[Discussion] You Are a Rock

[The Walrein]

Hold on, our enemies are named the "Prism Knights", as in something that produces every color of the rainbow. And what's the one type that a Pokemon with every type combined is weak to? That's right, rock type. Coincidence? Hmm... HMMMMMMM...

 

[Negrek]

Oh shit, they have triple wekness for rock-type?! What fools we've been!

namo must be so disappointed that walrein solved the game

 

[Namohysip]

Very interesting theory.

 

[Namohysip]

@Mirage I should probably specify that the footprint does NOT match Weavile's. It's a fourth Pokemon, and doesn't seem to match any you've met so far.

 

[Mirage]

Oh sweet, we do have a new character, nice! Human shaped with prominent claws huh... As Negrek mentioned, lots of potential candidates for that one. Watch it be an Igglybuff on dinosaur stilts or something

 

[Negrek]

Well! I begin to get an inkling of why Druddigon and company don't like us, lol

Interesting that Weavile seems much more emotive now. I wonder whether that was just a facade, or whether something about being "KO'd" broke whatever had a hold over him earlier. (Was possessing him, maybe?)

I think how I'm leaning here is the "restrain" option--try to get his bag away from him, maybe Lenora can capture him if she's got another pokéball, and then maybe we can have someone who knows what they're doing help question him? (Like maybe an E4 member could get involved here?) But there's admittedly a lot that could go wrong there, from him just managing to escape/getting rescued to us getting treated as suspiciously as he is/not allowed in on whatever is learned from him.

I'm not interested in going the full evil murder option here (and I'm guessing you aren't, either), but I admit I am a little tempted by "claim." It's... not necessarily evil? If it's something like we're actually Necrozma and our z-crystals have gotten dispersed among several pokémon "fragments" like weavile and we need to resorb them to do whatever, then maybe that would be the way to go here. But it's hard for that option not to feel at least a bit evil with how Weavile clearly wants nothing to do with us, lol, and idk how Lenora's going to react to seeing... whatever precisely that ends up being.

One way or another, maybe a telepathic "Tell me what happened to Millie and I'll let you live," or something along those lines?

 

[Mirage]

Interesting that Weavile seems much more emotive now. I wonder whether that was just a facade, or whether something about being "KO'd" broke whatever had a hold over him earlier. (Was possessing him, maybe?)

Yeah, I've been wondering about that too since the blank expressions they had earlier, and that mysterious 4th Pokemon to also point signs to a mind controller fleeing. Something definitely seems off with how they act and coordinate together.

Then again, if mind control or possession was involved, I do wonder if Weavile'd be a bit more disorientated or confused after we struck our powerful blow... could have been as simple as him underestimating us and not thinking his invincibility spell could be broken, and now he's panicking since death is a real possibility. If Team Prism thinks we can't kill them, that might work in our favor if we have to fight Druddigon and Marshstomp at some point...

I'm not interested in going the full evil murder option here (and I'm guessing you aren't, either)

You guess correctly, I'm generally not into genocide routes on the first attempt and it would close off some interesting story possibilities if we just kill him right here. I'm personally split 50/50 between the interrogating him and the claim options. Restraining and interrogating him might be our best shot at learning more about the Prism Knights - they claim to need to eliminate us, but is that actually their true goal? What is their connection with the other knights? How are they borderline invincible to everyone but Cobble? Where do they recognize us from, before we got transformed?

Using a Pokeball to contain him is a clever idea, he probably won't be able to stop it now in his weakened state - though the mechanics of a human capturing a sentient PMD Pokemon might get a bit wild. I wonder if he'd be able to backstab us as soon as he comes out, or if the Pokeball tiself can place restrictions on what we can do if Lenora manages to catch him?

But yeah, I'm also definitely quite intrigued about what the claim option is for too! It sounds so... dominant, for lack of a better word. That's a really cool idea with Necrozma, where Weavile would "die", but only in the sense that it would really be a part of ourselves re-merging. Alternatively, if Weavile really was being mind controlled, I wonder if "claim" allows us to sort of impose our own will on Weavile and "kill" him by overwriting his will with our own? That could be pretty scary, especially if that's what Weavile's been under up to now. We could be facing an opponent with the same ability as us...

I'm personally very undecided on how to proceed here, but if you're leaning towards interrogating Weavile, I'm totally onboard with that. Threatening Weavile until we learn about what happened to Millie would be a solid start, and then I'll add in a Telepathy with perhaps a few of those questions from above and see how Weavile responds.

And after all, if "Claim" is some kind of powerful ability that's lying latent within us, I have a feeling this won't be the last time it comes up, and it may very well not be our only chance to activate it either. But we probably will only get one chance to talk to Weavile like this...

Going to be very on the next chapter!

 

[Negrek]

Yeah, I've been wondering about that too since the blank expressions they had earlier, and that mysterious 4th Pokemon to also point signs to a mind controller fleeing. Something definitely seems off with how they act and coordinate together.

Ooh, I hadn't even considered the fourth pokémon being some kind of controller. But I agree, there definitely seems to be some kind of mind control thing going on, or perhaps a hive mind or something like shadowfication that alters a pokémon's emotions.

Alternatively, if Weavile really was being mind controlled, I wonder if "claim" allows us to sort of impose our own will on Weavile and "kill" him by overwriting his will with our own? That could be pretty scary, especially if that's what Weavile's been under up to now. We could be facing an opponent with the same ability as us...

Yeah, I was kind of wondering this as well... whether "Claiming" a pokémon might let us mind-control them, or actively possess them, or something. It would be wild if the idea was for us to build up our own group of mind-controlled pokémon to use. Surprise villain protagonist.

Definitely agree that it seems likely we'll have more "claim" chances. Super intriguing! Fingers crossed this scene goes well.

 

[Mirage]

TIL that "enervate" is a word, first time seeing it! "To reduce the mental or moral vigor of, to lessen the vitality or strength of". As is usual, I'm sure I'm about to see it all over the place in the next few days!

For the actual ability, it looks to be quite a useful one! pays for its own energy cost if it hits, greatly reduces enemy mobility, and halves the energy cost of the next attack. Good offensive and defensive uses, this'll surely get some showtime in our future encounters!

She's stable. Tough one, that human.

100% my thoughts too, Cobble. She's been a real MVP!

------------------------------------

As for what to do with Weavile... That's the question of the hour here. It looks like we have a similar set of options to our last round - we can let Weavile go, try to interrogate him further, murder him, or... claim. I don't feel like the straight up murder option has gotten any more appealing since last time. We could continue to try to interrogate him, but it's getting a little dicey here. It'll be hard to transport him anywhere with both us and Lenora (and him too honestly) so heavily weakened, and the longer we keep him, the greater the odds of him either escaping on his own or trying to pull off some kind of sneak attack. Plus, if the police find us like this, they might straight up force us to release him, even if Lenora can use her influence to stop them from asking too many questions.

I feel like the play might be to either directly release him, or to use claim on him at this point. If we release him ourselves, I don't buy for a second that he'll actually tell them we're dead and let us go - he doesn't seem like a very trustworthy figure, and there's absolutely no benefit or reason for him to do that, especially as he does seem to legitimately believe that we're a danger of some kind. On the other hand though, he might pass along that we freed him volentarily, which could garner some sympathy? Or at the very least, it should guarentee Millie's safety, since now the Prism Knights know she has bargining value.

On the downside, he'll also pass along all the intel about our new ability and how we defeated him, which might come back to bite us next time if they're better prepared. At the very least, should they still try to get rid of us, they'll have him as a 3rd member, and we'll have to defeat him all over again. And if we could barely beat him one on one now, it would be extremely tough if they try to take us on as a group next time...

With Claim, he won't be a problem in the future, and we won't have to worry about the Prism Knights finding out anything from this battle. But on the other hand... it might put Millie in danger, if they don't think she's valuable to us anymore. If it actually kills Weavile, it'll for sure also cause the other members of the Prism Knights to harbor quite a grudge against us, although tbf they seem to have one already anyway. If it doesn't, and it's instead some kind of mind control thing... Then would be fascinating for the next time we encounter the Prism Knights, and Weavile could be a big help, both for his knowledge and his combat prowess. But that might be risky, we don't actually know with really any certainty what's going to happen here if we use Claim.

Tough decisions! Any preference for how you'd like to approach this, Negrek?

 

[Negrek]

Ultimately not much change from the last post, here. Interrogation hasn't gone well so far... I don't see him budging. I also don't really see him not finding some way to screw us over if we release him. Maybe he'd have some level of gratitude and be willing to do us a solid down the line, but that's far from guaranteed; maybe not "claiming" him will cause the others to think that we've changed from... whoever we were before. Mostly my lean towards release/interrogate at this point would be a generalized "don't be evil" feeling, and Claim really does sound a bit evil, lmao. On the other hand, I'm deathly curious about it. Not really sure that releasing Weavile is going to improve Millie's chances, either.

I guess at this point my vote would be "claim," and then if it's terrible we can just never do it again, lol.

 

[Mirage]

That sounds fine with me, Claim it is!

If it makes you feel any better, I think we could make a good case here for acting in self-defense, since Weavile did just try to straight up murder both us and Lenora after all

And 100%, if it turns out to be crossing a line we don't want to, we can always avoid using it in the future. It could get dicey though and we may be forced to use it if (honestly, probably when ) we stumble on Druddigon and Marshstomp again... If there's anything we learned from this match, it's that we can't rely on Lenora to carry us, and if Weavile's already almost able to exhaust our health and energy, a 2v1 is rather scary

 

[Negrek]

Yeah, it's a real good thing we didn't go with that plan to try tracking the group down and having Lenora back us up. Turns out gym leader level pokémon can't help us out much here...

 

[Mirage]

SPOILERS for latest chapter below
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Well damn, what a chapter! We were fairly close with the mind control angle, except that rather than directly recruit people, we take over their bodies instead. Negrek was absolutely spot on with the clutch Ylvetal prediction, very nice!

This seems like a fun mechanic - we're supposed to hop from host to host, increasing our strength as we do so, but also risking a new permanent consideration that might hinder us. Juggling those permanent considerations is going to be interesting... Like right now, with the one that we inherited from Weavile, that could make rescuing Millie difficult. After all, if we are Ylvetal, then we would be forced to disclose our identity as soon as we see anyone from the Prism Knights.

I wonder what a few workarounds might be - can we convince ourselves that we aren't Ylvetal, so that we "warn" of a different entity out there? Or perhaps, so long as we don't directly talk to anyone from the Prism Knights, can we still resist the urge to approach them? I figure these ironclad considerations need to at least be strong enough to override our regular ones, or else we could just perpetually nullify them, but we might be able to at least dampen them enough to partially circumvent what they do. I dunno if Rejections can apply to Ironclad Considerations - I suspect they don't, but if they do, that might be another route.

In the short term at least, we're kind of screwed here with the options haha. Weavile demonstrated before we fought that we're more or less immune to regular Pokemon... but us possessing him might have changed that immunity, and even if not, we would be an extremely easy target should the other Prism Knights members return anytime soon. Fighting feels pretty risky to me, and honestly, none of those police officers have done anything to warrant us lashing out.

I don't feel like bargaining will get us very far here, since there's only us as Weavile, who just egregiously wounded Lenora. Even if Lenora believes us - and I don't know that she will, she might just think Weavile is playing a trick on her - I feel like these police officers will rationally conclude that we must be to blame.

Surrendering is, in some ways, a surprisingly ideal option. We don't really know where to go for now, and by surrendering ourselves, we'd almost be guaranteed a meeting with the E4 or some other kind of high ranking official. We can even demonstrate with Claim to prove we aren't an ordinary Weavile, although we have no idea how they'd react to finding out. The main issue I have with that is then we're pretty limited in here we can go, and would have to break out of however they'd hold us. And of course... Millie would be pretty much completely up to the mercy of the Prism Knights.

Running might be our best play here though. We have a Warp Seed handy, which gives us an instant no-effort escape, and we could then use our stealth and speed to set out and find Millie. There are a few problems though... namely that ironclad consideration, which will make it nearly impossible for us to find Millie without fighting the other two Prism Knights who are likely stronger than we are

 

[Namohysip]

@ShiniGojira Here's where discussion and questions can go, as you alluded to!

Regarding how attack and defense works, it's very basic addition. The enemy's offense subtracted by your defense results in damage, to a minimum of 0. So yes, it's theoretically possible to be against a foe that simply can't damage you. The mechanics are very simplistic in terms of combat.

 

[ShiniGojira]

Ah cool. So for example, like if enemy does 10 damage and we have 9 defense, it'd do 1, right?

 

[Namohysip]

That's correct.

 

[Negrek]

Hmm, what are we thinking here? Under ordinary circumstances I'd be inclined to help Druddigon, tbh... but given that he's immortal, and getting close to him might cause us problems with Weavile, that doesn't seem super advisable. On the other hand, it's not going to ingratiate us with Weavile any, us leaving the guy to deal with this by himself. (Kind of wanting to ask Weavile if he can see those weird squiggly things. Can he see anything at all right now? He must be aware of the environment to some extent.) THEORETICALLY we could pretend to be Weavile and try to get information out of Druddigon, but that just seems to invite interference from the real Weavile... Standing around and watching seems risky for the same reason, though I'm really curious what will play out here--if we can figure out where those blobs are coming from/what they do.

Other than that, I guess we can go down the path that hopefully leads to the Amber Knights and let them know Druddigon's in trouble.

Although, those "dark blobs..." I wonder what would happen if we destroyed them? Cleared them off the pidove, perhaps?

 

[Mirage]

This has the potential to end really badly... but considering everything here, tentatively, I think we're best off approaching Druddigon and offering our assistance. As you mention, abandoning him probably isn't going to be taken well by Weavile, and would undermine our credibility that we're trying to help. Additionally, because Druddigon has already been weakened and doesn't have any items, I think he's more likely than usual to accept our help. If he gives us too much trouble... we could always go for the tried and true strategy of running away as fast as our legs will carry us

The biggest risk here is going to be explaining what we're doing in Weavile's body. Druddigon's going to see that we've claimed Weavile's soul, and I really can't imagine him taking this well. I'm trying to figure out a way we would explain it without him immediately rejecting us, and I haven't found one yet. Best I've come up with so far is getting Weavile to vouch for us - his Consideration is still at play, so if we can show Druddigon that he's not dead (Druddigon could just ask us something only Weavile knows, and then we let him take control), then Weavile can confirm that we won't try to attack him. That buys us time to meet up with the Amber Knights and hopefully get a better idea of what's going on. If Druddigon knows that Weavile's spirit is still alive, that should also hopefully discourage him from just axing us at the first opportunity.

Of course, that has the major flaw of relying on Weavile's cooperation, which... yeah. Middle claw in literally last chapter isn't a great vote of confidence

If things get really dicey, and we can't escape, so long as Druddigon's alone and weakened... we could claim him, and abandon Weavile. That's definitely an option of last resort, and I don't want to have to do that, but between our type advantage and N's support, I feel like we actually have the upper hand at the moment.

If we go straight to the Amber Knight, we might be able to recruit them to help Druddigon, but I'm concerned Druddigon might wander off in the meantime. If he escapes, I don't know when the next time we'll see him is... and I figure, he's going to figure out we've claimed Weavile eventually, one way or another. I feel like that's probably something we want to reveal on our own terms.

100% agree with trying to see if Weavile can also spot the dark blobs - it seems to be something only we can so far, perhaps because of our Ylvetal powers. If he's also able to, since we share the same body, that might help with convincing him to work with us, if he knows that he and his friends are being (at least partially) possessed. People do tend to resent being unknowingly influenced... And we can definitely try removing them! If the dark blobs are connected to the Pokemon's sudden hostility, and we remove the dark matter, then maybe that also removes the hostility

 

[Negrek]

Hmmmmf. It's tricky. Certainly true that we have an advantage over Druddigon here, and hopefully we could take him in a straight fight or run away with necessary, but I feel like approaching him here doesn't leave us with a great exit strategy. Like, I can't imagine after we introduce ourselves Druddigon will just let us walk away again later. Something's clearly messing with the Prism Knights' heads, so even if he did feel gratitude, I don't think that whatever's going on with that would let him act on it. One way or another, it seems like we'd end up with the choice of trying to run, possibly after beating up Druddigon ourselves, or trying to possess him. And with the potential for Weavile to interfere with us, it seems dangerous to put ourselves in the position to need to do one of those things.

Not against helping Druddigon in general; I don't want to see him get beat up, and it would presumably improve relations with Weavile. My question is, what do you see happening after we introduce ourselves as Yveltal? How do you see us parting from Druddigon later, if he stays focused on killing us?

 

[Mirage]

Sorry about the belated response, had a bit of an emergency arise at work this week.

I thought it over Negrek, and honestly, you're right - I'm letting my eagerness of seeing Cobble and Druddigon interact again get the better of me, hah. I didn't properly appreciate earlier that Druddigon tried to straight up crush us when we originally encountered him, and nothing's fundamentally changed since. Us saving him from a few wild Pokemon and some mysterious dark matter is uh, not exactly going to offset that. And for whatever that's worth, once he finds out we claimed Weavile... the odds of him not flying into a murderous rage are pretty much zero. Weavile won't let us fight back, so we'd be forced into running, and wouldn't have accomplished anything.

If we talk to the Amber Knight and get their help, we might have some extra backup, and at minimum we'll get to see the two different sets of knights interact. That's something I've been looking forward to ever since we learned about the different factions

So I'm going to echo your decision of going to the Amber Knight and requesting their assistance. Let's see what happens!