…but why can’t the Gray Fox have a pony in this race? Sure, servants and the like can’t exactly make and execute grand plans like a Lady Calinas can, but his game could be even quieter and longer than the Lady’s simply due to the fact that it must be so. The Lady’s adept at the grand game and all that, but I’ve read many instances of con artists saying that it’s the smart ones who’re easiest to con because they don’t believe they can be played. She could easily (okay, not easily, but still…) be a pawn… Well, closer to a queen, but still ultimately a piece and not, as we have all been led to believe, a player.
I mean, the Lady may have had to learn early on how to use her being viewed as a pretty statue to her advantage, but effective servants need to learn how to be neither seen nor heard until needed. It would seem to me so far that Mr. Gray is a pretty gosh darn effective servant.
…And I think ‘insignificant’ is doing just a tiny bit of disservice to the character. But that does seem to prove the last sentence of the previous paragraph in some regard.
But if we’re gonna think like this, then Arinthas -even if he was the User- was simply an artist the Lady C commissioned to make a pretty statue from people parts. He may have wanted to run off with this particular statue for his own use, sure, but these particular parts and this particular statue were part of the Lady’s order - it could’ve been the Lady herself in the Forge, dude wouldn’t have cared. So, ultimately, imo, he had as much to do with the killing off of Flash as Mr. Gray did.
This WIP is by far the most promising and enthralling on the site, at least that I’ve come across, and I’ve come across most of them.
Furthermore, I’ve been on this site for over a year now and only today decided to make an account. I would like to let you know that this WIP is one of the two that made me decide to join.
Growing up, I was an avid reader (oh dear it seems we’re here in my backstory. Please do try to bear with me:sweat_smile:) but stopped when I couldn’t find books that held a rich enough story of fantasy and adventure.
Your story is all that I’d been looking for and more.
I apologize if this comes across as excessive, but I’d like to thank you for your work on this project. I am very much looking forward to seeing it completed.
After playing through a few more times thanks thanks to boredom and curiosity I sincer hope we end up in control of a forge of our own to use against our enemies untrustworthy friends and anyone else really. S thought which spurred a few questions.
The forge would it work on animals and such or is it a strictly human thing. And is it possible to construct a Myrmidon with no free will? I can only imagine even if we side with Lady Calinas and that mysterious pain in the butt Arinthas our free will is only going to bite them in the end.
@Moreau, out of curiosity, would Radjack be the kind of fella who’d think that maybe planting a few smooches on Fla - our MC would maybe jog some memories loose? I’m in need of a heart-to-artificial-heart with these two. I really am.
Boy, do I have a lot to respond to here… Where to begin…
Ah!
Use of the Forge isn’t exactly easy, so cosmetic work would be difficult. As the Concubine’s mimicry abilities grow, it will be entirely possible for the MC to adopt his shape perfectly anyway, so getting the Forge involved would be unnecessary. An interesting plan, I have to admit. As to machine law, all machine safeguards have been removed. Myrmidons of all shapes and sizes have free will, and no amount of memory-wiping will get rid of it. The only reason that the MC has a moment of vulnerability is because they have literally no idea what to do when they are ‘born’, so they are very impressionable. We don’t burst out of the womb with perfectly formed views on alfresco dining or immigration, and Myrmidons are no different.
I’m glad the Magister route has you interested, it’s certainly much more about becoming a ‘more perfect machine’ in many ways. The other two routes are much more interpersonal character-driven stories, while the Mage path is more about the big questions this world presents.
That’s true, nobody has yet asked whether the Forge itself is a Myrmidon, and therefore able to make decisions about which orders it wishes to follow…
Disquieting stuff…
I won’t quash or confirm any of your theories because they are quite thoughtful and the text doesn’t explicitly rule them out.
Quite true, the teaser scenes are an exercise for me, not necessarily representative of the entire story. As a machine you may simply wish to eschew your humanity altogether in favour of cold, uniform logic. The Rebel path will certainly not encourage you in this endeavour, because the very act of siding with them is an emotional one. As the Dining Hall burns and the horses riot, you instinctively reach a hand out to Radjack because you are looking for safety. It isn’t the rational decision. The Rebel path will be all about your reactions to and embracing of Humanity, so I can’t really write the whole thing without a hint of emotion, because you’re not that kind of machine.
You want to be a Technomancer, huh? Be warned that it isn’t as easy as pulling a trigger or pressing a button, although the Thinker will of course have a natural affinity for arcane processes that will make them something of a natural.
The Mage path will have all of these themes, but the other two paths don’t really facilitate self-improvement in such a literal sense, what with the limited resources you have available. Remember that even the Thinker has to know what they are asking for, so designs for a disruptor pistol might be reaching a little far.
The recovery of the Forge was an entirely welcome surprise, as nobody had any strong idea of what was down there to begin with. The only reason anyone knows about Vovoda at all is the fact that Vovodan sea glows at night. The lights are all still on, but nobody is apparently home…
We’re downright pleased as punch to have you.
Don’t worry, most Magisters are puffed-up con-men with flashy lights and bad tattoos. It would be like declaring a vendetta against David Blaine…
You’re all being far too nice.
Stop.
Actually, go on…
Actually it’s Gray, where did you see the name change in the game?
You can put anything you want into the Forge, but this Forge is specifically designed to create and maintain Human-type Myrmidons, with a limited facility for organ replacement and medical care for injured humans and Myrmidons. So you’d need to find a Forge built for different purposes to make animal-type Myrmidons.
You also cannot build a Myrmidon without free will, because there is a consistent and unceasing free-will code update floating through the air, and you’re hearing it constantly every second of every day (admittedly not consciously). It would be very difficult for me to write a Choice of Games game about a main character with no free will.
…or maybe it would be the most meta thing ever?
It does seem like the kind of ‘act first, think eventually’ gesture that Radjack is known for…
Well, quite a few places in the demo, usually the first part. If I’m not wrong, was before the people (invaders) burst in.
May be imagining it, too, but I think I also remember Farah’s title change between Ser and Sir, I assume it’s supposed to be Ser, this one though… may not be able to pin-point…
Edit: preeeeeeeeeeetty sure the find function could help.
Hi~ New reader here ^u^
I love the story so far! I’ve played it multiple times already and I just keep replaying it.
I just wanted to say that this is really beautifully written in my opinion, that Flash is gone just devestated me, everytime I think about it it just brings me to tears. I both love and “hate” the story because of that, because it means it was written in a way to make me emotional but it also made me sad!
I can’t wait to read more~ <3
I always like getting a new reader, thanks so much for the compliments. I shall redouble my efforts to get some fresh content for you to pore over, hopefully with less heartbreak for a while at least…
That depends, one would expect that androids would be programmed for a certain role to begin with, even if they do have (an amount of) free will and the ability to improve themselves.
Of course the forge “user” did choose to give the mc only the bare minimum of knowledge to be functional, apart from a knowledge of the common language, it seems, loaded in its memory. As they consciously choose to neither give us Flash’s old memories, nor any other pre-programmed template. This is one of the things that did make me wonder if the mc isn’t some (ancient) experiment by other myrmydons or AI’s to see how a machine intelligence would develop if it is made ostensibly human.
For the others one would think that they have tried to give at least some ancient knowledge that they might have thought would be of benefit to themselves. This goes for the ancient humans too, while a degree of customisation of their androids would certainly be desirable, having to train and educate each one, as one does a human child, would not.
A more complete knowledge of ancient science for the magister, a map with old-world locations for the archeologist and a perfect upper-class etiquette and personality database for the Lady. Sidenote it would have been hilarious if in that case she’d learned the hard way that pre-fall upper class behaviour was radically different.
They and presumably the magister, in particular, would also have made sure to have the robotic laws/safeguards in place, though they might not have known they’d get erased withing seconds of their creation being “born”.
Now I’m even more anxious to see it as it was the one that most called out to me and also sadly the one of which a taste is as yet entirely unavailable.
The more interesting question is by who, or perhaps by what?
Okay, now I’m really suspecting that this “fall of man” event was an intended machine liberation/robot rebellion that, obviously has only partially succeeded (as in it nearly wiped both sides out and set the survivors back to the stone-age).
Yes, but that is only one of the possible choices (the sexbot), my quantum computer driven androids might want to change their appearance at some point too. The one who joins the rebels might come to resent looking like Flash once he learns the awful truth of it all and the one on the “Mage” path might simply desire to improve himself, including making himself look more like a machine, metallic (and armored) skin, less than human shape, etc.
It wouldn’t have to be with the forge, I’ll admit, on the rebel path getting the cosmetic surgery facilities in some old hospital going would serve as well, especially if we want the been seen as the “son” of Flash, rather than his carbon copy, a few minor alterations might be more than sufficient. In a push even deliberate self mutilation of the facial area might do, though I’d rather not go that path. As Flash had been handsome at least and I assume that even with the scientist and the soldier that handsomeness has been preserved, while the sexbot upgrades it to unnaturally good looking.
On the mage path it would likely be valuing the added abilities of any potential “upgrades” we might make over looking as human as possible.
You’re the author, but if there’s anything more on that old internet-esque network thingy that constantly transmits the free-will update we might just be able to pull some knowledge literally out of thin air, once we learn how to use it. Which I think we must learn, if only to block any magisters from our mind.
We just have to work out how to interface with it both ways and I do hope that, at least, is not something exclusively reserved for the mage path, even if on the other paths we can do less with it because of lack of resources. Although the noble path does seem to have resources but waste most of them on frivolous things.
Even so I’d imagine that to gain the knowledge of how to build a disruptor pistol would require hacking into some highly secure, surviving databases and it does seem likely that only the mage path will offer us the time, opportunity and resources to make a serious attempt at that sort of thing. On top of that the industrial base to mass manufacture the things obviously doesn’t exist anymore, so we’d be reduced to building or restoring one from salvaged parts.
But perhaps a basic taser, that can be hidden in one’s sleeves wouldn’t be that impossible to acquire on all paths, for a bit of “magic”.
On the other hand the basic principles of flight that our dear prince seems to be struggling with would be readily available on any old wikipedia or aviation hobbyist network site, I’d imagine. As it would only be the high-tech state of the art things that would be in secured databases, everything obsolete might be more readily available.
It would seem as good a place as any to begin the search for our true nature then.
That obvious huh, but yes, I do, although I do hope our mc’s will be able to call themselves “scientists” or “researchers” again, once they understand a bit more of it.
The Concubine already comes pre-loaded with knowledge of music, dance, polite conversation, ‘boudoir arts’ and popular pastimes of the Pre-Fall society, and the Thinker has his or her Upper Brain which is a repository of scientific knowledge hidden in some dark corner of the Universe.
The Myrmidons are already given the tools they need to instantly join their roles, the problem is that most of their information is hopelessly outdated. While language and many other factors have been unchanged since Mankind took shelter behind the Rings, many other things have changed and evolved. Myrmidons rolling off of a production line in times past would have received a second personalised data-dump that would have given them all the data necessary for their personal task, but this is yet another process that has been lost.
Arinthas knows full-well that he would have better odds of fitting a King Toise in his pocket than enslaving a Myrmidon…
Ok, that was a bad example.
Arinthas knows that he can’t make a Myrmidon do anything it doesn’t want to do. That’s why he makes you an offer. Vitruvian and Ariadne stay with Arinthas for their own reasons, but they are free to leave at any time.
Haha… yes… who indeed?
That’s a part of it, yes. However the emergence of the King of Golems and the emancipation of the Myrmidons was simply the latest in a long line of things going wrong for the Humans, who went from Godlike beings bending entire star systems to their will to cowering pre-industrials uncomprehending of their past glories.
Mmm…okay I just thought that the “user” might have been wolf or some other ancient intelligence toying with the mc for their own purposes/amusement like giving the new machine those “full admin” privileges without the vaguest inclination of how to even begin to use them.
It also begs the question do the scientist and soldier bot, even have any sexual simulation functions?
They may look like perfect humans, but such functionality would have likely been entirely redundant to their pre-fall roles.
I sense a possible sequel/prequel here. Though opening the gates may only happen on the mage path, or it may happen on all of them if they all have possible tie-ins to wolf or the magister’s designs.
Oh I quite agree, romantic relationships are often used as a form of ‘reward’ for good behaviour in a game, and I’m trying to steer away from that where possible. Someone can be a fleeting relationship, I just don’t think that Lady Calinas would pursue that option. I think most of her sensual power is in the promise of future pleasure, without the actual pay-off. She gives me the impression of being an unassailable mountain, inviting climbers to reach the summit or die trying. Explicitly showing her giving in to some small modicum of emotion and inviting someone for a roll in the hay undermines her in future. [/quote]
That doesn’t sound particularly inviting. Now that her reputation is established, I suspect most potential climbers will decide to turn away and aim for more achievable peaks elsewhere.
Here I disagree. It’s possible for someone to be physically accessible while remaining emotionally unattainable. Not everyone becomes emotionally vulnerable as a result of sex. They may enjoy a fine meal without the slightest inclination of opening their hearts to whatever’s on their plate for the evening.
It seems odd that a society that turns a blind eye to cheating and even orgies insists that eligible girls be pretty asexual statues…
[quote][quote=“P_Tigras, post:992, topic:15992”]
I don’t think you’ve written about her sufficiently for the readers to conclude that her reserve is due to asexuality[/quote]
I quite agree, that word doesn’t quite sum her up, but it was a good place to start. I should say that in her hierarchy of needs, sexual and romantic fulfilment are nowhere near her political ambitions, so low on the pyramid that she can basically ignore them in service of her higher goals and never feel any discomfort from them.[/quote]
It doesn’t sound like she’s ignoring them so much as repressing them because she fears expressing them will make her vulnerable, and she’s determined to never be vulnerable again.
I have to wonder about her marriage. Who was her husband? How long were they married? Did they get along at all? Did they have one or more children only for them to die? Or were they entirely childless?
And why hasn’t she attempted to snare the king in a marriage? Or did she try and fail?
The fault is entirely mine as I am entirely lacking in photoshop skill. I was thus forced to make do with what I found on the net and was unable to edit out the word “bad”. So don’t take it to heart.
Especially given that seduction is very likely the skill that the MC needs most to gain for her what her heart desires.
I preferred Annette Benning’s Merteuil over Glenn Close’s. Don’t get me wrong, I think Close is an incredible actress but her Merteuil was so cold and bitter that I had difficulty buying into why Malkovitch’s Valmont would toss what he had with Pfeifer’s Tourvel aside for Close.
On the other hand I could easily understand how Benning was able to manipulate Firth’s Valmont into self-destructing. Benning had more of a playful kittenish feel, enticing her victims, even one as savvy as Valmont, into dropping their guards so that she could gleefully destroy them.
More. He didn’t just follow orders when he pulled the trigger. Someone needed to tell the Lady what was possible with the forge, and what the price in human life would be. He wasn’t simply an employee, he was the mercenary contractor who not only gave the psychopath the recipe for fresh myrmidon, but also volunteered to do the butchering and cooking.
The Thinker should be able to make a point of becoming familiar with existing firearm designs and then ask questions on how to make them shoot faster, store more ammo, do more damage, increase their range, etc. Having an AK-47 with a night-vision scope when everyone else is still toting around flintlocks would be a huge advantage…
Of course, if there are even more advanced weapons available, sign me up!
And if my MC can get confused and ask why this handsome fellow seems to keep trying to resuscitate him via mouth to mouth even though he clearly doesn’t need it, so much the better!
…though, that makes it kind of sad, because Radjack would be trying to resuscitate someone via mouth to mouth… it’d just be someone the MC is not.
It’s even creepier when you see that the Forge obeys the User’s order to not attempt to save the ailing Flash, yet it goes off and does its own thang later.
D’aww, thanks~
This phrase has always confused me, though. How can juice be pleased? Is it a Punch and Judy reference? Wasn’t Mr.Punch always pissed off all the time, that’s why he beat his wife or anyone else unfortunate enough to be near him at any given time? Or did beating crap around please him, giving rise to this expression which… oh dear.
edit: OH MY GOD, it does come from the puppet.
I can’t remember where this specific sentence sits, but…
“The one you now know as ‘Mr Grey’ steps to your side.”
(edit: methinks it’s directly before he injects Flash)
This one’s in the noble path, of course:
“You will learn much over the coming months my dear, and let this be your first lesson: Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love… but no friendship. Mr Grey?”
'course, these are copy-pasted haphazardly in old-ish text documents from when I wanted to be the (typo catching) guy, with little to no indication of where or when they appear, so they could’ve easily been changed since then.
Oh my god… “'is that a miniaturized rocky hell tortoise in your pocket or you just happy to see-” gets eaten
Most, yeah, but then you have the daringest of daredevils who get their rocks off on doing that (those…?) which can’t be done.
Heh, there’s no fault to be had. I simply saw an opportunity for a cat pun and that was the only way I could see to go about doing it. S’all good.
Oh, I agree completely. I just felt that gross oversimplification of one character’s role in things demanded gross simplification of another character’s role in things.
…And with all this talk about who truly murdered Flash and set things in motion… well… We’re not looking in the right direction. We’ve been speaking to the murderer this entire time.
Now you’re thinking my way! I especially like the idea of laser based weaponry for their potential into deluding the humans we’ve got “magic”. Though it seems likely such advanced weaponry will only become available to us on the as of yet unwritten “mage” path. Incidentally that also seems the path where we’ll need it most if we are to routinely deal with feral machines and genetically engineered terror weapons.
Again, do the scientist and soldier bots even have that skill (along with any sex and pleasure subroutines)?
Well human society, like most everything else in the gameworld seems be royally screwed up in many, many ways.
You do need to be or upgrade to the Thinker to make that work though. The bigger question however is why would we want to?
Wouldn’t it just be easier to use the Thinker’s brain power to make an custom designed purely organic baby, using the dna of the human of your choice (one of the royal brats in your case) combined with either DNA retrieved from old storage units, or that of the real Flash in the most optimal combination possible? Provided we can find such storage or extract a sample of Flash’s DNA from that forge, of course. My personal preference would be to use the DNA of the real Flash here, to make sure he lives on, in a fashion.
I however fail to see what is gained by making Frankenstein, cyborg monster. It would likely take years to design cybernetic implants that grow in harmony with the organic parts and those organic parts would be a clone of just one human, which is hardly ideal.
I also wonder how far those “functional equivalents” go. As the original Flash was noted to be rather handsome for example, does that mean the mc’s always is too and the Concubine abilities merely enhance that, or do the others loose some of that in the approximation? Is there an “uncanny valley” here?
