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Messages - dragharrow

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31
RPG Discussion / DMing brainstorm, artifacts and stuff
« on: September 24, 2015, 05:26:27 pm »
Hey guys, I know some of you play pen and paper games. I'm running a campaign for the first time and am trying to come up with fresh ideas. Honestly the hardest part of it I've found is that I can't bounce ideas off my friends. The people I normally kick writing ideas around with are my players. I don't know if there's enough activity in this part of the forum to keep this kind of post alive but does anyone want to try and come up with some ideas?

I'm down to talk about whatever, encounters and plot stuff, but right now I'm trying to come up with some interesting artifacts for my players to find. I really like Bakker's artifacts. They're mechanically interesting, and they fit with the metaphysical rules of magic he's set out, but they maintain all the mystique and wonder you want from artifacts. They all feel unique and clearly leverage sorcery in cool ways. I have a forerunner race in my game that is roughly modeled on the nonmen and I want to put interesting remnants of their civilization in the world. Does anyone have any thoughts for artifacts like that? Like the Diurnal and that kind of thing?

32
RPG Discussion / Re: Any pen&paper roleplayers here?
« on: September 02, 2015, 09:38:53 am »
Not about the theoretical TSA rpg, just responding to the thread topic: I've recently started playing D&D 5e with some friends and I've been enjoying it.

This recent game is the first time I've ever played a formal rpg properly but when I was pretty young someone must have explained the concept to me because I got really into the idea of it. I remember I went and got a copy of the dungeons master guide from the school library and convinced my friends to try and play with me. We can't have been older than 12 and none of us had any previous experience with pen and paper games whatsoever so we were totally unable to figure the rules out. In the end we defaulted to having me as the DM just decide everything. It worked out pretty well. Players would describe their actions, I would tell them how it played out. I definitely enjoyed the power lol

33
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: quyan theorems
« on: June 18, 2015, 02:24:11 pm »
what if there were secret spells that the nonmen never taught humans???  could be some crazy shit!

There definitely were some areas of magic that were never passed on. The aporos for example

34
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Side Effects of Eating Sranc
« on: June 09, 2015, 07:50:42 am »
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If thats true (I don't remember that being said), then it may point to either Kellhus or the Mandate not wanting the gnosis to be free. Like you said, probably Kellhus, but even without him I'd say it wouldnt be released. Men guard nothing so jealously as power.
Also, it does point out that maybe Seswatha did care for the World.

Here is the passage I had in mind. I think Seswatha saying this may have been referred to at another point as well but I'm not sure.

It's in the warrior prophet before Akka has been captured. He is on the way to the library I think.

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Do I teach him the Gnosis?

To his gut he balked at the notion—the mere thought of surrendering the Gnosis to someone outside his School made him blanch. He wasn’t even sure he could teach Kellhus the Gnosis, even if he desired. His knowledge of the Gnosis was the one thing he shared with Seswatha, whose imprint owned every movement of his slumbering soul.
Will you let me? Do you see what I see?

Never—never!—in the history of their School had a sorcerer of rank betrayed the Gnosis. Only the Gnosis had allowed the Mandate to survive. Only the Gnosis had allowed them to carry Seswatha’s war through the millennia. Lose it, and they became no more than a Minor School. His brothers, Achamian knew, would fight themselves to extinction to prevent that from happening. They would hunt both of them without relenting, and they would kill them if they could. They would not listen to reasons … And the name, Drusas Achamian, would become a curse in the dark halls of Atyersus.

But what was this other than greed or jealousy? The Second Apocalypse was imminent. Hadn’t the time come to arm all the Three Seas? Hadn’t Seswatha himself bid them share their arsenal before the shadow fell?

He had …

And wouldn’t this make Achamian the most faithful of all Mandate Schoolmen?

I don't know what this means for my argument but it's interesting.

35
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Side Effects of Eating Sranc
« on: June 08, 2015, 11:07:11 am »
Good rebuttals all,  dragharrow. I'm not convinced, but I haven't anything else to bring forth.
Thanks. Whatever the case is, I agree with you that the disaster and the deaths of those mandati were not a mistake. Kellhus had a larger plan or at least saw it as strategically necessary.

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Also, Seswatha at least claimed that touching the Heart to receive the Gnosis was a temporary measure.
If thats true (I don't remember that being said), then it may point to either Kellhus or the Mandate not wanting the gnosis to be free. Like you said, probably Kellhus, but even without him I'd say it wouldnt be released. Men guard nothing so jealously as power.
Also, it does point out that maybe Seswatha did care for the World.
I'll look for it. Not that it proves anything.

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While I think this scene was showing us that Seswatha may be more alive than we were led to believe, I think there is something of vital importance here.
I think it shows that as well. It isn't just that they've been trained to be soldiers but they've also been imprinted with something of Seswatha himself. Maybe a lot of Seswatha.

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Post torture, during the escape, Akka goes what amounts to super-saiyan (and/or Avatar state), briefly becoming more powerful than he ever could have been on his own. If all the Mandati could be triggered into this state during a full scale battle, they'd be even more extreme of a force to be reckoned with.
Lol, well said. I think it is possible that a similar state could be triggered in any mandate sorcerer but I doubt it is likely that any carry Seswatha's power to such a great degree. Or, alternatively, most lack the raw power to replicate the feat regardless of channeling Seswatha.

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Maybe Kellhus was counting on this and it didn't happen, he expected them to go into the Seswatha State under the extreme pressure of a devastating surpise attack, for long enough for him to come to their aide, and certainly long enough for most of the Mandate to survive pretty much any onslaught.
Hmm maybe. I think Kellhus understands the nature of the Seswatha imprint well enough that he wouldn't make that mistake. He has had unlimited access to the mandate since the time of his ascension to the throne as well as a personal knowledge of Akka. I think he is probably aware of whether it is possible to trigger the Seswatha-State in any other of the mandati and if so, what kinds of triggers that requires.

On top of that, I am hesitant to accept any evidence in favor of the "Locke position" or the argument that Kellus is massively deluded and fallible. There's too much evidence for that already lol

36
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Side Effects of Eating Sranc
« on: June 04, 2015, 05:47:24 pm »
I still stand by my idea that eating Sranc will similar but short-term effects to Qirri, possibly even stronger than Qirri, with much worse long-term effects.
Sranc are to Meth as Qirri is to Adderal? I dig it.

37
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Side Effects of Eating Sranc
« on: June 04, 2015, 05:00:59 pm »
More importantly, I think he created it as a way to avoid dying.
Yeah, I think this is very possible. The dreams serve a bunch of purposes. They're clearly doing something new to Akka. And from that we have proof that Seswathas a damn liar, so I wouldn't put anything past him.

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Regardless, it was built to maintain the memory of the Consult and to jealously guard the secrets of the gnosis. If Seswatha wanted elite sorcerers, he would have made it such that the Mandate could give the secrets of the gnosis to others. If the three seas was filled with legions of Gnosi, they'd be far better off than with some 50ish Mandate schoolmen of the rank.
He did. You just have to be a member of the few and willing to touch the Heart. Whatever ulterior motives he definitely had, this makes sense. He wanted to keep the people with the Gnosis focused on the Consult and ready to actually fight. I think they serve all these purposes.

Also, Seswatha at least claimed that touching the Heart to receive the Gnosis was a temporary measure. Akka says that they are only supposed to guard the Gnosis until the Consult returns. Then they're supposed to distribute their weaponry freely. I could totally see that being a lie told by Seswatha but I had assumed that the reason the Gnosis was still not being distributed freely was a choice by Kellhus.

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More importantly, the dreams serve to essentially train them for the brutal ordeal of a war against the consult. Night after night the heart has run them through battle drills... Seswatha has done the closest thing to providing Kellhus with a "blooded" school. The next best thing to having sorcerers who have actually fought the consult before.
This is maybe something small to be considered, but not a huge deal.
I disagree. Arming and training men isn't enough. Experience is invaluable. The Quya have been doing this millennia. The dream's aren't a perfect replacement for having actual professional soldiers, but they are a lot better than nothing. The other schoolmen are basically academics. At best, they have played the role of artillery. They have very little experience fighting other human magi. Zero experience fighting Quya or dragons. And they are soft. They've never seen anything like what the consult is capable of.

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Big picture, the Mandate make up a tiny portion of the war and their experience was more important before the march began.
The mandate might make up a tiny portion of the war if you include Mundane humans but in terms of relevance they are a substantial portion Kellhus' army. The mundane humans are just a vessel to protect the schoolmen and deliver them to the battlefield. Ultimately, the schoolmen are the army.

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They were built to be teachers.
Maybe. To me the mechanics of the dreams seem like they are exactly what you would make if you wanted to create fanatic sleeper soldiers. They focus on big battles (some of which Ses didn't even attend) and the horrors of war. Seswatha fighting dragons . Fighting Quya. Being captured by Mek. And then they drill them every night.

Look at Akka. When he was kidnapped by the scarlet spires and tortured, he leaned on the dreams to get through it. He had already been trained for that situation and was unphased. The same will happen when the first mage battles start. The other mages will be unprepared and they will fold. The mandate will follow Kellhus' orders to the end. I think thats useful

38
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Side Effects of Eating Sranc
« on: June 04, 2015, 04:00:48 pm »
We are told that Seswatha's intentions are to destroy the Consult. I believe this to be true absolutely, however I don't think that this has to be his only objective. Even if it were, Seswatha was no super-human intellect. Not the product of  2000 years of genetic selection. Even if the Mandate where purely a tool be the most efficient way to destroy the Consult through the ages, it is still a human plan. Kellhus needs Kellhus' plans. His own school, his own mysticism, and because the Mandate cannot be fully extracted from their own darkness that comes before, they must be made irrelevent, if not destroyed entirely.

Has Kellhus ever done that? That doesn't sound like him to me.

It might make sense from a dunyain perspective to destroy any agents that you cannot absolutely dominate and predict but Kellhus isn't dunyain. He has never really adhered to that protocol. He picks up Cnaur right away and hangs out with him for most of the first trilogy. Cnaur is dangerous, unstable, and due to the influence of Moe, it is clear that Kellhus could never own him completely. He is perfectly happy to take over huge systems that his father has carefully created. He lets Akka live, despite the fact that Akka know the truth and is simultaneously becoming the avatar of Seswatha. The biggest example is his kids, Moe kills his defective children (presumably) , Kellhus lets them all live. Even the one with a demon in his head.

Kellhus doesn't usually worry about prior corruption by other forces. He is too arrogant. He believes that he can put everything to use. The influence of other major players just gives him more to stuff to play with.

That said, I actually didn't mean to imply that I thought Kellhus lost part of the mandate by accident. I'm sure he had his reasons. I just think they represent way more of a useful tool than a hazard. The seswatha stuff is all upside from Kellhus's perspective, even if seswatha and Kellhus have opposite ultimate goals. Kellhus thinks he can just play around that, or put it to good use.

39
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Side Effects of Eating Sranc
« on: June 04, 2015, 12:32:19 pm »
I'd argue that the Mandate, while important, are the 'old guard' if you will. Schoolmen from yesteryear, sworn to Seswatha and no-one else. Might be that Kellhus thought they were a bit of a wild card.

I don't know, theoretically the mandati should be more useful and more reliable than the other schools (excluding the witches). Seswatha didn't just create the heart in order to guard the gnosis. He did it to make sure that there would always be an elite school of sorcerer prepared to fight the consult. The dream's have programmed them with a single minded devotion to to the cause. More importantly, the dreams serve to essentially train them for the brutal ordeal of a war against the consult. Night after night the heart has run them through battle drills. Familiarizing them with their enemy and their enemies tactics. Preparing them for the consult's atrocities so that they won't be horrified when they face them. Running their souls through simulations of combat over and over and over.

They have all been programmed to be soldiers in this war. They, more than any others, know what it feels like to stand against the consult. When the time comes they wont be able to do anything else but fight bravely, they've done it countless times and now it is second nature to them. Seswatha has done the closest thing to providing Kellhus with a "blooded" school. The next best thing to having sorcerers who have actually fought the consult before.

I think Kellhus actually says this in the first trilogy. He says that the dunyain believed that the function of dreams was to prepare the soul for situations it had not yet encountered.

That all assumes that Seswatha's intentions aren't completely beyond our understanding obviously. I know he's a liar but it does seem that in this at least his intentions were sincere.

40
Thanks for the share. This makes me want to more seriously consider having this stuff around for those days when I'm too lazy to make something decent and end up eating a bag of chips for dinner lol.

No problem :)

Also I don't think I said this but I think they've done a good job with the taste. It smells like chocolate chip pancakes kind of and I'm trying to think of how to describe the taste specifically. I don't know, it sort of just tastes like pure nourishment in a good way. Like, I'm not trying to argue that it's intrinsically healthy. I'm sure a really well balanced, no junk food, solid food diet would be healthier. But your body can definitely tell how nutrient rich it is and you get like a positive conditioned response.

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I'll probably ping you again in a few months to see if you exploded or something. I should probably poke around on their forums too, but I find it easier to be less skeptical here than other places.

sounds good.

I feel that. I've been on their forums a couple times tops.

41
Really? That reads rather sarcastically (imo), but if your serious then I'm curious.

Directed at me? If it is then yes, I'm serious. I'm just generally not a fan of eating.

I really do think eating is gross. Not in a compulsive way or anything. I don't actually get skeeved out eating or being around people who are eating but on an abstract kind of philosophical level it is gross. "Oh let me stick this in my face hole and grind it up. Yum."

That said, the fact that eating is aesthetically unappealing is the least of the reasons I don't want to do it. It is a little true but I'm probs emphasizing it because I think it is funny. Animal grossness isn't actually a hangup for me. I can clean stables or change a babies diaper without any problem. Sex is gross but I have no interest in replacing it with a supplement.

In reality, I like to feel like a car that you put fuel in. It puts me in the right mindset to take on the day lol. Like putting on a suit, it focuses and motivates me. When I eat soylent I make healthier choices in general. I'm more likely to go for a run, etc. Regular food is hard to manage. I'm likely to consume too many calories if I'm not careful to manage my urges. I want to stay lean and hot.

Dealing with things in a black and white way makes it simple. Managing food is hard. It's easier for me to just cut it out of my life altogether.

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Some comments have, to me, seemingly ridiculous claims of this stuff making a drastic improvement on their health. I don't by this.

Yeah. There are plenty of people making ridiculous claims about its health benefits but that isn't surprising. Some people turn to worship as soon as they buy into something. It's the same thing as how some people who smoke weed become convinced that it is some kind of mystical panacea and preach that it will cure anything.

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However, something that is marketed as a total food replacement and has been sold for some time now, I'd think it at least has no major negative side effects. Is that true?

What's your experience? How long have you been "eating" this stuff, and how much of your total nutrition intake comes directly from it?

Only two months so far. I'd estimate that about two thirds of my nutritional intake comes soylent.

As far as I can tell, I'm healthier. I have better control of my caloric intake and I don't eat junk food. I feel good when I consume it. Your hunger goes away completely and you feel well nourished but not overfed. I get good long lasting energy from it. I haven't noticed any ill effects.

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What I really want to know WHY on earth would they call this Soylent, given the connotation it has in pop culture? I know I'm  being paranoid but that alone freaks me out about it.
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But yes, Soylent, while hysterical (imo) is not a great name for someone seriously trying to sell something. Great for a joke, which does nothing to make this stuff seem viable.

It hasn't seemed to hamper their sales. I haven't done any research into it but my guess is that they are doing well. It takes like four months to get your first shipment because according to them they are having to seriously ramp up production. They privilege established customers though. Once you receive your first shipment they will fill your orders in like a week.

I think the soylent name is directed at people like me. Nerds who are dissonance emphasizing. It certainly appeals to me.

42
Philosophy & Science / Re: You have just become God. What will you do?
« on: April 27, 2015, 07:41:17 pm »
If you must feel that sense of accomplishment (which I really doubt you do. There's a reason synthetic opiates are so addictive), I can just give you that too. I'm God, after all.

It isn't about a sense of accomplishment. I agree with you, the drugs pretty much outclass any natural sensation and they're only getting better. Anyone who says that a sense of accomplishment feels better than drugs hasn't tried drugs. But sensations are not ends in and of themselves. Hedonism is a dead end.

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Pleasure is its own reward.

No, it's not. Pleasure out of context is worthless. It's just a transmission of meaningless data.

Pleasure is a functional process. It has a purpose. It rewards you for doing things right and trains you to come back and do things right some more. It's part of the suite of heuristics by which we navigate the world and learn how to function.

Your emotions are there to program you. Pleasure tells you to keep doing whatever your doing. Pain tells you to never do that thing again. Ambition and greed make you climb the social hierarchy. Lust tells you to go have sex with a pretty girl.

Emotions drive us to go out and live life. They're processes in our mental code that push us around and teach us. And they're fine for that.

What would be the point of separating an emotion or a sensation from the rest of the program. It's literally like stripping a random chunk of code out of some computer program. The process is pointless on its on. It only has meaning as a functional part of the machine.

Do you really want to be a barely sentient pleasure loop? If you lived in constant ecstasy you would barely be alive. You would just be a broken robot. One circuit telling another circuit that everything is great. And that's all.


43
Ok. I only skimmed this thread so far but I'll actually read it at some point and weigh in. Until then I just wanted to chime in with the fact that I eat soylent and I'm a huge fan.

I don't eat it exclusively but I rely on it heavily. I've never liked eating at all and have a tendency to go for long stretches without eating anything. It's just too gross a process for me. So yeah I use it to supplement the few meals I feel like consuming. It's a huge improvement to my nutritional intake but basically anything edible would be. In any case, I dig it.

Fuck food. I'm over food.


44
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: quyan theorems
« on: April 23, 2015, 08:23:00 pm »
The Gnosis derives from the Quya but the Gnosis has been filtered through thousands of years of human scholarship. I think that the Gnosis practiced in the time of the books is probably very different from the Quya.

Quyan magic is suited to the minds of the Nonmen and Nonmen are weird by human standards. The Gnosis was developed and honed by men. There are probably many Gnostic incantations that are based on earlier Quyan formulas and that accomplish the same thing but the logic of spell has been changed to make it more accessible. Pieces of Quyan knowledge may have been lost and abandoned over the years. Also, humans have expanded on the Quya. They've improved old formulas and developed new ones.

In the end I'd bet that the Gnosis is slightly more powerful than the Quya. The Quya has become stagnant as the Nonmen have declined, whereas humans continue to tinker with the Gnosis.

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Now maybe some of the old Quya that are still wondering around, who have all but perfected the gnosis after thousands of years of practice, might stand a chance.

The Nonmen magi who are still around aren't more powerful than human sorcerers due to the superiority of their incantations. They are more powerful than human sorcerers because they are themselves physically and mentally superior. They have inhuman stamina, inhuman intelligence, and many lifetimes worth of practice. They're almost always win, but the Quya is the inferior weapon.

45
Philosophy & Science / Re: You have just become God. What will you do?
« on: February 13, 2015, 07:19:33 am »
I'd make every remotely sentient creature in the universe immortal and invincible and reconfigure their minds to experience nothing but bliss. Then I'd do the same to myself and retire to my new heaven.

Done.
Everlasting heroin for everyone? Whats the point?

I'd probably choose humans I thought were interesting and then craft elaborate adventures for them. I love being the dungeon master.

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