, and to pursue their aims in without resorting to violence. Open conversations on the Conclave floor were devoted to trying to work out plans for mutual cooperation. However, reticence on the part of several factions to reveal their true aims, paranoia that other factions would take advantage of apparent weakness, and several key communications breakdowns in the final stages of the negotiations meant that those negotations had failed to come to a conclusive agreement by the time factions made their move. As far as can be reconstructed from the historical record, the faction that called itself the Stewards of Creation moved first, utilizing the power of Endowment to Return one of the fallen agitators who had been blamed for many of the increased tensions during the leadup to war, joining a suite of other Returned who - wittingly or unwittingly - provided intelligence to the Steward's central command. In response, GLaDOS abandoned their offers to cooperate for mutually beneficial ends, and accelerated their plans to indebt members of other factions to them by staging false attacks and saving their lives, thus acquiring leverage over influential individuals. Seeing their position grow more and more precarious as the faction alliances began to fray apart, the Hidden Garden abandoned their own aims, instead throwing their weight fully behind the eviscerated remnants of the Utility Company, who had been the subject of a number of unfortunate 'incidents' and had not yet recovered. Together, they made a ploy to hold dominion over a network of Shardworlds, controlling the newly reopened trade routes from Roshar, Silverlight, and Taldain. Those plans were foiled at the last moment by the inadvertent action of players trying to remain neutral in the growing struggle. The retaliation was swift and brutal, and only the intervention of the hidden Shard of Survival saved the worldhopper Toucan from a grisly fate. Abandoned and friendless, the Joe Cloud faction could only watch as their own goals grew increasingly distant, holding the stolen Shard of Odium tight and threatening to unleash its wrath on anyone who got in their way. The tragic result, of course, is well known. - - - - - - - - - - On a small island of stability in the far reaches of the Cognitive Realm, Sheon Idris sat alone. The wreckage of the last Shardic War had reached even here. As he watched, a stray bit of Odious investiture curled itself like a wisp of smoke. The crown that he had once worn lay on the ground in front of him, broken and twisted. The woman's voice behind him startled himself out of his reverie. He half-turned out of reflex, the hint of a smile on his face. It was gone just as quickly as it had come. She hadn't come for ages and ages. Khriss stood there, a scowl on her face, and a defeated slump to her posture. He hadn't heard the exact words she'd said. The look on her face told him everything he needed to know regardless. "It's over, then?" The look she gave him could have evaporated steel. "Odium and Dominion have shattered each other on Sel. There is nothing left. Not a single Shard remains intact." Her voice began to rise in anger. "Not a single Shardworld remains untouched, and only three of them can still support life unaided. Half a trillion souls are dead, and the wellsprings of all Investiture in the entire Cosmere are gone. Are you happy now?" The venom in her voice surprised him, a little. He looked back at her with mild bemusement. "Happy? Why should I be happy? Why should anyone be happy now?" She spat at him. "Look at you, sitting there. Still meddling and pulling strings, like some grotesque spider. Well, this is what you've brought us to. Even the factions you supported are all gone. The Stewards and GLaDOS control what's left. Maybe now you'll see that, if we had just left well enough alone, things might have stayed the way they were before you took it in your head to meddle with forces beyond the power of human reckoning!" She took a breath as if to say more, then cut off when she saw his face, and the haunted look in his eyes. "You're more right than you know, of course. Completely wrong, but more right than you know." "Once upon a time, long before you were born, there was...something more. Adonalsium, we called it. God, maybe. I don't remember why, anymore, but it was important that we killed him. We, Khrissala. I was there. By the end, I opposed the others, but it was my meddling that set them on their journey in the first place. It was my fault that the Shards came to be. You think my meddling caused these? You give me too much credit. The seeds of this were sown in the Shards themselves. But without my meddling, there would never have been Shards to war against each other." "You said something right, though. The Shards are power beyond human reckoning. They shape and mold their bearers until they are something that is no longer human. They are parasites that slowly invade a consciousness until they have subsumed it, and then they follow their nature as surely as any animal. While the Shards rule, these wars are inevitable. This destruction is written into the future of Shardic rule as clearly as words on a page." Khriss bit back a bitter laugh. "And that justifies you manipulating things, egging them on? I'm sure that's a comfort to the loved ones of half a *trillion* dead souls. I’m sure that the orphaned children and the widowed spouses and the childless parents will be so comforted to hear that your warmongering was just the acceleration of an inevitable event." “Do you think that I wanted this? I tried to stop all of this.” Sheon gestured out at the devastation. “Everything I’ve ever done was in the service of peace.” “Well you’ve done a piss-poor job of it!” “Do you think I don’t know that! Do you think I can’t see it! Do you think that a day goes by that I don’t wonder if I had done something else, that all of the pain and suffering could have been averted?” They were both practically shouting now. “Well if you had left well enough alone in the first place...” Sheon cut her off. “The wars were inevitable. The Shards brought out the worst in us, our drive for power, our lust for mastery over other beings. I...” He paused for a moment. “My actions made them worse. I tried to stop them, tried to build something that could contain them. I failed. Maybe nothing I did could have prevented them.” “Then you should have recognized that to start with, and left things alone.” “How could I? I created the problem. And I have the power to fix it, if given half a chance.” “What are you talking about? How could you possibly have fixed it?” When Sheon did not respond, she turned back to look at him, and then stopped in mingled surprise and horror. Beyond him, in the distance, but somehow also so close that she could reach out and touch it, Investiture was gathering, streaming from myriad places. Fragments of Dominion raced in front of her face so close that she could almost feel it touch her. Startled, she spun to follow the glowing trails of Investiture as they swirled past. Odium, Ruin, Preservation, Dominion. All of the shards and more, coming from every world and every corner of every realm, twisting and cavorting in complicated spirals that grew more and more intricate the longer they spun. And at the center...a figure, glowing so bright that even her eyes, used to the radiance of the Shards themselves, had to turn away from. "Is that...is that?" Sheon gave her a wan smile. "It is. It's taken long enough, but it is." Shivering a little, she turned from the spectacle. "And I suppose you think that this end justifies everything?" "Of course not. But it might just redeem everything." "What?" "With Adonalsium back, humanity has another chance. A fresh start, without all-powerful but fatally flawed Shards interfering with each other and with the worlds. All of us, together, with a God who might actually deserve the name. Not just a personified force of nature that we tried to imbue with human visions of what a God ought to be, but a God put back together out of all the broken pieces." As he spoke, he began to fade. Khriss began to stammer. "Where are you going? What are you doing?" "My work is done. My crime is atoned for. I killed God once. I’ve brought God back now. But you, Khriss? Yours is just beginning. Just maybe, this time humanity can do better. And just maybe, you can be the one to make it so." And then he was gone, the twisted crown clattering to the floor from where he had held it. A single word etched into it, in letters that burned like fire. Forgiven. - - - - - - - - - - AG5: One Final Blaze of Light is finished! The Stewards of Creation have met their win condition to have Returned from 5 unique factions! GLaDOS has met their win condition to prevent players from 5 unique factions from dying! The Utility Company has failed to meet their win condition of outnumbering all other factions on three separate worlds! ALL HAIL THE JOE CLOUD has failed to meet their win condition of having their living faction mates plus all players with the Shade role outnumber all other living players! The Hidden Garden has failed to meet their win condition of fusing 5 Shards together! Hoid failed to meet his win condition of getting any faction to collect all the Shards of Adonalsium! Khriss failed to meet her win condition of inviting a member of 5 unique factions into her doc, killing Hoid, and preventing any team from winning via the Adonalsium Reborn condition! Survival has met the win condition of surviving until the end of the game!
  5. The night ends at the same time it always has. We just switched to reporting in Pacific time instead of mountain time, to avoid annoying midnight mixups.
  6. Night 7: Trained for War The weasel slunk through the darkness. It was what weasels did, after all, and this worldhopper had chosen a codename specifically based on his preferred habits. Shadows, nighttime, it was a comfortable place for him. He was used to passing through the city unseen, used to having free reign over the night. Might be why he liked Taldain so much. It was always Night here. Or always day, but you could choose which one. You just had to move around a little, and for a worldhopper, that was simple. Perhaps his time on Taldain mastering local investiture had made him careless. Perhaps the implicit protection of Devotion had dulled his paranoia. And perhaps he had even grown complacent in the strength and power of his faction to protect him against all ills. But whatever the reason, he was not expecting Tribunal Guards to appear from the shadows of the nearest building to arrest him. He was, briefly, even more surprised when the guards ripped out the Hemalurgic spikes from his body without even reading him his rights or the accusations against him. And then he was no longer surprised at all. Indigo Weasel was lynched! They were a Researcher and Mastrell of GLaDOS. Vote Count: Mouse(4): Albatross, Toucan, Tuatara, Elephant Weasel(8): Zebra, Mouse, Heron, Ostrich, Dragonfly, Crocodile, Scorpion, Ambition Tuatara(2): Falcon, Weasel Player List: 1. Amethyst Scorpion Returned! 2. Azure Mouse 3. Amber Vulture Returned! 4. Charcoal HyenaVessel[/b], Ambition ALL HAIL THE JOE CLOUD 5. Chartreuse Penguin Returned! 6. Coral Swan 7. Cream Tuatara 8. Emerald Falcon 9. Fuschia Ostrich 10. Indigo Weasel Worldhopper, Mastrell, Researcher 11. Ivory Dragonfly 12. Magenta Albatross 13. Mauve Crocodile 14. Melon Dingo 15. Mint Heron 16. Onyx Flamingo 17. Opal Lion Vessel, Odium 18. Oxblood Beagle 19. Pearl Chameleon Worldhopper, Mastrell, Forger 20. Plum Rhinoceros 21. Quartz Zebra 22. Saffron Iguana 23. Sage Kangaroo 24. Salmon Meerkat Khriss 25. Sapphire Elephant 26. Scarlet Octopus Worldhopper, Mastrell 27. Sunburst Toucan 28. Taupe Gecko Worldhopper, Researcher, Feruchemist. 29. Turquoise Gorilla 30. Violet Axolotl Hoid, Odium Shardworld Tracker: Yolen: 2/8 charges First of the Sun: 4/6 charges The night will last until Monday, February Fourth, 11:00 PM, Pacific Time
  7. Nope. I'm a middle aged man who wears khakis and plaid button up shirts to work for the IRS. Different plot twist though, I was at college with Mailliw once upon a time, leiftinspace used to be my boss, and Droughtbringer's grandpa was my high school calculus teacher.
  8. Apologies for the short notice, but due to unexpected circumstances, this cycle is going to need to be extended for 24 hours. The day will now end at midnight, mountain time, Tuesday January 29th
  9. Sorry for the delay on the writeups, everybody. I've been in a little bit of a funk - turns out working without pay is even more demoralizing than I expected. But I managed to get this cycle's writeup done before the end of the cycle, so that's a thing. I'll try to get Day 3's done at some point, but getting today's results done is the priority.
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