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

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Look guys

You had your chance to get a tactical doge from Iteration X

and you could have gotten one from the Progenitors

You did not do so

This is all your fault

If Henrietta had been given a tactical doge she would have realized that her feelings are important and become an incarna of forgiveness
 
Cornuthaum said:
They were cloned pod lolis raised in VR simulation to a shiny happy life until they figured out it was ALL A LIE and in the process Enlightened. And went a bit crazy because ALL YOUR LIFE IS A LIEEEEE is not good for your mental health.
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To go into more details since A was my character (and the whole reason the gene line can't walk is because I took a flaw for enough points to start with a better ship) they were trying to get more Nicholes to try to recreate her capacity to get past the Anomaly. Rather than make Mind 5 replicas like Rose, they used an older method which needs lower Mind. They used a Time Mind Space effect on mundane clones to basically read the mind of Nichols past self and feed all the same sensory input into the clones in their 2x accelerated lives. The theory says that if you do it perfectly, they should develop Genius at the same age as she did because you fed them all the same sensory input.

Personalities which glitch out early are either Enlightened and fine with therapy, Marauders, or psychotic wrecks who don't even have Genius. There were ten clones to start with - that they got three successful Enlightened glitch out s means they are already ahead of expectations.

Of course, Traditionalists might point out all these early Awakenings of the Nichols clones might be related to the fact that lots of Avatars got freed up by the Avatar Storm so a few of them got powerful Avatars. Technocrats might more note that the personalities of the clones are... similar to selves that Nichols showed in parallel intersplices.
 
[ ] Towards an inland jungle warzone, full of chaos (Leads to The Killing Grounds, the Realm of war without end)
This sounds really dangerous, and could slow us down considerably. On the other hand, it's also not inherently ideologically friendly to the Residents or the Agency, though the fact that they're fighting a forever war against everything means its not as hostile as it would otherwise be.

[ ] A run-down high-tech city that makes you incredibly uncomfortable. (Leads to Dystopia, the Realm of pessimism about the future).
On one hand, this is directly ideologically opposed to the technocratic ideal of progress, which might interfere with Threat Null pursuers, but also ourselves. On the other hand, dystopian fiction tends to have strong central governments or highly powerful corporations that the Agency and Residents can hijack, so things also could go very badly. In my opinion, a risk.

[ ] Through the streets of American cities, being chased by shady black-suited people and black vans. (Leads to the Omega State, the Realm of strong governance)
We are currently being chased by the Agency, who fits in here like a glove. At the absolute least, it'll make spotting them harder. Lets not go here.

[ ] Towards where singular heroes are trickling in-superheroes, war heroes, maverick scientists, you know the types. (Leads to Fountainhead, the Realm of Great Men). I don't want to go anywhere named after an Ayn Rand novel when we're being chased by Evil Capitalism Manifest. It just sounds like a bad idea. Plus, it seems like it would power up the Residents, given their ideas about value and Meritocracy.

[ ] Towards Henrietta (leads to Planet Hollywood and directly out). No. Not when she's after us specifically.
[x] Write-in. Towards a shining kingdom on a hill. (Leads to Avalon, the Realm of Good Order). I say, let's confront our pursuers with what they think they are, but aren't. Lets run toward the ideal they forsook when they started stripping men of choice entirely, rather than rallying them to their banner. The agency and the Residents may not even realize the realm is hostile to them until its too late. And besides, isn't Good Order what we're fighting for, in the end?
 
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I think going into Dystopia is a bad idea because it sounds like it would power-up the Residency and Agents. It is the realm of powerful and oppressive government; is that what we want to give to Threat Null in this fight?

So, it sounds like going into an area where they are strong. No thank you.

The place of constant war... well, it just sounds very dangerous. It might also be good for Autopolitans. We'd be going through the future of Terminator, the one where the place is a blasted landscape with robots shooting everywhere rather than the one where a few T-1000s chase Sarah Connor.

The Great Man Theory seems like it would match up well with us... And at this point I'm too tired to properly examine this and determine if it's actually as good as it looks, or is too good to be true. But, I had an easier time imagining how Dystopia and Always-War land played to Threat Null's strength, and not so easy a time figuring out this one for what its worth.

We could also go toward the GIANT DEATH ROBOT*.

*danger consists of going near the GIANT DEATH ROBOT
Arcus2611 said:
What kind of treason would we be committing again?
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Cornuthaum said:
All of them.
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If we are planning on blowing up Henrietta in the very near future then running toward her might not be the worst idea. She's obsessed with her sister, not finding Jamelia, and is invading the Realm of Hollywood for fuel to feed her combat. She probably would not be looking for the party in particular, and the Resident-controlled elements there will be distracted trying to fend off Henrietta's forces and not get eaten. The closer we are to danger, the safer we are, as it were; and of course it's probably the fastest route out of here and to be honest the Umbral Adventure is starting to drag a bit.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
They're complex, almost fragile-seeming collections of parts that shift and alter themselves seemingly on a whim, but her sensors can see the incredible forces holding them together via forcefields and hypertensile connectors. They were pitch-black and nigh-invisible before, but they have become perfectly reflective in response to incoming weaponry, shielding elements replicating and interlocking to create rough ovoids of protection with sensor stalks and weapons systems protruding. There is a small core inside, and Henriette knows this is the metric-altering computer at the unit's heart, one part mind, one part weapon system, and one part drive.
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Oh wait. Now I know what this reminded me of.



yaaay :V

Garlak said:
I think going into Dystopia is a bad idea because it sounds like it would power-up the Residency and Agents. It is the realm of powerful and oppressive government; is that what we want to give to Threat Null in this fight?

So, it sounds like going into an area where they are strong. No thank you.
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But on the flipside you can't really hide in the Fountainhead and still be able to use your powers. Either you're part of the masses and you're basically scenery, only there to motivate the Heroes in an abstract way (and in practice mainly just getting reamed by the villain of the week to establish how powerful he is/in the background of a splash panel getting collateral damaged/being shoved into a fridge if you're a woman and sufficiently pretty) or you're one of the Only People Who Matter. And if you're One of the Only People Who Matter you can't exactly disguise yourself as one of the general population because you're qualitatively different than them. You're above them. You've got it and now you've got to flaunt it. So, dunno, if I had to hazard a guess I'd say if we hit the Fountainhead we can either be hidden and basically powerless (since the Masses don't have superpowers duh and we have to act within the bounds of the genre or suffer) or we can be pretty free with our abilities at the cost of being blatantly obvious.

And like @Azunth pointed out: we're fighting Evil Social Darwinist Hypercapitalists. Fleeing to a place named after an Ayn Rand novel might not be the greatest idea. At the very least, like, they can throw CoD and FPS protags at us.

I'm only like...semi joking.

Dystopia's almost always have a seedy underbelly and the monolithic society is almost always riddled with cracks. Things like decaying infrastructure. Non-policed areas. Lots of leather. We can actually keep ourselves concealed there.

Oh and also:

[X] Elsa's just spotted a big Austrian man going into the cafe-and someone who looks like a young Michael Biehn doing the same. This might be a minor problem.

He did say he'd be back.
 
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Azunth said:
[x] Write-in. Towards a shining kingdom on a hill. (Leads to Avalon, the Realm of Good Order). I say, let's confront our pursuers with what they think they are, but aren't. Lets run toward the ideal they forsook when they started stripping men of choice entirely, rather than rallying them to their banner. The agency and the Residents may not even realize the realm is hostile to them until its too late. And besides, isn't Good Order what we're fighting for, in the end?
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Won't that just make sure when things go wrong we don't know how?
 
Something always goes wrong, if we go to a place where we know the theme is hostile in some way the enemy will be attacking through that approach.

If we go to a place where the theme is hostile to our enemies, and questionably hostile to us, since Kessler doesn't really fit in such a perfect world, we'd be finding attacks coming from unpredictable forms.
 
[x] Elsa's just spotted a big Austrian man going into the cafe-and someone who looks like a young Michael Biehn doing the same. This might be a minorproblem.

Terminator Jokes. We have two terminators. Ours are better.
 
Lightwhispers said:
Imposter detected!

Regarding the Dystopia option, remember that this might mean we find ourselves in Alpha Complex, where the Computer is your friend.
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Unlikely, because Dystopia is the realm of pessimism about the future. Technology exists to disempower people, to make life suck more, not to elevate mankind. It's not played for laughs. It's basically an industrial hellscape, although only if you go really deeply into it do you get to the actual metal hells full of Nephandi.

Also, do consider what @Cavalier has said about if you want to just get this over and done with.
 
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EarthScorpion said:
To go into more details since A was my character (and the whole reason the gene line can't walk is because I took a flaw for enough points to start with a better ship) they were trying to get more Nicholes to try to recreate her capacity to get past the Anomaly. Rather than make Mind 5 replicas like Rose, they used an older method which needs lower Mind. They used a Time Mind Space effect on mundane clones to basically read the mind of Nichols past self and feed all the same sensory input into the clones in their 2x accelerated lives. The theory says that if you do it perfectly, they should develop Genius at the same age as she did because you fed them all the same sensory input.

Personalities which glitch out early are either Enlightened and fine with therapy, Marauders, or psychotic wrecks who don't even have Genius. There were ten clones to start with - that they got three successful Enlightened glitch out s means they are already ahead of expectations.

Of course, Traditionalists might point out all these early Awakenings of the Nichols clones might be related to the fact that lots of Avatars got freed up by the Avatar Storm so a few of them got powerful Avatars. Technocrats might more note that the personalities of the clones are... similar to selves that Nichols showed in parallel intersplices.
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The trick is that this also only requires you use Time 3/Mind 3/Corr 2 versus Mind 5 for mind programming. The flaw is that, of course, unlike Mind 5, you can't really adjust or mix the living of the clone. If you are willing to deal with various annoying mundane issues and embrace the technocratic paradigm, in fact, you can do it with just Time 3/Life 3 to create the clone body (rather than Life 5).

Advantages: Much lower sphere requirements. If you take all the shortcuts only need two mages, one with Time/Life 3, and one with Time/Mind/Corr, to set up the cloneatrons.
Disadvantages: Fixed results, unreliable, requires significant amounts of mundane equipment (for life support, keeping your embryos alive in tanks, etc) and infrastructure expenses, if you use it to copy mages you may end up with psychotic failures.

Amusingly this does mean that the SWORD-series used lower spheres than Bobs do.

(Bobs are made via Mind 5/Life 5/Prime 2, they just are super shitty clones so they can be mass produced by Devices, require like, 1 success on your Enlightenment roll to make, and the Progenitors have created rotes and Devices that let you make them with Mind 4/Life 4/Prime 2).
 
Like, we probably win in a terminator throw down anyway. Kessler and Elsa specialise in blowing shit up anyway. Maybe being extra sneaky here would be against their genre?
 
Lost In Hollywood, Part 1:
You're approaching Cemal's, the cafe which Illiyeen works at. However, there is a complication. That complication is...
[X] Elsa's just spotted a big Austrian man going into the cafe-and someone who looks like a young Michael Biehn doing the same. This might be a minorproblem.

Lost In Hollywood, Part 2:
How does the team of Kessler, Elsa, and 4 White Tower units solve this problem? They have low profile power armor but they also only have regular guns, even if they do have special ammunition in spades. And by special ammunition I mean foci for magic.
[X] Write-in

Well, let's look at what we know. The movie characters are working for the Residents, but the movie robots have been hacked by Khornetta. That means that the Terminator will try to kill Illiyeen, while Reece will try to grab her and take her away while saying "Come with me if you want to live". They will also try to kill each other.

Fortunately, this is a cafe. That means it has a big glass window. That means Kessler can jump through the glass window on top of Arnie, and since it's a Terminator spirit, not a HITMark, it won't have Primium. And since Kessler is a Technocrat, he can use Forces and Matter on spirits if they're what should normally apply. Which means he just has to grapple it and then USE HIS CYBORG STRENGTH TO TEAR ITS HEAD OFF (Forces + Strength), possibly while telling it that it is inferior and obsolete. Or maybe "You should split" (even if that was The Running Man where Arnie said that, not Terminator).

Meanwhile, since nature loves renegade interrupts, the perfect point for Elsa to shoot Reece in the head with Forces + DSci glowing sci-fi space bullets (it's a Technocratic round which undergoes a state-change to destabilised matter when fired, making it glow. Not an etheric blaster. Honest.) is when he's saying his line.

Reece: "Come with m-"

*boom headshot*

Elsa: *lowers her smoking rifle* "That's my line now. Come with me if you want to live."

Illiyeen: *was splattered with blood, so screams and punches Elsa in the face. Hurts her hand.*

Kessler: *holds up Teminator Arnie's head* "Looks like we headed them off."

Illiyeen: *goes for a boob-shot, just manages to hurt her hand again on Elsa's armour*

Kessler: "At least we're ahead of them."

Illiyeen: *screams at Elsa in Arabic*

Kessler: *switches to Arabic* "Heads we win."

Elsa: "... oh thank God, you speak Arabic. And will you stop making head puns before the Summer Glau Terminator shows up and I have to wrestle with her? I mean, I'd quite like to, but not in this context."
 
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Well, the T-1000 is immune to kinetic attacks (I suppose we could ask Elsa to phaser it), and we might have to worry about more killer deathbots later on, so useful to know he can do such a thing.

Right now, though, let's go with:
[X] Our Terminator is Better, Decapitation Edition
 
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