Remove ads

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

Reader mode
...Wait, the Moscow Museum as in the Moscow Museum that was raided and taken over by Hemophages which we just finished investigating? Whose caretaker crew are either dead or addicted to vitae? That Moscow Museum?

Fuuuuuuuck.

Well, at least now we know (or at least have a healthy suspicion) that "Crisis Management Committee" CMC.CMD.JOINT.TU is compromised.

How do we save these people?
 
"The tools of the Union are mere mindless tools." Collins manages to groan, from a burned throat. Part of his face has burned off, revealing a shiny metal jaw. Primium. "They can be bent. They can be broken. The Union is the same. It has become corrupt. Uncaring. The only good thing to do is to burn it to the ground. Look what they did to me. They made me into this. When I suffered, they said that there was nothing they could do. But they came to me. They made me understand. My suffering is not because of anything I did. I never did anything wrong. My suffering is because the entire world suffers, and the only good thing to do is to end it."

"And how are you going to end it?" Siddharth asks, carefully.

"Simple. We're going to break into Mount Meru and shatter the Prison. We're going to unleash the closest thing to hell on Earth, dread gods imprisoned for untold eras, seeking their revenge on the humans who jailed them. When the Red Star comes to pass judgment on mankind for its original sin, you will understand."

"What Red Star? What dread gods?"

"There are things beyond our understanding. Things that the Union lied to us about. Things beyond space, beyond time. Everyone lied, do you understand? There is no loving God, there is no benevolent Control. The Union is a shadow of itself, fighting a losing war its members can't comprehend. The Gods which seeded this world are monsters who see humans as nothing more than snacks. Do you understand any of this, marine? Do you? I doubt it. When faced with the truth, you go back to comforting lies."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Okay. Reviewing the story, it become clear that the Infernalists plan to release the Primordials somehow. Seems like bullshit to me, but Ebon Dragon is certainly still imprisoned, probably with the Scarlet Empress. The Red Star may actually be Malfeas, I vaguely recall if he got fetich-murked again his new fetich would become a red star.

The Jade Key... Welp, I dunno. Reminds me of the Jade Prison, and people are probably playing around with exaltations in addition to ancient Exalt artifacts, and I suspect Auto-kun is indeed awake and alive somehow and behind Panopticon. If he is awake, I suspect he does NOT want his siblings freed, so that's something.

All this may be obvious to those who have kept the general arc of the story in mind, but it bears repeating - these Nephandi douchebags are probably headed for Mount Meru eventually. Of course, you can bet that there are a veritable shitload of Akashic Brothers ready to beat their faces in if they try that, so we might want to figure out how they plan to get around that.

All this and 'rogue' Iteration X agents. Hilarious.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
[Blurry pictures of Iteration X equipment engaging Moscow Technocrats has been attached. Most of them look to have been taken from the construct underneath the museum.]
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hold on, who's being attacked here?

Are... are these photos of Panopticon attacking the Technocrats who defected to the Camarilla who were under the museum? We know they got attacked by Technocratic equipment, exowalkers and such...

If Ivan Rankovitch was attacked - well, I'd expect us to have heard about it, unless things went very badly indeed. We need to try and contact him - under the circumstances, if he's gone dark, it could mean Panopticon noticed that he accepted Filipov's surrender and has decided to use whoever it is who just showed up as cover to take him out. If he hasn't lost contact, maybe he knows just who did get attacked.
 
Candesce said:
Hold on, who's being attacked here?

Are... are these photos of Panopticon attacking the Technocrats who defected to the Camarilla who were under the museum? We know they got attacked by Technocratic equipment, exowalkers and such...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

They are pictures of some people with heavy Iteration X hardware attacking the museum, after there was a hostile mat-trans dial-in from coordinates literally nobody recognized.

Which coordinates would have had been completely unused for nearly 2 decades, and probably more, because the place was super high-security and didn't regularly have farcasting from Earth?
 
So the traitors at the museum were killed by escapees from the dimensional anomaly or whatever it was that happened 16 years ago? Has it been 16 subjective years for them too? What have they been doing this whole time?

Looking at their situation and instructions, they aren't going to trust easily. As far as they know, the entire union has been subverted. This is not entirely true, but they are wise not to trust. Someone above us wants them killed, presumably to silence them. If we could contact them we could probably learn a lot. It will be risky, though. They must be approached carefully, or they may attack us. At the same time it wouldn't be good for people to know that we are communicating with them or that we know about the internal problems that we almost killed Serafina to hide our knowledge of. The orders forbid negotiation, but we also have to investigate them to understand the nature of their "threat"...
 
While I'm proud of you guys for avoiding metagaming to frankly ridiculous levels, we already know just from the transmission that these guys who assaulted the the museum just now have corroborated our theory about the Computer. That alone bears investigating before we shoot. Jamelia would be unlikely to think that these people would necessarily be friendly, but she'll be open-minded enough to invite them in, provided they shut the fuck up.

[X] 1.5x) You need more information. Something here is suspicious.
-[X] We were just in the Museum's control room yesterday. The virus we planted (Corr 2, Time 2) will let us observe the recordings of the assault and what they're doing currently, if they're still held up in there.
 
Last edited:
Amorous Intent said:
While I'm proud of you guys for avoiding metagaming to frankly ridiculous levels, we already know just from the transmission that these guys who assaulted the the museum just now have corroborated our theory about the Computer. That alone bears investigating before we shoot. Jamelia would be unlikely to think that these people would necessarily be friendly, but she'll be open-minded enough to invite them in, provided they shut the fuck up.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think adding "very convincingly make everybody else think they're dead" to the plan would probably be good. so we don't all end up actually dead, too.
 
[X] 1.5x) You need more information. Something here is suspicious.
-[X] We were just in the Museum's control room yesterday. The virus we planted (Corr 2, Time 2) will let us observe the recordings of the assault and what they're doing currently, if they're still held up in there.
 
-[X] We were just in the Museum's control room yesterday. The virus we planted (Corr 2, Time 2) will let us observe the recordings of the assault and what they're doing currently, if they're still held up in there.
 
Amorous Intent said:
While I'm proud of you guys for avoiding metagaming to frankly ridiculous levels, we already know just from the transmission that these guys who assaulted the the museum just now have corroborated our theory about the Computer. That alone bears investigating before we shoot. Jamelia would be unlikely to think that these people would necessarily be friendly, but she'll be open-minded enough to invite them in, provided they shut the fuck up.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I agree with both. First, while avoiding using information that we don't know out-of-character is all well and good, we do need to remember to use the information that Jamelia actually has.

For example, Jamelia knows that this is almost the exact kind of trouble that she was worried Serafina might let out if she investigated into what happened to Henriette without Jamelia's help. These 'rogue agents' don't have Jamelia's help, and they sure as hell don't seem to be aware of how dangerous the information they're spreading is. Or at least, they don't seem to have a good picture of the political landscape they're spreading the information in.

So we need to silence them. Very preferably in a way that doesn't paint a target on us. And we want them to stay alive (addendum: pending investigation into their motives, but it's looking like they're potential allies so far). Ideally, we want them to also no longer be targets. As Grin_Reaper said above, they might need to appear dead.

Also, the notification seemed to be concerned about them defecting to RDs. This is probably not actually true, even if they're pursuing temporary alliances with RDs like we sometimes do. But have we considered, er, helping them actually defect? This isn't without its problems—we have various contacts that we might be able to call on, but none of them are already in on our conspiracy. Potential benefits: if these 'rogue agents' are legit and have information on basically the entire Union being subverted and have a giant target on their heads, they might be safer with superstitionists than with us.
 
Last edited:
FunkyEntropy said:
Well, at least now we know (or at least have a healthy suspicion) that "Crisis Management Committee" CMC.CMD.JOINT.TU is compromised.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Are you sure? Look at their address.

Maybe they're just smoking grass and rubber-stamping whatever they're getting.

Or maybe, you know, they don't actually know what's going on in the Umbra because the Void Engineers aren't talking about it, as said.
 
What Amorous Intent said and most of what Emy said. If these people are survivors/escapees from whatever-the-frak went down on Autocthonia, if we can convince them we're aware of what we think is going on, they could be allies, or even better, give us the actual inside story of what went wrong. However, given our orders, we'd need to do some really fancy work to make them either appear to have died or really vanished without a trace. Bonus points if we can lay the blame for what they did on Panopticon/Threat Null, because they are hostile to the Union and prone to using Union gear to attack loyal Constructs. The more we can quietly and legitimately raise the alarm about a 'Hostile EDE entity that tries to look like 1990's Union gear', the better, as long as we do it in a way that doesn't get the Void Engineers thinking we're about to blow the whole thing wide open and spark a Union Civil War.

[X] 1.5x) You need more information. Something here is suspicious.
-[X] We were just in the Museum's control room yesterday. The virus we planted (Corr 2, Time 2) will let us observe the recordings of the assault and what they're doing currently, if they're still held up in there.

I'll whip up a 'Day Off' bit or two after I get my weekly report in by local Noon.
 
Shit. Shit. Shit!

Is this why Panopticon was deployed to Moscow?

In order to squelch these guys as soon as they showed up?
 
Garlak said:
Shit. Shit. Shit!

Is this why Panopticon was deployed to Moscow?

In order to squelch these guys as soon as they showed up?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If that was their plan, they'd have arranged for them to be the ones called in to deal with it instead of us.

Either that or they're blithering incompetents, but I don't think we're that lucky.
 
Grin_Reaper said:
If that was their plan, they'd have arranged for them to be the ones called in to deal with it instead of us.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, who says they haven't been called in already? =/

Jamelia only got orders for her Construct. It's not like she'd be privy to all orders sent out to all other Technocrat assets in Moscow. It's possible that that Panopticon purge squad also just got this order.

Jamelia is getting a "go put out this fire that just sprung up" order simply because her Construct happened to be in Moscow.
MJ12 Commando said:
Your personnel are fully healed, have regained all their WP, and all their Prime Energy. The power of a day off (which Kessler mostly spent in the regrowth vat, to be fair, but everyone else had fun!) Bonus XP may be rewarded for elaborating more on the actual day off which everyone (including Jamelia) enjoyed, which I was going to do but we're at 4700 words here and I just took a final exam.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Kessler: Die Hard movie marathon? Die Hard movie marathon.

Actually, maybe make that a general "catching up to action movies from the past 16 years" thing. I think Kessler might have missed out on seeing the sequels to Terminator? The second movie came out in 91, the third in 03, and the fourth in 09. Rocky Balboa in 2006.

Hm... Should introduce him to the wonder of videogames, too. We can start with the Metal Gear Solid series, or whatever the in-universe equivalent would be.
 
Garlak said:
Well, who says they haven't been called in already? =/

Jamelia only got orders for her Construct. It's not like she'd be privy to all orders sent out to all other Technocrat assets in Moscow. It's possible that that Panopticon purge squad also just got this order.

Jamelia is getting a "go put out this fire that just sprung up" order simply because her Construct happened to be in Moscow.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, for one thing, having an option to throw Panopticon at the problem wouldn't make terribly much sense if they were already involved in the operation.

"Let's throw these guys at a problem they're already being thrown at!"
 
Last edited:
We really don't want to 'throw Panopticon at the problem' if these people are a group who've escaped Panopticon once and might be allies against them. They're truly loyalist Union members if they've survived all that. And we'd want to keep Panopticon as far from our investigation and our Construct as possible.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Are you sure? Look at their address.

Maybe they're just smoking grass and rubber-stamping whatever they're getting.

Or maybe, you know, they don't actually know what's going on in the Umbra because the Void Engineers aren't talking about it, as said.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I thought it was known that the museum was taken over. I guess I was wrong.
 
Strypgia said:
We really don't want to 'throw Panopticon at the problem' if these people are a group who've escaped Panopticon once and might be allies against them. They're truly loyalist Union members if they've survived all that. And we'd want to keep Panopticon as far from our investigation and our Construct as possible.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yes. I'll emphasise that Jamelia now, IC, does not believe that Panopticon can be trustworthy because she knows they're taking orders from Control, even if the members she's met seem to just be obeying because... well, it's Control, right?

Except it's not Control, she thinks. It's the Computer who's stolen Control's codes.

... goddamnit. What we really want to do is to hand these guys over to the Void Engineers if they're Iterators who have stumbled onto the fact that the Computer went rogue, so they can help fight it - as the VEs are doing, right? But because the VEs are trying to run a conspiracy without the NWO, we can't tell them because we can't let them know that we know.

I wonder. Can we somehow lure the VEs here, while leaving them ignorant about the whole 'guys we know you're fighting the Computer'? Possibly on the grounds of advising with the extradimensional aspects of the case - after all, right, they're the Dimensional Science experts. If these people are EDEs or EDE possessed trying to sow chaos among the ranks of the Union, then the VEs have the job of dealing with them. If they're Iterators who have stumbled across the truth, then the VEs - we think - have been recruiting everyone who stumbles across the truth, and they seem to be a non-neglibible force.

... man. If only we had a contact who was a Void Engineer who was very skilled at DSci and Correspondence who we would ask about things and if she happened to look at the Museum data she could probably get information from the MatTrans ripple or something and then alert her organisation without it looking like we "accidentally" let her know about that when we "just wanted her to advise on the EDE artefacts".
 
Heh, yeah. :) Just because we don't have that VE directly in our Construct, doesn't mean that they're 'out of bounds' for contacting like it's some kind of RPG where you can only get your PC party to do stuff and never the NPCs.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Bonus XP may be rewarded for elaborating more on the actual day off which everyone (including Jamelia) enjoyed, which I was going to do but we're at 4700 words here and I just took a final exam.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As far as black markets went, Jamelia thought that she'd been in worse. The sun wasn't boiling them, sand wasn't blowing everywhere, and the place didn't stink of camels. Keeping an eye on her compatriots, she idly browsed around. Rose had arrived from Los Angeles fresh with a shopping list from Donald, who apparently had certain ideas of things that would be cheaper to acquire directly from Russian black markets and Rose was all too happy to help with that, dragging Henriette to and fro. Serafina had managed to bustle Jamelia out with them to occupy her time before she would be sent to LA herself to keep her appointment with Donald.

Passing by one of the ubiquitous gun stalls, she was about to put it out of her mind when she saw something that almost made her double-take. "What exactly is that supposed to be?" she inquired.

The grizzled vendor snorted. "That is why gunsmiths shouldn't build while drunk, drink more, then keep building."

Jamelia motions towards it. "May I?" After he nods, she takes down an unwieldly crime against good sense and starts looking it over. "So, what's its story?"

"Well, he first started with Kord heavy machine gun. He must have been reading too much American propaganda because he decided to make it like a sniper rifle. Accurized barrel, fancy scope, okay no problem. Little indulgent but still usable gun."

Looking down at the utter mess in her hands, Jamelia remarked, "He didn't stop there."

The merchant shakes his head. "Nyet. Well, he thought, okay, gun can kill everything in front of it, but what about around corner? So he cuts apart and mounts a fucking CornerShot kit underneath it with a GSh-18."

Working the hinge, she can see that it does technically work, although questions about usefulness should be left aside. "And once he did that, he figured why not more?"

"Da. He now thinks but what about targets around corners far away? Fucking side mount a GP-34 grenade launcher! Well, all ranges and corners covered, but movement? What will you do about doors? Fucking mount shotgun to other side for breaching!"

Jamelia waits a beat. "...so why do you have this?"

The merchant only sighs. "Well, he is a fucking idiot, but he's still my brother."

The veteran agent prepares to put the charitably labeled weapon back onto the display rack. You'd have to be insane to try to actually use this and you'd have to be magically insane to actually get any use out of it.

...

...did she send that thank you gift yet she'd been meaning to after Hong Kong?

"So, with that said, how much are you selling this conversation piece for?"

---

A cheerful woman skipped down the road, grocery bag of fresh detergent (and one tub of ice cream) in one hand, freshly bloodied crowbar in one hand. She pulled up slightly short of her apartment, seeing an incongruously large shipping crate in front of the door. Circling it warily, but seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she carefully removed the note attached to the front.

"Stephanie,

Thanks for your help.

All the best,
Jane"

One forceful application of handy crowbar later, feminine squeals of joy could be heard around the neighborhood. The wise ones kept their heads down for the next few days.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top