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Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns

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MJ12 Commando said:
JB CCXXXII: Reunion

Outside, the skies are overcast, and spitting rain down on an ancient city.

One woman sits on the opposite side of the table to another, younger-looking woman and an older man, in a cafe in the middle of Paris. The two women look like relatives-possibly sisters or cousins, for all that one of them is the biological mother of the other. The last time she had visited this cafe, it had been decades ago. She had been younger, and known under an entirely different name.

But it seems like the decades have passed this little cafe by, preserving it in its own pocket of frozen time. There's still something reminiscent of that old fateful day in the poise and tone of the clientele. The place still smells of cocoa and coffee, as if the old scents had permeated into the woodwork and stone. The lights are still the weak incandescent bulbs she remembers from back then. And they're sitting at a table which looks identical to how it was when Jazmin Blade gave her life, and her daughter, to the Union. Everything of the cafe brings back memories, but they hurt less now.

Even the damn coffee cups are the same.

Jamelia finds it fitting for this reunion. That day changed the lives of all three of them in a single instant. And now they're all here, bearing the scars of Jazmin's choice. There's Jamelia herself, dressed in a conservative suit and a lilac headscarf, fresh from noon prayers. Bearing the memories of a woman who chose a form of death rather than face her pain like old wounds, the pain numbed by scar tissue. Is she Jazmin? So much has changed-and not even their bodies are the same anymore, Jamelia's mind altered by conditioning and drugs, Jamelia's body changed by nanotech and surgeries and retrovirals after Moscow and London.

Sitting next to her is Harlan, dressed like the professor he's been for years before they put him out to pasture, rather than as Screaming Owl, psychic interrogator and special forces murderer. He's traded away psi-amps and black commando fatigues for beige coats and turtleneck sweaters and khaki slacks. But like all of them, he can't run away from the past. He carries that burden through the ballistic fiber in his clothes, the targeting HUD in his glasses, and the holster hidden by his piezoelectric armor-lined coat. He looks at Elissa more than Jamelia, his expression a melange of regret and disappointment and anger and resignation, shifting erratically between one and the other. He's here mostly because of her. He wanted to see her again, he said. But now that she's in front of him again, he clearly doesn't know what he wants to say or do.

Elissa - or is she Alice? - sits across from Jamelia, barely touching her coffee. The way Elissa looks at Harlan, then back to her, then to Harlan again, her expression flickering between disappointment and anger and determination, makes it obvious that she's not happy to be here. Why should she be? She was abandoned by her biological mother. She ran away from her adoptive father. And now she's here to meet both her failed parents, almost certainly not of her own free will.

She doesn't look too much like Jamelia. Some of it is just the demands of her work - the little changes add up over the years, and when they give you back your face it's never quite the same. But there's more of Starling in Elissa's appearance than Jamelia would like. She has her father's nose, and his eyes. Her black hair still falls in front of her face, veiling her behind a self-made mask. Despite that, Jamelia recognizes a bit of Jazmin in Elissa's expression, that single-minded 'for the mission' dedication.

Are they a dysfunctional family? Are they something else? Jamelia's not sure. But there are more important concerns for her. "Elissa. You wanted to talk to me," Jamelia says. She leaves the statement open, waiting for Elissa's reply.

"I'm not here because I want to be here," Elissa says. Her tone is flat. Controlled. "I'm here because a high-ranking 'Crat forced me to pass a message along to you. I didn't expect you to bring him here, though." She glances over at her adoptive father. "He's backup, isn't he?"

Harlan opens his mouth, then closes it again. He doesn't say anything. "I'll go stand watch," he says bitterly. A brief flicker of some emotion, too quick to catch, appears on Elissa's face, and vanishes. Harlan stands up and stomps out the door in a huff, slamming it shut behind him.

Neither Elissa nor Jamelia say anything for a few minutes, just looking down at their cooling drinks. Neither of them wanting to say much of anything. And perhaps, for all their training and experience in diplomacy and interrogation and investigation, neither of them know what they should say in this situation.

Finally, Jamelia decides enough is enough. "Who asked you to send me a message?" she asks suspiciously. She already has started to narrow down the list of suspects. Only a handful of people would go to these lengths to deliver a message. And several of them might want her dead. Jamelia looks at Elissa, remembers details from requisitioned threat briefings and memories of child-raising. Powerful psychic, psychokinetic and telepathic, capable of manipulating EDEs-especially ghosts. Founded a craft, military or paramilitary training incorporating components of NWO tactical training.

Despite everything, Jamelia is already thinking of how to solve this puzzle, and it's another harsh reminder to her. Jazmin might have sacrificed anything for her daughter, trusted her unconditionally. But Jamelia isn't going to let herself get assassinated just because someone might have used a familial connection to get at her. Jamelia's hand discreetly slides down to her holster, touches the cool polymer of the Union-issue handgun.

"General Aleph. Head of Panopticon. I don't understand why he couldn't have just sent you an email," Elissa's mask breaks, and she spits each word out with unconcealed resentment. Jamelia's not sure if Aleph's the only target for it. "But what do I know? I don't get access to all your backstabbing and politicking anymore. I wanted to escape it!" She takes a deep breath.

Jamelia says nothing, even if something twinges in her gut. It's truer than she likes. Over the past year and more, she's mostly been facing off against other Technocrats. There's good reason for it, but that doesn't make what her daughter says untrue.

"He wanted you to hear this: 'You know the stakes at play because you found the Truth. Remember your sacrifices. All of them. Don't render them meaningless. Don't make them all for nothing'."

Jamelia's lips curl in a frown. "That's it?" But she loosens her grip on her weapon slightly.

"That's it," Elissa says. "Five cryptic sentences. That's all he wanted me to tell you. So if we're done…"

She starts to think about what he meant. Jamelia knows, of course, that he dissolved Panopticon and vanished. Either dead or in hiding. To go to these lengths to find a way to send this message meant that it must be important. And to use Jazmin's daughter for it-that was another message. And someone with the knowledge of the General would have been able to suspect or even confirm temporal distortions. Time travel. Or did the General mean Jazmin with that statement? Did he mean Jazmin giving up herself, her body and mind and memories, to become a weapon for the Union? Is that the sacrifice he refers to? Or...

There's the sound of cars from the road outside. Elissa rises, dusting off her hard-wearing black coat, and turns to go.

Something aches inside Jamelia. Maybe it's a memory of Jazmin, who really had loved her daughter. Or of Illiyeen, not wanting to see another motherless girl toughened against the world. Maybe it's just the effects of endless regrets, droplets wearing away at the stone wall of her mind until a few words can break through. "I know you have questions. Ask them."

"Why?" Elissa asks. Jamelia says nothing, and Elissa's face hardens. "Are you getting sentimental? Is a 'crat assassin wanting to know how the daughter she abandoned and then had raised living a lie concerned about her daughter's upbringing? I'm doing quite well, thank you very much." Elissa's words are angry but not hateful.

"She made a mistake." Jamelia admits, looking Elissa right in the eye. "She made a mistake and compounded it with more mistakes."

"You're talking about- Illiyeen-" Elissa chokes, and her eyes are wet with tears of anger or sorrow or both "-like she's someone else entirely."

"It's going to be easier - for both of us - if we continue doing so," Jamelia says, keeping her own doubts out of her voice. "What you want from your biological mother, I can't give."

Elissa stares at her for a while silently, before her head dips fractionally in a slight nod. "So what are you to me?"

Jamelia gives that more thought than she would have a year ago. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No. I don't." She pauses. There's the sound of rain outside, a melancholy sound. Rivulets of water run down the frontage of the cafe windows like tears. "Serafina is doing well, by the way." A distraction, maybe. Or a way to put her mind at rest. Or to move away from a topic she doesn't want to talk about.

Elissa can't hide the flicker in her eyes; of relief, of suspicion, of doubt. "Why bring that up?" she demands.

"When I spoke with her when trying to work out what happened in Mexico City, she mentioned that she thought that you'd been made with my DNA." Jamelia smiles weakly. "It was very hard to avoid letting anything slip. But she is doing well."

The other woman is silent. Then; "I'm glad to hear that." The most defensive option around. Not willing to show she cares too much. "So why did you select her as a second-in-command?"

Jamelia raises her eyebrows. "Because she's a very talented doctor and a natural-born leader. Surely you've seen that." And that's the truth.

"Well, that's… good. That's good." Elissa hovers where she is, on the edge of leaving, held here by unseen threads she could so easily break.

Wrapping her hands around her coffee, Jamelia meets Elissa's eyes. "My offer was real," she says. "I know you have questions. Maybe you can walk out the door, but you'll always wonder what would have happened if you'd stayed. If you hadn't turned away from the truth."

"Projecting, are you?"

"Yes." Her shoulders slump slightly, remembering the pain of the memories revealed to her in the Realm of Hollywood. "And even if you get a chance later, everything will have changed. So if you have questions, if you have anything you want to know, ask them now."

A hitch in her voice.

"Please."


The Writing's On The Wall: Elissa has many questions about who she is. She doesn't have any expectation that any of them will be answered fully and honestly, but this might be the only time she gets to ask any of them. And she's not going to give up this chance to understand what's hiding underneath those lies. Choose three questions for her to ask.
[ ] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[ ] "Who are you, exactly?"
[ ] "Why did you come?"
[ ] "What did he mean? Why was this so important?"
[ ] "Why are you hunting me?"

For You I Have To Risk It All: How and why does Jamelia answer the questions? Note that answering fully spends 1 Willpower to suppress Chameleon.
[ ] Fully. Because Elissa deserves to know.
[ ] Fully. Because there's no reason not to hide it.
[ ] Fully. Because blood matters, despite all else.
[ ] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

[X] "Why did you come?"
[X] "What did he mean? Why was this so important?"
[X] "Why are you hunting me?

[X] Fully. Because blood matters, despite all else.
Adhoc vote count started by TaliesinSkye on Apr 7, 2019 at 8:24 PM, finished with 10 posts and 9 votes.
Click to expand...
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "What did he mean? Why was this so important?"

[X] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "Why did you come?"

[X] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "Why did you come?"

Alice knows that the man who raised her was not her biological father so it would be logical for her to want to know who her real father was. Simarily asking Jamelia who she was is another no brainer, after all, understanding one's parents is something that people often want.

[X] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.

I think this is a good direction for her story, Jameilia wants to bury the past and help create a better future. Absolution fits these objectives greatly, especially considering that Jamelia should be well aware that as the fight against Threat Null progresses the odds of her losing her life will remain a very real possibility. So Jamelia has even more reason to seek remission from her sins.
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "Why did you come?"

[X] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.
 
Last edited:
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "What did he mean? Why was this so important?"

[X] Fully. Because Elissa deserves to know.
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "Why did you come?"

[X] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "What did he mean? Why was this so important?"
[X] Fully. Because Elissa deserves to know.
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "Why did you come?"

[X] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "Why are you hunting me?"

One question about her father, one about her mother, and one - ultimately - about herself.

For You I Have To Risk It All: How and why does Jamelia answer the questions? Note that answering fully spends 1 Willpower to suppress Chameleon.
[X] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.

I don't think Jamelia is attached to the idea of people deserving to know things, and I don't think she's doing this just because they share genes. So it's a toss-up between simple practicality, which I don't like - and her doing it because of internal reasons. Not because Elissa is her daughter, but because Elissa is her regret - a slight but important difference. Jamelia does have a habit of stealing agency, and while she's not an awful person she's also not massively sentimental. Elissa is ultimately an agent in Jamelia's struggle to reconcile her past with herself here - just as Jamelia is ultimately a bit-player in Alice's own inwardly-focused quest. I wouldn't call it selfish, but both of them are... mm... self-centred. In the sense that what they do is About Them, and in Jamelia's case About The Union is just an extension of her own strong belief in it.
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "Why did you come?"

[X] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "Why did you come?"

[X] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "Why did you come?"

[X] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.

We spent a long time time pushing Elissa towards inner piece, and these put to rest the biggest questions she has remaining. And Jamelia's spent a long time with her regrets. I think it's time she tried to change that, just a bit.
 
It seems that of the original party, Donald is the only character who has not changed their virtue/vice or acquire Enlightenment 6.
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "Why are you hunting me?"

[X] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.

"Why are you hunting me?" is a reminder that Blanc and Clock are taking this personally. Giving it narrative weight now might make for an exploitable weakness in the finale.
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "Why did you come?"

[X] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.
 
[X] "He said my father was another Operative. Who was he?"
[X] "Who are you, exactly?"
[X] "Why did you come?"


[X] Fully. Because this is the closest to absolution that she'll ever be able to get.

Kid's gonna want to know who her parents are. That means asking who the father was and asking who Jamelia is if she isn't exactly Illyeen or "her birth mother" anymore. And if JB isn't her mom then why is she here is the next logical question.

Jamelia isn't here for Alice, she's here for herself. So answering honestly means acknowledging that truth to herself as much as it means opening up to Alice.
 
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Update CCXXXIII: Unburdening
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    • JB CCXXXIII: Unburdening

    Rain falls outside the windows. Creeping down the glass frontage. Painting the world in melancholy. Jamelia's shoulders slump slightly, remembering the pain of the memories revealed to her in the Realm of Hollywood. "And even if you get a chance later, everything will have changed. So if you have questions, if you have anything you want to know, ask them now."

    A hitch in her voice.

    "Please." Jamelia says it because it's the closest thing to forgiveness Jazmin can get. A chance to explain herself. Jamelia doesn't want sympathy, and she's sure Jazmin wouldn't and Illiyeen wouldn't. But maybe she wants to be understood.

    Just this once.

    One of Elissa's hands taps on the table unconsciously, distractedly. The younger woman's still slightly tense, and at any moment she could choose to relax and stay there, or get up and leave. For once, Jamelia isn't in control of the situation. She hasn't rigged the game. She doesn't know what Elissa would do. She doesn't want to know what Elissa could do. For a moment, she sees the world the same way the masses do, out of choice. Out of respect.

    For a moment, anything could happen. Elissa is poised halfway between leaving and staying.

    And then the tension leaves Elissa and she slumps fractionally into the chair. Elissa picks up her drink, takes a sip-maybe because she's thirsty, maybe because she wants to put this off for a few moments more. And when she puts her drink cup back down, hands shaking ever-so-slightly, she asks her first question. "Why did you come here? You aren't claiming to be my long-lost mother. You erased yourself from my memories and never crossed paths with me again until now. Why show up?"

    "I was curious," Jamelia says, truthfully. She wants to lie, to conceal, to hide something that could be used against her. But she's so old now, and so tired, and ever since the UCs and the time machine, she's been able to feel possible futures, soft and mutable, harden into the nigh-immutable cage of history. She's cheated the cold prison of causality once, and she knows in her bones that she can't cheat it again. She wants someone to remember her.

    And she remembers what Winston said, moments before his death.

    "You killed me with my own teachings. You'll go on to teach them to others. Maybe in the end, that's all that men and women like us get…" He swallows. "Do it. Take my legend and make it part of your own."

    In the end, maybe this is the only chance she'll get for something resembling absolution. In the end, maybe the most she can hope for is to be remembered as a flawed woman who tried to do the right thing, who tried to make the right decisions but still made many mistakes in her life. Perhaps that's the best case, to be remembered as a person, not a hero or villain. For someone to remember that she was a person of both virtues and flaws, for someone to be able to understand why she did what she did.

    She doesn't want to be turned into another caricature of herself when - if - she dies, the inconvenient facts edited out because someone needs a legend. Or a bogeyman. If she wanted to be part of Threat Null, she'd have joined it years ago.

    "I was curious why you'd contact me," Jamelia continues. "I know now that you're Jazmin's daughter. But that doesn't mean you'd have any reason to seek me out. Even if you knew who I was to you- if you somehow decided to sift through every childhood memory for inconsistencies- trying to find someone like me would take far too much effort for too little gain." Jamelia knows what you look for when you're dealing with a defector. You look for hidden compulsions, secondary personalities, personality edits. Not seamless deep-level memory edits designed to hold up against psi-agents and NWO psychoconditioning.

    Jamelia Brown was a weapon, and her memory edits could be rough, as long as she kept her edge. Elissa al-Hallaq's memory edits were to ensure her daughter wouldn't be damned by the sins of the mother. And perhaps they were the last vestiges of kindness in an old mentor, before age and failure transformed him and made him bitter and cruel.

    "It wasn't easy," Elissa admits. She gazes past Jamelia, watching the people going by, her eyes avoiding Jamelia's own. "But when you've got a deferred death sentence from a Crat bigwig with his own personal murder squads that was important enough to deliver in person, it tends to focus you."

    Jamelia nods. "Jazmin tried to keep you from living this life."

    Now Elissa fixes Jamelia with a cold stare. In that moment, she suddenly looks much more like her mother. What does it say that this is something they have in common? "I know, but it didn't work," Elissa says icily. "And good intentions aren't everything."

    Jamelia returns Elissa's gaze, and there's a wordless understanding there.

    "You found me, sent that message to a dead-drop. To do that takes some skill, resources, and desperation. How did you do it?"

    Elissa considers lying, considers deflecting, considers just not answering. But she suspects that at this point, it doesn't matter. Christos Barberis is dead. And she doesn't owe him enough to keep his secrets to the grave. "Christos Barberis," Elissa says, and she enjoys seeing Jamelia's eyes widen just a fraction. It's petty, but it satisfies her to see the surprise in her eyes. "He knew who you were. He knew your True Name. I know you're going to dismiss its relevance as a bunch of 'Reality Deviant Nonsense,' but-"

    "I've seen stranger things in this world," Jamelia interrupts curtly. "But I'm surprised he knew my name and didn't ever take advantage of it."

    "I am too," Elissa admits. "He might have saved it for this very meeting." Ever-so-fractionally, her lips crease into a frown for a split-second, and Jamelia knows exactly what it means. She's not happy with Christos Barberis.

    "So why would he help you find me on behalf of a senior Technocrat?" Jamelia wonders. "I hardly think he'd be working with General Aleph in a grand conspiracy."

    "I don't fucking know." Elissa hisses, quietly as to not get anyone's attention. They're both warding the conversation with jammers and psychic noise, but that's no reason to throw all caution to the wind. "Maybe there's something deeper at work here. Some grand plan that made them allies of convenience. Although what that might be, I don't know. Maybe he's just a sucker for dysfunctional family reunions."

    Jamelia suspects that Elissa is right about the alliance of convenience. Threat Null is something bigger than the Ascension War, big enough to perhaps create another grand understanding, the same way the Nephandi did in the 1940s. But how much would Elissa know about Threat Null? About what she's dealing with? She'll have to find out later.

    "General Aleph said my father was another Operative. I don't think he'd have mentioned it if he didn't think it was important for me to know. Who was he?"

    Ah, those painful words. Jamelia isn't the same woman Jazmin was, and there's still a twinge deep inside, like a bit of old shrapnel in a scarred over wound that shifts and reminds you of its presence when you move your arm just wrong. "What can I say? How much time do we have?" she says out loud.

    "You said you'd answer."

    "And I will. It's just… among other things, I still don't remember everything," Jamelia admits. "But I first met him New Year's Day, 1977. He'd just transferred to the team I was in. I didn't like him at first. He was arrogant, out of touch, cocky. But he was also intelligent, caring, and actually good at his job. He and Jazmin became friends. Then lovers."

    "He had a melancholy streak."

    "A melancholy streak?" That's touched a nerve, and Jamelia isn't quite sure why.

    "Black moods; dark thoughts." She swirls her coffee. "Especially whenever a mission went wrong, or he felt he'd failed. He was always a bit of a perfectionist. And when he couldn't live up to that, he'd close in on himself."

    "Why didn't your Technocracy pump him full of drugs to get rid of that?" Elissa doesn't bother to hide her disdain; her pain.

    "Because he hid it, of course." Jamelia is surprised she asked. "Men are like that, especially high-performing Operatives like that. No one wants that kind of marker to go on their file. Not just because it would get in the way of promotions, too. Because having that kind of weakness written down opens you up to having it used against you." She lets out a little sigh. "And because he was from an emotionally repressed British upper class military family, too."

    Jamelia waits for the shoe to drop. She knows where this is leading. It takes all her self-control to stop from deflecting, from interjecting in a way which might avoid the question.

    "What happened to him?" Elissa asks.

    "He went Nephandic. He saw too much horror, was betrayed one too many times. Betrayed others one too many times," Jamelia admits. "I thought it was my fault at first. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't."

    Elissa is silent. For too long. "You moved to talking about 'I' midway through," she says.

    Jamelia doesn't blink. "So I did," she says, trying not to let anything show.

    "So who is 'I?'" Elissa asks. It's a question Jamelia hoped to avoid. "Who is Jamelia Belltower?"

    "What answer would you like?" Jamelia asks, and although her question is cutting her tone is gentle. "I was hoping you wouldn't ask that question," she admits ruefully. Before Elissa can retort angrily, or get up and walk away, Jamelia continues. "I know who I was born as. I know who your mother was. But I don't know who I am now."

    "People change with their experiences."

    "Normal people aren't a composite overlay of tactical programming on a set of fake memories. Does that make me someone else? I don't know. When did the Ship of Theseus become a new ship? When does the marble slab become the statue?"

    "So are you or aren't you my mother?" Elissa asks flatly. "I'd like a simple answer."

    "Yes and no. I remember what she did and why. Both the kindnesses and the cruelties. I remember how desperate she was to save you from this life. But I'm not her. When she chose to give you up, she chose to join a NWO augmentation project in exchange. That was the price she chose to pay."

    "By augmentation you mean-" Elissa starts.

    "Psychological conditioning." Jamelia finishes, her tone clinical. "Paring away unnecessary human weakness, the weakness that led her to fall for a teammate and to go rogue. Drugs and brainwashing to damp empathy, to ensure her loyalty was ironclad. The woman who left the facilities was stable and useful, but stable in a place where no sane person should be. Was that woman the same woman who walked in?" Jamelia asks, rhetorically.

    Elissa pauses, quietly staring at her coffee. "That doesn't matter. People's lives change. People's minds change. Yours was just a little more drastic than most. But other people have gone through drastic changes in their lives, too, and they've been forced to adapt," Elissa says bitterly. "Do you think you're the same woman?"

    "I don't know." Jamelia admits. "I don't know," she repeats. "I've seen so much in this world. I've done so much. And in the end I still don't know who I even am."

    Even she doesn't know what she'll say, now that the mask has broke, but then Harlan interrupts. And even if what he says is ominous, it's almost a relief for Jamelia, to have such a ready made excuse to avoid the topic. "Hyena," Harlan says over her subdermal communicator, his voice flat and cool. Jamelia instantly tenses slightly, because she hasn't heard that tone from him in decades. The tone of the professional killer, not the professor or the bitter old man. "I've been on overwatch." Standing on a roof bending photons around him with the power of his mind, perhaps. Or hiding amongst the tourists and citizens, just a harmless old man who nobody needs to pay attention to. Harlan's proud, but not proud enough that he wouldn't use his age to his advantage. Nobody survived very long in HELMETSHRIKE with that sort of pride. "Trouble's here. Two paramilitary elements just stopped near your location and are running some sort of operation nearby. I've tapped their comms already but they're not giving me any useful information, just status reports I can't place. Either they're really taciturn by nature or they're expecting their comms to be compromised."

    Elissa's face looks almost sympathetic, unaware of Harlan's warning. Maybe it's a trick of the light, maybe it's genuine, but Jamelia doesn't have time to figure it out. Even as Elissa starts to say something, Jamelia interrupts with the bad news. "We have trouble. Armed personnel, multiple teams," Jamelia says, as Harlan feeds her more information.

    "Are they coming for us?" Elissa whispers, any sympathy fading from her face like a mirage.

    "They shouldn't be." Jamelia says. She knows that she's taken all the proper steps to hide from observation. Elissa has, too. To find her would take a lot of effort, and she'd probably have noticed. Outside of a connection she hasn't considered, their presence must be a coincidence. And yet- "But that's no guarantee," Jamelia finishes. She finishes her drink and gets up casually. Scanning the streets and the crowds, all of which look undisturbed for the moment. She has some time, then. Not much. But she'll have enough time to decide what to do.

    Ambushed!
    Jamelia has been given a heads' up that a paramilitary strike team is heading to some incident near her. It might be a coincidence, but it probably isn't. Her reaction is to:
    [ ] Observe: There's no reason to engage them without full information. She wants to know who they are and what they want. She plans to double back under stealth and shadow them, just to confirm that they're not here for her.
    [ ] Evade: Whatever this means, it can't be a good sign. Get out of their search zone before doing anything else.
    [ ] Ignore: Moving now might draw attention to you, attention that you don't want. Just stay here, and act calm. You're armed, and you'll be able to improvise in case they're coming for you and know you're here.

    Does Jamelia expect Elissa to join her?
    [ ] Yes. (Write-in: Why?)
    [ ] No: Elissa's a survivor, and she's not familiar with who Jamelia is. For all she knows this is a trap for her specifically. Even if this wasn't a trap, trying to coordinate with someone she's not familiar with is going to be difficult, at best. Let Elissa go her own way.

    What is Harlan doing?
    [ ] Scanning: Harlan himself has a lot of useful spheres for these purposes. He can observe the firearms officers and find out quite a lot about them, while laying low.
    [ ] Moving to Backup (1.2x): Harlan has a bad feeling about this. He's going to discreetly move in the direction of the paramilitaries in case Elissa needs the assistance.

    Harlan himself has Enlightenment 5, Mind 4 (Assassination), Correspondence 4 (Portals), Forces 3, Prime 3, and Spirit 4 (Control). He gained the last one from the experiences he's had in the Umbra and after you've left him to do his own thing.

    Elissa has Arete 5 and these spheres: Correspondence 3, Entropy 1, Death 3, Dimensional Science 3, Forces 3, Life 3, Mind 4 (Control), and Time 3. Elissa's gained a little more knowledge of the Ixoi (in her Entropy) and learned a lot about Correspondence under that paradigm.
    Adhoc vote count started by MJ12 Commando on May 27, 2019 at 12:38 AM, finished with 46 posts and 26 votes.
    Click to expand...

    Adhoc vote count started by MJ12 Commando on May 27, 2019 at 12:39 AM, finished with 19 posts and 8 votes.
    • [X] Evade: Whatever this means, it can't be a good sign. Get out of their search zone before doing anything else.
      [X] Scanning: Harlan himself has a lot of useful spheres for these purposes. He can observe the firearms officers and find out quite a lot about them, while laying low.
      [X] Moving to Backup (1.2x): Harlan has a bad feeling about this. He's going to discreetly move in the direction of the paramilitaries in case Elissa needs the assistance.
      [X] Yes. (Write-in: Their conversation isn't done, but more importantly if evasion fails and it comes to a fight they can both agree that their chances of survival are better together than if they're caught alone.)
      [X] Yes. Because Jazmin gave her life for Elissa, and Jamelia only exists because of that. It's a debt to her own birth, insofar as such a concept exists. Or maybe it's just a memory of Jazmin's willingness to die for the same of her daughter bleeding in. Jamelia isn't sure, and she doesn't have the time to analyse her own motives.
      [X] Observe: There's no reason to engage them without full information. She wants to know who they are and what they want. She plans to double back under stealth and shadow them, just to confirm that they're not here for her.
      [X] Yes. (Write-in: Why?) Because this conversation isn't finished, because run or fight it will be easier with somebody watching her back and offering up knowledge, because if Elissa wants a chance to avenge herself upon Jamelia this is it, and because she hopes against hope deep down that she can have have a healthy human relationship with her daughter and not fail her, or Starling, or her earlier self.
    Click to expand...

    Adhoc vote count started by MJ12 Commando on Jun 2, 2019 at 5:22 PM, finished with 19 posts and 8 votes.
    • [X] Evade: Whatever this means, it can't be a good sign. Get out of their search zone before doing anything else.
      [X] Scanning: Harlan himself has a lot of useful spheres for these purposes. He can observe the firearms officers and find out quite a lot about them, while laying low.
      [X] Moving to Backup (1.2x): Harlan has a bad feeling about this. He's going to discreetly move in the direction of the paramilitaries in case Elissa needs the assistance.
      [X] Yes. (Write-in: Their conversation isn't done, but more importantly if evasion fails and it comes to a fight they can both agree that their chances of survival are better together than if they're caught alone.)
      [X] Yes. Because Jazmin gave her life for Elissa, and Jamelia only exists because of that. It's a debt to her own birth, insofar as such a concept exists. Or maybe it's just a memory of Jazmin's willingness to die for the same of her daughter bleeding in. Jamelia isn't sure, and she doesn't have the time to analyse her own motives.
      [X] Observe: There's no reason to engage them without full information. She wants to know who they are and what they want. She plans to double back under stealth and shadow them, just to confirm that they're not here for her.
      [X] Yes. (Write-in: Why?) Because this conversation isn't finished, because run or fight it will be easier with somebody watching her back and offering up knowledge, because if Elissa wants a chance to avenge herself upon Jamelia this is it, and because she hopes against hope deep down that she can have have a healthy human relationship with her daughter and not fail her, or Starling, or her earlier self.
    Click to expand...
     
  • Threadmarks
    • One day I will realize what I can and cannot write before I start a quest, and not end up setting things up so the final resolution of plot points is largely 'things that make me turn into a mushroom and vanish underground to feed on rot until the sunk cost fallacy convinces me that I probably should finish this damn thing' :V
     
    MJ12 Commando said:
    Does Jamelia expect Elissa to join her?
    [ ] Yes. (Write-in: Why?)
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Riiight. We can't vote Yes without working for it. Even though narratively there's no way they actually split up, or that doing so wouldn't lead to them meeting up again anyways.

    Maybe one way to go about this is that, contrary to Jamelia's expectations, (but in line with her desires,) Elissa is the one to decide to stick together?
     
    MJ12 Commando said:
    One day I will realize what I can and cannot write before I start a quest, and not end up setting things up so the final resolution of plot points is largely 'things that make me turn into a mushroom and vanish underground to feed on rot until the sunk cost fallacy convinces me that I probably should finish this damn thing' :V
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    "All I wanted was to write a quest about giant robots punching evil vampiric god-abominations in outer space, but instead I'm writing about the family drama of an emotionally repressed killer superspy"
     
    [X] Evade: Whatever this means, it can't be a good sign. Get out of their search zone before doing anything else.
    [X] Yes. (Write-in: Their conversation isn't done, but more importantly if evasion fails and it comes to a fight they can both agree that their chances of survival are better together than if they're caught alone.)
    [X] Scanning: Harlan himself has a lot of useful spheres for these purposes. He can observe the firearms officers and find out quite a lot about them, while laying low.
     
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