Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns
Should that be "he"?
Also, have some analysis:
Pros and cons have already been discussed.
Pros: Jacking a ship from Planet Hollywood and flying it back to the Oppenheimer's Light will be quick and direct.
Cons: It also requires going through Planet Hollywood, which is currently on fire, and the ship might get noticed by Henrietta or the H/K, and lead them to the Oppenheimer's Light. Which would be bad.
Pros: Doesn't risk running into an unknown situation, and any skills Illiyeen (re)develops will likely favor the sneaky approach.
Cons: The known situation is pretty bad, and hiding won't necessarily work once the Residents start calling in Batmans, Sherlock Holmeses and various World's Greatest Trackers.
Pros: Fast.
Cons: Almost everything I learned about the WoD I learned from this quest, but I'm guessing that the Dreaming is a) from Changeling: The Dreaming and b) Very Bad News. Illiyeen in particular may react badly, due to incomplete memories or whatever.
Pros: Fast, gets everyone onto the ship quickly for an easy escape.
Cons: None of our heroes have a genre that supports teleporting, so there will be paradox. Also, the teleport will likely be noticed and tracked, possibly from both ends, which could (again) reveal the position of the Oppenheimer's Light.
EDIT
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- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
[X] Tunnel through her sister's massive body via rapid-fire nuke bazooka.
Rapid-fire nuke bazooka is always the right answer.
Rapid-fire nuke bazooka is always the right answer.
Winged Knight
Still just a crazy man with a wolf on his head
- Location
- Texas
[X] A mystic tome of knowledge, which somehow cannot be lost and easily folds down to pocket size.
[X] Running to another Spirit Realm (using the votes in the previous update)
[X] Find a thin area of her sister's body and ram her way through via this machine's reinforced strike faces.
[X] Running to another Spirit Realm (using the votes in the previous update)
[X] Find a thin area of her sister's body and ram her way through via this machine's reinforced strike faces.
Cemal's Gift:
Cemal has hidden something in his soul-spaces for his reincarnation to use when it became most necessary. He feels that time is now. That thing is:
[X] An ornate bracer full of complex clockwork and engraved blessings, intended for an assassin.
Assassin's Creed-esque hidden bracer-blade from the man whose memories also gave her legendary Dex? How could we not?
Cemal has hidden something in his soul-spaces for his reincarnation to use when it became most necessary. He feels that time is now. That thing is:
[X] An ornate bracer full of complex clockwork and engraved blessings, intended for an assassin.
Assassin's Creed-esque hidden bracer-blade from the man whose memories also gave her legendary Dex? How could we not?
- Location
- UTC -6
[X] Tunnel through her sister's massive body via rapid-fire nuke bazooka.
Because XCOM taught me that you should make your own entrances. I also want to see Henriette charging into the teeth of impossible odds, trusting in her skills and firepower to see her through. And not trying to be a space ninja.
I bet Hollywood loves explosions too.
Because XCOM taught me that you should make your own entrances. I also want to see Henriette charging into the teeth of impossible odds, trusting in her skills and firepower to see her through. And not trying to be a space ninja.
I bet Hollywood loves explosions too.
Running thorough the dreaming will require us to either recruit or kill Elsa: Kessler is the only who has the paradigm to pull it off, and it'll out him as a Dreamspeaker. This will be absolutely hilarious (and probably rather vulgar), but letting Elsa report it to the Void Engineers would lead to Bad Juju. (Explaining it to the rest of the party would also be ... awkward.)
On the other hand, getting back to earth early might give us a better chance to counter Ms. Clock's moves. On the third hand (gotta love Progenitors) going back the fast way means splitting the party, which won't be too problematic from an in-game perspective, but might make us deal with inconveniently split storylines.
On the other hand, getting back to earth early might give us a better chance to counter Ms. Clock's moves. On the third hand (gotta love Progenitors) going back the fast way means splitting the party, which won't be too problematic from an in-game perspective, but might make us deal with inconveniently split storylines.
- Location
- The end of all things
Now would be a really good time for Henriette to have finally gotten the combination functions working. Why pilot a 15m atomic death robot when you can pilot a giant 30m atomic death robot with enough extra firepower to end civilization thrice over?
Sure it may be too big to get all the way into Henrietta's core, but the extra bits always get blown off before the climatic final confrontation anyway.
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Who said it was a blade? For all you know it might actually be a laser gun. It's definitely something useful but it might not be something so mundane as a retractable knife.
Yes, fixed.
The Dreaming is what the Void Engineers refer to as Ensemble Space and the NWO as the Jungian Collective Unconsciousness. It's the sum total of humanity's hopes and beliefs and dreams and nightmares, past, present, and future. This gives it some unique traits, like how you can visit it with pure Mind (Mind 4) and the right paradigm, and how a lucid Sleeper dreamer in the Dreaming can manipulate it like the Digital Web with Willpower rolls. The Dreaming is bad news in the sense that everything in the Umbra is bad news.
Oh, also you can end up in Candyland, which @EarthScorpion can tell you is probably not a place you want to be in. People might laugh at that but seriously.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
I'm guessing those people don't know what the melting point of sucrose is.
@MJ12 Commando
would be this okay
[ ] a short blade that constantly shifts it shape, but whose hilt is always wrapped with fine gold chains. A faint presence of grace, elegance and welcoming comes to those who wield it.
would be this okay
[ ] a short blade that constantly shifts it shape, but whose hilt is always wrapped with fine gold chains. A faint presence of grace, elegance and welcoming comes to those who wield it.
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Okay, note that for the thingie Cemal has given us, we presumably get to keep it afterwards and thus don't want to waste it on something we can get in other ways. Weapons? We can get weapons from anywhere. Jamelia is perfectly fine with a gun - and Waitressmelia isn't going to be any more use with a short sword than with a pistol. We also probably want to make sure it doesn't scream REALITY DEVIANT HERE, since that could get, uh, rather awkward if we keep it when we arrive back on Earth. So let's look over the options.
Cemal's Gift:
Cemal has hidden something in his soul-spaces for his reincarnation to use when it became most necessary. He feels that time is now. That thing is:
[ ] A mystic tome of knowledge, which somehow cannot be lost and easily folds down to pocket size.
It's a toss-up between the tome and the bracer, really. The one gives us knowledge that we might be able to use, the other is probably a buff of some sort which might help Waitressmelia out right now. Hmm.
I think I'm gonna go with the tome, tbh, though there's about equal weight on either side.
[ ] A mystic tome of knowledge, which somehow cannot be lost and easily folds down to pocket size.
Vote changed.
Cemal's Gift:
Cemal has hidden something in his soul-spaces for his reincarnation to use when it became most necessary. He feels that time is now. That thing is:
[ ] A mystic tome of knowledge, which somehow cannot be lost and easily folds down to pocket size.
Has potential - it's knowledge. Admittedly it might be Reality Deviant knowledge, but it's easily hideable and we can keep it close. However, Waitressmelia may not be able to leverage what's in there very well.
[ ] An ornate bracer full of complex clockwork and engraved blessings, intended for an assassin.Depends largely what it does. I actually rather doubt it's a weapon - it might be intended for an assassin, but it's covered in blessings and filled with clockwork. More likely to be a buff like the one Senex gave us. Somewhat conspicuous, potentially Deviant.
[ ] A beautiful jeweled dagger.Mehhhh. Probably a really nice dagger, but we have the Barnes-Sykes back home and in her current state Waitressmelia is no more able to use a knife than a gun.
It's a toss-up between the tome and the bracer, really. The one gives us knowledge that we might be able to use, the other is probably a buff of some sort which might help Waitressmelia out right now. Hmm.
I think I'm gonna go with the tome, tbh, though there's about equal weight on either side.
Vote changed.
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- Location
- Singapore
Hm... It needs to be useful and fancy, but also something that wouldn't trip any 'FILTHY RDS PREPARE TO DIE' alarms, eh?
What about a really, really classy watch? Like, a watch from all those old spy flicks.
What about a really, really classy watch? Like, a watch from all those old spy flicks.
Acatalepsy
Firewall Proxy
- Location
- The Diamond Age
"[ ] A mystic tome of knowledge, which somehow cannot be lost and easily folds down to pocket size."
Is this another way of saying "thumb drive full of useful information" ? If so, I can get behind that.
Is this another way of saying "thumb drive full of useful information" ? If so, I can get behind that.
- Location
- in the trash
A pocketwatch!
[X] A mystic tome of knowledge, which somehow cannot be lost and easily folds down to pocket size.
Remember, Cemal died in the 1700s. Such a gift is likely to be rather more... mmm, either personal to him (and be about him and his reasoning), or metaphysical in nature. He was an enemy of the Order of Reason, not even the Technocracy, and even if Reina did personally try to kill him several times (and send lots and lots of killers after him and complain bitterly in the Inner Circle about what on Earth the Grigori are playing at, why can't they find one traitor), his knowledge probably ends at his death.
I would also remind people that one of the things Jamelia did in her seeking was decide to look for her own answers, rather than accept those of others. This kind of thing would be the perfect trigger for an Enlightenment 6 seeking, but... uh, she already did that. And we've spent a lot of the game choosing information over more concrete things and... well. Ms Clock is out there. Henriette-A was the easy mode evil twin compared to her, and she doesn't have a useful inferiority complex to press so it's going to come down to brute force at some point.
(Also, even if the bracer doesn't have an assassin's hidden blade, it's a mystical assassin's bracer filled with cunning and anachronistic clockwork complexity, made by some great artificer-hero of the Order of Reason. Corr 2 Matter 2 says that there was a knife hidden in it. And now the knife is in Jamelia's hand. It may also be an assassin's bracer, which is to say, no one will ever see it coming. Which is to say, Time 2, Corr 2, Entropy 2, Mind 2 shielding of attacks made with the hand wearing it. It's quite a handy focus without even touching on RDism.)
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Cemal's Gift:
Cemal has hidden something in his soul-spaces for his reincarnation to use when it became most necessary. He feels that time is now. That thing is:
[X] A mystic tome of knowledge, which somehow cannot be lost and easily folds down to pocket size.
Knowledge is power, power that can be concealed, and sorted into the proper paradigm for use with analysis. Hopefully.
Extraction Plan:
Elsa and Kessler are now most wanted criminals in Hollywood. Their extraction plan is:
[X] Translating to Planet Hollywood and finding transport there
There's plenty of chaos ongoing there, which I hope even waitress Jamelia can figure out a thing or two to exploit.
Robot Duel, Part 2:
Henriette is going to start by:
[ ] Trying to sneakily fly in via preexisting battle damage.
Time consuming, and there may not be a legit path to use without deploying some Entropy.
[ ] Tunnel through her sister's massive body via rapid-fire nuke bazooka.
Maximum penetration, but also maximum attention. Risky.
[ ] Find a thin area of her sister's body and ram her way through via this machine's reinforced strike faces.
Lewd.
Cemal has hidden something in his soul-spaces for his reincarnation to use when it became most necessary. He feels that time is now. That thing is:
[X] A mystic tome of knowledge, which somehow cannot be lost and easily folds down to pocket size.
Knowledge is power, power that can be concealed, and sorted into the proper paradigm for use with analysis. Hopefully.
Extraction Plan:
Elsa and Kessler are now most wanted criminals in Hollywood. Their extraction plan is:
[X] Translating to Planet Hollywood and finding transport there
There's plenty of chaos ongoing there, which I hope even waitress Jamelia can figure out a thing or two to exploit.
Robot Duel, Part 2:
Henriette is going to start by:
[ ] Trying to sneakily fly in via preexisting battle damage.
Time consuming, and there may not be a legit path to use without deploying some Entropy.
[ ] Tunnel through her sister's massive body via rapid-fire nuke bazooka.
Maximum penetration, but also maximum attention. Risky.
[ ] Find a thin area of her sister's body and ram her way through via this machine's reinforced strike faces.
Lewd.
Sarpedon
Knight Errant
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] An ornate bracer full of complex clockwork and engraved blessings, intended for an assassin.
Cause it sounds cool and we never got around to reading the other book of Ixoi knowledge and discounted spheres before even though we said we would totally get to it.
Cause it sounds cool and we never got around to reading the other book of Ixoi knowledge and discounted spheres before even though we said we would totally get to it.
- Location
- in the trash
[X] Ornate bracer
Tradwiki: Candyland
File extracted from wiki.tradwiki.trad/Teams/Astral_Explorers/Reports/Draft_Reports/2015/2015JUL_Candyland
As part of Team Astral Explorers' attempts to keep an up-to-date model of the current astral realm structure, a subset of the team engaged in a dreamquest-type journey to the 'Sweets' sub-realm of the Realm of Childhood Innocence, encountering it in the 'Candyland' version (a similar version to the space-paradigm Candyworld, only it exists on a plane floating in a sea of chocolate). This is the the first draft report, and is a work in progress.
Team members: ReignBow, WickedWitchOfTheWeb
Backup team members: LiQWERTY
Entrance method: copious amounts of hallucinogens combined with a child's nightlight attached to a short-duration battery (see here for more details - classed as a CoX/Verbena fusion)
Date of expedition: 2015-JUL-03
Subjective Duration: Two days
Earth Duration: One hour
Target location: The Realm of Childhood Innocence, Candyland sub-Realm.
Threat level: Significant
Technocratic presence: Significant, subverted realm
Nephandic presence: None encountered, suspected
Maruader presence: None encountered
See Realm of Childhood Innocence and Candyland for more information about this astral realm.
The smell of burning sugar. That's the first thing you smell when you get to Candyland these days. Burning sugar and acrid sweetener and a hint of liquorice. They don't sing there any more. There's no more joyous songs of the gingerbred men as they mine the mountains for rich seams. The lords and ladies are cruel and paranoid, and in the towns and cities you can see flatscreens and tablets sunk into the icing walls.
The clouds have been wounded, and the sky unicorns are almost extinct. Where once you saw swarms of the things, singing their merry songs as they grazed at the sugar clouds, now they're a rare sight. They're scared of humans and the gingerbread men alike. The clouds have been pierced repeatedly and now bleed sweet rain down onto the hills and valleys near constantly. We saw signs of flooding and landslips around Treacle Valley. Cocoflakeville is gone entirely. We're not sure where. The farming villages are gone, too, and there are stunted, mutated candy canes growing wild in the unplowed fields.
WickedWitchOfTheWeb was in tears by this point, but we pressed on.
As we came over the Waffles Plateau, we found a mass grave on the edge of a fudge-slagged area, by the ruins of a strange mechanical device made entirely from hardened sugar which looked vaguely like a child's drawing of a tank. Hundreds, maybe thousands of gingerbread men had been thrown in the pit to rot. Some of them had been blown into bits, but some had been systematically executed. Strangely, their dough seemed oddly malformed and... and factory produced. The gingerbread men we tried to talk to about it refused to even accept that was a place, although we overheard a conversation which suggested they were considering driving us out of their village and they didn't like strangers asking around.
Rather than risk an Innsmouth Situation, we chose to refuse their offer of staying at the inn, and camped out. It was probably for the best.
That night, we saw that the stars have changed. There are satellites hanging overhead now, and ReignBow scried that there's a lot of junk debris. We think it's coming in from Candyworld, before falling down on Candyland. A shooting star fell near us - it turned out to be ruined hull plating. Bronze. Maybe Etherite, we're not sure.
The next day, we set off, hoping to reach the safety of the gummybears of Gumdrop Forest. Our hopes were in vain. Gumdrop Forest is gone. Entirely. There's now an open circular lake there, filled with toxic artificial sweeteners and colourings. The bright stains and fluffy white scum floats on the surface. There are a few stumps of gumdrop trees around the crater-lake, but they've been slagged.
We saw the wreckage of more war machinery, made entirely from local materials and the remains of what looked like factories. This isn't expected at all - the only places you get factories in Candyworld are in the major cities, and that's where they touch the Realm of Popular Culture and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. These factories weren't like that. They were gleaming skeletal things, made of tin foil and reinforced uber-icing.
We tried to approach one of them, but there was an Out Of Place thing - what looked like a Technocratic containment barrier. There were defence guns shooting hot fudge at us, but most of the defences were facing inwards. Whatever happened here, the Technocrats were trying to contain the factories, not protect them. ReignBow wanted to investigate further, but WickedWitchOfTheWeb insisted that the two of us press on to Candyville and find out what the flip (you can't swear in Candyland without being punished for being rude) was going on.
When we cleared the ridge, aching and sticky from our walk through the Fudge Fens, we saw that Candyville is surrounded by refugee camps. Hastily erected tents are slowly melting in the sunshine. The soda rivers are polluted with sweetner and dye - they're dumping their waste in there. Sanitation is poor. We picked our way past the camps, and saw wide-eyed, bulging-bellied jelly babies and hollow-eyed, crippled lollypop men. They wanted tass, but we had none to give.
Things were barely better when we got to Candyville itself. Wise Queen Honey is dead. Her daughter, Lolly, is now the queen and despite her youth - she appears as a small girl with bright swirling patterns in her hair - she rules with an iron fist. Martial law is in effect, as is conscription - draft-dodging is punished by summary dissolution. As a sign of the corruption of childhood, there are cameras and screens everywhere, in among the old-fashioned gingerbread houses. The jellybean harvest has failed and rationing is in effect.
All evidence suggests Queen Lolly is actively collaborating with the Void Engineers, who are up to their usual tricks.
(Why does no one ever seem to remember that the Void Engineers are the descendents of the bits of the Technocracy which wiped out lots of native Americans and which subverted and conquered India for the British Empire?)
Queen Lolly is ruling with the aid of a military junta including Baron Gummybear (who's lost an arm, and now has a candy-cane hook), Duke Cookie and Lady Milk-Choc. There is rumoured to be a Void Engineer on the junta council, but we were not able to confirm that. There is local production of AK-variants firing high velocity sugar fragments, and we saw public executions by firing line of 'criminals'. Candyland's justice system has always relied on human goodness, rather than cold and mechanical laws. Now it is absolutist.
The Queen's secret police are everywhere in Candyville. We found this out when we had liquorice policemen start following us as they're not very secret - they're all made of liquorice. We'd normally congratulate the previously hated liquorice minority for integrating in society, but this is an old fashioned imperialist trick - give an unpopular minority status and authority, and they'll follow you because they know they'll lose it if they aren't loyal. We saw them questioning people we talked to - they wanted to know what we were asking about, and who we were working for.
From our questioning, it seems that some unknown spiritual force invaded Candyland - perhaps one linked to mechanisation or industrialisation - and was repulsed at great cost, seemingly with Void Engineer assistance. The Technocrats seem to have used this chance to insinuate themselves with the ruling class of Candyland, who are mostly the generals and leaders of the Candy forces. We're not sure if they're the real power behind the throne, or whether they let Queen Lolly rule autonomously and support her because she's friendly to them. Lolly was always the most ambitious of Honey's daughters, but also the youngest. For her to have the throne suggests all her sisters and brothers are dead.
We gathered all the information we could, and then fled just in time. We managed to come down from our high before the police caught up with us. Whatever happened to Candyland... it's horrible, and the Technocrats are using this to full advantage. We don't know what to do.
As part of Team Astral Explorers' attempts to keep an up-to-date model of the current astral realm structure, a subset of the team engaged in a dreamquest-type journey to the 'Sweets' sub-realm of the Realm of Childhood Innocence, encountering it in the 'Candyland' version (a similar version to the space-paradigm Candyworld, only it exists on a plane floating in a sea of chocolate). This is the the first draft report, and is a work in progress.
Team members: ReignBow, WickedWitchOfTheWeb
Backup team members: LiQWERTY
Entrance method: copious amounts of hallucinogens combined with a child's nightlight attached to a short-duration battery (see here for more details - classed as a CoX/Verbena fusion)
Date of expedition: 2015-JUL-03
Subjective Duration: Two days
Earth Duration: One hour
Target location: The Realm of Childhood Innocence, Candyland sub-Realm.
Threat level: Significant
Technocratic presence: Significant, subverted realm
Nephandic presence: None encountered, suspected
Maruader presence: None encountered
See Realm of Childhood Innocence and Candyland for more information about this astral realm.
The smell of burning sugar. That's the first thing you smell when you get to Candyland these days. Burning sugar and acrid sweetener and a hint of liquorice. They don't sing there any more. There's no more joyous songs of the gingerbred men as they mine the mountains for rich seams. The lords and ladies are cruel and paranoid, and in the towns and cities you can see flatscreens and tablets sunk into the icing walls.
The clouds have been wounded, and the sky unicorns are almost extinct. Where once you saw swarms of the things, singing their merry songs as they grazed at the sugar clouds, now they're a rare sight. They're scared of humans and the gingerbread men alike. The clouds have been pierced repeatedly and now bleed sweet rain down onto the hills and valleys near constantly. We saw signs of flooding and landslips around Treacle Valley. Cocoflakeville is gone entirely. We're not sure where. The farming villages are gone, too, and there are stunted, mutated candy canes growing wild in the unplowed fields.
WickedWitchOfTheWeb was in tears by this point, but we pressed on.
As we came over the Waffles Plateau, we found a mass grave on the edge of a fudge-slagged area, by the ruins of a strange mechanical device made entirely from hardened sugar which looked vaguely like a child's drawing of a tank. Hundreds, maybe thousands of gingerbread men had been thrown in the pit to rot. Some of them had been blown into bits, but some had been systematically executed. Strangely, their dough seemed oddly malformed and... and factory produced. The gingerbread men we tried to talk to about it refused to even accept that was a place, although we overheard a conversation which suggested they were considering driving us out of their village and they didn't like strangers asking around.
Rather than risk an Innsmouth Situation, we chose to refuse their offer of staying at the inn, and camped out. It was probably for the best.
That night, we saw that the stars have changed. There are satellites hanging overhead now, and ReignBow scried that there's a lot of junk debris. We think it's coming in from Candyworld, before falling down on Candyland. A shooting star fell near us - it turned out to be ruined hull plating. Bronze. Maybe Etherite, we're not sure.
The next day, we set off, hoping to reach the safety of the gummybears of Gumdrop Forest. Our hopes were in vain. Gumdrop Forest is gone. Entirely. There's now an open circular lake there, filled with toxic artificial sweeteners and colourings. The bright stains and fluffy white scum floats on the surface. There are a few stumps of gumdrop trees around the crater-lake, but they've been slagged.
We saw the wreckage of more war machinery, made entirely from local materials and the remains of what looked like factories. This isn't expected at all - the only places you get factories in Candyworld are in the major cities, and that's where they touch the Realm of Popular Culture and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. These factories weren't like that. They were gleaming skeletal things, made of tin foil and reinforced uber-icing.
We tried to approach one of them, but there was an Out Of Place thing - what looked like a Technocratic containment barrier. There were defence guns shooting hot fudge at us, but most of the defences were facing inwards. Whatever happened here, the Technocrats were trying to contain the factories, not protect them. ReignBow wanted to investigate further, but WickedWitchOfTheWeb insisted that the two of us press on to Candyville and find out what the flip (you can't swear in Candyland without being punished for being rude) was going on.
When we cleared the ridge, aching and sticky from our walk through the Fudge Fens, we saw that Candyville is surrounded by refugee camps. Hastily erected tents are slowly melting in the sunshine. The soda rivers are polluted with sweetner and dye - they're dumping their waste in there. Sanitation is poor. We picked our way past the camps, and saw wide-eyed, bulging-bellied jelly babies and hollow-eyed, crippled lollypop men. They wanted tass, but we had none to give.
Things were barely better when we got to Candyville itself. Wise Queen Honey is dead. Her daughter, Lolly, is now the queen and despite her youth - she appears as a small girl with bright swirling patterns in her hair - she rules with an iron fist. Martial law is in effect, as is conscription - draft-dodging is punished by summary dissolution. As a sign of the corruption of childhood, there are cameras and screens everywhere, in among the old-fashioned gingerbread houses. The jellybean harvest has failed and rationing is in effect.
All evidence suggests Queen Lolly is actively collaborating with the Void Engineers, who are up to their usual tricks.
(Why does no one ever seem to remember that the Void Engineers are the descendents of the bits of the Technocracy which wiped out lots of native Americans and which subverted and conquered India for the British Empire?)
Queen Lolly is ruling with the aid of a military junta including Baron Gummybear (who's lost an arm, and now has a candy-cane hook), Duke Cookie and Lady Milk-Choc. There is rumoured to be a Void Engineer on the junta council, but we were not able to confirm that. There is local production of AK-variants firing high velocity sugar fragments, and we saw public executions by firing line of 'criminals'. Candyland's justice system has always relied on human goodness, rather than cold and mechanical laws. Now it is absolutist.
The Queen's secret police are everywhere in Candyville. We found this out when we had liquorice policemen start following us as they're not very secret - they're all made of liquorice. We'd normally congratulate the previously hated liquorice minority for integrating in society, but this is an old fashioned imperialist trick - give an unpopular minority status and authority, and they'll follow you because they know they'll lose it if they aren't loyal. We saw them questioning people we talked to - they wanted to know what we were asking about, and who we were working for.
From our questioning, it seems that some unknown spiritual force invaded Candyland - perhaps one linked to mechanisation or industrialisation - and was repulsed at great cost, seemingly with Void Engineer assistance. The Technocrats seem to have used this chance to insinuate themselves with the ruling class of Candyland, who are mostly the generals and leaders of the Candy forces. We're not sure if they're the real power behind the throne, or whether they let Queen Lolly rule autonomously and support her because she's friendly to them. Lolly was always the most ambitious of Honey's daughters, but also the youngest. For her to have the throne suggests all her sisters and brothers are dead.
We gathered all the information we could, and then fled just in time. We managed to come down from our high before the police caught up with us. Whatever happened to Candyland... it's horrible, and the Technocrats are using this to full advantage. We don't know what to do.
Article: Well, @BaptismOfFire? Care to explain? What are your people playing at?
Article: We're just trying to stop the dratted place falling apart. I would like to say that in our defence, Lolly is paranoid, is traumatised from the burning of Sherbert Castle, and is far too young to be ruling. If we were actually running the place, we'd be doing a much better job of it. As it is, we're just supporting the existing royal family because we can't do anything else, and trying to encourage her to make decisions which won't make things worse. What do you want us to do, invade and introduce democracy? Like that'd work.
Article: That place is a mess. And WickedWitchOfTheWeb will go and talk about it - and kick up more of a fuss if we 'censor' her. Can't you do anything to... make it look less bad, if anything else?
Article: I think it's stupid, but we have to support the local strongwoman or the place will fall apart and Our Enemy will get a toehold there to spread into the rest of Childhood Innocence. It's almost a failed state already. If we withdraw our support from her, the entire place will collapse.
Anyway. I'll check this article out with my superiors. I think it'll pass, but it'll worry them since if this is up on tradwiki, RCpedia will find out and then we'll get a bunch of fanatics showing up to 'save childhood' or some rubbish like that.
Article: 'Saving childhood' is rubbish?
Article: My brattish little sister was right. This place is a terrible form of childhood. What kind of little sugar-filled brat wants to live in a place filled with sugar? Just reading this article made my teeth hurt.
... also, they don't have any erg cola there. Which is just stupid.
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hmm. Fair points all. While I disagree somewhat with the first - I think the information could perhaps be useful...
... yeah, the second one is really the clincher, though the third doesn't hurt. It's not just a decent focus, it's also... hmm... a continuation of the "find our own answers", which has sort of been a running theme. We might use the tools of our forebears, but we don't take their words as gospel (after all, we're not filthy stagnant traditionalists
).Okay, changing my vote:
[X] An ornate bracer full of complex clockwork and engraved blessings, intended for an assassin.I
The bracer does seem to be the option that's most open for us to decide what it means, yeah.
[x] An ornate bracer full of complex clockwork and engraved blessings, intended for an assassin.
Clockwork, but also a very human element in the blessings - whether or not you believe that blessings have any inherent power.
We can certainly use them as mind focuses for personal effects, if nothing else.
[x] An ornate bracer full of complex clockwork and engraved blessings, intended for an assassin.
Clockwork, but also a very human element in the blessings - whether or not you believe that blessings have any inherent power.
We can certainly use them as mind focuses for personal effects, if nothing else.
Kerrus
Fractal Insanity
I disagree with the Bracer choice. I mean it's cool, yeah, it's got some neat stuff, almost assuredly, it can aid Jamelia in finding her own path- absolutely.
But excluding the other options because of this belief that there's only one beneficial choice and our previous actions have rendered the other two of these completely undefined options irrelevant seems... a bit of hubris, really.
Knowledge is important, but that doesn't mean it's going to be a little tome filled with 17th century information that's going to be out of date, or personal information that is someone else's path. I think assuming either of those would be doing Cemal a disservice, given all the lessons he learned, and later passed on to Jamelia.
I think the most likely thing the tome would contain is not hard information and other people's answers, but advice and thoughts and feelings. A diary, of sorts, but in a way that doesn't give us cold, technical answers, but insight into who Cemal was, and how he did things- a sort of angel on our shoulders giving us advice. It's up to Jamelia to choose to follow that advice, but having the option is very solid. Cemal was also a seeker of truth, and an opponent of corruption, and knowledge on both of these would be extremely useful to us in the long term.
In game terms, the book is almost certainly some sort of Grimoire, which is to say a book that aids the teaching of certain abilities, attributes, and occasionally spheres. These types of books let their users raise stats/abilities/spheres by studying the book and paying a massively discounted amount of XP.
So for example, you might have a Grimoire that teaches Dex 6 (wallrunning), Melee 5, Dodge 5, Stealth 5, Acrobatics 4, and a unique rote for Time 2 that lets you use what would otherwise be a time 3 ability (extra actions).
Grimoires can also let you raise Arete by 1 without going on a Seeking, and in a rarer form called a Primer, can awaken the unawakened into the Grimoire's paradigm.
But let's talk about the knife. It could be a knife. We already have a knife that's great for combat. But a knife isn't always just a knife, and discounting the weapon because the current pre-Jamelia doesn't think she knows how to use a gun, is I think rather foolish.
There's lots of things that can be attributed to knives, but I think the most relevant is in words- the phrase 'cut to the center of things', for example. For someone seeking the truth and fighting oppression like Cemal, a knife can be a great tool- not just a weapon, but a tool. It could be magical, it could be a focus- but it could be greater than either of those things. Maybe it's actually a key. Maybe it's a symbol. Maybe it's a tool to help Jamelia find the truth or expose corruption, and empowered with formidable order of reason proto-science aimed at aiding that cause. Maybe the knife represents a background, an ability Jamelia might sorely benefit from.
For example, in the Mage game that Christopher Westin originates in, the party once found a tiny book that was tied shut, and foolishly opened it. In doing so, that party member learned a piece of knowledge so ancient it was extinct- nobody else in creation knew the words contained within. But they also lost an item that granted the background of Arcane 6- Cloaking, to the technocrats. The user of this artifact basically had always-on DRM that obscured his identity from anyone scrying him, anyone trying to indentify him through magickal means. Whether seeing him in the future or the past, or reviewing security footage or statistically analyizing his movements - in every case it applied.
A book of a word so primal that no being knows its name is just an example of what an item can be- and like you guys, that party fell into the trap of thinking "A book is a book, that must mean we're to read it, and it can't possibly be anything else."
A knife is a knife, sure, but it could be so many other things. The Verbenae use ritual knives in their reality deviance, as symbolic focuses and channels- but even the early Order of Reason had use for knives to discern the will of God.
Remember that the Order was very fond of hidings its secrets, of preventing one form that within itself contained another, of creating places that a student could gradually tease the secrets out of, but at each level could look back and see all the things they missed.
A knife is a knife, but it's never just a knife.
But excluding the other options because of this belief that there's only one beneficial choice and our previous actions have rendered the other two of these completely undefined options irrelevant seems... a bit of hubris, really.
Knowledge is important, but that doesn't mean it's going to be a little tome filled with 17th century information that's going to be out of date, or personal information that is someone else's path. I think assuming either of those would be doing Cemal a disservice, given all the lessons he learned, and later passed on to Jamelia.
I think the most likely thing the tome would contain is not hard information and other people's answers, but advice and thoughts and feelings. A diary, of sorts, but in a way that doesn't give us cold, technical answers, but insight into who Cemal was, and how he did things- a sort of angel on our shoulders giving us advice. It's up to Jamelia to choose to follow that advice, but having the option is very solid. Cemal was also a seeker of truth, and an opponent of corruption, and knowledge on both of these would be extremely useful to us in the long term.
In game terms, the book is almost certainly some sort of Grimoire, which is to say a book that aids the teaching of certain abilities, attributes, and occasionally spheres. These types of books let their users raise stats/abilities/spheres by studying the book and paying a massively discounted amount of XP.
So for example, you might have a Grimoire that teaches Dex 6 (wallrunning), Melee 5, Dodge 5, Stealth 5, Acrobatics 4, and a unique rote for Time 2 that lets you use what would otherwise be a time 3 ability (extra actions).
Grimoires can also let you raise Arete by 1 without going on a Seeking, and in a rarer form called a Primer, can awaken the unawakened into the Grimoire's paradigm.
But let's talk about the knife. It could be a knife. We already have a knife that's great for combat. But a knife isn't always just a knife, and discounting the weapon because the current pre-Jamelia doesn't think she knows how to use a gun, is I think rather foolish.
There's lots of things that can be attributed to knives, but I think the most relevant is in words- the phrase 'cut to the center of things', for example. For someone seeking the truth and fighting oppression like Cemal, a knife can be a great tool- not just a weapon, but a tool. It could be magical, it could be a focus- but it could be greater than either of those things. Maybe it's actually a key. Maybe it's a symbol. Maybe it's a tool to help Jamelia find the truth or expose corruption, and empowered with formidable order of reason proto-science aimed at aiding that cause. Maybe the knife represents a background, an ability Jamelia might sorely benefit from.
For example, in the Mage game that Christopher Westin originates in, the party once found a tiny book that was tied shut, and foolishly opened it. In doing so, that party member learned a piece of knowledge so ancient it was extinct- nobody else in creation knew the words contained within. But they also lost an item that granted the background of Arcane 6- Cloaking, to the technocrats. The user of this artifact basically had always-on DRM that obscured his identity from anyone scrying him, anyone trying to indentify him through magickal means. Whether seeing him in the future or the past, or reviewing security footage or statistically analyizing his movements - in every case it applied.
A book of a word so primal that no being knows its name is just an example of what an item can be- and like you guys, that party fell into the trap of thinking "A book is a book, that must mean we're to read it, and it can't possibly be anything else."
A knife is a knife, sure, but it could be so many other things. The Verbenae use ritual knives in their reality deviance, as symbolic focuses and channels- but even the early Order of Reason had use for knives to discern the will of God.
Remember that the Order was very fond of hidings its secrets, of preventing one form that within itself contained another, of creating places that a student could gradually tease the secrets out of, but at each level could look back and see all the things they missed.
A knife is a knife, but it's never just a knife.