When you beat them you become them.
Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns
Serafina:
[X] Influence (Progenitors) to 3, Requisitions to 6
[X] Correspondence to 3, Time to 1
When the coffee arrives, it is a godsend. Serafina casually empties four sachets of sugar into it and wraps her hand around the cup, staring into the depths and warming her hands. Her reflection floats on the blackness.
Just like the blackness of the void. Only, uh, black coffee doesn't have any stars in it. At moments like this when she's not in the lab and doesn't have anything to distract herself with, she worries about what must be happening in space. She hasn't heard a word from the others.
Oh, she knows why. Security is key. They're light years away, out of the solar system, and superluminal comms systems are very hard to conceal. Even if they could hide where they were sending the message from, the very fact that a message had been received here on Earth might be noticed. Probably by the Void Engineers. Serafina keeps an eye on public force movements, and she's noticed that the Engineers have moved extra infowar specialists to Los Angeles. Probably to try to intercept any communications sent back to Earth by the rest of her amalgam.
She hopes Henriette is okay and hasn't done anything stupid.
Serafina sighs, and shakes her head, stirring her coffee. She sort of wishes she was up there. In '96, she'd managed to secure a summer internship voidside, on Cheiron Station. It had been that internship which had made it quite clear that she hated the voidside Progenitor facilities with their endless rules and the way the senior staff were all so detached from earthly concerns. That was why she'd taken the much less prestigious position with MSF, severely disappointing her parents. She's good at that.
But, ah, she'd had one glorious three week mission on a Void Engineer vessel, out lightyears away from Earth. They'd been doing field research on Kepler-10c. Most people wouldn't enjoy their time on a 3g hellhole with a mean surface temperature of 485K. But she'd had gene mods so she'd been fine in her ultrahazardous environment suit, and the ecology had been utterly alien and... and fascinating. Nothing like anything on Earth. Swathes of thermophilic pseudo-cellular lifeforms forming metallic shades over the land. The strange ecologies of the crevices, with steam-pumped lifeforms boring into water-rich minerals and using it to drive their metabolism. And even if they'd also been incredibly strict about the rules, damn it, it made sense to be like that when you were in a place where if your suit failed, you'd flash-boil.
Maybe if they'd offered her a placement with the the xenobiologists on the Void Engineers, she'd have stayed out there. Serafina sighs. And then she'd have been caught away from Earth in '99. So it's best she wasn't offered a xenobiology placement. But that doesn't mean she doesn't miss her time with the old Void Engineers. Maybe that's why she quite likes Almacia. The girl is... uh, a little bit crazy, but maybe Serafina just identifies with slightly crazy teenage girls with a thing for experimental xenobiology.
Shaking her head, Serafina sips at her coffee.
Her phone chimes, and she glances down at it. Smiling faintly, she puts on her glasses, and then answers it. "Hi, Alicia," she says to the currently-blonde-again woman whose image appears on the lens.
"Sera!" Alicia says. "Nice to see you actually have your phone on for once."
Serafina sighs. "I know, I know," she says. "I've been working a lot recently."
"So have I," Alicia says archly, "but I'd still make time to talk for you. Why don't you ever call me?"
Serafina frowns minutely. Alicia does tend to slip her mind, it's true. Maybe it's some legacy holdover from the thing done to her which meant she forgot her in the first place. "I've been really busy," she says. "Listen, I'm just in a cafe at the moment, so..."
"Chill, chill," Alicia says casually. "I'm routing this call such that it meets all the InfoSec requirements from my end. It's up to you to make sure people don't listen to you."
"Fine, fine," Serafina says, taking another sip of her coffee. "So, how are you doing?"
"Oh, you know how it is in Damage Control," Alicia says, pouting. "Work work work. I didn't get any sleep last night. I'm thinking I should just go splice it out, but... urgh, I like sleeping."
"Pretty much the same for me," Serafina says ruefully. "I've been in the labs."
"I know!" Alicia says, sounding delighted. "I bet you've been enjoying that! You've sounded a bit down the last few times we spoke. And I've been hearing good things about you! People're saying that they're totally glad you showed up and saved some projects some really nasty internal review board meetings with booooooring Syndics going on and on about how things are behind schedule. If they like money so much, why don't they just marry it?"
Serafina smiles. "Yeah."
"I'm sure if they rolled up some dollar bills, they could use them for conjugal visits," Alica adds, to a sudden snigger from Sera. "Hah! Got you laughing!"
"Don't do that! Coffee nearly went up my nose!" Serafina protests.
"Picked up any new enhancements recently?" Alicia asks. "Oooh! Your medical records say you've finally got that circadian booster. Me, I've been looking at a teleport plasmid. That'd be totally sweet, right? Poof - then you tear yourself into a weakly cohering superposed hyerspatial phase cloud and reintegrate. It's great! Creepy blood mists are cool!"
"Not a good idea," Serafina says, shuddering. "Reintegration is a... problem. Sometimes a terminal one."
"But it's so useful! Sometimes you just have to do something like that! Oh! You should fit it to Rose! She'd love it!"
Serafina purses her lips. She won't say it out loud, but Alicia sometimes seems a little too willing to contemplate using Rose as a weapons test-bed. Even if Rose probably would love it - and with the haemophage genetics, turning into a biological mist is actually stabilised for her and... no! She's getting distracted. Stupid Alicia and her weirdly sensible-if-you-discard-common-sense ideas. "I'll think about it," she says.
"Honestly, if you don't want to get something as simple as that, you should just get your amalgam to hire me as a travel agent," Alicia says, pouting. "I'll sit in your office and book you flights all over the place and send Bobs to drive you places. That'd be a great use of my talents, I don't think." She sighs. "I do have to ask... how are things going with Alexander?"
Serafina does her best to glare at someone who's only a head appearing on her glasses. "Fine," she says.
Alicia sighs. "You don't sound fine. Come on, Sera. What's the matter? You should try to spend some time with him. What about next weekend, mmm? You could go somewhere nice together. You're stressed and missing him, and he's probably working too hard." She shakes her head. "I don't like Li," she says with worrying intensity in her voice. "He's taking advantage of poor Alex. And I hate his policies and... and he's dangerous. He's the side of Damage Control I can't stand. Even... even if he says he's pro-Construct rights, he certainly doesn't mind taking advantage of their blind spots."
She's right. Serafina agrees with Alicia there, but she's a better politician than her friend and won't say it out loud. She does want Rose out of Damage Control, though. Damage Control is becoming something she doesn't like very much. "Maybe," she says. "Look, I don't want to talk about this kind of thing. I'm just exhausted right now."
"A weekend with Alex would help..." Alicia says temptingly.
Serafina raises an eyebrow. "Do you just want him in a good mood?" she accuses. "Are you preparing to ask for a pay rise?"
Alicia looks innocent. "Would I do that?" she asks.
"Yes."
"Sera! I'm hurt! Hurt and appalled."
Serafina shakes her head. "How do you manage to avoid being reprimanded?" she says wearily, already knowing the answer.
"I lie a lot," Alicia says with a cattish grin.
[X] Influence (Progenitors) to 3, Requisitions to 6
[X] Correspondence to 3, Time to 1
When the coffee arrives, it is a godsend. Serafina casually empties four sachets of sugar into it and wraps her hand around the cup, staring into the depths and warming her hands. Her reflection floats on the blackness.
Just like the blackness of the void. Only, uh, black coffee doesn't have any stars in it. At moments like this when she's not in the lab and doesn't have anything to distract herself with, she worries about what must be happening in space. She hasn't heard a word from the others.
Oh, she knows why. Security is key. They're light years away, out of the solar system, and superluminal comms systems are very hard to conceal. Even if they could hide where they were sending the message from, the very fact that a message had been received here on Earth might be noticed. Probably by the Void Engineers. Serafina keeps an eye on public force movements, and she's noticed that the Engineers have moved extra infowar specialists to Los Angeles. Probably to try to intercept any communications sent back to Earth by the rest of her amalgam.
She hopes Henriette is okay and hasn't done anything stupid.
Serafina sighs, and shakes her head, stirring her coffee. She sort of wishes she was up there. In '96, she'd managed to secure a summer internship voidside, on Cheiron Station. It had been that internship which had made it quite clear that she hated the voidside Progenitor facilities with their endless rules and the way the senior staff were all so detached from earthly concerns. That was why she'd taken the much less prestigious position with MSF, severely disappointing her parents. She's good at that.
But, ah, she'd had one glorious three week mission on a Void Engineer vessel, out lightyears away from Earth. They'd been doing field research on Kepler-10c. Most people wouldn't enjoy their time on a 3g hellhole with a mean surface temperature of 485K. But she'd had gene mods so she'd been fine in her ultrahazardous environment suit, and the ecology had been utterly alien and... and fascinating. Nothing like anything on Earth. Swathes of thermophilic pseudo-cellular lifeforms forming metallic shades over the land. The strange ecologies of the crevices, with steam-pumped lifeforms boring into water-rich minerals and using it to drive their metabolism. And even if they'd also been incredibly strict about the rules, damn it, it made sense to be like that when you were in a place where if your suit failed, you'd flash-boil.
Maybe if they'd offered her a placement with the the xenobiologists on the Void Engineers, she'd have stayed out there. Serafina sighs. And then she'd have been caught away from Earth in '99. So it's best she wasn't offered a xenobiology placement. But that doesn't mean she doesn't miss her time with the old Void Engineers. Maybe that's why she quite likes Almacia. The girl is... uh, a little bit crazy, but maybe Serafina just identifies with slightly crazy teenage girls with a thing for experimental xenobiology.
Shaking her head, Serafina sips at her coffee.
Her phone chimes, and she glances down at it. Smiling faintly, she puts on her glasses, and then answers it. "Hi, Alicia," she says to the currently-blonde-again woman whose image appears on the lens.
"Sera!" Alicia says. "Nice to see you actually have your phone on for once."
Serafina sighs. "I know, I know," she says. "I've been working a lot recently."
"So have I," Alicia says archly, "but I'd still make time to talk for you. Why don't you ever call me?"
Serafina frowns minutely. Alicia does tend to slip her mind, it's true. Maybe it's some legacy holdover from the thing done to her which meant she forgot her in the first place. "I've been really busy," she says. "Listen, I'm just in a cafe at the moment, so..."
"Chill, chill," Alicia says casually. "I'm routing this call such that it meets all the InfoSec requirements from my end. It's up to you to make sure people don't listen to you."
"Fine, fine," Serafina says, taking another sip of her coffee. "So, how are you doing?"
"Oh, you know how it is in Damage Control," Alicia says, pouting. "Work work work. I didn't get any sleep last night. I'm thinking I should just go splice it out, but... urgh, I like sleeping."
"Pretty much the same for me," Serafina says ruefully. "I've been in the labs."
"I know!" Alicia says, sounding delighted. "I bet you've been enjoying that! You've sounded a bit down the last few times we spoke. And I've been hearing good things about you! People're saying that they're totally glad you showed up and saved some projects some really nasty internal review board meetings with booooooring Syndics going on and on about how things are behind schedule. If they like money so much, why don't they just marry it?"
Serafina smiles. "Yeah."
"I'm sure if they rolled up some dollar bills, they could use them for conjugal visits," Alica adds, to a sudden snigger from Sera. "Hah! Got you laughing!"
"Don't do that! Coffee nearly went up my nose!" Serafina protests.
"Picked up any new enhancements recently?" Alicia asks. "Oooh! Your medical records say you've finally got that circadian booster. Me, I've been looking at a teleport plasmid. That'd be totally sweet, right? Poof - then you tear yourself into a weakly cohering superposed hyerspatial phase cloud and reintegrate. It's great! Creepy blood mists are cool!"
"Not a good idea," Serafina says, shuddering. "Reintegration is a... problem. Sometimes a terminal one."
"But it's so useful! Sometimes you just have to do something like that! Oh! You should fit it to Rose! She'd love it!"
Serafina purses her lips. She won't say it out loud, but Alicia sometimes seems a little too willing to contemplate using Rose as a weapons test-bed. Even if Rose probably would love it - and with the haemophage genetics, turning into a biological mist is actually stabilised for her and... no! She's getting distracted. Stupid Alicia and her weirdly sensible-if-you-discard-common-sense ideas. "I'll think about it," she says.
"Honestly, if you don't want to get something as simple as that, you should just get your amalgam to hire me as a travel agent," Alicia says, pouting. "I'll sit in your office and book you flights all over the place and send Bobs to drive you places. That'd be a great use of my talents, I don't think." She sighs. "I do have to ask... how are things going with Alexander?"
Serafina does her best to glare at someone who's only a head appearing on her glasses. "Fine," she says.
Alicia sighs. "You don't sound fine. Come on, Sera. What's the matter? You should try to spend some time with him. What about next weekend, mmm? You could go somewhere nice together. You're stressed and missing him, and he's probably working too hard." She shakes her head. "I don't like Li," she says with worrying intensity in her voice. "He's taking advantage of poor Alex. And I hate his policies and... and he's dangerous. He's the side of Damage Control I can't stand. Even... even if he says he's pro-Construct rights, he certainly doesn't mind taking advantage of their blind spots."
She's right. Serafina agrees with Alicia there, but she's a better politician than her friend and won't say it out loud. She does want Rose out of Damage Control, though. Damage Control is becoming something she doesn't like very much. "Maybe," she says. "Look, I don't want to talk about this kind of thing. I'm just exhausted right now."
"A weekend with Alex would help..." Alicia says temptingly.
Serafina raises an eyebrow. "Do you just want him in a good mood?" she accuses. "Are you preparing to ask for a pay rise?"
Alicia looks innocent. "Would I do that?" she asks.
"Yes."
"Sera! I'm hurt! Hurt and appalled."
Serafina shakes her head. "How do you manage to avoid being reprimanded?" she says wearily, already knowing the answer.
"I lie a lot," Alicia says with a cattish grin.
Typo: It's the Pyrenees.
Interesting... what happened here, exactly?
...
*breaks down laughing*
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Reina's family died. Probably from mages, vampires, or werewolves.
EDIT: Apparently it was.
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I think you're missing the context here. This is a young Reina on a journey immediately after Awakening and meeting the angel Gabriel.
Moreover, this was the middle ages. Magi did not have the coordination the Technocracy had, nor were the problems with vain magic (what people would call 'vulgar' magic today) as pronounced. A mage who wanted Reina dead would be far more willing to risk the Scourge (especially since you could in theory get benefits from a Scourge backlash rather than just flaws) and lightning bolt her from the heavens, giving her no way to counter, because they were scrying in a wizard tower somewhere. But because magi then were scarcely united and made the modern Traditions look like paragons of cooperation and understanding and mutual respect, they'd not do that, but rather be shooting each other with fireballs.
The Camarilla would scarcely find interest in a random young woman-certainly not to randomly burn down her house for no good reason. If their attentions were fixated on her, she would probably disappear, or be taken for a bride by a handsome suitor who strangely enough never shows up in daylight. Similarly, if the Sabbat's attention turned on her, she would probably be torn to ribbons, and if she survived her family would be multilated, not burned. Oh, let's not forget that vampires freak the fuck out when exposed to fire. Vampires are not going to be setting any fires unless they're suicidal.
So that leaves werewolves. Which brings me to the same question. Why would werewolves set fires instead of just flipping out in Crinos and murdering everyone? The werewolf 'masquerade' is entirely retroactive and requires zero effort from the werewolves themselves.
This is the ur-example of how pretty much every major mistake in the voting has gone-people don't actually look at what's in front of them, but rather shape what's in front of them to preconceived notions. Reina was important so clearly the fire in this case must have had to be the work of supernaturals. Contingency Five is violent so they'll be instantly wiped out by the Technocracy. Threat Null is schizophrenic so choosing different assets from different Conventions must lead to infighting. etc etc.
Who's saying that whoever started the fire was after Reina? Sure, it might have been a completely mundane tragedy, but from my limited understanding of the matter, awakenings often come about from witnessing the supernatural. In my books, there is a non-zero chance that Reina's village and family were collateral damage in a mage fight.
Now, now. Let's be fair to them. That's almost exactly the same conclusion Reina had.
It can't have just been an accident or the actions of men. It can't have been. It must have been something malicious or malevolent. A just God would not permit such things to happen, so evil must have acted in this sinful world to try to thwart God's will. And there has to have been a reason she survived. It can't just have been a coincidence which meant she was left alive to dig the graves and bury the bodies and cry all on her own. The angels must have saved her. God must have a plan for her.
(Rose moe is, apparently, genetic)
The Moe has been passed down through history?
- Location
- in the trash
Retroactively genetic.
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The vast, vast majority of awakenings come from institutionalized teaching. The number of mages who awaken from witnessing the supernatural is exactly as high, proportionally, as the number of werewolves who undergo their First Change after being bitten by a werewolf. That is to say, 'there is no meaningful difference.' The Taftani are not correct. Throwing around vulgar magic does not, in fact, Awaken people. The way you Awaken people is with education and patience and 'exposure to the supernatural' that goes far beyond mere witnessing but actively broadens people's horizons. A Ecstatic takes his or her groupies into the Umbra so they can have an orgy with lust-spirits. The academies on Doisstep taught young students linear sorcery and then showed them the older, Awakened students and the wonders they could accomplish, as well as surrounding them with wonders of every shape and form as inspiration.
Damien, Unity, and MIHT do the exact same. They surround their students with hypertech and high-end Enlightened Science so their horizons are broadened, they teach the theory and practice behind them to do the same. Awakenings are an epiphany that results when you realize that reality can be changed in ways far beyond what you believed possible before. Watching two people throw around fireballs doesn't do that when you don't believe it by definition.
We can, in fact, examine our decidedly-abnormal party here and still find similar patterns;
Illiyeen because she is disgustingly self-reliant managed to essentially put herself through a basic spy training course through careful, measured observation of patterns of behaviour, deliberately expanding her horizons and teaching herself French so she could listen in people's conversations, and months of watching, waiting and learning all in pursuit of the truth.
Henriette possibly Awakened due to 'my parents are dead' trauma (a so-called Batman Awakening), but recent evidence suggests quite strongly that it's also linked to the whole Twin Souls thing and the fact that at the same time the Computer was carrying out hypertech Incarna unethical experimentation on Henrietta trying to force an Awakening.
Kessler followed an entirely typical Iterator steelhead path to Enlightenment - joins as a mook, probably learns some linear sorcery while studying for his degree in asskicking, Awakens as an enlightened scientist after years of training.
Elsa followed an entirely typical Virtual Adept path to Awakening - joins as an outcast (Russia not exactly being entirely tolerant of her sexuality) who hangs around the cyberpunks, trains as a consor and linear sorcerer hacker, Awakens after years of training.
Donald followed an entirely typical Ecstatic path to Awakening - falls in with a certain crowd, sex drugs and rock and roll, gates of perception get blown wide open after a few months. Notably in the Control timeline, he follows an entirely typical Iterator scientist path to Awakening.
Rose... uh, who knows? We don't really know how she Awakened. It was either from being a mental newborn exposed to Progenitor primers and thus accepting them fully, from mighty sorceries worked on her when they were trying to make her into Reina Lior, or from all the trauma inflicted on her over her life.
Serafina, amusingly enough, despite being the only party member who's gone through the ludicrously expensive Damien education did not Awaken thanks to the countless Primers and teaching she was exposed to, but did it during the school holidays because she was a desperately lonely little girl who really wanted a friend and to get to do things with her parents.
...
So of the party, we have three institutionally taught, one self-taught prodigy, one emotional-distress-primed-by-teaching, one unknown, and one emotional-distress-or-possibly-bleedthrough-from-inhuman-godmind-forcing-her-twin-soul-to-Awaken.
Yes, that does mean that it's possible that just like all good superheroes, the Computer accidentally created its greatest nemesis.
(Meanwhile, hmm, Jane Clarent is Technocracy-taught, Antoinette is Damien educated, the EXEMPLARs are mostly Technocracy-taught apart from Maria who went AWOL and had a consciousness-expanding experience in a world where she wasn't constantly told what to do and also started a war, and Elissa/Alice was... uh, a psychic at ground zero of her crazy mother botching an Enlightenment 6 Seeking. And was already primed by Technocracy teaching. Hannah had a pretty typical Orphan Awakening finding weird things on the net and being led down the rabbit hole by scattered rumours and tales, while Melody was visited by a magical fairy who told her that she was a magical girl, possibly caused by her freakishly managing to track down a VHS of the lost Episode 0 of an early 90s magical girl show which never got an English release, managing to find something which could actually play VHSes [1], and watching it in full [2])
(Oh, and Aqidah became an Enlightened Scientist because she's really, really good at computer games [3]. So unfair.)
[1] Which was only marginally easier than finding the VHS in the first place.
[2] Melody has taught herself Japanese so she can watch raws. Many people are amazed that she could do something like that. Many more people just wish she could put that effort, focus and capacity to concentrate into actual academia.
[3] Intelligence 6, Tactics 4 (Strategy Games) good. UFO: Extraterrestrial Combat, Long War difficulty, Iron Man mode, All Mutators, 4 casualties good.
- Location
- Singapore
I call bullshit. Only four casualties, when one of the mutators ensures that you'll fail your first mission with a Code Black, which has six operatives?
Someone's a cheater.
I call bullshit. Only four casualties, when one of the mutators ensures that you'll fail your first mission with a Code Black, which has six operatives?
Someone's a cheater.
Owed So Much To So Few caps your squad size at 4 men and disables squad size increases.
- Location
- Singapore
Actually it doesn't apply for the tutorial mission, which leave in a six man squad for that mission that tells you how fucked mankind is without XCOM/VEs. Which, you know, is actually really atmospheric until you realise that with the changes to Long War's escalation mechanic it actually just makes sure you won't get an Enlightened Scientist operative until they start throwing Force 5 effects at you.
JOHNNY LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMP
Entropy at work?I call bullshit. Only four casualties, when one of the mutators ensures that you'll fail your first mission with a Code Black, which has six operatives?
Someone's a cheater.
Oh, didn't you get the joke in that section?
Alicia only actually told one factual lie. And that was "I lie a lot". Alicia doesn't lie much. She's just Manipulation 6 and thus very good at phrasing things to imply things she's not actually saying, and she sometimes uses 'I' to describe things Sera is doing, like 'Work work work. I didn't get any sleep last night.'. Which is totally legitimate because she's an imaginary friend.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
It is absolutely criminal that she is not a Void Engineer cadet.
It is not impossible that in her future as one of the sinister figures on the Council providing the funding, she may facepalm, inform the Commander that he's an idiot and is doing it all wrong, and take over. Assisted by her robo-meido and her bio-butler.
I thought it was a normal fire at first, and then I noticed this:
and thought it meant something out of the ordinary. I guess I was right the first time.
Apparently not.
The world back then was pretty sinful!
Not that the world now is much better. But at least you have porn and ipods, right?
Not to mention little things like human rights, reliable sources of food, access to clean water and constant warm shelter. The lifestyle of the average American or Westerner is quite likely much better than the paradise envisioned by the common citizen from Renia's time. We should keep in mind when considering Reina's perspective on the modern world and Technocracy that its current condition is vastly superior to anything throughout human history.
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Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
And when considering, you know, why we're 'crats.
Yes, that is certainly what Technocratic history would have you believe. And because you believe it, maybe it's true.
But was it always true?
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Hm... I'm going to go with "probably."