Jebus. There's a reason so many quests favor amnesiac protagonists- you get the excuse to explain things to the reader. :/

Okay, these wiki lists of everything these characters did or had happen to them in the plot of games is nice, but not really what I'm looking for. Especially as this is some kind of alternate universe / crossover and much of that may not have happened yet / will not happen / may happen differently.

Could I get the cliff notes here? Just the basic capabilities / abilities of the characters and the basic premise of their settings, and I'll run from there. Because fan wikis are really bad at useful overviews, and really good at exhaustive detail. It's like when a dictionary defines a word with 10 other words one then has to look up (and so do those definitions). It's very exact- but not exactly helpful for a beginner.

I mean, c'mon, it's not necessary to read entire exalted or d&d sourcebooks to enjoy quests based on that material.

>>69652 is right about the shortcomings of fan wikis for things like this where a summary's what's needed. It doesn't help that what Cocona knows will definitely vary based on where from the timeline of the AT2 plot she comes. So even someone like me with some familiarity with that game isn't completely certain about what memories she'd have.

With that said, I do like this quest so far, but preparing the infodump summaries beforehand would've been helpful and means you wouldn't have to take the time for it mid-quest like you'll now have to. For that matter, it might be wise to prepare any future info you'll likely have to give out.

Just a bit of concrit of a quest that, again, I've been liking so far.

>>69652
And this is why Cocona is amnesiac, yep. Honestly, you could get away without reading any of this.

The fate/stay night side is more of a problem; I have no good excuse to make *Ilya* amnesiac, but she's not the protagonist either. Oh well. Cliff notes, you say.. most of this will end up baked into the story, but it's stuff Cocona knows, so:


Cocona side:

- Cocona's birth date is 3764. Not AD; there are hints that, if put on our calendar, it'd be somewhere around 45,764 AD, with Earth having died in some ancient disaster. (Angel Notes, anyone?) That's plus or minus a few thousand years, of course. I'm mentioning this mainly to set a baseline: The civilization she's from may or may not have actual magic, but you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference from their technology.

That's in the "third age", with the ages being measured in terms of near-complete societal disruptions, not counting the events that originally placed humanity on Ar Ciel. (Literally, "The Planet".) Naturally, most of their technology is well and truly ragnarok-proofed, so seven hundred year old devices from the first age are still working.

As far as Cocona is concerned, it might as well be magic.

- Cocona's home (Metafalls) is an enormous artificial construct floating in the air, roughly the size of France. It wasn't really meant to be inhabited, so the actual population is only about five million, and it's not a terribly nice place to live. However, both the sky and the ground are gone; one replaced with a lethal energy barrier, the other with clouds of poison, so they're stuck.

Despite Metafalls not actually being tower-shaped, like the two other such constructs it's generally called a Tower. Capitalization and all.

- Cocona's a Reyvateil, an artificial human designed for vastly higher mana throughput, spellcasting speed and accuracy than any of the natural casters are capable of - by a factor of about a hundred. However, she only learned about this a few weeks ago, and despite a few quick lessons from someone who's very good at it (Jacqli), she doesn't understand magic well yet.

The rest of this section, she doesn't really know... feel free to read it anyway.


There are three types of Reyvateils: Origin (Alpha), Beta and third-generation.

The Alpha types are fully artificial, with bodies *and* minds constructed almost entirely from robotic components, AI modules, etc. There are only three in existence, and they're generally considered goddesses; Metafalls is, in fact, an enormous spell that one of them is continuously maintaining, so there's something to that statement. It should be noted, however, that the actual power source for these spells is.. a white hole for continuous supply, and matter-antimatter annihilation for bursts.

Alpha-type Reyvateils can survive at least as long as their tower is functional, if not longer. The youngest is seven hundred. (So is the oldest, though.)

The Beta types are somewhere in the middle; their minds are created wholesale, and their bodies are made from a form of generic "bio-fluid", which is maintained in human form by a continuously cast spell. All Reyvateil spells are proxied via the computers in their Tower, so beta-types can't leave the area of influence of that Tower; they'd turn into a puddle. Literally.

Beta-type Reyvateils have a variable lifespan, typically about 150 years. It depends on how much magic they use, as their internal power supply is the only part that doesn't regenerate. It can go as low as ~sixty, if one should have to use magic continuously their entire life. Neo-Beta seems to lack that design flaw, but there's only one in existence.

Third-generation Reyvateils (decidedly not Gamma) are.. a mistake. It turned out that humans could breed with Betas, which has lead to a near-100% prevalence of Reyvateil gene markers in the population of Metafalls.

In times of stress, this can cause girls to accidentally activate a Tower connection, and be mis-identified as Reyvateils. As all the repair logic exists in the Tower, it will promptly (well, over a period of a few years) rewrite their bodies and mind to match its image of what a Beta Reyvateil should be, with two differences: First, as they're not made of bio-fluid, they can survive outside the range of the tower; second, they'll lack the auxilliary power supply, as there's no repair program for that.

The tower is perfectly capable of supplying all the required power, but the resulting power surges and general unpleasantness means that the average lifespan of a 3rd generation Reyvateil is 18 years, or about 40 with a regular supply of medicine. On Metafalls, that medicine is provided free of charge to anyone who needs it.

In common for all Reyvateils is a significantly enhanced mind; they're still fundamentally human, but they're humans with a very large number of AI components grafted on, which is what allows them to use magic (or, if you like, program the tower) with literally inhuman speed and precision. It also benefits their mental health, as the AI components can compensate for even a horribly skewed, near-insane human part, and will attempt course corrections over time. As a result, a Reyvateil's *mind* essentially never ages; they'll still be as mentally stable and nimble when they're seven hundred as when they're twelve.


Cocona is a third-generation Reyvateil; she originally became one about two years ago, due to the stress of her parents being killed, but it only became an issue a few weeks ago when she contracted a Reyvateil-specific mental problem (..don't worry, that bit fixed itself quickly). A large number of people probably realized earlier, but her brother tried very hard not to see. Considering her expected lifespan, I can sort of understand that.

- Lastly, Cocona has been involved in a saving-the-world quest for the last.. two months or so, but she can't remember much of that right now. That's the main plot of AT2, and I'm very deliberately hiding its status from you.

- In a fight, Cocona is an agility-type fighter, aiming for weak spots and redirection. She's very good at that, able to cancel out any blow entirely with a bit of luck.

Her personal ability to take damage is small, but her clothes are very effective armor, capable of stiffening up when hit to distribute blows evenly.

Lastly, she's capable of crafting a small fireball to throw at people. "Small" is a bit of a relative statement, here; when used against mundane, not tower-generated matter, it can probably burn through 10-20cm of iron.


F/SN side:

- The Grand Grail is a magical construct designed to, bluntly put, break through existing rules and give the user temporary root access to the universe, at least locally. The purpose of this is, most likely, to create a new form of magic. It was designed by the Einzbern family, several centuries ago, but so far they've failed.

- The Throne of Heroes was made in a previous such attempt (maybe), though not with the Grail (definitely). It collects heroes and antiheroes of all kinds from.. everywhere and everywhen, really, for an unspecified purpose.

- The Grail War involves using the Holy Grail to hack the Throne of Heroes and acquire seven Heroic Spirits, which will then compete in a free-for-all until there's only one left. The defeated spirits are absorbed by the Grail, and the victor may use the collected energy for a relatively free-form wish, which will be interpreted by the Grail. If the victor is an Einzbern, and everything works, then that will involve finally achieving their goal of hacking the universe. So far, they've never won.

Unfortunately, the Grail was corrupted by an evil spirit ("All the world's evil") in a previous war, and now grants only monkey's paw wishes. This is not widely known.

- The grail war starts in eight weeks. Ilya just summoned a mentally damaged girl who appears even younger than she does, instead of Hercules. This is not in the plan.

There's more, of course, but that should cover the basics.

>>69655
Don't worry, I'll be taking your advise into account for future scenes and/or quests. :X

It.. somehow hadn't occurred to me what it'd take to appeal to people who've never seen either story before. I suppose that's why so many quests are entirely original, too; the audience is small enough to begin with.

Alright. So we got a half-breed android from a sufficiently advanced science / sufficiently studied magic setting who's going to be slowly killed by her own power, and we've been accidentally thrust into a contest to the death for a rewrite reality wish on someone else's behalf. I can work with that.

>monkey's paw wishes. This is not widely known
How not widely known? Is either or our protagonists aware of this fact? Kind of changes if we play this strait or not.

>>69656
So, to clarify a few things, the below prior knowledge don't match with your post, Nenesha. Are the changes deliberate?

-It's spelled Metafalss and the sky is perfectly fine (the Blast Line's in Sol Ciel, Nenesha).

-The Grand Grail was created through the efforts of three families: the Einzbern, the Matou, and the Tohsaka. It was created so the Einzbern could regain their Magic, the Materialization of the Soul (a fragment of which gave Cocona, and the rest of the Servants, their current bodies). (The other families were supposed to want for their turn after the Einzbern's, but that agreement has been betrayed.)

-The Throne of Heroes was never created, as far as the magi of Earth knows. The Greater Grail accesses this place to gain information with which it would stuff into containers, the product of which are called Servants.

-Ilya is the container for the Lesser Grail, which collects the souls of the fallen Servants. The other Masters don't know this and are probably dishonorable scum, so Cocona should protect Ilya with all her might.

-The corrupted Grail turns all wishes to "kill everything" rather than monkey paw it.

>>69657
Oh, it's not hard to appeal to people who don't know the source material. The key is to just introduce what's necessary for them to work with as you go along. (Unless of course the whole point of the quest is not knowing what's going on and having to discover it in character).

There's even somewhat of an advantage of having players who are, and who are not, familiar with the source. The familiar perspective has obvious advantages, but the new people can sometimes see things that others might miss, overlook, or fail to consider due to preconceptions. Done right, it makes us better. (Done wrong, and it's a pointless argument about what we actually know to be true).

>>69659
Neither protagonist knows. It's been a while since I played F/SN, but the only person I remember who should know is Gilgamesh, and he's not telling.

>>69660
> Sky's fine
Oops, you're right. That was just the first tower.

> The grand grail was created by multiple families.
Right, again. I'm afraid there might be a few such misses, and although I've got a ready-made excuse if it happens in-story, getting it right is fine too.

> Throne of heroes
Like every complex system, it must have been created at some point. Not necessarily by humanity. The distant past of F/SN is a bit of a black hole.

> Ilya is the container for the Lesser Grail
Never claimed she isn't. :-)

> Cocona should protect Ilya with all her might.
Now, really, that's strictly optional. I'll admit she's disposed in that direction right now, but it's not a fact. :O

Although I forgot to mention: Because servants are overpowered, assaulting a different servant's Master is a viable strategy.

> The corrupted Grail turns all wishes to "kill everything"
That one's deliberate. It monkey paws them.

Hm. Deliberate changes from F/SN:

- Cocona does not have command seals. Ilya hasn't commented on this, as she wasn't expecting any.

- Ilya's still the lesser grail. That wasn't a change, I just forgot to mention it. The short explanation is that she's an energy collector-slash-interface for the main Grail. Ilya's a homunculus herself, with a life expectancy of about eighteen years; she's sixteen now, although she looks about twelve.

Yes, that does sound like she accidentally used herself as a summoning catalyst.

- As earlier mentioned, the corrupted Grail has changed from "kill all life" to "grant monkey's paws wishes, involving killing when at all possible". There's a reason for that.

Anything else that's different, you can probably chalk up to my dusty memories.

>>69664
>>69663
I see. Thank you for your clarifications.

Though...
>Cocona doesn't have Command Seals
Does that mean we should expect the other Servants to have Command Seals? Or what you mean is Ilya doesn't have Command Seals corresponding to Cocona?

>>69665
The latter. Other masters still have command seals, Ilya has none.

>>69664
Oh, so both are characters are androids with an abbreviated life expectancy. At least they'll have something in common once they start talking.

>>69666
So... we're the only contestant at the moment not subject to a brain clamp. Interesting.

If you're feeling reasonably happy now, I'll start on the next snippet, leaving most of what was explained here implied.

Yeah, I'm satisfied. We can move on to character responses and stuff.

I don't suppose there's any way to edit previous posts? No?

>>69714
Correct the original text, delete the post, then post the corrected text.

Or ask one of the mods to change the text--though you should only do so if you can't delete the original post.

>>69715
That works so long as it's the newest post, I imagine it'd be a little problematic for older ones, and I'd rather not bother the mods for every little correction.

I wonder if they'd want to take a patch.

>>69716
What are you trying to fix? If it's small stuff like grammar or spelling errors, it's not really worth the bother, unless they're particularly egregious. ("Alison will try and conserve as much mass as possible".)

If it's big stuff several posts back (you're changing something plot relevant) it's also kind of a problem because then you're sneaking stuff past people who have already read it.

>>69721
Small stuff - setting subject headers for the last couple of posts.

I agree that it's not worth the bother, but it would be if doing so involved talking to a computer instead of a human. That's something for a different thread, though.

So, some speculation and analysis on the Hymmnos from the Soulspace Turn 4 update, basing the below on d6ef5d's excellent work.

>Wee ki ra hymme enne tes ADDR_KOKONA_0x781
(Fairly) (concentrating) (I want this to continue) (sing) (prayer) (to) (address designation: KOKONA_0X781--presumably Cocona, though the use of "K" rather than "C" is odd)
Thus, "I ask [Cocona] [for permission to enter]" would be a simple approximation. There isn't really anything complex here, just a simple server command that asks for authorization to take control of Cocona's Soulspace.

>Was granme erra enter ADDR_0x80
The Hymmnos word "enter" doesn't actually mean "to execute [a Hymn]" but literally "to enter into (something, usually a Reyvateil's Cosmosphere)". Thus, presuming ADDR_0X80 is Cocona's address in Infel Pira, this would be "To protect [Cocona] eternally, I enter [Cocona's mind]."
This line suggests that Nenesha wasn't actually inside Cocona's mind when she appeared, though possibly the line just means establishing a connection between herself and Cocona that would allow Nenesha to do stuff inside Cocona.

>Wee yant wa rre yorra slepir yanje omnis
So, an English approximation of this would be something like: "Because I can't resolve the situation, you will sleep forever."
I would guess that "yorra" refers to the acid--the anger and sadness must come from somewhere, likely multiple people. The thing responsible for freezing the ocean.

>Fou paks ga 0x25 0x7 => exec
The sentiment given by the Emotion Sounds probably is "trepidation," since Nenesha expressed worry that Cocona wouldn't wake up after the Hymn was finished its job. The "=> exec" is pretty simple: it just means to execute the spell. The numbers stuff... I know what "0x" would mean if it just stood by itself or if it had binary connected to it, but I don't get this at all. All I can offer is a guess that it defines the layers the spell affects.

Thus, the Hymmnos is simple enough--stopping the acid from doing more harm to Cocona. The numbers stuff I don't get. However, the only that worries me is that authorization for Nenesha to take control of Cocona's Soulspace was never revoked, nor was the connection severed. I mean, the implication of "This might be the last thing I ever do" indicates that it won't actually be a problem from Nenesha, but possibly someone highly skilled (and severely cheating) could enter a dead person's Soulspace and have a ready access to Cocona.

There doesn't seem to be much of a problem on the AT side (I think. Though I question why Nenesha, a Reyvateil connected to Sol Marta, has access to a Reyvateil connected to Infel Pira--unless Hibernation or something like it happened and rather than Infel jumping over to Sol Marta, Nenesha entered Infel Pira? ...Questions, speculation, baseless--don't worry about it until more information arises). However, I worry that the Caster or otherwise magically proficient enemies on the FSN side would be able to exploit it. Still, we have time to work things out.

>>69761
Good work, I'm sure you'll get it eventually. :P

Hm, a hint, a hint. Something that won't actually help... oh, I know. 0x usually means hexadecimal notation, and random strings aren't.

>excellent work
Crude copy pasting and speculation, you mean. :p

Examining these codes that don't translate though- I can think of a few approaches to try.

>binary translation
If 0x[binary string] is supposed to have a meaning in Hymmnos, than probably the most obvious thing to try would be converting the numbers we've been given to binary and seeing if that than makes any sense (seems to obvious though- I'm not expecting this to work).

(decimal) = (binary)
781 = 1100001101
80 = 1010000
25 = 11001
7 = 111

>hexadecimal
In some coding languages the formant 0x[num] is used to denote a number in hexadecimal. Which we can covert back to base 10, or to binary.

(hexadecimal) = (decimal) = (binary)
0x781 = 1921 = 011110000001
0x80 = 128 = 10000000
0x25 = 37 = 00100101
0x7 = 7 = 0111

The hex notation could also point to something in another table, though I'm not sure what. Most these values don't work with the ASCII table.

>Something that won't actually help
Well, that's a nice thing to have pop up while I was busy converting values. :p

>>69768
Well, it might, but in all honesty I geeked out and picked the numbers from two tables that are completely unrelated to everything else in the quest. As if that OS is even going to be around, in 43000 years.

It's still possible that you could figure something out, but unless you recognise at least one of the numbers on sight, I wouldn't worry about it. There are more productive areas for speculation.

>>/quest/505580
I think the only ways you can fuck up the dice function either results in no roll at all, or giving it the wrong number of sides.

...rolling for our own reaction feels a little weird given how you've set up the player/character separation, though. I mean it's one thing when the character is clearly someone else we have to talk to and reason with- their reaction being unpredictable makes sense. But when we're so closely integrated and trying to roleplay reactions and dialog, it's odd having our responses controlled that way. I mean, I guess we can blame berserker influence, but it's kind of off-putting in a way that rolling bad on an attack or something isn't.

>>69951
You're right, of course.

It was an experiment, and not one I think I'll repeat. It doesn't flow very well, plus I ended up having to discard a fair bit of writing - I was expecting a low roll, and wanted to use the risk to make you consider the other options. I'll think of something better next time.

I'm on a translations kick, so here's my crack at this stuff we skipped over early on
>>/quest/503602

First we clean up the static

>Ma num ga 0x vvi
>wase re x.y.n. anw ciel nnoi /.
>wase re x.y.n. anw ciel dri /.
>gral re x.y.n. anw ciel oct en nei /.
>fandel re x.y.n. anw innna /.
>y.y. zz arhou /.
>jass juel /.
>1x AAs ixi.

>Ma num ga
(discretionary / presence of mind) (nothing / nil) (I want this to stop)

The emotion phrase, and probably the trickiest for me to untangle the meaning of. I wish I could find a resource that gave more than one example and a single sentence explanation on how you're supposed to read these.

"I want nothing more than for this to end"? "I have no choice, but I want this to end"?

>0x vvi / 1x AAs ixi.
These function like brackets or parenthesis, so every sentence between gets the multiplied by the initial emotion

>wase re x.y.n. anw ciel nnoi
(strong / intense) [passive voice] (hurt) [D.O.] (world / sky) one
"World / Sky one is very painful to me", and then repeats for 3. Then the next line is
"World / sky eight and nine is all pain to me".

If I had to guess, this is a damage report, and refers to the layers we observed in the cosmosphere. It's consistent with the two outermost layers being blown off, and damage to the memory layer (3), and the the innermost, discontinuity triggering layer.

>fandel re x.y.n. anw innna
(many) [P.V.] (hurt) [D.O.] (inner world / heart / soulspace)
"Many things are painful to me in my inner world." (At least this one is easy!).

>y.y. zz arhou
(heal) (negation) (hope / wish)
"There is no hope for a cure".

Although I'm not sure how that's meant to combine with the overall emotion. Depending on how you're supposed to correctly interpret that, this could be seen as a forlorn (wanting to end having no hope?) or suicidal (wanting to end because of the lack of hope).

>jass juel
"I seek aid" (although the dictionary thinks that should be "juelicc").

Again, though, how the emotion is read could twist that.

>>70058
>Ma num ga
1st Emotion Sound: intensity of emotion
2nd Emotion Sound: emotion itself
3rd Emotion Sound: subject's feelings toward the emotion
Thus, Ma num ga means something like "I don't care, just stop."

So, "I hurt all over. Make the pain stop!"

>>70058
"juelicc" is a verb, so I got clever, figuring it'd be translatable anyhow.

A less quick explanation of battle abilities:

- First off, movement is basically Newtonian, thus the inertia references. It's also limited by your need to dodge while moving; you can go a lot faster than 1 m/s under ideal conditions. Obviously, boosting agility helps.

- In addition to hitting someone with a baton, you can combine them to form a 'lightsaber' of sorts. This is an unwieldy weapon, so you should only do so when your opponent is off balance. I'll let you know if a chance occurs. It won't be relevant for the Leysritt fight, though; you'd kill her outright by using that.


- "Ignore inertia" is somewhat of a misnomer. You're actually using magic to grab onto the surrounding environment, letting you transfer momentum freely between yourself and the environment. It's active for the entire round you select it; it'd normally be a combo action, but Cocona isn't familiar enough with it for that.

It has a number of benefits.

- You can use it to move yourself around, in flagrant defiance of apparent physics.

- You can block an incoming strike. Normally, if you tried that with Leysritt's polearm, you'd get smashed several meters away; it weighs more than you do. With this power, you can just about ignore the strike.

- It has some (semi-)passive armor value; related.

It would be reasonable to use this to enhance your own strikes, but as it stands Cocona hasn't practiced that; you'd likely tear your own weapons out of your grasp.


- Combinatory actions. Speed/strength are very similar; either way, you enhance your muscles. You can mix and match these, but any more than 10SP will cause HP damage. They do not count against your two action total.


- Control heat - yes, you can also draw away heat, but it's not Cocona's specialty. Freezing the ground around Leysritt is a reasonable idea, though. Otherwise this is fairly standard pyrokinesis, trading control for power.

In light of the current decision (make persona for parallel processing or get scared off by the risks) I'd like to point out that given the a clear choice between action and inaction we pretty rarely choose inaction.

I mean, every decision potentially comes with consequences, but generally we prefer trying things to waiting them out. Unless we can convince ourselves the action is very stupid.

The closest analogue I can think of off hand is when Saulanna presented us with the choice of trying to hack her soul or hack her hero's soul to unlock a new moon power and we all went hell no.

Although Saulanna's inner world situation and Cocona's cosmosphere are somewhat similar, the situation feels different here because even though we risk damaging or changing ourself permanently, that's not the actual goal. ...and the payoff ratio looks better, actually. Strangely, in a lot of ways, Saulanna's situation is more stable and understood by us. The uncertainty here makes us more willing to take risk, and makes the danger feel less defined.

I'm glad to see this quest back, and I'll also say that I've been enjoying your Author Quest. You've managed to create two of the cooler and more interesting text quests I've seen on this boards. With Cocona Quest, you've done more than merely crossover two canons together; you've actually done so in a manner that creates a very interesting and unusual situation for the respective canons. And Author Quest especially has a very unusual mechanism (paragraphs as a life bar and consumable resource) that I don't think I've ever seen used before.

>You kept calling me Sevener after some ancient story
...so Lagotrope existed in the Ar Tonelico-verse, and Cocona-four was a fan of Unnatural Selection. :V

Also: we're now C-4. Our powerset is explosion based. This amuses me.

Expanding on this stuff: (since this is really more questdis material).

>>/quest/537051
>>/quest/537052

As I said before, a lot of quests have to content with parts where things go off the rails to some extent. The fact that this is happening to you doesn't mean there's necessarily anything wrong with your quest. If you haven't read it yet, Kathrine Quest is a fairly short (but good!) quest to take a look at- particularly because after the quest the author sat down in the dis thread and explained how our input changed the quest- which decisions fit with things she planned, and which ones were completely unexpected and changed things.

http://tgchan.org/wiki/Katherine_Quest

Hardly the only quest where we manage to shift thing, but one of the few where the author lays out how it worked. (I'd love to hear what say, Lago would have to say along these lines, when his longer quests finally reach an end).

The other concern I think I'm picking up on here is that your quest doesn't exactly fit the format of all the others? I'd say that's not something you need to worry about. You've got an interesting variant on the traditional format, and it works.

So... let's think about this ethical injunction for a moment.

>"You're not allowed to invent solutions that involve killing".
If this is the extent of the injunction (exact wording, no subclauses or additional specifications or clarifications), then it is a restriction on thought or intent, not directly on actions. Which means unplanned, unintentional, non-premeditated, spur of the moment, and/or unavoidable killings may not be blocked by the injunction.

Now, our problem is that the grail war, as described to us, cannot be survived without killing. And there's the added problem that inaction or non-participation indirectly kills Ilya, which is a potential violation.

One way around this is we are almost certain that Ilya's information is incomplete or inaccurate. There may be workarounds, loopholes or ways to cheat in the contest she is unaware of, or has not thought of, that we can exploit. Especially since we have a month on the other masters. For instance, perhaps we could prevent the other masters from successfully summoning servants in the first place?

(Although, FSN is hardly a new thing. I'm sure people have been thinking about ways to break the system for a while now. Obvious solutions like 'blitzkrieg the opposition' probably already have countermeasures).

Also, to our knowledge, no one like Concona has ever been involved in previous grail wars. This means we have a unique perspective, and potentially, access to means or information no one who has considered the problem prior has. We may have options that were not available to previous combatants or contestants.

The biggest problem with this, though, is an exploit that gets us out alive with ethics intact may invalidate the grail war. So no one gets a wish. Ilya may not exactly welcome such a compromise.

...although since the whole wish system is monkey pawed anyways, this isn't necessarily a deal breaker from our perspective. Especially as that two wishes thing (one for master and servant) still sounds like bullshit to me.

And alternate solution is we may be able to game our injunction with the right perspective. We did not choose to participate in the grail war. Each of the seven masters has, and understand that their lives are forfeit if they fail. In essence, the deaths of 6 of the 7 are predetermined (barring new information or an exploit). Our only agency is to try and influence who the survivor is.

The servants are a little trickier to deal with, as the obvious justification is to see them as merit-less copies, or already dead, and thus not protected by the injunction (something has to be alive, a person, and/or unique in order to be killed). The problem of adopting this mindset, of course, is we would have to think that about ourself.

The simplest and most obvious solution, of course, is to try and rewrite ourself- to bypass, shut down, or invalidate our ethical injunctions. The problem being that we don't really want to have to do that. It's kind of a scary prospect, terrifying when you consider the implications as to what could happen if an individual completely free of an ethical structure were to win the war and gain access to a wish. Unfettered intelligence and ultimate power is a bad combination.

Hmm. I am flatly unwilling to read about a JRPG, or Japanese cartoons. I don't think I can read Ar Tonelico material without reading Ar Tonelico material, or Fate/Stay Night material without reading Fate/Stay Night material. Trying to answer your, "What do you do?" puzzle has therefore developed a fatal exception if I have to read this stuff in order to make a reasonable decision regarding it.

Is there any other source of information available for answering the question of where the heck that robot and rift came from, or is that just going to stay an unsolvable?

I dunno. I've been enjoying puzzling through this quest despite complete ignorance of both source materials. You try to make reasonable decisions based on what you know about the characters and situation.

After all, not having complete information, or understanding all of what's going on is kind of standard for a quest. We're always trying to make the best decisions we can without all the facts.

And the fact remains, even if you knew the source material, you wouldn't know all of what's going on anyways. Spoilers only get you so far when someone is building their own thing on top of or out of the pieces of something else.

>>77358
That's fine, that's normal, I agree that not knowing everything is part of how many games are played.
Where I'm having problems is that I don't even know if defeating the adversary kills us. We're involving two different world systems worth of magic here plus homebrew glue content it seems, so I'm going to raw basics of definitions of magic, eh? So far so good, but I come to a complete stop when facing a foe that is thematically linked to our character which could be caused by their mind or presence in the world in too many different ways to come up with a single answer for how to deal.

--If it's a manifested dream then waking Cocona up could end things with no negatives.
--If we're fighting her internal battle externally waking her up just pauses the battle. Also useful.
--If we're fighting something that her internal safeguards summoned somehow then her being awake or asleep probably doesn't make a difference.
--If the robot and rift are part of the spell mishap that brought her here then defeating them could either help with her issues, or possibly break the spell that brought her here.
--If the robot was somehow summoned by one of the other competitors who went looking in Cocona's world for something that could kill her then whatever ends that threat quickest is best (in that case the rift might be part of the summoning spell that brought/controls the robot).

So, where I'm going with that is that I don't know if things are safer keeping Cocona asleep or awake, or if it would be a bad idea to destroy the robot or if it's necessary to destroy the robot.
I.E. I don't even know what the object of the game is. How fair is it to play a game of chess with someone but eat the little page with the FIDE rules on it so your opponent doesn't even know how to win the game?

Well, to narrow down the options slightly:

We know for the fact that the ABR is a boss from an Ar Tonelico game. A final boss, in fact. (Only requires checking gamefaqs).

That means the odds of it being summoned as the result of enemy action by another master is probably low. It's almost certainly connected to Conona. (Well, unless more than one servant is from Ar Tonelico).

It's a final boss. Meant to be taken down by a party of three high level Reyvatiels. Barring finding a way to turn it off, or banish / dismiss it, killing it in combat is likely not an option with the people we have conscious. Maybe Cocona could take it with Ilya's and Leysritt's support, but they certainly can't take it alone.

Which is why I think waking up Cocona (if we can) is a good idea. As you said, it's possible awakening her will resolve the situation immediately. And if not, it puts us in a much better position to fight or escape.

Truthfully, we're going into completely unknown territory here. I don't know of any Reyvateil that was broken in the specific ways that Cocona's broken. Then again, I'm only really familiar with AT 1 and 2. Point is, that there in >>77363 is pretty much the only sort of info those of us more familiar with the source material has on the current opponent. Other than that, it's mostly unfamiliar territory--the canon-familiar was fumbling through trying to fix things. Canonical interactions with Reyvateil's psyches was more like psychological therapy than software debugging, but then against they weren't as broken as this.

Ok, in the interest of getting this thing moving...
We should present Cocona to the APR, then back away slowly.
I'm guessing as administrator, she gets one of those as a bodygaurd, basically. It's freaking out on us because we're 'unidentified' citizens.

>>77389
Propose it, in the thread. Seriously, it's as good a guess about what to do as any I've got: I still don't have the information to know whether trying to defeat it would be a bad idea.

Hey, I like that idea!

Ah, but to be nice, there's something I should tell you - unless you're deliberately shooting for it, I'm very very unlikely to kill anyone off. It would go against the principles of quantum suicide.

>Ah, but to be nice, there's something I should tell you - unless you're deliberately shooting for it, I'm very very unlikely to kill anyone off. It would go against the principles of quantum suicide.

As a GM myself I know that a sufficiently creative imagination can always make things worse without death even being on the table: It can easily get bad enough for death to be mercy.