Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
Now to play "James, Cemal, or Senex?"
That is so goddamn adorable!
Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns
Now to play "James, Cemal, or Senex?"
Possibly also less important than what Jamelia learns from the possibility existing. She's got a team to mentor herself, after all.
(And, given the existance of Enlightenment, that's actually a pretty important mission itself.)
We need to consider whether Blanc's method was a failure because of bad materials or bad methodology.
(Given that Jamelia's made Enlightenment 6, even if late... I think we can rule out bad materials.)
Hm. Not sure what to think of this. And, I mean, isn't there also a running theme of discovery and figuring out/finding out things too.
Well... there's also been some questions asked of who Jamelia is, and of her relation to the old person she used to be. What if the materials themselves -- the person -- was changed and reforged such that they were different enough?
Though I think one answer that Blanc might have taken away from that, could be "Never fucking rely on Nephandi for anything constructive".
Seriously, I can't be the only one to wonder if the fact that Nephandi were involved in the test like that, was probably not the best idea.
Not that mages couldn't gain Arete/Enlightenment or break through as a result of facing or fighting Nephandi, of course. Just... probably not a good idea to have that added in to all the pressure there.
In fact, it sounds a bit like Damien, and how kids are pushed to awaken in it. Except doing so for Enlightenment 5->6. Or maybe it's the school that is using the same methods that push people into Enlightenment 6.
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If he'd made it that far without learning that already...
NonSequtur
a body
Wasn't Jazmin, hm, a psychic dud? While Jamelia is rocking DSci 1 in a psychic paradigm?
- Location
- Southern Virginia
Consider what Enlightenment 6 really is.
DSci is DSci. Using "psychic powers" and using a dimensional scanner to do DSci things are completely the same thing. She didn't have any psychic potential when she was tested because she didn't have the spheres and didn't use the paradigm. Now she does. Certainly she can use the paradigm now because she's a very different person, but then again, who wouldn't be after four decades?
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Sure, but this is oMage and everything
What a silly thing to ask when Jamelia has finally faced the subjectivity of the world. Did Blanc know? Of course he did. And of course he didn't. Both are valid. Both are true. Both are false. What matters is what is believed.
"Control the present and you control the past. "
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Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Personally, I'm of the opinion that he didn't do it, because he was not at the time that fucking stupid. He retained his human capacity to say "no, that's a terrible idea, I'll do something else instead," the Autopolitans' lack of which led to that glorious debacle in Moscow.
Not to mention we can learn a lot more from considering the timeline in which he wasn't quite that far gone than in the one that he is - after all, we've already learned "don't work with Nephandi."
The one about how a much more honest mentorship blew up is a better warning, or at least a more useful one.
*whistles innocently*
Just leavin' this here.
Don't mind me.
What's an Avatar?
No, seriously. One of the little things I'm having fun with is rejecting the Purple Paradigm with the various things that for the party would all be clumped under the "Avatar" category if they were Traditionalists, but here... well, it's actually quite hard to argue that they're the same thing without resorting to Traditionalist lingo.
Jamelia doesn't have an Avatar. The interrogative, challenging, self-reflective part of her (classically associated with the super-ego and with human Genius) only ever appears as herself, and asks her things based on herself which she already knows, even if she refuses to consciously accept them. The fact that she has some of the memories of... of some long-dead man is, as far as she's aware, not actually linked to that. She doesn't have an explanation for Cemal. Yet. She's probably the most classic "Technocrat denying that their Avatar is their Avatar and handle the past life stuff" character in the party.
(Cemal disagrees and says that the self-reflective part is totally her Avatar, and that they share it. But what does he know? He's just a scattershot of memories.)
Serafina doesn't have an Avatar (even if her character sheet has both Circumspect Avatar and Manifest Avatar on it). Hell, if you ask Alicia and get her to not lie, she'll agree she's not an Avatar. She's an imaginary friend who came about because Serafina was a massively cognitively augmented, very lonely little girl, so her imaginary friends are in fact fully fledged personalities in their own right - not helped because some of her augs leaves people with them prone to mental health problems. Alicia just feels it's better for the two of them to be a little bit, manageably crazy than it is for Serafina to be so very lonely. And her parents felt that Alicia was just mental illness of a kind that only a Genius-possessing mind gets, which is how they managed to lock her off and stop Serafina seeing her until Serafina started resisting her own Conditioning post-Moscow with almost no wp left, which led to the reemergence of her issues in that area. Of course, since Alicia is precisely as intelligent and manipulative as Serafina, and more mature than she was before despite the way she acts, she's being very very careful to not give herself away as not actually being physical because that's what caused problems last time.
(Alicia is approximately as good a higher self as Dr Nichols is a spirit guide)
Donald doesn't have an Avatar, oh no, he totally doesn't. He was just a fool when he was an RD thinking he had Ravana as a spirit guide. Pay no attention to the fact that he still sometimes sees him in his dreams. That's just dreams. Do de do de do. Donald away! *drops smoke grenade*
Henriette and
(The fact that the two body system has become a three body system with the addition of Mari may be... quite interesting as a consequence. Because three body systems are chaotic.)
Rose is... Rose. Yeah. And she's just... quite confused with what's going on in her head. The nasty dark side personality from her haemophage genetics has gone away and now she has her genesource in her head except Thorn always said she was an Avatar and Reina has said some things which imply she's wondering if she's a mask worn by Rose's guardian angel and it's all very confusing.
(Rose's moesevoirs are filling up.)
Naturally, as befits the one party member who's actually secretly a member of a Tradition, Kessler does not really have anything going on with his Avatar, beyond the way that it means he exemplifies the archtype of the lone gunslinger who never gets to put down his pistol and has to walk off into the sunset after saving the town.
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If it wasn't so unlikely to work shooting it in the thermal exhaust pipe(necessarily wide, and energy permeable) would have been a classic.
And then, after 30 years rebuilding herself, she is somehow now central to events. That must so be pissing him* off. The Adversary indeed.
*Or whatever pronoun applies to posthuman things.
For Kessler, regarding the EM shielding, would it be possible to set the armor to scan, record, and analyze the patterns of said shielding, and then come up with a sheath for attacks which would mitigate its effects? Huh, I just described Forces countermagic, didn't I?
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
Dr. Nichols is indeed the Worst Spirit Guide Ever. If and when Jamelia and Donald ever compare notes, Donald is going to be so smug that his spirit guide is a sweet cool dude who brings Donald the Best Drugs and then sits down to smoke them with him. Ok, so his 'advice' is sometimes not the most advanced (R: "Dude, you should do more drugs." D: "Okay." R: "Kickass."), but he's a lot more fun to hang around with than a former VE who sucks at doing the 'cryptic mentor' routine.
I mean, come on? A weak attempt at a Vader riff? Sigh. Worst Spirit Guide Ever.
Henriette: "Getting in my head and making me think all this stupid stuff... and it keeps being right! NWOers.... so annoying!"
Rose: "...isn't that the thing Director Belltower always says?"
Henreite: ".....WAAAARHAAGRBLBBL!"
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
SUNOVABITCH!
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
You mean Henriette, right?Henrietta: "Getting in my head and making me think all this stupid stuff... and it keeps being right! NWOers.... so annoying!"
Rose: "...isn't that the thing Director Belltower always says?"
Henreitta: ".....WAAAARHAAGRBLBBL!"
So, I still don't actually know much oMage despite playing in this quest for half a year -in what ways do the Traditions not quite walk the walk with a truly subjective reality?
*whistles innocently*
Just leavin' this here.
Don't mind me.
Moreover, what's that Prime Energy storage every character has represent? It doesn't even represent the same thing for everyone.
For Jamelia, it's just that little edge, that ability that the drugs and the enhancements and the retrovirals give her that lets her go above and beyond even what she'd normally do. Biological rocket fuel for her body, now. She replenishes them by taking the right blue and green pills and nutrient-fortified foods.
Kessler's got internal power cells to overcharge his cybernetic augmentations. He can use them for RD magic because well, spirits are a thing, he's lived too long on fucking Dragon Planet to not know this, and spirits love juice no matter what kind it comes in. Magic mushrooms or power cells, they accept it as payment. Elsa has a similar, but more advanced design now.
Harlan understands that psychic powers are generally used at a safe level, and it takes effort and sheer will to contain them at levels beyond that. He, amusingly enough, is the only person in the entire party who recharges his "Avatar" Quintessence via meditation. Although a good night's sleep also suffices.
Donald just knows that he can push himself, and when he does it too often he's drained and he has to regain that edge by playing hard. Same with Serafina. Amusingly, Jazmin saw her internal pool of Prime Energy in much the same way. She just didn't regain it by 'meditating' and by 'meditating' I mean 'sleeping around and other forms of entertainment.' When Donald recharges his "Avatar" via Primal Utility, he does it by literally cutting a check from his personal expenses account, using that to buy himself a nice dinner or go on a date or something, and that recharges him.
Henriette knows she has minor implants, and most of them are cognitive, and if she needs that edge she can overclock those implants to do some crazy things, and she can push even harder but that leaves internal burns and she doesn't like suffering brain damage (that's Prime 1, BTW).
Rose is a biotech killing machine which happens to have the body of a beautiful young woman and the mind of a moepuff and has reserves of hyperoxygenated rocket fuel if she needs to give herself an edge in any way, shape, or form. She can regenerate it slowly, or by dedicated injection.
Yes, via Prime they can transform all of these into different forms, but it always takes a relatively convoluted path. Donald can use his personal genius to find cost savings which he uses to order nutritional supplements, which Jamelia takes and give her the negotiating edge she needs to get Kessler additional PS-85 hypercapacitative energy cells, etc. Even out of the party, the Purple Paradigm isn't used very much.
Brandon Jiminez's "Avatar" is just his striving towards being the best super-spy he could be. First because he wanted to be one as a kid, then as a CIA agent, and now because it'd let him down, and his friends down, and everyone else down if he didn't. He knows just how incredible human potential is and when he puts his mind to it he can do some incredible things beyond what he normally thinks is possible.
Dr. Grey's Avatar is just her obsession with Science! and technology. She has no spirit guide who talks to her, merely the thoughts that it'd be AWESOME if she transferred someone's brain into a jar and put it into a 30 foot tall killer robot to fight the Enemies of Ascension. Her personal Quintessence storage comes from hyper-enriched atomic fuel, which powers the fantastic array of devices implanted in her cyborg body.
Hannah doesn't have a real Avatar. She just has personal musings on "wouldn't it be great if the story happened like this" and constant criticism of her own work that strives to make her understand her fiction better-and her role in life better. She keeps looking for her own personal spirit guide, but she hasn't found one yet.
Melody's Avatar is a small talking cat-thing. When she was working for the Rogue Council, it was a spirit. Now, as a member of the Technocracy, someone made one of those as a lark and she decided to adopt it. It's not supposed to be as smart as it is, but somehow its learning capabilities are beyond the expectations of the young Iterator who made it as a cute robo-pet.
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Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
... Harlan's "wife" was Jazmin!bot.
*Shakes fist at heavens* ES!!!!!!!!!!!
*Shakes fist at heavens* ES!!!!!!!!!!!
No wonder her life is full of suffering.
NonSequtur
a body
...You'd think she'd have recognised herself, if that were the case.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Given all the memory editation, I wouldn't be sure. Besides, it gives continuity to poor Elissa. Up until she ran away to join the hollow ones. Hmn, what could have prompted that?