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

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Anathematic
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    • The Anathema is a minor Marauder-it believes in its paradigm so strongly it projects it around itself. This is largely used to anchor a DSci/Correspondence reality bubble-the same Format Space effect used to create beachheads in chantries for mystic assaults.

    In this realm, Autochthonia's rules rule. These rules are:
    • Machines are superior. If you have a contest between a machine and something natural, the machine wins all ties.
    • The Engineered is superior: engineered machinery gets bonus dice.
    • Machines do not fail. Any attempt to cause a machine to break down is automatically extra vulgar.
    • Humanity is weak. Paradigms based on human intuition or talent or power, like Jamelia's or Harlan's, have all their effects count as vulgar. Ditto for paradigms based on the power of nature or human belief or whatever. Note that economics and finance is human belief. To the Anathema believing in the Invisible Hand is just as foolish as belief in a god which isn't Autochthon.
    • Technology is God. All effects cast via technological foci like weapons or armor or cybernetics are Coincidental.
    • Iterative Self-Improvement is Truth. Your spheres all count as 1 higher than normal if used to enhance machines...
    • Men are just meat machines. Matter counts as Life for all purposes-similarly, any effects that affect machines can affect Life equally well. You can make humans with Matter 4 in the Anathema-bubble. Being flawed and evolved apes, though, they gain none of the benefits of the reality bubble.
    As for paradox: Donald is stricken with a desperate and rather sensible fear of the machine god that means his next roll requires him to spend 1wp.
     
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    • Donald: "So... so I'm thinking we run. Like, now. Run. Run run run run. Because I happen to be a meat machine. Do you know how easy it is to break machines? I do it all the time, like when I spill coffee on a keyboard. I don't want to have metaphorical coffee spilled on me. I'll just stop working."

    Reina: "Pull yourself together, man!"

    Donald: "Look, what I'm afraid of is it pulling me apart!"
     
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    EarthScorpion said:
    When facing targets likely to be running active countermagic or passive primium, buff-don't-try-for-direct-effects. And that goes double for Mind effects. And that goes triple when it is literally an avatar of the Computer.
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    Entirely valid point. (Also, GACK! Marauderbot!) Therefore, not doing offensive stuff.

    Reina, Mother of Mechanised Armor, can push her equipment harder, faster, and further than most. She knows how it reacts to changing circumstances, and it appears that current circumstances are rather friendly to power armor. (And chainswords) Thus, she feels confident in employing some undocumented (and experimental) features of her armor, which enhance its performance dramatically. Components under the plates of her armor shift configuration, optimizing performance, and causing the gilt decorations to shine slightly with barely-restrained energy.
    Overclock: Forces 5(6!)/Time 2(3). Boosts her equipment, in terms of striking power, reaction speed, and toughness. Kinetic energy is her armor's plaything.

    That something better?

    EDIT: Was washing dishes, and realized how to phrase it much better. Did so.

    MJ12 Commando said:
    Iterative Self-Improvement is Truth. Your spheres all count as 1 higher than normal if used to enhance machines...
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    Don't spheres at 6 let you pull off rather absurd effects?
     
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    So... just to revisit...

    Reina Lior has Arete 8, and the following Spheres:
    • Correspondence 2
    • Entropy 2
    • Forces 5 (f) (God's Wrath)*
    • Life 4 (Lab Sphere-Prosthetics)
    • Matter 5 (Artifice)*
    • Mind 4 (Leadership)
    • Prime 5 (Forging)*
    • Time 2
    ...which means that if she's describing it as "enhancing machines", she has Forces 6, Matter 6, and Prime 6. Also, correspondence 3. Also, her engineered machinery gets bonus dice, and it's all coincidental as logn as she uses a technological focus (as long as she's not trying to make a machine break down). Also, she has Life 5 as a standard sphere (though that's less useful than it could be)

    That *seems* like the sort of thing we could work with usefully here.

    Also, summoning paradox spirits into this bubble would be a *bad* thing.
     
    MJ12 Commando said:
    Donald did that in the Anathema's reality bubble. Laser watches are totally okay in that case.

    Summoning weapons out of thin air when your specs don't include spatial bubble storage os not ok.
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    I was more referring to the "with witnesses" part of the Paradox gain, wouldn't all of the Sleepers have been focused on Donald at the time?

    From the sounds of it the Anathema's bubble should only make it vulgar after all.
     
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    *Is* there any known way to shut down the marauder effect, short of killing the individual producing it? If it's depending on Being A Marauder for much of its paradox mitigation, then it seems like shutting that down would be Very Helpful Indeed.
     
    Anyway, calling the Serafina vote here so I can actually get writing.

    Panopticon has the Dracosaurs, the Emiles and the reptoid hybrids - and because the vote was so very close, Yinzheng used some of that imprinted gut-feeling savantism at 'making do' with Requisitions, and borrowed a few Damage Control recapture specialists to advice on the handling of the Dracosaurs and the hybrids from a safe place (where they wouldn't see things they're not meant to). She's also in discussion with Dr Polo about what level of information on the field testing he's willing to accept, although negotiations are still ongoing there.

    (Hey, I didn't say they'd only get two - I just told you to pick at least two)

    And as for the other vote... well, Serafina was willing to drop a nuclear weapon on a capital city to accomplish her goals. This is a lot less messy, has a lot less collateral damage and involves a rather smaller bang.
     
    Sirrocco said:
    *Is* there any known way to shut down the marauder effect, short of killing the individual producing it? If it's depending on Being A Marauder for much of its paradox mitigation, then it seems like shutting that down would be Very Helpful Indeed.
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    Not in normal Mage that I know of. Killing it is pretty much the only way to get rid of the effect. Of course, MJ is using alternate Maurader rules, so it could be possible. Anyways, it would probably require Mind 5 in technoparadigm, or Mind 5/Spirit 5 in a more mystic paradigm.
     
    The only way to remove the marauder without killing it is pushing it quiet/permadox up so high that it gets punted out of reality. Which is a bit hard with all the periapts that it has.
     
    What if you tried using the VE's Beachhead rote? I mean, it basically makes a second Reality Bubble with different rules, so couldn't they both be negated?
     
    Scia said:
    The only way to remove the marauder without killing it is pushing it quiet/permadox up so high that it gets punted out of reality. Which is a bit hard with all the periapts that it has.
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    I don't suppose having Reina perform surgical strikes to sever/destroy the periapts would help? She's specialized in Hitting Where It Hurts after all, and Rose's body certainly is a masterpiece machine in it's own right here.

    notanautomaton said:
    Fucking fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck. Fuck. How does the Computer even make a Maurader? And how does a force conceptually aligned with Stasis control a force that's aligned with Dynamism. Unless of course MJ is using alternate Maurader rules... Or maybe the Computer captured a pre-existing Maurader and assimilated it... On the bright side, depending on the rules of the bubble, Reina can probably get away with much bigger effects, given that she's has a paradigm that's somewhat similar to what I'd imagine Anathema's is.
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    Dipping into Alchemicals for a bit(for what it's worth), Alchemicals PRECISELY select for those traits in Autochton's champions. Individuals that wouldn't fit into the regimented, clockwork society while being immensely loyal to said society.

    Orichalcum - Advancement of grand scale goals regardless of consequences.
    Moonsilver - Creativity and lateral thinking in problem solving
    Starmetal - Calculated disobedience of Authority for the Authority's own sake

    Etc.
    So not entirely unprecedented
     
    If I'm understanding the aura correctly Kessler would've thrived in this fight because of his ability to wring every last ounce of performance out of his machines. I think Reina, as the mother of mechanized armor, can do just as well now that she's taken the dox for getting her stuff to her. A bit of techwank here, some clockwork compartments there...quite a bit of room for effects.

    That being said, I think a fighting retreat is in order. I don't think Reina is up to the job by herself or even with Donald in support, but they ought to be capable of getting out of there alive.
     
    veekie said:
    I don't suppose having Reina perform surgical strikes to sever/destroy the periapts would help? She's specialized in Hitting Where It Hurts after all, and Rose's body certainly is a masterpiece machine in it's own right here.
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    Sadly, Rose is biological, and therefore doesn't count. All Flesh Is Weak, sayeth Autocthon.
     
    FunkyEntropy said:
    If I'm understanding the aura correctly Kessler would've thrived in this fight because of his ability to wring every last ounce of performance out of his machines. I think Reina, as the mother of mechanized armor, can do just as well now that she's taken the dox for getting her stuff to her. A bit of techwank here, some clockwork compartments there...quite a bit of room for effects.

    That being said, I think a fighting retreat is in order. I don't think Reina is up to the job by herself or even with Donald in support, but they ought to be capable of getting out of there alive.
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    They may be able to get out of there, but I don't think they have any hope of running faster than this thing can chase.
     
    MJ12 Commando said:
    The Anathema is a minor Marauder-it believes in its paradigm so strongly it projects it around itself. This is largely used to anchor a DSci/Correspondence reality bubble-the same Format Space effect used to create beachheads in chantries for mystic assaults.

    In this realm, Autochthonia's rules rule. These rules are:
    • Machines are superior. If you have a contest between a machine and something natural, the machine wins all ties.
    • The Engineered is superior: engineered machinery gets bonus dice.
    • Machines do not fail. Any attempt to cause a machine to break down is automatically extra vulgar.
    • Humanity is weak. Paradigms based on human intuition or talent or power, like Jamelia's or Harlan's, have all their effects count as vulgar. Ditto for paradigms based on the power of nature or human belief or whatever. Note that economics and finance is human belief. To the Anathema believing in the Invisible Hand is just as foolish as belief in a god which isn't Autochthon.
    • Technology is God. All effects cast via technological foci like weapons or armor or cybernetics are Coincidental.
    • Iterative Self-Improvement is Truth. Your spheres all count as 1 higher than normal if used to enhance machines...
    • Men are just meat machines. Matter counts as Life for all purposes-similarly, any effects that affect machines can affect Life equally well. You can make humans with Matter 4 in the Anathema-bubble. Being flawed and evolved apes, though, they gain none of the benefits of the reality bubble.
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    Well, that's really quite useful for Reina, at least. Sadly it's also very useful for our opponent.

    Possible ideas:

    - So Reina is going to activate the armour's inbuilt shoulder mounted etheric projectors, microrocket launchers, and other weapons. Then she's going to use those to shoot the Anathema repeatedly.

    - She has a rather nifty gadget with her. A force field generator. It can generate a barrier that blocks anything and everything from passing through it. So she'll just pop it down to create a wall between the Anathema and Donald, so his oh so very squishy face doesn't get mashed in, and he can have some time to bravely run back to the limo.

    - Reina will release a bunch of little clockwork drones stored in her armour. She can get them to do a couple of things, like using the raw material in the area to self replicate and quickly forge some expendable combat automatons. (Matter to create some disposable mooks)

    - Also, she may have figured out the basic principles of how the Anathema's cloaking field works. With a couple of adjustments to her armour, she thinks she can replicate the effect.
     
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    Looking over the local rules, it appears that something like the following might be possible (and maybe even advisable).

    [Reina - Matter + Forces + Prime (+ Matter as Life) - Here and now, with the stakes this high, Reina can clearly see that Rose's body is just a machine. It might be made from living tissue, but it's also clearly not natural. Further, it's designed to imitate Vampires, and she's very familiar with what such creatures are capable of. This transforms Rose into Robo-Vampire for the duration of the fight both so she can benefit from the reality bubble and to ease future sphere use. (EDIT: It might also make Rose a valid target for her artifice speciality for future enhancements replicating the abilities of Vampires.) Enhanced by Intelligence + Vampire Knowledge.]
     
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    Lightwhispers said:
    Reina, Mother of Mechanised Armor, can push her equipment harder, faster, and further than most. She knows how it reacts to changing circumstances, and it appears that current circumstances are rather friendly to power armor. (And chainswords) Thus, she feels confident in employing some undocumented (and experimental) features of her armor, which enhance its performance dramatically. Components under the plates of her armor shift configuration, optimizing performance, and causing the gilt decorations to shine slightly with barely-restrained energy.
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    I'd add Life 3 to that, representing her optimizing her armors performance. Also, the forces aspect would be 2, not 5.

    Also, adding: Dsci 1 Forces 1 Matter 1 Life 1: Reina upgrades her suits sensors in order to track the invisible creature.
     
    I'm not sure that the conversion would even be necessary to benefit from the reality bubble. Autochthonian rules aren't that flesh is weak - it's that natural things, like human bodies, are weak, and engineered things are strong. Rose's body is very much an engineered biological machine, and should benefit from all the same properties of the field that any anthroform construct would (it doesn't distinguish between Matter and Life, after all). Simply shutting her down should be Vulgar, her designed functionality should be Coincidental, etc., etc.

    Not that enhancing it using Reina's Matter+stuff is a bad idea, but benefiting from the reality bubble shouldn't need to be there.
     
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