Ouroboros Retrograde - plot role info

[powersthatbe]

If you are not a plot infiltrator or someone with IC reasons to share knowledge available to plot infiltrators, please do not read the comments of this post.

If you ARE a plot infiltrator, please comment under your toplevel to let us know you've read it; please also popover here to announce your plotroleishness to the game at large. We prefer that you do any confidential plotting with other plot-important folks in the comments here, rather than on plurk, and please comment no later than January 13th, 21st, 29th & February 6th, 14th & 22nd with a brief (as brief as 1 sentence; as long as you like) summary of your activity during the week & plans for next week. These comments will help the mods shape mingles and plot events to keep the story dynamic and player actions important to the outcome. Likewise, comment at any time with any questions you may have, and a mod will get back to you within 36 hours at the outside.

Comments

[scarsolderthanyou]

I am here, and I am pleased!

Also, first question... since Adversaries are so new and untrusted, is the role if Pillar more accepted as "part of the journey" and as having useful skills to support other people (monsters avoiding them, stopping magical battles, etc), or is it still a thing nobody wants anyone to ever be?

[powersthatare]

Pillars are accepted socially, but nobody wants to be a Pillar - no Dreamer wants to give into to despair.

[scarsolderthanyou]

Yeah, I couldn't explain what I meant really, I know nobody WANTS to be it, but is it considered more normal and useful and part of the journey from champ to oracle than, say, abherent or to be avoided at all costs? Less pitied or avoided, and more to be supported and intentionally included so as to intentionally bring them into Oracle?

[powersthatare]

Yes. Most Champions and Oracles never go Pillar, but Pillaring is a recognized risk of the lifestyle and no more shunned than any other occupational hazard.

[scarsolderthanyou]

But it is considered a risk and a hazard, not something natural, the way in later times Adversary is considered natural. That was what I was after :P

Additional questions... how long have the timelines been converging? Long enough for tentative friendships to form, or is it brand new as of the start of the Jaunt? Like, does the council of senpai know each other already coming into the Jaunt, have they shared info, or are they meeting for the first time in the first mingle?

[powersthatare]

It became visible to Oracles that Ouroboros would go into retrograde about a week before the first mingle, and occasional communication through the mists might have been possible, but only a few words or a few moments. When the first mingle goes up, it's been about three hours since everyone first met in person.

[scarsolderthanyou]

Last question (for now). How hard/easy would it be to work out the time differences between their worlds? Like, Lupa and Stone are both Spartoi, could Stone just ask "what year is it" and then be able to say "so there's 300 years between us" and hunt down another spartoi from the future timeline and do the same? (If there is one. Might not be :) )

[powersthatare]

Unfortunately, Spartoi, vodyanoi, and elves don't have a unified calendar system between different subcultures. Gorgons, who don't care about the cycle of seasons, likewise would find it hard to track the time. Humans from the same cultures, or Hecatites of any culture, would be the only people who can easily tell the time gap between the Rise & Double Valence generations (the gap between Double Valence and Starquake is small enough that only Spartoi and vodyanoi would have trouble communicating the time gap between tribal groups, and within tribal groups they'd have no problem).

[scarsolderthanyou]

I was afraid of that :P

One more try before I give up on having that particular info: would the "oracle of age" (as that's Stone's archetype) be able to get a rough estimate of such things, or not so much?

[whatspringislike]

Actually, given that Archetype, yeah, that makes sense.

[starshaper]

So, I hope you're ready for this crazy dork to be interested in his era, senpai.

[scarsolderthanyou]

Ask all the questions you like, little one.

[powersthatare]

Anything to report from week 1/plans for week 2?

[scarsolderthanyou]

He's spent all of week 1 checking in with people, giving out instructions and info, and being grumpy about everyone telling him Adversaries are normal, because dammit they're against everything he knows about QC :| He pointed a couple people at paths and spirit companions and shit like that.

Going into week 2, he's going to probably be chewing out people about "peacebonds", trying to get a handle on what ELSE QC could possibly be for (besides fostering hope in the waking worlds) that Adversaries are good for, and visiting the other times' places to get a better feel for what's going on there, especially Starquake era. He is most concerned about Starquake era, tbh.

[powersthatare]

Got it, thanks!

[powersthatare]

Anything to report from week 2/plans for week 3?

[scarsolderthanyou]

He helped Kohaku get her Champion powers by getting attacked by a nightmare and helped an Adversary who he doesn't know is an Adversary when he stupidly interfaced the lake and attempted to direct people at the glatisants with little obvious success. Um, he was not very effective this week, but then he's not a fighter anymore, so what would he be doing about a glatisant, anyway? :|

(I blame 1099s to be honest. God they killed my brain last week. This week should be better.)

Next week, I imagine he'll be all up in that message from the spirit companions wanting to know what's going on. He's still needs to hit up more Adversaries and try to broker some kind of non-bond-peace because all the other timelines can do it, they should be able to manage. It kind of depends on what the message is, though.

[powersthatbe]

Anything to report from week 3/plans for week 4?

[scarsolderthanyou]

He's been comparing the Ideas from the two glatisants over with Ace/Casper, and with Naoya. He's noted the difference in color, and put forth some guesses about what that means. The guesses are probably wrong :P

Mostly, though, he's been trying to work on the Adversary problem, with mixed results. (Managed to get an "okay, fine" out of Thae, still working on Haru, pissed off Altair enough to turn him Dark Oracle...) That will continue into next week, for sure, and he had the bright idea of offering an Adversary into his bond group, both for their protection and as a show of good faith for everyone else. The problem with that being that the only unattached Adversary I've been able to find is Kentrolite/Kenzaki, who is Very Against this idea ICly and whose player thinks it won't work. So... not sure if that will pan out.

Hoping the non-garbled warnings from the familiars will help him put the glatisant idea guesses into better focus. For non-Adversary stuff, I'm mostly I'm waiting for the details of the next mingle before I know exactly where he's going there.

[powersthatare]

Anything to report from week 4/plans for week 5?

[scarsolderthanyou]

Same as last week mostly... he's focusing on the Adversaries issue in his time frame, and doing better this week than last week thank god, but he might get roped into the cabochon stuff or the Harbinger stuff depending on how a couple conversations fall out, and how the band thing with the cabochon works. There are people talking to him about both things.

But mostly he's trying to talk people around about Adversaries, and making slow progress.

[powersthatare]

One last check-in for the road: What are your character's plans to resolve what they see as the biggest issue of their era?

[scarsolderthanyou]

Talk to people /helpless shrug. Basically continue what he has been trying to do during the Jaunt, and slowly convince Champions and Oracles that Adversaries are just a new way of protecting hope, and Adversaries that maybe attacking right off the bat isn't necessary and we can be adversarial in a multitude of ways, and make sure all Adversaries are aware of how sanctions are formed and how best to avoid them, until they fall out of style because people don't fear Adversaries anymore (he hopes) and people forget how to make them. He's got 2 years before he dies to hopefully at least lay the groundwork for this, if not get it done.

As a side-note, he's getting a ton of shit from Shiro regarding the elvish rebellion, plans and data and some devices, that he's supposed to pass on to the new rebel leadership. Once he figures out who that is.