Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns
[X] Fly for it. Literally. Sure, you don't like flying normally when the nightmares are creeping into the world, but you have a broom and he has a sword. Running away sounds like a good idea. (x1.1)
Aleph's idea of a minds rule to make it notice is less as we jet the fuck out of there sounds good to me! Maybe an invocation of the inverted Ace of Swords to bring about misinformation and an inability to clearly see what's going on? Could we enhance it with Dexterity+Stealth to fly low, fast and keep our of its direct sight?
Aleph's idea of a minds rule to make it notice is less as we jet the fuck out of there sounds good to me! Maybe an invocation of the inverted Ace of Swords to bring about misinformation and an inability to clearly see what's going on? Could we enhance it with Dexterity+Stealth to fly low, fast and keep our of its direct sight?
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
[X] Fly for it. Literally. Sure, you don't like flying normally when the nightmares are creeping into the world, but you have a broom and he has a sword. Running away sounds like a good idea. (x1.1)
I have to fully endorse Aleph's logic here. Attacking 'the knight' we've been specifically warned about is both a bad idea for that reason, and lets her past life's urges have waaaay too big an opening to get at her. Likewise, waiting around and trying to blend in sound like fast ways to get caught. So it's time to GTFO with a quickness and get some distance between us and this thing.
I have to fully endorse Aleph's logic here. Attacking 'the knight' we've been specifically warned about is both a bad idea for that reason, and lets her past life's urges have waaaay too big an opening to get at her. Likewise, waiting around and trying to blend in sound like fast ways to get caught. So it's time to GTFO with a quickness and get some distance between us and this thing.
Update CLXVIII: One Bad Day Begets Another
JB CLXVIII: One Bad Day Begets Another
Henriette seems tetchy, Rose observes. It might be because of the pain of regrowing new nerves and muscle and bone after the damage from her incident was repaired. But somehow, Rose suspects it's about an entirely different reason. One related to Rose's confiding in Henriette about her current problems during the hour-long session to repair most of the Iterator pilot's lingering biological damage.
"So, let me get this straight. Your problem is that your biology is glitching and because of that, you can't become ugly but will instead remain young and beautiful. Is that really, truly, honestly, seriously the problem you're having." Henriette seems to be being quite sarcastic, too. "My heart bleeds for you. It really does."
"Your heart is bleeding?" Rose says, wide-eyed and innocent. "Is there something wrong? Oh no! Do I need to fix you up again?"
The other woman opens her mouth to speak, and then closes it again. She glares suspiciously at Rose. "I'm watching you," she mutters. "Oh, just you wait. Some day."
"No, Henriette! If your heart is bleeding, it's a medical emergency! We need to treat it now! Not 'some day'!"
Henriette storms off. "You win this round!" she announces loudly as she leaves.
Rose sits down in the chair, crossing her legs neatly. "Yes, I do believe I do," she says to herself, before clapping her hands and squealing girlishly. "That was fun!"
"This doesn't actually solve the issue where you can't take the form of a Nosferatu to infiltrate Kindred society," Thorn points out.
"Well, no. That's still a problem," says Rose, pouting. "I think we're going to need another plan."
The little annex kitchen of the hotel suite has become the impromptu office space of the team, and as a result the next morning everyone is gathered there for two purposes. Firstly, they are having breakfast. Secondly, Rose has a proposal for them.
"Okay, okay!" Rose says brightly. Her disgustingly sugary brightly colored cereal is already finished, as is her hot chocolate and the half pack of butter she ate for lack of proper high-energy-density nutrition supplements. "Now, if everyone could just settle down…"
"There's only three of us," Henriette points out, wrapped up in a big fluffy jumper and holding a mug of black coffee. She's fiddling with some flash-printed microchips in front of her, a cable running from her headset into the hardware.
"I know, but I just need to get things underway," Rose continues. She gestures to the laptop beside her. "I made a briefing and everything."
"I know you did," Henriette says. "I had to spend half an hour yesterday trying to explain to you how to use templates and I really have no clue how you managed to-"
"Now, if everyone could just settle down," Rose said more loudly, "I have my slides on the operation proposal I've devised in front of me." She rummaged through her bag. "Here's the text copy," she said, passing it to Donald, "but I thought I'd explain the summary and field questions."
Wufan sits back, no emotion at all readable in his eyes. He has his hands folded on his lap, and he inhales his food almost as quickly as Rose did. "Go on," he says neutrally. "I'm listening."
Running her hands through her night-black hair, Rose purses blood-red lips and takes a breath. "The previous plan to have me assume the role of a hemophage will not work," she says, trying to not let her voice quaver. She hates admitting to defects. "My morphovariant biological systems are damaged and working irregularly due to damage I took in the Demise, and I have not had access to the proper Progenitor labs to verify the integrity of several other high-end systems. At the moment, I cannot assume any other human appearance and while I should be able to bring them back online again within a few days, I cannot guarantee that they won't malfunction again."
"Paaaaaaaradox," observes Thorn from the mirror behind the others, leaning on the kitchen counter. She's only wearing a baggy t-shirt, has mussed hair and looks hung over. The fact that she's apparently drinking beer along with her breakfast doesn't help matters.
"To that end," Rose continues, ignoring the hallucination, "I have come up with a new plan that… I hope you'll consider."
She taps the mouse, and accidentally minimizes the window.
"Um."
"Press F5 to show it as a slideshow," Henriette says with a yawn and a mouth half-full of cereal.
"Oh, right, thank you! Uh… oh yes, there it is. Okay. Yes. Okay. Uh… yes. Here we go."
Donald winces. Apparently Damage Control doesn't teach PowerPoint, at least to the combat constructs.
"We have two problems at the moment," Rose says, as the screen shows THE PROBLEM in big red letters. "We need access to Union networks so we can use it without people knowing what we're doing, because we don't have enough intelligence - and the higher, the better. The fake Serafina is formally in charge of Amalgam-451, because their fake Director Belltower heads up a different Amalgam, which means she'll have Director-level access. It will probably be restricted, but even if she isn't really Serafina, she'll still have to be very clever to pass as her, which means she can contribute to the Union as a Director even if she won't do it as well as Sera could." Rose takes a few moments to let everyone catch up with her train of thought. She doesn't know if it's necessary, but just to be on the safe side she gives them a minute. "But! We also have the problem that our allies and friends might be fooled that she's really Sera, and that'd be really bad! They'll be able to use that against us! So we also should try to neutralize the threat that her and her influence and her ability to use our contacts poses."
"We're agreed on that," Donald says, feeling slightly relieved that Rose managed to catch her stumble after the initial problems with the screen. "So what's your proposal?"
Rose taps the mouse, and CAT-A TYPE-3 CONSTRUCT ACUTE PERSONALITY REJECTION DISORDER comes spiraling in with a comic boing.
"As a FACADE facsimile which is engineered to pass as a transhuman modified senior technocrat liable to be exposed to RED threat detector sources, standard protocol would be to ensure that the MUSE-category personality mesh - which is probably a FALSE EIDOLON subtype but I'm not sure about that - is composed of an active self-integrity component with EGO verisimilitude and a passive underlying SUPEREGO which carries the mission information which the EGO is not permitted to know and can assume perfunctory control in response to appropriate stimuli. Through exposure to appropriate stimuli and dissociative drugs, an Ashford Inversion can occur and the EGO becomes dominant over the SUPEREGO, removing the monitoring authority of the Ego in a classic locked-in phenomenon. Knowing Serafina as I do, her behavior thereafter as the EGO locked in a dominant position without SUPEREGO monitoring will be predictable and can be guided," Rose says cheerfully.
Donald and Henriette stare at Rose. "Uh," Donald says. "Could you maybe downgrade the explanation for those of us who aren't biologists? Or, you know, Progenitors?"
"Interesting," says Wufan, clinically. "So you want to modify her psyche so that the secondary triggers are disarmed and she is made aware of her status as a duplicate." Donald and Henriette look at him like he's just grown a third arm. "Neutralization Specialist Corps. Applied hyperpsych is one of my fields of expertise. Especially psyche manipulation of this sort." He drums his fingers on the desk. "Which dissociative drug? My expertise is limited to human neurology."
Rose turns to face him. "Assuming the duplicate is a combat construct like the one observed before, I'd really need a more detailed analysis of her to know which of the narrow-spectrum compounds I could select would work. If she was baseline, this would be trivial to compute, but without more detail I can't tailor something without risking her likely wide-band immunities would trigger on them."
"And stimuli?"
"She's my mother figure. I know her routine, her personality, and the fact that if she undergoes such an inversion and suspects that she's not the primary personality, her response will likely be to find an excuse to meet up with Alexander Cross from Damage Control."
"She'll go straight to Ethical Compliance?"
"I believe so."
"Role as a distraction?" Wufan asks, leaning forwards. His eyes gleam, and he's skipping words. There's something very cold about him here. Rose briefly contemplates the irony that despite the fact he's the one with the fewest cybernetics of any of them at the table, he's the most machine-like one here.
"Yes. If it works, they won't be able to just replace her, unlike if we terminated her."
"Hmm. Expensive to cover up," Wufan says, pondering out loud, albeit tersely. "What if Ethical Compliance is compromised?"
Rose purses her lips. "It can't be too obvious," she says. She doesn't want to think about the risk that Alexander might be… might have had done to him what the Anathema did to her. But it's a risk. "Ethical Compliance is frequently vetted because of its role."
"Who else might she go to?"
"She's not close to her parents," Rose says. "I can't think of anyone she trusts more than Cross who she won't suspect. Their false Director Belltower, for example, will be the prime suspect for this sort of thing." She frowns. "She might also suspect herself," she admits. "I don't know what she'd do if she thought she might have left a duplicate in her own place. But I think she'll link it to the assault on the construct, so she won't trust anyone else who might have been replaced."
Wufan cracks his knuckles. "Workable," he says laconically.
"It's not guaranteed," Rose admits. "Even if we successfully induce the personality self-realization, there's always the risk that she gets taken up by whatever monitoring they have on her. Or just bad luck that they happen to have a check-up on her when she's undergoing the trauma and they catch and avert it. Or the risk of Cross being compromised you raised." She swallows. "That's why the first stage of the plan is to acquire the biological samples. Even this idea is non-viable, we'll need them if I can get my morphovariant systems back online and am to assume her identity. After that, we can consider the viability of dosing her with low levels of dissociative drugs and subjecting her to stressful situations to induce a breakdown in the monitoring of the shell personality."
"Rose." Donald speaks softly. The other two have already left to acquire a vehicle. "What made you think of that scheme?"
She shrugs. "It's just the most viable way of eliminating the threat from the fake," she says. "That I could think of, at least."
"Is it?" he asks.
"Yes."
He looks at her, eyes sad and slightly wary. "Well, I hope it works," he says eventually, shoulders slumping.
She can read him. Easily. He's thinking that she's doing it partly because she wants to make someone who's nearly Serafina suffer through what she went through herself. Which is nonsense. She's not cruel. She doesn't want revenge.
"And look how you leap at the idea that you might want revenge," Thorn observes, polishing her claw-like nails. "There's a little bit of you who is jealous of dear old Mama. You two are more alike than you both think, and it makes it hurt more. The way that she was grown in a vat too, but she never had to kill people when she was little. The way that you were both sculpted for beauty, but for her sexuality is a fun little thing while for you it's a question of predators and victims."
Rose really wants to strangle Thorn right now. More than usual, that is.
"If you want to know the truth," she says softly, leaning towards Donald and pitching her voice huskily, "at least some of the reason was that I was looking for a way which meant I might not have to kill her. I… I know she's a fake. But I don't want to be in a place where she might plead for her life and I might pause and put you in danger."
Donald perks up at that. "I understand," he says, reaching forwards and giving her shoulder a squeeze. "Hmm. Biological samples, biological samples. Ideally we want fingerprints as well as DNA, which… hmm. Fingerprints on a wineglass, I think."
"I notice that his first go-to plan involves alcohol," Thorn says archly.
"I notice that your first go-to plan involves alcohol," Rose repeats, on the grounds that while it is a bit mean, it's also quite funny.
"Bitch, stop stealing my lines."
Donald looks slightly hurt and then chuckles. "I deserved that. But seriously. This wouldn't be the first person's biometric data I've picked up from glasses. People leave fingerprints, lip-prints and DNA on them. In one of my first amalgams, we had a Progenitor on-team who insisted we pick them up for everyone we had dinner meetings with." He sighs. "Otherwise they wouldn't approve our expenses for business lunches."
"Such cruelty!" Rose says with wide-eyed ingenue innocence.
"I know," Donald says miserably.
Serafina Rosario spends a lot of time at classy bars buying overpriced drinks, largely because they have a more proper sort of clientele. The kind she doesn't mind being around, who are at least somewhat interesting to her. And the cost of the drinks is fairly minimal. As is usual for her, people very quickly find excuses to buy her drinks and test their pickup lines on her. Most of them fail, although they succeed often enough that people keep trying.
Today, there's something different. She notices a new staff member working at the bar. She's got a good memory, and she's very good at faces. Even if she's been in one of those annoying slumps where she doesn't seem to have any inspiration. The psychologists and Director Belltower have told her that it seems to just be trauma from the stress of the amalgam assault, that she just needs time to recover-something that probably required Jamelia to grit her teeth and deliberately pronounce every syllable-but she can't stop working and take a months' vacation. She's too busy. And it'd set a bad example for an amalgam that was just attacked if its current director decided to take a month's vacation to Hawaii with her sort-of-boyfriend. Even if the thought is very tempting.
She decides to relieve her boredom by checking the new staff member out. He's blandly handsome with fairly average facial features, a little above average height, and quite muscular. The way he moves speaks to long hours in sports. She wouldn't mind spending some time with him, but his demeanor towards her speaks to "strictly professional," which is fairly surprising for someone of the male persuasion.
"Would you like another drink?" He asks politely. There's an undertone of "I don't want to be here" in his voice, which Serafina interprets as him just disliking his job. She nods. Just another day. Just another routine. She'll look for someone interesting and maybe take him home. Something to forget about everything that's happened recently. It probably won't work, but it's better than just stewing about it and considering how many things have gone wrong ever since she ended up working for Director Belltower.
So instead she just drowns her sorrows in alcohol and empty sex. What a life, Serafina thinks bitterly. Rose is out of action for the foreseeable future, Donald is traumatized and barely holding together-and she isn't in much better shape. She wants whoever's responsible for this entire sequence of events brought to justice-and she wouldn't mind much if that 'justice' came in the form of a Mindwipe-an uncharacteristically aggressive thought. But not an entirely unreasonable one, given what she's been subjected to.
Their plan goes off without a hitch. Wufan, for all his personal problems, is a consummate professional capable of following orders and following them well. Rose reminds herself that she's a skilled doctor and bioengineer for all that so many people think of her as just a weapon in a pretty package. And they haven't spared nearly enough surveillance to catch the plan in the making. They have guards, but they seem to be just as unaware of the true nature of their VIP as everyone else is. For them, Serafina is just another spoiled princess they have to protect from harms such as paper cuts. Wufan has gotten them that much. The only complication is that it means "Serafina" will have to explain why she's back after making her excuses to leave.
And, Rose thinks-if she's right, the false Serafina is going to destabilize... within a few hours at most. Which means she has to get ready for it. Which explains very handily why the hotel suite's restroom is occupied by a woman who is the spitting image of Serafina. Rose runs her hand through her hair and looks at her altered body. Both of them come from the mathematical beauty of Progenitor designers, but there's differences. Serafina's body was designed with no real concern for combat effectiveness-just good looks and enhanced mental capability. And it shows.
Looking at Thorn in the mirror, handily dressed up as some juvenile's idea of a sexy vampire, tight leather and all, it's hard to accept that one of the criticisms leveled at Progenitors by Reality Deviants is that they're responsible for the proliferation of a "mass-produced consumerist ideal."
"I didn't know 'like mother like daughter' was supposed to be taken that literally." Thorn says, amused. "How does it feel?"
Rose shakes her head. She thought this would be a better way than to have to directly confront the false Serafina-but it feels like a gross violation of trust, somehow. She shakily looks at the neatly folded pile of clothing and the forged ID that says "Serafina Rosario" on it. It's almost enough to make her call off the plan. Almost. But that would have wasted the time and effort of everyone here-and she's not willing to do that. They don't deserve suffering because she isn't willing to play her part.
"Don't worry." Thorn says, with sympathy that seems almost real. "It's not really a violation. No more than what she's already suffered from. And maybe a bit less."
"I thought you hated her." Rose says.
"Who? Me?" Thorn asks, grinning. "I love everyone, Miss Ashford. I'm just a cheery little head-vampire."
"I don't believe you."
"Good. I didn't hate her. She's an obstacle you had to overcome to embrace your birthright. If she had her way-you'd have been kept away from the frontlines. Never had to face what you were built for. You'd have never had to face what you actually are, and overcome it via strength of mind and spirit. Rather, you'd have been able to avoid it and would have never grown. She may have been smothering you via kindness but she was still smothering." Thorn grins, flashing pearl-white fangs. "Isn't it interesting that the moment she left your life, and Reina took that position as your mother figure, you've become so much more... respectable?"
"She just didn't want to see me hurt." Rose says, in Sera's defense. "She was right."
"Well of course not. Nobody ever means to hurt anyone. But they do it anyways. Food for thought."
"And you?" Rose asks. "I'm pretty sure that doesn't apply to you."
"I don't count as a person, remember? I'm just a hallucination." Thorn says, sticking her tongue out. "So get used to it."
Super Secret Searching, Part 1:
You want to find out where Serafina is via her high-level access. You are going to do that by...
[ ] Write-In: What exactly do you think will get you the closest to finding Serafina herself?
Super Secret Searching, Part 2:
What else are you looking for with Serafina's access? This can change quite a few things, as in how long you stay in LA, what subplots you're engaging in, and what you can or can't do. Choose two.
[ ] LaCroix and what forces are being pointed in his direction;
[ ] Jamelia Belltower's recent activity;
[ ] Access logs as to who has been entering and exiting the construct;
[ ] Serafina's recent search history;
[ ] The construct's inventory and supply sources.
Henriette seems tetchy, Rose observes. It might be because of the pain of regrowing new nerves and muscle and bone after the damage from her incident was repaired. But somehow, Rose suspects it's about an entirely different reason. One related to Rose's confiding in Henriette about her current problems during the hour-long session to repair most of the Iterator pilot's lingering biological damage.
"So, let me get this straight. Your problem is that your biology is glitching and because of that, you can't become ugly but will instead remain young and beautiful. Is that really, truly, honestly, seriously the problem you're having." Henriette seems to be being quite sarcastic, too. "My heart bleeds for you. It really does."
"Your heart is bleeding?" Rose says, wide-eyed and innocent. "Is there something wrong? Oh no! Do I need to fix you up again?"
The other woman opens her mouth to speak, and then closes it again. She glares suspiciously at Rose. "I'm watching you," she mutters. "Oh, just you wait. Some day."
"No, Henriette! If your heart is bleeding, it's a medical emergency! We need to treat it now! Not 'some day'!"
Henriette storms off. "You win this round!" she announces loudly as she leaves.
Rose sits down in the chair, crossing her legs neatly. "Yes, I do believe I do," she says to herself, before clapping her hands and squealing girlishly. "That was fun!"
"This doesn't actually solve the issue where you can't take the form of a Nosferatu to infiltrate Kindred society," Thorn points out.
"Well, no. That's still a problem," says Rose, pouting. "I think we're going to need another plan."
***
The little annex kitchen of the hotel suite has become the impromptu office space of the team, and as a result the next morning everyone is gathered there for two purposes. Firstly, they are having breakfast. Secondly, Rose has a proposal for them.
"Okay, okay!" Rose says brightly. Her disgustingly sugary brightly colored cereal is already finished, as is her hot chocolate and the half pack of butter she ate for lack of proper high-energy-density nutrition supplements. "Now, if everyone could just settle down…"
"There's only three of us," Henriette points out, wrapped up in a big fluffy jumper and holding a mug of black coffee. She's fiddling with some flash-printed microchips in front of her, a cable running from her headset into the hardware.
"I know, but I just need to get things underway," Rose continues. She gestures to the laptop beside her. "I made a briefing and everything."
"I know you did," Henriette says. "I had to spend half an hour yesterday trying to explain to you how to use templates and I really have no clue how you managed to-"
"Now, if everyone could just settle down," Rose said more loudly, "I have my slides on the operation proposal I've devised in front of me." She rummaged through her bag. "Here's the text copy," she said, passing it to Donald, "but I thought I'd explain the summary and field questions."
Wufan sits back, no emotion at all readable in his eyes. He has his hands folded on his lap, and he inhales his food almost as quickly as Rose did. "Go on," he says neutrally. "I'm listening."
Running her hands through her night-black hair, Rose purses blood-red lips and takes a breath. "The previous plan to have me assume the role of a hemophage will not work," she says, trying to not let her voice quaver. She hates admitting to defects. "My morphovariant biological systems are damaged and working irregularly due to damage I took in the Demise, and I have not had access to the proper Progenitor labs to verify the integrity of several other high-end systems. At the moment, I cannot assume any other human appearance and while I should be able to bring them back online again within a few days, I cannot guarantee that they won't malfunction again."
"Paaaaaaaradox," observes Thorn from the mirror behind the others, leaning on the kitchen counter. She's only wearing a baggy t-shirt, has mussed hair and looks hung over. The fact that she's apparently drinking beer along with her breakfast doesn't help matters.
"To that end," Rose continues, ignoring the hallucination, "I have come up with a new plan that… I hope you'll consider."
She taps the mouse, and accidentally minimizes the window.
"Um."
"Press F5 to show it as a slideshow," Henriette says with a yawn and a mouth half-full of cereal.
"Oh, right, thank you! Uh… oh yes, there it is. Okay. Yes. Okay. Uh… yes. Here we go."
Donald winces. Apparently Damage Control doesn't teach PowerPoint, at least to the combat constructs.
"We have two problems at the moment," Rose says, as the screen shows THE PROBLEM in big red letters. "We need access to Union networks so we can use it without people knowing what we're doing, because we don't have enough intelligence - and the higher, the better. The fake Serafina is formally in charge of Amalgam-451, because their fake Director Belltower heads up a different Amalgam, which means she'll have Director-level access. It will probably be restricted, but even if she isn't really Serafina, she'll still have to be very clever to pass as her, which means she can contribute to the Union as a Director even if she won't do it as well as Sera could." Rose takes a few moments to let everyone catch up with her train of thought. She doesn't know if it's necessary, but just to be on the safe side she gives them a minute. "But! We also have the problem that our allies and friends might be fooled that she's really Sera, and that'd be really bad! They'll be able to use that against us! So we also should try to neutralize the threat that her and her influence and her ability to use our contacts poses."
"We're agreed on that," Donald says, feeling slightly relieved that Rose managed to catch her stumble after the initial problems with the screen. "So what's your proposal?"
Rose taps the mouse, and CAT-A TYPE-3 CONSTRUCT ACUTE PERSONALITY REJECTION DISORDER comes spiraling in with a comic boing.
"As a FACADE facsimile which is engineered to pass as a transhuman modified senior technocrat liable to be exposed to RED threat detector sources, standard protocol would be to ensure that the MUSE-category personality mesh - which is probably a FALSE EIDOLON subtype but I'm not sure about that - is composed of an active self-integrity component with EGO verisimilitude and a passive underlying SUPEREGO which carries the mission information which the EGO is not permitted to know and can assume perfunctory control in response to appropriate stimuli. Through exposure to appropriate stimuli and dissociative drugs, an Ashford Inversion can occur and the EGO becomes dominant over the SUPEREGO, removing the monitoring authority of the Ego in a classic locked-in phenomenon. Knowing Serafina as I do, her behavior thereafter as the EGO locked in a dominant position without SUPEREGO monitoring will be predictable and can be guided," Rose says cheerfully.
Donald and Henriette stare at Rose. "Uh," Donald says. "Could you maybe downgrade the explanation for those of us who aren't biologists? Or, you know, Progenitors?"
"Interesting," says Wufan, clinically. "So you want to modify her psyche so that the secondary triggers are disarmed and she is made aware of her status as a duplicate." Donald and Henriette look at him like he's just grown a third arm. "Neutralization Specialist Corps. Applied hyperpsych is one of my fields of expertise. Especially psyche manipulation of this sort." He drums his fingers on the desk. "Which dissociative drug? My expertise is limited to human neurology."
Rose turns to face him. "Assuming the duplicate is a combat construct like the one observed before, I'd really need a more detailed analysis of her to know which of the narrow-spectrum compounds I could select would work. If she was baseline, this would be trivial to compute, but without more detail I can't tailor something without risking her likely wide-band immunities would trigger on them."
"And stimuli?"
"She's my mother figure. I know her routine, her personality, and the fact that if she undergoes such an inversion and suspects that she's not the primary personality, her response will likely be to find an excuse to meet up with Alexander Cross from Damage Control."
"She'll go straight to Ethical Compliance?"
"I believe so."
"Role as a distraction?" Wufan asks, leaning forwards. His eyes gleam, and he's skipping words. There's something very cold about him here. Rose briefly contemplates the irony that despite the fact he's the one with the fewest cybernetics of any of them at the table, he's the most machine-like one here.
"Yes. If it works, they won't be able to just replace her, unlike if we terminated her."
"Hmm. Expensive to cover up," Wufan says, pondering out loud, albeit tersely. "What if Ethical Compliance is compromised?"
Rose purses her lips. "It can't be too obvious," she says. She doesn't want to think about the risk that Alexander might be… might have had done to him what the Anathema did to her. But it's a risk. "Ethical Compliance is frequently vetted because of its role."
"Who else might she go to?"
"She's not close to her parents," Rose says. "I can't think of anyone she trusts more than Cross who she won't suspect. Their false Director Belltower, for example, will be the prime suspect for this sort of thing." She frowns. "She might also suspect herself," she admits. "I don't know what she'd do if she thought she might have left a duplicate in her own place. But I think she'll link it to the assault on the construct, so she won't trust anyone else who might have been replaced."
Wufan cracks his knuckles. "Workable," he says laconically.
"It's not guaranteed," Rose admits. "Even if we successfully induce the personality self-realization, there's always the risk that she gets taken up by whatever monitoring they have on her. Or just bad luck that they happen to have a check-up on her when she's undergoing the trauma and they catch and avert it. Or the risk of Cross being compromised you raised." She swallows. "That's why the first stage of the plan is to acquire the biological samples. Even this idea is non-viable, we'll need them if I can get my morphovariant systems back online and am to assume her identity. After that, we can consider the viability of dosing her with low levels of dissociative drugs and subjecting her to stressful situations to induce a breakdown in the monitoring of the shell personality."
***
"Rose." Donald speaks softly. The other two have already left to acquire a vehicle. "What made you think of that scheme?"
She shrugs. "It's just the most viable way of eliminating the threat from the fake," she says. "That I could think of, at least."
"Is it?" he asks.
"Yes."
He looks at her, eyes sad and slightly wary. "Well, I hope it works," he says eventually, shoulders slumping.
She can read him. Easily. He's thinking that she's doing it partly because she wants to make someone who's nearly Serafina suffer through what she went through herself. Which is nonsense. She's not cruel. She doesn't want revenge.
"And look how you leap at the idea that you might want revenge," Thorn observes, polishing her claw-like nails. "There's a little bit of you who is jealous of dear old Mama. You two are more alike than you both think, and it makes it hurt more. The way that she was grown in a vat too, but she never had to kill people when she was little. The way that you were both sculpted for beauty, but for her sexuality is a fun little thing while for you it's a question of predators and victims."
Rose really wants to strangle Thorn right now. More than usual, that is.
"If you want to know the truth," she says softly, leaning towards Donald and pitching her voice huskily, "at least some of the reason was that I was looking for a way which meant I might not have to kill her. I… I know she's a fake. But I don't want to be in a place where she might plead for her life and I might pause and put you in danger."
Donald perks up at that. "I understand," he says, reaching forwards and giving her shoulder a squeeze. "Hmm. Biological samples, biological samples. Ideally we want fingerprints as well as DNA, which… hmm. Fingerprints on a wineglass, I think."
"I notice that his first go-to plan involves alcohol," Thorn says archly.
"I notice that your first go-to plan involves alcohol," Rose repeats, on the grounds that while it is a bit mean, it's also quite funny.
"Bitch, stop stealing my lines."
Donald looks slightly hurt and then chuckles. "I deserved that. But seriously. This wouldn't be the first person's biometric data I've picked up from glasses. People leave fingerprints, lip-prints and DNA on them. In one of my first amalgams, we had a Progenitor on-team who insisted we pick them up for everyone we had dinner meetings with." He sighs. "Otherwise they wouldn't approve our expenses for business lunches."
"Such cruelty!" Rose says with wide-eyed ingenue innocence.
"I know," Donald says miserably.
***
Serafina Rosario spends a lot of time at classy bars buying overpriced drinks, largely because they have a more proper sort of clientele. The kind she doesn't mind being around, who are at least somewhat interesting to her. And the cost of the drinks is fairly minimal. As is usual for her, people very quickly find excuses to buy her drinks and test their pickup lines on her. Most of them fail, although they succeed often enough that people keep trying.
Today, there's something different. She notices a new staff member working at the bar. She's got a good memory, and she's very good at faces. Even if she's been in one of those annoying slumps where she doesn't seem to have any inspiration. The psychologists and Director Belltower have told her that it seems to just be trauma from the stress of the amalgam assault, that she just needs time to recover-something that probably required Jamelia to grit her teeth and deliberately pronounce every syllable-but she can't stop working and take a months' vacation. She's too busy. And it'd set a bad example for an amalgam that was just attacked if its current director decided to take a month's vacation to Hawaii with her sort-of-boyfriend. Even if the thought is very tempting.
She decides to relieve her boredom by checking the new staff member out. He's blandly handsome with fairly average facial features, a little above average height, and quite muscular. The way he moves speaks to long hours in sports. She wouldn't mind spending some time with him, but his demeanor towards her speaks to "strictly professional," which is fairly surprising for someone of the male persuasion.
"Would you like another drink?" He asks politely. There's an undertone of "I don't want to be here" in his voice, which Serafina interprets as him just disliking his job. She nods. Just another day. Just another routine. She'll look for someone interesting and maybe take him home. Something to forget about everything that's happened recently. It probably won't work, but it's better than just stewing about it and considering how many things have gone wrong ever since she ended up working for Director Belltower.
So instead she just drowns her sorrows in alcohol and empty sex. What a life, Serafina thinks bitterly. Rose is out of action for the foreseeable future, Donald is traumatized and barely holding together-and she isn't in much better shape. She wants whoever's responsible for this entire sequence of events brought to justice-and she wouldn't mind much if that 'justice' came in the form of a Mindwipe-an uncharacteristically aggressive thought. But not an entirely unreasonable one, given what she's been subjected to.
***
"I have your DNA samples." Wufan says emotionlessly. "They required some effort to acquire. Please don't waste them."
"And by effort you mean 'bedroom aerobics,' right?" Donald asks. He notices that the Void Engineer looks significantly different. "Because that's generally how most people get DNA samples. If they aren't cops."
"No. I asked for short-term cosmetic surgery to replace this man-" Wufan flashes his picture-no, Donald corrects himself, the man he's impersonating. "We got a lucky break-one of the bars the target frequents was having a new hire. When we're done, we'll simply have both parties' memory modified so that everything blends in seamlessly. As I'm given to understand, FACADE specializes in this, but even if they were concerned, there are too many points of contact to sweep for replacements-and they'll necessarily give lower priority to recent ones." Professional and by the book, Donald thinks. That's who he's dealing with. If only he wasn't a stuck-up humorless jerk. Why couldn't he have had Kessler or someone-oh right, because the big lummox was a high-end cyborg who needed active countermeasures to not trip a metal detector and weight detector, let alone any serious Technocratic sensors that were specifically there to make sure nobody was sneaking in a reprogrammed HITMark or Etherite killer cyborg. And the guy had his own friends to meet, contacts to cultivate, leadership positions to influence. So Mr. Professional it was.
"You going to get that reversed after this is done?" Donald asks. "The surgery?"
"No." Wufan says. "Why would I?"
"Most people tend to care about things like... not having their original face and... minor human inconveniences like that."
Wufan sighs. "It would be a waste of time and resources. And this isn't the second face I've worn. You get used to it."
Donald counts as a scholar of the human mind as well, albeit at a much lower practical level, and he's fairly sure normal people don't get used to being completely different. But he doesn't see any benefit in starting an argument so he just nods. "Well then. Enjoy your job."
"Certainly."
"You know, I know the dossier described him as 'a professional agent,' but I didn't expect a fucking robot." Donald complains to Rose when she gets back. She's bought quite a bit of takeout, Thai this time, and puts it down on the table. Right now, it's just the two of them there. Henriette's off trying to infiltrate Union systems, and Wufan has his cover to consider. Rose looks almost interested, which means that she's maturing. Certainly, enough that she doesn't hang on his every word, like she did before all this went down. One of the few good things about the Spy's Demise is how much it's done for her sense of self-confidence. "You gave him the facelift, didn't you?"
"I did." Rose says. "He insisted on the surgery. It wasn't a bad choice, since it'd keep him off of any automated Union surveillance-and the enemy can't have that many people who are both capable and trusted to do these wide-area intelligence sweeps. As long as we don't show up on any automated searches, we should be fine."
"Obsessive guy, isn't he?"
"I don't know..." Rose muses. "I think it's fine. He's useful like this. As long as we keep him in the loop for the mission, he's an asset. And unlike Elsa or Kessler, he's predictable. Not as effective as Kessler, but far more predictable." She sighs. "I wish it didn't have to be like this." The lies. The backstabbing. In the end, Rose thinks, she just wanted to help people. To save them. She's done that already-but to save people she's had to sacrifice others. To sacrifice herself. And it makes her feel a bit hollow to think of just how much she's had to change in just one month.
It's another reminder for Donald just how much Rose has learned from Reina in the past month. The path she's walked has changed her, and not entirely for the better. "Me too." Donald says. "Me too." But in the end, he doesn't have time for more than a short statement of sympathy. There is so much more to worry about. "How are the preparations coming along?"
Rose looks distracted for a moment. "Fine. Henriette's successfully compromised the not-Serafina's phone and lifted her login and password. We should be in position to move at any time. I don't want to spend more time lingering here than I have to. Are you running support?"
"I am." Donald says. It's at least something he can do. Talk to people over the radio. It's something more than stewing and wondering how he's totally useless, staring at the prosthetic that's a "temporary replacement" for his lost limb because the Iterators Jamelia knows consider a missing limb an opportunity to upgrade their augmentations rather than an actual, real loss. More like machines than men, with an almost condescending level of accommodation for "frails" as they refer to normal people out of earshot. Something to demonstrate that he's not just a terrible person. He's a terrible person who can do some good in this world.
"And by effort you mean 'bedroom aerobics,' right?" Donald asks. He notices that the Void Engineer looks significantly different. "Because that's generally how most people get DNA samples. If they aren't cops."
"No. I asked for short-term cosmetic surgery to replace this man-" Wufan flashes his picture-no, Donald corrects himself, the man he's impersonating. "We got a lucky break-one of the bars the target frequents was having a new hire. When we're done, we'll simply have both parties' memory modified so that everything blends in seamlessly. As I'm given to understand, FACADE specializes in this, but even if they were concerned, there are too many points of contact to sweep for replacements-and they'll necessarily give lower priority to recent ones." Professional and by the book, Donald thinks. That's who he's dealing with. If only he wasn't a stuck-up humorless jerk. Why couldn't he have had Kessler or someone-oh right, because the big lummox was a high-end cyborg who needed active countermeasures to not trip a metal detector and weight detector, let alone any serious Technocratic sensors that were specifically there to make sure nobody was sneaking in a reprogrammed HITMark or Etherite killer cyborg. And the guy had his own friends to meet, contacts to cultivate, leadership positions to influence. So Mr. Professional it was.
"You going to get that reversed after this is done?" Donald asks. "The surgery?"
"No." Wufan says. "Why would I?"
"Most people tend to care about things like... not having their original face and... minor human inconveniences like that."
Wufan sighs. "It would be a waste of time and resources. And this isn't the second face I've worn. You get used to it."
Donald counts as a scholar of the human mind as well, albeit at a much lower practical level, and he's fairly sure normal people don't get used to being completely different. But he doesn't see any benefit in starting an argument so he just nods. "Well then. Enjoy your job."
"Certainly."
"You know, I know the dossier described him as 'a professional agent,' but I didn't expect a fucking robot." Donald complains to Rose when she gets back. She's bought quite a bit of takeout, Thai this time, and puts it down on the table. Right now, it's just the two of them there. Henriette's off trying to infiltrate Union systems, and Wufan has his cover to consider. Rose looks almost interested, which means that she's maturing. Certainly, enough that she doesn't hang on his every word, like she did before all this went down. One of the few good things about the Spy's Demise is how much it's done for her sense of self-confidence. "You gave him the facelift, didn't you?"
"I did." Rose says. "He insisted on the surgery. It wasn't a bad choice, since it'd keep him off of any automated Union surveillance-and the enemy can't have that many people who are both capable and trusted to do these wide-area intelligence sweeps. As long as we don't show up on any automated searches, we should be fine."
"Obsessive guy, isn't he?"
"I don't know..." Rose muses. "I think it's fine. He's useful like this. As long as we keep him in the loop for the mission, he's an asset. And unlike Elsa or Kessler, he's predictable. Not as effective as Kessler, but far more predictable." She sighs. "I wish it didn't have to be like this." The lies. The backstabbing. In the end, Rose thinks, she just wanted to help people. To save them. She's done that already-but to save people she's had to sacrifice others. To sacrifice herself. And it makes her feel a bit hollow to think of just how much she's had to change in just one month.
It's another reminder for Donald just how much Rose has learned from Reina in the past month. The path she's walked has changed her, and not entirely for the better. "Me too." Donald says. "Me too." But in the end, he doesn't have time for more than a short statement of sympathy. There is so much more to worry about. "How are the preparations coming along?"
Rose looks distracted for a moment. "Fine. Henriette's successfully compromised the not-Serafina's phone and lifted her login and password. We should be in position to move at any time. I don't want to spend more time lingering here than I have to. Are you running support?"
"I am." Donald says. It's at least something he can do. Talk to people over the radio. It's something more than stewing and wondering how he's totally useless, staring at the prosthetic that's a "temporary replacement" for his lost limb because the Iterators Jamelia knows consider a missing limb an opportunity to upgrade their augmentations rather than an actual, real loss. More like machines than men, with an almost condescending level of accommodation for "frails" as they refer to normal people out of earshot. Something to demonstrate that he's not just a terrible person. He's a terrible person who can do some good in this world.
***
Their plan goes off without a hitch. Wufan, for all his personal problems, is a consummate professional capable of following orders and following them well. Rose reminds herself that she's a skilled doctor and bioengineer for all that so many people think of her as just a weapon in a pretty package. And they haven't spared nearly enough surveillance to catch the plan in the making. They have guards, but they seem to be just as unaware of the true nature of their VIP as everyone else is. For them, Serafina is just another spoiled princess they have to protect from harms such as paper cuts. Wufan has gotten them that much. The only complication is that it means "Serafina" will have to explain why she's back after making her excuses to leave.
And, Rose thinks-if she's right, the false Serafina is going to destabilize... within a few hours at most. Which means she has to get ready for it. Which explains very handily why the hotel suite's restroom is occupied by a woman who is the spitting image of Serafina. Rose runs her hand through her hair and looks at her altered body. Both of them come from the mathematical beauty of Progenitor designers, but there's differences. Serafina's body was designed with no real concern for combat effectiveness-just good looks and enhanced mental capability. And it shows.
Looking at Thorn in the mirror, handily dressed up as some juvenile's idea of a sexy vampire, tight leather and all, it's hard to accept that one of the criticisms leveled at Progenitors by Reality Deviants is that they're responsible for the proliferation of a "mass-produced consumerist ideal."
"I didn't know 'like mother like daughter' was supposed to be taken that literally." Thorn says, amused. "How does it feel?"
Rose shakes her head. She thought this would be a better way than to have to directly confront the false Serafina-but it feels like a gross violation of trust, somehow. She shakily looks at the neatly folded pile of clothing and the forged ID that says "Serafina Rosario" on it. It's almost enough to make her call off the plan. Almost. But that would have wasted the time and effort of everyone here-and she's not willing to do that. They don't deserve suffering because she isn't willing to play her part.
"Don't worry." Thorn says, with sympathy that seems almost real. "It's not really a violation. No more than what she's already suffered from. And maybe a bit less."
"I thought you hated her." Rose says.
"Who? Me?" Thorn asks, grinning. "I love everyone, Miss Ashford. I'm just a cheery little head-vampire."
"I don't believe you."
"Good. I didn't hate her. She's an obstacle you had to overcome to embrace your birthright. If she had her way-you'd have been kept away from the frontlines. Never had to face what you were built for. You'd have never had to face what you actually are, and overcome it via strength of mind and spirit. Rather, you'd have been able to avoid it and would have never grown. She may have been smothering you via kindness but she was still smothering." Thorn grins, flashing pearl-white fangs. "Isn't it interesting that the moment she left your life, and Reina took that position as your mother figure, you've become so much more... respectable?"
"She just didn't want to see me hurt." Rose says, in Sera's defense. "She was right."
"Well of course not. Nobody ever means to hurt anyone. But they do it anyways. Food for thought."
"And you?" Rose asks. "I'm pretty sure that doesn't apply to you."
"I don't count as a person, remember? I'm just a hallucination." Thorn says, sticking her tongue out. "So get used to it."
***
When Serafina makes an excuse to leave to find Cross, it's trivial for Rose to insert herself seamlessly, making an excuse about the "situation," whatever it was, resolving itself in the half hour between her leaving and her 'return.' For Rose, the hardest part is dealing with the guards. Even though she knows that they're somewhat contemptuous about the underworked, oversexed Union princess-even if they're happy that she doesn't ask much of them princesses are princesses, they're being polite to her rather than ordering her around like a HITMark. It's such a rare thing, being treated as a superior. Having a chauffeur. Having people who exist to die for you.
"We could probably get used to this." Thorn says. "And plenty of people have."
Rose-as-Serafina ignores Thorn, concentrating on her 'work.' The tablet looks like Union standard on the outside, but on the inside it's packed with Henriette's custom-built intrusion equipment, and a quantum tunneling communications system. She forces her heartbeat and respiration down to normal levels, forces down the discomfort at going into the belly of the beast. Alone. The old building the amalgam had based itself out of felt like home before, now it's something else, foreboding and hostile. There's guards at the front gate with body armor and weapons, and an upgraded surveillance network. As the armored town car pulls into the garage, Rose can see that they still haven't fully managed to clean away all the traces of combat. There's still subtle discolorations, places where they had to repair walls or floors or ceilings and did so with more concern to safety than aesthetics.
Rose waves the bodyguards away-just like Serafina would do. Sera wouldn't be one to have them running around for longer than necessary. They nod at her and thank her, as if this was some great favor instead of a minor courtesy. The children of ranking Technocrats really do get treated better, and it's never been as obvious as when she's pretending to be one. She steps into the elevator and up into the construct, straight up to Serafina's office. Well, formerly Director Belltower's office, until they changed everything.
Unlike Director Belltower, there's a lot more personalization going on. She has some 'family' pictures-a few about her time at Damien, some with Rose and Alexander, a few Christmas pictures with friends. Still, it's easy to notice how the friends in the pictures always seem to be different, and how she seems to always be just a little set apart from the others in those pictures, as if she's alone. Rose wonders if Serafina noticed those herself. But she's not here to spy on her mother. Well, she's not here to spy on her mother in this fashion.
Her disguise should spoof the multiple biometric safeties on the computer. She looks like Serafina down to a genetic level, as long as nobody tries any deep tissue samples. All that's left is a login and password. And she's never been told what it is, but she can take a guess.
Username: SRosario
Password: RedLikeRoseIs
Welcome, Director Rosario flashes on the screen. Messages and mission updates and objectives unfold. The construct is heavily involved in sweeping for the hemophages who have caused them so much pain. Other objectives, such as R&D support, have been temporarily put on hold. There's constant personnel transfers and war materiel requisitions going in and out, several of which are waiting for approval and a drop location.
"They're probably terminating witnesses. Anyone who might be able to contradict the official story is a target." Donald says. "Check who they're targeting."
Rose does. They're targeting hemophage leaders, several of whom are in hiding. The name "Lacroix" comes up a few times. His allies seem to be priority targets.
"Oh that shifty bastard. I knew him when I was working here. He controlled his own little corporate empire, which I was supposed to be containing and rolling back." Donald sighs. "I should have known he'd be the kind of ambitious blowhard who'd do something stupid like this. If he's the target, he might know something."
"Or we can just let him get killed." Henriette says over the link. "He's just another leech. He probably doesn't even know anything. He's a dead end, I think."
Rose ignores their bickering, goes on delving deeper into the files. Lacroix has vanished, apparently, and they're searching for him. Results are promising, and they expect to have him localized soon. It's not a problem they can ignore indefinitely, because no matter how much of a bigshot he is in the hemophage world-he's seemingly lost most of his support at such a provocation, been labeled as a rogue, and is being thrown to the wolves as a concession. Nobody wants an active hot war between the Technocracy and the Camarilla. Nobody. She puts it out of her mind, and refocuses on finding Serafina. She has perhaps a few hours before false-Serafina ends up in Cross's custody, which will lead to access being revoked. She has to find what she needs quickly. Maybe if she has more time, she'll go back for this information.
"We could probably get used to this." Thorn says. "And plenty of people have."
Rose-as-Serafina ignores Thorn, concentrating on her 'work.' The tablet looks like Union standard on the outside, but on the inside it's packed with Henriette's custom-built intrusion equipment, and a quantum tunneling communications system. She forces her heartbeat and respiration down to normal levels, forces down the discomfort at going into the belly of the beast. Alone. The old building the amalgam had based itself out of felt like home before, now it's something else, foreboding and hostile. There's guards at the front gate with body armor and weapons, and an upgraded surveillance network. As the armored town car pulls into the garage, Rose can see that they still haven't fully managed to clean away all the traces of combat. There's still subtle discolorations, places where they had to repair walls or floors or ceilings and did so with more concern to safety than aesthetics.
Rose waves the bodyguards away-just like Serafina would do. Sera wouldn't be one to have them running around for longer than necessary. They nod at her and thank her, as if this was some great favor instead of a minor courtesy. The children of ranking Technocrats really do get treated better, and it's never been as obvious as when she's pretending to be one. She steps into the elevator and up into the construct, straight up to Serafina's office. Well, formerly Director Belltower's office, until they changed everything.
Unlike Director Belltower, there's a lot more personalization going on. She has some 'family' pictures-a few about her time at Damien, some with Rose and Alexander, a few Christmas pictures with friends. Still, it's easy to notice how the friends in the pictures always seem to be different, and how she seems to always be just a little set apart from the others in those pictures, as if she's alone. Rose wonders if Serafina noticed those herself. But she's not here to spy on her mother. Well, she's not here to spy on her mother in this fashion.
Her disguise should spoof the multiple biometric safeties on the computer. She looks like Serafina down to a genetic level, as long as nobody tries any deep tissue samples. All that's left is a login and password. And she's never been told what it is, but she can take a guess.
Username: SRosario
Password: RedLikeRoseIs
Welcome, Director Rosario flashes on the screen. Messages and mission updates and objectives unfold. The construct is heavily involved in sweeping for the hemophages who have caused them so much pain. Other objectives, such as R&D support, have been temporarily put on hold. There's constant personnel transfers and war materiel requisitions going in and out, several of which are waiting for approval and a drop location.
"They're probably terminating witnesses. Anyone who might be able to contradict the official story is a target." Donald says. "Check who they're targeting."
Rose does. They're targeting hemophage leaders, several of whom are in hiding. The name "Lacroix" comes up a few times. His allies seem to be priority targets.
"Oh that shifty bastard. I knew him when I was working here. He controlled his own little corporate empire, which I was supposed to be containing and rolling back." Donald sighs. "I should have known he'd be the kind of ambitious blowhard who'd do something stupid like this. If he's the target, he might know something."
"Or we can just let him get killed." Henriette says over the link. "He's just another leech. He probably doesn't even know anything. He's a dead end, I think."
Rose ignores their bickering, goes on delving deeper into the files. Lacroix has vanished, apparently, and they're searching for him. Results are promising, and they expect to have him localized soon. It's not a problem they can ignore indefinitely, because no matter how much of a bigshot he is in the hemophage world-he's seemingly lost most of his support at such a provocation, been labeled as a rogue, and is being thrown to the wolves as a concession. Nobody wants an active hot war between the Technocracy and the Camarilla. Nobody. She puts it out of her mind, and refocuses on finding Serafina. She has perhaps a few hours before false-Serafina ends up in Cross's custody, which will lead to access being revoked. She has to find what she needs quickly. Maybe if she has more time, she'll go back for this information.
Super Secret Searching, Part 1:
You want to find out where Serafina is via her high-level access. You are going to do that by...
[ ] Write-In: What exactly do you think will get you the closest to finding Serafina herself?
Super Secret Searching, Part 2:
What else are you looking for with Serafina's access? This can change quite a few things, as in how long you stay in LA, what subplots you're engaging in, and what you can or can't do. Choose two.
[ ] LaCroix and what forces are being pointed in his direction;
[ ] Jamelia Belltower's recent activity;
[ ] Access logs as to who has been entering and exiting the construct;
[ ] Serafina's recent search history;
[ ] The construct's inventory and supply sources.
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- Location
- Southern Virginia
I think, as far as subplots go, LaCroix is a must because we're still here in LA, it's a limited opportunity, and it'll lead to the TYRANTS and our interns. And if we get in touch with the TYRANTS we have a good chance to bring Bastion and the NWO on-board.
The others are, hmm. Jamelia Belltower's recent history could alert us to what Ms. Clock is up to, which might or might not involve matters touching on Vigilance and Helmetshrik, or on Elissa. Access logs might lead to Gregor and Roth, maybe also Li and Sanjeet if they stopped over on the way to Tokyo. Serafina's recent search history might pick up on the real Sera's attempts to find the real Jamelia and help lead us to her. And the inventory and supply sources I'm not sure of, but would obviously let us gauge their resources and maybe find a way to counter some of the surprises they're going to pull out. Not sure which way to go but leaning toward focusing on Ms. Clock here.
The others are, hmm. Jamelia Belltower's recent history could alert us to what Ms. Clock is up to, which might or might not involve matters touching on Vigilance and Helmetshrik, or on Elissa. Access logs might lead to Gregor and Roth, maybe also Li and Sanjeet if they stopped over on the way to Tokyo. Serafina's recent search history might pick up on the real Sera's attempts to find the real Jamelia and help lead us to her. And the inventory and supply sources I'm not sure of, but would obviously let us gauge their resources and maybe find a way to counter some of the surprises they're going to pull out. Not sure which way to go but leaning toward focusing on Ms. Clock here.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Not yet.
Super Secret Searching, Part 1:
You want to find out where Serafina is via her high-level access. You are going to do that by...
[X] Write-In: What exactly do you think will get you the closest to finding Serafina herself?
First things first. Rose has to blend in. She has to act like Serafina for a bit in how she uses her computer, which means she needs to put some time into answering her emails. Henriette told her that the initial login receives the most system time for external monitoring because hostile hackers will want to be in and out quickly. At least fifteen minutes, before she gets bored and starts browsing the internet. Which is how her mother usually works. Oh yes. Rose has noticed that much.
She keeps well, well away from answering any emails from the fake Director Belltower. She's not one hundred percent sure that she can fake her mother's writing style well enough to fool her, if she's as good as the real one. And she's not sure of the response she'll get if she tells the woman that no, she hasn't looked at the analysis she mentioned yet. She might come over to inspect her progress, and that would be bad. Rose really doesn't want to blow her cover by killing a combat construct if they have another one impersonating her boss, too.
"Oh! Oh! I know! I have the super-bestest best plan ever!" Thorn declares loudly in a mocking tone, bounding into view. She's wearing an obviously fake blonde wig, and a Progenitor biosuit which on closer inspection is a wetsuit with some aluminium foil glued onto it. "You'll totally love it! It will literally blow your mind! It'll be totally radical!"
"... what are you doing?" Rose mutters. She has no idea what Thorn is up to and doesn't really want to know, but feels she has to ask.
"Just helping you get in character as Serafina," Thorn says, sounding hurt. "You're Serafina, and I'm your super-best friend who's also a top secret Damage Control agent and who everyone loves and who's funny and witty and who breaks the rules all the time but gets away with it and who's just as clever as you are, but who doesn't let it get between you and talking with normal people and-"
"Stop it."
"I'm more than happy to," Thorn says, pulling off the blonde wig with undue speed. "Urgh. I think I need to wash out my mouth. I could literally feel my IQ dropping from acting like that." She pulls out a bottle of mouthwash from behind her back and gargles with it. "But seriously, I have a plan."
"That's nice," Rose says softly, before turning on her throat mike. "Henriette," she subvocalises. "Do what you need to do. I've disguised my activity like you said I should."
"O-kay," Henriette exhales. "Donald, I'm grabbing the overhead right now. All those low value, low encryption asset transfers. Prepare for some days of forensic accountancy."
Yes. That's the plan. They won't be able to see any of the ultra-classified things that other facilities are doing, but the Progenitors have the structure that's perhaps the closest to the pre-99 organisation. When they lost the Administration, the remaining Research Directors merely took over the tools that were left behind on Earth. And that means there's a lot of low-level paperwork which goes on. Asset transfers like 'Bob cleaning staff teams' and 'grants for pet projects'. Nothing major or very high value, ten thousand dollars here, a few clones there. It's the low-level bureaucracy which hums around in the background without anyone really noticing. It's not heavily encrypted and it's open access to any senior Progenitor who cares to check if someone is getting through an unusually high rate of cleanup teams.
So maybe, Donald hypothesised, that's the best place to hide small asset transfers. Their enemies won't have to do that - they clearly have no paucity of assets. But if Serafina's gone to ground inside the Progenitors, it's how you could build up a little power base from the dribs and drabs of waste. Like a filter-feeder, Rose had said to provide an appropriate biological metaphor.
But... Rose sighs. She's not so sure. Oh, she suspects that Serafina may well be siphoning out tiny bits of resources that way. She might even have paid attention to what Director Belltower had done in New York and activated old Union facilities with dribs and drabs of cash. But the problem is that she's probably far from the only one. Rose strongly suspects that there are so many Progenitors trying to game the system that the things Serafina is doing are probably going to be lost under the noise. Which is, of course, what Serafina might be relying on. When there are graduate students all over the place 'accidentally' exposing Bob cleaning staff to mutagens because they're low on funding and don't want to spend budget on proper test subjects, it'll be very hard to find if Serafina is misappropriating Bobs to set up a secret base in among other people misappropriating Bobs for their own pet projects.
"Like looking for a needle in a haystack which is not in fact made of hay, but is made of more needles," Thorn observes. "Because much like the Progenitors, a haystack made of needles is full of pricks."
Rose rolls her eyes at that.
"Not even a giggle? Rose, you're so cruel to me. But yes, despite the fact that you don't want me to be your super-amazing friend, you should still go and read Serafina's emails. Not the recent ones. The old ones. Like, say, from the night of the attack," Thorn says.
"Why?" Rose mouths.
"Because it'll let you see what they want people to think that she did on that night," Thorn answers.
There's no grand answers there. There's some perfectly mundane work, and a saved half-draft on an aspect of shapeshifter biochemistry. Rose checks her history and... oh. She was looking at pages about parenting advice for parents of teenagers - and she can hear Thorn smirk at her. She flicks through Serafina's messages again, and one of them catches her eye."
"That name's familiar," she subvocalises. "And the face."
"Which one?" Henriette says into her ear, obviously distracted.
"In Brighton. Sera talked about someone called Alice from school. She showed me a photo of her and the other girl. I think it's the same person mentioned in one of the emails."
"Oh?"
"A message from a friend of hers. Saying that she's dead - a HVT."
The noise from Henriette somehow manages to convey her apathy.
Rose stares at it. There are... missing sentences. Somehow. The haemophage bits of her brain, the bits which are a social superpredator which preys on humans, are ringing all kinds of alarms. But she's not sure exactly. There's something wrong about it. Like it's been changed in some way.
[Rose - Time 2, Primal Utility 1 - Blindsight Vampire focus to look at the edited message and through nothing her conscious mind can explain, deduces the original structure of the message and the woven-in spell just through haemophage super-intuition and savantism which lets her work out how it was changed. Enhanced by Wits + Alertness.]
Oh. Oh no. Maybe she wouldn't have understood this before the Demise, before she... she took control of her own mind, but she can see the kill-phrases through the missing words. So perfectly tailored that just a few small changes made it totally useless. Which means most of it is still there and she can see the structure, even if she doesn't know exactly how it would work.
A hyper-advanced Progenitor and NWO autotermination meme. Aimed right at Serafina's enhanced psychology. So carefully done that it could be read by Serafina's mother - who has the same mental augs - and she wouldn't be affected. It could even be read by a gamma-level clone safely, and might only give a beta-level clone a migraine. And in its safe form, Serafina's clone can read it and won't be hit.
"Did you know about this?" she mouths at Thorn.
"No," Thorn says, brow furrowed. "I thought she might have saved some message hidden in the drafts folder. You know, if you read the first letter of each sentence, it would say something like A-M-G-O-I-N-G-T-O-H-I-D-E-I-N-C-R-O-S-S-apostrophe-S-B-E-D-R-O-O-M. Something normal for her. Not an actual serious murder attempt."
"So. They tried to make her kill herself. And you'd have to be an expert at neurobiology to target something so precisely. There aren't many of them around," Rose mouths. "Sera would know that. She has a shortlist of people who could do this. She'll be looking for them."
"Probably. Unless she's so brain-damaged from the suicide attempt that she's passing as a Bob here and no one noticed," Thorn says brightly.
Thorn, Rose remembers, is still a big huge bitch.
You want to find out where Serafina is via her high-level access. You are going to do that by...
[X] Write-In: What exactly do you think will get you the closest to finding Serafina herself?
First things first. Rose has to blend in. She has to act like Serafina for a bit in how she uses her computer, which means she needs to put some time into answering her emails. Henriette told her that the initial login receives the most system time for external monitoring because hostile hackers will want to be in and out quickly. At least fifteen minutes, before she gets bored and starts browsing the internet. Which is how her mother usually works. Oh yes. Rose has noticed that much.
She keeps well, well away from answering any emails from the fake Director Belltower. She's not one hundred percent sure that she can fake her mother's writing style well enough to fool her, if she's as good as the real one. And she's not sure of the response she'll get if she tells the woman that no, she hasn't looked at the analysis she mentioned yet. She might come over to inspect her progress, and that would be bad. Rose really doesn't want to blow her cover by killing a combat construct if they have another one impersonating her boss, too.
"Oh! Oh! I know! I have the super-bestest best plan ever!" Thorn declares loudly in a mocking tone, bounding into view. She's wearing an obviously fake blonde wig, and a Progenitor biosuit which on closer inspection is a wetsuit with some aluminium foil glued onto it. "You'll totally love it! It will literally blow your mind! It'll be totally radical!"
"... what are you doing?" Rose mutters. She has no idea what Thorn is up to and doesn't really want to know, but feels she has to ask.
"Just helping you get in character as Serafina," Thorn says, sounding hurt. "You're Serafina, and I'm your super-best friend who's also a top secret Damage Control agent and who everyone loves and who's funny and witty and who breaks the rules all the time but gets away with it and who's just as clever as you are, but who doesn't let it get between you and talking with normal people and-"
"Stop it."
"I'm more than happy to," Thorn says, pulling off the blonde wig with undue speed. "Urgh. I think I need to wash out my mouth. I could literally feel my IQ dropping from acting like that." She pulls out a bottle of mouthwash from behind her back and gargles with it. "But seriously, I have a plan."
"That's nice," Rose says softly, before turning on her throat mike. "Henriette," she subvocalises. "Do what you need to do. I've disguised my activity like you said I should."
"O-kay," Henriette exhales. "Donald, I'm grabbing the overhead right now. All those low value, low encryption asset transfers. Prepare for some days of forensic accountancy."
Yes. That's the plan. They won't be able to see any of the ultra-classified things that other facilities are doing, but the Progenitors have the structure that's perhaps the closest to the pre-99 organisation. When they lost the Administration, the remaining Research Directors merely took over the tools that were left behind on Earth. And that means there's a lot of low-level paperwork which goes on. Asset transfers like 'Bob cleaning staff teams' and 'grants for pet projects'. Nothing major or very high value, ten thousand dollars here, a few clones there. It's the low-level bureaucracy which hums around in the background without anyone really noticing. It's not heavily encrypted and it's open access to any senior Progenitor who cares to check if someone is getting through an unusually high rate of cleanup teams.
So maybe, Donald hypothesised, that's the best place to hide small asset transfers. Their enemies won't have to do that - they clearly have no paucity of assets. But if Serafina's gone to ground inside the Progenitors, it's how you could build up a little power base from the dribs and drabs of waste. Like a filter-feeder, Rose had said to provide an appropriate biological metaphor.
But... Rose sighs. She's not so sure. Oh, she suspects that Serafina may well be siphoning out tiny bits of resources that way. She might even have paid attention to what Director Belltower had done in New York and activated old Union facilities with dribs and drabs of cash. But the problem is that she's probably far from the only one. Rose strongly suspects that there are so many Progenitors trying to game the system that the things Serafina is doing are probably going to be lost under the noise. Which is, of course, what Serafina might be relying on. When there are graduate students all over the place 'accidentally' exposing Bob cleaning staff to mutagens because they're low on funding and don't want to spend budget on proper test subjects, it'll be very hard to find if Serafina is misappropriating Bobs to set up a secret base in among other people misappropriating Bobs for their own pet projects.
"Like looking for a needle in a haystack which is not in fact made of hay, but is made of more needles," Thorn observes. "Because much like the Progenitors, a haystack made of needles is full of pricks."
Rose rolls her eyes at that.
"Not even a giggle? Rose, you're so cruel to me. But yes, despite the fact that you don't want me to be your super-amazing friend, you should still go and read Serafina's emails. Not the recent ones. The old ones. Like, say, from the night of the attack," Thorn says.
"Why?" Rose mouths.
"Because it'll let you see what they want people to think that she did on that night," Thorn answers.
There's no grand answers there. There's some perfectly mundane work, and a saved half-draft on an aspect of shapeshifter biochemistry. Rose checks her history and... oh. She was looking at pages about parenting advice for parents of teenagers - and she can hear Thorn smirk at her. She flicks through Serafina's messages again, and one of them catches her eye."
"That name's familiar," she subvocalises. "And the face."
"Which one?" Henriette says into her ear, obviously distracted.
"In Brighton. Sera talked about someone called Alice from school. She showed me a photo of her and the other girl. I think it's the same person mentioned in one of the emails."
"Oh?"
"A message from a friend of hers. Saying that she's dead - a HVT."
The noise from Henriette somehow manages to convey her apathy.
Rose stares at it. There are... missing sentences. Somehow. The haemophage bits of her brain, the bits which are a social superpredator which preys on humans, are ringing all kinds of alarms. But she's not sure exactly. There's something wrong about it. Like it's been changed in some way.
[Rose - Time 2, Primal Utility 1 - Blindsight Vampire focus to look at the edited message and through nothing her conscious mind can explain, deduces the original structure of the message and the woven-in spell just through haemophage super-intuition and savantism which lets her work out how it was changed. Enhanced by Wits + Alertness.]
Oh. Oh no. Maybe she wouldn't have understood this before the Demise, before she... she took control of her own mind, but she can see the kill-phrases through the missing words. So perfectly tailored that just a few small changes made it totally useless. Which means most of it is still there and she can see the structure, even if she doesn't know exactly how it would work.
A hyper-advanced Progenitor and NWO autotermination meme. Aimed right at Serafina's enhanced psychology. So carefully done that it could be read by Serafina's mother - who has the same mental augs - and she wouldn't be affected. It could even be read by a gamma-level clone safely, and might only give a beta-level clone a migraine. And in its safe form, Serafina's clone can read it and won't be hit.
"Did you know about this?" she mouths at Thorn.
"No," Thorn says, brow furrowed. "I thought she might have saved some message hidden in the drafts folder. You know, if you read the first letter of each sentence, it would say something like A-M-G-O-I-N-G-T-O-H-I-D-E-I-N-C-R-O-S-S-apostrophe-S-B-E-D-R-O-O-M. Something normal for her. Not an actual serious murder attempt."
"So. They tried to make her kill herself. And you'd have to be an expert at neurobiology to target something so precisely. There aren't many of them around," Rose mouths. "Sera would know that. She has a shortlist of people who could do this. She'll be looking for them."
"Probably. Unless she's so brain-damaged from the suicide attempt that she's passing as a Bob here and no one noticed," Thorn says brightly.
Thorn, Rose remembers, is still a big huge bitch.
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- Location
- England
[X] Write-In: What exactly do you think will get you the closest to finding Serafina herself?: Plan reading the hidden message within a message.
[X] LaCroix and what forces are being pointed in his direction;
[X] Access logs as to who has been entering and exiting the construct;
Cavalier has convinced me on LaCroixand I want to know as much as possible about Clock, because I trust her least out of every threat in play.
As Kerrus pointed out, we can expand our search based on the access logs.
[X] LaCroix and what forces are being pointed in his direction;
[X] Access logs as to who has been entering and exiting the construct;
Cavalier has convinced me on LaCroix
As Kerrus pointed out, we can expand our search based on the access logs.
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Kerrus
Fractal Insanity
Okay, so we have high level access, but that doesn't mean we're completely free to do whatever. While looking at 'Director Belltower's recent activity' is certainly an option, I wonder if it might set off flags of behavioural deviation for clonefina that might be in place. But maybe I'm being too paranoid.
I do think we should look at the access logs to the construct. That's the sort of thing a director like Serafina might peruse in their spare time, and in particular it would give us a good indication of who has had access to clonefina and we might have to worry about in the short term- and those points of contact are additional vectors by which we can expand our search.
I do think we should look at the access logs to the construct. That's the sort of thing a director like Serafina might peruse in their spare time, and in particular it would give us a good indication of who has had access to clonefina and we might have to worry about in the short term- and those points of contact are additional vectors by which we can expand our search.
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
[X] Write-In: What exactly do you think will get you the closest to finding Serafina herself?: Plan reading the hidden message within a message.
[X] LaCroix and what forces are being pointed in his direction;
[X] Access logs as to who has been entering and exiting the construct
Figuring out the suicide-inducing message will give us a lead on Clock's people, which will help us track from that end. LaCroix is a non-Union viewpoint on what happened the night of the attack, and given how much effort Clock is directing at him, he apparently knows something valuable/incriminating. And Access logs will give us some idea of who got out and who is a fake replacement, I hope.
[X] LaCroix and what forces are being pointed in his direction;
[X] Access logs as to who has been entering and exiting the construct
Figuring out the suicide-inducing message will give us a lead on Clock's people, which will help us track from that end. LaCroix is a non-Union viewpoint on what happened the night of the attack, and given how much effort Clock is directing at him, he apparently knows something valuable/incriminating. And Access logs will give us some idea of who got out and who is a fake replacement, I hope.
Uh... how? Even barring the "how do access logs distinguish between false replacements and real brainwashed people" issue, I'm not sure what the gain to doing this this way is. Considering that everyone wants to go La Croix, it seems, that leaves us with only one real choice and therefore that behoves us to pick it well.
NonSequtur
a body
That's... foreboding. An Transhuman replacement, maybe?
[x] LaCroix and what forces are being pointed in his direction;
Not sure about the other one.
[ ] Write-In: What exactly do you think will get you the closest to finding Serafina herself?
Alright, so we suspect that she's active, and used to be in Mexico City as FIERY ANGEL. We, of course, don't know that she's made contact with the Abjad and has received a flawless cover in Brazil. Even without that, however, she's going to be extremely difficult to track down. She could be quite literally anywhere.
The General said:
So we don't track her down. The replacement of a Director isn't going to disappear without a trace once it reaches Ethical Compliance. There will be ripples through the Progenitors, ones that Serafina could use to figure out that something's gone wrong with her duplicate - and given she knows that there's at least one Master-class Progenitor Mind specialist working for the enemy, she's going to suspect it was engineered. So that'll grab Serafina's attention. Of course, it will also grab the attention of Dr. Gregor and Director Clock.
Then we need to figure out decent bait to get her to come to LA personally (hopefully without drawing too much attention from Oversight), and keep our eyes open.
So little discussion about subplots and symbolism makes the writer very very sad 
It might, but the decision loop of Oversight is not 100% instant. And it's not like people aren't going to notice in a few hours anyways.
She's downright nice. For an imaginary head-vampire. Vampires are pretty terrible people, Thorn is a saint by their standards.
It might, but the decision loop of Oversight is not 100% instant. And it's not like people aren't going to notice in a few hours anyways.
She's downright nice. For an imaginary head-vampire. Vampires are pretty terrible people, Thorn is a saint by their standards.
Okay! So! Given I worked 12 hours today, and yesterday spent most of my evening editing Power Games, it's time for a very incoherent, nonsensical, and actually just making things up when I feel like it analysispost. Which is to say, I'm just going to blather for a bit about themes and ideas and then go to sleep.
[ ] LaCroix and what forces are being pointed in his direction;
Well, clearly LaCroix is angry and pissed off and has all the spitefulness of a vampire added to all the spitefulness of a Ventrue reduced to less pleasant surroundings. Therefore logically, given that Donald has a cyberarm, the theme will be "all for revenge" - notably, LaCroix will be wanting revenge against the Camarilla and the Technocracy and the Giovanni because they all fucked him over. He may be in the state of mind right now to make deals with any of a) Pentex, b) the Sabbat, c) Infernalist vampires, d) Infernalist magicians, e) all of the above. As this is California, fortunately there are offshore oil platforms to serve as LaCroix's secret hideout - after all, castles are so passe, while oil platforms allow you to escape hunters and werewolves by jumping overboard and walking along the sea floor.
Risks include Donald losing an eye. After all, he's not the real Winston, but as a Syndic he might have to pass for him.
(This is probably just nonsense, and mostly just Metal Gear jokes.)
[ ] Jamelia Belltower's recent activity;
Themes of sneakiness, espionage, and the dawning horror that while the fake Serafina is 'just' a combat construct with her personality, the fake Jamelia is just as good as the real one.
Which also sadly means you're not going to get much juiciness from it, because she's really good at what she does. Maybe a plot hint or two that lead to some other operation or hints at one of her larger plans.
Hmm. I wonder if Ms Clock ever slips up around Serafaker, who is for all her fakeness a) Manipulation 6, and b) a fork of Serafina, who has made a lot of trouble for Ms Clock over the years. A loooooot of trouble. Serafaker may have made some notes on... on how there's something familiar about Director Belltower that she can't quite place.
[ ] Access logs as to who has been entering and exiting the construct;
This is a wildcard - I don't think it'll be much use as a general plot hook, but it might allow us to pin names to certain of Ms Clock's minibosses. Like, say, Henriette recognising Ling and sadly noting that this means she's probably not going to get to apologise to her.
[ ] Serafina's recent search history;
This... might actually be good for Rose's arc. Or possibly cringingly embarrassing, if she has to look through her mother's porn stache [1] (well, if Rose can manage to be embarrassed by her mother). But still, it's a sight for Rose into the mind of Serafina, which can be useful in its own way as a focus at a tactical level. And it's a family thing for Serafina and...
... oh. Interesting. Without Alicia in the back of her head and with Rose not around and Cross not present... oh gods. Poor Serafaker. She's going to be intensely lonely, and that may well come through. Okay, I like that as an insight for Rose to experience. And of course, she's even programmed to keep away from her parents - not that you really have to programme Serafina to do that much.
It also might provide some wildcard hints, because Serafina is a bit sloppy sometimes and if she's googling various locations to see what it looks like there and what the weather's like, it might lead the party on a trip somewhere to see exactly what's in the place in the jungles of Cambodia that Serafaker used google earth to look at.
[1] Yes, the spelling is intentional. Oh those wacky Progenitors.
[ ] The construct's inventory and supply sources.
Obvious clue into the assets Ms Clock has, inevitably people will want to have Rose steal something, blah blah blah.
[ ] LaCroix and what forces are being pointed in his direction;
Well, clearly LaCroix is angry and pissed off and has all the spitefulness of a vampire added to all the spitefulness of a Ventrue reduced to less pleasant surroundings. Therefore logically, given that Donald has a cyberarm, the theme will be "all for revenge" - notably, LaCroix will be wanting revenge against the Camarilla and the Technocracy and the Giovanni because they all fucked him over. He may be in the state of mind right now to make deals with any of a) Pentex, b) the Sabbat, c) Infernalist vampires, d) Infernalist magicians, e) all of the above. As this is California, fortunately there are offshore oil platforms to serve as LaCroix's secret hideout - after all, castles are so passe, while oil platforms allow you to escape hunters and werewolves by jumping overboard and walking along the sea floor.
Risks include Donald losing an eye. After all, he's not the real Winston, but as a Syndic he might have to pass for him.
(This is probably just nonsense, and mostly just Metal Gear jokes.)
[ ] Jamelia Belltower's recent activity;
Themes of sneakiness, espionage, and the dawning horror that while the fake Serafina is 'just' a combat construct with her personality, the fake Jamelia is just as good as the real one.
Which also sadly means you're not going to get much juiciness from it, because she's really good at what she does. Maybe a plot hint or two that lead to some other operation or hints at one of her larger plans.
Hmm. I wonder if Ms Clock ever slips up around Serafaker, who is for all her fakeness a) Manipulation 6, and b) a fork of Serafina, who has made a lot of trouble for Ms Clock over the years. A loooooot of trouble. Serafaker may have made some notes on... on how there's something familiar about Director Belltower that she can't quite place.
[ ] Access logs as to who has been entering and exiting the construct;
This is a wildcard - I don't think it'll be much use as a general plot hook, but it might allow us to pin names to certain of Ms Clock's minibosses. Like, say, Henriette recognising Ling and sadly noting that this means she's probably not going to get to apologise to her.
[ ] Serafina's recent search history;
This... might actually be good for Rose's arc. Or possibly cringingly embarrassing, if she has to look through her mother's porn stache [1] (well, if Rose can manage to be embarrassed by her mother). But still, it's a sight for Rose into the mind of Serafina, which can be useful in its own way as a focus at a tactical level. And it's a family thing for Serafina and...
... oh. Interesting. Without Alicia in the back of her head and with Rose not around and Cross not present... oh gods. Poor Serafaker. She's going to be intensely lonely, and that may well come through. Okay, I like that as an insight for Rose to experience. And of course, she's even programmed to keep away from her parents - not that you really have to programme Serafina to do that much.
It also might provide some wildcard hints, because Serafina is a bit sloppy sometimes and if she's googling various locations to see what it looks like there and what the weather's like, it might lead the party on a trip somewhere to see exactly what's in the place in the jungles of Cambodia that Serafaker used google earth to look at.
[1] Yes, the spelling is intentional. Oh those wacky Progenitors.
[ ] The construct's inventory and supply sources.
Obvious clue into the assets Ms Clock has, inevitably people will want to have Rose steal something, blah blah blah.
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NonSequtur
a body
[ ] LaCroix and what forces are being pointed in his direction;
Pretty obvious. Track down LaCroix, shake him down for info all 'Who are you working for' style and hope Oversight doesn't liquidate him first (and that the Anathema's left). TYRANT contact opportunity, so that's useful.
[ ] Jamelia Belltower's recent activity;
Really mysterious option. She's been in Europe recently-ish, but beyond that? She's Jamelia+ in a lot of ways, so the usefulness and accuracy of information is suspect. Much creeping paranoia.
[ ] Access logs as to who has been entering and exiting the construct;
Could give us some forewarning about enemies, both immediate and political, possibly subverted allies. Kind of bland.
[ ] Serafina's recent search history;
Unless there's something like conspicuously absent searches due to the underlying personality kicking in, or odd searches built off of Serafaker managing to roll really well with Int 7 despite warding I'm not sure how useful this would be. Even as a look into the mind of Serafina I'm not sure how useful it'd be. I guess it'd be bittersweet if Rose found a bunch of searches about her own safety, so that's something.
[ ] The construct's inventory and supply sources.
Inventory is loot, but supply sources might be interesting. Drop points and movers for Threat Null materiel etc. Unfortunately, since Serafaker isn't a Mage, the information is probably not as useful as it could be if we broke into, say, Roth's computer. If we've got inventory history we might be able to spot anomalies to suggest where and when stuff is moving due to Donald ridiculous sphere power and appropriate paradigm.
Rose: ...
Thorn: Programmable follicles sure are fun, aren't they?
Rose: *rips Thorn's moustache off*
Rose: More neural connections to burn. Again.
Pretty obvious. Track down LaCroix, shake him down for info all 'Who are you working for' style and hope Oversight doesn't liquidate him first (and that the Anathema's left). TYRANT contact opportunity, so that's useful.
[ ] Jamelia Belltower's recent activity;
Really mysterious option. She's been in Europe recently-ish, but beyond that? She's Jamelia+ in a lot of ways, so the usefulness and accuracy of information is suspect. Much creeping paranoia.
[ ] Access logs as to who has been entering and exiting the construct;
Could give us some forewarning about enemies, both immediate and political, possibly subverted allies. Kind of bland.
[ ] Serafina's recent search history;
Unless there's something like conspicuously absent searches due to the underlying personality kicking in, or odd searches built off of Serafaker managing to roll really well with Int 7 despite warding I'm not sure how useful this would be. Even as a look into the mind of Serafina I'm not sure how useful it'd be. I guess it'd be bittersweet if Rose found a bunch of searches about her own safety, so that's something.
[ ] The construct's inventory and supply sources.
Inventory is loot, but supply sources might be interesting. Drop points and movers for Threat Null materiel etc. Unfortunately, since Serafaker isn't a Mage, the information is probably not as useful as it could be if we broke into, say, Roth's computer. If we've got inventory history we might be able to spot anomalies to suggest where and when stuff is moving due to Donald ridiculous sphere power and appropriate paradigm.
Rose: ...
Thorn: Programmable follicles sure are fun, aren't they?
Rose: *rips Thorn's moustache off*
Rose: More neural connections to burn. Again.
Actually, I really do have the standing issue.
Why do we care about LaCroix? Like, not only at an IC level, but also an OOC narrative level. What about him is so compelling that he gets narrative focus?
Why do we care about LaCroix? Like, not only at an IC level, but also an OOC narrative level. What about him is so compelling that he gets narrative focus?
- Location
- in the trash
[X] Jamelia Belltower's recent activity
Undecided on the other option, but definitely this.
Undecided on the other option, but definitely this.
Because he was in a fun video game. And we all kinda want to punch him in the face because of it.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
- Pronouns
- He/Him
An idea... I don't have enough brain right at the moment to say if it's a *good* idea, but it's an idea. Surveillance tapes from the night of the attack. They'll be edited, but they'll have to be edited in at least somewhat plausible ways, so they edits will have to have *some* meaning (which Sykes can dredge through for meaning as the focus for a corr/time sensing rote). They'll give us an in on finding the tyrants/interns without having to go through LaCroix. They might set off a few alarms... but if she sets up the right sort of a false personality, it'll set off the wrong alarms - the "Our Serafina is getting suspicious again" alarms, rather than the "someone is infiltrating" alarms... and if everything goes all the way to hell, she can exfiltrate via DSci with vampire biology as a focus, and some sort of a "stepping into a shadow" trick.
So... maybe not so much of a good idea. Still, it's a bit of meat for someone else to maybe work with.
So... maybe not so much of a good idea. Still, it's a bit of meat for someone else to maybe work with.