u/TechnicalDoughnut8

So I am at arc 15, and I am really interested in what Thea is doing or trying to do: the whole creating a custom-made world where you can basically play god.

Where exactly do you even find the items that have those words in them; Odis says that the word Thea was stuck on was made by a freaking brownie; she is an apprentice with just a few years under her belt, and she already has multiple items with entire words in them and a lesser god-level other (the orthoniologist).

How do you make or find these words? Can someone just create them? How? Where do you find these items? Do you just go find them at markets? Would you be able to buy this stuff at, say, Gold Garden, the marketplace made by Ray, or just some fae market, etc.?

I was genuinely disappointed when Johnny Boy gave him a gun-assisted lobotomy.

He was an asshole and a rat bastard, but I really liked him every time he appeared, and I really wanted to see what else he would scheme.

So assuming John didn't kill him and that karma managed to get Ted out some other way, what do you think Alexander would have done? Would he have won the BHI back? How do you think he would have done it, etc.?

Beyond that, did you like him or hate him, and why?

So I read Pact, and I am halfway through Pale, and I am still not clear about what the distinction between 'innocence' and 'innocents' is and how they are protected.

I get that Others bound to the seal instinctively know to steer clear of innocents, and both others and practitioners get karmic backlash for fucking with innocents, which scales with the number of people made aware of the supernatural because of them.

But there are several loopholes stated; goblins go after the low-karma people (who aren't necessarily bad people) and fuck with people down on their luck until they have little connection or recourse and no one to listen to them.

Once they slip through the cracks or are given ample warnings but don't heed them even if they aren't clear (like what Gerhild did to Maggy's hometown), they seem to have carte blanche.

Several people say that if you do clean up after (Alexander, Bluntmunch, etc.) so that no one notices, you can basically murder a bunch of campers in the woods and not suffer for it, so long as there are no witnesses.

Mathew said that if the beautiful man used his prettiness and then went and seduced an obscure royalty, he could get married, live in quiet luxury for the rest of his life, but if he tried to advertise himself and go into innocent politics, he would basically be hampered at every turn, which is corroborated by Wildbow's WOG.

Is the protection granted to innocence triggered the second you use practice or other power on them, or is it punishment for making the universe bend over backwards to smooth over your indiscretion? In short, it's protecting innocence as a whole as opposed to innocents.

So what exactly is the line? What form does karmic backlash take, and when is it triggered?

So this is something that is bugging because in pact and pale we get two extremes.

I pact Blake is half a person, a vestige, and a portion of his power is spent sustaining Rose, and he has seven generations of bad karma, which hamper him at every turn, including, I assume, the cost of even basic practices.

In pale, the girls are the opposite; there are three of them, and because they awakened at three, they are a lot stronger than the sum of their parts. They have access to power sources, like the hot lead, glamour, and sanguine stone, and they have a portion of the sum total of the kennet's other power on tap.

For the trio it's never clear to me when they are using their own power or when they are tapping the kennet of others, but I never recall seeing winded like Blake is because he tapped too much into himself.

The one clear example is in the doll-making class when they power things with the hot girl totemist guy, and he gets knocked out while the girls are not even winded, but it's not clear if it's because they are three and they are strong as such or because they are taping Kennet and the guy couldn't keep up.

So imagine some guy awakened because he found a copy of essentials in an abandoned house that belonged to a dead practitioner; he has no family, no power source, etc.

How much self/soul/spirit can they tap on before getting winded or just collapsing?

Beyond that, does the practitioner need to power them using themselves or a power source, or can they get the spirits to make a basic fire rune start a fire or make a basic diagram with sound, air, and a fire rune to approximate an explosion, etc., or tap the ruins or spirit world for power?

Basically, what the title says, could someone either make an item or have a ritual that would allow you to have Tattletale's pericognition.

What would it look like in the pactverse? What would you be able to discern? What would be its scale and scope (feed you motivation or intent; tell you what another practitioner is doing based on the ambient spirits, either the detail of the practice if you know it or the effect if not)?

How would it work? I seem to recall that there are spirits of knowledge, and Nina can do stuff like guessing Ray's password by aggregating a lot of data on him, which is very tattletale-like.

Would it be an item or the type of ritual that Nicolette did where you do it once and it gives you a permanent advantage with an equally permanent disadvantage (make it very gluttonous power-wise, being capable of giving false positives like the original power)?

So imagine a practitioner that is similar to Maggie; they awakened themselves using material they found (say, they found a copy of Essentials in some occult shop that belonged to some dead practitioner).

They know the essentials and, through the appendix, have the means to get more basic practice books (I seem to recall that Wildbow said authors reference other books and the means to buy them as a marketing method and supplementary revenue).

What can this practitioner do to gather or get a power source that isn't bleeding themself dry, Blake-style?

The only thing I can think of is grinding, going around finding wisps, echoes, and spirits, bottling them and using that or making some shrine to let them grow in power for later use, but that feels really weak.

Is there anything in campaigns or wog, or just stuff that seems plausible we can extrapolate from canon.

So I am halfway through Pale on Arc 13, and I love it. I love the interaction of the girls, and a great part of the narrative is them defining their niche, seeing in what direction they develop.

Lucy is the clearest; she is the offensive and head-on fighter. Verona is the bag of tricks, the one who takes to practice the best. And Avery has her path, the ability to move around, call for backup, and, thanks to her personality, keep the relationship with other practitioners and allies alive and stop it from drifting.

I was curious, though, if you guys could think of a niche that would be nice to see or just some form of practice that you would have loved to see more of; if you could add a fourth practitioner (go with it, I know that it ruins the three symbolism, which is powerful on its own).

For my part, I would have wanted to see the hypothetical 4th boy or girl specialise in summoning, either calling forth existing others or making them themselves, Ala Charles.

I could see this 4th guy taking the route of trying to see if Charles has kept any books or practice stuff, like Trio asked about at the beginning, and that basically developing into some form of informal apprenticeship, which then gets more developed in the Bhi arc.

So in effect their job would be to both give the quartet more options and be a force multiplier by giving them more force to deploy. I know that in later arcs Verona dabbles in summoning and other creation, but I would love to see more fleshed-out stuff.

Beyond that, I would love to see more evangelism, but obviously that would be a lot more difficult as it deals with the highest power above even gods and primaevals, and I don't even know if BHI offers classes on that.

What about you guys? What would your hypothetical fourth be? What would their personality be? Would they be a boy or a girl? What sort of practice would they take up?

So, good karma basically means that the practitioner who has it has extra good luck or fortune; stuff works out their way. Whatever can plausibly (or unplausibly) resolve in their favor does; they dance between the raindrops while everyone around them gets pelted with and soaked.

But can this be directed? Can a practitioner who specializes in karma, like a law or luck magus, expand his karma reserves for specific stuff; stumble on a winning lottery ticket, have the rich widow at the bar like their vibe and find all their jokes funny, or somehow find they have a long-lost granduncle who left them with a fortune?

The hungry choir winners win out fortunes in the form of lawsuit payouts, etc., with the money keeping up so long as they spend it on food (I take this as them getting good karma as part of winning the ritual).

Isadora's apprentices (the ones she doesn't snack on) go on to have very successful lives, things going their way, and it is confirmed Isadora gives them good karma.

Can a practitioner who stocks up on good karma decide, "I am giving up half my good karma reserves so the 10 million lottery numbers end up being the numbers that I am currently filling up"?

Basically, I have been scratching my head about how the more creative magic items get made, the ones with convoluted effects.

For simple, straightforward stuff (June Hatchet), you find an appropriate spirit, elemental, or echo; bind it; shove in the item; and voilà, you've got your hypothermia axe that makes people feel depressed or a gun that shoots fire pellets, so long as you have juice left.

But what about the stuff that doesn't have a straightforward spirit associated with it, like an element, etc.?

Think Verona's pen or Lucy's sword ring.

If a fledgling practitioner wanted to make, say, a pair of sunglasses that shows emotion as an overlay of kaleidoscopic colours that they understand intuitively and allows them to amplify or neuter said emotions, provided they have power, either from the self or some exterior power source.

how would they do it?

What sort of practice specialises in making magic items?

Basically assume we have a practitioner who just awakened; they don't have a family or some patron - Other or human -whom they can fall back on. Maybe they stumbled on some artifact or were interested in the occult and got their hands on a stray copy of Essentials.

They have few resources and little knowledge, at most a few books that explain the elementary stuff (runes, spirits, basic others, etc.); in short, think something like Maggie.

What is the stuff that this person can do literally within the first days and weeks of their awakening, stuff that any practitioner can do with relative ease, given that they don't have any cred with the spirit or power source.

What can they do to accumulate power, bootstrap themselves, or get in contact with their practitioner community, and what do the timelines look like?

Can they communicate with minor spirits (who suffuse everything) to accomplish minor effects they can exploit (what are they)?

Can they start setting up routines and rituals (what are they, to what end, and how long before they start seeing some minor effects)? What are the weakest, safest others they can bind to get more information/power, etc. (like Maggie binding goblins to get info out of them)? Can they summon others or find them ( goblins, fairys, not faeries, etc.)?

As to the sight, how can they exploit it? What would it allow them to see? Blake uses the Sight to do some very cool investigative work. Can a beginner practitioner use their sight to find other practitioners (do practitioners have some tell that only sight reveals)? Can they see the breath depth and nature of connection, and how can that be leveraged? Can they look for places with significance, places where the spirits congregate, to find where other practitioners might be or find where others might be found and bound (ghosts and vestiges in cemeteries, etc.)?

The sight seems like the most versatile tool in a young practitioner's arsenal, with some very cool potential for investigation work. Beyond that, what are the practices that lend themselves well to beginners (dealing with spirits, summoning, etc.)?

So I am at null arc in Pact, and I am really scratching my head about who this guy is. At first, in the vision/nightmare that Conquest forced Blake to live through, at first I thought he sexually assaulted Blake.

Even though there are other traumas that would make a homeless guy be averse to touching, it seemed like the obvious go-to point between Blake turning down a threesome, hating being touched, and because it was not elaborated upon - with Wildbow being a cut-to-Black sort of author when it comes to sexual scenes - Amy Wretching Victoria is another example I can think of.

But then other thoughts occurred to me: Carl being some sort of gang/cult leader or recruiter and getting Blake into something sketchy that would get him killed, with Alexis getting him out of it.

Is it elaborated on later, or is there some agreed-upon fan speculation to explain who Carl / the man is, his relation to Blake, what he did, and how Alexis got Blake out? I don't really mind spoilers for this.

So in pact/pale magic systems, the established fact is that the best, or rather only, way to gather or get more power is through repetition, doing things over and over again until they become convention or have a deep cultural significance (law of hospitality, rule of three).

We see how powerful practitioners get in Canada, which isn't that old relatively speaking, seeing as the modern practitioner traditions seem to have been established post-settlement, but how about Europe? How about, say, Greece, where the laws of hospitality were so important that Zeus is its patron god (xenia)?

What about civilisation or places that are even older, with histories that span as far back as civilisation goes (China, Iran, Egypt, etc.), where you would have families that can trace lineage back near millennia and would have had hundreds of years to establish patterns, rituals, pass down knowledge, etc.

Are there canon examples/feats, etc.?

So I am reading Pact and just reached arc 8. I just learned that Rose botched her awakening ritual in order to keep her ability to lie.

I assume that she didn't actually do this on purpose or at least meticulously plan it so much as just follow the instructions left by Rose Sr, because at that point Rose Jr. wouldn't have the expertise to do something like that with confidence, what with her being the more risk-averse of the duo.

It puts everything she said and did in a more suspicious light. What did she actually lie about? Because there are a few things already and a lot of instances where she has been doing some very manipulative shit, but I don't see where she outright lied at this point.

Also if she isn't awakened how come she can actually use the thorburn voice and summon boogeymans and Others etc ?

So I just started reading Pact; I reached arc 4 (I don't mind spoilers).

Basically I am trying to understand what the point of being a diabolist is and what a competent or at least semi-decent diabolist can do.

Because from what I have seen until now, and from what I read of WOG, becoming a diabolist just seems like a bad idea all around, yet they are still there and a entire family is based around the practice for at least seven generations.

Even Pauz, a mote, a forgotten fragment of a bound demon, not worth even being seen as a pawn, the supposed lowest of the low on the demon hierarchy, is still smart enough to fuck over Blake immediately by rule-lawyering into nearly being killed the literal second after it was bound.

They are basically one and all relentless, immortal, unkillable, chaotic evil fuckers, with completely alien mindsets, goals, means of accomplishing those goals, and perceptions of time and causality.

So what could a decent diabolist accomplish at a minimum, someone that has both the resources and reputation that are similar to the Thornburns'?

Could they summon and bind motes permanently in a way to make use of them as they wish, either as batteries or disposable subordinates?

Can the bad karma be managed? Could you bind others and pass down the bad karma the same way bad karma is passed along family or the wog verity, passing down bad karma while funneling good karma upwards?

In short, what is the baseline that a competent, well-prepared diabolist could accomplish if not completely safely, at least reliably with an acceptable risk relative to

Basically something that has been bothering me about the Holy Kingdom arc is why was a ragtag team of paladins the only people going around trying to secure assistance?

What I mean is that the holy kingdom, along with every human nation in the region minus the theocracy, was established more or less 2 centuries ago; the holy kingdom should have embassies in every single one of them and vice versa, along with proper channels to secure high-level audiences with monarchs, rulers and powerful nobles, let alone merchants and business magnates and tycoons.

If the north fell fast enough that all chains of command were severed and no unified plea could be made, then the south should have been panicking because they would have felt the aftershock of that fall, of a significant portion of the north being enslaved or murdered, and basically drumming up support everywhere they could.

But what we get are dim-witted Remedios and somewhat less dim-witted Gustav, cold-calling minor nobles in re-estates to beg for help, and every time they are asked what is in it for them (Ainz asks this), the best they can muster is a vague IOU, not 'we will give you major shares in merchants' guilds or mining and fishing and lumber-cutting rights for decades', etc., because it seems that they don't have the authority to actually make any promises.

So here is a hypothetical. Say a level 100 player lands in the new world. He doesn't come with a guild, but let's say that he is powerful enough that killing him, let alone capturing him, would put a noticeable dent in Nazarick's finite, if expansive, resources (the things from Yggdrasil that they can't replace) and that they would need to risk several guardians, if not outright have to spend the money to resurrect them several times.

But on the other hand, they are useful enough, or their build fills a niche that Nazarick lacks, so bringing them onboard would be a genuine addition.

What this hypothetical build/player would look like doesn't matter really, but I can come up with several ideas. A specialized angel/divine caster that can cast resurrection spells with no penalties or other high-tier divine spells that at the moment only Pestonya can cast and only at mid-tier levels, with Ainz having to resort to items that grant subpar results

Maybe the translation into the new world gave them a gimmick similar to Ainz's undead creation, so they can summon high-tier angels permanently (maybe there is a metamagic/spell in Yggdrasil like D&D's Permanency, which in-game made things last for 24 hours but in the new world makes things permanent). Maybe they have a staff/summoning focus made from a caloric stone that lets them bypass the gold/mana/XP cost of spells several times a day as a special ability, so in the new world they can cast a wish without level loss or summon the more powerful summons easily and permanently, or otherwise make use of the more powerful spells and abilities with little to no cost, or they just have a shitload of Yggdrassil gold and mercenary contracts so they can summon an army of high-tier mercenary NPCs.

The sky is the limit; I am sure you can think of plausible options. The point is they are too powerful to defeat without permanent losses in the open field; we assume they are as competent a player as Ainz and as familiar with PK tactics as him. They have the standard anti-divination measures, so even finding them, unless they want to be found, is difficult, let alone engaging them.

They are weak enough to actually threaten the tomb of Nazarick, nearly impossible to capture or contain for the long term, and useful enough that they can bring in serious contributions to Nazarick.

Would Ainz actually consider cooperating or even recruiting this player, not just acting friendly so he can pump them for info to kill them later? If yes, why do you think so? If no, can you justify what would be his reasoning knowing that he isn't likely to gain more than what he stands to lose? If it's a maybe, at what point/novel would Ainz's decision differ? Volume 1 Ainz is different from Volume 15. The later volume Ainz is more ruthless and more comfortable not taking peace as the default option, but even in Volume 15 Ainz still thinks of the villages on the 6th floor as a good idea to show players to prove that Nazarick can coexist in the new world, so cooperation with non guild players is still a serious option.