[X] Donate to Anna (Unknown degree of rewards)
[X] Integrate as trophy onto her mech
[X] Keep a one or two as weapons and present the rest as gifts
[x] Elegant masquerade
you know I would like to point out, with how often we get into near death fight during the patrol and with how often we manage to trash our mech it might be smarter to just place it in our office instead of placing it on our mech where we will most likely lose it the next time *cough*next turn*cough* when we get into the invetable death fight and manage to trash our mech
[X] Donate to Anna (Unknown degree of rewards)
[X] Integrate as trophy onto her mech
[X] Keep full set and turn into display weapons
[X] Formal ball
Horray for alpha dragon solo kill. Ya we'll need light repairs but i'm sure Duchess Anna will let it slide...as soon as we slide her a gaint Alpha True Dragon corpse.
[X] Donate to Anna (Unknown degree of rewards)
[X] Integrate as trophy onto her mech
[X] Keep a one or two as weapons and present the rest as gifts
[X] Formal ball
Hmm. We sure we don't want to keep the corpse? We're building a hab next turn, so we'll have room for a lab, and we're just over two turns income to build it - the extra sci from the hab actually makes up the difference, if it gives its income immediately.
[X] Store for now (Opens up special research projects, -1 Economy a turn to store until finish researching or a Research Lab constructed)
[X] Integrate as trophy onto her mech
[X] Keep full set and turn into display weapons
[X] Elegant masquerade
Hmm. We sure we don't want to keep the corpse? We're building a hab next turn, so we'll have room for a lab, and we're just over two turns income to build it - the extra sci from the hab actually makes up the difference, if it gives its income immediately.
Assuming it only costs as much as a refinement to do research on (really unlikely), even with a lab it would take something like 9 years to complete (while never improving Sci generation).
It probably costs more than 50 RP. We probably wouldn't complete any project inside two decades. Might as well wait for more influence generation is in before we try to do that.
So, after we have build an enclave which of the buildings it can build do we build?
I think we should build a trade post. It's the option that has the best chances of preventing the nomads from wandering off, because they can sell any goods they produce there and buy any goods they might want. The wildlife parts sales would certainly be improved by it.
There's also that we need to build a trade post anyway, if we want to trade with Indigo Hammer. Well not only a trade post but a factory (or two) and a caravan as well, preferably by turn 10 and before turn 15.
So, after we have build an enclave which of the buildings it can build do we build?
I think we should build a trade post. It's the option that has the best chances of preventing the nomads from wandering off, because they can sell any goods they produce there and buy any goods they might want. The wildlife parts sales would certainly be improved by it.
There's also that we need to build a trade post anyway, if we want to trade with Indigo Hammer. Well not only a trade post but a factory (or two) and a caravan as well, preferably by turn 10 and before turn 15.
i was looking through the first page and the impovements, and noticed that some improvements have two fields as prerequisites, like this:
Hab [C&M/Sociology][0/1] (0/50).
Now does it mean there are two distinct and separate updates available, one for C&M and one for Sociology?
basically that we could have a maximum of one of C&M and one of Sociology for our habs?
Or does it mean that we only can have one in total?
And also what does happen if, for example, C&M would go up to level two while Sociology remained at level one?
i was looking through the first page and the impovements, and noticed that some improvements have two fields as prerequisites, like this:
Hab [C&M/Sociology][0/1] (0/50).
Now does it mean there are two distinct and separate updates available, one for C&M and one for Sociology?
basically that we could have a maximum of one of C&M and one of Sociology for our habs?
Or does it mean that we only can have one in total?
And also what does happen if, for example, C&M would go up to level two while Sociology remained at level one?
Sociology means we can (Reads as: are capable of, in addition to Science Influence) use Culture influence to perform research and refinement. It doesn't need the C&M tag to indicate Science can be spent.
C&M/Socio means that there's two means of refining hab space, from the standpoint of structural engineering (improved materials leads to improved building techniques, such as reduced structural support requirements/taller constructions without risking firestorm damage, etc.) and social engineering (improved sociology leads to improved space management and allows more cramped quarters without happiness penalties a la hyper-advanced city planning, etc.).
If I had to guess, I'd say that it consumes one or the other, but can be produced from either baseline.
Now does it mean there are two distinct and separate updates available, one for C&M and one for Sociology?
basically that we could have a maximum of one of C&M and one of Sociology for our habs?
Or does it mean that we only can have one in total?
And also what does happen if, for example, C&M would go up to level two while Sociology remained at level one?
Powerofmind is correct. Basically you are capped in the number of refinements available to you by the highest level of the base technology(s) that it is tagged with. So at the moment you can have 1 refinement to your habs, but if either Chemistry and Materials or Sociology goes to level 2, you can make a second refinement. If both are at level 2, you are still restricted to level 2. The base techs also influence how certain side research methods that don't use Science influence interact with things (Culture for Sociology, Military for weapon refinements, mostly).
[X] Donate to Anna (Unknown degree of rewards)
[X] Integrate as trophy onto her mech
[X] Keep full set and turn into display weapons
[X] Debauched rave
[X] Donate to Anna (Unknown degree of rewards)
[X] Integrate as trophy onto her mech
[X] Keep full set and turn into display weapons
[X] Debauched rave
[X] Donate to Anna (Unknown degree of rewards)
[X] Integrate as trophy onto her mech
[X] Keep full set and turn into display weapons
[X] Debauched rave
[X] Donate to Anna (Unknown degree of rewards)
[X] Integrate as trophy onto her mech
[X] Keep full set and turn into display weapons
[X] Debauched rave
Ella sat quietly in the hangar for her mech, just admiring the display of the skull that had been integrated into it. While there wasn't too much room to display it, they had fortunately been lucky in its dimensions and the technicians had been able to rearrange some of the communications gear on the shoulder of her machine so that the various antennas stuck through the holes of the skull and it formed a sort of shoulder guard. Hopefully it wouldn't get smashed in the near future, but the material was in some ways tougher than the underlying armour, and that was also the sort of risk you took to look that damn cool. Things had been hectic in the planning of the festival and centrepiece party she would be hosting, but being able to admire her mech was giving her some peace of mind, especially since once the technicians left the bay for her mech was one of the quieter locations in Razorleaf. Had there been more mechs it would likely never sleep, but with just her mech once repairs and maintenance were done it was locked up for security purposes and the techs went off to do other things. So with the repairs and modifications Ella had been coming down here to check the progress and get away from her job for a little while with the excuse of "needing to check on things".
Leaning over the rail on the inspection gantry lazily, Ella tried to set all the little worries and frets out of her mind. If nothing else, her near flawless victory over the dragon was going to reap major benefits and repair some of her damaged reputation. The frequency of some of the most dangerous creatures on Dandriss wandering into her area of responsibility was concerning... but for now she just had to set that aside and do her job. There was a good chance that the amount of activity would bring her grandmother in to put her own personal hammer down on any root causes, which was kind of the main job of the commander-in-chief. Figure out who needed the boot and then put a heavy mech sized boot up its ass.
There was a mechanical thunk as the main power was disengaged, casting the repair bay in weak red light that cast long shadows. Frowning, Ella realized that she must have been dallying too long and someone switched the lights from the mains to night mode. She sighed. Someone was going to get a thorough chewing out for this bullshit. Still, it was also a personal kick in the ass to get back to work. Turning away from her mech, she walked along the maintenance catwalk towards the access door. Spinning open the heavy wheel, she opened it up to reveal a dark hallway only illuminated by a single red light at the far end. Grumbling to herself, she began to carefully pick her way down the haul, hand running across the walls to help her to avoid tripping and falling over anything. By regulation there shouldn't be any tripping hazards here, but people could get lax about those sorts of things, especially since no one hand warned her about the lights switching off for the night.
Something prickled along the edge of her senses and all of a sudden Ella was on high alert. Snapping her head about to look back the way she had come, she found nothing but darkness there, the door closed behind her and lost to shadows in the dim red light. Turning back towards the other end of the hallway even as every hair on her body tried to stand on end in quiet panic, Ella found herself staring at the exit door, the red light above it flickering almost imperceptibly, but just enough to make the eyes ache at trying to catch the flashes of darkness. Placing a hand on the locking wheel, Ella went to open it only for that sense of panic to flash through her again.
Turning around, she looked up at her mech, looming over her silently, daubed in bloody light and shadows hanging from it like strangler vines. It was a thing of overt violence, the brutality of its forging stripping away any sentiments of humanity or even of gender. To Ella, her machine was neither a he nor a she but an it, a thing of war and nothing else. And yet when she clutched her fists, she almost felt the loaders of her weapons cycling. What did that mean about her?
Turning slowly away from her mech, Ella placed her hands on the door's wheel to open it. The flickering got worse, and she made a mental note to yell at a technician about all of this. Someone was slacking on the job and she wouldn't stand for that.
stay
Ella whipped her head and body around again, scanning the black corners of the space for any clue as to what might be out there. Her eyes picked up on nothing, for everything within the bay was utterly still. Her ears couldn't even pick up on the sound of the ventilation system at work, even if her skin could feel the gentle caress of the breeze the system generated. Head still turned into the dark bay, she turned the wheel and then stepped out into the hallway on the other side. Dark other than the distantly spaced red lights and flickering light leaking out from one of the rooms nearby, it caused Ella to frown deeply. Had there been a power outage? Why hadn't she been informed, the comm system should remain active on emergency systems. What was going on?
Moving towards the door that was slightly ajar and allowing light to leak out, Ella opened it to find the room itself was dark except for a computer monitor pointed away from the door, casting an inconstant bluish-white on the far wall, which then diffused out to the rest of the room and dribbled into the hall beyond. Going inside, Ella went around to see what was on the screen, to see if there was some clue as to what was going on. Coming around the desk, what she found was cycling images of all the grotesque indignities a human body could suffer at the hands of the reavers, captured in clinical glory. While she recoiled at first, after a second she realized that she recognized these pictures. Mostly because one in particular was almost impossible to forget.
The image of a man who, under their mental thrall, had gouged out his own eyes in an attempt to make what they were showing him go away. He had lived long enough to be recovered, but he had bled out from the damage done shortly after, a mad smile on his face even as one of his shredded optic nerves had lolled from the socket.
Ella knew what the next image in the cycle was. She knew what the next part of this presentation was. She knew she should look away...
She didn't.
Once every five to ten years a settlement would go dark. Never less than about five hundred, and never more than about two thousand, but all the same these groups would just vanish. No sign of them would be found for a few days, until they would abruptly be found again, as if they had never left, as if they had simply been hiding. Most were dead, dumped back in their homes, almost some sort of final irony, but the few that lived inevitably begged for death - and those incapable of begging were invariably too violently insane to be brought in alive. Flesh was twisted and distorted, like it had been made of clay and someone had used fingers to smudge it. People were mashed together into stomach churning monstrosities, arranged 'artistically' in perverse manners. Children stuffed inside parents stuffed inside grandparents like living nesting dolls. Individuals with their spines and limbs distorted so that they had to walk on all fours, fused with others in an approximation of ancient mythical chimera. Heads removed from one individual and connected at the ends of others, their mouths service to pass waste even as they silently screamed at their fates, their mouths unconnected to lungs.
People threw up viewing these images. Hardened combat veterans who had seen people transformed into bags of bloody offal would recoil from the mere mention of having to sit through that particular briefing.
Ella watched transfixed as the nightmare played itself out.
A sound like a flint straight razor playing itself over a steel cable under high tension roused Ella's attention away from the flashing images of human being impossibly twisted and reconstructed. Had she viewed the images or heard that sound on their own, at noon on a cloudless day, under a clear skylight, Ella would have been creeped out. As it was, the two together in a dark room with the facility apparently under emergency lighting was enough to snap her out of her reverie. Glancing about all around her as her heart started to accelerate towards a truly ludicrous beat, Ella still managed to beat back the panic in her mind. She was terrified almost beyond reason, but she didn't start screaming or flailing or running blindly in the darkness. Eyes darted back and forth seeking threats, but all she got were crazed shadows from the uneven light, and a slightly red tinted void from out in the hallway, the bright screen having ruined her night vision for the moment.
Something like a breath tickled the hairs on the back of her neck.
She whirled about, lashing out with a fist that only bounced off the wall with a painful clang. Clutching her hand to her body in agony, Ella found herself still completely alone in the room.
That horrible, scratching, screeching note, it's only gentleness its maddeningly low volume, returned at the edge of Ella's hearing. There for only a few of her painfully fast heartbeats, it was soon enough replaced by another barely audible sound, like long nailed fingers tapping on the metal walls. Blinking through the pain in her hand, Ella scanned all around her, trying to localize it, trying to pin down the source. It took her several moments to realize that there were multiple barely audible sources, and that they were all converging towards the dent on the wall where she had lashed out. As they congregated there, the sounds started to get louder and more excited, and images danced in Ella's mind of forcibly conjoined things, their fingers made from the joints of many, many hands; overly long and disgustingly articulated appendages. She saw multiple faces shoved together like clay busts, all vying for control of a jaw propped open by the impossibility of the connections of bone and muscle, all desperately trying to scream but interfering with each other.
She saw a bare metal wall faintly illuminated by a computer screen, the images starting to loop back around to the beginning of the horror show.
Ella ran. She ran out into the maze of shadowed hallways, the overly harsh red but underwhelmingly illuminating lights casting mad, angular shadows off of every obstacle and bend. Ella stumbled often, unable to find footing on the uneven ground. The labyrinth of hallways and pitch black rooms confused her and turned her around frequently, leading her back to the room with the monitor... or maybe different rooms, similar except for the content on their monitors that she never dared look at again. Somewhere in the maze, echoing through the halls, there was a mad violinist, playing a discordant tune on an instrument of metal and glass that screamed at the threshold of hearing at the musician's touch.
Ella ran and ran and ran and then she stumbled and went sprawling, smashing her lip on the foot of her mech.
Looking up, she found herself in the maintenance bay, her war machine looming above her. It was dark and brooding and the surface of its metal hide was cold to the touch, but it also had a definite solidity to it. There was something different about it this time. It looked too big, too massive, more like an exaggerated size from someone bad at estimating such things.
There was a loud mechanical thunk as a heavy duty circuit connected mechanically. Light lapped against Ella's feet and she turned around to find a spotlight shining down upon her grandmother's face, high up on one of the maintenance catwalks. She looked down on Ella and then asked, "Why are you here?"
"I... I got locked in when the power went off and..." Ella began to stammer, like she was six years old and had been stealing treats from the kitchens.
"No, why are you here?" Anna asked. More lights began to turn on, illuminating the endless rows of cloning tanks that stretched out to infinity, each filled with some new blasphemy against nature. "Why isn't my sister? My mother? Why you? You're a mistake."
Ella had nothing to say to that, her throat having suddenly seized up. She just watched as her grandmother moved forward, further into the light...
She was... was fused into her personal mech. Not just connected, but flesh and metal ran together and intertwined intimately. Cables of sinew, peristaltic tubing, ribs of metal, all blended together into a mad conglomerate of haphazardly assembled parts. Most grotesquely though was that hanging from the mech on hooks of bone and connected by metal umbilical were Anna's daughters, all naked and swollen with pregnancy. As she moved further into the light, biomechanical monstrosities could be seen dancing about at her feet, human things blended with the machine, faceless except for the porcelain masks that identified them as Anna's sons.
"You don't fit in, you don't conform to your proper use. Neither a son nor a daughter and unwilling to do the work of either," Anna stated. "Why are you here? What purpose do you serve?"
The giant biomechanical abomination moved in close so that Anna's face was but a hand's breadth from Ella's and said, "Why aren't you someone else?"
Whatever might be said next was interrupted by the door alarms going off, filling the repair bay with warning sirens and flashing amber lights. Caught by surprise, by the time Ella looked back at her grandmother, she and her brood were already fading away into the shadows. Ella ran towards the nearest door, but it wasn't there, she couldn't find an exit upon the smooth metal walls amongst the chaotic shadows. Hands desperately slapped against the metal, and all she got in return was pain and the tapping of mutilated fingers on the other side. An enormous clank caused her to turn around in horror as the bay doors began to open. Scanning the bay for answers, she saw that there was an open door on one of the walls, up on the top-most catwalk level, the pale bluish-white light of a monitor leaking out into the amber and red insanity of the bay. Running for a ladder, she began to climb, even as the doors ground their way open, and something began to flow through the opening.
Pale, almost translucent and yet not, it was like a liquid made of flesh, or a flesh made of liquid. It flowed quickly, but it had a viscous consistency that had bubbles and ridges like syrup. As the flooding of the bay began, shapes began to emerge from the material. Most were malformed approximations of human body parts, but sometimes entire people would emerge from the bubbling ooze, complete but for their faces. She could identify them as all the people she knew and worked with on a regular basis, but the faces blurred like reavers under her sensors and were utterly indistinct, only some strange instinct letting her know that they were people she knew. She frantically climbed the ladder, but the doors kept opening, letting the amorphous flesh pour through and flood the bay faster and faster. And hand reached out for her and grabbed her by the leg, the grip unyielding but surprisingly soft, warm and almost sensual.
The warmth and softness caught her off guard, and Ella found herself unable to focus. She looked at her goal, the room with the monitor displaying the atrocities of the reavers, and its connection to the red and black maze beyond. More and more of the faceless figures grabbed onto her, and it feeling so good and yet so wrong... and she just gave up. She let go of the ladder and let herself be carried off into the growing flood of liquid flesh. It surrounded her. Enveloped her. Defiled her. And yet she did not resist, even as the groping tendrils of inchoate matter squirmed all around her. People without faces and yet with identities pawed at and caressed her, even as she drowned in them, an ocean of humanity she could not tell apart. She reveled in it as their touch brought warmth and relaxation, and yet she also wanted to vomit at the intrusion and horror of it all.
Pain lanced through her, and then a great force began to haul against the sucking viscosity all around her. Breaching the surface of the liquid flesh and writhing bodies, every part of her naked body covered in slime from her submersion, and she found the giant biomechanical Anna reeling in the hook she had caught Ella on, a spot on her mech reserved for her now contented granddaughter. Even as the bone hook she was caught upon ground against her, sending electric knives running up and down her nerves, and the amorphous and amorous flesh tried to suck her back within itself, Ella just felt numb.
She was a mistake.
She didn't belong.
She had no friends.
She was lonely.
She was a womb for continuing the line, for continuing her grandmother's ambitions.
She was a machine to dance to the whims of another, devoid of her own desires.
She was a vessel to be filled.
Everything froze.
Only able to move her eyes, she looked up and found a girl on the ceiling amidst a circle of clean light that somehow kept out the bloody bruise light of the rest of the bay. She half-sat, half-knelt in a giant circle of chalk that defined the boundary of light, it's edges covered in complex geometric shapes, while in the centre she was drawing with childish strokes a strange shape, like a fractal leaf. Her appearance was foreign and yet achingly familiar, like it was something that Ella should know. The girl looked up at Ella, hooked and half submerged in lustful liquid, and smiled. It was like she was on the floor and Ella upside-down on the ceiling.
In an incongruously adult voice, she said with childish glee, "It's the branching."
Waking did not come easily or painlessly, but there was a definite transition point where she suddenly knew that she was no longer asleep. That she was laying in her own bed, the only fluids clinging to her, her own cold sweat. Control took far too long to return to her limbs, and even then she felt drunken and sluggish in her movements.
Stumbling out of the tangle of sweat soaked sheets, Ella leadenly made her way to the bathroom. What she found in the mirror there, waiting for her, was a complete mess of a woman. Her hair was tangled to the degree that she was almost impressed, her eyes were bloodshot and had dark bags hanging under them, and she generally looked like she had been drinking hard liquor and getting in fights with people for the past week. Her head thumped against the mirror as she learned against it in exhaustion. Maybe using the cube - maybe taking it in the first place - had been a mistake, especially when she was so busy with preparations for the festival and party she had going on. She was already exhausted from poor or even no sleep, and the responsibilities...
And yet, she didn't want to turn the damn thing off. Not yet. It... it was showing her things, things about herself, making her confront the horrors lurking in the shadows of her own mind.
Head still propped against the mirror, she looked down at her hands.
She was lonely.
She was surrounded by people, but she always had to consider the political ramifications of her actions. She always had to be careful, be cautious with what she did, because she couldn't afford to screw up like her mother had.
And yet she had her raunchy, filthy, lustful grandmother who gave no fucks about who she fucked - even if she did care about who she had kids with - as her primary role model in life. She had other members of her family who were also poor role models for sexual self-control, and yet she was expected to be careful about her actions because she was already in a precarious political position... so she had to remain distant from everyone even as her own desires and instincts and general model of behaviour said that she couldn't get too close before she had weighed the pros and cons. She had to act like a machine, to treat others like machines, and sometimes... sometimes...
Sometimes she wondered if she preferred it that way.
Trudging back to bed she collapsed into it but found no interest in even attempting to sleep. Instead, she pulled out one of her meeting plans to discuss budgetary issues for the upcoming festival and other issues around it. There was, as always, a question of how much money to throw at things. Maybe making up her mind would help clear her head.
Probably not.
But maybe.
Ella gains Stressed (-1 Physique, -1 Management, -1 Intrigue)
Festival Budget (Cultural)
[] Min (5 Culture)
[] Advanced (7 Culture)
[] All-out (10 Culture)
Festival Budget (Economic, capped at Cultural Investment)
[] None (0 Economy)
[] Small (2 Economy)
[] Significant (5 Economy)
[] Advanced (7 Economy)
[] All-out (10 Culture)
AN: Apologies to everyone, this took longer than I expected as I had to run it past the staff a few times to avoid going overboard. Thanks to the mods who reviewed this though and kept me from making an ass of myself. Hope this hits the right level of creepy that I am going for
Initial calculations show we can spend 5 culture, gain 0 from the festival and still have 1 more than needed for a hab.
However, with the additional income promised by the economy trade, the hope of actually gaining some influence from the festival instead of it being a complete sink, and the hope of influence from Dragon killing...
