Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns
[X] MAJ Jane Clarent
Yes, she's the somewhat "bland" choice, but I feel here a certain level of blandness is desirable. She's got a useful balance of spheres, and Mind 4 (Brute Force) just means she might need to drop custom-made flashbangs and incapacitate werewolves from the bright light and the resulting agonising pain (Technocrats in the area are advised to bring along their polarising goggles). She can make full use of any loadout we want her to use, she's got a wide range of skills (which opens up Glorious Technocrat Bullshit options), and her relative fragility is somewhat offset by her agility. And from a point of view of our goal here, she seems likely to be the militant-leaning kind of Iterator who we want to not leave alienated.
Sylia is too much the "obvious" choice for later recruitment, but if we did that, we'd be preaching to the converted. We already have a lot of misfits onboard - we don't need two Iteration X misfits. Moreover, the -Combat Skills concerns me, and spherewise she's basically Henriette's mild superior
Yuuki Sajaki, I feel, risks racking up paradox too fast on this particular mission. Drones are liable to be more 'dox prone than men with guns (even if the men are robots under their skin), and I don't know werewolf powers that well, but at least against mages his reliance on Correspondence 2 means he'll be prone to being shut down entirely by wards - unlike Henriette's capacity to shoot guys as well as being the DRONE QUEEN. Of course, I might be wrong here, and "not being in range of an angry werewolf" is a distinct plus.
Sorry, Kiet. You are no KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRIL.
I was very tempted by Jordon Pondsmith, but the double minus for fragility put me off too much. I could be swayed, though. (well, okay, it's also that if we did wind up recruiting him, we'd have both him and Kessler wandering around in trenchcoats and our amalgam would gain Notorious (Outmoded Fashion Sense).)
Also, another reason to pick Jane Claret is Motokoooooooooooooo.
Yes, she's the somewhat "bland" choice, but I feel here a certain level of blandness is desirable. She's got a useful balance of spheres, and Mind 4 (Brute Force) just means she might need to drop custom-made flashbangs and incapacitate werewolves from the bright light and the resulting agonising pain (Technocrats in the area are advised to bring along their polarising goggles). She can make full use of any loadout we want her to use, she's got a wide range of skills (which opens up Glorious Technocrat Bullshit options), and her relative fragility is somewhat offset by her agility. And from a point of view of our goal here, she seems likely to be the militant-leaning kind of Iterator who we want to not leave alienated.
Sylia is too much the "obvious" choice for later recruitment, but if we did that, we'd be preaching to the converted. We already have a lot of misfits onboard - we don't need two Iteration X misfits. Moreover, the -Combat Skills concerns me, and spherewise she's basically Henriette's mild superior
Yuuki Sajaki, I feel, risks racking up paradox too fast on this particular mission. Drones are liable to be more 'dox prone than men with guns (even if the men are robots under their skin), and I don't know werewolf powers that well, but at least against mages his reliance on Correspondence 2 means he'll be prone to being shut down entirely by wards - unlike Henriette's capacity to shoot guys as well as being the DRONE QUEEN. Of course, I might be wrong here, and "not being in range of an angry werewolf" is a distinct plus.
Sorry, Kiet. You are no KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRIL.
I was very tempted by Jordon Pondsmith, but the double minus for fragility put me off too much. I could be swayed, though. (well, okay, it's also that if we did wind up recruiting him, we'd have both him and Kessler wandering around in trenchcoats and our amalgam would gain Notorious (Outmoded Fashion Sense).)
Also, another reason to pick Jane Claret is Motokoooooooooooooo.
[X] Jordan Pondsmith
Intrigued by Rossum to be honest.
Also @EarthScorpion
Intrigued by Rossum to be honest.
Also @EarthScorpion
Is that a published (or even alluded-to) Gift?EarthScorpion said:
As a note she also has a really sweet powered armor suit with more Fun Toys than several animes and films about rich people with power armor suits, and outside of the very odd exception of Serafina (who has been hammering away at it for years) Master level sphere understandings are difficult to attain. If you want an in-house source of Primium for the long-run, she's basically the only choice if you can swing a recruitment.
Also, if you want to do some sort of reconciliation her participating in a mostly-ItX combat operation could be swung as one with the right media tack. You have a journalist to do interviews and Jamelia/Serafina to write the script.
Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
[X] Jordan Pondsmith
Our goal here is to help mend the cracks in IterationX, having someone who is not only popular with everyone in that convention, but also works as a badass who shows them that there can be other ways for them to be effective is well, pretty ideal as far as I'm concerned.
Kiet wouldn't be that useful for our purpose since he's a Pre-1999 Killing Machines, so anything he says to support Lovelace is going to provoke the same reactions as Kessler did.
Sylia's unpopularity is frankly not something we want to deal with. Yes, we could fix it, but frankly I think we have better things to do. Also, she's a noted Lovelace supporter, so anything she says is just going to be mostly dismissed as biased and political in nature, not help by her NWO parentage which will just make the other Iterators even more suspicious about what comes out of her mouth. And since she is an natural ally, I think she'd be more useful as a contact/connection that we can use who is outside of our Construct.
Yuuki, look I just don't think she's really the kind of person we want on a attack on a Werewolf base.
Jane is a decent choice, and my second favorite, but I think Jordan just covers what we need the most.
Our goal here is to help mend the cracks in IterationX, having someone who is not only popular with everyone in that convention, but also works as a badass who shows them that there can be other ways for them to be effective is well, pretty ideal as far as I'm concerned.
Kiet wouldn't be that useful for our purpose since he's a Pre-1999 Killing Machines, so anything he says to support Lovelace is going to provoke the same reactions as Kessler did.
Sylia's unpopularity is frankly not something we want to deal with. Yes, we could fix it, but frankly I think we have better things to do. Also, she's a noted Lovelace supporter, so anything she says is just going to be mostly dismissed as biased and political in nature, not help by her NWO parentage which will just make the other Iterators even more suspicious about what comes out of her mouth. And since she is an natural ally, I think she'd be more useful as a contact/connection that we can use who is outside of our Construct.
Yuuki, look I just don't think she's really the kind of person we want on a attack on a Werewolf base.
Jane is a decent choice, and my second favorite, but I think Jordan just covers what we need the most.
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
If I'm not mistaken, Donald can finance a properly set up area and the equipment for a Primium-forge (Spirit 4 variant of Format Space, assisted by lots of unEnlightened personnel). Vulgar, but useful.
That said, that makes her a good recruitment option, but doesn't really impact her relevance to our immediate goal.
That said, that makes her a good recruitment option, but doesn't really impact her relevance to our immediate goal.
Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
Eh, worse comes to worse if we really need some Primium we can just chip some off of Kessler.
What? The man is made of that thing, he won't mind missing a few flakes/bits/chunks/pieces over random parts of his body.
You know, expect when he will mind because of the reduced combat ability.
What? The man is made of that thing, he won't mind missing a few flakes/bits/chunks/pieces over random parts of his body.
You know, expect when he will mind because of the reduced combat ability.
He's also got the respect of his men, even though I didn't mention it. If he's convinced, you've got a lot of soldiers convinced because they respect someone who's murdered more werewolves than most people have birthdays.
+Natural Ally implies that recruiting her as a more permanent member is very likely and sure you'd probably be banned from getting Iteration X gear ever again for life, but you have the Progenitors to source and that powersuit is very very gorgeous. Also if you're thinking long-term you get:
1. Primium
2. Another Technocratic princess to add to your collection (you have Henriette, who would have been a princess but her parents died, Serafina, and Antonia). People dig princesses right?[1]
[1]You may notice that all of them come from either Iteration X or the Progenitors. Between them and the Syndicate, you generally have your sources of nepotism. The NWO are way too meritocratic for parentage and the Void Engineers originally had entrenched families but most of them kind of died due to Threat Null-related causes.
3. Have you considered working in the other direction? Instead of making the militants like Lovelace, make the techs give them more cool shit?Roll 1d10 for gender. Even = male, odd = female.
Also, Yuuki brings a lot of remote firepower even if the paradox cost in malfunctions and feedback is high. But you're not the ones suffering it-and a lot of drones means a lot of ways to spread out that paradox.
All choices are actually viable here. I won't say equally viable but they're mostly about what tack you want to take.
Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
It's the IF part that really stands out as an issue to me.
From what I understood, there's kind of a shortage of necessary infrastructure going on no? Like, I guess with TN hovering over things that maybe shooting long-term recovery of the Convention in the foot a bit for some immediate reconciliation is not actually that bad of an idea, but I'm concerned that if we don't make the militants accept the situation and adapt, they could still be bribed by the shitton of cool shit Threat Null can give them as it fits the old ways even better.
I mean, that's going to happen either way, but well I think it might be more advantageous for us to try to change the game so to speak rather than to play with rules that gives Control even more advantages.
It's not that impossible. He's a HITMark but he's not stupid.
There are solutions to Panopticon, one of which has been hinted at and would distinctly remove that potential issue. Moreover, working both sides (by convincing the techs that the militant wing is starving and convincing the soldiers that the techs are doing all they reasonably can) is probably the ideal solution, so having someone who can force some give one way or the other would work just fine.
(Also I may have done a name edit to make the reference slightly less obvious).
Sirrocco
Pedantic
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We can work both sides on that one. "Hey, listen, you really need to dial it back a bit because (reasons). At the same time, yeah, some of what you're saying makes sense. Let's see what we can do." can be a pretty potent rhetorical combo.
- I like Pondsmith a lot, if we could recruit him. Mostly I like him because that Correspondence 3/DimSci 3 means he can play "voice on the other end of the phone" just as well as Sykes. Having people who can play support back at the office is nice. He also makes a great mouthpiece (though we have a decent number of those).
- Sylia (Stingray?)... yeah. The near-guaranteed in-house primium factory is *shiny* (though to my understanding it's still a seriously tass-hungry process.) At the same time, she has a *lot* of overlap with Henriette. She's a matter/forces specialist who needs obvious combat equipment to fight effectively with... and she doesn't have the correspondence to do it from afar. She also lacks combat skills, and taking her, while near-guaranteed, is also near-guaranteed to do a decent bit of damage to our diplomacy efforts. I can see why people want her, but I think she's a bad pick.
- Kiet might not be a bad pick for the fight, if we could sway him somehow, but he's a terrible recruitment pick. We wouldn't want him if we could get him.
Let's review the options.
Yeah, okay. This guy's Spheres are almost too good to be true. Dimensional Science 3? We are kinda making do with Kessler's Spirit right now, which isn't quite the same thing. Best of all though is a Correspondence 3 linked to a brutal Entropy 3, Life 3, Forces 3. That's 'I trash your equipment - by hacking or whatever. I trash your body - by poison gas or hypnagogic conditioning of the inner ear or whatever. And in a pinch I can just blow you the hell up. And by the way, jumping across the Gauntlet or across the world or being a spirit or bugaboo does jack. And I am probably about as good on defense as offense.'
All that, and he eats the small amounts of Paradox he generates.
'Fragility' is listed as this guy's main problem, in that his implants are a bit outdated and he doesn't favor heavy weapons or armor. That's... Kind of a SMALL problem, given we have Rosario on call, and access to power armor and guns ourselves.
[X] Jordan Pondsmith
Low Paradox Mitigation is troubling, because it indicates adapting hyperscience to paradigm with subtlety just 'isn't her style'. We corrected that to an extent with Henrietta, but it's still a work in progress. More troubling, her Spheres are rather lackluster and just aren't what we really need. Correspondence 2 and Matter 2 by themselves are tough to use for much. Forces 3 is obviously good, but it's an It X staple many candidates have and while it's good it's also paradox-bait if you don't use it with subtlety. Mind 4 is the interesting bit. The issue is, it can be a game-changer, but it's a Sphere that loves subtlety and hers is noted as 'Brute Force'. Pain attacks and the like are probably gonna flow like water off anyone with Primium or Mind 1 or even high Willpower. Mind also hasn't really been a bit issue in terms of spheres, Dr. Rosario and Jamelia do it well, and we don't NEED it like we do high Correspondence or Dimensional Science.
Yeah. No thanks. Let's be honest - if everything she does is via remote, and she's easily jammed, and she doesn't have Correspondence of 3 or more to pull off real Magick-backed remote casting, she's not gonna be much help. Even her 'delicious Spheres' are kinda lackluster. Yes, Matter 4 is potent, but we have Henrietta for robot-building and re-building and the lack of Forces 3 means her robots won't have as much punch as you'd hope.
Let's be honest. We ARE looking at a badass here. Those Spheres are godly. Time 3 is potent, Matter 5 is insane, and with Forces 3 and Prime 3 Antonia could hand out rayguns and zappy robots like candy. She'd a dream for combat applications, lacking only experience. The problem is, unless we handle her perfectly she's also a trap. This throws our relations with Iteration X in a talespin and potentially is bad for the Technocracy as a whole. I'm not cool with that, or at least I'm not cool with that unless someone has a writein that will absolutely handle that angle.
There is the vague and worrying plot-related concern that we are overlooking something in our plans or that not having an awakened Avatar will be a vital advantage at some point for some silly reason. Other than that, being a mundane in a Mage game is like being Mortal in Exalted. Flavorful, but pointless.
Yeah, okay. This guy's Spheres are almost too good to be true. Dimensional Science 3? We are kinda making do with Kessler's Spirit right now, which isn't quite the same thing. Best of all though is a Correspondence 3 linked to a brutal Entropy 3, Life 3, Forces 3. That's 'I trash your equipment - by hacking or whatever. I trash your body - by poison gas or hypnagogic conditioning of the inner ear or whatever. And in a pinch I can just blow you the hell up. And by the way, jumping across the Gauntlet or across the world or being a spirit or bugaboo does jack. And I am probably about as good on defense as offense.'
All that, and he eats the small amounts of Paradox he generates.
'Fragility' is listed as this guy's main problem, in that his implants are a bit outdated and he doesn't favor heavy weapons or armor. That's... Kind of a SMALL problem, given we have Rosario on call, and access to power armor and guns ourselves.
[X] Jordan Pondsmith
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Sirrocco
Pedantic
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I will note - it would be pretty easy to buff Pondsmith with augs from in-house resources. It would also be a mistake. A lot of his influence is based aroudn being kind of a badass without much in the way of augs. In fact, it doesn't look like he has any primium at all... which means that he'd be a fantastic guy to be talking the talk while walking the walk with respect to being a badass on a limited budget.
AND his outfit matches Kesseler!
We don't really need to do more than maybe 'tweak' Jordan's implants if the need arises via Procedures. (He probably does that himself).
The thing is, he's got more than enough Correspondence and intersecting Spheres to run absolutely bullshit movie-style 'hacking' or sabotage that makes Henrietta look like a mere henchperson, and his sheer oomph lends itself to stuffing him in a powersuit or handing him a blaster rifle or whatever in a pinch. And as stated, he works a hell of a lot better for advertising 'do more with less'.
The thing is, he's got more than enough Correspondence and intersecting Spheres to run absolutely bullshit movie-style 'hacking' or sabotage that makes Henrietta look like a mere henchperson, and his sheer oomph lends itself to stuffing him in a powersuit or handing him a blaster rifle or whatever in a pinch. And as stated, he works a hell of a lot better for advertising 'do more with less'.
Okay, you're selling her incredibly short. Firstly, mitigation isn't necessarily reduction or evasion. After all, she's the Motoko Kusanagi expy here. Yes, there's no real way to avoid 'dox when you pull out her "Extremely Agile" trait (which probably indicates really good Dex and that probably means permadox, so she's going to be prone to 'Dox backlash, much like Kessler), and use of nanite wetware to hack human brains in the field is going to be prone to 'dox (as are Basilisks beyond a certain point). That doesn't mean that she's suddenly going to be more vulgar than Henriette when she hacks hardware. It doesn't mean that she's going to be incapable of using Forces to simply hit hard enough to cleanly and precisely break a man's neck, rather than gib him. Yes, elements of her paradigm (especially against humans) are going to have problems outside of Constructs, but so do elements of Serafina's. And Henriette's. And... uh, everyone in the party apart from Jamelia and most of Donald.
Mind 4 in a field operative, though? Very, very useful. It means we don't need to have Serafina in place for information extraction, because Serafina is squishy. Mind 3 lets you network brains together, turning a team into a temporary hivemind - a better version of what Jamelia did back at the start with the MIBs, which she could only do because they were already MIBs and thus set up for it. And it means that when her and Serafina do work together, truly godly dicepools can be thrown at really big Mind effects. Mind effects often need a lot of successes. Remember; Jamelia only has Mind 2. She just tends to use a lot of Entropy and pre-rigging the scenario to best effect. Also, the "Brute Force" isn't her focus. It's her speciality, in the same way that Henriette has "Military hardware". It means she gets to count tens double when using Brute Force in Mind. It does not mean she is restricted to using Brute Force, at all.
The Forces 3 thing? Yeah, notice she's also marked as being "+Omnitactical Battle
Moreover, you're also completely ignoring her mundane skills, and that's a lot of the lure. To be quite frank, no, her spheres aren't the best. She, however, comes with good gear, good standing in Iteration X, and she's an Omnitactical Battle Cyborg which means she comes with tactics and command as well as being very good with about anything that comes to hand. If we did go to recruit her, we'd finally have someone who could run alt-ops without Jamelia having to micromanage things, and who can take the field commander role when Jamelia is too squishy for the field. Someone who can lead TAC1 and TAC2 well, and also link all TAC2 into a ItX combat hivemind when it comes to it.
EDIT: And vitally, she doesn't have two minuses for fragile. You know, the kind of thing which means when you're trying to lead an ItX combat team into a werewolf hive, you're probably only able to bounce small-calibre rounds off your skin and find a rifle to your head a lethal threat.
And werewolves are, indeed, more dangerous than rifles.
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Let's be honest here - upon further thought, 'low paradox mitigation' almost certainly means 'She is running around with a decent amount of permanent Paradox', probably from said Basilisk hacks. Is that absurdly crippling? Not necessarily. But it means that when she does pull down paradox it's at risk of hurting more, and that she can probably eat less of it than other candidates. She may be due for some paradox flaws.
Setting up a tactical hivemind is nice, but it's actually nothing Dr. Rosario couldn't set up ahead of time. Throwing more Mind dice around is likewise nice, but Jordan has a lot more dice to throw around for group Enlightened Science in any event, with Correspondence to back it. Realistically, with our Life dice pools, we should be doing ALL OF THE DRUGS. ALL OF THEM. ALL THE TIME.
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13th Bee
Worker
- Location
- Tennessee, USA.
[X] The Major.
Reasons:
*Ghost in the Shell is cool and I actually know who this person is based on.
*It looks like she can fit in with the hardliners.
*Capable of leading an assault (which is what she will be doing).
*Can probably counter Threat-Null hacking.
*Actually fits the description of Posthuman Warrior.
*All that shit ES is talking about.
*It would be awesome to have the Major as a party member or a recurring character.
Reasons:
*Ghost in the Shell is cool and I actually know who this person is based on.
*It looks like she can fit in with the hardliners.
*Capable of leading an assault (which is what she will be doing).
*Can probably counter Threat-Null hacking.
*Actually fits the description of Posthuman Warrior.
*All that shit ES is talking about.
*It would be awesome to have the Major as a party member or a recurring character.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
[X] MAJ Jane Clarent
I like this lady. She's like the bastard lovechild of Henriette and Jamelia in her spheres and capabilities. She's also interesting. She has a nice mysterious backstory, is likely well respected in ItX, and would be a nice foil to Henriette if we recruit her.
Parents unknown-killed in plane crash at an early age. Sole survivor of plane crash, was adopted by Iteration X due to DNA markers showing high levels of cybernetic compatibility. Grew up in Iteration X care, joined Shock Corps at age of 16. Extremely gifted at multitasking and battlefield hacking of both hardware and wetware (latter via Basilisk or nanotech infiltration). Qualified in use of almost every Iteration X weapon or vehicle.
Spheres: Correspondence 2, Mind 4 (Brute Force), Matter 2, Forces 3
Notable Traits:
Spheres: Correspondence 2, Mind 4 (Brute Force), Matter 2, Forces 3
Notable Traits:
- +Omnitactical Battle Hydra Cyborg
- +Decent at almost everything
+Extremely agile - -'agile' is just two letters away from 'fragile'
- -Low Paradox Mitigation
I like this lady. She's like the bastard lovechild of Henriette and Jamelia in her spheres and capabilities. She's also interesting. She has a nice mysterious backstory, is likely well respected in ItX, and would be a nice foil to Henriette if we recruit her.
No, actually. Given that she's only one -Fragile, some of it is from armouring and defences
The rest, though? She's clearly less armoured and protected than Kessler, so the rest is probably coming from "OMG you have how much Dex?". I am in favour of that, because "boosted Dex + Forces enhanced guns" = "I see dead people because I just killed them".
Amorous Intent
Love the future
- Location
- Octavia, Venus
- Pronouns
- She/her
Scorp has done an amazing job of convincing me about Motoko, but the others need some love, too.
Toni Stark is perfect recruitment bait, and she can act as our Construct's supplier of delicious primium. Yes, we risk alienating Iteration X with her recruitment, but that means we need to not fuck it up. She's perfectly viable as a way of moderating both sides. She's favorably inclined to the tech side (and handily demonstrates what you can do with low primium tech), but at the same time, she'll be proving herself in the field to the troops. As long as we push for a moderate position with her (more toys for grunts, still advancing science), we can avoid alienating ItX.
Did I mention her sweet, sweet Seraph armor and primium production capabilities?
Toni Stark is perfect recruitment bait, and she can act as our Construct's supplier of delicious primium. Yes, we risk alienating Iteration X with her recruitment, but that means we need to not fuck it up. She's perfectly viable as a way of moderating both sides. She's favorably inclined to the tech side (and handily demonstrates what you can do with low primium tech), but at the same time, she'll be proving herself in the field to the troops. As long as we push for a moderate position with her (more toys for grunts, still advancing science), we can avoid alienating ItX.
Did I mention her sweet, sweet Seraph armor and primium production capabilities?
Either J.C.-Totally-Not-Deus-Ex (Jane Clarent) or Shadowrunner McCyberpunk (Jordan Pondsmith) would be good, I think, and Little Miss Primium Factory (Antonia Sylia) wouldn't hurt, so long as we act to mitigate her unpopularity.
I am suspicious as all hell about Jane the Bland Cyborg, though. What kind of self-respecting NWO couple takes a last name of Clarent, anyway?
I am suspicious as all hell about Jane the Bland Cyborg, though. What kind of self-respecting NWO couple takes a last name of Clarent, anyway?
Amorous Intent
Love the future
- Location
- Octavia, Venus
- Pronouns
- She/her
The kind that likes swords?I am suspicious as all hell about Jane the Bland Cyborg, though. What kind of self-respecting NWO couple takes a last name of Clarent, anyway?
Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
People would feel a lot better about Antoinette if Wordsmiths could provide epic write ins to allow us to circumvent her unpopularity with ItX.