You start to ponder more questions for Caius to ask while he's still in the ritual, when he suddenly speaks up.
"...Y'know," he says to the tradesmen, "I ain't real sure tha pricin' on that first question's fair. It's s'posed to be fair, right? 'Cuz you guys are askin' for a cost we ain't willin' to pay. Seems like a shitty way to run a business, to me personally."
Well. That uhh. You maybe wouldn't have put it like that--
"The price of the answer is judged to be balanced," the tradesmen reply. They don't sound mad, but you kind of expect them to be. "Though you may lack context for the reasoning. If you do not wish to pay for the answer to the question, that is your decision--we cannot force you to do so, any more than we can prevent you from asking a question."
"Well," Caius starts, "that's--"
Wait.
Wait wait wait.
Any more than we can prevent you from asking a question?
They've... sort of tried that, before--they'd cut you off or offer 'free' information, but they mostly do that to keep you from wasting your time and resources asking questions that are
...dangerous.
Do they not want to tell you who made Combat #11? Are they worried about something? Is that why they're making the price something you've already... sort of dodged giving up once?
You stop him, and suggest not phrasing it as a question. They have to price it if it's a question.
Caius collects himself a bit... and starts over. "We ain't gonna hurt whoever made that disc. C'mon. You guys gotta know us by now, we ain't like that."
"That is not an issue that factors into the price of the question," is all the tradesmen say.
Huh. Alright.
It's something else, then. They don't want you to know who made Combat #11 for... some other reason, and it's not that they're worried about what you might do to the ritual makers.
"While the tradesmen do offer various messaging services over space and even, rarely, time--that is unfortunately not our area of influence, and would require a separate ritual. We do apologize for any inconvenience or frustration this may have caused. As compensation, we will offer this information for free: unlike what lies beyond the door in the location you've designated Bunker C, which is very dangerous and would not likely be worth the effort to investigate, the two newer Zone Fifty bunkers your group has gained access to are, under the vast majority of circumstances, perfectly safe. What they offer is minimal, but there is also little, if any, risk involved in entering them."
That's... good to know. Under the vast majority of circumstances is a little odd.
"What's up with tha leech?," Caius asks.
"We cannot effectively price a question that you already have the answer to," the tradesmen reply.
"Aww, don't gimme that," Caius huffs.
That... means it has to do what you wanted it to, though, right? You traded in the tinfoil hats as protection against psychic intrusion--maybe that's... what the leech does...? That doesn't really answer how to use it, though.
"Maybe that's s'posed to be obvious, too," Caius quietly says into the phone. "Y'know, like, 'open the can' or whatever. Dunno if I'm feelin' all this cryptic shit."
You ask Caius to ask about physical damage, and how it carries over after using the Combat #11 ritual. Does it shrink back down when the caster returns to normal? Does a wound stay the same size? Does the injury just disappear...?
It takes Caius a little effort to word it, and you end up having to repeat the question for him, but he finally asks.
The tradesmen reply, "we can answer this question in exchange for three tinfoil hats."
"When the affected returns to their original form, any physical trauma remains but will scale down proportionately. For the state gained by the ritual, what appears on the surface to be a large amount of damage may actually mean very little."
So a huge bullet wound turns into a small bullet wound afterward. ...Or something like that.
"Can we--" Caius stops himself, and remembers what you mentioned earlier. "I want you guys' phone number."
"For various reasons, we are not capable of communicating in that fashion," the tradesmen state simply.
I wonder if the ritual makers might be somehow influenced by actually meeting their "god" (i.e. Mine) and by keeping her a mysterious eldrich being, it keeps them strong and doing what they're doing - the mere act of interacting with her personally would change their understanding of her, influence the rituals, and potentially weaken their fight against whatever fascism they're fighting.
*thoughts:
1) We should ask if the Tradesmen are willing to educate us about the ritual for using them as messaging service.
2) We should find out if it's safe for the universe as a whole (and Mine as an individual) if we were to trap Nil in The Red somehow (thereby removing him from the rest of the universe at large).
3) We should trade up for at least one more brainphone - having just the one is already most excellent, getting another one would be very useful for the non-bloodpathic members of our crew (so, everybody except Mine).
4) We should ask Mom's Red if he has access to The Red (the pocket dimension), and if he does, if The Red he's got access to is the same as the one we do (is all RedSpace the same RedSpace?). Also, I'm curious where he *put* the dangerous crate that we gave to him - is it in The Red, or is it just shoved into the quantum folded space that he's folded himself into?
Definitely would be good to have a second brain phone, and also to find out whether or not Nil can be trapped in the Red, if that's the option we choose to, or are forced to go with.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the disk is from an alternate timeline in which Mine is already established as a well-known deity. Maybe she pulled back to the red entirely in this one?
This is assuming they didn't reach forwards/backwards in time, which their comments about messaging seems to support.
It'd be dangerous to get in touch with them due to time beings, but perhaps not impossible.
The person on the disc said mine was a nice good so we could assume she went through simmaler trials, I personally think it's from the future. The tradesmen basically hinted that their trades can cross time "rarely"
The person on the disc said mine was a nice good so we could assume she went through simmaler trials, I personally think it's from the future. The tradesmen basically hinted that their trades can cross time "rarely"
If it's from the future, depending on how far into the future it is, knowing who she is might alter the timeline in such a way that she doesn't even exist. For example, if she were descended from someone we know. Maybe we should just drop the subject.
I'm guessing that the Combat disc is from the future, where Mine has already overcome.
Either from or during the process, the things outlined on the disc are put out to the public at large* to fight the man or for protection. (*large, see what I did there?)
+1 on (2) Nil and (3) brain phone, though maybe check with the team on who all would want a brain phone before trading in for as many as are wanted. Maybe they can all have a brain conference call during important events and take potential communications load off of Mine...
We should also ask Caius how he's doing stamina-wise, like how tired he is
He's a lab dude, so that means he definitely has more endurance than a regular dude, but does that also mean he can ask more questions/stay in the info ritual longer, or is the energy drain proportional?
The tradesman said that they sometimes do trades across time, so that means that combat 11 might come from someone we will eventually meet, so the group that made the disc might not exist yet or something like that and us finding out about them would cause time shenanigans.
Yeah, the fact that they went out of their way to mention doing things across time suggests that there are time shenanigans involved in the making of Combat #11.
I mean, I guess this means we're on the right track though, if we end up inspiring people to do that sort of thing!
Perhaps we should start considering a project for Lydia and Fuse to essentially work on making some of our understanding of magic open-source, and find a way to say "hey, we're a nice blood goddess who dislikes abuses of power, so if you'd like to borrow some power, please feel free to do so." Then we might be able to get some people started on making awesome stuff in *our* timeline/dimension.
Let's end the ritual here- Caius should be getting tired about now, though he probably wouldn't say anything. We've gotten the answers we came for, and I don't think it's worth it to pursue contact with people from our future/another timeline for now.
Let's get back to testing out the power up ritual in the snow. Now that Caius is drained, Michelle's probably the best candidate, even with new arms.
Agreed. Final question, then we can add 'explore at least one new bunker' to The List(tm).
They won't have much in terms of loot, but it might lead to something in the long run. Also no going in there alone or underequipped.
So I have an idea. I think the leech is going to, in some way, eat Auras or powers. Try having fuse burn something near it and observe the auras. May only work with psychic tho
I want to ask about vampires. Are we ever likely to encounter one? Would they have any more reaction to drinking Mine's blood than the blood of ordinary human? Maybe that can wait for some other time though.
I forget, can we just outright state our wish to know things, without phrasing them as a question - thus giving the Tradesmen more scope for off the cut answers with no associated charge?
While we can preface our questions with information to help them guess at what we want and cut us off if they want to add in a freebie, it's probably not a great idea to lean too heavily on statements rather than questions. Doing so too often will probably be noticed as a means of subverting the ritual, basically trying to cheat the tradesmen at business, and this would not bode well for our future interactions. We should keep them happy and be good customers when there is pricing we can agree to.
i say we should ask something like this "is Combat 11 from the future" keep all the details vague of when by who and how. that should keep the answer simple since its just a simple fact with no important info
I haven't read all the comments here, so sorry if someone else already said this, but:
Combat #11 is probably from the future.
"While the tradesmen do offer various messaging services over space and even, rarely, time..."
We never actually brought up sending messages through time, which means that pertains to us asking about the disc. Plus, Mine really hasn't been around as a god for very long, and whoever made that not only knows of her, but has had time to experiment, (11 stages, no less,) with magic that draws from her Red.
So they don't want to tell us, because knowledge of the future is a dangerous thing to have.
(The bone armour spell is also probably from the future. I kind of assumed as much at the time, (I guess I do read a decent bit of time-travel scifi...) but since at a glance I didn't see anyone mentioning it as a possible reason, I realized it must not have been as obvious as I though.)
Edit: Just remembered that ctrl+f is a thing, and at least 3 other people had the same idea...
.... Come to think of it, due to the whole blood goddess bit, the impossible's just stuff we don't fully understand how to do yet. Should take a look at some of the cultivator fictions (wuxia/Xiaxia martial path stuff). Who knows, meridians and that ethereal body energy network they belong to might actually exist in a way the blood can effect them.
One more question for the tradesmen. Would killing a negative entity that is from the person's mind (not an external entity like Nil) in a forced sync cause any personality change to the person involved.
I'm referring more specifically to something like Spider Vasquez here, but I'm not sure that Caius knows of it's existence, and we probably don't want to just blab about it, as it's kind of personal.
*thoughts:
1) We should ask if the Tradesmen are willing to educate us about the ritual for using them as messaging service.
2) We should find out if it's safe for the universe as a whole (and Mine as an individual) if we were to trap Nil in The Red somehow (thereby removing him from the rest of the universe at large).
3) We should trade up for at least one more brainphone - having just the one is already most excellent, getting another one would be very useful for the non-bloodpathic members of our crew (so, everybody except Mine).
4) We should ask Mom's Red if he has access to The Red (the pocket dimension), and if he does, if The Red he's got access to is the same as the one we do (is all RedSpace the same RedSpace?). Also, I'm curious where he *put* the dangerous crate that we gave to him - is it in The Red, or is it just shoved into the quantum folded space that he's folded himself into?
Definitely would be good to have a second brain phone, and also to find out whether or not Nil can be trapped in the Red, if that's the option we choose to, or are forced to go with.
This is assuming they didn't reach forwards/backwards in time, which their comments about messaging seems to support.
It'd be dangerous to get in touch with them due to time beings, but perhaps not impossible.
Either from or during the process, the things outlined on the disc are put out to the public at large* to fight the man or for protection. (*large, see what I did there?)
Either that or the worshipers are defendants from some zone fifty folks.
He's a lab dude, so that means he definitely has more endurance than a regular dude, but does that also mean he can ask more questions/stay in the info ritual longer, or is the energy drain proportional?
I mean, I guess this means we're on the right track though, if we end up inspiring people to do that sort of thing!
Perhaps we should start considering a project for Lydia and Fuse to essentially work on making some of our understanding of magic open-source, and find a way to say "hey, we're a nice blood goddess who dislikes abuses of power, so if you'd like to borrow some power, please feel free to do so." Then we might be able to get some people started on making awesome stuff in *our* timeline/dimension.
Let's get back to testing out the power up ritual in the snow. Now that Caius is drained, Michelle's probably the best candidate, even with new arms.
Let's not wear Caius out too much though.
They won't have much in terms of loot, but it might lead to something in the long run. Also no going in there alone or underequipped.
A businessman giving a customer the tools to remove himself as a business man is bad for business.
That said, I could be wrong. We could ask them for some of the factors affecting the cost.
Combat #11 is probably from the future.
"While the tradesmen do offer various messaging services over space and even, rarely, time..."
We never actually brought up sending messages through time, which means that pertains to us asking about the disc. Plus, Mine really hasn't been around as a god for very long, and whoever made that not only knows of her, but has had time to experiment, (11 stages, no less,) with magic that draws from her Red.
So they don't want to tell us, because knowledge of the future is a dangerous thing to have.
(The bone armour spell is also probably from the future. I kind of assumed as much at the time, (I guess I do read a decent bit of time-travel scifi...) but since at a glance I didn't see anyone mentioning it as a possible reason, I realized it must not have been as obvious as I though.)
Edit: Just remembered that ctrl+f is a thing, and at least 3 other people had the same idea...
Nil is nothing and nothing can be everywhere at once. ;)
I'm referring more specifically to something like Spider Vasquez here, but I'm not sure that Caius knows of it's existence, and we probably don't want to just blab about it, as it's kind of personal.