KoL

The War of the Three

@KoL If you want to interrupt the Zeruel/Miyu/Henry/Fran fight early, I'd be a little disappointed, as it's my last opportunity for enjoying the Miyu power fantasy. But if you need to keep things moving, you need to keep things moving.

@The 42nd Gecko

The very reason why I asked first was to avoid this. Until you are done with it, I'll probably wait in the sidelines since there's nothing else for me to do on this battle.

The War of the Three

I edited my post to do the only thing I should be doing now.

When you all are satisfied and ok with moving the battle forward to Helena please let me know. I'll be waiting.

The War of the Three

"Let's go this way. I think that the explosions are coming from there," Diana said as she and the maggot girl retreated from the battle between Khaine and Titanica. The direction to which Diana pointed, was more or less the one from where the battle between Zeruel's Laguna and Henry's group was taking place. In an effort to draw Titanica there, Diana dragged her tail against the dungeon floor and walls, leaving behind a noticeable scent trail that the other lizard would be able to track with ease.

The Shattered World

@Lyla

This picked my curiosity quite a lot. The mix of elements strikes my fancy quite well.

I can try doing a character if this is still accepting.

The War of the Three

@KoL Does Eos know whether or not everyone was going to turn around after they left? Does she have lie-detection/mind reading? If so, please tell, because that will make Miyu's situation so much better.

Eos: Because you're such a chronic traitor, we're installing a kill-switch.
Miyu: I don't remember doing that.
Eos: Hmm.. Ok, you don't. What do you remember?
Miyu: I fought a dude named Henry, and a guy named Zeruel.
Eos: Hmm... Have you seen our nice propaganda pamphlets?

@The 42nd Gecko

Eos has demonstrated near omniscience previously in the RP. I mentioned that she could notice everything on that battlefield more than once. The logical conclusion is that she would notice them turning their backs instead of leaving and keep the fight on.

As for lie detectors and other stuff. Ar you really, really questioning the skills of a godlike hive mind android? I though it was very clear that you can hide secrets from Eos if you are a Machina or are in Machina territory.

Furthermore, I've never said that the memory loss caused by the Dungeon is permanent, you are assuming that. It's meant to help your characters get a new perspective in life, but as soon as you get away from it the memories will start coming back. The only way for it to cause permanent damage was to stay there for eons, having it slowly rot away your being or if someone is nameless NPC levels of weak, which no player is, even Miyu.

Khaine's posts are the only ones that I saw up to now that got a clear picture of how the Dungeon is supposed to work without the GM's needing to go out of their way to explain anything else for the player controlling such a character. I'm frankly amazed how something like that could happen, yet, if the message got through to at least one person, it means that we didn't fail to communicate our point, but that you failed to understand it are doing a string of assumptions instead of simply asking.

The War of the Three

@KoL I wanted to leave and regroup. I was saying "Hey, everybody, let's pretend to retreat, and regroup outside and attack again"

And then you stated "If you leave the factory, the battle is over" and so we tried staying, and that didn't go well.

We wanted to retreat to outside the factory, up until the point you said "retreating loses the battle".

@The 42nd Gecko

Retreating means running away from the battle. There's no way Eos would let them fall back and regroup.

Anytime you ask to retreat you are asking to flee the battle, otherwise, if you just wanna regroup, you can do it through IC actions, not theoretical questions about fake surrender.

What you asked me was to forfeit. The next time you want to regroup, do it with IC actions, not asking if you can leave the battle.

Eh, ya gotta pick your battles Gecko. Unfortunately, this is another one we can't win.

@Lucius Cypher

I'm only pointing facts. Not even a single word of what I said is meant to "crush the opposition". Regardless of that, you know when you are losing a debate when you have to start nitpicking topics that have already been explained more than once.

The GMs behaved badly? Yes we did, because we aren't perfect, we can commit mistakes like any human being. Nevertheless, we acknowledged out errors and are working as much as we can to make up for them. Just try to point me a single time we haven't been transparent and tried to alert the players about bad choices in this RP in the last semester, or so?

I acknowledge that I was wrong in a lot of things, but you all trying to pull a straw man will not result on anything. I'm doing what I can to make things interesting and so is Windel? Why is it that whenever you all have to complain about something you bring back the old issues, instead of leaving them be, like we are? You'll me not see us complaining about your past mistakes, you could as well try to do the same.

The War of the Three

As for Henry crying against Eos, that was after we were told "No, you can't win, go home" in "your character will be permanently deleted if you stay" terms.

@The 42nd Gecko

Let me remember you that this only happened AFTER you all asked for a chance to leave the battle and turned on your backs as soon as Eos offered said chance to retreat. You asked to leave, I allowed you to leave, but then you go out and throw a tantrum because you were told to leave? What's the point?

The War of the Three

<Snipped quote by TheWindel>

Correction:

I've initially pondered the idea of her being a character as a joke. But then you guys came to me and basically said, "Hey, that idea's actually entertaining. Let's invest in it." and I was like "Oh uh... OK, sure." Sooooo yeah. I thought a character like her wouldn't be a thing...

_{Then again we do have a literal Kermit so...}

@Lmpkio

Yeah, but you are still in a real need of learning moderation with all of your characters, not only Titanica. When it gets to the point of we having to interfere to take your characters down at every battle it really gets problematic.

No one is supposed to die everytime, but fair play is fair play and no-sell people's attacks is really irritating.

The War of the Three

@The 42nd Gecko

I'll be sincere. Just as I said before, the way I introduced Juno to the RP was the worst possible. There was a lot of drama going by on that time and I'll not excuse myself from the part of the blame that's due to me. Regardless of that she improved a lot.

That's also the reason why I made a point of never using Iona until this battle, and her sole purpose was to guarantee that Titanica behaves herself. Harley's group are meant to be bosses, if that ever comes to pass, so they are supposed to be defeatable when the time comes for them to take action.

Hohenheim is just an observer, though. She exists to deliver acidic comments about anything and anyone but she's not a threat in battle unless someone goes really out of their way to annoy her.

The power escalation never was our intent, but... certain things led to it and I'd better not poke these issues now.

As for Eos, I was just trying to give the Machina one well deserved victory and had to use way more power than wished to with her (you saw how much I tried to avoid it). But I'll leave their fate to themselves, now. She only used that much power because there was a squad of overly powerful 'no-sell everything' characters on that battle.

The War of the Three

Ok, so where should I begin?

I still fail to understand why any faction would ever bring anything less than their entire army. I mean, it's not like you'll lose any soldiers, they're all immortal.

@thewizardguy

Arbitrary administrative reasons is the most correct answer. It's pretty much like how nearly every tactical game or RPG ever made only allows you use an arbitrarily chosen number of units in every battle. It's just to make things manageable from an OOC POV.

ICwise, the explanation @The 42nd Gecko gave is the one we usually go for. The Nexus is technically infinite in size, there's always more battles to be fought so it's logical that not everyone is fighting on the same battle field at once. Plus, there's always those that are dead/injured, or simply taking a time for whatever reason.

@The 42nd Gecko
I suppose that makes some degree of sense. These leaders sure are lax about this war. Then again, considering the circumstances, I'm not sure anyone really has any chance of winning ever, so hey. Guess it's irrelevant.

@thewizardguy

They aren't lax at all. It's just that War has become commonplace for these people. And, winning is far less important than not being annihilated. Pretty much like say... Warhammer's verse. The war isn't going to go anywhere any time soon (or ever) because no one can or will compromise on peace. They fight for a living and live for fighting. This really should be the RP's atmosphere based on the OP's description.

Asking for peace or for a side to win the war is unrealistic. Even if the PCs compromised with it, almost no one else in the setting would. The unnamed NPCs live based on what I described above and the leaders do their job of trying to keep their people alive and keeping up the fight.

In other words, in the Nexus you fight to avoid a fate worse than death, not to win.

@thewizardguy I mean, it's been established that if the armies ever get uppity and close to winning, they just wipe them out and start over.

Winning is not and never has been the goal. Thus, all kinds of bad leadership is completely excused, because, well, why would they even want to lead well?

@The 42nd Gecko

Actually this is a fallacy. Outside of the delusions of an overgrown lizard who thinks she's the Nexus' living reset button, this has never been confirmed by anyone.

You shouldn't take the NPCs' words by their face value as well, because they have their reasons to not spill all of the truth, or outright lie. Nevertheless, there are various hints spread through the story that anyone can use to reconstruct the truth. And no, Titanica isn't meant to 'reset' the Nexus if any faction gets too strong.

Likewise, based on what I said above, the likelihood of the Nexus' armies amassing is nearly 0. As I said, even if it's the PC's goals, no one else wants, or sees a reason to stop fighting. Unless someone start playing the politician this won't change in the least.

Peace is of no interest to anyone and, why would it be when all of your way of living, history and economy are dependent on warfare?

@The 42nd Gecko
Based on what I've seen the only faction with any reason to do anything is Grafdakka's little 'thing'. Not sure if it can really be called a faction, but at least they have some idea of what they're doing.

@thewizardguy

No, they aren't the only ones but I guess I explained this above as well. It's just that the players are really, really misunderstanding the tone and backstory of the setting.

@KoL It doesn't help that all the main characters just give one or two cryptic hints per battle while the playerbase attritions. If it weren't for Banana* and Lmpkio's* prolific rosters, we'd probably have more GM characters than player characters at this point.

*Thanks, btw, otherwise heaven would literally be just Omega, who hasn't been doing anything but pocket sand. :P

@The 42nd Gecko

I explained this above as well.

There's no fixed or 'right' way to look at the plot. It's up to anyone's interpretation regardless of the NPCs' actual motivations. Nevertheless, there's a lot of hints about the greater scheme of things in the IC already. That said, let me tell you a thing, none of this has anything to do with the actual plot of the RP. The overarching plot is written in the OP, pretty much everything else are sidestories to liven the setting.