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

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[X] Meritocracy: Your Executive's Guide to the Latest in Syndicate Developments
[X] Dressed To Kill: A Periodical for Operatives, by Operatives
 
[X] Vapor Online Cloud Software Service: Syndicate Agent CHIP Programs (Compatible with ItX/NWO Upgrade Drivers)
because the idea of Donald being able to buy someone AWESOME SKILLS is something we haven't really used and sounds interesting

[X] Ivory Tower Academic Review Volume 52, Issue 34
Yay academics. However the real question is what happens when the NWO finds you scraping Techno JSTOR for your boss :V
 
Tempted by Strypgia's vote, but i will go with

[X] Meritocracy: Your Executive's Guide to the Latest in Syndicate Developments
[X] Dressed To Kill: A Periodical for Operatives, by Operatives

Mainly because i still believe that Jamelia being amnesiac is a chance for her to look at things she doesn't tend to look at usually, and her going both Operative and Ivory Tower is pretty much her main focus usually.


EDIT: Hhahahah, seems like my instinctive thought that it was about Jamelia is probably wrong. Might change vote if it's confirmed, but i'll see.
 
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[X] Meritocracy: Your Executive's Guide to the Latest in Syndicate Developments
[X] Ivory Tower Academic Review Volume 52, Issue 34
 
[X] Meritocracy: Your Executive's Guide to the Latest in Syndicate Developments

Because Donald needs something interesting to read on the way here. And by Donald, I really mean Rosencrantz, because Donald left it out when he went to the toilet, and then Rosencrantz crammed the entire document while he was busy.

[X] Dressed To Kill: A Periodical for Operatives, by Operatives

I'm hoping this is going to be about clothing. Seriously, to the plebians and the Masses, the difference between models of NWO issue suit and the careful nuances between shades of black, charcoal, midnight, obsidian, onyx, carbon and noir may seem unimportant. But it says so much about internal power struggles within the New World Order. For example, did you know that since 1999, the diversity of the shades of black and similar colours used has really reduced? The Order is the most homogeneous it has been in a century. Kremlinology has nothing on NWOlogy.

Oh, and there's probably some bits about other less important things, like secret organisations and successful missions and threats to be wary of and how to handle attacks of Belltoweritis if you're a modern Augmented Agent. You know, in between the important articles on ties and reviews of new models of laser watch.
 
[X] Meritocracy: Your Executive's Guide to the Latest in Syndicate Developments
[X] General Health and (Bio) Warfare Quarterly: The Official Progenitor Periodical
 
[X] Dressed To Kill. It's just too alluring.

[X] Vapor Online Cloud Software Service. For reasons stated Sarpedon along with the fact it could also help Jamalia.
 
[X] Iteration X Biomechanical Field Division/Progenitor Applied Sciences Battlefield Medicine Field Manual
[X] Vapor Online Cloud Software Service: Syndicate Agent CHIP Programs (Compatible with ItX/NWO Upgrade Drivers)

We can always use more posthuman warriors and this can never possibly be a bad idea. Ever.
 
Vote for Enlightened Science Field Manuals
[X] Iteration X Biomechanical Field Division/Progenitor Applied Sciences Battlefield Medicine Field Manual
[X] Dressed To Kill: A Periodical for Operatives, by Operatives

This should give us some nice ideas for how Rose, Serafina, and Jamelia can apply their skills. And because Jamelia having a wardrobe full of suits in every shade of black, each one just right for a certain purpose, amuses me.
 
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[x] Meritocracy: Your Executive's Guide to the Latest in Syndicate Developments
[x] Ivory Tower Academic Review Volume 52, Issue 34
Because our goals are starting to require larger-scale actions and manipulations than we've had to handle previously, so I'd like to see more examples of that.

Especially the ones that specifically cover how to influence or control organizations.

Trying to repair the Technocratic Union is going to be hard enough, between the groups who want to destroy or subvert it, and those that profit from the status quo and don't realize how inherently unstable it is. We'll need to understand the tools we'll be using to do it - and the ones that will be used to oppose us.
 
Part 2: You Best Start Believing in Ghost Stories, Miss Belltower

Senex's last words still haunt her.

"You see," he had said, "the war, the true war is not one of soldiers, of guns and blades and armies. They are but distractions, toys and props which we play with, while we fight the real battle."

"What's the true war?" she had asked.

"You've fought it for forty years and you haven't realised?" he had said. The line went dead.

She's still in shock.

There's no way she's old! How can she be fifty? Sixty? How old does she have to be to have fought 'this war' for forty years? She doesn't look that age. Nowhere near it. She's not unaging on top of everything else, is she? Does she have to… to cut the heads off her rivals to avoid withering and dying?

Wait. That was a film. She's pretty sure of it. She thinks she watched it. Or possibly kicked down the door to a room of people who were watching it. That's also distinctly possible.

The eastern horizon is getting slightly lighter. All it does is contrast the iron grey sky and the slashing rain. It has been slow going through remote rural roads. She's had to dodge any major road and work from a map she found tucked into the side of the door. She's had her phone turned off since then, in case someone tried to track her.

She strongly suspects Senex could contact her even if her phone was off. Call it a hunch. Or paranoia.

She slows at a crossroads, and checks the signpost. To the right is 'Shalebridge – 2 miles'. The safehouse is meant to be close to that village. Well, it's not really a village. It's more of a hamlet. If that. And she's found on the drive that there's a bit of her which feels very uncomfortable using miles. She must have spent a lot of time abroad, she considers. Miles feel like a… stupid system of measurement.

He had told her to listen to the radio, that it would be her clue, and that the station didn't matter. It's some early morning call-in show, hosted by some posh British guy who in Jamelia's possibly-professional opinion sounds like he's trying too hard to sound attractive in a bumbling clumsy way, and with a call-in audience which seems to be largely composed of lonely women working night shifts.

"Look, what happened to Moscow could happen here! Nuclear terrorism is a real danger! I'm planning to move well away from London, because everyone knows the terrorists would attack there! Somewhere in the country. And what about those Chechens? You can't trust anyone like that! The immigrants down your street could secretly be Chechens, especially if they're from Eastern Europe. That's why we need to bring back the death penalty and…"

"Oh… gosh, and… well, let's just move on from that," the host says, "and gosh, I know I've got a lot of pretty young women in my audience who probably shouldn't have had to hear that, so I'm very, very sorry. This is Dave and you're listening to Dave Break. Who's on line two?"

"Hi Dave! Dave! Dave! I know the truth. You have to listen to me."

"Ah, Sasi." Jamelia thinks she can detect a note of weariness in his voice. "What discovery do you have for us?"

"It's so obvious. I can't believe no one else has realised it. I just suppose it shows the innate stupidity of most people. Urgh. So annoying. It wasn't always quite so clear for me, but now? Now I can see everything. So, anyway. The thing you have to understand is that it's related to the moon landings."

The host chuckles. "I suppose you're going to say they didn't exist?"

"Oh, no, don't be stupid," the caller says contemptuously. "Of course they happened. But the thing is, they were going on a long long time before the secret group which ran both the US and the USSR in the Cold War let anyone else know about it. They had to remove all the alien artefacts first. Some theories say that they're not alien artefacts, but they were originally made by angels. I like to keep an open mind about that, because I don't think there's enough evidence to say either way. But it went wrong! Can't you see that?"

"Mmm hmm."

"They missed one! So when normal humans stepped foot on the moon, it unleashed a plague of soul-eating aliens – or possibly angels – dating back to before humans evolved! Those entities were released and flocked down to earth and started eating souls and wearing their victims as puppets."

"Well, that sounds dreadful," the hosts says firmly. Jamelia can hear that he's humouring the woman. "Something should be done."

"Something can be done," the woman says firmly. "You see, we just have to find the hidden guardians who live among us, and…"

"I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to cut you off, because I have a new caller on line three. Hi, this is Dave and this is Dave Break. What's your name and what are you calling about?"

"Um, hello Dave. Um, yes, I'm calling about the changes to the education and health systems the Conservatives are doing. They're just deplorable. I don't know why they wants private companies to come in and run these academies and hospitals. They've been doing it ever since they got in power and it's really hurting morale. How on earth did they persuade the LibDems to go along with-"

The radio cuts out in a sudden wave of static, as suddenly as someone had flipped a switch. Jamelia flicks through the stations. Every single one. Static.

And there's the turn, just as Senex said it would be. It's a gravel track, barely above a dirt path, leading away from this minor road and winding around a hillside. There's grass growing among the gravel, to the extent that she can badly see it under the care headlights. Jamelia considers leaving her car entirely and walking, but it's raining heavily and she needs to get her vehicle away from the road. She'll need to find cover to park it under.

The gravel crunches under her tires, and the rain bounces off her metal roof. She's looking nervously around, hoping that no one has followed her here and that there's not trap waiting for her. And yes, she's a bit nervous that there might not actually be a safehouse.

But when she turns around the corner of the hill, there is a house built up on the hillside. It's more of a mansion, really, built in the late Baroque style. There's even a cupola. It looks like a little bit of early eighteenth century Italy dumped into the English countryside for no good reason. And then Jamelia sees that she was wrong. No, it isn't a mansion.

It was a mansion. Now it's a ruin. It sits amongst a copse which was probably once an ornamental garden, and there's a full-blown tree growing out of the cracked-open cupola. It looks like fire. But fire a long time ago, enough that nature has almost reclaimed the structure entirely.

No small amount of cursing is directed at Senex as she draws closer. He's sent her to a burned out shell. Then again, maybe that's just the cover. An old decaying building in the middle of the countryside which is legitimately unsafe to go in the middle of a strange radio blackout area into is probably a fairly good disguised place.

No. She doesn't think that, somehow. If she was picking a safehouse, she'd choose an utterly generic building on the outskirts of a city. Somewhere like this is… is too showy. She'd prefer to hide out in one of the small villages she'd passed on her drive here than this place. Somehow she damn well knows this is the first place she'd look.

The rain is, if anything, getting heavier. She's going to get drenched, even with her umbrella.

She parks her car under cover. Rummaging through the back, she finds a laptop bag with a laptop in it. Well, she doesn't need the laptop right now, but the bag could be useful. She fills it with the things she picked up in the Tesco Metro – the scissors, the hairpins, and the like – and then pads it out with food. If this place is safe, she can come back to collect the rest, but she wants to be ready with superficially innocuous tools.

She smiles prettily, and throws the bowl of sweet-and-sour dip in his face. He's blind and she grabs him, pulling him over the table as a human shield. His bodyguard has her gun out, but Jamelia has her hand on his holster, and with a twist she fires it twice into the other woman's gut. And then she's throwing herself out the window and…

Yes, thank you very much, memory, Jamelia thinks to herself. Yes, she can make use of improvised tools very well. And she has an umbrella.

The gardens smell strange. Yes, everything smells of rain and wetness and countryside, but there's something else. A sickly sweet odour, like… like perfume. Her nostrils flare. Yes, a perfume, but a perfume which is trying to cover something up. She follows the smell, distracted for a moment, and finds a rose garden in full bloom, growing malformed stunted grey-white flowers. The rain dances down on her umbrella as she stares.

Bending down, she examines a rose, a strange grey blossom growing out of season.

A rose. Something about that is familiar. She can't remember what. She brushes it with her fingers, and finds that the grey colouration comes from a thin layer of soot over the white.

Shaking her head, she continues, nerves screaming at her from a thousand subtle wrongnesses. There's nothing moving in the undergrowth. She can't hear any animals. It's just her, and the patter of the rain.

The front door is still intact, but there's nail holes over it, and a pattern of darker and brighter areas. Jamelia is willing to bet that there were boards nailed on it, before they were pried off. Yes, there's the damage from a claw hammer. Knock at the door? Jamelia snorts. Yeah, that's what anyone waiting for her in here would expect her to do. She doesn't trust Senex one bit. Even if he knows more about her than she does. Especially since he knows more about her than she does herself.

So rather than knock at the door, which is an obvious place for an ambush, or get in through the broken second story window she can see which is clearly bait, she edges around the building until she can see an area of the building where façade has fallen off entirely, exposing the underlying stone, and the roof has slumped. She'll be able to get in there, and most people wouldn't have a chance of scaling the wall there in the middle of a rainstorm. Of course, they might be expecting her to go through there, but she'll be expecting them to expect her and there's a limit to how many defences they can conceal there while still leaving it looking suitably degraded.

She keeps an eye on the building as she paces around it, keeping in the cover of the overgrown garden. But, no, there's no power in the building, no hum of a generator or anything like that, and nothing alive watching her from inside. Not even birds or bats.

Jamelia takes a deep breath. She folds her umbrella up, and tosses it up into the third storey area of slump. The bag joins it shortly afterwards. Working her hands, she paces back and forth, judging the best way up. If she can get her fingers onto that ledge there, she can walk her way up the drainpipe, and from there she can get onto that trellis – if it can support her weight. No, wait, there's that rough patch of brickwork she can use to climb there and…

It doesn't go quite as planned.

Rather than a carefully planned climb, she almost flows up the wall, in direct opposition to the water coursing down it. She leaps up onto the ledge, and somehow her trainered feet manage to find purchase in smooth brick, with each step pushing her further and further up. One push off the rusting drainpipe pushes her up an entire storey, and then she's comfortably crouched on a ledge three-fingers wide, and swinging through the broken window into the remnants of what was once a bedroom. Now it's a rotting shell, thick with moss, with the rusted framework of a cast iron bed half-slumped on the ground.

Jamelia pauses, testing the creaking, squawking ground, finding a safe place to stand. How did she know she could do that? Climb three stories easily in the rain? Jumping most of the way? No, she doesn't think she could do that.

"This young man is a prodigy! He was born to the sky! You are truly gifted by God!"

"Thank you, master."

She thinks Cemal could do it.

Shaking her head, she pushes those fancies from her mind. This isn't a safe place. She's high up in a rotting burned out shell of a building which probably burned down in… she narrows her eyes at the sight of the bed. Something like that was made a hundred years ago, she somehow knows, and the building burned down eighty years ago.

She pulls off her hoody, and wrings it out. It's still damp when she puts it back on, but she doesn't want to get hypothermia on top of all her other problems.

Stooping, she picks up the laptop bag full of food and her umbrella. She recovers the torch she brought and turns it on, the small spotlight dancing over the walls and showing decaying plaster. Testing the floorboards ahead of her with the umbrella, she makes her way to the closed door, keeping well away from the rotten hole in the floor. The dank wood complains and protests under her weight. She's not sure it could have held an adult man. The scent of rot and wet wood fills her nostrils, and there's something else under it.

Smoke. Coppery blood. The pork smell of burned human flesh.

Jamelia shivers. She knows those smells very well.

And she knows those smells are far, far too fresh for a building which burned down eighty years ago.

She touches the back of her hand to the closed door. It feels… warm. No, it feels blistering hot. But only for a fraction of a second. Her hand isn't burned when she checks it, and the door only feels cold and wet now.

Jamelia eases open the door, and narrowly avoids a two storey tumble. The floor beyond the door is missing. The wood has rotted away entirely, even if the stone walls still stand strong – albeit blackened. There's a door opposite to her, and she can see all the way down to what might have once been a dining room or a portrait gallery, through the lack of a floor.

She considers the area. This looks like servant quarters, she thinks, from the small rooms and the cheap cast iron beds. A house this expensive wouldn't keep the master or mistress in somewhere like this. And she can see the floor down in the gallery is stone in the spotlight from her torch. Much more solid than this wooden floor under her which she doesn't trust one bit.

Jamelia glances down, her brain judging leaps and drops for her. She can drop onto that joist, leap onto the opposing wall, slide down, and then land and roll. She'll be fine.

The floor creaks under her again. Finer than she'd be if she stays here.

She makes a leap of faith.



…​



Jamelia looks around this dark space, her torch dancing over the walls. Great suits of armour loom out at her. Anarchonistic suits of armour, with tarnished clockwork gears and pulleys lining them, and two hulking silver figures with what can only be boilers on their backs. There are portraits on the walls, too, and though the neglect and humidity have reaped their toll, she can pick out occasional faces. Some of them were under glass, and she'd swear they're as new as the day they were painted.

Of course, in some, the glass is shattered.

Because what she couldn't see from the high-up room were the bodies. Skeletons lie on the floor, wrapped in the tattered remnants of whatever they were wearing when they died. Smashed bones and severed limbs litter the place; there must be twenty, maybe thirty dead men in here, and more animals. Things which she thought were men at first, but on closer examination are revealed to be unmistakably apish, though too… too upright for an ape. And some of them were wearing clothing and carrying tools.

They were killing each other. That's all she can conclude. From the way the bodies lie, the black and grey uniformed men were with the apes. The other ones? They're far more disparate.

A cold chill runs down Jamelia's spine. This isn't a safe house, is it? It's a charnel house. What happened here?

She would leave. She would run. She would flee. Except for one thing. The crest on the peeling shield hung up at one end of the gallery. The motif, the icon; it's all familiar. And the words.

ipsa scientia potestas est

That's what her phone said. That's the first thing she read when she woke up.

She would escape from this place of men and women and near-men, dead eighty years. But she doesn't.
 
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[X] Iteration X Combat Operative Tactical Handbook
[X] Vapor Online Cloud Software Service: Syndicate Agent CHIP Programs (Compatible with ItX/NWO Upgrade Drivers)
​
 
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Meritocracy, April 2015 Issue
  • Threadmarks
    • Everyone loves Meritocracy so let's show you a preview!

    Meritocracy, April 2015 Issue

    Foreword by Vice President of Operations Andrew Kerrin

    Letters

    Guest Column by Enforcer Adrienne Veidt: Why Project J Is The Best Thing That's Happened To The Technocracy

    What's Hot In Fashion:
    Killer Style: The Imperator Tailoring Praetorian combat armor
    Worn under clothing, +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Appearance, +5B/5L soak with 4 Ablative HLs​
    AEZIR's civilian innovations: The Freya Evening Gown and the Baldur Power Suit
    +2 Appearance, +2 Charisma, Matter 2 self-cleaning, Matter 2 self-repair, +2B/2L soak with 2 Ablative HLs​
    New World Order "Bond Watches": Which One Is Right For You?
    Two Tickets to the Gun Show: Proper Firearms Engraving Techniques For The Enterprising Enforcer
    A description of various Forces 2/Mind 2 engraving techniques that both make the firearm more stylish and also improve its balance or heat dissipation capability (adding to Accuracy and intimidation rolls using the firearm).​
    The LX-5 Executive Limousine: Hedonism On The Run
    ​
    Editorial by Executive Ryan Moore: What The Fuck Happened To Moscow? - Black Swan Events And Why Statistical Forecasting Only Gets Noticed When It Fails

    Finance and Personal Welfare
    Market Corrections: How To Deal With Them
    Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and why they stay Rich and Famous
    Various foods, wines, and paraphernalia that are foci for Mind 3 or Life 3 self-improvement effects. Notes that long-term distortions of your true value via these methods may cause Market Corrections or cost significant amounts of value to retain (you need to pay 1 Prime Energy/day for boosting attributes via non-permanent-enhancement methods, pay the XP to raise the attributes, or suffer from Aggravated damage)​
    A Helping Hand: How humanitarian investment can reap huge dividends
    A Primal Utility 3/Mind 4/Life 4/Correspondence 4 effect that slowly improves the health, intellect, and welfare of a community, and makes them extremely loyal to their benefactors.​
    RAVANA Tricks You Probably Didn't Know About, by Financier Donald Sykes​

    Don't Hate, Assimilate: Exploiting The Wrong And Bad Ideas of Reality Deviancy for Fun and Profit

    Main Story: Classic Syndicate Procedures
    Strong Efficient Market Hypothesis: Primal Utility 2, Entropy 2, Matter or Mind 2
    Using hypereconomic principles, the Executive can enforce the Strong Efficient Market Hypothesis-that is that a market will perfectly reflect the desires and reality of the consumer base, even if those desires are secret. This allows the Executive to rapidly acquire whatever they want via a trade of a trivial amount of Prime Energy in exchange for the object in question.​
    Murders and Acquisitions: Life 3 or Mind 4, Correspondence 3, Primal Utility 4
    This Procedure uses deliberate attacks on a recalcitrant element's financial stability, inducing either stress-based heart attacks or stress-induced suicide. Furthermore, via clever legal maneuvering, the target's assets are liquidated into Prime Energy, allowing the executive to significantly invest in this operation and still have a positive rate of return even on the elimination.​
    Noblesse Oblige: Mind 2, Primal Utility 2
    Via financial gifts to a deserving receiver, the Executive provides the target a sense of general well-being due to their financial stability. Due to human psychology, this sense of well-being reflects with a significantly improved relationship between the gift-giver and the recipient.​
    High Value Target: Mind 2 or 4, Primal Utility 3
    Style isn't just important for business, it's also a lifesaver in war. An Executive in a high-threat situation can use this Procedure, oozing style and wealth from every pore, to induce the enemy forces to take the Executive captive and hold him or her for ransom, rather than for execution. This is obviously a stop-gap measure, but has saved many, many lives. Profit is the primary impetus of mankind, and even the most hardened terrorist understands that they need resources and funds to achieve their goals. Of course, there are many Enforcers who use their wealth and sophistication to do the same as an infiltration method.
    (Primal Utility 3 is use for countermagic to 'stealth' the effect against enemy detection and break enemy mind-shields)​
    Aphrodisiac: Mind 3, Life 3, Primal Utility 3
    Fact: Power makes you sexier. Fact: Money makes you sexier. Fact: You have tons of money and that gives you town of power. Conclusion: You are the sexiest thing to ride into sexy-town in a sexy car fueled by liquid sex.
    (this Procedure replaces your Appearance and Charisma scores with your Resource score. There are no obvious physical or anything changes. People just know you have a ton of money and power.)​
    Entertainment and Humor:
    Victor Wrestling Deathmatch 2015 Odds
    Help I'm Dating a NWO Agent: How To Survive Boring NWO Plays
    The Rejected Features List for the HITMark VII: Why Haven't We Created An Official Hooker Budget for Iteration X Yet
    Enemy Within, Season 4, Episode 5:
    In this episode of the internally filmed and funded Technocracy Drama, Agent Johnathan Barrett finds out that the enemy he is fighting are the residual noetic projections of the dead Technocrats from the Reckoning.​
    Ten Differences Between a Vampire and a Syndicate Executive
    ​
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • FYI: The vote for the other Procedures magazine is still ongoing. In fact, because people now know what they're roughly in for (note the format for them may be somewhat different than the format for Meritocracy) I'll reset the vote. Choose one.

    Vote for Enlightened Science Field Manuals
    [ ] Iteration X Combat Operative Tactical Handbook
    [ ] Iteration X Biomechanical Field Division/Progenitor Applied Sciences Battlefield Medicine Field Manual
    [ ] General Health and (Bio) Warfare Quarterly: The Official Progenitor Periodical
    [ ] Vapor Online Cloud Software Service: Syndicate Agent CHIP Programs (Compatible with ItX/NWO Upgrade Drivers)
    [X] Meritocracy: Your Executive's Guide to the Latest in Syndicate Developments
    [ ] Dressed To Kill: A Periodical for Operatives, by Operatives
    [ ] Ivory Tower Academic Review Volume 52, Issue 34
     
    [X] Dressed To Kill: A Periodical for Operatives, by Operatives
    Let's see some things Jamelia might be able to wear and/or issue to Bobs/Victors/Vanessas/Men in Black/grunts in general.

    Or interns, I guess. You know, if we really have to.
     
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    [X] Ivory Tower Academic Review Volume 52, Issue 34
    Because the other side of academia in the Union, other than Progenitor face- (and occasionally back-)stabbing is the NWO.
     
    MJ12 Commando said:
    RAVANA Tricks You Probably Didn't Know About, by Financier Donald Sykes
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Jamelia: "Donald......"

    Donald, bright and innocent: "Yes?"

    Jamelia: "Did you convince Rose to help you crack the encryption I put on the RAVANA keypad?"

    Donald: "You didn't tell me not to.":)

    Rose: "He said it was good practice for hyperstatistical encryption modeling!" :)

    Jamelia: "Where's my headache meds?"

    Donald: "Oh, try these, they're much nicer."

    Jamelia: ¬_¬

    Ten Differences Between a Vampire and a Syndicate Executive
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Henriette: "They could only find ten?"
     
    [x] General Health and (Bio) Warfare Quarterly: The Official Progenitor Periodical.

    WARCRIMES GOGOGO
     
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