Indulgence WoG Compilation

Indulgence Word-of-God Compilation


[Beloved]

Beloved allows you to request boons from a concept, which cost ‘leeway’ based on how potent they are.
The single massive powers given as examples are simply upper limits for what you can do with these boons.
It is not possible to get more leeway, but impermanent effects (like ‘kill that one guy, Death’) are vastly cheaper and permanent effects can include things like ‘manifest an avatar of yourself with some degree of concept-powers you can use freely’ or ‘give me lesser concept-powers that can improve with training’.

“Can I use Beloved to gain the ability to seize complete control of my Fight dungeons? I’m assuming it would be a high leeway perk, but could be interesting to have to turn that on its head.”
I’m leery of letting you take control of something that is literally infinite, with ever-growing power the farther you stray from a central point.
You can use a boon to take complete control of finite (but not necessarily incapable of growing) dungeons, or rather vague and indirect (or absolute but with limited coverage) influence over a true, infinite dungeon.

“How much leeway would it cost to heavily bias the types of societies encountered via interdimensional travel so they usually have a few traits of my choice?”
It depends to some degree on the precise traits, but likely less than 20% for anything not ridiculously improbably.
You aren’t actually changing anything beyond the multiversal nexus, after all.

“How much leeway would it cost to gain the [Share] ability without picking that option?”
25-50%

“How much would it cost to make the recharge from [Share] instant?”
Making it instant-instant, allowing you to potentially stretch yourself across a world and instantly empower every inhabitant with an ability that passively corrupts everyone around them towards your will?
Definitely over 70%.
Recharging in less than a second, so you can empower new allies mid-battle?
Somewhere around 20-40%, leaning towards the low end.
Limiting the recharge to a single, specific ability, you could probably halve or quarter the leeway cost.

The best you can do by just spending leeway is get a steady supply of something mildly inferior to leeway.
If you /really/ want to just get more, you can perhaps look at the explanation for the leeway system, that conepts are barred from significant intervention in reality by various laws.
One /potential/ interpretation of this is that there is some kind of vast bureaucratic system controlling reality, the leeway available to your concept representing every favor and potential bribe it has accumulated since it came into existence, saved up for you to spend on unauthorized changes when the time was right.
In that lens, you could perhaps accumulate more leeway over vast timescales- say, a few billion years for every 100% more you want- as your concept scrounges and scrapes for more influence.
Or, if you are powerful enough, perhaps gain leeway more quickly by acting as an agent in reality for other concepts, your own brokering the deals back in Yu-Shan concept-space.
But really, this is a stretch.

Utter impossibilities tend to be expensive.

Leeway is partially about potency of the boon, and partially about its effects on the world.
If it doesn’t significantly affect overall population dynamics, or the capabilities of the people you meet, it could reasonably cost less than 10% to guarantee everyone you will significantly interact with in the future is a sexy woman.
Really, in that case, the boon might be cheaper if it makes more people into sexy women- because it’ll be providing less info on the future, re: who will be important in your life.

The cost of purchasing a power like brainwashing depends on quite a few factors.
Making it something that needs training or some special conditions to reach full power could reduce the cost.
Removing the training cap, or causing it to scale with some factor, would increase the cost but probably be a good investment.
Less than 3% if you want to be able to rewrite an unexceptional person’s mind, without any worries of resistance, in less than a minutes time.
50-70% if you want something like the Anti-Life Equation.

“How much power would it take to seal the dungeon that spawns monsters, or the xiaxia portal, and so forth?”

If we’re talking an absolute seal that nothing can ever break, bypass, or sneak through by any means, that will last for eternity, on the same scale as the boon that gives you absolute immunity to all harm?
Probably somewhere between 30% and 60% of your leeway- this is a big deal.
Additional barriers past the first are likely to be vastly cheaper, however, because you can just expand what already exists.
Less than 10% each, easily.
A barrier that is as effective at stopping trespassers as you, in person and at full strength, would be?
Less than 5%.

Honestly, when you have sufficiently powerful concept-manipulation, the precise concept you are able to manipulate becomes a lot less significant no matter what you do.
If Death loves you, you could become wealthy by killing your poorness, or do a timestop by killing your temporal momentum.

I believe the finite, non-renewable supply of leeway for boons is important for balance.
If a player wants to produce more minor effects without drawing from this reserve, they could, say, expend some to create a lesser-but-unbound avatar of the concept, or perhaps grant themselves concept-powers.
If someone really wants an endless supply of actual boons, they can even take Ascendant and drag the effects of various boons back into the present from timelines that, now, never were.


[Beastly]

When your bones are repaired, they are not moved.

‘Broken’, in the case of your bones, is defined as ‘no cracks, not in pieces’.

Your consciousness is sustained by every one of your bones, and can be additionally sustained by specialized shadowflesh constructs.

The ability of shadowflesh to transform is finite.
A given piece can only reshape itself once.

You can learn to turn shadowflesh into any technology you understand.

With raw shadowflesh, some structural supports, and a shadowflesh brain located literally anywhere to control it, you can easily produce variably autonomous minions.

A strand of shadowflesh can be stretched (without transformation) to become thinner than a syringe needle.

The false skin can produce temporary substances that dissolve into nothing after a time.
Doesn’t need to worry too much about underlying sources of the substances; your false dick can generate false cum all on its own.
With a bit of experimentation, your false skin can make permanent examples from appropriate nutrients/materials or enduring examples(still technically not real matter) from shadowflesh.
Substances not secreted by the human body take more work to figure out how to produce in this way.

Substances derived from shadowflesh are not technically real matter, merely shadowflesh that has expended its capacity to transform, and advanced magic and tech may be effected by that.
Some effects that would only modify real matter may cause it to dissolve into nothing (it can generate energy in a fusion reactor, but not heavier elements).
You can expect it to act as real matter would for as long as it remains in a living body.

You can learn to use shadowflesh to fuel anything that requires fuel.
That is to say, you can use it in place of mana, stamina, essence, hydrogen, etc.

Upgrades that enhance your meatflesh will similarly boost your shadowflesh.

You can develop shadowflesh structures that do all manner of useful things.
Moving yourself through space without emitting mass for propulsion, and creating pocket dimensions, are two of those things.
How you do those things may vary; you don’t necessarily need to go about it in one specific way.
You can control shadowflesh structures as easily as twitching a finger.

Many shadowflesh structures require fuel.
Those that only perform basic movement, perception, and thought do not.

You can learn to create shadowflesh computers.
They are somewhere between normal computers and brains.
They can sustain your consciousness, even if every one of your bones breaks.
They network perfectly through the medium of shadowflesh.

You always know the relative locations of your bones.
Your bones can pinpoint the locations of the shadowflesh around them.
Your shadowflesh has a vague sense of touch and pressure by default, and with experimentation, can be converted into sensory structures.

To kill you, someone must break every one of your bones within the space of a single second, then destroy anything else that anchors you to life (like your human brain, if you still have it).

“Pure ashes” refers to any powdery substance you get by burning something that isn’t mixed up with other junk.
You can use wood ash from a campfire, if you make sure to get rid of the charcoal and dirt first.
This is intended as a resource limit to provide some potential problems re: running out of matter, so you can’t use shadowflesh to make more ash until you tech up to energy-matter conversion.

With research and experimentation, you can learn to create bones of other substances, sure.
The less like human bone it is(in underlying structure), the harder this becomes.

You can generate a quantity of shadowflesh equal in mass to the relevant bone from every one of your bones every second.

By default, I’d expect any shadowflesh that is no longer needed to evaporate like grimmflesh.

Your false skin is more-or-less a force field that perfectly imitates human tissues.
Sensory organs set on it work perfectly.

“Would a pierced eye still function as well as an unpierced one, or would its functionality suffer as long as the intruding object is present?”
If the thing piercing your eye blocks the few millimeters of nerve-to-nowhere at the back, you can’t get sensory info from it.
Otherwise, it’s just a matter of the object in your eye blocking out some light.

You have enough control over your false skin to adjust its durability, as long as it falls below your upper limit.
Making parts of it completely nonphysical, just an illusion, is relatively simple.

“How strange/strong can the false skin get, exactly?”
Depends on how much you work towards them.
You could use false skin to create a mass of shapeshifting, indestructible slime around a bone core.
Durability, at least, has no upper limit on improvement.
Note that your false skin retains the same total defensive value no matter how thick it is- one meter of false steel armor is twice as sturdy per a given unit of volume as two meters of false steel armor.


[Nexus]

While you are immune to negative magic, beneficial magic has a superior effect on you.

You don’t start with any significant reserves of magic (though you will be able to easily find ways to store vast amounts of magic for later use).
At the beginning, you, personally, generate enough to perform magical effects on the scale of ‘core through a tank with a magic missile’ a few times a minute.
The magic generated by something depends on various factors, boiling down to ‘importance’.
Gods will generate more than mages will generate more than baseline humans will generate more than plants will generate more than stone.
A square kilometer of wasteland, or a hundred people, is enough to double your initial magic supply.


[Wound]

“You were split apart by a cosmic weapon in a bizarre, semi-conceptual way.
Your resource-generating aspect is now unbound by your resource-consuming aspect. Your cells burn glucose without consuming it, convert amino acids into proteins without actually using them up. Your synapses fire without generating waste or becoming in need of rest.
Your resource-consuming aspect is now unbound by your resource-generating aspect. Your cells can instantly assemble the appropriate resources into new, healthy flesh. Your brain can use hours of accumulated synaptic processes to instantly draft that term paper you need to be writing.
Your weakest link is the fine threads that connect them. Each thread is attuned to a specific type of resource, initially physical, mental, and spiritual. With an investment of actual time and the appropriate resource, you can weave new threads, allowing you to draw more resources out of your resource-generating aspect, store more resources in the space between, and push more resources into your resource-consuming aspect.
In time, you may attain a deeper understanding of threads and resources, allowing you to produce more esoteric things. Externalize Stamina into Ki, Focus into Psi, Spirit into Aura. Unify Stamina and Focus into Chakra, Focus and Spirit into Mana, Spirit and Stamina into Chi.”

You start with approximately 300 threads total, 100 each attuned to your physical, mental, and spiritual energies.
The sum of their output is equal to your previous natural resource generation; each default thread is 1% of a certain kind of resource.

The limiting factor is the threads.
Increasing the power of your resource-generating aspect doesn’t help them carry a greater fraction of it’s power to your resource-consuming aspect.

A default thread extracts resources from your resource-generating aspect quickly enough to fill itself over the course of one week.
Its storage is thus sufficient to contain 1.68 hours of your previous natural resource generation.

It initially takes about 10 minutes to weave a new thread.
Extra resources, improved technique, suitable artifacts, etc. can accelerate that process, but it takes more effort for the same degree of improvement the faster it gets.
Threads can be broken down and used as material to weave larger/better threads.

Once you figure out how, you can freely activate, deactivate, and boost any natural bodily process.

You are wholly sustained by your resources.
Yes, by consuming the physical resources it would take to perform a series of exercises and recover from them, you can obtain the results of physical training- and the same for mental training.
This is only limited by your threads and how much you want to spend.

Your supernatural bullshit is the same as your normal bullshit.
You only heal when you feed physical resources into healing, but can feed them into healing at an arbitrary rate.
Thinking at normal speed is not fundamentally different from instantly completing that term paper you really need to get working on, simply a more measured consumption of your mental resources.

Your internal resource production is more-or-less infinite, but can only be tapped with threads.
Note that resources from other sources, like Player, Nexus, and cultivation structures, are vastly easier to draw upon with your threads than your resource-generation aspect because ~handwave~ your resource-generation aspect is partially out of sync with reality or something.

“… Can the resource (power) be refined into a higher quality variant?”
You can increase their raw potency, but this is liable to proportionately decrease the rate at which your threads can extract them.
You can optimize resources for particular purposes, such as an energy very efficient at healing.
You can create resources that can do a greater or smaller variety of things, such as essence that can do anything physical/mental/spiritual/aura/chi/psi/ki/chakra/mana can do or a telekinesis resource that is only suitable for fueling telekinesis.

Once you figure out how to generate cultivation resources internally (instead of gathering them from the environment and storing them like it seems a lot of cultivators do), you can create threads for those specific resources.
This would net you an internal, continuous power supply you can use to fill up your cultivator reserves and cultivate with.


[Progenitor]

If multiple bloodlines exist, one person can benefit from more than one of them.

Quintessence-based powers can be created to let someone generate and control a form of shadowflesh.

How about this: you can increase the potency of the rift, but the cost in quintessence and required number of people in the bloodline doubles with every extra droplet.
100 and 10, then 200 and 20, and so on.
It leaves a little potential for growth, but isn’t quite so breakable.

“Also, the quintessence can be hoarded, right? And can be used to modify existing quintessence-derived abilities?”
Yes to both.
Also, I removed the mention of it in V0.2 to save space, and it was rather poorly worded in V0.1, but any quintessence you accumulate but do not spend works to protect you from unguided misfortune (i.e., anything other than active efforts to screw you over by a thinking being).

“Can you use Progenitor to modify other powers, like making dungeon portals closeable?”
I wouldn’t say that you can use Progenitor to modify non-quintessence-derived powers.
You could use it to develop independent abilities with much of the same effects, such as the ability to manifest permanent barriers, warp space, or imbue greater durability into an object.


[Inheritor]

Any aspect of reality you spark into existence exists in every reality containing one of your sparkborn creations.

Inheritor can be used to create and improve cultivation systems and cultivation techniques.

You can use sparks to create cultivation techniques.
Expect one based on that[super-powerful example technique] to be somewhat less capable than the original inspiration until you invest enough sparks into enhancing your cultivation techniques.
Fortunately, the benefit curve for spark investment is a bit exponential.

One spark is sufficient to learn a useful pickpicketing technique, which you can perform skillfully.
Eleven used to augment the category of ‘dextrous techniques’ would approximately double its effectiveness.

Sparks accumulate without limit if not spent.

Not really.
The closest you can get to an instant, direct intelligence boost is using sparks to learn an impossible thought-pattern superior to the norm.
Of course, that’s just a variant on intelligence-boosting drugs that is less effective in exchange for not requiring materials.

“How conceptual can sparks get?”
You can create objects that are superior for conceptual reasons, such as a shield that uses the concept of protection to stop you from aging.
You can develop mechanisms by which you can interact with concepts, such as a clock that can force time to slow down.
You can create objects that work through conceptual means, such as a pen that lets you edit the word of god pastebin you are in.
…Actually, that last one is a bit overboard.
You can create a pen that lets you erase people from existence retroactively, leaving a hole almost impossible for anyone to notice even though the effects of ‘s presence linger still.


[Player]

“If you combine it with You Can Fight, can you come across artifacts to grant you stat/skill points and skill slots?”
You can get achievements for finding loot.
Collect 1/2/5/10/20/50 grade 1/2/3/4/5/6 wands/potions/swords/rings/amulets/skill tomes, say, and extra achievements for anything particularly unique.
Basically, you come across artifacts /and/ get stat/skill points and skill slots- the artifact never acts directly on the Gamer overlay, it’s just a special enough thing that it happens to net you an achievement that gives you those other things.

Death resets the benefits from leveling up, yes.
Your Achievements will always remain, and may modify this process, such as a stat-boosting Achievement starting you above 0 in some stats, an Achievement for real mastery of a skill granting you a Skill Slot locked to that skill, or a special Achievement starting you above level 1, giving you the appropriate benefits (including spendable Stat Points and Skill Points) you would have at that level.

‘Achievements’ are meant to be as broadly-encompassing as possible.
You might find a daily-repeatable Achievement to work at an orchard, each time causing you to respawn with an extra piece of fruit and increasing your HP by a few points.
You might unlock the Intelligence stat after graduating from a university, and get extra Skill Slots for every class you pass.
Helping someone develop a super-soldier serum?
Even if you don’t use it yourself, that’s worth a few points to each of your physical stats.
There are probably Achievements for getting x amount of exp and killing x amount of monsters that increase your level cap, and Achievements for reaching a certain level that increase the rewards you get on level up.


[Understanding]

You can use Understanding to learn programming languages, and automatically know how you might do something, but you can still get confused when working on sufficiently large programs.
Yeah, it can work on encryption.

You can understand body language as easily as any other language, so better than most people.
You can’t infallibly detect falsehoods and acting, but I think it’s harder to mask those sort of physiological responses than to lie verbally anyway, so it’s still an advantage.
You would be much better at deceiving with your body language and putting out the desired impression, as well.

And yes, you can ‘hear’ a perfectly silent opponent attacking you from a blind spot.

“Do you have to consciously listen to sounds to understand the language, or just physically hear it? IE, can you pick up a language while sleeping/unconscious?”
The information is processed by your mind to some degree, so if you’re completely unconscious, you can’t learn new languages.
If you are merely asleep, though, you can.


[Change]

Change effects your entire body, all at once, and while I’m not sure exactly what it is, it has to have some size limit.

If it has a persistent physical presence, you can use Change to integrate it into your body more safely and effectively than any surgery would normally allow.

I suppose that if you become a being of pure spirit, such that your body is your spirit/soul, you may be able to make a greater degree of changes.
You’d still need stuff like spiritweb samples and artificial soul structures to go beyond the limits of an exceptional human soul.

If spirit-related traits are dependent on some facet of biology, like some sort of physical spirit veins, you may be able to copy the genetic predispositions of others to have a superior version of those biological quirks.

Change cannot directly interact with souls. [Some exceptions may apply]

Yeah, you can just bubble someone with a pile of cybernetics and they’ll come out with them all installed perfectly.
With biomods, you can similarly add genetic samples to the bubble for a variety of effects.
Make someone a genetic clone of someone else, mix the samples to make them a hybrid of a few others, or overlay samples that don’t encompass entire genomes to just modify the existing DNA.
And, of course, because these things are external to Change they can bypass the built-in stat caps.

If the person being changed thinks these aspects of themselves[personality flaws like laziness] are flaws and wants them to be gone, Change can remove them.

Used to the fullest, it can put people in extremely healthy mental states(including all the benefits of mental youth and maturity simultaneously), but not directly increase intelligence or grant mental abilities the average human lacks.


[Money]

Longer sessions net exponentially more cash.
10 times longer means 100 times the reward.


[Pockets]

You have a steel box, open on one side.
-If you fill the box with clay without using Pocket, the Pocket is not destroyed, even once it hardens. Living things inside the Pocket can still leave, but must deal with this obstruction.
-If you fill the box with molten steel using Pocket, the Pocket will be destroyed once the steel cools, sets, and melds with the structure of the box.
-If you rip a gaping hole in five sides of the box, but the holes do not extend to the edges of the sides, the Pocket is not destroyed.
-If you remove two of the sides, leaving the box open on three sides, the Pocket is very close to being destroyed, but is not destroyed.
-If you weld a lid over the opening, leaving a hollow cube, it’s no different from closing a bag.

A living thing in a Pocket can look out through the cavity it was inserted into and crawl out whenever it wants.

Sorry, but you need physical contact with a cavity to retrieve objects stored inside it.
As well, looking at old recordings just shows you what’s inside the cavity at the time of the recording.

An object you want to store between two other objects pressed together still needs to fit through the opening- in this case, probably the crack where the two objects meet.
That’s easier with squishy stuff.
It’ll take some work to store something as big as a guitar on your head.

You can use cleavage as a cavity to store things.
If the breasts are ever pulled apart so they don’t touch, everything stored inside falls out in a safe but comical manner.
Don’t need to worry about stuff falling out otherwise.


[Fight]

As long as it is appropriately dangerous and capable of inflicting long-term consequences, a dungeon can inflict any reasonable kind of consequences.
This may effect the loot; it will often be designed in such a way that it helps prevent/deal with whatever consequences the dungeon tries to inflict, or inflict similar consequences on others.

“Can the dungeon contain items that grant extra [Beloved] leeway? Or is that impossible?”
Nothing that grants extra leeway.
Maybe a source of wish magic, if you go deep enough.

You can determine the overall dungeon theme, yes.
No matter what you pick, expect wilder environments the deeper you descend.


[Grow]

You initially possess the talent of an average person in the setting, with whatever minimum boost may be necessary to make cultivation actually possible.
You begin as a non-cultivator, and must take the first steps yourself.

“Is the potential increase[from training to a higher cultivation level and resetting] cumulative or based on your high score?”
It’s based on your high score.

Regardless of what happens to the connection to the xianxia world or where you go in the multiverse, you should retain the potential to cultivate.
Some forms of cultivation may require resources(including whatever Qi-variant they use) that don’t exist in a given world, or in useful concentrations, mind you, but as long as you have or can get the resources needed, the portal is irrelevant.

How about this: your world has to be very big, have cultivation of some kind, and have a few xianxia tropes of any kind.
Say, Shadowrun could be made compatible by stretching it out onto a ringworld, allowing mages and adepts to train so hard they eventually become dragons, and including “random level-appropriate bandits”, “a series of cultivation-boosting minerals that grow simultaneously rarer and more potent”, and “this one random peasant on the other side of the world has ridiculous luck”.


[Share]

Granting people the benefits of [Fight] with Share?
They’ll definitely be just as permanent- to make them temporary when you can’t close them manually would be an upgrade- and be able to scale with the power of the creator at the time of creation.
The only remaining areas to limit it are then loot, scaling, and size.
On this matter, you can probably just pick one- do you want the lesser dungeons to:
-Generate generally crappy loot, thereby messing with the adventurer powerscaling because that loot is what lets them build their stats.
-Not scale, or scale significantly slower, as you delve deeper, thereby forcing the dungeon creator to grow stronger if they want to generate better loot.
-Be locked to some finite size, thereby necessitating a greater number of dungeons, with more monsters near the entrance that need to be culled.

“If we share [Beloved] with someone, how much leeway would they have relative to us?”
That’s actually something I never considered, for some reason.
How about this- they have the standard 100% leeway, but the concept granting them boons is weaker and/or more limited in scope than your own.
Some of the boons they try to get will run up against limits of versatility (their particular form of death can’t kill temporal momentum) or potency (the concept backing them can’t generate barriers above a certain strength, even when trying to make it scale with them).
Your concept can bully their concepts, in ways that don’t provide significant mechanical benefit.

You can grant ability to cultivate, cultivation talent, and cultivation level.
Given how xianxia works, I’m pretty sure instantly creating cultivators a few stages below yourself isn’t overpowering.

Your level of cultivation buffs every persistent boon- if you called down an avatar of your concept, they will grow stronger as your cultivation improves.
If you used a boon to get access to a power set, you will find it easier to develop powers within that set, and they will be stronger, as your cultivation improves.

The nemesis does not get anything from the ‘You Have’ or ‘You Can’ sections.

“How much leeway would it cost to just straight out kill the nemesis right away?” (with [Beloved])
There’s a strong argument to make here that they would naturally burn their own leeway to try to counter such an attack.
This could end in a few ways- both of you could run out of leeway with nothing accomplished, or you might get your nemesis crippled or permanently wounded in some way if they were at less than 100% at the time of your attack.
With an advantage of less than 25% over their own leeway reserves (not taking into account what they spent that leeway on, and definitely more expensive if they somehow become vastly more powerful than you) you could just kill them instantly.


20 thoughts on “Indulgence WoG Compilation


  1. Legion1771

    So I’m incredibly glad that you didn’t die and have just disappeared instead.

    Knowing that you respond to questions here, though, means that I have a question to ask.

    What areas and effects do each of the power resources you can generate with A Wound look like?

    Pretty much an area of making shit up, really, but I was curious about whether or not you’d assigned some effects and capabilities to them.

    Ki can allow you to fly, for example. What else can it do? Physical reinforcement and the like, I’d imagine. Perhaps with energy shielding and projection like Dragon Ball.

    And the others?

    Psi is presumably telekinesis, telepathy and all that stuff.

    What about Aura, then? RWBY comes to mind, but that edges in on Ki. Perhaps its a more spiritual thing. Understanding and being understood, becoming one with nature, some weird Force-esque lifeforce sensing and shit.

    Presumably one has areas that its stronger in than others. Or areas that the others straight up don’t have.

    • admin

      Ki/Psi/Aura are your basic resources, just externalized. Use of Ki is ‘use of your body, external to your body’; force without counter-force, interposing yourself without actual physical presence, melee combat expressed along new vectors of attack and injury. Flight, barriers, and energy blasts, yes; potentially more.

      Use of Psi is ‘use of your mind, external to your mind’. The most obvious application is imposition of your mind upon other minds; telepathy, mind control, etc. Perception is rooted in the mind, alloying clairvoyance by flinging your senses across great distances, precognition by applying a temporal offset, and more exotic utilities as you master stranger vectors. Brute manipulation of the physical world is possible, but comparatively limited and rather difficult.
      Perhaps you eventually find a way to treat the universe as one great thoughtform, or to impose enough mind on the inanimate to force them into motion, or to manifest dream and fantasy physically in a sort of reality warping aura.

      Aura, like Spirit, is somewhat harder to decipher. ‘Use of your soul, external to the soul’ involves much more in the way of seemingly-internal effects, exerting the soul upon your own body and mind. Its most direct application is the purification of corruption, just as Spirit maintains the homeostasis of your own soul, but it can also augment you quite comprehensively. Through Aura, the intangible can become physical, allowing you to cut illusions, destroy the soul of an enemy directly, or manifest spiritual puissance as shield or pressure.

      • Legion1771

        So what do the three combined resources look like then?

        A relatively simple combination of their effects, I suppose?

        Use of mind and body external to mind and body, via Chakra. Use of mind and spirit external to mind and spirit, via Mana. Use of body and spirit external to body and spirit, via Chi.

        Except combining their effects.

        Not quite sure what Chakra would look like.

        Nor Mana.

        Chi, at least, seems simple enough. Apply your soul to your body, allowing you to maintain your body the same way you maintain your soul. Heal wounds, regain wholeness, etc.

        Perhaps strange conceptual effects or enhancements to skills and physical power.

        Is it possible to combine all three resources into a single super-resource? And if so, what would that look like?

        • admin

          Not quite. The combined resources are more complex, owing to their composition and to their position on the interface between ‘external’ and ‘internal’. They are exceedingly versatile, moreso than the sum of their parts. The presence of two components of the mind/body/soul trinity produces a tendency for manifestation of the third; seen in newly-sapient species developing souls, objects or animals with substantial spiritual might developing consciousness, ghosts developing ethereal bodies instead of remaining formless. Though the combined resources are generally less efficient and less intuitive, being far more difficult to actually master, there is very little need to master more than one of them.

          The ultimate combination of all resources is Essence. It is very difficult to produce with any degree of efficiency.

  2. LordElsquare

    Glad to see you’re okay!

    I have a question about the Progenitor power – you say above that quintessence can be used to modify existing abilities. Everyone shares all the abilities added to the bloodline, but can you edit powers someone else has added whilst they’re still a member of the bloodline? Suppose you added the power to shape stone with your hands, and some annoying great-great-grandchild keeps modding it to shaping stone with your feet (much less useful/dignified). Is there any way to prevent this?

    On a related note, can you add powers that aren’t 100% beneficial (for example, change bloodline so that people with more quintessence stored up have ‘moderator rights’ as to whether certain changes to abilities are allowed)? Or do all changes have to be uniform improvements?

    The other thing I noticed is that despite being all about cultivating a vast and widespread bloodline, unless you’re in imminent danger of death the best course of action is to avoid having any new members of the bloodline for as long as you possibly can. After all, each new member cuts into your supply of quintessence, reducing your control over how you want to grow. And if they can muck up your existing powers, they’re actually a handicap?

    • admin

      Any alterations must be made through the lense of upgrades. Changing the limbs a power is used through would require some significant enhancement. Changing powers substantially will tend to be increasingly expensive as they grow stronger, as ‘enhancement’ is measured somewhat proportionally: what is significant to a power capable of breaking boulders is irrelevant to one capable of breaking mountains.

      Powers need not be strictly beneficial, but do need to be more benefit than cost.

      Some care is needed in planning the development of your bloodline, definitely, but this is a manageable problem. Perhaps you develop a form of enhanced charisma that scales with age, or create some manner of obedient thrall in mass quantity to ‘catch’ most of the quintessence supply in place of free-willed members of the bloodline. If all else fails, repeated possession can effectively cull your bloodline of undesirable elements. In exchange, you get a power that you could potentially spread to every inhabitant of your local multiverse day one. Used cleverly, you could defeat Chaos within minutes of arriving in 40K.

  3. LordElsquare

    Hey – hope you’re doing well. Came back to this to look up details (vaguely writing a story based of the Player power) and ended up getting sucked in once again.

    Question about Wound and how it interfaces with other powers, specifically Progenitor and Beastly. “Your supernatural bullshit is the same as your normal bullshit” – does that mean that you can/need to use threads for resources other power provide you with? So for example, shadowflesh – you produce X amount per second, where X is the mass of your bones. But do you need to filter that through ‘shadowflesh threads’ to acually use it to make shadowflesh? Does it also apply to quintessence, since your body seems not to consume resources (“Your resource-generating aspect is now unbound by your resource-consuming aspect. Your cells burn glucose without consuming it, convert amino acids into proteins without actually using them up. Your synapses fire without generating waste or becoming in need of rest.”); can you make a ‘quintesscence thread’ to very slowly draw out quintessence from your stores and use it to improve your bloodline without depleting your reserves?

    Also, threads are ususally the bottleneck – but if you just sat around making new threads non-stop, you would eventually reach a point where your resource production was the limiting factor, right? Even if you have TREE(3) threads, you can’t draw more resources per second than your resource-producing aspect is making – or have I got that wrong?

    Can you transform shadowflesh into actual flesh? It’s obviously less useful, but also less distinct (thinking cultivation land – helpful if people think you die when they kill you, but if someone else pops up with the same weird shadowy flesh, they may figure it out).

    Also trying to figure out Ascendant. Can you preserve multiple things each reset? Seems like you’d pretty much always want to preserve memory of what happened (or you’d just do everything exactly the same as before, or close to), but if you can only preserve one thing per reset… I’m additionally confused by the bit about “everything get’s reset – your mind, body, powers – only retaining the effects of CYOAs you have played”. What if powers are from a CYOA (say, this one)? You presumably keep them? Or not? Resetting presumably loses any progress you’ve made on stuff like achievements from Player – but then you can get some of them back by preserving them… Is that right?

    • admin

      I’d argue Quintessence doesn’t quite count, from the nature of its source and where it comes out. But otherwise, Wound incorporates all of your stuff into the thread/resource paradigm.

      Threads interact with reality strangely. Since the source does not deplete, and they do not interfere with each other, more resources can be drawn than you actually produce.

      With some experimentation, yes.

      As you develop your powers, you can preserve more and more stuff from any given reset. As well, the shards you record require no additional effort to be preserved across future resets, so they can just pile up. Powers from a CYOA are preserved, powers developed in play are not. Fun hack: preserve that you have one unspent stat point. Tap that shard to impose what it records back onto reality. Spend your stat point. Repeat indefinitely.

      • LordElsquare

        Okay, so to check I’ve understood Ascendance properly: if you reset, you go back before you first used a CYOA. You would keep every power you have from this CYOA, as it was at the moment you aquired it. Beyond that, you could also send back some fragment of the development you’d achieved with those powers (say, an echo of some powerful boon, or a really great achievement, or your skill manipulatin shadowflesh). Is that about right?

        How does Ascendant interface with the nemesis from Share (and also the people you grant it to, I guess, if you do that)? Is there a turn order, or something, on who gets to reset in what order? Otherwise you could find yourself up against nemesis v12.5 on day one, from your perspective, since they’ve ambitiously abused the hell out of the power. And if you went further back, could you not go back to a time before the nemesis got their powers and just kill them?

        Actually, since the nemesis may not have played ANY CYOAs, they’d lose all their powers except those they preserved if they reset, right? My mind is boggling a bit on this one, as tends to happen with time travel-esque stuff.

        I did also have a question about Nexus; the power makes you immune to magic – but what is magic? Seems like it could potentially be anything (as in, the old Arthur C Clarke quote about sufficently advance technology), but more specifically, many of your power resemble magic. Conjuring a fireball with a quintessence power, drawing forth threads of karma to form an inescapable net with cultivation, an entad that induces confusion that you found in a dungeon or various boons – all of these could technically be seen as magic. Would Nexus grant immunity to these? Mainly relevant in terms of actually being able to fight off a nemesis.

        Pretty much every power can be defeated via carefully developed abilities to target them (e.g spell that breaks every bone in their body, threads that extract bon-breaking aspect mana, etc), other than Player (but I think coming back to life with that one is a choice? So mind/soulfuckery that takes less than a second could prevent them from choosing to return?). But if those carefully developed abilities are also technically magic, that might scupper things…

        • admin

          When you reset, you can potentially preserve anything: if you kill or wound an enemy, you could preserve the fact of that harm. It isn’t limited to yourself. What you preserve is crystallized, and these crystals will persist as records across all future resets. You can ‘activate’ these records at will, even multiple times in the same reset, to make the fact they record true.

          Resetting is a universal effect; if someone resets, everyone with Ascendant gets to pick something to preserve, and is sent back. That which is preserved is still available even if someone hadn’t gotten their powers, or hadn’t been born, yet. This could leave an adversary in a vulnerable position.

          If a power considers itself to be magic, it is magic. Most stuff on offer in the CYOA isn’t ‘magic’ in this sense.

          • LordElsquare

            Thank you for the reply! I guess the success of the ‘Omae wa mou shindeiru’ strategy hinges on if it’s possible to preserve the entirety of the Ascendant power on day 1.

            I had some thoughts/questions about Wound, if you’re still up for answering them?

            Given the production of any resources depends only on how many threads you have, not how much you make, that can actually weaken other powers, correct? Number of bones is irrelevant for how fast you can make new shadowflesh, Achievements that buff the rate at which you regen Stamina don’t do anything, etc?

            By contrast, if you have Wound and Beloved, can you not choose all your boons such that they run on some internal well of power (“Wish juice”, “Reality alteration fluid”, “God blood” – whatever) but then handicap them by making the rate of production infinitesimally small, such that their leeway cost is massively reduced? After all, it doesn’t matter how much you produce, just how many threads you have tapping that resource.

            Side note with Beastly – normally with Wound, you could move instantly by consuming all the resources needed to move in an instant. But shadowflesh specifically needs zero resources for movement, perception and thought. Does that then mean you can’t actually accelerate those actions, or that you can accelerate them arbitrarily quickly without cost?

            Thanks for the replies so far!

            • admin

              Wound as of Indulgence 0.3 is really janky. It can weaken you, it can cheese stuff, it can fail to interact usefully at all with other powers. I recommend just treating it as a source and reservoir of generic action points, spent to take action and naturally scaling in effectiveness with your capacity for action- because what you can do with ‘one second’ of action points increases very straightforwardly when you inhabit a great swarm of shadowflesh warforms that blot out the sky.

  4. SymphC

    When it comes to Nexus’ consideration of “magic” something like cultivation effects could be considered right? Probably depends on the type of xianxia world. Can you develop nexus into its own kind of magic system? Can you control how it manifests like “My magic works via mixing materials in a solution”, with the final result being an alchemically themed system where your magic manifests effects via solutions and powders and pills etc?

    Could you expand that into making other things specifically magical? Not just another source or able to do the spells and such, but putting some of your magic into an herb plant to make a magical instance of the herb, and not just “this herb generates magic I can draw from”?

    • admin

      Not all forms of supernatural power are ‘magic’; I cannot (should not) decide for you whether a particular form of power is or is not.
      Nexus is intended to develop into a magic system as part of its core progression. You have a lot of control over this.

      Yes.

  5. Arcaseus

    Hello, and thank you for these great CYOAs!

    I have a few questions about this one:
    – How does Grow’s buff to “potency and finesse” apply to Ascendant? Does it allow making more achronal crystals? Does it give more precision in what exactly ends in them?
    – How fast does control over the Ascendant power grow? In particular, does it go faster or slower with very frequent resets? How long until it is possible to preserve both full memory over one reset and at least one other thing?
    – Do we have any control over where the portal from Grow appears (on both sides)?
    – From the phrasing it sounds like the buff from Grow scales with the highest power reached, whereas the cost of the ritual scales with the current power (allowing to reset the ritual cost without also negating the buff). Is it correct?
    – Is it possible to automate in any way the ritual from Grow or otherwise have someone else do it?
    – Can spending leeway allow increasing either cultivation talent or strength?
    – Is there any way to die with A Wound or Beastly? Maybe the direct use of leeway? Same question for Nexus: is it possible to commit suicide with it without having to hunt down every little scrap of magic?

    • admin

      -Both, and more.
      -You should be able to preserve full memory from the beginning. As always, practice makes perfect.
      -Full control over where it appears on your side. It naturally appears in some low-level starting are on the other side.
      -The buff from Grow (to your overall power/finesses) is scaled to your current cultivation level. The buff from Grow (to your cultivation talent) is scaled to your highest ever cultivation level. Reseting for a cheaper ritual will at least temporarily entail a loss of cultivation level and the benefits thereof.
      -It is not impossible.
      -Of course!.
      -If you have Wound, you cannot be killed. Beastly and Nexus require only some significant effort; leeway would serve your purposes well.

  6. Pixie

    I have what I hope is a simple question about the Wound power. I’ve read both Indulgence and the By a Thread VO. I know that instantaneous powers use up thread resources but it seems like all “real time” uses are infinite since the refil in the same amount of time you use them or faster, like it says for stamina. Let me know if this example make sense and is correct. Lets say a simple Wizard can normally only cast one weak spell a day then they have to rest, if this same Wizard suddenly had the Wound power then they could cast that one weak spell as many times a day as they wanted with no need to rest as long as it was all done in real time and not instantly. Is that right?

    • admin

      Casting a spell in 0 seconds should be equivalent in cost to casting that same spell in 2, 10, or 500 seconds. Acquiring the Wound power does not immediately increase your resource recovery rate. The described Wizard, suddenly acquiring Wound, would only be able to cast their spell all day long as you describe if they did so at an effective rate of 1 cast per 24 hours. (At least until they started massively multiplying their resource supplies via Wound and False Wizardry progression.)

  7. Silor

    Hey this CYOA is great :). If it’s alright I’d like to ask a few more question.

    1. You said so here in the WOG that and I quote that [Share] is “an ability that passively corrupts everyone around them towards your will” is it true or am I misinterpreting it.
    2. So thanks to [Wound] output ≠ input right? Does that mean our body is now infinitely sustained? Do we no longer need sustenance in order to live? Like not eating food ever?
    3. How does [Wound] unkillableness work? What happens if a person is torn to bits? Or what if your soul was eaten or something?
    4. So since the [Grow] portal can be set anywhere on our side does that mean you can only set it once? or can it be moved elsewhere after setting? Can you open and close it at will?
    5. How much Leeway would it cost to have the ability to both add or remove anyone from your Bloodline? How much Leeway for [Understanding]? And how much would it to have a [Fight] portal closed permanently?
    6. Can you have more than one entrance to the same Dungeon?

    • admin

      1. No. Examining the quote: “allowing you to potentially stretch yourself across a world and instantly empower every inhabitant with an ability that passively corrupts everyone around them towards your will” the substatement “an ability that passively corrupts everyone around them towards your will” refers to a hypothetical power spread using Share, not to Share itself.

      2. Correct. Wound allows you to forgo food, water, air, etc.
      3. You may be injured, but you will never die. Even if literally nothing remains, you will not die.
      4. You do not receive any ability to relocate the Grow portal by default. It might be moved by other powers you develop/acquire.
      5. Less than 50%. Less than 30%. Less than 5%.
      6. Not without some degree of further development beyond what the CYOA grants directly.

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