Chương 120: 4.10 Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Iron Maiden (13:38)

StoryLeech I've been thinking about Zeke's performance in the bar, and I've got a theory I want to throw at everyone. I don't think that Zeke's songs have a fixed magical effect. In fact, I don't think that his magic is like anything else we've seen in the Fracture-verse before. Remember, Rockstar was cut content. From what Venerated told us, the developers originally planned to unveil the class during Shards of Time, but that game was such a complete clusterfuck that they couldn't get the class working properly.

If Rockstar was supposed to function like any of the other Fracture-verse magical classes, they could have introduced it easily and called it a day. The fact that they didn't makes me think there was something fundamentally different about the class. Something unique to how Zeke's magic works. We've all been treating his songs like magical spells because that's the easiest way to describe what we're seeing, but if you actually looked at the examples we've gotten, the effects don't line up cleanly enough for that.

VeneratedWitchHunter | but that game was such a complete clusterfuck that they couldn't get the class working properly. | That's not how I put it. But okay. BaryBybax | the effects don't line up cleanly enough |?? Zeke plays songs and magic happens. That's basically the definition of a spell unless we're going to start inventing new words to describe what Zeke is doing because he's all weird. StoryLeech Nah. That's not what I'm saying.

I think that the song is more a vehicle for the spell rather than just the spell itself. Think about what we've seen him do. He's been playing existing songs (Black Betty, Free Bird, Holding Out for a Hero) and then something magical happens. If the magical effect were embedded in the composition itself, you'd expect the results to be consistent every time someone played the song, and you'd also expect Zeke to have some idea of what each song was going to do before he played it. But that's not what we're seeing.

When Zeke played Free Bird, he was thinking about that one scene from Kingsmen where everyone starts fighting in that church. When he played Black Betty, he was thinking about what kind of a song would fit a chase through the Deadlands. When he played Holding Out for a Hero, he was thinking about… well, holding out for a hero. The important thing was that he always had intent when he was playing. He wasn't just thinking "I'm going to play this song and hope what happens is beneficial to me."

He knew what he wanted the music to communicate, even if he didn't consciously understand his magic. Then we get to the bar and he tried to play the Bowie song and nothing happened. Why? Because he didn't actually know what he wanted the song to do. More importantly, he wasn't trying to communicate anything specific with it. He said it himself that he had practiced the song and thought it was good. But it didn't do anything. His magic didn't activate.

Then he played Ten Words by Satriani, and he's thinking about everything that he's seen in Cliffhaven and all the horrible shit that's happened to him since arriving in the Fracture-verse and how he's finally found somewhere that it feels like he belongs and he's safe. Suddenly, he is able to tell everyone exactly how he was feeling. That's why I'm thinking that the song he plays supply the structure for Zeke's magic, and Zeke supplies the instruction for it.

MoronicMnemonic | he tried to play the Bowie song | Nirvana did it better. DataDatum So you're basically saying that the song is just a spell framework? StoryLeech Yea, basically. The melody, rhythm, lyrics, repetition, instrumentation, and everything else that makes a song a song gives Zeke's magic something to attach itself to. Or move through.

I don't know exactly what it's doing, but I think that Zeke's magic needs something to attach to (like a glyph is attached to a wall or a floor) and then his mana provides the actual intent behind the song and tells the magic what he's trying to accomplish. It's almost like the song is the language and Zeke is deciding what he's saying with it. The song provides the vocabulary, and then meaning comes from what Zeke is trying to communicate.

Shootingblnks I'm not saying I agree with you, but it would explain what happened in the bar. It would also explain what happened in the Chapel Pit. Everyone who heard him play seemed to experience the same emotional shift. That's not just people enjoying the song. It was more a coordinated thing that happened to a huge number of people at the same time. Craaazzzzy How dare you downplay what can happen when people hear the peak of Ten Words or Free Bird.

Both songs are amazing, and both songs can definitely make people fight/cry. Music affects people's emotions all the time. You don't need magic to explain why people get emotional when they hear something that hits them. Zeke's magic might just amplify the effects of a good song. Shootingblnks Sure, but having an entire army of Black Teeth experience basically the same emotional shift at the same time is a little more than what you normally see.

You're not suddenly at a concert and some drunk dood screams "FREE BIRD" when the band asks for requests, and then everyone in the building starts up a mosh pit. That's not how music normally works. We already know that Zeke's playing is magical. What Story is arguing is that the song itself isn't necessarily the source of the effect. The song is giving him something to work with, while his intent decides what his magic actually does. OldManKiyote There's another possibility that we haven't thought through.

What if the original artist's intent matters? VeneratedWitchHunter Nah. Neither Spiderbait nor Ram Jam nor Huddie Ledbetter intended for Black Betty to be played by some rando who got isekai'd into the Fracture-verse. They didn't think their song would be played by a guy sitting in the back of a jeep, trying to escape from a bunch of psychos through the Deadlands. I think we can safely ignore the original artist's intent. OldManKiyote I'm not saying it's completely about the original artist's intent.

I'm saying that a song carries more than one kind of meaning. There's what the artist intended when they wrote it, but there's also what the listener thinks it means. If Zeke's magic responds to meaning and intention, than a song shouldn't necessarily carry one fixed magical command when someone plays it. Story already said the song is like language. The artist would create the original sentence. They gave the song its emotional shape and its original intent, but Zeke is the one speaking it.

If he uses that same sentence to mean something completely different, the magic would follow him, not necessarily the person who wrote it. BUT, the original intention is still there. It's basically like intonation. There is a difference between someone saying "I didn't say to fight him," and " I didn't say to fight him." They are the same words, but they've got a completely different meaning. BUT, there is a limit to how far Zeke can twist the meaning. LSMFT | there is a limit to how far Zeke can twist the meaning.

| Is there? People misconstrue songs all the time. Think Zombie by the Cranberries. It's supposed to be an anti-war song about the Troubles. It was written about children being killed in the Troubles and nobody really seemed to bat an eye at that, and she's saying that violence has become so prevalent that it has inured people to the cost of the war. But then you've got Call of Duty over here who uses Zombie as the theme song for their CoD Zombie campaign, and that's a game which mythologizes war and conflict.

It's completely antithetical to what The Cranberries were saying. To take your example, that's like saying the original song was supposed to say "I didn't say to fight him," and changing it to "fight him." SignalLoss If we're going to say that intent matters that much, there have to be some limits to what Zeke can do with a song. He can't play a children's lullaby and decide that it's going to summon a thunderstorm just because he really wants a thunderstorm.

There would still have to be some kind of relationship between the song and what he's trying to communicate. Otherwise, we're basically saying Zeke can do anything as long as he knows a guitar chord. StoryLeech I'm not saying that he can pick a random song and force whatever effect he wants through it. Look at the song he's actually used. He chose Black Betty because it fit the energy of a chase. He chose Free Bird because he wanted violence.

He chose Holding Out for a Hero because he wanted to communicate the desperation of needing someone to come save them. Ten Words is probably the clearest example we've gotten so far. He wasn't just playing a song he liked. He was using the song to communicate everything he'd experienced since arriving in this world, particularly the feeling of finally reaching somewhere safe. He can't just play a song and shove whatever intention he wants through it.

It would also explain why he seems drawn to using different songs instead of perfecting a single song. He has to find a song whose emotional and musical structure can actually support what he's trying to say. Lorem-Ipsum Okay, this is going to start an argument and I know it, but explain the mana cost. StoryLeech What about it? Lorem-Ipsum It's an established fact that humans in the Fracture-verse don't have a lot of mana. That's a hard rule of the place.

Even the strongest human magic user can't casually throw around spells. They don't have the mana for fireballs or lightning, which means they definitely shouldn't be able to maintain a magical effect over dozens or hundreds of people at once. But we've seen Zeke affect groups of people. Large groups. MASSIVE groups. If he were directly casting a spell on every individual person in an area, the mana costs for that would be absurd.

A normal mage trying to influence forty, fifty, or a hundred people simultaneously should burn through their reserves almost immediately. But Zeke doesn't seem to be doing any of that when he plays. I didn't want to bring it up before because I got slammed for talking about noncanon stuff and how Zeke is writing around a bunch of rules, but if we're really going to be talking about his magic it needs to be addressed. Plethora He's not paying for forty targets.

He's paying for ONE spell, and the music carries that spell to everyone who hears it. Zeke's mana establishes the intention and gives the music its magical charge, but the sound itself is what distributes the effect. Instead of Zeke playing for an audience of fifty individuals, he's playing for ONE target, which is the entire audience. That would also explain why the effect can spread through an entire room without Zeke collapsing.

The magic isn't jumping from person to person and draining Zeke every time it reaches someone new; it's traveling through sound and hitting everyone at once. Also, I think the guitar has something to do with it too. His guitar was made by Riley, and it could be acting as a magical focus. Instead of Zeke having to push his mana into everyone, he pushes it into the guitar and that just amplifies everything.

His mana enters the guitar, the guitar turns that intention into music, and the music carries the effect outward. That would explain why his mana cost seems so ridiculously low compared to what he's actually accomplishing. DataDatum What about the Chapel Pit? He couldn't use his guitar there, remember? He only had that harmonica. StoryLeech If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. Hmm… it would have to have been the glyphs that he used.

Remember we gave him the microphone glyph and he had them written on rocks and spread throughout the Chapel Pit? If we're assuming the music itself is carrying the magical effect, then the glyphs were just extending the range of his spell. Now that I think about it, the glyphs might have been more of a mana drain than the song itself. Z3ke (Original Poster) Hey everyone.

I really appreciate that you're all taking the convo about my magic seriously and trying to help me figure it all out, but I've got a quick question before we get into all that. What the hell is the WHY NOT and should I be concerned about it? Everyone around me is kinda freaking out and I've got no idea what's happening. I figured that this was probably the sort of thing I should ask you all about before I make a spectacularly stupid decision. MoronicMnemonic HAHAHAHAHAHAAHA.

I swear to God, every time you post something it's like a coin is being flipped. Are we getting a normal update where you've found something interesting to wax poetically about? Or have you somehow managed to stumble into an entirely new disaster. CrushDaddyXx KRILL KRAKEN ARC!!! LFG!!! Zeke, let no one ever say that you haven't given this community anything. Some people spend ten hours carefully planning their character builds and then play the games like they're trying to min max everything. But no you. Oh no.

You just wander along and accidentally trigger pirate storylines and apocalyptic events. AND I LOVE IT. GnomelandSecurity JEEZUS. Zeke, you're just a magnet for horrible shit. I'm thinking that this isn't even bad luck anymore. This is more that the world has a personal grudge against you and keeps throwing increasingly bizarre situations at you just to see what happens. Caboodle (Proctor) | KRILL KRAKEN ARC!!! | Zeke, did you seriously not read Malv0lio's massive wall of text?

I know that it was long, and you've constantly proven that you don't like reading things (for some reason) but the dood specifically warned you about the Living Stories. MushroomCleric Zeke, I want you to think very carefully before you answer this next question. Did you get onto the Why Not without checking with us first? Because if you somehow managed to stumble onto Simon Pucco's ship without realizing what it was… I genuinely don't know if we can help you anymore. I'm with Gnomeland here.

I think the universe is actively trying to put you in increasingly dangerous situations just for our entertainment. Z3ke (Original Poster) What? No. I didn't even know that ship existed until about five minutes ago, which is why I'm asking all of you about it. Can someone actually tell me what the thing is instead of just acting all mysterious and laughing at me?

I'm standing on another ship watching the thing come towards us while everyone around me looks like they're about to shit themselves, so I'd really appreciate some information. Malv0lio (Primary) Are they chasing you? Have they already spotted you? Give us something more to go on. You said you're on a different ship. What is your captain doing? Is he trying to outrun it? Or is he moving towards it? Z3ke (Original Poster) Uh… yes, yes, panicking, yes, and no. Is that how we want to do things?

You just give me a bunch of questions and I gave you the answers, but I don't really see…. You know what. I'm kinda freaking out now because everyone else is freaking out. This is me taking a deep breath and then asking for info. I don't know how long before the ship gets to us. I'll tell you everything that happened, but I'm gonna need to make it quick so you can hopefully give me some useful advice before some terrible shit happens. I told you all about the bar in Cliffhaven where I was playing at.

Well, I went back there and got a drink and I met a captain there. He'd heard me playing the night before and he liked it enough that he offered me passage on his ship. At first I thought he was trying to recruit me as some kinda moral officer or something. But then I told him I was headed to Brightharbor and didn't plan on really working on a ship for very long. He nodded at that and then said that one of the advantages of being a captain was that his ship went wherever he decided it was going to go.

So he offered me a ride as long as I played for his crew. That sounded like a good deal but then I remembered what you all told me about keeping my eyes out and looking at the ship and the crew and everything. So I went to the harbor and found his ship and started poking around. I talked with the crew and made sure the thing wasn't falling apart. Everyone seemed pretty happy with the captain.

Nobody said he was a dick and there wasn't that much turnover with his people and I didn't see any signs that anyone was underpaid or mistreated. Everything looked pretty legit. The captain seemed like a decent guy, the ship was in good condition, and it all seemed pretty straightforward. The idea was that I would play for the crew and they'd take me to Brightharbor without me needing to sell some of my inventory stuff to pay for passage.

UnhelpfullyHelpful | I would play for the crew and they'd take me to Brightharbor | Such a Zeke way to travel. I'm here for you being a magical busker who gets around the world by convincing strangers to take you on their ships as a morale officer. Z3ke (Original Poster) Uh… thanks, I guess. Anyway, that was the plan. I'd play music, maybe practice my magic a little. Maybe I could figure out how to use my songs to make the ship move faster or keep everyone in a better mood or whatever.

Then we'd pull into Brightharbor and I'd be on my way. We left the harbor and everything seemed to be good. The captain was friendly. The crew was friendly. Nobody was giving me shit and I wasn't getting any sense that I was in any danger or anything like that. We'd only been out of Cliffhaven for a few hours when someone spotted something on the horizon. At first, nobody could tell what they were looking at.

There was this dark shape sitting low against the horizon and we all just figured it was another ship that was headed to Cliffhaven. Then it started getting closer and we got a better look at it. It's a lot bigger than our ship and the hull is made from this dark wood that looks kinda greyish greenish blue. I don't even know if that's an actual color. There's this strange green tint to it when the light hits the sides and it seems to match the water. The sails are the weird part though.

They're this weird blue-green color, and it looks like they've been sewn from seaweed. The sails kinda blend into the horizon, and maybe that's why it took so long for us to notice a ship creeping up on us. The closer it got, the more nervous everyone on the ship became. Nobody was saying anything. People were just staring at the ship and the captain came over and was looking at it and the horizon like he was trying to decide whether we could get away before it reached us.

I'm still here on the railing because I have no idea what's happening. All I'm doing is looking at the thing and… I think the crew just kinda gave up. It's like they're seeing a car crash happening in real time and they realize that there's nothing they can do about it. The ship is close enough that I can see the figurehead. I think that's what it's called. It's the thing at the front of the ship.

It's a woman and she's standing with both arms stretched wide in front of her like she's trying to embrace something enormous. And when the ship turned slight - I think to intercept us - I finally saw the name painted across the side. The letters are enormous and completely white against the dark wood and it says WHY NOT. So that's where I am right now. Can someone tell me what the hell this ship is?

Malv0lio (Primary) Well Zeke, unfortunately for you, you just got sucked into a mission that you're going to HAVE to deal with whether you want to or not. The Why Not is the ship of Simon Pucco. He's a pirate from Syndicate's Wake. He actually doesn't show up in the original Emberveil which is actually my fault for not putting him in the pdf I sent you. He's one of those characters that doesn't really matter to the original game but he becomes a bigger deal when you add in Syndicate's Wake. Again… sorry about that.

I should have caught his absence from the pdf. Pucco is a pirate captain, but calling him a pirate doesn't really capture why the crew of your ship is reacting the way they are. He's one of the most feared men operating in the ocean, and the Why Not is an extension of his reputation, but he's probably not going to just kill everyone on the ship. The funny thing is, the name sounds almost stupid when you first hear it.

You've got ships like The Adventure, and The Revenge, and The Black Pearl, and whatever else pirates come up with when they're trying to sound intimidating. Then you got Simon Pucco who named his flagship the fucking Why Not. It doesn't exactly strike fear into the heart of people who see it. It kind of sounds like something that a dood would name his fishing boat because he couldn't think of anything better. But the name is basically a mission statement. Why not pirate? Why not steal?

Why not sail into waters that sane sailors would avoid because they know what lives in them? Why not chase things that everyone else considers myths? Why not fight something in the ocean that looks like it crawled out of a Lovecraftian fever dream? That's Simon Pucco's entire philosophy. He doesn't seem to believe that there are things people shouldn't do. There are only things that people haven't been stupid enough to try yet. He's basically Crush's favorite type of person. CrushDaddyXx Dood. But also true.

Malv0lio (Primary) The Why Not isn't supposed to sound intimidating. It's supposed to sound casual, because Pucco himself is weirdly casual about things that terrify sane people. There are stories about him sailing into waters where entire crews have refused to go because they could hear something enormous moving beneath the ship. Supposedly, there is a story where Simon's first mate once told him they should turn around because they were entering waters nobody came back from, and Pucco's response was "why not?"

Z3ke (Original Poster) So the man is insane? I'm dealing with a crazy man? What the hell?!? I was just supposed to be heading to Brightharbor. Malv0lio (Primary) | So the man is insane? | I wouldn't call him insane exactly. Pucco is perfectly capable of understanding when something is dangerous. He just doesn't seem to believe that danger is a good enough reason to not do something. If anything, he seems to think that danger is evidence that something is worth doing.

He's basically the human embodiment of the phrase "fuck around and find out." Except he has a massive ship, an experienced crew, and enough confidence to make everyone else fuck around with him. Z3ke (Original Poster) Then why isn't anyone doing anything about it? The ship is practically on top of us now and the captain hasn't ordered us to fire at it or to run or anything. What the hell dude? Malv0lio (Primary) Because your captain knows what's about to happen.

Simon Pucco is going to board your ship and take it, and there's nothing your captain can do about either of those things. Actually, the best thing that you can do is just give up. Pucco is actually fairly reasonable about this. He isn't going to slaughter the crew or throw everyone overboard for the fun of it. He'll probably explain that the ship is being requisitioned and then tell everyone that they are going to work for him and if they do a good enough job, they can leave when he reaches the next safe port.

It's the last part that you should be worried about. You don't want to just get kicked off the ship in the middle of the ocean. You need to be useful to Pucco. Since you got a magical guitar that can apparently influence an entire crew, there's a very good chance that he'll be interested in keeping you around. BUT… he is going to be piloting your ship to dangerous waters. And that might actually get everyone killed. If I'm remembering everything from Syndicate's correctly, Pucco doesn't care about your cargo.

He's going to be grabbing every ship he can so he can create an armada. Once he takes control over your ship, he'll explain that he's hunting a Krill Kraken. Z3ke (Original Poster) And I'm guessing that right now you're going to tell me why Crush is so excited about the Krill Kraken arc. Malv0lio (Primary) Yep. Since you're going to be involved in this whether you like it or not, you should probably understand what the creature actually is. First, the name is ridiculous.

Krill are tiny little sea creatures that get eaten by the millions every day, so calling something enormous and terrifying a "Krill Kraken" sounds like a joke. But the actual story is really interesting. It's this old maritime legend about a gigantic creature that supposedly once guarded the treasures of the deep.

Any ship that was carrying gold or trade goods or whatever that got caught in a storm and sank to the bottom of the ocean, the Krill Kraken would gather up everything they had and take it back to its nest. The Krill Kraken was originally supposed to be a guardian that was protecting something until some kind of ancient magic cursed it and twisted it into an enormous violent abomination. Now… these ancient sea stories are just that. Stories. It's the same thing with mermaids and the Lost City of Atlantis.

They are just stories that drunk sailors tell each other to while away the time. But then magic started creeping back into the world and it started grafting onto urban legends and tall tales and all that. I already told you about the Living Stories: magic that somehow created these urban legends and made them real. Well, that's what happened with the Krill Kraken. The problem is that Living Stories don't necessarily become real in the way people expect.

The story itself becomes real, but reality bends around the version of the story that everyone tells. All the retelling, all the superstition, all the exaggeration, it all becomes part of the story. So when someone says that the Krill Kraken is an ancient guardian that was cursed into an abomination, you no longer get to assume that the story is metaphorical. Uh… I can't remember exactly what Simon Pucco believes. He might think that the Krill Kraken is real.

Or he might think that the story has been bastardized over the years. I'm not sure. What I can tell you is a few things. First, the man is obsessed with the creature. He's been collecting old sailor stories, fragments of ancient texts, records of unexplained shipwrecks, stories from fishermen, navigation charts, half-rotted journals, and anything else that might contain a reference to it. He is devoted to hunting this thing down. Second, the man has been gathering ships for a VERY long time.

Not just pirates, either. He's been pulling in privateers, smugglers, treasure hunters, mercenaries, independent captains, disgruntled sailors, and basically anyone else who would be interested in fighting the Krill Kraken. AND, he's been taking ships from all throughout the ocean. He's trying to build an armada that is strong enough to actually kill a Living Story. That's why he's coming after your ship.

He'll jump on board, tell the sailors that they work for him, and then probably leave a skeleton crew to be officers on the ship and head to wherever his armada is anchored. Z3ke (Original Poster) Uh… is there a way to NOT fight this thing? Caboodle (Proctor) Not really. It's actually in your best interest to just play along. Try to stay out of his way, hope that he can actually kill the Krill Kraken, and then get off at the nearest port. You're basically screwed. The best thing you can do is not try to be a hero.

Hey Mal, we're gonna need to go through what we can remember from the games to see if there's anything that we can come up with that will help Zeke. I for one never did the Krill Kraken missions. I don't even know what would harm it. CrushDaddyXx Don't worry Zeke. I'm going to help out. KRILL KRAKEN!!! It's going to be just like the Reclaimer. I'm going to help you kill a Living Story, you're going to get SOOOOO much loot from it, and who knows, maybe you'll actually like working with Simon Pucco.

Z3ke (Original Poster) Somehow I doubt it.