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

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Arty son, tons of mundane arty.

The Army's field exercises has them shelling the daylights out of the Caern first. Second and oh third.

A fortified position is target practice.
 
fitzgerald said:
Arty son, tons of mundane arty.

The Army's field exercises has them shelling the daylights out of the Caern first. Second and oh third.

A fortified position is target practice.
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Cute thought - but by this point, that land is likely either a national part, or owned by Garou/Kinfolk. Getting that through legally is going to be a trick.
 
Actually, I think this is worth looking at a little more: how are the Garou able to pull off attacks like these? Their ambush on us involved multiple vehicles, which probably had to be enhanced beforehand in order to keep up with us, along with heavy weapons and a pre-arranged close assault. This was not an afternoon affair: they needed local assets, from the humans driving the vehicles to the cars themselves, to make this all work. How are they pulling this off even in the middle of England?

Option 1: Their local caern hidden well enough that no one's found it yet.
Possible, but if so, how good is their camouflage for them to pull off something like that?

Option 2: There is no local caern. All, or almost all, of their gear and personnel came from a secure location much further away.
Again, how?

Option 3: Their local caern is in a known location, but so well-fortified that Iteration X doesn't or can't take it on directly. (buried deep with plenty of Garou inside, that kind of thing)
This is the most likely option IMO: they know where the caern is, but actually digging the werewolves out is too much hassle for the post-99 Technocracy to do so long as the Garou don't do anything too crazy.

Option 4: Their local caern is in a known location, but Iteration X can't take it on due to some other reason. (difficulty of a coverup, possible worldwide backlash, etc.)



I figure this is worth looking into while we're around a bunch of Iteration X cyborgs who probably have the inside scoop on what's going on. We're hardly any kind of equal for the local Iteration X base's firepower, obviously, but we have resources like the Dosh King and his satellite access that might come in handy.

EDIT: Derp, I dun goofed. Re-reading the earlier snippet:
"You got it. I counted nine confirmed shapeshifter kills and three possibles. Those bastards have been making trouble for us for a while. It was probably inevitable that they'd bite off more than they could chew." It's the first bit of emotion that the ARC IV's pilot has shown.

"What sort of trouble?" Henriette probes.

"The usual sort where they kill soft targets like Sleeper civs commuting between major British Constructs. I guess they got bold and thought they could take on some real targets. Of course, now that we've got bodies, it should be easier to localize their base and wipe it out. Are you interested? Standard bounties apply."

"Of course I-" Henriette starts, to be interrupted by Jamelia.

"We're definitely interested, but we have plenty of pressing concerns. We'll keep our options open for now." Jamelia says. She doesn't want to commit, but if General Garrison is only going to be impressed by fighting the Ascension War with guns instead of Comptroller Lovelace's more subtle-but still entirely effective-method of fighting the Ascension War, a show of force could be good. And it'd keep Kessler out of trouble if he was gunning down shapeshifters.
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So, "they don't know where it is" indeed.
 
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The caern is nonmoving, werewolves don't generally have much stealth, and mages are really, really good at finding things. It's almost certainly not the "hidden" option.
 
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Remember; they're actually really hard for Technocrats to track, especially Iterators, due to a shortage of DSci. Any werewolf who's not an idiot (and the ones giving the orders are only idiots in the kind of ways which mean you last long enough to give the orders) will have any deployment involve hopping to and from the Umbra until you lose them. No Dimensional Anomaly for werewolves, after all, so they can just casually jump.

After all, all you need is a mirror large enough for a wolf to fit into. They literally sell those things in shops.

And the pilot of the ARC, at least, believed they didn't know where the werewolves were operating from, and that getting the bodies would help with tracking them. I can believe that. Tracking down a cairn would be work for a dedicated VE hunt-team without lots of bodies to help you via the POWER OF CSI, and they were always scarce, even pre-1999, because of the rather painful attrition rates (and resultant phobia of mirrors among veterans).

Now, that doesn't mean that the place is only reliant on secrecy. But it does mean that yes, it's quite plausible even Technocracy high-ups don't know where they're working from. Of course, it's also plausible that moderates are permitting a low level of attacks because the werewolves haven't been brazen enough to attack anything major, and we'd have to be worried about tipping the hand pro-hardliner by going on a werewolf hunt.
 
Okay. The hopping back and forth is a thing (so the rote I had thought of before wouldn't do it) but let's take Donald. [Time 2, Correspondence 3, spirit of I think 1, but if he needs more there's more]. Scan the general area by satellite, using the special camera filters. Watch them hop in and out of the local meatspace and the local umbra. Track them individually. This is quite doable - and they might have some werewolf mojo that increases difficulty, but he isn't spending any resources other than a bit of time to try, so he can just keep trying. Also, as previously noted, the technocracy isn't short on ways to add dice. Now, if someone like Donald can get it done all by himself, while sitting in his office (possibly with a few interns) then I guarantee that a major ItX base has enough pull to get someone to do it for them. If nothing else, they're handing enough resources to the VEs to get them to run a scan or two.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Remember; they're actually really hard for Technocrats to track, especially Iterators, due to a shortage of DSci. Any werewolf who's not an idiot (and the ones giving the orders are only idiots in the kind of ways which mean you last long enough to give the orders) will have any deployment involve hopping to and from the Umbra until you lose them. No Dimensional Anomaly for werewolves, after all, so they can just casually jump.

After all, all you need is a mirror large enough for a wolf to fit into. They literally sell those things in shops.

And the pilot of the ARC, at least, believed they didn't know where the werewolves were operating from, and that getting the bodies would help with tracking them. I can believe that. Tracking down a cairn would be work for a dedicated VE hunt-team without lots of bodies to help you via the POWER OF CSI, and they were always scarce, even pre-1999, because of the rather painful attrition rates (and resultant phobia of mirrors among veterans).

Now, that doesn't mean that the place is only reliant on secrecy. But it does mean that yes, it's quite plausible even Technocracy high-ups don't know where they're working from. Of course, it's also plausible that moderates are permitting a low level of attacks because the werewolves haven't been brazen enough to attack anything major, and we'd have to be worried about tipping the hand pro-hardliner by going on a werewolf hunt.
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On the flipside, though, is there any reason we shouldn't put in the effort? As mentioned, we have both bodies and the trained personnel to play CSI with them: we might as well use that as an object exercise with Serafina and the biomedical interns, combine that with some scanning by Donald and a little extracurricular research by Williams, and hey, we just might get somewhere. At minimum it's good brownie-points material and also good practice for our interns, and if we hit paydirt, then we might get something useful to work with. Jamelia and Henriette are our two field agents atm, but I don't see why we couldn't rope in Donald and Dr. Rosario to take a poke at things; Serafina will probably get better results from an autopsy than an Iteration X Biomechanic, after all.
 
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The ambush does seem a little well planned though. It might be just paranoia, but their operation smells vaguely of an attempt to test us at...something. Using completely expendable patsies.
 
Although... still worth noting that the "Harvest the Caern" side quest does make it that much less likely that we'd be able to do awesome kung-fu fighting in North Korea.
 
Sirrocco said:
Although... still worth noting that the "Harvest the Caern" side quest does make it that much less likely that we'd be able to do awesome kung-fu fighting in North Korea.
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Given how Moscow escalated from "check out some stolen artefacts, yo" to "EVAS AND TAC-NUKES AND THREAT NULL OH MY", are we sure we want to go and do kung-fu fighting in North Korea? I mean, given the level it's already at? You just know it's only going to escalate more if we go there.

... of course, not going there may count as "taking time off", and we all know where that leads, so to a certain extent we may be screwed either way.
 
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Soundtrack

"Tell me what you see," Serafina orders.

Biomechanic Arthur Patel reflexively scratches his short beard. "Large chunks of mangled flesh, ma'am?"

Bespectacled Thomas Park, standing beside him, is quicker to the punch. "Garou, young, probably wolfborn. Killed by free-electron laser, with death occurring via traumatic blood loss," he announces crisply.

Serafina nods neutrally in response, happily noting that neither the Sikh Biomechanic or the Chinese Pharmacopeist seem to have any trouble with the other. She loved field work in part because of the escape from escape office politics it offered, and she'd happily murder both Enlightened interns in their sleep if they tried to start a new feud. "Gentlemen, these corpses come to us courtesy of Agent Langley and Iteration X's newest four-wheeled toy. Our job is to find out where they originated."

Park nods, her fellow Progenitor already studying the nearest Garou remnants from behind his old-fashioned glasses. "I'll see about sequencing the specimen's DNA," he announces, while reaching for a syringe.

"Mr. Park, does DNA sequencing require the attention of Enlightened personnel?" Dr. Rosario asks rhetorically.

The young man blinks, confused. "Err...no, ma'am."

"Then please explain why you're choosing to do the task yourself, instead of delegating it?" Serafina says, pointing to the pack of unEnlightened research staff standing uneasily behind the two men. The assembled men and women shift uneasily as their boss's boss looks over them, and Serafina smiles to put them at ease.

"I'll-I'll do that right, right away, m-ma'am," Park stutters. He turns around, trying to collect his thoughts, but a petite woman preempts him to the task. The young man flounders, clearly unused to leadership, and Serafina intervenes to set the lab to work. She directs Park to begin hypermathematical calculations of the Garou's DNA degradation, and turns back to the robed Sikh still standing at ease.

"While I appreciate the object lesson, I'm not sure what I can do to help," Arthur Patel says, spreading his arms in a placating gesture. "I'm a Biomechanic, not a 'proper' Progenitor like Mr. Park over there. My job is to stick metal bits into people, though sometimes I diversify into sticking people into metal bits," he says, waving his hand at the surgical equipment tucked in a corner of the rented space.

In response, Serafina reaches down to the nearby Garou corpse with a gloved hand and withdraws a single metal shard. "As you can see, this was recovered from the creature's hide post-mortem. I believe it's a sliver of a .30-06 bullet, one used by the Masses, which somehow managed to penetrate the Garou's skin. I need someone," she says with a significant glance at the Sikh Biomechanic, "to find out the nature, composition, and origin of this inorganic oddity."

Patel dons gloves and gingerly accepts the metal sliver. "Yes, ma'am. Point...uh, taken."

Serafina sighs at the terrible pun. Dear heavens, I hate teaching.

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Serafina (+Patel, +Park, +Sleeper science team, +lab equipment): Correspondence 2, Mind 2, Life 1, Matter 1.
"Gentlemen, we can retrace them. We have the technology. We have the capability to track these things down. These Garou will be those clues. Better...stronger...in more bits and pieces...oh to hell with it, we're going to autopsy their remains and find out where these things came from."
 
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Sirrocco said:
Okay. The hopping back and forth is a thing (so the rote I had thought of before wouldn't do it) but let's take Donald. [Time 2, Correspondence 3, spirit of I think 1, but if he needs more there's more]. Scan the general area by satellite, using the special camera filters. Watch them hop in and out of the local meatspace and the local umbra. Track them individually. This is quite doable - and they might have some werewolf mojo that increases difficulty, but he isn't spending any resources other than a bit of time to try, so he can just keep trying. Also, as previously noted, the technocracy isn't short on ways to add dice. Now, if someone like Donald can get it done all by himself, while sitting in his office (possibly with a few interns) then I guarantee that a major ItX base has enough pull to get someone to do it for them. If nothing else, they're handing enough resources to the VEs to get them to run a scan or two.
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I'd just like to point out, that aside from the fact that Jamelia has already been told they don't know where it is but that the bodies should let them, is that dimensional science is a very rare sphere in the technocracy, and even assuming said rote works Enlightened scientists with that array are even rarer.

Iteration X in particular has even lower numbers of people with Dimensional Science in the convention then average, due to a convention wide ban that lasted till 1999 on the shere, instituted by the Computer/Autocthon. As for the VE the whole point of the tensions between them and the other convention's is that they take all these resources DESPITE giving very little back to the TU in the name of fighting Threat Null.

Therfore their ability too carry out such sweeps is likely very limited, whether through rare VE assistance or possibly even rarer in house elements capable of doing it. While theoretically Iteration X could likely find them if they had focused on them, the post 1999 Technocracy is stretched for resources and is always getting more to deal with. It's very likely that, given tll now the limited themselves too ambushing soft sleeper targets of little strategic or tactial importance, Iteration X chose too employ said limited resources on much more important targets.

As for Donald being able too do something that a major Iteration X can't, well, first of all let's keep in mind each convention is hyperspecialized by the very nature of the TU (to the extant there are entire sphere's that certain convention's have near monopolies on which DS may very well be) arguably inevitibly due to it's goals. While there is definitely overlap and attempts too branch out, for the most part convention's let eachothertakecare of the tasks there spezialized in, allowing the TU too in theory always have the best tools for the job. The VE in house attempts due to circumvent are the exemption, not the rule and is only considered due too their conspiracy.

In that context the idea that members of different convention's could be capable of tasks that no one in a entire base of another convention could do isn't that farfetched. Especially when that person is a exceptional Enlightened Scientist, and like all Jamelia's direct subordinates he is. Aside from the incredibly high enlightenment and diverse set of spheres, Donald not only managed too break open The Syndicate's most dangerous internal conspiracy, but early mastered the spirit sphere in his short stint with the CoX.

It's easy too overlook him due too his hands off role during missions, or his laid back demeanor but Donald is just as capable and dangerous as his peers in the right enviorment. Which just happens too usually be a office setting.
 
Candesce said:
There is something we'd need to look into, yes.
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Sirrocco said:
Although... still worth noting that the "Harvest the Caern" side quest does make it that much less likely that we'd be able to do awesome kung-fu fighting in North Korea.
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Um,... guys? Girls? Remember:
Aleph said:
Given how Moscow escalated from "check out some stolen artefacts, yo" to "EVAS AND TAC-NUKES AND THREAT NULL OH MY", are we sure we want to go and do kung-fu fighting in North Korea? I mean, given the level it's already at? You just know it's only going to escalate more if we go there.

... of course, not going there may count as "taking time off", and we all know where that leads, so to a certain extent we may be screwed either way.
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Yeah. This. Moscow escalated significantly because we got a little sidetracked hunting hemophages and helping unfark the Russian Union elements. I don't want us to get so busy following the white werewolf down the hole that we come up later to find I-50-B31 has assimilated all of Northumbria and Threat Null is about to be elected to Parliament.
 
Strypgia said:
Um,... guys? Girls? Remember:
Yeah. This. Moscow escalated significantly because we got a little sidetracked hunting hemophages and helping unfark the Russian Union elements. I don't want us to get so busy following the white werewolf down the hole that we come up later to find I-50-B31 has assimilated all of Northumbria and Threat Null is about to be elected to Parliament.
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True, but on the other hand, is there anything else more productive that Serafina or Donald could be doing right now? They could do some networking, sure, but poking around to find a hidden nest of werewolves doesn't seem like a terrible use of their time. After all, if we do strike paydirt we could just hand off the intel to Iteration X instead of running the whole operation ourselves, and buy ourselves some influence with the hardliners.
 
Actually, that's a good point. Check around the base, see if they know where the caern is or not. If they do, then great - leave it to them. If they don't, then we put our people to work trying to find it for a day or two, then pass that info off.
 
Strypgia said:
Um,... guys? Girls? Remember:
Yeah. This. Moscow escalated significantly because we got a little sidetracked hunting hemophages and helping unfark the Russian Union elements. I don't want us to get so busy following the white werewolf down the hole that we come up later to find I-50-B31 has assimilated all of Northumbria and Threat Null is about to be elected to Parliament.
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First of all, I'm not sure that's the point Aleph was trying too make. Of course, I think her original point might not neccesarily hold up due too MJ's statement that Panopticon quest doesn't need too constantly escalate and top itself, but I digress.

Second of all, I think there's a very strong arguement that the situation's aren't comparable. Taking down a garou Caern, while a profitable endeavor, has it's it's main use in how helping General Starborn and his men take it down can help us build a rapport with them, whereas refusing to do so could damage our image in his eyes. It's my understanding that the point, the real point of this trip for Jamelia is too gather resources and influence to fight Panopticon/Threat Null, reform the TU, and strength it's pragmatic faction. Assisting on the assualt on the Caern would likely, in my opinion, directly aid that task.


Plus, let's keep in mind that while it's easy to forget in the face of the climatic battle, at the time we weren't exactly clued in on what was going to happen, while both deaing with the Haemophages and unfucking the Russian TU were big deals. We had evidence too suggest the Baali were poised too summon Threat Null, and had a real chance of taking over the local Camarilla, which were the de facto rulers of Moscow at the time. We were also told, or atleast strongly hinted, that not only was the Russian TU in danger of falling under the sway of Panopticon or becoming one of it's prime recruiting grounds, but that if it was left as is the Russian It X hardliners taking over and starting ww3. These were existential threats to modern civilization, and arguably de facto win conditions for Threat Null. If we hadn't gotten sidetracked, we may have very well doomed the world as much as if we had lost the Eva fight.

Not to mention that our goal had been too investigate museum when we first came too moscow, but what would have clued us in the most too stop the plan was investigating Exordium. How did we learn about it, too gain that option? Not by investigating the museum, but by first meeting with the Russian Union, who refered us too the Tunguskans, whose leader showed us Exordium. So arguably what put us in the best situation to stop the Autocthonian plot was getting sidetracked, and that had we gotten more sidetracked instead of following upnon existing/older leads on the panoptico/threat null plans we would have avoided the situation.
 
Nuts! said:
Honest question: what explicitly can we do with 80 Tass?
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Well, single-use devices are going to be 1 Prime Energy per dot of sphere in their effects plus 1 point for additional power/duration per batch (and with a high dice pool and assistants, you can make very large batches since it's 1 use per success on your Enlightenment roll-and you will be using Attributes/Abilities to enhance those rolls). So Henriette can make a lot of single shot Forces 3 anti-tank ammo, Serafina can make a lot of combat drugs.

Actual Devices and such are going to cost significantly more-you can probably safely assume that 80 Prime Energy will get you a couple of guns or suits of power armor assuming Henriette or Kessler buys Prime 3 (she has the XP to).

Note that at Primal Utility 4, Donald has the ability to generate tass for people to use via investment. So this investment may or may not be useful dependent on whether or not you want Donald to rush for PU 4 instead of buying, say, a few more dots of other spheres.

Also, people should keep in mind a few things:

1. Like any actual hearing, the Tribunal is going to go on for months. This is not quite a downtime arc.

2. The UNSC cannot move as quickly as the Technocracy, due to lacking high levels of Correspondence, Entropy, and Time.

3. You can't actually speed up the Tribunal, you can only slow it down if you want to be dilatory.

4. Having a desperate infiltration mission into a war-torn Seoul where US Marines in DARPA prototype Enhanced Performance Armors are in bloody hand-to-hand battle with North Korean Vanguard Special Forces-the Technocracy and the Rogue Council engaged in bloody proxy war-wherein Jamelia & co desperately try to not attract more attention while they sneak into the ruins of the Seoul Museum of History to steal a legendary bow or something before the Rogue Council can steal it for themselves is totally cool.

5. I have plans for the 'enemy territory' thematic that Pyongyang was supposed to be, possibly to a more extreme degree.
 
Random question, do either Jamelia or Kessler have Instruction, because teaching people how to be more awesome for less XP is always a good idea.
 
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