Alicornutopia

Jokers reject the premise of the Path. They can become more themselves, but not using the Path's methods; or at least they refuse to play along so much that we'll never find out.

Will we get to see a Miles wreck the path?

I dunno. Moriwen, do you want to provide a Path for a Miles to wreck?

DanielH wrote:And what, specifically, do they perfect?

Well, some of the more obvious 'virtues' are, in increasing order of 'aaaaa':

- Gardening
- Self-control
- Surgery
- Autonomy/freedom-from-subjugation
- Sovereignty/command

Re: Are they Isabellas, afterwards?

... Yes and no, I think. The Path refines and burns away. Isabellas do this process to themselves naturally: they do fundamentally believe that imperfection is dross, waste.

I think that while you might get an Isabella out of the other end, you likely do not get a person. In refining command, or surgery, or autonomy, the path would burn out their ethics - and the Isabella would believe that they were better without them.

It is remotely possible that the path might pick a virtue such as self-control or altruism - something that would result in a genuinely better Isabella, not merely a 'perfected' one. In those cases... There are basically three possible outcomes.
1: The Isabella becomes unable to go on after being confronted with her failings one too many times.
2: The Isabella becomes not-an-Isabella - she sacrifices some essential component of her personality in the pursuit of her virtue.
3: The path Actually Works, and you get a goddess or a saint out the other end.

I would guess 2 is the most likely outcome. Isabella is not good at understanding herself.

I would be totally up for providing a wreckable path. :D

Poor Isabella. Having someone actually agree with the Path's principles is surprisingly horrifying.

Doesn't this depend on what the virtue is? It didn't sound like the choice was up to the victim. If it's forcing Miles to perfect his violin playing, that probably doesn't involve wrecking the Path.

The choice isn't up to the victim, but it's not up to the Path either. There's a correct virtue for each person. A Miles' correct virtue is going to involve wrecking the path. (There are some people the Path would make perfect violin playing, but Miles isn't one of them. You know the thing people say of "X isn't a career, it's just my job?" Imagine another step up from that of "X isn't my vocation, it's just a career." If violin playing is your vocation, it might be your virtue.)

So if a Sherlock (one of the ones who plays violin) had already been on the path a few times it might have to reach and perfect their violin playing, but it would probably never get there for a Miles?

...So I actually have someone who's not really awake but definitely at least mumbling in their sleep who might actually like this.

Ari posits that his Virtue is destruction and/or rage, and that in lieu of taking his actual trials he's just going to furiously attempt to murder the Angels until he can actually accomplish that, which probably qualifies. (Ari doesn't like the Angels.)

Sally absolutely hates everything about it, but absent any possibility of escape, goes through her creativity-oriented vision quest with robotic precision. After winning, she builds a rocket with her perfected skill and launches herself into the sun. (This is a standard failure mode for Sally.)

Zanna is irked by the whole affair, but eventually gets into the spirit of things. By the end, she's a perfected engine of either justice or cruelty, depending on whether she's a benign or malign model of Zann. Either way, the world is fucked.

Zafira, who is a character who I haven't really put anywhere but is my default video game protagonist, is looking at the Path and rubbing her hands in glee. She wants to run that shit over and over until she's on a first-name basis with the Angels. She is going to speedrun the Path until she no longer has attributes that are not perfect. Fuck cardinal virtues, Zafira wants cardinal everything.

Deekin wants to go home, but eventually manages to hone his cuteness to a monoatomic edge in the face of all odds. When he returns to Faerûn, he develops into a Charisma Singularity and annihilates most of the continent before coalescing into an antimatter copy of Jar Jar Binks.