>>5959540>>5959774>>5959808>>5959876>>5959915>Yes, but why Tisiphone?“A deal with the Germans. I’m not entirely certain what they’re doing with it, but I’d assume it has something to do with <Postmortal>. I would generally be wary to give up such a thing, but in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll tell you what I’m getting out of the deal.”
He pauses, taking a sip of his coffee before continuing.
“<Typhon>.”
Your eyes widen as he continues,
“While for gods, spirits and the like, incarnation grade doesn't particularly matter in terms of power, the exception is monsters and beasts. Can you guess why?”
“<Monstrossification>”
“Precisely. While the system does somewhat correct for power, as a general rule, the power of a beast in the mythos is directly proportional to its power as an incarnation. To compensate, high grade beasts and monsters generally have much higher rates of divinity consumption, however, as I’m sure you’re more than aware, in a world with <Nectar>, <Ambrosia>, and exponential influence costs for skill upgrades, low level burst power is of the utmost importance.”
“If you want <Typhon> so badly, why not just demand it instead of trading something so valuable for it?”
“The German government doesn’t possess a large amount of personal incarnation power,” he explains, “but someone in their bureaucracy is extremely deft at foreign affairs: they’ve managed to position themselves as a perfect grounds for soft-power war between all of the relevant parties and, should any of us overstep that line, the other contenders will almost certainly use that as a casus belli to single handedly destroy the aggressor.”
“Who are these other incarnations, anyway?”
He pulls up a map, with each country color coded.
“This is our current assessment of the situation: these things aren’t absolute, and it’s difficult to tell which factions are ‘winning’ any given conflict, but it should be broadly accurate.”
You inspect the map: while some of the alliances follow expected trends regarding public foreign relations, you notice a couple of dubious exceptions. Noticing the piquing of your interest, he explains:
“Many of the countries currently possessed by one faction used to be run by independent incarnations. Most of them were either subtly replaced or bound with a <Faustian Bargain> or <Pact of Submission>.”
“What about...New Putin?”
“Well, he certainly isn’t old Putin. Beyond that, we haven’t the faintest clue.”
Odd.
Regardless, you decide to follow through with the exchange. You buy an <Epithet Holder> and make the exchange. You decide to hold onto <Lethe>’s epithet as an item for now in case you want to give it to a subordinate instead.
Influence: 9,025->7,025/51,200
