kenod

"Thanks," KoTiel said. They opened up their notebook and showed it to Laurelai. "The thing I'm currently working on is a way for me to create a new body for myself. As for why I want to do this, lets just say I've got a couple of issues with my spiritweb, thanks to Mraize, and I need a way to get rid of it, but given what he did I can never be sure if I've gotten all of it. So my idea was to create a new body and transfer my memories, which will give me a new spiritweb. Transferring the memories will be easy, I've got a couple of tricks for that as a Kandra, but the issue is avoiding conflicts between my memories and the new body, which is where I'll need your help." They paused for a bit, turning a couple of pages. "The results of this conflict becomes clear in an older attempt to do this by Mac. In his case it failed both because of memory degradation as well as the fact that the new body already had their own memories and identity, which caused him to manifest as a separate personality, and eventually ended with Macs personality dying." "Now this is where you come in," They said, pointing at a design on the next page. "Kandra do not naturally have sapience. Specifically, we do have it, but a blockade between our cognitive self and the rest of us prevents from actually being sapient. To fix this, we need our blessings, a pair of specially made spikes. The important part here is that these blessings still give us abilities, and it is even possible for blessings to grant allomantic or feruchemical abilities, although this normally doesn't happen. What I want to do is to use essence spikes as blessings, with the essence spikes turning the new Kandra into a blank slate, without any form of personality or identity that might interfere with the integration of the memories. I believe that your skill with essence spikes and forgery is more than enough to do this. The second thing I'm looking into depends on your biology knowledge though." KoTiel went to the next page, which was filled with diagrams of enzymes and cells. "One of the main drawbacks to our shapeshifting abilities is that we can't create things like bone, hair, and nails. The reason for this is actually biological in nature, so not something that a simple spike, or more experience with shapeshifting will fix. However, I thing I've worked out a basic modification that can be applied to the body that will allow it to digest these substances, and then regrow them in different forms, as well as repair them. Minor things like hair and nails should even be able to grow in the same way as for humans. Now, the way I want to apply this is through what I call Blessings of Bone. A bit of a melodramatic name perhaps, but it does say what they do. The idea is that'll modify the spiritweb in a way that gives my body the necessary cells and enzymes. Of course, the issue is finding a way to apply this modification. I actually hoped you might have an idea for how to do this, though my initial idea was to rewrite the exact way in which the body was created, though I'm not sure how viable this is." KoTiel looked back up from their notebook. "Sorry if this is a bit much all at once, but do you think you're able to help me?"

For a good point to start era 3, as well as a logical stepping board for the gods (avatars) to decide they need to clamp down on the amount of power characters have, use Hellbent and Septhis. They currently have a large amount of power and are going to go full on evil. Have them destroy a bunch of stuff and be generally unstoppable, have the gods realize that they need to deal with this, as well as create rules to reign in the amount of power granted to characters in the future. To deal with it, they will expand a lot of the guilds' resources (thus lowering to an acceptable level) and expand the power of a number of characters, but with the side effect being that they'll either die or lose most of their power (not just granted power, but also their original power) afterwards because of the amount of raw power granted to them. This gives a story excuse for the re-balancing as well as give a great climax to the current story of era 2. It also means that since the gods together will be allocating the power and thus will choose the already strong characters, it'll give a way for already balanced characters survive without any alterations.

But how would other characters interact with a space peacekeeping force? I don't think most of us even have a way of interacting with space based things.

KoTiel walked up to Laurelai. "Hey," they said. "Could you help me with something I'm working on? It isn't like we'll be getting a lot done while those guys are busy anyway." Suddenly realizing that it might look like they'd want to do another experiment they spoke again: "Ah, I don't mean a different experiment if you thought that. I would just like your opinion on something, given that you seem to know a fair bit about more precise spiritweb manipulation."

On the subject of power creep, perhaps we should also put more of a limit on the resources guilds have access to? While I understand that large armies can make things more interesting, I'm a bit concerned about the fact that it's gotten to the point that the only way to stand up to it is to either have your own massive resources or be massively overpowered yourself. To give an example, there's GUESS having a full fleet of space ships, and the Fiend also counts, although to a lesser point, since we did manage to get a plan for taking it down. There's also the fact the we seem to be introducing a lot of high power gear, the best example being that we've got enough high power stuff that there's talk about a weapons expo now, which seems to include things like power armor. There are also things appearing that have nothing to do with Brandon Sanderson books anymore, and instead look like they come straight from a sci-fi novel. While I understand that all of this is interesting, I feel that this is quickly turning away the focus from our characters, and instead heading into who can come up with the most powerful weapons and soldiers, which I think is even worse for balance than unbalanced characters. The issue here is that this is difficult to fix, since it's difficult to just create a set of rules regarding armies and weapons everybody needs to stick to, especially since a single person not sticking too it means that the whole arms race will be kicked off again. The only solutions I see are to cut back on this as a community, and to make sure that what we introduce at least somewhat sticks to the rules regarding how everything works in the books, and that any time we want to introduce something that isn't in any of the books (like things from other, non-Brandon series) we first discus this with each other. Making sure our characters also seem probable according to the rules we know of would also help with characters being op at the same time. As for things seeming probable, I'm talking about things like a character being a compounder (extremely rare in the books), or having Investure from multiple planets, especially if both forms of Investure are difficult to get (such as being both an elantrian and a surgebinder, things like a character having breath on top of their other Investure is alright, since breath is easy to get). Of course, characters can use Hemalurgy for these type of things, but try to portray it accurately. Using Hemalurgy means killing people, so somebody with spikes would generally be a psychopath for example. This should cut back on the strength of characters, as well as introduce a fairly easy form of balancing. It also creates a way for characters to be more diverse, as well as create more situations where characters have to be creative to deal with issues, instead of just muscle through with brute force. Also, using aluminum to negate the powers of strong characters is not a good method of balancing, so don't just use anti-investure things everywhere. TL;DR: A fairly good way to fix most issues with things being op is to put restrictions on armies and weapons people have, and to make sure that abilities generally remain at least inside the realm of plausibility.

"I'll be the god of foxes." I paused. "Or maybe shapeshifting? I do have questions about the whole ascension thing though. First of all, how would it happen? And secondly, how would it work with the way avatars are set up at the moment? And thirdly, would this mean that the character is basically retired?"

I looked up. "Just blame it on the alleys messing with things. It's basically my standard excuse for weird spatial or temporal things."

From the way I understand it (which probably isn't that good), all the different planck units are at the point where if you try to go any smaller (or larger, in the case of planck temperature and frequency) you need a working theory of quantum gravity to describe what is happening, meaning that we currently can't understand what happens at these points, which is why these are generally regarded as the minimum (or again, maximum) values. This means that you can have units of time smaller than planck time, but we just don't know what's happening anymore. On a side note, the smallest measurement of time that we've managed (8.50 × 10−19 seconds) is 25 orders of magnitude larger than the planck time (5.39 × 10 −44 seconds). Also, the actual definition of planck time is the amount of time it takes light to travel a single planck length.

" I see. I'm sorry, but I've already cast my vote, and I do still feel that we shouldn't be giving out things like these to mortals. Though I am curious. How would the Eye of the Oracle warn of large events? Will you simply use it to send Hellbent information you personally gather? Since I doubt you'll be able to predict what we will do."

With a little grin I looked up. "Natural laws? That doesn't mean much where we currently are, though I get what you're saying." I then continued in a more serious tone. "I'm also not sure about the idea of us actively interfering in the world. Our current methods work just fine, and any active interference could cause conflict between the avatars themselves, which could be catastrophic. I'm also not sure if a protector would be such a good thing. Why would we want one? Conflict is what makes the world evolve. All of us enjoy it. Some enjoy causing it, and some enjoy solving it, but the main point is that this causes change. If we have a protector, this conflict is gone. What does it matter if the bad guy wins, or if things get destroyed. We will still exist, and so everything will keep going, and stay interesting." I paused. "So, I vote that Hellbent will not receive our blessings, and that the same will apply to all who follow him here. While I will allow Hellbent to keep his spoils, as a reward for being the first to reach us, I also propose that we ensure he will not remember exactly who reside at the top of this mountain, only that we rejected him. I also propose that any who reach us after this will be treated the same, and that they will not keep their spoils, to prevent dangerous influences in this world." Remembering that others had brought their own people here, I spoke again: "Also, for any of those who have brought their charges to this mountain, I'd suggest not leaving them fully aware of their true nature. This might cause... disturbances for their personality. Perhaps make them believe that certain beings have influenced them, but don't make them aware of the fourth wall, or to which extent we control them." Having finished, I sat back down again.

I stood up. "True enough," I replied to Xinoehp. Looking down at myself, I wondered why I was a fox. I decided it didn't matter, since foxes are fun. I walked down to Ark. "There's something I'm wondering about, before I vote. You said that the Eye of the Prophet will allow Hellbent to see the future, but how does that work? While you might be able to predict what the world in general will do, I doubt you have the ability to foresee our interference. Or would this be limited to just relaying the information you find out, as well as your own influence, back to Hellbent." I sat back down to wait for an answer, in the mean time wondering how I could speak as a fox.

"Clone others?" KoTiel looked up from their notebook. "Can I borrow you for a bit? I want to see if your clones copy the spiritweb as well."

KoTiel decided it would probably take a while before the experiment resumed, so they took out their notebook and continued working on the design for a different experiment they had planned.

I suspect that at least a couple of them will want to have words with their creator.

Don't we (as in the controllers of the characters) already exist somewhere at the other side of the world? Also, if you want to create a character that interacts with the 4th wall as a basis of their powers, please make it something like Archer did, and don't make them really powerful. It kind of breaks the entire alleyverse.

"Mac is the one who will decide on that," KoTiel replied. After a short pause they continued talking in a softer tone. "Sorry about the whole pinning you against the wall by the way, I thought you were an intruder."

"You were?" KoTiel asked, surprised. "Well, just sit down somewhere and wait for your turn." Releasing him, they turned to Mac. "Hey Mac, I thought the idea was that we'd reuse the old guy, not use a new subject? Also, are you sure it's a good idea to use someone with some weird type of investure for the experiments already?"

KoTiel sighed. Getting annoyed, they called out: "Hey, can someone get confinement in here, or maybe security? Get them to take this guy away. Just get rid of his limbs, don't kill him, otherwise we'll just get a clone, and I still want to do some experiments on him. Now, can we get back to the science?"