The Knight of the Kether vs. The Knight of Order

[GardenBlossom]

Olierus and Zain Vaerpath

4-B versions

Speed Equalized.

I'm too lazy to make a setup so lets say they meet up at The Booty Trap and Olierus hates him.

They start out 5 meters away from each other.

 

[ThePerpetual]

I will look at this in more detail later, but first-

I am very concerned as to where "The Booty Trap" is supposed to be and really would rather not look it up, I think

 

[ThePerpetual]

Let me run some quikmaths here:

Olierus's AP is said to be equivalent to "hundreds of billions of Suns exploding in one's midst": taking that to mean supernovas rather than star-busting attacks, and that them exploding 'in one's midst' is taken to mean they're tanking the full force of it rather than entail weird/narratively misplaced Inverse Square Law shenanigans, that's 200+ GigaFoe, achieved by normal attacks. Relatively simple.

Zain took on, and defeated, the Vesper Core, which is slightly trickier. Though it is known that Vesper was not wholly stopped after the events of Babylon, it was stated that it 'bought some time', and that there was no detection of star mass being absorbed elsewhere with irregularities in the universe or any of that- in combination with the Vesper being, itself, Zain's own Shell, acting and reacting primarily in response to the False Envoy, a duration about as long the story's lasted up to this point: that is, just short of 1 year, rounded up to one year for simplicity's sake: seems a reasonable higher-end.

Total Stars in the Universe = 1.0e+21, and if we're using one year we'd divide by (365.25 days * 24 hours * 3600 seconds) to get ~3.1688e+13 stars destroyed (or eaten, as the case may be) in one second. Using the Sun as a baseline 'star' (with a GBE of 5.693e+41), since its a medium-sized star, makes this come out to a total of ~1.80400e+55 Joules, or ~180.4 GigaFoe. That said, this was also achieved by simply 'moving'/eating, not much of a step over the usual existing category and lower effort than making a conscious effort to attack.

200+ GigaFoe via basic attacks vs. 180.4 GigaFoe by breathing/chewing on the fabric of space is, uh, relatively close AP-wise: enough to have an actual fight of it, in theory: though I don't doubt that Astral Breaker is enough AP-wise to one-shot Zain, since his potential for "chaos" is essentially infinite.

Alright, so, question time, from here:

One, what's Olierus's main Win Condition, here, and how potent is it? Two, just how potent is 'Extremely powerful resistance' to physical, magical, conceptual, and reality based attacks? Three, what is Olierus's own "potential for Chaos" looking like? The Primordials in-lore seem to observe that he "brings more chaos and destruction upon reality" in his efforts to bring order, but this is also Olierus before the end of his story, so I'm not wholly sure if this would be the case at this point.

I'll continue evaluating later now that I've figured out that the AP actually matches up enough for this to be interesting.

 

[GardenBlossom]

Didn't expect the AP to be so close. Wowie.

Olierus' main win condition is his Apeironegation and superior intelligence I'd say, which would likely be enough to allow him to deal with Zain's powerful resistances, be clever enough to evade and outmenuever him, and land a killing blow in the end.

Anyway, Olierus' chaos equalizing spear would definitely work here on Zain, however, the Astral Breaker moreso equalizes chaos based on the users own will. Meaning that Olierus doesn't percieve his own actions as chaotic and would only percieve Zain's action as such a way. It even works on order aligned beings as briefly mentioned in the Olierus vs Mastema thread. Basically, if Zain does somehow get an AP advantage, then the Spear will equal to his level of power as that would be Olierus seeing Zain trying to oppose his own will with Chaos. That's the basic gist of it for now and what's most important for this match.

His resistances are definitely pretty damn ridiculous. He fought against basically every power under the sun, including probability, fate, plot, law manipulating, absolute conceptual annihalation, sealing into a blade that could seal other billion year old entities such as himself, and most impressively, his sheer willpower alone allowed him to resist being in Purgatory, which instantly erases and is supposed to negate all resistances to being erased on other beings.

Not gonna vote yet, but yeah, that's the basic gist of things.

 

[ThePerpetual]

Well, that's high-balling each AP, anyways, which works well enough for these purposes given the circumstances.

What are Apeironegation's best feats of working? The Tiphareth couldn't be nullified/over-written by Samael- the Big Bad of the verse, who exists as an infinite-in-scale force way up in the eleventh Sphere of reality- from essentially the moment he got powers at all. I'm pretty sure it can negate anything cheeky like an attempt at an Attack Reflection, but from what I'm seeing, I'm not finding any reason to believe that it can negate the False Envoy's regen.

I mostly ask because, since this is after Zain acquires the Devil Mystery/trains with it against Keiwa to take the Totsuka-no-Tsurugi from him mid-battle, it's pretty in-character for him to just steal Astral Breaker if it becomes at all obvious that its an obscenely powerful weapon (in particular, compared to Olierus himself.) Wouldn't be his opening move, obviously, prior to Act V it's usually "Throw on Blade-Metamagic Offense spell and enter melee", but Olierus's Astral Breaker seems to have no special resistance either to that or to him using The Lovers to conceptually tether it to himself as a shared aspect such that Olierus can't call it back without trying to punch through his Concept Manip. resistance. If its own attacks can inflict unhealing wounds upon its normal wielder (Olierus), used against him nothing would change, no?

...Hmmm. The regen being Low-Godly only, and the fact that he just got the Daathe/The Tower/Moon Mystery, means that Existence Erasure's at least potentially on the board, but his actual offensive capabilities are a lot less potent than his resistances with the Sephiroth. If he'd want to use something of that magnitude offensively, he'd have to find an Idea Fracture resulting from some particular aspect of Olierus's being. The Chesed probably wouldn't like the arbitrary designation of various aspects of the world as "orderly" or "chaotic" when each can (and will, as Olierus's own story can attest to) lead into the other given time. Removing the concept of "chaos" from reality by default makes the Astral Breaker itself an Idea Fracture of massive proportions, as well, and the corrupting stain it's left on Olierus himself leads me to believe he'd be considered as having such as well.

 

[GardenBlossom]

Zain trying to steal the Astral breaker is a terrible idea, actually, and the Spear is indeed binded to his being as the forgemaster created the weapon for him and him alone. There has been other attempts to steal it, but all of them have failed as even touching the thing would result in a massive bolt of energy that, if held for too long, would result in the erasure of ones being, as the weapon is tied to Olierus' own concept. To steal the weapon would be like trying to simply claim Olierus as an entity as your own, which he would obviously say no to, since the weapon isn't just made for him, it is him.

So umm...I didn't know Zain's resistances were that good and this might turn into a stomp thread if Olierus can't do anything to him to win, but I must ask, how powerful is Zain's Existence Erasure? Olierus could survive being in purgatory, which passively erases everything inside of it due to being controlled by a multiversal entity.

 

[ThePerpetual]

"Erasure of one's being"

This lad literally spent the entirety of Act IV inside a non-existent space, which was also his own Shell (that is, the Vesper), and got the Daathe: that thing that makes one immune to Existence Erasure: so that's kind of a nope, I'm thinking

The Devil on its own would be mundane supernatural theft: it's the Lovers that provides a tether to make something else "a part of him", or for him to rather be a part of it. That's the only reason he's able to wield the Sephiroth in the first place, he can accept other things as an aspect of himself (though I suppose that if the Astral Breaker isn't viable for that/he'd have to try to punch through resistances first, it'd not be worth the bother.)

If he were going to beat Zain, you're probably looking for really unconventional methods, since the Sephiroth in general just kinda tell most weird, esoteric powers to piss off (that being the whole point of collecting them aside from all eleven being needed to free the world), and holes in his defenses get fewer and fewer in number as the Keys progress.

His actual active hax, though, is uhh, not great. His EE in particular is pretty bad, since aside from the Tower (which is supposed to be able to do that potentially but I'm an idiot and didn't list it, aaaaaa) its just a side effect of being defeated by one's own Shell. If something is defeated by their own Shell, and fails to awaken, it drags its essence back into the Daathe due to cosmology shenanigans and so forth. Technically that's higher-dimensional EE within the verse itself, but it's only due to that being the verse rules and not really a thing that Zain himself can actively impose on people. I imagine Olierus's resistances aren't letting that through any time soon.

The only higher-dimensional hax he can actively wield: that is, the Sephiroth's ability to mend Idea Fractures: isn't usually combat-applicable, and is probably something he'd only think to try after he either pops (and regens elsewhere), or Olierus pops and regens (immediately, since it seems to be substantially faster.)

...hmmm.

 

[GardenBlossom]

Okay yeah, this is really weird...With the different ways our verses work clashing against each other, it's really hard to tell what will happen. Olierus would obviously be able to tell that his resistances would be...troubling to say the least - he knows higher-dimensional entities exist in his own verse - and would likely be able to tell that what he's dealing with is higher than anything the Astral Breaker has had to yeet. Him being a supergenius, I could see him somehow devising a plan to deal with Zain, maybe. Whatever that plan is, I uh...I really don't have a clue. I'm honestly unsure what Oli could do to Zain with his resistances and whatnot that are...well...seemingly impossible to get through? Idk. For me, this seems inconclusive at best and a stomp in Zain's favor at worst.

 

[ThePerpetual]

Well, the tricky thing about this site and the Sephiroth is that they kinda fundamentally disagree?

The Sephiroth by design are supposed to only enable Zain to have the opportunity to resist higher-order magic, not necessarily to be immune to normal such things without an expenditure of Will. All things that can be considered "attacks" within the verse are rejected consciously or subconsciously on the basis of their being a hostile gesture, and Will is essentially synonymous with AP: hence I bothering figuring out what the APs looked like from the get-go. But then that contradicts that higher-dimensional characters are supposed to have infinitely higher AP, etc... I dunno.

The easiest way to break an Archetype Armiger user's resistances is just to break their spirit tbh, but that usually requires more social finesse than Olierus seems fond of using.

My main argument more entails that, since Olierus's definition of Order essentially extends to "whatever I exert to be order", he (or his relationship with the spear describer as corrupting him more specifically) would constitute an obvious Idea Fracture that the Chesed can 'repair'- that is, that it can set to follow less subjective laws, regarding what constitutes Order. I mostly bring up the fact that the Kether (and by extension the rest of the Sephiroth) are what they area because the possibility to resist against someone who can cover so much of their bases and even counter their enemy's own fluctuating power levels (stripping them of "buffs", the Geburah, etc.) has a lot of inherent advantages in being able to consistently apply that defense.

...really, I had ought to make a blog explaining all of this in more detail/elaborate on that, since that seems to be enough to constitute a weakness by this site's standards.

 

[GardenBlossom]

Yeah, I think this match was a bad idea. Olierus has no real way of winning. In the context of the match itself, he doesn't have any real social experience other than leading armies and having some pretty powerful charisma (Really, Social Influencing should be on his profile as he does technically have that to a degree.) But breaking another person's spirit? Not only is that something he'd never be able to do in a million years because of his personality, but even if he could do it, in a battle like this, he wouldn't think of doing it sooo...for all intents and purposes, this is a stomp as Zain has a win con. Olierus...does not.

 

[ThePerpetual]

I don't know that it was a bad idea, per se. Definitely its thematically fitting at the very least? I'll go do a run-down one more time when I can clear the time for it.

 

[GardenBlossom]

Just gonna note that I'll be adding quite a few things to Oli's profile soon, but I promise that they won't affect the match that much.