With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

This reminds me I know Zatanna wanted to convert religions after the angels killed Paul. Is she still Christian? Did she officially convert to some other religion or what?

 

Hmm... I mean. In theory, a ring should still be able to augment him well, and replicate rare resources and whatnot... though you're also pretty likely to run into the same issues synthesized blood did early on of needing to be 'vitalized' by something. But... a Power Ring in a Cultivation setting is very much a case of 'One-Man Singularity' if it's useful at all, and such a Paul would struggle with the whole uplifting thing.

 

As you noted, without absorbing Qi for thousands/millions of years all those rare resources would just be completely mundane copies.

And uplifting would run face first into the problem of Paul having to actually play the face game.

 

The best result I can see is achieving Jianghu genre, modern conveniences with cultivation repressed to the. Criminal underground and jackboot military.

Although, in a perfect world, I'd hope for Jianghu to eventually evolve into Eclipse Phase crossed over with EYE: Divine Cybermancy crossed over with Megaman Battle Network crossed over with One Step From Eden.

 

*me waggles hand*

Even discounting the possibilities of a Power Ring replicating shit, it would absolutely be a major advantage in helping to cultivate. Just locating spirit stones or other cultivation resources at long range, being able to scan around to find shit(even if important stuff is likely warded, there's liable to be low level sects/clans to steal from), etc. To say nothing of the more basic advantages of a ring like flying and protective constructs.

It's impossible to say how generally useful a Power Ring is as a weapon in a xianxia setting because there's wide ranges of power levels. Something like Battle Through the Heavens, and it is gonna be massively useful at basically everything up until Dou Di. Meanwhile, in Desolate Era a power ring isn't gonna take you terribly too far.

Xianxia!Paul probably uses the Ring to jump start his own cultivation. He may or may not be able to charge it off local resources, but in any event likely has to rely more and more on his cultivation as he climbs the ladder.

So you know, standard xianxia stuff complete with cheat.

 

Qi, souls, and the ability to cultivate are almost never defined well enough or consistently enough to connect them with mundane technology and science. Can anyone even properly answer the question of where Qi comes from? Living creatures? The physical world? Souls?

 

Doesn't really matter. Power rings are computerized batteries.

Emotional Electromagnetic Spectrum energy, magic, cosmic cube energy, the power cosmic, lightning, nuclear energy, cosmic radiation. Power rings have been shown to absorb them all.

Why would Qi be the sole exception?

 

You might be able to get another one of her incarnations, she pops up in pretty much every pantheon in Mesopotamia and the Levant. There are like eight different pantheons that all have Ishtar in them, but virtually no other members in common.

Also, Sekhmet turned down Athena on account of not swinging that way, right Zoat? By that I mean, it wasn't out of any ideological opposition to tying the two pantheons together. Durga/Kali would also make a good match if you want to tie pantheons, she's probably the highest-ranked war goddess outside of Ishtar, and based on what we saw during the Sheeda invasion the Hindu pantheon is also looking to be more active. I'm pretty sure the Hurrians or Hittites or some other people that started with an H had a war goddess in charge of their whole pantheon too.

I'm just surprised none of the Amazons have suggested Nike.

 

I was thinking the reverse. Power rings would have power, but what could they even do in that setting? For a new user, power rings can mimic mundane physics. But in a Xianxia world, is anything even mundane? If QI is literally everywhere and in everything, does this mean that it all has the innate resistance to ring manipulation that magical items do, at least for low level ring users? Where even the dirt is hard to influence, because it's filled with earth Qi? Will a ring be able to heal, augment, or harm anyone, seeing as how it probably can't copy or produce Qi, and everyone has Qi? Fill flight even be possible with all the Qi infused in the air? The question of how a power ring will work in that setting depends on the nature of Qi, which is unclear and inconsistent.

 

I don't think she's converted.

Paul is looking for a god that can fulfill the violent side of war, so maybe Nike can't do that.

 

Maybe look to the Mayan or Aztec pantheons, they could do brutality really well. Another suggestion would be The Morrígan who is/are really great at violence and blood shed.

 

Gotta say I'm shipping Artemis and Graven-Paul... She's had more character development put into her than Jade and the majority of the other female cast members in both paragon and renegade paths. Except maybe Paragon Zatanna

 

Unfortunately for you, that's never going to happen. The two have stated that they are platonic life partners, nothing more.

 

Well he could have potentially recorded it and was planning on showing it later, or maybe he had someone on his ship see the destruction, like Tarkin had Leia watch Alderan be destroyed.

Or maybe he was feeling spiteful and petty.

You can say all you want about him being efficient, but he was still a monster raised on Apokalips and had a lot of their characteristics.

He may have been better than them, but it's not like he had much competition.

That's probably the Eradicator talking.

"load of"

 

Dickybird now there's a word I haven't heard in decades.

My granddad used to keep birds, so to differentiate from the other set of grandparents, we called him 'grandad-dickies'.

Sounds a lot less innocent nowadays.
It was a different era, I suppose. People didn't have such dirty minds.

Or maybe birdkeepers just never gave a fuck?
They be like "Yeah I'm breeding blue-chested tits, what are you gonna do about it, bitch?"

 

Don't forget the Boobies.

 

Sorry, what are they looking for? Just going over old Apokalyptian outposts for funsies?

 

*searches the story only thread*

Not a single mention of dickybird until this update.

 

Now there's a word I haven't heard in a long, long time.

 

Y'know I was just thinking to myself 'I wonder what Rene-Artemis is doing right now?' I'm glad to have an answer to that question.

Hmm... I forget what is renegade working towards right now? Aside from world domination because I think he's cleared most of his enemies now? I mean Paragon is generally working against the reach in the background is Renegade only doing the world domination thing now?

I think they're cleaning up after Grayven-16

 

simple

 

Tbf, I like that better, and seeing those interactions. Those types of deep, platonic bonds are explored far too infrequently in fiction.

 

We had a whole arc filled with Pauls and none of them said dickybird. Clearly Rengade!Paul is absorbing a new Source concept. Something which resonates with the core of English culture.

 

Ah, is the Renegade taking stock of what he acquired from his local namesake? About time, unless Grayven was very successful and the Renegade's been working on and off to catalogue it all.

Spoiler: Commentary spoilered for length

...I don't see either Grayven being this... Wasteful.

Only because of the sheer vastness of the memories of someone 50,000 years old. Even if a lot of it was just walking places, fighting people, eating food or bedding women, that's a hell of a lot of time.

Hmm... Telling her to drop it via Godspeech, making it an order from mentor to student? Bit rude.

So, Apokalips laid a hellacious smackdown on this planet... Wonder what they did to earn that?

True enough. After all, most fictional terraforming methods and devices generally don't treat any existing biosphere nicely. Even realistic scientific theories aren't too subtle about it.

What would be the point? This place is a burnt cinder.

...This sounds like a bit more than a message.

...Or they were trying to hide something? Turning a planet into a deathworld would make most species take one look at it and move on.

Verrrry interesting.

So either shielded from Maltusian tech, or not distinct enough to register as different.

Easy on the arrogance, girl. Leave that shit to the Renegade.

So whatever set this up knew their shit about concealing things.

Large-scale industrial machinery. Got to love Power Rings.

And with little to no travel time, thanks to Boom Tubes, a few minutes is no big deal.

Heh. Teleporting to the point of impact? There's a clever way of getting around.

I suppose feeling jaded is a common feeling amongst Pauls in this situation.

Well, after however many hundreds of years, of course she'd know him well enough to notice...

Still trying to live a normal life, then? I guess she needs that mundanity to avoid losing all her humanity.

...So, just a bit off-topic.

...Quite a bit off-topic, then.

It's not the League's shit-list, is it? I'm guessing she's more or less quit the Team by now.

An armour plate the size of a country? isolated location, or is the entire planet plated like this, I wonder?

Ah, Renegade, you and your silly British slang.

An actual slang word, yes. And very old-fashioned, I gather.

And laughing at it because it has 'dick' in it? You're a bit older than twelve, missie.

To be fair, the British have a crazy large amount of slang terms, many not in common circulation. And that doesn't even begin to cover subcultures.

If this is New God tech, it might take a lot more than poking at it with a pinprick of a sword. And it'll more than likely take action against you once you're inside...

Still not sure why they're out here, really. Cataloguing Grayven's stolen assets? Looking for the origin of the Absolute Dominion, and whether there might be more where it came from? Change of scenery? At any rate, it's fun to see them interacting like this. No drama, no threat looming overhead, no stress to get in the way of two buddies giving each other friendly shit.

 

You're giving him too much credit.

Despite seemingly being better than the rest of Apokalips, he was still a lot like them.

Maybe they just felt like blowing the place up.

Good point.

Doubt it, but they may be watching her.

Maybe she's still in it but works a lot more with renegade now.

 

That's deliberate.

Write pony fanfiction.

When your enemy has a list of 'sites of interest', it's advisable to investigate them with alacrity.

Thank you, corrected.

 

I want to hear that speech so much.

 

I don't think that was Grayven speaking. He said it would be weird for him to just .. blank .. on something like this. The fact that they're here means they've followed Grayven 16's trail, but he still doesn't remember a damn thing about this radioactive dirtball.

I think that bit of Godspeech is foreshadowing why he doesn't remember.

 

‘pH’, I think.

This seems like it could be an interesting plotline, although I’m glad it’s just supplementary, since I was enjoying the current Paragon plotline.