The Chat Thread

[+ZincAboutIt she/her]

7 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

the tomato basil soup alley.

I must visit this place immediately

[Rushu42 she/her]

46 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

It would be interesting if there was some sort of magic revolving around a true sight, or a grounding in reality, or detecting of investiture or something like that, that happened as a result of everyone existing in the forgery. Like peoples spiritweb responded after the forgery as a defense mechanism and developed this new ability.

Ooh, expanding the magic system like this would be really cool. I wonder if we could establish some sort of meta-investiture powers - as in, powers based solely off of the detection/manipulation of other forms of investiture. Kind of like A-Bronze or Aluminum already impact things, but expanded, perhaps?

[MacThorstenson he/him]

27 minutes ago, ZincAboutIt said:

I must visit this place immediately

I may or may not have come up with that alley based off of what I'm craving at the moment.

17 minutes ago, Rushu42 said:

Ooh, expanding the magic system like this would be really cool. I wonder if we could establish some sort of meta-investiture powers - as in, powers based solely off of the detection/manipulation of other forms of investiture. Kind of like A-Bronze or Aluminum already impact things, but expanded, perhaps?

That would be pretty interesting. I gotta think about that.

 

Guys I wrote a paper for the DA.

Spoiler

On Departments and the department heads.

Authors:

Mac Thorstenson, Former head of Department of Counter Intelligence, et al. Cam Nosnetsroht, head of HR

 

Abstract:

There are a lot of departments, many of them lack active heads.

Introduction:

Everyone knows that the DA has a myriad of departments and members. In this paper I attempt to catalogue a number of the departments that existed in the past (Pre-era1), and list which ones don't have active department heads.

Methods:

I looked through the OP for People you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley (Dark alley thread for short). Each specialty listed was given a department or sub department, and the current canon head was listed next to the department name. Several alternate names were suggested for simplicity, though knowing the  DA's organizational skills, the odds that both departments are fully funded and functioning are high. 

Results:

Dept of Sales: Voidus

R&D: The Stranger

Dept of Advertising: ??

Dept of Recruitment (Acquisitions?): Mathew or something idk

DoCI: Lita (formerly Mac)

Dept of Spying (Inteligence?):

Dept of Shipping: ??

Dept of Inter-Guild commerce: ??

Dept of Public Relations:??

Dept of Biochemistry: Aylitha (?)

Dept of Alleymatics: (Soon to be filled maybe??)

The Following specialities were deemed likely to exist under R&D, but could also be their own department if needed.

Specialties: Breath Experimentation Expert

Specialties: Hemalurgic Theorizing 

Specialties: Hemalurgic Compounding Researcher

Specialties: Zoohemalurgy

Specialties: Hemalurgy of non-Metallic magic systems

Specialties: Trans-species Hemalurgy,

Specialties: Eldritch Horror* and Researcher of Investiture of The Dark Alley!

*Pending office cleaning

Specialties: Mistwraith research team,

Specialties: Lerasium

Conclusions:

The department system in the DA is ridiculously bloated and Chaotic, and many of the department heads have been missing in action for years. But I love it. I know that this is a scientific paper and that I'm really not supposed to use the first person but I don't care. The department of citations was dissolved years ago. 

But yeah, I guess theres a lot of departments. Further research is needed to determine if we should fill them. 

Disclaimer applies.

 

Edited March 19, 2022 by MacThorstenson
Dept. of Proofreading didn't go over the paper.

[kenod]

13 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

Dept of Shipping: ??

What type of shipping? (Both?)

[+ZincAboutIt she/her]

 

16 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

Specialties: Lerasium

Heck of a specialty right there

[MacThorstenson he/him]

9 minutes ago, kenod said:

What type of shipping? (Both?)

Thats a fair point. I think the original department was logistics, but there would certainly be room for another department with the same name for relationships.

[18th Shard he/him]

Xanas is head of the Department of Testing and Analysis. 

[Fatebreaker he/him]

2 hours ago, Voidus said:

I feel like the Stranger was wise enough to excise them from existence in the Forgery. Some hatreds are too powerful to be overcome even with reality-bending magic that reshapes the entire world.

Canon

[mathiau he/him]

4 hours ago, ZincAboutIt said:

Fwiw we don’t usually do too much Sanderson plot canon here. I haven’t actually read any of the Skyward books but bringing canon book characters or key plot elements into the AV is generally not done because it starts to get thorny with the established book canon. Just a heads up for any of your plans! :]

The Tanix aren't really main characters, they're animal with cytonic powers people bound with (in the sense someone can bound with their dog, not in the sense someone bound a spren).

1 hour ago, Rushu42 said:

Can Aln hear Kerr's talking? I couldn't remember, so I left it out of my response, but if yes I'll edit it in.

She should be able to see his words

It may not have been clear, but when Kerr is speaking in italic he's speaking to Folorian's mind while when he speaks "between quotation marks" he's speaking normally

2 hours ago, Voidus said:

DA civil war? Well that sounds...
Reality ending.

Could be reality starting too, knowing R&D

Edited March 19, 2022 by mathiau

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood he/him]

5 hours ago, kenod said:

True and true, I guess. And to be fair, alleymatics wasn't supposed to be DA-exclusive either, wasn't it? IIRC it was originally that if someone invented a new concept that got included in the alleyverse, their chars could control it. It just ended up morphing into a magic system revolving around manipulating the alleys.

Hmm, doesn't that mean alleytravel is just the most basic subset of alleymatics?

No, the space marines did

 

5 hours ago, Arlin said:

Hahahahaha...  Been there done that. You know how everyone freaks out when they get their memories back? Yeah...  Check out the Seven Day War if you want more detail on how that goes.

 

5 hours ago, Arlin said:

@Thaidakar the Ghostblood I think you you might be getting a picture about just how ireprocable the DA is from the above conversation.

 

 

 

 

 

5 hours ago, Voidus said:

This is more or less already the case. The DA largely don't actually care or interfere much with the wider city unless it's affecting them in the Alleys. Mostly because the RP becomes very boring if there are a bunch of demigods just wandering around handwaving the problems away. Though by necessity of the RP we do tend to mostly see the few members of the DA who actually do wander about the wider city from time to time.

No someone else nuked the city because the DA was defending itself and murdering pretty much everyone in the process. And no, not really. In part because there's just absolutely no way to seal the Alleys against the DA, but also because there are several demigod level department heads who would get personally annoyed at that and just use less standard Alleytravel to arrive in the city.

I think that was discussed yeah though we never really went anywhere with it that much. And yeah, Alleytravel is just the most basic application of Alleymatics.

 

5 hours ago, MacThorstenson said:

If I recall correctly the city was nuked because when everyone invaded and pissed off the DA they realized that was the best way to stop the fighting. The DA didn't nuke it, the invaders did it to stop the retaliation.

 

4 hours ago, ZincAboutIt said:

I’d be all for a new magic system if we wanted to make one up, that sounds fun! As for trying to take down the DA, it’s not really a wise plot course mostly because it’s been done before, and also because the power imbalance is pretty enormous and therefore not really fun. The best bet for an actual compelling “guild war” plot, if we wanted to do one, would be for the DA to effectively go into a schism and turn on itself, with each side garnering allies from the other guilds. 
Depending on how this Era ends and what goes on between the resident demigods, that could actually be possible.

thanks for the info guys! making a new magic system sounds good. would it be pizza based?

[18th Shard he/him]

3 hours ago, Rushu42 said:

Ooh, expanding the magic system like this would be really cool. I wonder if we could establish some sort of meta-investiture powers - as in, powers based solely off of the detection/manipulation of other forms of investiture. Kind of like A-Bronze or Aluminum already impact things, but expanded, perhaps?

I like this idea. Snapping into powers similar to A-Bronze, Aluminum, A-Nicrosil, Raysium, etc. could also help negate some of the more OP characters' standing out so much. 

[Ashbringer he/him]

Is there an anti-void? From what I gather Voidmaking is very similar to A-Chromium, could an Anti-Voidmaking be similar to A-Nicrosil drawing Investiture from somewhere?

[MacThorstenson he/him]

22 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Is there an anti-void? From what I gather Voidmaking is very similar to A-Chromium, could an Anti-Voidmaking be similar to A-Nicrosil drawing Investiture from somewhere?

There really isn't an anti-void. Perhaps if sudiov got back in the business it could happen? But it wouldn't be that applicable as there have only been 3 characters with voidmaking, and that was the weakest abilities they had.

[Ashbringer he/him]

I'm not really sure what Voidmaking is besides A-Chromium, so I'm not entirely sure... I just know it's worth a lot more points. But if the Forgery breakdown starts proliferating powers, I could see Voidmaking being one of those.

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood he/him]

what if we had a magic system based on pizza? like with the different toppings would give different magic powers. i

[Voidus]

33 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Is there an anti-void? From what I gather Voidmaking is very similar to A-Chromium, could an Anti-Voidmaking be similar to A-Nicrosil drawing Investiture from somewhere?

Kinda all Investiture, energy and matter is anti-void.

[mathiau he/him]

12 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Is there an anti-void? From what I gather Voidmaking is very similar to A-Chromium, could an Anti-Voidmaking be similar to A-Nicrosil drawing Investiture from somewhere?

Since Voidmaking require you to hate the thing you destroy, maybe we could do magic that require other feelings? Envy based power copying and trust based empowering for example?

3 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

There really isn't an anti-void. Perhaps if sudiov got back in the business it could happen? But it wouldn't be that applicable as there have only been 3 characters with voidmaking, and that was the weakest abilities they had.

Even if you only count the duplicate once, I'm counting counting five

Three of them have duplicates

[MacThorstenson he/him]

6 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

I'm not really sure what Voidmaking is besides A-Chromium, so I'm not entirely sure... I just know it's worth a lot more points. But if the Forgery breakdown starts proliferating powers, I could see Voidmaking being one of those.

Voidmaking has a specific way it happens, but Its not my system to spoil, so i'm not sure how much I want to say.

3 minutes ago, mathiau said:

Since Voidmaking require you to hate the thing you destroy, maybe we could do magic that require other feelings? Envy based power copying and trust based empowering for example?

Again its not my magic system, so I don't want to spoil too much, but any feeling works for voidmaking, you just need to be able to channel it in a large amount.

Who has voidmaking? I'm counting Voidus, the Stranger, and Mac?

EDIT, I forgot about Sanax and Xanas

Edited March 19, 2022 by MacThorstenson

[mathiau he/him]

1 minute ago, MacThorstenson said:

Voidmaking has a specific way it happens, but Its not my system to spoil, so i'm not sure how much I want to say.

Again its not my magic system, so I don't want to spoil too much, but any feeling works for voidmaking, you just need to be able to channel it in a large amount.

Who has voidmaking? I'm counting Voidus, the Stranger, and Mac?

Xanas and Deteca

[Voidus]

1 minute ago, MacThorstenson said:

Voidmaking has a specific way it happens, but Its not my system to spoil, so i'm not sure how much I want to say.

Again its not my magic system, so I don't want to spoil too much, but any feeling works for voidmaking, you just need to be able to channel it in a large amount.

Who has voidmaking? I'm counting Voidus, the Stranger, and Mac?

Detteca and Sanax as well I believe.
Plus technically the earlier Voidus.

[Ashbringer he/him]

1 minute ago, MacThorstenson said:

Who has voidmaking? I'm counting Voidus, the Stranger, and Mac?

I think Sanax and Deteca are technically Voidmakers, but not to the same scale.

... is it Sanax or Xanas, or just both?

[+ZincAboutIt she/her]

7 minutes ago, mathiau said:

Envy based power copying

*Lita ascends to the Shard of Greed* 

[mathiau he/him]

9 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

I think Sanax and Deteca are technically Voidmakers, but not to the same scale.

Well, only Deteca's and Sanax's can be put on scale in the fist place

Quote

... is it Sanax or Xanas, or just both?

In the forged world, only Sanax. Xanas is just a 4th Oath Elsecaller here.

In the original world only Xanas exists and he's basically a saner version of Sanax

6 minutes ago, ZincAboutIt said:

*Lita ascends to the Shard of Greed* 

Envy, not Greed

Edited March 19, 2022 by mathiau

[+ZincAboutIt she/her]

Just now, mathiau said:

Envy, not Greed

She can make it work  

[MacThorstenson he/him]

This is where Mac learned to Voidmake for those that are interested. 

I'm not sure that there needs to be a whole new magic system, maybe 2-3 abilities result. Mainly because a whole system can be a pain to mess around with and balance. 

I also like the idea of it being a reflexive response to the forgery, as that would be something that everyone in the alleyverse would be able to have, just like how scadrians are allomancers and nalthians are awakeners.

Finally, it shouldn't be too powerful. I think the idea was that voidmaking was not the most powerful system you could make. It was a counter to a lot of things, but offensively most magic systems are better then it. I think that the new powers should also be kinda mid.