DrakeMarshall
-
Posts
4309 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
3
Content Type
Profiles
News
Forums
Blogs
Gallery
Events
Everything posted by DrakeMarshall
-
Very true. Then again, I believe the dragons of Yolen were already sapient.
-
I would say Roshar's focus is specifically on symbiotic bonds. Basically every fantastical element of the Rosharan setting revolves around a symbiotic relationship of one kind or another: Animals and spren have symbiotic relationships to survive. This lets greatshells defy the cube-square law and sky-eels fly. Surgebinders form a symbiotic bond with certain spren that allows them to use stormlight to manipulate surges. Spren trapped in gemstones can also use stormlight to manipulate surges* Parshendi form a symbiotic bond with spren to gain different forms. If they form a bond with a sapient spren like one of their dead ancestors, it acts a lot like the nahel bond. People can directly bond unmade to gain powers (Yelig-Nar grants access to every surge, for example). Interestingly, many of the unmade have symbiotic elements. Moelach grants foresight. Nergaoul grants the ability to ignore pain. It is hard to say what magic belongs to who, though. Most spren are a mix of Honor and Cultivation, and some are touched by Odium. So maybe the magic on Roshar is a mix, and doesn't fit neatly into categories? I'm going to question the notion that each shard has a clearly defined magic system. That was the case on Scadrial, but remember that Scadrial was artificially created by shards, and it stands to reason that magic would be more structured in that environment. *I get where you are coming with saying fabrials are Cultivation's magic, because you are cultivating the spren to harness their abilities. But fabrials still basically control the surges. I would hesitate to call fabrials a separate magic system, any more than South Scadrian technology is a fourth metallic art. I would suggest that fabrials are just a human-made and controlled version of the natural phenomenon that usually manifests as surgebinding.
-
That's a fascinating WoB, thank you for posting that. However, I want to point out that in your WoB Sanderson does not explicitly refute the OP's theory. He doesn't say anything about what would happen if you burned the metalmind, just that you couldn't feruchemically tap it anymore. He actually strongly suggests that there are some things you could do in this vein that would work: So I am going to predict that burning steel that used to be an ironmind would do something interesting. But not necessarily what you would expect it to do.
-
Little Trivia: Worm has a parahuman named Sundancer who can do exactly this. Not unless they are literally spitting as they speak, no That would be a different power, although kind of a funny one. Biting comments literally bite people, a heated conversation literally raises their body temperature Huh. Well for what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure a lot of epics accidentally pick a name that somebody on the other side of the continent is also using... Would be funny if at some point we had two characters in Edmonton with the same epic nickname and they became rivals because of it.
-
This sounds very, very much like Big Al, if I am not mistaken. Edit:
-
Factional cannon fodder? Me like. Voidus has a point about Reaction's abilities, though; it is good to define the limitations of powers that seem "open-ended" sometimes. Can she only defend against one specific sort of attack at a time? If so, how quickly can she cycle from one protection type to another? Depending on the answer to these questions, this could either function as a moderate defensive power, or as a Steelheart tier invulnerability power. Ah, what the heck, here are one or two lesser epics in Epoch's territory for use. Feel free to kill them. Or to write as them, if you want. Vitriol: Everything about them is acidic. Their blood, their spit, and their sarcasm. Specifically, fluoroantimonic acid. Somehow, they can survive this. Clapper: Can overload all electric lights in a building by clapping. Causes the sun to expode if performed outside. Has no effect if performed outside.
-
Yessss worm is excellent. The threat evaluations are from Worm; you will see them at some point. Ironically, some of the most interesting, scary, and influential parahumans in the Wormverse (Weaver and Jack) have relatively insignificant power ratings
-
The best I can think of for why Lerasium (and alloys) create allomancers is that it is a raw form of the power that fuels allomancy, and just like how mists rip pathways into the spirit web to allow more power to flow, Lerasium does the same (but in a more structured way, because solid power is more structured). Of coarse, ripping those “troughs” isn’t the primary function of the mists (the primary function is fueling allomancy). Like so, Lerasium has another primary function, that is not directly related to the side effect of gaining allomancy. I don’t think we could have an easy time guessing what that primary use is, because I don’t think it is a generalization of the side effect, if the mists are any example. I think it is a completely distinct (although still preservation-themed) power.
-
That is what the nicroburst feedback loop is for. What you connect it up to is almost irrelevant; at those levels of nicroburst enhancement basically any external allomancy could become dangerous.
-
Well, that was fun. I would like to think I was making good headway before I died. Then the game ended not long after when the elims got swamped by village kill powers. Good aim on those, by the way. The excellent aim of the village kill roles played a big part in the village winning, but looking at the roster, I will also note that our role distribution seemed pretty generous. Eyeballing it, I would say maybe swap the elim soother for a lurcher, and swap the village seeker for a smoker, and it might be about right? Anyways, you alls played well. Big thank you to Straw for putting on the game, running these things is a time commitment (also, I don't suppose we could have a peek at the docs?). Look forward to seeing you all in future games.
-
Hm, we've had some characters who make motivators before, but I don't think there's been a straight-up weapons dealer who buys DNA samples, like Diamond in Newcago.
-
Well, I have a pretty decent idea for everything I'm writing, now Looking forward to when this starts up. For the "faction" I mentioned earlier... When we have a GM, it would be best if I could explain it to them in a PM. For now though, I'll just say its location is pretty out of the way, specifically I was thinking South Edmonton Common.
-
I think getting a rough draft of the premise sounds like a fantastic idea. I wish you good luck putting the pieces together, but I think once the pieces are put together we'll have a pretty strong foundation here. On that topic, I kind of have another faction idea that I am starting to take a shine to. I'm not 100% finished with figuring it out though, and I'm not sure how much of it I want to expose right now because some of the details might detract from the storytelling of it. So, like Pyro is doing, I might want to PM the GM about it when we have one, if that works.
-
S9 confirmed
-
What if... There was a faction lead by an optical illusionist gifter Edit: Now I kind of want to write that, but describing it from the perspective of a vanilla who joins the group.
-
I wasn't meaning to imply the Node thing would replace what you were talking about with the Fence (I was just trying to create an NPC faction as filler, although it's possible that Node is on the weak side for holding a significant territory idk). But if you think Node would work well as part of the Fence feel free Agreed. Even Epoch's borders are a little informal; they are more defense fixtures than political boundaries. I thought it was fitting Not only does the river Lethe erase memories, it specifically claims the memories of the dead. Hmm... Noted. I have another gifter epic profile named Archetype that also has a slightly nonstandard gifting power, but if necessary, I could probably delineate that into two seperate abilities. Hmmm... I should read the Altermind one. Were the illusions optical-based or mental-based? That would be a decent starting point for how to distinguish them, maybe?
-
Yep, Node and Node's minions would essentially just be there to flesh out the number of factions, and to give people cannon fodder if they want it.
-
I don't see any reason why in principle a mystery epic couldn't work, so go ahead. Maybe it's an illusion epic? Everybody knows who the local authority is, and they apparently pay maple guards to police the area... But not much is known about their actual powers, nor has anyone really seen them about, because that's how illusion epics work best. The HQ building might have an illusion over it so it looks dilapidated and abandoned despite being an important center of operations.
-
I agree with this concept, in general. Also though, epics whose powers in great part involve the creation of barriers (Knox, Epoch) would almost have to gravitate towards more tightly defined and maintained borders. If we want another faction, maybe a prominent gifter? The ability to mass-produce low-power epics is not to be underestimated (and is also a significant source of cannon fodder... especially if this character is not being written by anyone in particular). The memory epic (I might start calling them Lethe unless you tell me not to ) could also be a faction, if you were so inclined, although from the current description I get the feel that this isn't really their style. EDIT: Random concept for the above-described gifter epic. This gifter has something of a twist, but since we only have hard data on Prof's gifting it's hard to say if they all work exactly the same anyway. Hopefully it makes sense. Epic Name: Node Type: Bioelectricity Epic Primary: Can create and manipulate their own bioelectricity. Applications: Electrified skin; Pain immunity/supression; Improved reaction times Secondary: Can gift a half as powerful version of their power to three normals. The twist is, the three gifted can also gift a half as powerful version to three more normals each. This can go on up to a maximum of 3 layers deep, for a total of 39 gifted people with different tiers of power. Tertiary: Has telepathic connection to the three people they directly gifted. Able to communicate with them at any range, and may choose to see/hear through them.
-
I could see a case for this, I guess. Sigh this is difficult with fewer people in some ways. Between Alvon, Araris, and Elandera, I won’t to hold off a bit on Elandera because Rae made a possibly valid point about that. So Alv or Araris... Both fairly opaque. Sorry Araris... It looks like Alv has been pleasing his gods lately because RNG picked you. Anyways I’m super tired and it’s getting very late (early?) so goodnight. I’ll be more intelligible in the moring, provided I’m not dead.
-
So, I’m the one Cadmium told to PM Araris if they died. I didn’t remember to do this immediately, but I did PM Araris shortly after they explained what they knew to the main thread. I’ve been asking around since then to try to piece this together better, but I haven’t had much luck, so I’m disclosing everything I know in-thread. Cadmium told me that an unnamed party PMed them and asked who Cadmium would kill if they were a village coinshot. Cadmium replied either Rae or Lopen-two-arms. Cadmium told me that if they died, I could PM Araris and Araris could tell me who. Otherwise, Cadmium would tell me who themself this cycle. Cadmium also said that if Rae/Lopen died they would have a suspect. So that is the safeguard Cadmium had in place. The fact that Cadmium had some idea they might be attacked this cycle seems significant. But I’m not sure I fully get how this information could be used to identify Cadmium’s killer. Any ideas?
-
Right, the time has come to cast a vote (honestly, the voter turnout isn't great right now) before I go to sleep. I'm not really feeling the Gancho lynch. Gancho's reaction seemed to indicate not knowing about the rules more than any elim-y assumptions, and seems pretty NAI to me. With a few exceptions that I'm still deliberating about (such as Elandera, I'm still not sure about), basically all the active peoples I've talked to / examined seem pretty village. Which actually makes sense, because I reckon the elim team is small and maybe not super-duper active. So by process of elimination, I'm going to go with Snipexe for now, as I don't think many others would work.
-
Would you mind explaining the thought process here?
-
While I'm already referencing obscure parahumans from Worm: Oliver (Noelle's caretaker) had a power that made his appearance match his own perception of attractiveness. Hm, spell tables is a sensible idea for what sort of effects could be produced. I'm partial to the idea that Fluke's powers can do the opposite of what was intended, so how about the set of powers is the effects of any 1st level spell in Dungeons and Dragons? This covers a nice range of functionality without being particularly overpowered. Fluke doesn't even necessarily need to be aware of where the powerset comes from, although they would probably figure it out eventually. So for example, Fluke could try to light an attacker on fire, but might accidentally light themself on fire instead. They could try to summon an invisible servant to fetch something, but it's just as likely that the servant will ignore Fluke's orders and start playing practical jokes on them.
-
Better to get a hang of it than to get a hung for it
