Experience Allocated:

Linda McCallahan
Finesse: 13
Drain Shotgun Tuned
Remember the Fallen: Raphael(Will perform weird dream sequence at a later date)

Cassandra Geld
Spirit 6: Forceful Break
Will: 3
XP Remaining: 1

>>74334
Linda is really a mish-mash of breaker types.

She has her form with the mech, raph and cally. She has her Avatar Twinda.
And she has a shitload of guns.

>>74353
She started out as a weapon type, sure, but we've seen how badly personal powers and custom equipment can break that. (It'll be interesting if and when we meet an enemy strong enough with their own ways to break the rules).

...says something that she is legitimately entitled to shout things like "who the hell do you think I am" or "this isn't even my final form" completely without irony.

Seriously. Who the hell do you think I am is her type now.

>>74351
Forceful break suits the new, smarter Cass. I expect to she her using more actives breaks in the future.

...actually, I wonder how complete her transformation is? Has she outright shifted her 'thing'? I expect the personal power to shift, but what will her edge in breaking be now?

I still would like to see more XP go into will as she earns it, even if that one goes to something else.

>Guy
...you know, I'm really thinking we should just put his 2XP into will. See if it helps with avatar management or not.

Honestly I don't think putting more into will is a great idea. All Cass needs is to not be at the whim of the Average Joe Schmoe Breaker. She isn't a Will-Type Breaker like an Avatar User is. Nor is she a leader like Linda.

As she relies on her weapon to fight I think she should invest in it more.

...hey wait. Cass got a whopping 8 XP in that last fight. Did that count the 1 XP she already had in reserve? If not, that means she should have 2 XP left, not 1.

>>74355
I'm not opposed to improving her weapon-wise, but her will score is by far her biggest weakness, and she's pretty strong elsewhere. And there really isn't a reason she can't be a leader now (be a nice development now, actually, if she was more comfortable leading all the idiots looking up to her). Nic's taken to it (leading), and with only a will of 4. I'd like to see Cass at least at will 4, at most maybe 6. That's a good safe place for the dump stat on a high level character.

I'd buff Linda's dump stats too, if we didn't have so many other things in need of XP. She's got the most expensive build by far. Versatility is expensive.

Here's something for you guys to think on= why is Will such a low-end power so often? Seems like we almost never see ways to weaponize it, or have to do a will battle. Things like Cass remaking herself anew required it, but from what I can tell, they're few and far inbetween.

>>74419
We've never seen what a high Will (in the range of 15) character can do. Guy's already gotten a lot of mileage out of messing up people midcombat with orders so that his allies can attack them. And being an Avatar user, he always has allies on hand.

>>74419
Will is pretty significant, sometimes. The very first will roll we made is what got Cass and the fixer brothers to stop fighting and try to reason with us. If that hadn't worked, there's a chance we might have concluded Cass was the crazier one and joined the fixers!

Marc (at will 10) also made a few noticeable will rolls against Linda, pretty obviously manipulating her at a few points. And the fact Raphael kept winning will rolls against us was part of the reason his and Linda's interactions was filled with so much unnecessary fighting.

And a lot of other social interactions have will rolls in the background- it's just for the most part they're harder to notice and blend into the narrative and characterization more seamlessly than combat rolls.

The reason will is less weaponized is because it's a lot easier to just shoot something or bash them in the face than it is to do something subtler. I mean, think about Elizabeth- mind control, prescience and debilitating fear. In theory, that makes her extremely dangerous in combat. In practice, it's difficult to bring those to bear reliably.

...that said, I still think we should get Cass to at least 4. And Linda to 8, when we can spare it. (Decent places for their tertiary and secondary stats, respectively).

I also think we should get Guy to 5. Best outcome- Michelle is a special case, and it helps with avatar management. Worst case it doesn't help with avys, but it still helps with normality acting, yelling at point, and our other allies.

>>74427
The main reason I don't want to put much into will is because these fights are getting closer and closer to losing, our best fighters were down to 15 BP each against a single breaker. We need combat capability, no if and buts to it.

>>74441
That was only because of special plot bullshit. Cass didn't even die once. She burnt almost all that BP doing her inner battle stuff. And Linda mostly lost BP spamming Cally's time manipulation power to deal with constant attacks from multiple directions while Cass was helpless. Mostly special circumstances.

There's also magnitude of returns to consider. One XP into increasing what Cass is already really good at? Not much of a difference. A few XP filling a crucial weakness and allowing her to play a bigger leadership role when she's already Linda's right hand, and has a lot of people looking up to her? Damn valuable.

(And I'd still like to poke dreamer about Cass' XP. We had one in reserve from a few fights back. If we earned 8 in that battle and spent 7, then She should have 2 points XP left, not 1).

Linda needs more combat capacity (we need more weapon upgrades, possible mech upgrades, finesse investment, a finesse match, and a small will bump). Cass is pretty much rock solid in combat- we can afford to put a few points plugging the biggest hole in her build before getting more weapons or refining the one she's got.

In fact, I'd really like to see how the new smarter Cass fights, and what her new personal power does, before making decisions about how best to upgrade her chainsaw, or what new backup weapon might suit her.

>Elizabeth's life at danger
If Elizabeth needs to be in a dangerous situation, but runs the risk of not surviving it, seems to me the obvious solution is to have Linda displace her with Someone Else. Sure, there will be some people confused as to how the spacey seer suddenly turned into a blur of motion gun wielder, but as far as reality as concerned, Elizabeth will still be there. Linda will just be her. It's also literally the closest we can protect her.

...and if she's but at serious risk before Linda gets back, Linda is totally entitled to sense it and remotely displace her- pushing her out of reality to protect her. (Although I expect Cass will be somewhat weirded out by Linda suddenly becoming Elizabeth without warning for no apparent reason).

The whole point we got this ability was so we could fuck over reality the next time it tries to fuck over our friends. We don't have to watch our friends die again. (Infiltration options and the fusion forms just ended up being awesome bonuses).

>>74474
>Someone Else
Additional bonus: going up against a seer, then suddenly becoming an invisible hole in reality. That'd really throw them for a loop.

Hmm. Only problem is an outsider has now been revealed to be involved.

Something like that would be able to see through what we were doing- it would be able to tell we were Linda-as-Elizabeth. And something that can deal with or damage threads directly is something we can't fully protect her from even if Linda displaces her.

Oh! Best solution to the outsider, if it comes to a fight.

Linda becomes Elizabeth to try and protect her. At the same time? Elizabeth casts view the weave on Linda. Angelica said Linda would have the ability to manipulate the threads if she could see them. And against a creature from outside reality, that's probably the only way to fight it. On it's own turf.

Counter or manipulate it's own alterations. It's removed it's threads? Tie it down. Attach them again. Make it something real. Something we can hurt.

(Assuming of course the observer is hostile. We don't know its motives yet, but we should be prepared).

The biggest problem I see with that is that Linda doesn't really have a reason to swap out with Elizabeth right now!
I mean, Liz hasn't even told any of her allies she's got a high chance of death coming up, or about the observer, or anything at all, really.

Well, uh, yes. This is future planning, for if and when we have to face the outsider.

Or if and when Linda suddenly gets a magic premonition Elizabeth is going to be killed and swaps her out.

Hang on, have we ever gathered everyone together and explained what the Outsiders are? And more importantly, gather people back at base and explain an Outsider is nearby? Because with a room full of people who casually break reality, I'm sure there will be some with... interesting ideas for dealing with them.

>>74537
Linda made a point of gathering everyone together and sharing all the plot stuff that was mostly known only to her back here >>/quest/492848 (in an effort to keep everyone we trusted in the loop, and to cast aside Marc-era secretiveness), but the meeting with Angelica was the one thing she forgot to elaborate on. Although she did mention it casually in our meeting with Aria when we were listing all the 'interesting' things we'd seen happen.

Elizabeth hasn't really said anything about the new threat to anybody, except what she let slip in front of Cally's peers (which only confirmed there was a threat to her). She may elaborate more when she talks to Aria about the weave later, though.

So yeah, there's been no real discussion about the beings from outside reality in the group. We know of three- the man in the room every breaker talks to and who gives them their focus (the one who watches over the 'Children', as Angelica put it), the stone angel / Angelica / the warden (calling her 'the angel' is ambiguous with Linda, and Angelica is just a name Marc made up, I think), and this new one, with severed threads, waiting at the port.

I kind of assume though we'll hold another meeting of the senior staff to discuss things when Linda and Cass get back, unless events move too quickly to give us the chance. Sharing information and discussing options before making a plan and giving orders is only smart.

Hey! Guess what? Cass has 2 XP! Not 1! Where'd you ever get 1 from?

Moving on, now seems a good time to drop this on you guys. Stats for your new fairy friend over with the Alternates. Hopefully she'll provide a good defensive option. Although she's a bit less nice about it.

Sidhe
Will-6
Abilities:
Circle of Protection- Sidhe places a spherical, protective shield of up to 10 feet in diameter around herself. This shield halts attacks made against her, and prevents people she doesn't desire entering from entering. The strength of the shield is dependent upon her will stat.
Shield Burst- Sidhe can cause her shield to "burst", sending a wave of force outwards around her. If close enough to an opponent, she can use it to "strike" them with variable force dependent on the size and strength of the shield used. Other applications of this burst might reveal themselves if her Circle ability is upgraded.
Prank- Sidhe can "cause" things to happen. While not powerful on its, this ability can be used to help level the playing field somewhat. The issue, however, is that Sidhe herself must find whatever prank is being pulled to be amusing, and that usually means someone has to get hurt in the process.

>>74601
Bumping Cass's Will up to 4's probably good enough for now. We can keep the spare for tuning something so she doesn't have just a chainsaw to fall back on. Actually, a nonlethal option might be nice. Or something that expands her capabilities in interesting ways.

Hmm. No finesse stat! I expected the fairy to be a flighty little thing. Although I suppose you don't need to dodge if you can shield. And it's one less thing to have to spend XP on.

Can she have more than one shield up at a time?

How would upgrading her shield powers work? Do we just upgrade it, and then make choices like with spirit powers? What's the cost to upgrade?

So prank is like an active break, only for no BP, and with the constraint she has to initiate it and be amused by it?

I assume manifestation cost is 1?

>Cass' XP
...I would still like to drop one of those two into will. We can figure out a tune or upgrade to make with the other, later.

>Cass' birthday in 3 Weeks
>two week car trip
>a certain event might be good for her within the next week
Hmmmmm~. So this could be a productive party for her, is what you're saying. :3

Fuck, Dreamer, that was a depressing update. It sunk a ship we gave a push, and murdered a whole punch of people we offered help and tried to keep safe.

After thinking about it, I do have a comment. It's one thing for the Moon thing to fall through. I'm cool with that. But we specifically picked the most risky possible option to both spare the most people possible and get answers. This made it feel (I'm very specifically using the word "feel" because it's a subjective impression that might be wrong) like that decision got completely negated by a single dice roll, which really destroyed the feeling of agency.

A worse outcome, sure, that's fine. But this made it feel like our choice didn't matter at all. That's just the perspective of at least two people who didn't know the thinking going on in your head--it's possible that things might've been even worse if we hadn't made that choice. But we don't know that. We only know the final result. That's why it hit so hard.

>destroying the feeling of agency
...unless that's actually what he was going for. It's not too far fetched that the observer was watching us right back, and manipulating things to try and deny our choices impact. I mean, if we're fighting something that believes Elizabeth shouldn't exist to have an effect on reality, it makes sense it would try and limit the 'damage' she could do with her choices and manipulations before removing her.

Maybe if it's removed we can counter that? ...we have seen a battle with an outsider result in raw reality before. Although I'm not sure this is worth condemning another person to non-existence (unless this is easier to fix, and wouldn't have that cost?. Elizabeth has the advantage of seeing the weave, and we might be correcting something instead of forcing it, and we've got some experience now).

Or this is just me grasping at straws hoping for a different outcome.

This is going to be the weirdest boss battle. We simultaneously have the least and greatest agency to do anything.

Dangit dreamer, you set us up for this desperate boss fight with our weakest character, premonitions of her own death and of her allies flashing all around and then in the middle when we're kicking ass, you stop things with a peaceful accord?

You horrible, horrible, tease.

Elizabeth at least deserves a crap-ton of XP. Assuming she didn't just trade herself normal or something crazy.

>What would you offer in exchange for you life?
This is totally the wrong question and way to be looking at it, by the way.

Linda's important to the outsiders. They need her for something. We shouldn't be offering a damn thing to save Elizabeth. We should be strongarming them into leaving her alone.

Or they can watch as Linda goes to war with them. Because damn it, she would for that little girl. If keeping her alive risks wrecking reality, they better damn well help us make it work, or they can watch us tear reality to pieces in the attempt.

(If Elizabeth had actually died, I don't see any other way we could have played this other than to have Linda basically lose it. She'd hate herself for not being there, she'd hate her friends for not stopping it, she'd hate Cass for taking her away. Everything would fall apart. I'm talking helpless sobbing and random uncontrolled breaking around her till she got a grip, followed by ordering one of the others to gouge her eye out, breaking it stuck that way, equipping Elizabeth's eye, and then trying to make raw reality on the spot to change time again. Even if Elizabeth's ghost was screaming not to do it as we do. And then we'd break time ago knowing full well we risked destroying the world, and not giving a damn).

...also I really wanted to kill that jerk for massacring the entertainers, even if Elizabeth didn't care so much.

>speculating about the deal
One thing it seems to have wanted was it's hunter's life. Which I would have been loath to give it, and demanded a heavy price. He deserved it, and I don't particularly care if a meddling outsider loses its agent. Elizabeth probably gave it, though.

It didn't demand her breaking or her sight, which I might have expected.

My best guess is she had to agree to cooperate with its plans. To help turn Linda towards whatever the observers have planned for her.

>other stuff
Totally forgot to tell her she was right about Music staying with us. And get her thoughts on the whole remember the fallen thing, that might be interesting. Actually, we haven't seen Elizabeth since we picked up someone else, she might have something interesting to say on that, period.

...also forgot to check base with Elizabeth about Cass. The obvious question being- she looks different now, right? I mean, we know the answer, but I'm just wondering what her aura looks like now. We'll have to work that in later.

Saving up an unhappy rant for the next observer we see. (I expect Linda to run into Angelica again).

I have a bone to pick with you. You interfered. Came in where you shouldn't have. Gave Marc power he shouldn't have had. Elizabeth died for that. Raphael sacrificed himself getting her back. I ripped myself right out of world to set it right.

And then one of you has the audacity to try and come after her? To massacre people looking for her? And then to force her into some secret deal, holding an axe over her head?

I wouldn't have it. I don't give a damn about the integrity of reality. Or about what's supposed to happen. I care about people. I'm trying to be a protector, and you crossed that. In my town. And with my daughter.

And I know you want something from me. That I'm important for some reason. My best guess is you made Elizabeth promise to have me go along with your plans. Well, I'm done being used by people I don't trust for secret objectives. I'm done being manipulated. If you want anything from me, you'll telling me what's really going on, and releasing Elizabeth from whatever hold you have on her. Or so help me, I'll find a way to fight you. I'll find a way to turn the tear on you, if I have to.

(I talk to myself too much in this thread).

An update for Elizabeth's Stats.

Will-10
Spirit 6: Forceful Break
BP: 29
Control Wires: Due to Elizabeth's increasing control over the weave, she can now "connect" to others using the control wires by attaching said wires directly to a person's threads. All other rules still apply. She can only control up to five people in this way at any one time, or if using a combination of the two methods, each wire connected in this way uses up two wires worth of concentration.

7XP. Nice.

Forceful Break is an excellent choice for her, considering her affinity with the weave already gives her a bonus active breaking.

And the control wire upgrade is very nice. Possibly allows for long range manipulation, and we don't have to worry about the link being severed (except by someone with the right powerset).

>Forget-me-not planning
All right, so we're basically going to have to burn 6-7 XP tuning foci to give to our allies just to keep them remembering us.

Because we can't keep them close to us forever. Eventually Aria will want to leave, or we'll have reason to travel again, or they'll have their own reasons to travel again (like if Chris catches word of Rise?), or someone will get captured, or we'll need to split up, or whatever. We can't keep our friends on a tight leash forever. We have separate lives.

We do currently have 7 junk foci, of which I think the black ball might be the only one interesting in it's own right. The others can probably be swapped for various guns (there's gotta be 6 bullets in that vault pile). This way we've finally got back ups if we're separated from our foci again. It might actually mean we have more weapon options, too, depending on the functional range of a focus. Can you manifest from a focus an ally is carrying for you in the same battle? That would actually open the interesting condition that our available weapons loadout would change depending on who's with us, when. (Meaning, if possible, we should assign memory-foci based on what weapon compliments who).

To avoid this taking two battles or something to build up the XP we need, we might be able to subsidize this. Ie, the next time we have a fight where our allies are collecting foci, we ask if they'll give up one of their share to Linda so she can tune a memory-focus for them. ...that way it's (most) the party spending / passing off 1XP to keep Linda, instead of Linda spending tons of XP for everyone.

I'd expect say, Cass and Chris to do this without hesitation. Not as sure about everyone else. And the Doc and Elizabeth (if she needs one) will be XP losses no matter what since they don't fight much.

>people it's already too late for
I assume: Rodriguez, Mike, George, Sonia, the schoolkids.

Oh yeah. And before I forget...

Christin Wayenright
BP: 35

Michelle
XP Total: 3


And for Aria Galliana...

Stats: Strength-2/Finesse-10/Will-10
Spirit: 8
BP: 78
Manifestation:
Golem: BP Cost- 10, A massive hollow armored suit. The thing says nothing and desires to say nothing, only moving at the directions of its Queen or automatically moving to safeguard her from harm.
-Stats: Strength-10/Finesse-7/Will-10
-Sudden Appearance(1)
-Self-Repair(3)
-Guardian(3): The Avatar gains a bonus to it's the applicable stat whenever acting in defense of it's master, equal to the cost needed to purchase Guardian. More XP can be added to buff this trait even more.
-Durable(2):Increases the strength of the material that the Avatar is made of.
Spirit Abilities:
Limit Break
Normality Cloak
Forceful Break
A Dance for Two: Aria has, thanks to her odd form of fighting, gained the ability to enhance her own abilities, as well as those of her partner, when fighting in tandem with anyone. Anyone who pairs up with her gains this benefit, but it only activates for her and one other person fighting with her.
Finesse Focus
Normality
Active Break
Death Avoidance
Manifest

Limit Break: Forcing reality to further allow your will to shape it, you now roll three times your spirit and add the number of successes together when attempting to break. Furthermore, you may select five "breaks" or your choice. These breaks always succeed if they are cosmetic or targeting an object that cannot resist, and are more difficult to resist if targeting something that can resist.

Whoo! Aria's stats. Finally. Hmm. Lower base stats than I would have expected. Although they're very balanced, and I expect her fighting style compensates quite nicely for any individual stat deficits versus opponents.

Also, god goods, spirit 8 and all those break bonuses. Aria is built to fight with active breaks.

>Guardian(3)
A floating stat bonus equal to the cost of purchase? So... if we assume this is in-theme for him, that means 2XP each, so the bonus is worth 6 points when it kicks in?

>Limit Break
Goodness graces, it's active break and forceful break on crack. That's crazy. No wonder she could casually rebuild the sewer into something else.

...and it allows you to 'store' 5 breaks you can call on? For either drastically improved or guaranteed success? Interesting- it's sort of like converting active breaks to manifestations. I assume that kid-form she likes to use is one of them? (Unless that's just normality?). ...and there's probably at least one in there for her sword. Makes using a weapon as a non-weapon type a lot more feasible if you have another way to reliably produce your weapon.

If we got this one for anyone else, I'm not sure what we'd actually assign to the 5 slots! ...not that Linda's likely to get this ability, since it looks like it needs Forceful Break as a pre-req. We've only got 2 spirit slots left, and we're probably going to get distracted by more nonexistence abilities or other new stuff.

>A Dance for Two
Interesting. That's the first support type personal power we've seen. And that means Chris was even deadlier during the fight with the hunter.

Does this apply only when working with other people, or can she use this on herself and Golem?

Maybe we can get our lieutenants to get THEIR lieutenants to give us the next free foci they obtain that they don't wanna tune. We'll get 1 xp from getting a foci, which we then spend to tune that foci and hand it back to the underling.

>>75334
Distributing the costs might be a fast way to get memory-bolstering foci for all our lieutenants / friends, but I don't much see the point in going down the ranks and getting charms for people who have already forgotten us, or never knew us.

...besides, I wouldn't be surprised if there are ways to harm or otherwise get at a breaker through their foci. It is a piece of yourself in each one, after all. We should only be entrusting spares to people we trust.

>BP: 78
Uh... huh.

Aria's max BP minus 5 isn't divisible by 3. That a typo, or does that mean she didn't start with 5BP, or she got some other special condition?

>yay for training XP!
Huh. Just a thought, but did Nic ever get any XP out of that midnight battle thing Elizabeth sent her on?

Alright, Guy got a ton of XP from what we had him pull. Let's consider our options here:

9XP:

>spirit rush
3XP gets us to spirit 4, and a semi-special power.
Another 4XP on top of that gets us to spirit 5, and a personal power.

>avatar upgrades
As a reminder, our options (and minimum prices) are:

1XP Universal upgrades (utilitarian things with little combat application, like speech or humanlike).
2XP Thematic powers
5XP Non-thematic powers

Specific examples:

I think getting the next level of humanlike is only 1XP. We have a lot of points, wouldn't hurt to keep that going.

Repair costs 2XP to purchase. For one BP, the breaker can concentrate and fix a damaged avatar. Not really worth it until the manifestation cost goes above 1BP (we could dismiss and manifest for the same effect), but it might be worth getting in advance?

Sudden appearance costs 5XP. Pricey, and level 1 only allows one use per battle to summon the avy, but it might be worthwhile to invest against being caught without Guy's brother.

A thematic power only costs 2XP. If we can think of anything good for our brother, now would be a really good time to pick one up. Heck, we could afford to get one for Sidhe, too. (A fairy ring transport system, maybe? A cheaper alternative to sudden appearance).

>stats!
Boring, but practical. Our bother could stand to be stronger and faster, he might need will if we go for a special power, Guy could really stand to have a bigger BP pool for juggling 2 avatars and active breaks, he could use some finesse if we're going to commit to an Aria-type build where the breaker is actually effective fighting with a normal weapon besides the avy.

Sidhe's ahead of the curve, I think. We can probably afford to delay bumping her will for another battle or two.

>plan
So... out of all that, I think I'd probably support going for spirit 4, getting our brother an in-theme power, maybe purchasing repair and/or sudden appearance, and spending whatever we have left over on stats.

How's anyone else feel about our options? Do we have any cool ideas for an in-theme power for our brother? I'm still kind of stuck on that.

>Jager / Rise
Jager has the choice of stacking some more str and/or fin, going for spirit 4, or weapon upgrades, I guess. I'd go for spirit 4 or upgrade his sword.

Rise, I dunno. We don't have her stats yet.

Personal power eh?
Well, a maybe a low- key summonable shield?
Or to go more with the potential D7 insider theme, summonable camera drones- Big Brother is always watching...

You know, with the way guy idealized his brother as his hero, I'd think sudden-appearance would be in theme. Heroes come out of nowhere all the time, especially to save their wards.

>>76364
A shield? Well, I see how it would fit the theme, but I don't think it actually fulfills a purpose we need. We already have Sidhe for casting shields on Guy. And our Brother is fairly resistant to most forms of damage- I'd rather make him tougher or better at dodging than give him a shield.

I'm not sure how much utility we'd have for a drone (I see similar problems to our initial x-ray for Linda- it's a lot harder to use effectively tactically than it sounds). Nor do I see a thematic fit. ...and to be honest, giving a drone to what is, in essence, a drone, seems silly to me. We could just give the fairy an invisibility power to get the same effect, and that might actually be thematically viable.

>>76374
If Dreamer says we can have sudden appearance at thematic power prices, I'm for getting it now.

So... anyone willing to come over to side "get information" over side "play it safe and run away"?

D7's going to be after us anyways after what we did, and because we have Rise, and the flashbacks and stuff have already made it pretty clear Guy's got a connection to them. I'd rather go for the truth than play out the tired old trope of ignoring the connection and running away from the mystery that will chase us anyways.

The only reason I haven't pushed Linda to do something about D7 yet is we've had too many other things requiring our attention. Other problems, people who need us, things to do before going to war with the government and/or crazy demon/tear beings. Guy has reason and opportunity, here.

Fuck... forgot to change the name on that last post in the spin-off... oh well. Here's Rise's stats and stuff, since she's part of the crew and all.

Rise Muramasa
Stats: Strength-3/Finesse-9/Will-6
Spirit: 4
BP: 44
Manifestation:
Muramasa- A nodachi painstakingly cared for. Like her sister's, it is usually kept at her side, although the weapon itself is just about the same height standing as Rise herself. The weapons is sharper than could be natural and lighter than it's form dictates.
Sprit Abilities:
Finesse Focus
Normality Cloak
Normality
Death Avoidance
Manifest

Oh. And the whole sudden appearance thing. Yeah, that's fine. Theme it up all you want.

>sudden appearance in-theme
Nice! We're getting that, for sure then. Just need to finalize what we're doing with the other 7XP.

>Rise
Wow, forty four BP? That's a ton, especially for someone without active break or active powers to spend it on (well, she has normality, but you never really spend more than one point on that at a time). That's more than anyone but our avatar users!

I'd say she should be saving her XP for spirit 5. It only costs one more XP than she has, and she can certainly afford to pay the potential BP costs of a personal power.

Kind of strange her sword has the same name as Chris'. What's the manifestation cost?

>wrong name
Heh, I didn't even notice. Don't worry, you're hardly the first to do that.

>if you don’t buy your daughter gender appropriate toys she’ll grow up to be a killer mecha pilot
Continues to be true, and awesome, apparently. No downsides to letting video games raise our daughter, it would seem. :D

>>76386
Since Sudden Appearance is apparently confirmed as in-theme, that and Spirit 4 costs 5 XP. Which leaves 4 XP to spend on other stuff. We could spend 2 each Strength and Finesse for Bro (unless we decide to get him something similar to Cassie's strength-into-finesse ability, but that might not be doable), deduct 1 or 2 for personal stats if we decide to give Guy finesse or BP.

This is pretty much where we have to decide whether to invest in finesse for Guy. Since avatars're huge XP sinks, it's either active break spam or gun spam for him. We seem to be going the gun route a bit what with already have gotten training and using it in the last fight, but honestly I'm a bit more inclined to focus on active breaks once we can get that up and running and treat guns as more something to tide us over until things start getting too high finesse to hit reliably. Finesse's useful for dodging things, but we got a forcefield already. Investing in Sidhe to improve that would help cover our defense needs.

You know what, my impulse right now is to say let's get Spirit 5 right now. That and Sudden Appearance. We'll definitely need to bump up Bro's stats afterward, but we can just do that with any odd bits of XP that dribble in. Plus, it'll give us something to define ourselves with.

Also, is it just me, or did Guy resist a potential corruption back there in the big fight with Bro telling him to take the safe route and him deciding not to do it? Maybe that Will 5 helped there (not to mention it helped us talk the other groups into our plan). We should keep that Will investment going (and I suspect it's a good idea to keep Guy's Will higher than Bro's).

With all that to spend XP on, we don't really have much XP for Finesse. It's worth noting that Aria only has only one Avatar to invest in. We have two.

>Drones
I suppose you're right. I was thinking more of a 'secure the area' lets Bro 'break post' cameras in an area that he could then watch/let him know if enemies were incoming...Maybe a spruced up version of this could be a later 'spirit' power that Bro gets.

As far as Sudden Appearance... He's a super hero themed Avatar right? Maybe he shows up with his own personal theme playing wearing superhero outfit of some sort! Hey, that might be an upgrade we give him-a superhero outfit for battle...What it would do I'm not sure, maybe flight!

>Get sudden appearance and spirit 4
I agree, completely.

Also- I think sudden appearance makes Lira's suggested D7 raid much less risky. If there is a surprise defender we can't handle, we could always run while our brother stalls and then appears to catch up once we're clear.

>spirit 5
I'm not so sure about this. Spirit 5 abilities tend to cost big chunks of BP. Guy would only have 17BP- that makes a 5BP ability on top of aggressive active breaking kind of hard to afford. Especially since against a tough opponent where we'd want to use a power, we're going to end up having to pay for respawning and repairing avatars, too. I think we need a bigger BP pool, first?

I'd agree we can't really afford to invest in finesse, right now. The gun is a crutch for the moment, and as it becomes less effective, we can use it as a holdout option.

I'd say maybe... 1-2 points in BP, put everything else into Bro's str and finesse?

>It's worth noting that Aria only has only one Avatar to invest in. We have two.
Well, Sidhe's kind of a discount avy, actually. All he powers are tied to one stat, and she starts with several useful powers we don't have to pay for. The XP it will take to keep her competitive looks less than other avatars might take.

...I have been meaning to sit down and try and make some more reasonable estimates about the other avatar user's XP costs, now that we know how this works.

>>76391
Yeah, I agree on this. 2 XP on BP, 1 each on Strength and Fitness for Bro. I'm fine with never investing in personal Finesse, but that's largely because Linda's already a gun spam build and I want to explore new ground with Guy.

Anonymous 2013/09/24(Tue)15:05 No. 76400 ID: 2f4b71
File 138006030321.gif - (0.98MB , 500x375 , 2pUKZc9.gif )

>Daughter with her own giant robot
We might not want to damage Athena too much, because reasons.

Lingering question:

Whatever happened with the fixer base in Havers? That was, ostensibly, the reason Linda and Cass went up there. Did they just forget to check it out after everything else? Did they find it abandoned or a dead end? (They withdrew after the west coast HQ went down, or D7 got them, etc). Was the intel wrong to begin with?

>>/quest/544737
>Brother / Sidhe break?
...I don't think that's how it works? Level 4 powers are semi-special, things a breaker only get one of, but that aren't necessarily exclusive. We don't get a custom, personal power till spirit 5.

Known spirit 4 abilities: evasion, finesse focus, weapon: enviroment, weight null, fear itself, unbroken will. They all seem to be direct applications of a stat (str, fin, or wil). Granted, in Guy's case, one may well be interpreted though an avatar (like the way Amelia could broadcast a fear aura), at which point I guess it sort of does boil down to Brother / Sidhe with offense / defense.

Hmmm. I wonder if Maria's power through death and roll to cover ability and Sonia's fast respawn were repeatable spirit 4 powers or spirit 5 personal powers.

>>76920
Though, the offensive/defensive nature of the Spirit 4 ability could be reversed, I think, if one would look at it in a certain way. Brother is focused on protecting Guy (to the point of Guy's own detriment), which would very clearly map to a defensive ability; and Sidhe is also very malicious, yes? that would make it a natural channel for any offensive abilities.

>>76914
There was no fixer base at all. It was a method for McCarthy to see if he could somehow remove Cass from the picture entirely, which would probably have been a severe psychological blow to Linda. Of course, he forgot to figure that Linda is Linda. Things never work they way there supposed to when Linda gets involved with it. EVER.

>>76920
Maria and Sonia's abilities are semi-unique. Both are simply variations on existing abilities. Sonia's is Death Avoidance tweaked slightly, and Maria's is Evasion tweaked slightly. You probably won't be seeing those again, unless I decide to randomly throw them in there somewhere.

>never was a fixer base
Hmm. That just leaves the question of how he got the false intel to our scouts. I guess that's easier when all he had to rely on was rumor, and we didn't have any way to verify information.

>Things never work they way there supposed to when Linda gets involved with it. EVER.
...I hear DM frustration. :V

>Sonia's is Death Avoidance tweaked slightly, and Maria's is Evasion tweaked slightly.
Oh, uh, that makes sense, actually. Sonia's ability has enough of a trade off to sub for a basic power (yes, fast respawn is an advantage in some situations, but in others it just makes it easier for people to chain kill you and bleed BP), and I'm guessing Maria's roll to cover when killed replaces the roll for damage mitigation Linda gets.

I'm going to apologize beforehand for what I am doing to poor Guy(although I've recently decided not to continue doing things from his point of view after we finish up with his deal). It's also going to be railroaded a bit from here, just the next few posts I think, at most. Unless you lot come up with another crazy off the wall plan to nullify anything I can think to do(probably not). Still, suffice it to say I'm using this as an opportunity to bring some more characters to the table for the main story, although whether they'll be allies or enemies has yet to be seen...

>although I've recently decided not to continue doing things from his point of view
Aww. It's kind of fun having a character on the lower ends of things, who can still, you know, do stuff. Poor Linda's all tied up running things. (Although we've still been making kind of significant 'how the place is run' kind of decisions. Once we've got the place stable, and start planning our campaign against D7 or whoever, I expect things will be more normal).

>Unless you lot come up with another crazy off the wall plan to nullify anything I can think to do
Did the best I could! Called in every chekhov's gun I could- including the gun and just about everything we have in inventory and our skill list.

And yet you still haven't connected the pieces... oh well. I'll do the rolls sometime tomorrow/over the weekend, and get to writing it up after that. In the meantime, keep thinking. You might come up with something better!

Or, you know, connect the pieces. Although I suppose it's a good thing if you haven't, it means I made them obscure or seemingly completely unrelated enough... or something. Or I'm just so bad at leaving clues around that it just didn't get noticed at all...

Probably the latter, now that I think about it...

>And yet you still haven't connected the pieces
Well, let's see what can be worked out here. (Warning, wall of text. You wanted me to think...)

Guy has definitely had his head messed with before (I've hedged that in-quest, but only because I figured it was easier for the character to cope with maybe being altered over knowing it for sure).

From the flashbacks Guy, or whoever he was before (Jean) doesn't seem to have been a very nice person. And he willing submitted to the chair, and/or whatever altered his memory, for reasons unknown. Possibly this includes having breaking artificially induced, although we don't know for sure Guy wasn't already a breaker.

>You might come up with something better!
Possibly. My current plan has several flaws. If assumes we can get our attack off quickly enough that Windy doesn't interfere. It assumes Emily is a Tear, that reform time gives us a small window of opportunity to in, that a grenade won't kill our brother anyways, and that the shield will buy us enough protection from the blast we aren't left wasting our window of opportunity on respawning. (And that would be Guy's first death- he won't shrug that off as quickly as he might otherwise). Texting for help is a real hail mary- there's no way our allies will get here in time if something we do don't work.

I suspect Windy is a subject, or at least, that he's not going to take action until he has to, or is ordered to. We can probably take first action without being countered or stopped.

I assumed Emily is a tear, because she seems to express derision for breakers, talking like she isn't one of them, and doesn't act exactly like one. Of course, fixers have expressed similar sentiments, and she could just have a manifestation she hasn't called on yet, or a weird power-set.

...of course, now that I think about it, there's another kind of being with superhuman strength besides breakers and tears. She could be an avatar. She could be Guy's avatar. From before the memory alterations. That might explain why we picked up feelings from her when we tried to tackle her, or why she has the power to directly damage Brother. If Guy was wiped, and then artificially re-broken, our Brother would be weaker. She's from a deeper, more fundamental layer of Guy's broken mind, she can literally undermine Brother.

Of course, if she's our pre-memory-reprogramming avy, plan blow-her-up won't work very well. Amelia could reform with a pretty short delay. We might be able to compel her to stand down, or dismiss her, but I wouldn't bet on it. We'd had to struggle to control our brother, who was a lot more amenable than her. And if she's connected to a whole nother layer of Guy's mind, I doubt we even have admin access.

The other flaw in the plan is we're focusing on removing the attacker and trying to get our brother out. There's another possible target. Emily needs that chair. We destroy that, and she can't mess with Guy's head. We could target that with the grendade, and/or active break it into oblivion. Emily might disengage from killing our brother to try and protect the chair, too. Of course, that assumes the chair isn't something Emliy or Windy can just repair or restore with a quick active break (if Emily is a breaker, or an avy with break channel). (If it's really complicated equipment, and/or involved tear or breaker stuff, it will probably be beyond what a quick break can fix).

We could also try to save our brother by submitting. Call out to Emily to call it off, that you'll submit. Of course, I suspect that as good as kills Guy (wiping him to restore whatever personality was driving the body before), and more than likely kills our brother anyways. It might work if we're doing it as a lie to buy time, but it's not much time at all. And if Brother is going to die anyways, Emily might not see the point in not killing him herself and tossing you in the chair. After all, why accept surrender when you've already won?

>>/quest/545168
Well, Guy doesn't have break sight. So he wouldn't get numerical readings for things like Linda does. ...and he's done lots of breaker things. We've manifested, we've tuned, we normalized several times, and... can't remember if we ever active broke, actually. There's no indication a tear could do those things. We also have spoiled stats, although I suppose those could be lies?

...I suppose he might have been a tear before he was Guy? If a person can break or tear, what happenens if you exploit memory wipes to try and tear one mind, and break the other?

(Assuming of course people can become tears as they can become breakers. We don't actually have any evidence tears start out normal the way breakers do).

>speaking of stats
...what's our spirit 4 ability? I think we unanimously voted offensive, but it hasn't been revealed. That might be something that could help us out of this situation.

All in all, trying to find some smart way to play this, instead of just screwing it up like we did Cally. (Obvious solution in retrospect was to active break her headphones. Either make them play the conversation we had with Jake- where he expressed his total contempt and lack of care for her, and/or horrible screeching sonic overload to stun her long enough to ice and disarm).

...also, man, crazy "you're almost certainly going to die" situation. Here I was expecting our first decent boss fight when I said to resist. (Two avies vs two breakers). All Guy's fights so far had been ridiculously one sided, (thanks to allies, suprise, and normality tricks).

Hrrrm...I guess you're right. We just got it so early on that it was missed that we can't always moniter the amount of BP we have.
And after a while, we learned how to 'game' the system by basically taking note of the numbers when we met people and then having rough estimations of how much break points they have by what we've seen.
But here's what I've been able to confirm.
1-Guy/Jean was once a D7 agent.
2-Emily, is most likely the 'she' from before. She might not be a full-on Breaker, but she DOES have power beyond a normal human. If I had to guess? She's more or less a Breaker without a foci, basically. So she has Will, Strength, Finesse, and Spirit, but no foci type, and possibly even lacking the power to respawn, meaning she can't actually get in a fight, in normal circumstances. It would explain Old Man Wind, another such experiement, though perhaps more successful. However, it might be that he's a 'failed' breaker like Emily, and doesn't have a foci, but has windy powers, instead of the form type we assumed him to be (Using his air powers to transmit his voice over a long distance, instead of simply turning into wind).
Guy, I think, is sorta space-y about the whole Breaker thing because of Brother- he's siphoned off the knowledge of things useful to Self-Preservation to Bro. In this case, it'd be a bit of a shell-shock causer and a 'image-breaker' for Brother to be killing, what with the 'Superhero' theme he has, and as a result, it'd mess with Guy to know his brother is well...Killing.
But there's something else weird. As soon as Sidhe came around, it seemed like the corruption just flat-stopped. It wasn't even an issue anymore. Granted, it could have been nothing happened to trigger that, but that's another thing I find suspect.
The data on Guys in D7 suggesting Guy was somehow a trap is why I got leery of going to D7 in the first place- I didn't know if D7 was planning to spring Guy in the Breaker base or wanted him to 'come home' so to speak.
And lastly, I got worried about the 'tear' idea after noting that the other breakers failed to combo break. And not just failed, but spectacularly failed-they either lost their minds, or outright ripped their threads from Reality, if not undoing it entirely. Then again, several people poofed when Guy did it as well, so I guess that means while he did it better, he still wasn't necessarily 'strong enough' to do it perfectly...
Then there's the headache. I chalk that up to the chair's effects but the WHY and WHAT it does is beyond me. Best I can think of is some kind of seal on Guy's memories but I think that was established already.
>Too obscure of clues
Hard to say Dreamer-did you mean for us to pick up on that, or was it more like Morde's abilities to create Primal Souls or whatever those plot coupons were called-where they were there to be snagged if we were slick, but really were 'sidequests' if you will, as far as their rewards went-nice, but ultimately unnecessary?

Another advantage break sight might have had: would be a lot easier to judge Emily as a breaker or not. (Normality cloak notwithstanding).

>Guy/Jean was once a D7 agent
Likely, but not absolute. He might have been involved or brought into or had dealings with the organization without actually being an agent.

>Emily
I doubt she lacks any kind of respawn or durability. If we could just shoot her and be done with it there wouldn't be dire warnings about railroading. We'd have an easy out. As I see it, she's either:

1) A breaker who hasn't felt the need to show off a manifestation, yet. She has the base stats to kick our ass, and a powerset that allows her to hurt our avatar, and that's what she's doing.

2) A tear. Explains how she punches through the shield so easy and can hurt our Brother- they're both aspects of breaking, which she is anathema to. Would also explain the contempt she seems to show for breaking and our avatar.

3) An avatar, likely past-Guy's / Jean's (before Guy's memories were altered, and then D7 either induced a second break on the new personality, or gave him access to a 'raw' avatar, and Guy produced his Brother the way Michelle did Behemoth). This could explain the feeling we got when we tackled her (she thinks she's fixing things, while from our perspective, she's messing them up). It would also explain her contempt.

Personally, I think 1 is the least likely of the bunch, though it's not impossible.

>Wind
...I really don't see why you're assuming he's some kind of experiment without a focus. We've seen people whose powers allow them to manipulate things (the Doc, Rodriguez, Elizabeth, Lighting, Fire, Raphael, etc). And a wind manipulation theme could fit a utility or tool weapon-type or a form type (form types don't need to necessarily be in a form to access all their powers, after all). No need to assume he's something new.

>how to deal
I already pointed out the possible ways my grenade plan could go wrong, before. Largely, it depends on Emily being a tear, and using a McCarthy-style regeneration rather than a death avoidance or repair. (And that regeneration-lag is proportional to damage, and gives us a better window that than other forms of respawning).

I'm starting to think it's too much of a risk based on too many assumptions. We might be safer trying to destroy the chair with the grenade. We can use active break and prank to try and make sure it gets there and works, or protect it from the enemy trying to stop it with a break. And we could use a shield to prevent a gust of wind or Emily from knocking it away in time. And she'd almost certainly try to intervene, possibly giving us a chance to grab our brother and book it (or for our allies to intervene?).

>>/quest/545200
>We've never had anyone try anything like that- we don't know what kind of spirit level would be needed for a reasonable success rate.
>But I'm inclined to think something that massively changes the enviroment and is that dangerous in combat is beyond what spirit 4 can do. Especially if the person with an affinity for wind tries to block it.

I'm going to go ahead and say I'm not so sure about this. The differences in the examples we've been given comparing breaks of various spirit levels seem to be the scale of the change, the degree the change is different then how things already are, and if the change violates the current laws of reality.(With affinity playing a role as well) None if it is based on how dangerous it is in combat. Changing one gas to another gas is a small change, doesn't violate the current laws of reality, and air has very little mass meaning it might well be a small scale change.

Now, if the air guy tries to block us I'd assume he can(If he can active break or the equivalent at all), but he may not know to. Breaks are quick, and he wouldn't know in advance what we're doing.

Not saying necessarily that we can do this, but it seems plausible to me.

For reference here's the examples we were given.

>>59811
>1-Minor Changes to Reality(Hey look! My shirt is PINK!)
>5-Major Changes to Reality(Look at the pretty pupp- OH MY GOD IT'S EATING MY ARM!)
>10- Deny Reality(Gravity? What Gravity?)

Spirit 5 seems to be enough to turn a puppy either into a vicious adult dog or some sort of dog sized monster. Changing the gas makeup of the air seems small in comparison, closer to changing the color of a shirt.

>>77053
You're talking about fundamentally changing the entire enviroment around us. The only person we've seen pull off something like that was Aria, and she was spirit 8 and buffed with limit break (and pulling that room out of nowhere might have been one of her stored breaks, too).

Changing the enviroment strikes me as a bigger job than changing an object or creature. Certainly it's more like changing an object or creature than changing a color. Color is a cosmetic quality, and really only affected by the surface properties of a material.

You're also leaving out the hidden balancing element. The ability to shape terrain aggressively is nerfed for balance. It was stated way back here >>60538 there are things in place to simply prevent high spirit characters from killing anyone who attacks them with lava, acid, etc.

Fundamentally though, it's something we have no experience with, and no good way to judge the feasibility of. And we're teetering on the edge of defeat- I'd prefer to risk more certain strategies, if we can.

...besides, we're already considering setting off a grenade in a small room. That blast already stands a decent chance at killing everyone in the room (ignoring shielding. Although we don't know how well that will hold up, either). Not sure we need to gamble trying to place gas on top of it. If we really wanted to enhance the explosion though, I'd say just have Sidhe prank it so. She's got a thematic boost for making violent mischief worse, and she proved she could enhance trapped devices before.

>>77056
Forgot about that post, but then I'm not sure changing the air to a combustible gas is the same thing as making acid or Lava. Acid and Lava are things that will stick around and potentially continually kill several breakers, and depending on placement could require a breaker to fly to even be able to attack the one who put it there. Not really comparable balance wise to using a break to, in combination with another ability, cause a single explosion.

And I'm honestly not sure the grenade will really work. It'll take Guy a second to grab and prime it, and I fully expect the air guy to be able to shield himself, or if he's on the ball able to launch it somewhere else since the grenade will need to travel through the air. Especially since we've been told unless we do something amazing we're gonna be railroaded. Gambling is pretty much what we have to do.

Honestly, if you want to break the chair, then we probably need to "break" the chair.

We already know Sidhe's shields can block controlled air flows. If we bubble the grenade until impact, the air guy can't deflect it.

And I really don't care if he shields or protects himself. He's a breaker- even if we kill him in the blast, he'd be up in a minute. He's not the real threat anyways- Emily is the one who casually overcomes our avatars.

The whole objective is to find something that buys us sufficient time to grab Bro and run, not win.

>Gambling is pretty much what we have to do.
Yes, but gamble smart. With things we understand. Betting on un or poorly understood mechanics working exactly as you want isn't a good bet. (Especially if we're being railroaded- all the railroad has to do is go "of course the mechanics don't work like that, sorry"). We're much better off trying to exploit mechanics we understand.

Seriously, pranking the grenade could probably net as big a bang as breaking a room full o' gas, with more chance of working.

The things we have to gamble on are unknowns- like what Emily is / what will hurt her, and yes, if the chair will survive an explosion or can be repaired by breaking. Honestly, I'd rather be debating that stuff than the more effective explosion making method. If we can puzzle out what's really going on, that allows us to plan better.

>gas plan won't stick around and keep killing
Kind of depends on if there's any sufficient breathable air in the room, after. (Oxygen not converted to gas or burnt off). We are in a closed enviroment.

Sidhe can only put a shield around herself. Unless she wants to get blown up with the grenade, we can't shield it.

>He's not the real threat anyways- Emily is the one who casually overcomes our avatars.

I'm not so sure of that. She's the one acting at the moment, so she's the most immediate threat, but I think he may very well be the bigger threat given his abilities. He may be capable of messing with avatars like Emily is and we also haven't seen him get physically involved. His disinterest gives me the impression he may even be Emily and previously "Jean's" Boss.

>Sidhe can only put a shield around herself
Hmm. Well, that completely trashes my initial idea of using a shield to concentrate the blast around Emily, then.

Although to protect the grenade from being blown off course, all she'd have to do is push the shield out far enough it's between Windy and it, and then retract before the boom. That, or we use active break to oppose interference, or to just move the grenade to the target (we know moving objects around is something low-level breakers can do. We can even cook it so the others don't have time to react).

>Windy threat level
He's a specialist. Wind control would basically give remote strangling power, and telepathy-like throwing or pushing things around. (And probably eavesdropping applications?). That could be highly deadly in a lot of circumstances, except Sidhe's shields work, and our avatars don't need to breathe. In a normal fight, Guy would have the edge.

And there's been no indication Windy's anything other than a breaker.

Disinterest might indicate a belief he could kick our ass, but the I think a simpler explanation is he knows what Emily is capable of (or what she is). Why worry about a fight when you already think you know the outcome? (Or if you're a subject who just sits around awaiting orders).

I'll say that we've seen so little of Windy's abilities that making assumptions about his limitations seems hasty. The only time we've seen him care, all he seemed to want was information. We have no idea what he can actually do.

His presence here suggests that he's in the loop though, and that to me means he's likely a tear or a brainwashed breaker. His disinterest make me think the second is unlikely, as hyperfocused as Chris was. Looking back I think he's most likely who Guy/Jean was talking to when he broke himself, and Emily is the She Jean referred to. So probably not their boss(that might be Jean), but her peer.

Yes, granted, underestimating opponents is dumb. I just see no reason to treat him as a bigger threat than he's proved to be so far, or to assume we're facing another exception or new phenomena. It's premature, and doesn't matter a whit unless we find a way around the immediate problem Emily presents.

>which means he's likely a tear
Except we've seen no evidence that tears can apply power the way breakers can. So far as we know, tears have passive regeneration, resist breaking, can sense people thinking about them, and can kill breakers by touch. Manipulating a part of reality (wind/air) strikes me as much more a breaker kind of thing.

Unlike Emily, who's really done nothing that shows her to be a breaker, and may support her being an avatar or tear.

There was an or there for a reason dude.

>Except we've seen no evidence that tears can apply power the way breakers can

I believe this is the first time we've actually fought a tear.(Assuming Emily IS a tear) We attacked McCarthy once, but he didn't fight back personally. Our knowledge of Tears is painfully low. The fact that we've seen near nothing from Tears doesn't mean we should be discounting him because he's doing a thing a breaker would be capable of, especially if the situation implies he's being trusted with knowledge other D7 members aren't by a person who seems to have a heavy dislike for breakers.(Or may just be yandere for Jean and she's currently venting at breakers because he cared about them)

To put it more plainly, the situation suggests he's either a partner/peer or a subordinate. If she's a Tear, and he's her partner or peer, then he is most likely also a Tear. I'm leaning against him being her subordinate, and I think she's a Tear, so I'm leaning towards him being a Tear. We know pretty much nothing about what Tears can do, and nothing that directly discounts him from being one, and so I think that the situation is far more relevant to judging whether he's a Tear than whether the abilities he's shown match the practically zero we've seen from Tears.

The very fact that we've seen him do breaker like-things when tears are supposed to be the antithesis of breakers would discount him being one as far as I'm concerned.

And just because we suspect Emily is a tear doesn't mean everyone she works with has to be. Elizabeth's visions suggested there was a future where Linda could get close to one, after all.

But really, this is irrelevant and silly. We're speculating on him with even less information than anyone else, and unknown capabilities on his part aren't exactly something we can plan for before we see them.

I mean, in order to save our brother, our options are to either attack Emily, get her away with a pitfall, and/or lure her away by threatening the chair. How do we improve or hedge that plan to account for what Windy may be?

...one advantage of an explosion is we could at least see how they die. That would reveal what they are.

>The very fact that we've seen him do breaker like-things when tears are supposed to be the antithesis of breakers would discount him being one as far as I'm concerned.

Breakers survive bullets to the head. Tears survive bullets to the head. Breakers show super strength. Emily showed super strength. Breakers can presumably damage reality. Tears definitely can damage reality. Also, we only have McCarthy's word that he is the antithesis of Linda. Unless I'm forgetting some other clarification which I totally might be.

>I mean, in order to save our brother, our options are to either attack Emily, get her away with a pitfall, and/or lure her away by threatening the chair. How do we improve or hedge that plan to account for what Windy may be?

And you'll notice the thing I had in mind that accounts for him is a follow-up to the pit plan. That said I'm now confident I was wrong, and I'm now pretty sure he's a breaker(I seem to flip-flop a lot when I go back to look at things. I'd say I should stop arguing/debating when tired, but it did lead me to find this bit) Way back Rise said

>"Excuse me. There was someone else here. Another agent/breaker team. I only ever met the agent, so I do not know much about the breaker, and they were never officially assigned here so..."

And I'm willing to bet Emily and Windy are that Agent/Breaker team. Funnily enough, that establishes a pattern for Tears partnering with a Breaker, what with McCarthy and 23 working together. Wonder if he has a replacement yet. Also wonder if the one who pulled the switch for Jean was his breaker partner, but I kinda don't think so given the reason he seems to have done it.

>Breakers survive bullets to the head. Tears survive bullets to the head.
Not quite. Breakers die from bullets to the head, and then come back. Change reality so it didn't happen. Tears just endure- take the hit, keep going, and don't die. Grow back.

There's a difference in method- one does something to reality, the other simply ignores the rules, refuses to let reality apply to themselves.

I think that's the difference between breaker and tear. One has mastery of reality (by being more than normal people- there's more raw reality in the thread of a breaker. Children of reality, as Angelica put it), the other has mastery of self by virtue of being a hole in reality, not subject to realities' rules.

Which makes Linda a rather interesting edge case. She's neither now. She's not a thread in the pattern, or a tear in it. She's not there.

>Unless I'm forgetting some other clarification which I totally might be
Well, we know from Chris that McCarthy can blow breakers up. That's a difference, and would support the antithesis idea.

There's also the interesting tidbit that tears might be a threat to outsiders- even Angelica wasn't willing to catch McCarthy's attention, and seemed to show some unease and fear.

But yeah, very little if anything is verified or confirmed on these guys. We didn't even know for sure they resisted breaking till Guy normalized that attack. I'm still wary as to how much might be general tear stuff versus unique to McCarthy.

>agent / breaker pattern
And Rise and with her handler. Although he was normal, at least.

>flip-flop
Nothing wrong with that! Beats the hell out of inflexibility. Maybe it shows we're actually figuring things out with our silly late night argument/discussion.

>There's a difference in method-
Yeah, definitely, but the thing is that there are times when the method might be hard to detect. For instance if he was Tear, Windy could have potentially been messing with the air by causing a void of it, creating air currents and when suffocating Guy a sustained lack of it. That might be within a Tears methods as a hole in reality for all we know. Easier to fit with a hole in reality then blowing something up anyway, which is also a very Breaker thing to do.

>And Rise and with her handler. Although he was normal, at least.
Don't think I'd count Rise, as she wasn't brainwashed and fit for a partner yet... On that note, I wonder what would happen if we got Windy into the chair. If it's designed or set specifically to bring back memories of those brainwashed through this method and he's been brainwashed, maybe it'd reverse that(or if it's specifically designed to bring back Jean's memories, fuck him up even worse).

I'm pretty sure the explosion is more the unmaking of a breaker. What happens when you tear something with all that extra reality?

Rise rejected brainwashing. He was her handler for the limited time they actually had control of her. D7 was following the same setup pattern, even if she didn't cooperate.

Rather than bumping a dis for a quest that might be dead, I guess I'll ask this here.

Is Beyond the Stars dead? Because I was really liking that quest.

Not if you don't want it to be. I think my issue there though was that I complicated matters too much, what with all those different skills and stats and such. I've discovered I'm not good with managing complicated. Keeping it simple is much easier for me, and more doable. If I did go back to that, I think I'd rather reboot it then try to pick up where I left off.

Anyway, if you'd like, once I finish up with Awakening for BR, I'll gladly give Stars another shot. Probably dumb it down a bit though. And have to think how to make the sensing based powers a bit more easily used... hmm...

I'd certainly love for you to give it another shot. A reboot seems a bit weird given the situation we left off in(people dead, learned about aliens, midst of first mission), but if the quest comes back I'm cool with it. I will say though that if the stats are the reason for a reboot, as opposed to the situation or just difficulty going back to something you haven't been thinking about, I think mechanics were subtle enough that just overhauling them in medias res would work. If other factors though, totally understand.

I will say I really hope there's no recreating the MC, as I liked Grey and a perspective shift with a reboot adds a good deal of dissonance.

And apparently I'm late for work.

Too complicated? Interesting. From a reader perspective it seemed a good deal less complicated than BR. As a grunt rather than a squad (or organization) leader, we had a lot less responsibility to manage. Our powerset was a lot less free-form. You also made it demonstrated early on we couldn't save everybody, which kind of took some of the pressure off. Just a tight, tactical situation to try and survive and solve.

There was also an immediacy and transparency to the results our decisions, I liked. Where sometimes it's hard to say how making a decision differently might have changed a quest, but in stars I could pretty much go back and trace consequences to cause. Or even make reasonable guesses to how things might have gone differently.

If you wanted to rip up the underpinning skill / stat system and change the rules, you could probably get away with it. Not like we were that invested in it.

...I could see the omni-sense powerset being difficult to balance or write for, though.

The other two, however... they alarmed you the most. It surprised you they would even show up at all. While they were both similar, the chances of the meeting were wild and varied. The first was an almost certain meeting, yet the chances of a relationship starting were abysmal. The first had a better chance of romancing the Warrior then the Angel. The second, on the other hand, was erratic in both regards. Meeting and relationship. Even as you viewed them, they changed almost constantly shifting up and down erratically and without any real pattern. You tried changing some of your own decisions regarding the information, and if anything, the just seemed to make it more erratic. Regardless, the chances were not the surprising bits regarding these two possibilities.

What surprised you was the fact they were tears.

From no. 531013 in the fourth thread.
All the way back here, did he have Guy and Emily planned out!?
Holy crap, nice work Dreamer.

>>77413
Well, that particular vision came a good two months after the start of the Awakening thread. I'd assume that kind of thing was planned as soon as it started.

>>77413
Guy is certainly one of the possible tears, although with your decision in his thread, he's actually going the opposite route, and fixing himself by... breaking... himself... it's complicated.

As for Stars, I doubt I'll do a complete character shift or anything like that. Maybe just restart it, switch some of the background stats and the like, dumb down some things, and maybe focus on retooling some of the psychic powers a bit, make them more... easily written for, in the long run. I could see you lot getting mapping to utterly ridiculous levels and having to somehow get across what's happening on an entire spaceship. And you lot would do it too, for the "tactical advantage".

...slight peeve, but I think we still don't know what Guy's spirit 4 power is. Unless this thing we're doing now is it, but I kind of assumed that was a special thing based off his nature.

I mean, not that one conventional breaking ability makes much difference at this point, but if we have one, it would be nice to play to every advantage we have.

...I just thought of something.
Humans can become Tears or Breakers, with both having their own distinct powerset and abilities, I'll wager, right?
D7, I think, can make people into tears, and that chair might be able to make tears into proper breakers if they're lucky...
But I'm betting the original process to create tears came from Mcarthy, who purposefully handed D7 the wrong tool for what they wanted, in hopes of creating allies that would help him tear Reality apart, properly.

>Humans can become Tears or Breakers
To be fair, we don't actually know that people can be torn as they can be broken. It's a reasonable hypothesis, but we don't have any actual evidence for it, yet.

(In fact, for a good while I wasn't entirely sure people break either. Based on the way character creation was set up, I nursed the idea for a while that breakers might not even exist as normals. That they come into being on that first day of breaking, and the rest of their lives are retroactively normalized into place when they appear. Rise's claim that breaking was artificially induced in herself and her siblings would seem to discredit the idea, though. You run into problems with causality. You run into a similar problem when you consider we have breakers whose initiating trauma was triggered by other breakers).

We don't know D7 can create tears, either, despite the the fact we've now seen several of them associated with the organization, and even if we have limited evidence D7 can create breakers. We also don't know who came first (did McCarthy set up division seven, or was he drawn to it, or created by it?). We really don't know anything about McCarthy's motivations either, except that they don't seem to sync up with D7's mission statement of controlling and/or harnessing the breaker population. I will say, whatever his plans, they would seem to involve Linda, and he needed her free to act (our escape doesn't really make sense, otherwise. There are countless ways he could have made her less easy to rescue). His dialog during the Havers trip might also suggest he was alive during the 40s, although that's far from definite. (It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume tears don't age normally, seeing as we have some evidence breakers don't. Ie, Maria).

And that marks the end of Awakening. Didn't end how I intended it from the beginning, but actually turned out better than I hoped. All in all, everything works out, I think. Hopefully... Eh, I'll figure it out eventually.

As always, post-chapter comments, questions, concerns and gripes are always welcome and encouraged. Anything to help me improve myself.

Question: What was Guy's spirit 4 power?

Warning: wall o' words. Trying to get my thoughts out in full.

>but actually turned out better than I hoped
Dunno. Well, I mean, yes, I can appreciate what went right, but right now it's kind of hard not to see it as a bad end, especially as Rise and the others forget Guy even existed. And I expected our suicide play to kill Jean, not burn Guy off and reveal him again. (Forgot to comment on it when it was first revealed, but nice touch using another french name).

The sad part is for a moment I though we'd dodged the railroad by using the grenade on the chair (I was counting on you not having remembered we had it in inventory). But... then you gave us the choice to save our hide at the cost of letting friends die, and we never take that choice. So we were trapped again.

(Oh, minor continuity error- we'd looted a flashbang and a regular grenade at the first D7 raid. We used the flashbang to help Jager- so we should have thrown an explosive, not a flashbang, at the chair. Not sure that would have helped, though. Jean was recoverable without the chair, and stunning the tear and breezy slowed them down more than a death would have).

Some of the branch points are kind of obvious, in retrospect. If we had run west, Guy probably would have lived longer, and the mess with discovering what he really was would have taken place near Linda and Elizabeth, potentially giving us more options (at the cost of placing other characters at risk of crazy tear stuff). If we'd run to the LR we probably would have run into whatever de Castillo is doing to fight tears down there. Our choices (and removing Guy from the decision) also cost us the chance of getting Jager or Lira to head west- and she would have been very useful if recruited into Linda's powerbase. As is, de Castillo is going to have the chance to try and scoop her up, and we have to worry about our secret Doctor stuff or robots getting hacked. (Or we may have lost them all together- I can't tell if Jean plans to rob them of the data, or neutralize them as breakers completely. Perhaps retroactively, with the time-tearing talk).

The real hanging question is what would have happened if we'd gone to the chair or drawn on tear powers in the last moment instead of over-breaking. Was a better outcome possible, or would tapping into Jean at all just have cost us Guy anyways, and loss of control of the character? What was Isabella really after, and how much of a dick were we turning the one person she seemed to trust and care about into killing her? (Just because she snapped doesn't mean she was a terrible person. She might have snapped simply due to the profundity of what it meant that we made 'Jean' reject her). ((Or maybe not so much, considering Jean was pleasantly surprised to have killed her)).

Overall, Guy makes a really odd breaker. He didn't really have a past. His break didn't cost him anything, or traumatize him. There was no sacrifice or recovery- breaking gave him everything. His identity, his family, and his friends. For the exceedingly short time he was allowed to have them. (He was conscious all of what, 3 days?). And then he had to choose to give it all up, and destroy himself, in a desperate (and only somewhat successful) attempt to preserve any of it.

From a reader perceptive, it's kind of weird too. We made all this investment and prep work for what we thought would be the slow construction of a build that almost wasn't relevant. (Guy never had a real fight- everything was trivialized by normality tricks against scrubs, superior numbers, or extraordinary circumstances. His stats were almost irrelevant). Similarly, we invested in a character who had to face his end just as he was starting to develop. And in relationships we never got to see the results of, and that now won't even be remembered (the Guy-Sidhe dynamic was fun, he and Rise were getting close, we barely scratched the surface with Lira, or with Jager (I meant to talk with him about his reaction after we woke up. And we never found out who he was looking for, either)).

I mean, the story certainly works. It's good. But the what ifs, and false expectations and things cut short by circumstances we didn't understand or see coming just leave a bitter sadness. (I did not expect "plan let's cut past the amnesiac protag running away bullshit and face the truth" to lead to death. Or for what looked like our first real fair fight to suddenly go so horribly wrong).

(And there's certainly a nice congruency with the way things lined up in the end. We made an avatar real, the actor played his role to the end, ending the play with literal and meta use of a chekhov's gun (more play references),simultaneously using it, and establishing it to used later).

>dangling thoughts
...where'd breezy go? I though Guy sent him with the others, still trapped by Sidhe, but he wasn't mentioned in the epilogue.

Missed opportunity- I have expected the Awakened Guy to make a reference, recognizing that the manner in which he was sacrificing himself, using his thread up, was the same way that Raphael / Daniel did.

I wonder how a Michelle / Sidhe encounter will go. Will Beloved By Avatars effect her in any way? (It's supposed to only work on her avatars, but Sidhe is an odd edge case, being independent now). Would Michelle see a free avatar as a fair game- material to be used to unlock the third of her children?

Guy's odd death (unraveling, over-breaking, and becoming someone else) also means I can't see if one of my theories is right. I half expect that when breakers die, they end up back in front of the man in the chair. Guy's special case means there was no after action report, no debrief, no end of life review. ...I wonder if that will catch his attention. One of his children went missing. Sent out into the world, but never coming back.


And, goddamn but we can't keep male characters alive in this quest (their only safety is to hide behind minor allied character status). And that's another person dying for Linda, too. We've got compounded men in refrigerators and black widow syndrome. (Linda's got good reason to be afraid of spiders).

>>77514
Yes, this still bugs me. I know we were being railroaded at that point, and almost nothing would have helped us, but dang it, how are we supposed to try and find a way out if we don't know one of the things we have to exploit.

He'd have had Fear Itself, since you guys voted for the more Aggressive option. The Spirit 4/9 abilities are all the same, for the most part, they just augment existing abilities, and there is two for every Stat. Used to be three, but I removed the third option. Didn't like those very much, and I never really used them. I'll adjust some of them slightly occasionally, but all are fairly similar.

To sum up the ones for Spirit 4

Strength: Weapon: Environment as the Aggressive or Weight Null as the Defensive

Finesse: Finesse Focus as the Aggressive or Evasion as the Defensive

Will: Fear Itself as the Aggressive or Unbroken Will as the Defensive

Not guy related, but....

>>77516
Are those based on what their stats are when they take Spiirt 4, or what choice they made at the start. If it's based on their current stats, what happens when someone hits Spirit 4 with even stats? Or if they've bumped BP instead of attributes(Probably rare to do before Spirit 4, but still)?

>>77516
I would think there's probably room for more. Off the top of my head, Weight Null seems more a utility power than a defensive one (leaving room to apply strength to your endurance, or ability to resist damage, or ignore pain). Or an offensive finesse power for people who wouldn't benefit from the str bonus of finesse focus. Or the ability to stack str or fin into wil for the right build or conditions, or to apply will to str / fin (possibly good for the right form type). Or a Fear itself analogue based on a different emotion, or an inverted unbroken will (domineering will- bonus to coercion, persuasion). Or a defense against fear and/or other emotional trauma instead of a defense against mind control. Or a defensive / utility will power to bolster diplomatic or positive interactions- a bonus to helping people or reasoning with them.

Possibly room for some support powers as well, but I think those would have to be more tailored to specific powersets.

(I kind of want you to have wiggle room- I don't necessarily want to be able to guess everyone's powers from the constraints of the system. I mean, yes I'm going to try and guess anyways, but why should it be simple).

>>77517
I would guess that in the case of a tie, it would select based on which stat were more relevant to the character's build, what their weapon or power relied on more. Or maybe it would default back to whichever stat started out at 3.

>Or if they've bumped BP instead of attributes
Then you get Michelle.

No worries on that front, by the way, always enjoy the feed back. But to answer some of your comments at least(although I can hardly consider that much consolation).

This side-story never really was meant to be a major story altering venture. At least, not at the beginning. I'd actually intended it as a way to help me get back into the feeling of writing for BR, given as at the time I'd been a bit out of touch. A bridge, if you will.

Somewhere along the lines that changed considerably, pretty early on, I think, especially because by that time I was already continuing the main story. Regardless, it got to the point where this particular venture was already touching the main story, and I had/have an idea of where I want Jean/Guy to go. Hopefully it turns out alright. Besides, he'll be meeting Linda soon enough, and then you can happily screw over all my idea/plan/railroads as much as you damn well like. You seem to do it with her all the damned time anyway.

To answer the hanging question of "What if I used tear power instead of crazy break-self powers?" was that Guy and his Brother would have fused, and become Jean... sorta. Kinda like what Jean is now, with less Jean and more Guy mixed in. Regardless, you'd have also gotten to explore the Tear side of the power scale, although you still would have been severely weakened. You might still get the opportunity later. Haven't decided yet. The Tears I'm still working on anyway. Ironing out issues I'm finding in how they work, and so on so forth. As for whether your were being a dick to Isabelle... yeah, yeah you were. Sorta. Jean(the original) was an asshole, but then, so are most of the Tears I've made so far. That's kinda the point. They are all somewhat dysfunctional, and most don't understand emotions very well, either having no connection at all, or taking a single emotion and taking it the extreme. McCarthy is probably one of the few I've created with that is mostly stable. In Isabelle's case, she was overly dependent upon Jean, to the point of psychotic obsession. So really, any of your decisions expect submitting to her would have been being a dick to her, from her perspective.

If you have any other questions about Guy/Jean, feel free to ask. I'll answer ones that I don't feel give away anything major.

>Questions regarding mechanics
It's the stats you have when you hit Spirit 4/9. For most, having stats that are even don't matter too much, as at that point, you're basically focusing on one anyway. For those that for whatever reason do match, it becomes a matter of dominant stat. Or more simply, whichever one I notice is being used more, or I feel is more in line with the character's line of thinking. On some occasions, here and there, I ignore stats completely, feeling that a particular fits a specific character more regardless of what mechanics state. Has only happened once or twice, though, and it didn't play much of a role. You killed em just as easily anyway.

As for those that seem like support powers, or any other amount of wiggle room, well, that is usually fixed by the Spirit 5 power. Or I just come up with something arbitrary off the top of my head. Those mentioned above though, are really just the standards I use for most characters after all. More important characters hardly follow that at all. Tears especially.

>consolation
In case my wall of words seemed overly critical, or negative in the face of sads / story not going on for a really long time, let me be clear that I did enjoy it, and it was fun ride. It's a lot easier to hit on momentary dissatisfaction then all the parts that worked well.

>never intend to be long
Can't seem to help getting sucked into stories, despite how many quests end up in the graveyard.

I think it's partially the avatar mechanics that did it (so much more planning than a weapon type. And way more XP costs to keep up with people of similar 'level' (that, and their rarity, balances against the innate advantage avatars have I suppose). Makes it clear development would need to be a long game, which leads to expectations, etc). That, and getting sucked into the npcs.

>you can happily screw over all my idea/plan/railroads as much as you damn well like. You seem to do it with her all the damned time anyway.
I remain convinced that you didn't expect us to pick Cass, and that we sided with the faction you'd originally planned for the bad guys. :V (Especially complicated by the fact we then went and played Linda as a complex moralizer rather than a powerhungry opportunist who might have been happy to kill for foci, or who might have been far more at home with Cass' psycho side).

>Isabelle
Yeah, I kind of felt it might be something like that. Kind of sucks- we were forced into defense mode, and then didn't have much choice but to kill another severely damaged person (Well, assuming we consider tears people). Which is really a major theme for the whole quest- everyone is damaged goods, and it's a complicated balancing between the people we can help, and that we have to put down. Or chose to kill ...or fail to help.

>Besides, he'll be meeting Linda soon enough
Oh, goodie, a crazy tear stalker. Just what I always wanted! (As if Linda didn't have enough trouble with wooing every eligible young breaker that seems to cross our path for longer than five minutes).

>don't understand emotions very well, either having no connection at all, or taking a single emotion and taking it the extreme
Hmm. I wonder then if my idea that the nightmare focus might work is any good. You have to know fear.

>You killed em just as easily anyway.
The eternal lament of the DM. All the detail put into characters we just steamroll over.

I've got to ask, have you created guys hoping to make a 'rival' only to watch them go down?
I looked through the wiki and saw a dude with a silver cane as a weapon- and I have absolutely NO IDEA where or when he showed up.

>>77523
You mean the cane-top foci Linda has looted? That's from Casey, from thread 3, the fixer we found with Trevor at the destroyed arena. He's the guy we killed by letting Elizabeth puppet us (we needed the edge- we hadn't had time to recharge to full BP after almost getting killed fighting Jake the night before, and D7 was closing in fast). Also the jerk who forced us to shoot Elizabeth, had some kind of multiple personality going on, and won more stat rolls than he had business doing. (He was either very lucky or he had at least one of the spirit abilities that allow rolling one stat towards another).

New question, especially with the recent BR update about that Castillo guy (King).
Form types. How do they even work!?
Seriously, they've been rare as crap, and each one seems different and confusing in how they work. Not helping was that Raph's powers got mixed in with that 'Dreamtime' stuff which seemed to be a powerset and things we completely missed out on learning more about(Seriously, I want to spam Raphael McCallahan as much as I can without breaking the foci, so we can find out how that all works out)
Form types being rare is probably because no default 'form type' mook to fight, Avatars are excluded via in-lore rarity...

>rare as crap
Still more common than avys, by our last count. And that was before bonerface showed up.

>Form types. How do they even work!?
Okay, here's what we know:
-form types have foci
-unlike weapon and avatars, a breaker can only use a single form at a time
-manifestation is not instantaneous, and can be interrupted. Interrupted manifestations don't cost BP. (According to word of god, form-type manifestations are supposed to be generally faster than others, but in practice, we've seen this isn't always so).
-death avoidance can repair the manifestation (since the form is the breaker. This differs from weapon and avatar types, who need to re-manifest or use repair abilities to fix damage to manifestations).
-base stats (str fin wil) affect performance of the form (presumably affected by some modifiers).
-more specific capabilities, abilities, and powers depend on the manifestation
-forms may come with abilities / powers that are accessible even when not manifested (not so special really- I think we've seen breakers of every type that do this).

Here's what we don't know:
-how upgrading and xp expenditures work
-if a breaker can change from form to form directly, or if they have to return to human in between

Unresolved weirdness:
-It is apparently possible for form types to get around manifestation cost. After upgrading his focus, Raphael was seen swapping between forms, and even turning human to talk and then back to monster, without a hit in BP. (Observed both by Linda's break sight, and the one time we controlled him directly). Similarly, if you pay attention to Trevor's later appearances, he seems to manifest without spending BP.
-It is somehow possible to be trapped in a manifested form, in the right conditions (Mike).
-It has been implied it may be possible to upgrade to allow multiple manifestations from a single focus. For instance, a gal whose form is a panther might be able to manifest as a man eating beast, a cat-girl hybrid, or a widdle kitty cat for sneaking and sleeping.
-What happens if you remove the focus from a still transformed form type. (Or even if you can).
-Tuning a new focus can influence the human body of a form type breaker (Raphael got buffer after tuning the Golem).
-We haven't seen what's happened to most of the form foci we've looted. (Morpheus', the arm guys', Trevor's). Did they end up traded to any of our allies? Mike, Matthew, the school-girl with the ghost form (okay, I know she has a name, but it was used like once and I don't remember it). (I wonder if the ghost girl could make use of the astral wolf aspect of Trevor's focus while largely ignoring the werewolf form? Seems sort of in-theme. Ghost-girl with ghost-dog).

>Raphael
Okay. So... his original unaltered nightmare focus worked this way:

-the focus allows Raphael to sense fears
-the focus triggers nightmares it's holder (Raphael was plagued by them, and Linda was affected the night we forced him to trade. Presumably the focus has to be tuned for this to trigger, as Linda hasn't been affected since taking possession of the focus after Raphael's 'death').
-just sleeping in Raphael's vicinity risked nightmares and mental trauma (which made it hard for him to find a group, and was why he vulnerable to Marc bargaining him into a corner for membership and special accommodations).
-the manifestation transforms Raphael into the Nightmare. The Nightmare:
--counts as ethereal
--allows Raphael to enter and exit the dreamtime
--cannot speak
--can be used to induce waking nightmares and fear (like fear itself, except better, and without taking a spirit slot).
--can be used to help or harm dreamers by exacerbating, feeding on, or quelling nightmares. (simplified explanation- what he does in the dreamtime is probably the most complex of his powers).

After he has the doctor modify it:

-Raphael gained the ability to 'store' fears of others, and assume forms based on them. (Presumed maximum capacity equal to spirit level). These forms require practice to use correctly, and have their own abilities and powers.
-Raphael gained the ability to enter and exit the dream-time in any of these forms, including his human form
-Raphael (apparently) gained the ability to ignore manifestation costs

After Linda Awakened his focus:

-Linda gains access to a fragment of Raphael (based off the part of him in the focus, and off her own memories / conception of him). Fragment-Raphael appears sapient, and has access to memories and experience Linda does not.
-The nightmare Linda form comes with a time limit and recharge window.
-Nightmare and Spider forms are unavailable- the dual consciousness driving prevents them from fully tapping into their own fears. (Unless we find a way to cheat, say by feeding on Twinda's fear, or a sleeping Linda or Raphael at a different point in time?)


That's... everything I can think of, I think. Man, gets really long when you try and boil it down to a list of details.

To help remove some of the confusion/misunderstandings that may or may not exist regarding the timeline, I've summed up the general times for each of the major events, starting with-

1) Linda taking control of the West. Raphael/Daniel begins trip back East, mostly because he has no memories of ever coming west.

2) 2 days later, Linda and Cass leave for Havers.

3) 2 days later, Guy "wakes up".

4) 2 days after that, Guy does his little reality altering trick, makes D7 forces disappear, and passes out.

5) 3 days later, Guy wakes up, goes through his assault on the D7 base, "dies" and Jean wakes up. His group splits, Lira and Jager headed south, Rise and Sidhe headed west. Linda and Cass arrive in Havers the same day.

That leaves roughly a week unaccounted for, maybe a little less. And to answer how Lira and Jager could possibly been faster at not only making it through the border and finding Raul faster than Rise, well... first off, Rise has no money whatsoever to her name. None. Second, and only slightly more important, Lira is a hacking genius. The border would have provided little trouble at all, and Raul probably would have noticed her activity even if she hadn't gone looking for him. Probably knew about him already, given as he's a very effective information broker. Least, that was my reasoning. Some of those days up there could be wrong I guess, but I double checked just to make sure... should be right. I think... eh, if I'm not, oh well. And all this just because one comment kept getting on my nerves and making me think I hadn't planned it out right... I blame you. And you know who I'm talking about, Mr. Wall-o-text.

>Mr wall o text
*Bows*

I think what got me is by the time we'd seen Guy wake up after the collaborative-normalization, it seemed like the timelines were, or were close to, in sync. (We had Raphael Daniel, people talking about the recent events of Linda's group, etc). My assumed timeline being a week off would kind of be an easy thing to miss, from the level of detail we had. (And yeah, when I thought about it, my first idea was to shift things back towards the Havers trip).

As for Lira, I kind of expected the UNA to have a more aggressive and fortified border than we do, and for D7 to be involved in keeping breakers from crossing. Making things trickier than just hacking the right credentials or door open. Apparently I overestimated the threat. Raul getting to them fast makes sense, though. (Doc, I hope your robots and secret stuff aren't networked to the internet, because Raul's totally going to have his new pet information hacker poking around. No way he gave up Lira after realizing what she can do).

Not sure a lack of money is a real problem for someone with normality (unless, like Jager, Rise is not willing to exploit that or people to survive). And I suppose she's openly carrying a giant sword, wearing full combat armor, and traveling with a fairy without warped minds. That would force more caution and care to stay under the radar. (Although she had plenty of BP and normality, so she can keep passing them off as something they aren't to avoid detection, and fixing messes when they occur. Still, slower than just being able to walk down the street without thinking about it and having no heads turn).

...there's also the fact she doesn't know she's in a race.

>On the one hand, yes, your aim was to create a safe haven for breakers.
Hey. Haven. How's that for a name?