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Kobal2 posted:And as anybody who's worn real mail at a renfaire can attest : metal + sweat + cleaning oil is certainly a wafty mix. The smell just stays with you for a good while after you take the poo poo off too - I can't even imagine after just a couple days of living in it, nevermind the stale piss and festering poo poo on top... It's a miracle the party isn't constantly puking their guts out. Bronze age. Any and all human habitations already smell like poo poo, sweat, and stale piss.
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Oct 20, 2020 04:47
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Stroth posted:Bronze age. Any and all human habitations already smell like poo poo, sweat, and stale piss. Not really, people put a lot of effort towards not feeling, looking and smelling like poo poo, you poo poo outside your house and get yourself clean in water far downstream of where you pick up your drinking water, and you don't think about the other population centers upstream, you dye thread and clothes, you scrub yourself with sand and or soap when you can get it, and it's hardly a secret, it's fat and ashes mixed and heated together and all this goes back a long, long time, we have massive trades in cosmetics and soaps documented before the bronze age collapse, laundry women in wherever the gently caress I come from, which isn't important since I expect it to be similar all over the world, had famously hosed up skin on their hands because washing for your poor village meant using a little ash and your skin oils and a lot of effort to make the soap in situ. SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Oct 20, 2020 |
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Oct 20, 2020 05:46
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Also, there are wizards all over the place to help magically keep things clean.
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Oct 20, 2020 05:54
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The game will touch on it more, but yeah, "Barik is sealed in his armor" is a bit misleading. It's more accurate to say: A horrible magical storm that warped metal was cast as an Edict in a place where Barik happened to be. Most people were impaled by the various bits of metal flying around, if they were out in the open. The bits of swords and metal plates and whatever instead kind of accreted around Barik to the point where it acts as armor for him, and he can move around in it. Weird magical stuff happened. Even if someone else in that same Edict-Storm wasn't impaled, they should've been crushed by the metal slamming into them.
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Oct 20, 2020 13:01
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Exactly so. So clearly, given how Barik should've died, and how improbable it is that he was merley encased in metal, clearly this was the will of Kyros.
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Oct 20, 2020 13:21
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I figure it's his first step to becoming either the Archon of Iron or the Archon of Poop.
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Oct 20, 2020 14:02
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inflatablefish posted:Archon of Poop. Poil fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Oct 20, 2020 |
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Oct 20, 2020 14:21
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Poil posted:With power over sanitation it could be an extremely important position. Also that title would look great on a resume. You know, when people are asked to list humankind's greatest achievements, things like spaceflight or computers or genetic engineering are often at the top of their lists. But underlying all those things are those humble works of infrastructure that just quietly take care of our basic needs in the background, like closed sewers. Certainly if I were living in the bronze-age, I'd prefer an Archon of Poop before an Archon of War or whatever.
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Oct 20, 2020 15:14
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Are you sure you would want the guy known for being best at pooping when there is no modern infrastructure? 
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Oct 20, 2020 15:18
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Corpses on the battlefields rot away, the equipment on them decays, army camps just up and disappear when no longer needed. Men on the statues are often instantly forgotten by and large. What doesn't disappear, and isn't forgotten, and in fact is still standing a long while later is acqueducts, sewers, fountains. Road networks also fit. The things that actively make your life better in some way. When Kyros ceases existing (it is fair to assume they won't die just on their own), that is what they'll be remembered by. When there's no longer a dude with a spear to intimidate you into remembering. Side note, but I wonder how surreal it must have been, decades or even centuries after the Roman empire fell, to be still using their stuff. Gargantuan engineering projects, huge columns and arches of stone that still bring you the water you use every day, and so forth.
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Oct 20, 2020 15:25
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inflatablefish posted:I figure it's his first step to becoming either the Archon of Iron or the Archon of Poop. Bog-iron
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Oct 20, 2020 15:40
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C'mon, let's spruce that Archon of Poop title up a bit, they're embodiments of the magic of entire concepts, after all. How about "Archon of Disposal"?
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Oct 20, 2020 17:38
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Archon of "waste disposal consultancy" ?
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Oct 20, 2020 17:43
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JT Jag posted:C'mon, let's spruce that Archon of Poop title up a bit, they're embodiments of the magic of entire concepts, after all. Archonia Cloaca.
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Oct 20, 2020 18:02
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JT Jag posted:C'mon, let's spruce that Archon of Poop title up a bit, they're embodiments of the magic of entire concepts, after all. Anus Archon
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Oct 20, 2020 18:58
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Shitlord.
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Oct 20, 2020 19:27
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sebmojo posted:Shitlord.
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Oct 20, 2020 19:31
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JT Jag posted:C'mon, let's spruce that Archon of Poop title up a bit, they're embodiments of the magic of entire concepts, after all. The Archon of Night(soil)
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Oct 20, 2020 19:49
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Voting closed, we are chatting with Lantry.
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Oct 22, 2020 01:33
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Cleopatra Jones and the Chatty Party Members First things first. We need to go to the Spire to get some cool stuff.  Hah! The joke's on them, I've got a large spell bar and -    : Have been stalking human's scent-trail. Have ranged many more-than-five nights through tribe, and human territories of Tiers-lands, hunting for human called Fatebinder. For human who woke horizon-rock called Mountain Spire.Oh, just what we needed, the classic hyphenated sci-fi bad-prose. Stop loving doing this, nerds!   : [Lore 43] Your markings - must be from the Shadowhunter tribe. The beastwomen are running off the old theory of alpha and beta wolves that has since been discredited but lives on in popular culture. : Hey, I'm not looking for conflict. I merely want to continue on my way.You can gain a lot of loyalty from Killsy here by smacking her in the face. We're a diplomat, even if we're also the feared war mage who kicked the Iron Marshal off the Spire and broke the Vendrien Guard. : Beastwoman did not range so far, chasing scent and tracks of Fatebinder only to step aside and watch human leave Beastwoman behind.: She snarls. I kind of hate that all our responses are to be rude here. : Explain yourself, Beastwoman. What is it you want?  Killsy always meets you early in the game if you go east from the Spire. Here she's confirming that word of Cleopatra's deeds as a powerful individual have spread far and wide, even to the Beastman tribes. Who are the Beastmen? We'll be seeing more of them later. : I merely read Kyros' Edicts - I am but a vessel for the Overlord's great magic. Killsy is not stupid. She is uneducated, but she is not stupid (and can actually train Cleo in lore, which rules). Here she's pointing out the paradox of the tyrannical ruler with capable subordinates - people associate the deeds with the person who performed them, not the person who ordered them. We invoked the Edict of Fire against the Vellum Citadel, despite Kyros giving the orders. It's a paradox of power that resounds throughout history and fiction, from Augustus Caesar banning triumphs honoring generals (because the generals had gotten ambitious during the civil wars) to Bel Riose of Asimov's Foundation (himself based on the generals of the declining Roman empire).  As Kills-in-Shadow points out, these are not the actions of a mere vessel. : Okay, so maybe you've heard of me.: Kyros hunts human realms to extinction. Rules tribe of blood and ruin, starvation and death. Seeks to slaughter Beastwomen like prey. But Beastwomen are not prey. Are not flighty, feeble-minded humans.: Kills-in-Shadow spits a gob of tawny mucus on the ground.Kills-in-Shadow provides a perspective we haven't seen yet - someone outside of Kyros' empire looking in, and she confirms once again that all Tunon's rhetoric about free food and the right to life is in fact a lie. There's one other scene on the rebel path which really drives this home too, but that will have to wait for another day. : Beastwomen are savage hunters. Bred to fight-kill-rut. Like Fatebinder who smells of Alpha. Despite the annoying-hyphen-speech Kills in Shadow is actually really good and can be kitted out to deal stupid amounts of damage to the many people we dislike. : If you want to join me, it'll have to be as my Beta.: Kills-in-Shadow is not Beta. But even Alphas submit to stronger-willed Primas. Many packs make a tribe. Is this not a thought humans also understand? Beastwoman will follow Fatebinder. Will not dominate. Dialog doesn't change here based on gender, by the way. Bellum omnium contra omnes. The irony is that, despite the Kyrosian forces and even supposedly unbiased Tunon looking down on the Beastmen as primitive savages, the entire Kyrosian empire is run on these exact principles, just with better tools.  : Fine. But keep your nose to yourself.Killsy is not too hard to keep in line - after all, you do tear fire from the sky. : The Beastwoman huffs and turns to address her pack. No wait, what are you doing, we need troops - oh, screw it. : Will not like if Kills-in-Shadow catches sight of stone mongrels again.Killsy, that is literally the language the Disfavored would use to describe your people. Rude.  Sorry Killsy, chill at the Spire with Verse for a bit. I think as you two enjoy killing people you'll get along juuuuust fine. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
There weren't any Beastmen in Act I because Beastmen don't live in that valley. We're going to be seeing a lot of Beastmen, because the game is going to use them both as kind of a Hobbesian analog while also portraying them as the victims of human colonization.  Kyros' Peace!  Back to the Spire. I hired this merchant guy Revos because he sells sigils and sigils are awesome.  He tries to pickpocket you and you tell him to knock it off. We tolerate it because he has good stuff.  We could buy this expensive Fatebinder of Tunon gear, or we could just find good equipment in our travels that we can equip instead.  We want this. Badly. It unlocks confusion and silence spells, which are very useful in protracted fights.  We learn this sigil as well. It kind of sucks and I pretty much never use it, but every sigil we learn gives us Lore xp.  We grab the sigil of Material Force, which lets us create sweet spells that let us enchant people's weapons with life drain attacks and other nuttiness.  Here's the confuse spell I mentioned. We can later upgrade it to do unresistable damage over time and whatnot. The magic system in this game is a gift that keeps on giving.  I grabbed this as well. Notice that Lantry has all the buffs, but also the highest lore skill. Later I will remove all the buffs from Lantry's spell slots on the ground that he's currently the best nuker in the party.  We teach this to Barik so he can lifesteal while also keeping the scrubs paralyzed.  Unfortunately we're hitting the limits of our lore...for now. The thread voted to talk to Lantry and see what his deal was.  At least someone likes us in this mad world.  : Let us discuss current matters. : Know anything about the region we're in? : The Spires predate us all. As far as I know, we're the only ones who have been up here since... ever? I think this might be a first? Perhaps the real trailblazer had trouble getting down and was lost to history.The game has given us few hints about this, but I suggest you look at the game over screen we got when the Edict went off.  : You're taking lots of notes... what about? : Is it safe to be writing on your arms that much?: Oh, certainly not, but it depends on the ink I'm using. Too much cerulean and I can't sleep... but just the right amount and I can write all night. The red ink will give you swamp bottom if you drink it, but absorbed through the skin, it'll make you taste colors and smell music... speaking of which, I should change out my tip. If you never played this game, I bet you weren't expecting Cleopatra to get high as balls. : Your inks sound like fun. Can I try them? Lantry is a good friend to have. : Consider it a lesson. Cautionary tale about wishing for things. Fatherly moment. Any of those work for you?  : What's the cerulean ink like?: He holds out a small vial, you put a small dab on your finger in and taste the blue, viscous fluid. Aside from a chalky sensation on your lips, it seems to do nothing.  Look at these replies! It's always interesting to see just what the limits of the "blank slate" characters are in RPGs - the evil run of Baldur's Gate 3 won't let you enslave the gnome despite him gloomily proclaiming you will, for instance - and it's quite revealing that our uninhibited thoughts are about how absent Kyros is. : Did you know that, legally speaking, my word is the same as Tunon's word unless the Archon contradicts my word as a Fatebinder? Rhogalus says the legal term for that is Proxy Decisis. Calio says the legal term is "gently caress you, I'm the law."The double-edged sword is an interesting bit of foreshadowing.  This ends the conversation. Let's chat him up a bit more. Tell him we have some questions, and...  : I'd like to know more about you. : What's your story? Tell me the origins of Lantry.: Someday, someone half your age will ask you to sum up your life and you'll realize what an odious request that is! Hmph... well, where to start?  Stalwart's military force is called "the Unbroken" because they have never been defeated...except by Sunder but they all agree that it wasn't a loss, much how there is only one China today whenever Xi Jinping is in earshot. : Any other family?: Irrelevant. If they exist, they are as strangers. Family ties are severed when joining with the Sages... at least in principle, the School has had its share of favoritism for blood relatives.It's always amusing to see that the Tiers get stuck in the same inept fuckup patterns as the Kyrosians do, which is the main reason the Chorus and the Disfavored were able to conquer the place in three years. : As a novice, I was assigned to the dovecotes, where I learned how to raise and groom birds to carry messages - and most of my early tomes are on that subject. Ten years and several tomes later, someone decided I was ready to be welcome[sic] into the inner circle and shown the ways of magic. : Were you born Lantry or did you take that name on joining the School of Ink and Quill? : Is this your true skein? Did you always want to be a Sage? : So really... what's your story? : [Subterfuge 43] I know you're smarter than you act - extend me the same courtesy.  You might be thinking "Wow, Lantry's an rear end in a top hat for selling out the Sages like that". Don't. The Sages and the Kyrosian armies have an...interesting relationship.  : So advocating surrender to Kyros was the end of your long plan?: Yes and no? When I first left, I was just happy to be getting educated by the Sages on someone else's rings and my orders were simply to listen and report. As the time drew near, my commands were to win them over, a little at a time, to the notion of surrender. Of course, the sad truth is that the Sages, while skilled at magic, did not have the might to stand against Kyros indefinitely. They certainly did a number on the armies during the Conquest, but ultimately the Vellum Citadel burned under the Edict of Fire. The other irony is that when we met Lantry he was rewarded for his loyalty by being crucified in the Scarlet Chorus camp. We'll talk about Lantry and trauma in a bit, but I'd guess Lantry takes his failure very personally. : Thank you for telling me. Now, no more secrets, understand? Back a bit through the dialogue tree.  : What can you tell me of the School of Ink and Quill?: You mean what's left of them?Oh yeah, we did kind of...hit them without warning.  : What's the core philosophy of the School of Ink and Quill? I could have sworn there were less spelling errors when I first played the game. : Each Sage benefited from the scrolls of learning that came before him and so each Sage must repay this boon by gathering, authoring, or translating new texts to the stacks. : Why did the Sages resist Kyros?: Why indeed! As historians it is our place to document, not direct... let others rage and resist, ours is the duty to record. The decision to defy Kyros was not unanimous... nor one decided upon lightly. : Tell me a bit about the School's history.  : The centuries fly by and suddenly the Vellum Citadel is the definitive archive in the Tiers. The Sages branched out into carrying missives for wealthy clients, training noble children to read - the peasants may have feared us, but we remained useful enough to the Kings and Queens of the Tiers to avoid war. : What sort of sigils do the Sages practice?: Traditionally, we use magic only so that we may observe and archive, so that means magic of concealment and protection.: But in truth, we have amassed a great wealth of knowledge. Before the Vellum Citadel fell, any given subject of magic had at least one Sage practicing it. Eb we literally taught Lantry the Phantombolt spell! Eb does NOT like Lantry for this reason.   The irony is that we know the results of this training - Lantry and the Sages are much stronger in combat than members of the Tidecaster order. Eb has a skill tree dedicated to compensating for her relatively low Lore skill (although you can break this in half with a bit of effort) when you first team up with her in the rebel path she has all of two spells and a few abilities that scale off might. Lantry starts with two sigils known already (per his self-description he mostly buffed himself to fight before we turned him into a nuker) and his lore outstrips the rest of the party. Enemy sages use a wide variety of spells, from fire to ice to atrophy to their custom time manipulation skills. Sadly we do not run into a wild Sage slinging gravelight spells. : I can see this conversation going to very constructive places. Both of you, drop it.One last option from dialogue. Going back up the tree one more time... : So they say Sages know all sorts of things... : Could you teach me something about history? There sure are a lot of opportunities to bully poor Lantry, aren't there? Screw that. Lantry has been nothing but kind and helpful to us. : [Lore 38] But what better tangent than triangles?I get the trigonometry joke, ugh.    A Brief History, Volume I is great. And then you ruin it with bad proofreading. Tyranny! We are taking all the Lore options here for that sweet, sweet XP. : [Lore 24] [Listen politely.] Fascinating... I admit I literally laughed out loud at the flashbacks to Tunon's lectures. : [Lore 38] [Listen politely.] Really? Do go on... : [Lore 42] But were your two measurements far enough to derive a parallax? Lantry is of course referring to the Pythagorean theorem, which indicates that the Sages are far ahead of everyone else we've seen as far as knowledge of science goes. : [Lore 43] So if that's correct - you could estimate almost any length from a known angle... I get we're playing this for laughs as "ha ha Lantry is a boring rear end nerd" in a video game most assuredly made by people with computer science degrees based on linear algebraic graphics algorithms but it kind of doesn't completely work. For someone bored out of their mind the Fatebinder is sure able to come up with an instantaneous use for all this math.  We'll give poor Lantry a break, for reasons I'll get into after the summary. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Like almost everything in Tyranny, there's more than meets the eye. Let's go back to the inks for a moment. Did you notice that Lantry is basically constantly high? Go back and reread that. Lantry is constantly applying these inks to his skin or licking them off his quill. That's not recreational use. Now, what kind of things has Lantry been through? So far (from what we've seen) Lantry's been used as a pawn by the Voices of Nerat to convince his adopted family to surrender, believes himself culpable for the Edict being called down on the school (note his word choice: "I failed") and the deaths of all the Sages...oh, yes, and when we met him he was being crucified by the people he was working for. Then he ended up owing his life to the woman who burned all his friends alive after seeing even more violence (as he states, he got into a lot of fights on the road) and this is all the stuff we know about! Lantry getting high off his inks isn't because he's a cool old stoner, it's because he's using these drugs to escape his traumatic life. He mutters vague bullshit about anxiety but that kind of constant drug use is not healthy and does a number on you. Hell, his reply to Cleopatra that he can't let her poison himself suggests that on some level he knows exactly what he's doing and that these drugs are terrible for him. It's a recurring theme that all of these companions have something wrong with them - Barik is repressed behind his armor that seals him in his own poo poo, Verse is a violent psychopath given free reign to indulge her desires (whatever they may be), and now Lantry is a traumatized drug addict trying to escape reality by constant drug abuse. Unlike Tides of Numenera where half the companions had no real connection to the Changing God plot, all of these issues are tied directly to the brutality of Kyros. I can't talk about Eb, Kills in Shadow, or Sirin (come on, she had the PC portrait, no use hiding she's our last party member) but like the party members we've seen, they have all suffered grievously at the hands of the Overlord, and that takes a psychological toll on people. The point you should (again) take away from this is that Kyros ruins everything she touches, even her own servants, and that broken systems create traumatized people. Lantry cannot get through a day without pumping tons of drugs into his system, and quite frankly it speaks well of him that despite all of this trauma he is still a good and loyal friend to Cleopatra. Pour one out for Lantry. He's been through so much poo poo, but at the end of the day he's a healer. He starts with the healing sigil and he has explicit talents to make him a better healer, but he's convinced himself he's a terrible person responsible for the destruction of his friends. Let's leave poor Lantry alone for a moment and take a look at the Sages. There's another running theme through the game that the Tiers echo the failings of Kyros and her forces in miniature, and the Sages are no exception. Throughout the Conquest we see that Kyros is able to defeat the Tiers by exploiting their divisions (making peace with Apex to continue marching, inciting a riot in the Bastard City to allow the armies to march in) as that is Kyros' one strength. The Sages' nepotism mirrors the Disfavored, their hording and LARP names the Scarlet Chorus (we'll come back to that next update). This is not a story about the heroic underdog rebels fighting for the equality of man against the tyrannical overlord, this is the story of a tyrant mastering the war of all against all, and the consequences thereof. Next time: Cleopatra really regrets not getting a library card.
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Oct 22, 2020 08:44
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: Hey, does that include the Tidecasters, you word skanks?
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drat it Beastwoman, we could really have used an army right about now. Or even a squad of troops.
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Oct 22, 2020 09:34
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I don't think Langtry refers to the Pythagorean theorem when talking about triangles. Rather, the usage of the word "parallax" and talking about similiar triangles suggests to me that he's into astronomy, and discovered the parallax method that can be used to determine the distance to astronomical objects (e.g. in our world, ancient Greek astronomers used it to discover the distance to the Moon). Also, I don't think that the fact that Cleopatra picks up on it, and immediately follows with a possible use for it, is played for laughs. Rather, this shows that Cleopatra, as a Lore-focused PC, and Langtry are both savants of the highest caliber - in a better society, they'd be able to focus on their research and possibly become this world's Archimedes and Euclid, instead of being lackeys of a cruel tyrant.
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Oct 22, 2020 10:28
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I think Kills-in-Shadow is the first to make explicit why Bleden Mark is a far more compelling ally than any of our other options; the Fatebinder is a big loving deal. It's been hinted at in act 1, but she throws it out in the open. You are never going to have a lasting professional relationship with Ashe or Nerat. In act 1, you were formally in charge, both because the direct superior, Tunon, said so, and because you cast the spell that would literally kill everyone if they failed to get their poo poo together. Despite this, you were never more than a pawn in their internal squabble. This is a relatively safe position in the rigid hierarchy that is Kyros' empire, because once you stop being a pawn, you start being a threat. The core tenet of the Scarlet Chorus is that anyone who is tough enough to kill their boss is entitled to take all their poo poo, and it is pretty obvious that Nerat takes proactive measures to prevent it from ever applying to him. Ashe makes some effort to convince himself he's an honorable man, but we've seen plenty of cracks in that facade already, and even if he let you serve him loyally, that means your career prospects would amount to "marshal of an occupying nazi army," which frankly shouldn't appeal to anyone. The rebels are a whole different kettle of fish, but ultimately they're just offering you a spot one step up in the list. They've seen that their two potential new rulers are going to kill and enslave their people for shits and giggles, and decide that it just might be better to bet on horse number three; an agent of the Overlord who doesn't do those things. That's not unappealing, but you're still just being a part of the system. Mark, however, may just be the freest individual in the Tiers. He occasionally has to kill someone Tunon wants dead and spar with the Fatebinders, but he seems to come and go as he pleases. He has achieved this by being a big enough threat that no one dares move against him. Unlike any of the other paths, this is a position that can be shared. If there's a second, equally dangerous shitkicker hanging around, that might even make his workload easier. He's pretty open about having to kill you if things go south, but that's a step up from the other Archons clearly thinking the same without saying it out loud. His offer is one of relative freedom, which is a big deal, but more importantly, he offers for you to be his equal. It's surprisingly rare in fiction that someone has a sweet gig and gives the protagonist a genuine offer to join in on the action, but I find it a lot more compelling than the more typical power fantasy offered by the others.
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Oct 22, 2020 11:02
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Thoughts: -Jean-Luc Picard is the greatest diplomat in all of fiction and he was never afraid to, for instance, talk to Klingons in a tone they respect. Beastwomen appreciate when their tough talk is met with immediate and decisive violence. Sure, it starts a fight, but everyone lives, and she respects you more for it. -There are in fact two beastfolk in Act 1, but in order to meet them, you need to make a brief stop at the Scarlet Chorus camp before returning to the Disfavored camp to decide who gets to attack Ascension Hall. -The reason a couple of the companions in Torment: Tides of Numenera aren't directly connected to the Changing God (though, five of the seven have some connection) is because the Changing God wasn't the entirety of the game's theme. The game's theme being torment, which is why the word is in the title. Same reason Annah, Falls-From-Grace, and Nordom have no connection to The Nameless One in Planescape: Torment. Because what's important is that they're dealing with some sort of emotional or psychological torment that brings you together, whether or not your past life caused it is secondary to how current you is going to deal with it. The reason every single companion in Tyranny can trace their personal poo poo back to Kyros is because Kyros (or more accurately, the tyranny that Kyros represents) is the game's central theme. Also given that Kyros controls the entire world, literally everyone has some connection to her, whereas characters like The Nameless One or the Changing God, while significant within their respective settings, are still of limited enough scope that if everyone had some connection to them, it would be fairly contrived.
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Oct 22, 2020 13:21
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Not clear to me how the ocean-going settlers of the Tiers arrived from the east when the Tiers is at the western end of the main continent.
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Oct 22, 2020 14:53
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GunnerJ posted:Not clear to me how the ocean-going settlers of the Tiers arrived from the east when the Tiers is at the western end of the main continent.  Five wives, seven husbands, no navigators. Clearly they have always been in desperate need of the guidance of Kyros.
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Oct 22, 2020 15:36
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We also saw hints of the trauma Cleopatra has been put through, even if the references to Tunon’s lectures were mostly humorous in tone. My anger at the “alpha” and “beta” bullshit is surprisingly strong. I fear the game’s going to insist on giving us more of it. Mark seems like an interesting case. No tyrant is going to permit an enforcer/assassin to exist without some very firm way of controlling him, because by definition he has to be powerful enough to eliminate those who might be a threat to you personally. I have to suspect that his independence is partly a result of a deal struck and partly because he is secretly and powerfully constrained in very specific ways, and thus chooses to flaunt his independence outside of those constraints.
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Oct 22, 2020 15:46
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A feral beastwoman who is visibly hot over Cleopatra's display of power is of course going to like a tussle. It makes perfect sense that Cleo demonstrating her strength is pleasing to Kills. Speak the language your counterpart can understand is something a diplomat ought to appreciate.
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Oct 22, 2020 16:04
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The lecture of a law professor who is also an unsleeping immortal old enough to have lost his sense of time... Also, is there a bit of a problem with Landry's backstory here? He's 84, but it says he's been working for the Voices of Nerat for 30 years, and that the Voices' agent arranged for him to join the School of Ink and Quill. But then it implies that he was a child when he was sold by his father to the School. Unless that's a lie, which would make sense given that that wasn't the "out-with-your-secrets" branch of the dialog tree. Then he would have been sold to someone else, and only much later wound up at the Vellum Citadel. Except it also says that he was "an eager kid happy to accept a thirty year assignment that comes with an education" so... Yeah, definitely looks like someone lost track of some numbers there. Montegoraon fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Oct 22, 2020 |
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Oct 22, 2020 16:11
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Montegoraon posted:The lecture of a law professor who is also an unsleeping immortal old enough to have lost his sense of time... Lantry's actually in his forties. Ink addiction is a hell of a drug kids.
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Oct 22, 2020 16:16
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Montegoraon posted:The lecture of a law professor who is also an unsleeping immortal old enough to have lost his sense of time... I'm pretty sure the implication is that Nerat's agents arranged for him to get to join the actual mage part of the school thirty years ago, as opposed to staying a pigeon handler/scribe/generic errand boy.
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Oct 22, 2020 16:18
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inflatablefish posted:
...Yeah, the devs didn't think it through. EclecticTastes posted:Thoughts:
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Oct 22, 2020 16:21
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12Apr1961 posted:I don't think Langtry refers to the Pythagorean theorem when talking about triangles. Rather, the usage of the word "parallax" and talking about similiar triangles suggests to me that he's into astronomy, and discovered the parallax method that can be used to determine the distance to astronomical objects (e.g. in our world, ancient Greek astronomers used it to discover the distance to the Moon). I interpreted "half-square" triangles as right triangles for what it's worth. You're right he's more interested in astronomy tho. kw0134 posted:A feral beastwoman who is visibly hot over Cleopatra's display of power is of course going to like a tussle. It makes perfect sense that Cleo demonstrating her strength is pleasing to Kills. Speak the language your counterpart can understand is something a diplomat ought to appreciate. Don't look at my rationale for forgetting the optimal dialogue path too hard, but I doubt Cleo is a beastman expert. This was me forgetting the Killsy encounter trying to get to the library. EclecticTastes posted:Torment: Tides of Numenera I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on that game, I don't want to crap up the Tyranny thread too badly. If someone feels I've done the Numenera game wrong they're probably going to need to make a "why this game is good" LP (good luck) because I've said my piece.
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Oct 22, 2020 16:36
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anilEhilated posted:You're making the (admittedly plausible) assumption that in-game maps have north at the top, which may not be true... For as excellent as the overall writing is in Tyranny, the script absolutely needed some more time with an editor, given the typos and stuff like this. It seems obvious they worked out the world map after they came up with the Five Wives and Seven Husbands and just forgot to go back and swap "east" for "west". Tyranny spends precious little time considering the world outside of the continent it takes place on, and much of it feels like an afterthought, which may be intentional, to reinforce that Kyros has forced everyone's attention onto himself. TheGreatEvilKing posted:I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on that game, I don't want to crap up the Tyranny thread too badly. If someone feels I've done the Numenera game wrong they're probably going to need to make a "why this game is good" LP (good luck) because I've said my piece. Agreed. I mentioned earlier in the thread that I have some thoughts regarding your takes on that game (though don't get me wrong, it's far from perfect), but I wasn't going to bring them up until it was suddenly brought up in this thread.
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Oct 22, 2020 20:04
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IIRC the bit with Lantry where you get high and say what's really on your mind also has a different dialogue option unique to every background.
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Oct 22, 2020 20:24
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EclecticTastes posted:Agreed. I mentioned earlier in the thread that I have some thoughts regarding your takes on that game (though don't get me wrong, it's far from perfect), but I wasn't going to bring them up until it was suddenly brought up in this thread. If you want to open a thread in Games to discuss this or something I'd be happy to take a look.
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Oct 22, 2020 20:27
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While I realize that Lantry been through a lot of poo poo that would turn anyone in an addict but I also believe that he´s also using his drugs to keep his 84 year old body going in in an extremely hostile environment that will kill you in an instant the moment you drop your guard.
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Oct 22, 2020 20:31
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anilEhilated posted:You're making the (admittedly plausible) assumption that in-game maps have north at the top, which may not be true... It's a very fair assumption, but it's actually false! Maps of Terratus have west at the top. I don't think a reason is ever given, but look at the below screenshot: I couldn't find one that has the area names on it, but this is when Cleopatra Jones heads to the Northern Clearing, on the far right side of the map. So the settlers would have arrived from the bottom of the map, which is not entirely unreasonable.
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Oct 22, 2020 20:34
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:It's a very fair assumption, but it's actually false! Maps of Terratus have west at the top. I don't think a reason is ever given, but look at the below screenshot: This actually makes sense, as Haven is often described as being in the east, IIRC, when on the map, it's in the lower-left. This raises so many geographical questions, though, regarding, among other things, the location of the "Northern Empire" Ashe hails from. As to why west is on top, it's likely because Kyros' conquest started from somewhere in that direction. The compass was already defined, but Kyros could at least determine which direction gets to be on top of the compass rose. That said, the whole map of Terratus is vague and confusing outside of the Tiers, and I'm sure some of it is intentional to reinforce how tyrannical regimes make it hard to even get a clear grasp of the basic facts of reality, but on the other hand it can be a little frustrating when everything is so inscrutable.
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Oct 22, 2020 21:00
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A large section of the map is almost literally labeled "here there be Kyros".
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Oct 22, 2020 21:22
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