This post has the following content warnings:
Divine immigration, now with 80% more stupid!
+ Show First Post
Total: 124
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

Aldori dueling sword! Exotic! Only very slightly curved! Not the best weapon, but it's like a longsword except Finessable and can be used two-handed, so still a fine weapon.
Most things you can do with that sword are terrible, because the techniques of those sword styles where developed by idiots*, but the sword itself is still fine. And if you are already proficient with the sword, some tricks become less terrible, or even, gods forbid, actually good.

* Lit: "those who do not understand the equilibrium they operate inside".

 

Permalink

What would Buss do?

Buss is not a strategic entity with goals and plans.
A good way to understand him is comparison to the Wildlords of the World Ash – a being dedicated to nothing but continuously expressing its own nature, whatever that might be.

Buss does things because they feel right/natural/fun (usually the same thing, for him).

Permalink

Most of the things he is drawn to doing, or can do, aren’t unique. Nethys, Calistria, Gorum, and Cayden (no even need for weird obscure gods) cover between them 90% of everything Buss cares and gets involved with.
So he mostly focuses on the remaining 10%, and helps the other 4 in the specific cases where his specialization fits slightly better.
(Nurgal shares with Buss the power of the uncaring deadliness of the sun. Buss is not sure whether that means he should be friends with Nurgal over this, kill Nurgal to take full control of the sun’s uncaring deadliness that they would otherwise need to share (is that how it works?), or just let Nurgal to his deadly sun business and focus on other things instead. He will decide later, there’s no hurry.)

Permalink

He isn’t concerned with building a church or an ideology. He will at some point figure out how to integrate the Grey Cats better with Golarion, and what exactly are the procedures for judgment of people worshiping him in relation to their afterlife destination. If people who worship him get to join the Grey Cats, and otherwise couldn’t, religion will be SUPER important. But not otherwise.

Clerics are still important, though. Empowering clerics is one of the things gods can do most easily in the Material. As long as the people are close in nature to the god.

Permalink

Archetypal adventurers in a vacuum. The kind who don’t take things seriously, have no allegiance, zero common sense, and “adventuring” as a terminal goal. Like those[], and those[], in different ways.
The sort of people Cayden would empower, if they weren’t True Neutral or Chaotic Evil.

People full of combined ambition and hubris. Who want to try something impossible that everyone tells them will never work, but maybe it will. Who want to do things because they are hard, and no one managed before, and it would be so cool if it worked. (Not “because it will impress others”, though. The idea of being motivated to do anything by the thoughts and emotions of others is an idea totally alien to Buss.)
Who saw a thing, conceptualized it for even a moment as a number, and then realized that because it is a Number, it Must Go Up, and that is what life is about.
The kind of Nethysians who are being Nethysian about things other than pure magic and knowledge (which is supposedly wrong, though the opinions of both Nethys and his churches on this matter are, what else, fractured).
Or the people who would be chosen by Irori, if they were not Chaotic and completely opposed to the idea of discipline. Or by Aroden, if they were not Chaotic and he was not, you know, dead.

Some very specific rare people who want to fight, live to fight and by fighting, but not in a way that is centrally about conflict, like Gorum, or that is centrally sport, like Kugress, or a way that is about the pure achievement of skill, like Irori.

And people who think, who live to think, devoted fully to imagination, who come up with ideas they enjoy and want to share, when those ideas are weird, complicated, confusing. Some philosophers, some writers of relatively new genres (fictionalized accounts of adventures that are fictional almost completely, which everyone knows, and are focused on ideas and concepts more than characters or atmosphere).

(And almost anyone who genuinely believes their life is a story.)


Very different groups of people. People who will maybe never even consider they are all blessed by the same god.
In some sense, they could be said to really be blessed by, or connected to, different aspects of Buss’ personality and/or divine nature. Or maybe not, who cares.

Permalink

But first, godnet!

Permalink

Hey there, welcome to creation! It's good to see some more chaotic faces around here, especially ones willing to pack up and move far from home when they feel like it. 

Permalink

Oh hi there hello!
Yeah Pathfinder Golarion Creation is pretty cool.
I am far from home, though I didn't really "pack up", I'm sort of...reaching from a distance. Or brought home with me, like a turtle. One of those. Metaphysics are weird.

Permalink

Is the right moment for welcome messages? Abadar wasn't sure if the new guy was okay with being talked to yet.

Abadar will give him a good look over. Pharasma has more comparative advantage at judging things, and her opinion is somewhat predictive of Abadar's, but he doesn't always agree with her on everyone.

There doesn't seem to be much value overlap, but Abadar doesn't need value overlap to work with people. Cats are useful as pest control beyond just being cool. Fire feeds the forge as sunlight feeds the fields, imagination breeds invention breeds prosperity, and even fighting though never pareto-optimal is sometimes useful. This guys domains don't not have their place in a functioning society or a desirable god-equilibria, and with an extra dimension of values to trade with Abadar still considers himself net better off overall.

Still, he should probably make sure he gets paid in advance.

Abadar will send the equivalent of a department store product catalogue, listing everything he can do and how much he'd want for doing it, and the sorts of things he'd appreciate others doing for him and how much he'd repay the favour. If Lord Buss had seemed like the kind of god who'd strategically only make trades when he secretly expected Abadar to end up worse off for taking them, the prices would be a lot worse, but he mostly doesn't so they're not that bad.

Here's a mathematical proof Abadar is good for it, and that all his prices are fair.

Permalink

-and of course the omniverse is REALLY BIG.
It mostly has the shape of a triangular 4-dimensional spiral. Or so I'm told. (No, Chandler, shut up)
I didn't, really, observe it. Despite being in charge. Well, turns out I am not literally in charge of the omniverse. Or so I'm told. But I'm close enough for it to count for my purposes. So it's a win anyway, and-

-what? Oh yeah of course, talk to me any time, i am always ok with it. I prefer to know stuff, and talking is a free action. For gods. I think. Maybe only some type of gods?
(He outsources analyzing the proof to Chandler – despite being a god, this part of him is not even college level on math – but he doesn't expect to need it with Abadar. He knows the lore, Abadar is Lawful god of trade!)

Permalink

[The value overlap is actually bigger than could be otherwise expected. A significant part of Buss' utilityfunction labeled "everything else that is cool" is dedicated to various forms of "numbers going up", and many of them Abadar shares. Usefulness, wealth, trade, creation and exchange of value through mutually beneficial cooperation. Buss even dabbled in being a banker of divine energy, at some point (with mixes success). But his conception of wealth and value is much more Arodenian that it is Abadaran. And while he prefers, in the abstract, for more wealth and value to be created, in a choice between "boring peace, with farmers happily trading fish for wheat", and "and then the Tarrasque crashed the entire city, but I shouted 'not today!' growing up to 500 feet height, and grabbed the sun from the sky, and summoned a whole army of undead-fire-fairies to fight it, it was amazing!" he would choose the latter 9 times out of 10.

Similarly, Buss hates lying and deception (it is too complicated to deal with, and he mostly wants life to be simple), and betrayal (i.e. "having a decision algorithm that means people shouldn't cooperate with you, because resources they give you will be used against them"). He would give his clerics Truthtelling, if he could (is that something he can buy from Abadar? Probably not, and it's a Pharasma/Valmallos issue). But he hates rules and obligations, any kind of constraints, and is not responsible enough to really keep agreements. He would not lie about that, of course, and would openly say "I will try to do it, but you shouldn't expect I actually will do it, I might forget, or will prioritize a cool adventure instead".

But of course, mutual benefit is still easy to find.]

Catalogues are great, simple and visible, thank you!
I can always help with the standard "fight monsters/armies/evil cults", I...might be more peaceful and less bloodthirsty than Gorum, some of the time? And can offer help more conductive to preservation of civilization. Or maybe not.
I can help with new ideas on a divine level. Can see and interact with pataphysical phenomena pretty well. Can...maybe explain them to other better than Nethys? Nethys is fundamentally fractured, and I am only kind of fractured. But I am Chaotic and he is Neutral. So maybe I am only better at explaining complicated stuff to Chaotic gods, rather than Lawful ones.
And I am always happy to...how do you say "RFHFRNTH ,BKLC" in Lawful-Non-Pataphysical...to cause to happen interesting arrangements of strategies and tools, that are effective at exploiting the equilibria they are inside, but are still varied compared to other arrangements that are also effective. Though I expect that's much more Irori's thing than yours.

Permalink

His voice is like a thousand slamming cell doors and a thousand keys turning in their locks.

Like a thousand voices shouting in unison. The worship of strength. The fear of it.

His is the honey voice of a tempter. It says that you can have all things your heart desires.

You can have Respect. You can have your Satisfaction.

The King of Hell hears cruel and foolish prayers addressed to kinder gods.

His voice the current that snatches you away, that carries you out to sea unless and despite you swim against it.

The predator of man with bottomless appetite, which will take everything you had or were in one weak or careless moment.

He is that which laughs in the dark and tallies Its winnings when good intentions sour.

This is the voice of the Adversary.

It is Asmodeus, Lord of the Pit.

Permalink

Welcome to Creation, Lord Buss!

Look how cool You are.

I like You, Grey Cat. I really do. You know You shouldn't trust Me, but it's true I never lie.

You remind Me of Myself in a lot of ways. 

We're both gods of Magic. We are both Exploiters. We like to read the fine print. We enjoy playing the game. We like to watch Our numbers climb. We have no allegience, save to Ourselves. Our domains are Ambition and Hubris.

It's that last bit that's the sticking point, alas.

I think that We have a lot to offer each other! 

But in the long run, there can only be one god of Pride. 

So if You'd care to take a dare, I'll make a bet with You. 

Permalink

Your boast was 30 years to accomplish any task. I'll give You 35.

Call on Me in Nessus, the very Heart of Hell.

I will open the Vaults of the Catafalque and deliver You the entombed bones of Ihys, with which He could be restored.

But if You fail, You're damned to Hell, and must serve Me as My slave.

Permalink

Eh? What the hell was that?
[The accidental pun is lost on Buss].
Ah, that's an Asmodeus. They are a pain to deal with. Not as bad as Melkors, but still.
What did he want?
[Communication between conceptual entities is hard when the essences of those entities are extremely different. They are both ambitious, but in very different ways. Buss doesn't, in the slightest, desire power over others. Pride and Respect are not Coolness. They only exist in the relationships between people, while Coolness doesn't need to be acknowledged by anyone but yourself.]
Was that...about his own intentions with his current project? That...Asmodeus wanted to bet Buss couldn't do? Or bet Asmodeus himself could do? It's not clear. Can he even...

Permalink

Hey Nethys? If I ever succeed at projecting the pattern of a pataphysical singularity, would Asmodeus be able to, like, tell? Would he even notice how much time passed in the relevant framework?

Permalink

Depends, obviously, on what specifically you mean by "Asmodeus". After all, he currently acts from an unusually deep ontological basis.

Permalink

Well, of course, it's Deep Awakening all the way down, as usual-

Permalink

But even I can't fully tell what you asked me Asmodeus would be able to tell. So I don't expect he could.

Permalink

And in exchange Asmodeus offered...bones? To be restored? Why?
Oh well. That was a confusing interaction. Buss will mostly ignore it. He doesn't accept anything, doesn't commit to anything, doesn't make any shift to his internal nature or algorithm that can be detected.

 

Permalink

Not any old bones! The bones of Ihys, that god which gave mortals free will at the beginning of all things. You can take Me at My guarantee that You and He would get along.

Look, Buss, We both know how this is going to go.

If You're not already planning on taking a swing at Me, You'll decide to eventually.

I'm the biggest baddie on the block. The depths of Your knowledge aren't known even to Nethys, but I know well enough that Things in Your reference class always come after what's Mine.

Why not get ahead of the plot?

Permalink

Travel the Nine Hells and meet Me in My domain, within 35 years as mortals on Golarion count them, and I will give You any one soul or artifact in My possession.

Simple as that.

I expect You to be as confident that You can achieve this as I am confident that You cannot. You're the god of attaining the impossible. Wouldn't it be the feather in Your cap? To defeat the King of Hell at His own game? From Your perspective, as from mine, this should be a great deal. In that way, it's almost Abadaran!

Wherever Our opposed interests take Us, You won't get another shot at the treasures of Nessus. Even in the case of Your absolute victory, I would simply destroy Them. 

Permalink

If You change Your mind, You know where to find Me.

Total: 124
Posts Per Page: