Piero_Dominici_(EXEMPLAR)/Discussion
ICONOCLAST 02?
One of our budget analysts found a budget line entry for "ICONOCLAST Unit 02" in a 2014 Ragnarok Command budget. Anyone know who it is? -Bowman
-> Do you know where the budget is going? -Li4399
--> Several West Asian major biotech Constructs. ICONOCLAST-01 is Piero Dominici. I believe that they're looking at either replacing or supplementing him. -Bowman
----> It has to be Rama, I think. I heard Piero went rogue in Moscow. So they want someone of his caliber that can deal with him. That means someone capable of landing that weakpoint shot. So why not the best archer? -IAskedForThis
If it is Rama, it's not going to be because of archery. Piero doesn't actually have a heel weakpoint. His immortality is the immortality of Achilles. An immortality that destined him to die by Paris's hand, to a shot to the heel. This is why the Technocracy spent so many resources on Alexander_Cross_(EXEMPLAR). They wanted to make sure they had Paris, so that if the situation got out of hand, then they could take advantage of that destiny. No matter which heel you try, you will always have the wrong one. -FateIsMyWaifu
-> Yes, the problem with that is that Cross came before Piero. -CaptainSemiObvious
--> That doesn't change my analysis. They already have the Paris, who will fell Achilles with an arrow to the heel, then die afterwards. Someone like Piero would therefore be controllable. -FateIsMyWaifu
--> Then why are they bothering to build another Iconoclast? I'm all for radical, theotechnological transhumanism, but I would much prefer it be on our side. And ICONOCLAST is a bit expensive. -IAskedForThis.
---> Sometimes you just need someone who can blow up a small city and give no fucks about it. -PorthosDidNothingWrong
How the fuck are they funding another ICONOCLAST? -FightDamian
-> Well, there are a few thousand tons of Primium and high-grade biotech just waiting to be reprocessed... BaptismofFire
--> No but seriously. Even given that you'll need a lot of Masters to build even one more. -FightDamian
---> There are probably still some assets sitting around that are part of the ICONOCLAST project. This is a Ragnarok Command budget with some Void Engineer buy-in, not a Progenitor budget. -Bowman.
----> The most expensive bit would be the actual body. Cloning demigods isn't cheap. But if they render down most of the Moscow haul into tass, they have more than enough to build one. -DrQueenofFrance
---> You'd have to look into ICONOCLAST 02's actual augmentation package to check but if you were basing it off of proven technology, you could probably kludge something useful out of it. -IAskedForThis
Confirmed. Seen a prototype EXEMPLAR deployed against several Kuei-Jin in India. Deployment specifications are similar to Piero's test depoyments-you had pretty sizable force, but they were all standing off. Looks like he was armed with some variant of the Shock Corps Nanobow-some hybrid of the Konoko and Barnes patterns.-StarShiva
-> And what does that mean, exactly? -ImNotDrunkImCastingASpell
--> Both are specialized weapons that the Shock Corps issues on a special circumstances basis in places where guns don't work as well. The Barnes pattern is designed for grossly superhuman users, while the Konoko pattern still has superhuman draw weight but uses a kinetic accelerator for its stopping power. -QuoNemoSequiPotest
---> So they're restarting at least low-rate EXEMPLAR production? Chilling. At least if they started out with something more akin to Piero that means they're probably expecting to be getting into fistfights with gods. This stuff is overkill against us and way too expensive to justify using outside of example-making. -FightDamian.
-> Example-making? Making examples of people? -IAmNotAProgenitorForFucksSake
--> Remember that Contingency V chantry which was operating in Syria about four years ago and had pretty broad support from "our side" regarding driving out western imperialism and the technocracy? This is why there is one fewer Contingency V chantry in Syria and a lot of people in that war have washed their hands of C-V. Because Piero happened to them, as a message. Who would win? One chantry full of highly trained sociopathic killer cyborgs, or one angry boi? -FightDamian
---> we could probably take him. Hes not that scary. Like come on, a bunch of ex-technocrat scrubs and a pile of vampires? Plenty of people have that sort of killcount. -mraaa
----> I'd like to see you try. -FightDamian (User was infracted for this post)
----> he has that sort of killcount because he's too expensive to casually deploy, you moron. -LondonLass
-----> he has a weak heel. I can hit that sort of target. -mraaa
------> Even assuming that he does, in fact, have a weak heel, and you can, in fact, shoot through whatever lower leg and foot protection he's wearing, congratulations. You're still dealing with someone who has high-end dermal and subdermal armoring and a biology modified for combat in hostile environments, with enough Primium in him to shrug off almost anything. You might have just annoyed him enough that he'll debone you. -FightDamian
-------> he can do that? -xxL3ITxx
--------> Yes. It's not practical, but it's certainly showy. And when he's not under threat, he seems to like showy. -Bowman
----> FightDamian, encouraging users to commit suicide is against the rules. For the rest of you, this is a reminder that encouraging people to pick fights with war gods or self-aware, reusable, weapons of mass destruction is, in fact, prohibited. -HackedHITMark42 (Moderator).
----> I wonder if this is some sort of EXEMPLAR IV? -40Congress
-----> I don't think so. If they wanted a fourth tranche of EXEMPLARs, they probably wouldn't have just done a single project line item. -Tarpit
------> Especially not because it lets you do quite a bit of analysis. -Bowman
EXEMPLAR WMDS?
So which EXEMPLARs are actual WMD-level threats besides him? -Qwpo
-> You have Maria_Adara_(EXEMPLAR), who is Helen of Troy except sexier. -Aesthete
--> The term 'shipping' actually comes from Helen of Troy, whose romantic entanglements launched a thousand ships. -FalseTruthsStated
---> No it doesn't. -Aesthete
----> Yes it does. The mythic thread of Helen of Troy and her role in the story has resonated with other stories, including ones written as fanfiction. This is why 'shipping' causes so many 'flame wars' on the internet-the action of pairing up two attractive people resonates with the mythic thread of the Trojan War and so a fight must occur. -FalseTruthsStated
----> I've seen where this argument leads. I've seen the discussion on it in Maria_Adara_(EXEMPLAR)/Discussion. I'm going to just nip this right here in the bud. -Wingz (moderator).
Someone already mentioned Maria, so they've already covered the only one. There's a lot of other extreme combat threats, but people like Zhang_Yuan_(EXEMPLAR) and Adele_Dubois_(EXEMPLAR) are just high-end personal combat threats, comparable to elite Iterator supersoldiers. If you look above, there's a discussion of an ICONOCLAST 02 project above, and there's a bunch of guesses as to who they might field. I'd have guessed Roland, but if they're outsourcing to mostly Asian countries, they're probably using the project genesource to honor some Asian bits of the Technocracy as some internal budget compromise. -NightsTemplar
--> Lu Bu and Joan of Arc. What other cultures are they going to appropriate? -Nativist
---> Technically the Technocracy has heavy traditional ties to both the clergy and to various Chinese governments. The Chinese Technocrats evolved out of the old court mages of the Chinese emperors who backed the technocratic paradigm instead of their own. So it's not really appropriation. -HermeticHistorian592
---> A Christian saint who sees visions is hardly based on solid Technocratic doctrine. How are they justifying this? -BobTheRogueBob
-----> Look at Knights_Templar_and_Iteration_X and Religion_in_the_Shock_Corps and come back to me. Iteration X was always religious, they just turned it from worship of regular God to worship of terrifying robot God. -FaithandFinances
---> I thought Adele_Dubois_(EXEMPLAR) was actually a gender-variant clone of King Arthur? -Qwpo
----> Not this shit again. -Grailseeker
-----> Yes. Let's not. -Wingz (moderator)
---> It makes me weep that the Technocracy is transforming history's legends and heroes into nothing more than more war machines. -WickedWitchOfTheWeb
Augmentation?
Holy shit what did they put into him? -DeaExMachina
-> Most of a HITMark VI as a skeleton, and the essence of several powerful spirits and at least one demigod. -TheMailman
--> I'm reading Piero_Dominici_(EXEMPLAR)/Confirmed_Augmentations and some of these sound ludicrous. Why does he have corrosive blood? -ParryHotter
---> It's a standard smartblood programmable function. Because sometimes someone might strip you naked in a cell, but generally if someone imprisons you they leave you your blood, at least for a while. And it's also hilarious if a vampire ends up biting you or something. -IAskedForThis
--> And why does he need a microkinetic carbine in his arm? -ParryHotter
---> Sometimes you just want to be able to kill things at the speed of thought. Or when you get disarmed. A well-hidden implant weapon helps. -IAskedForThis
----> Yes but why? He has unbreakable skin. His internal organs have multiple redundancies. He can punch so hard they tested his punch strength against tanks. He has kinetic amplifiers in his hands because he might want to punch even harder than that. He can yell so loud it shatters concrete. They've loaded him with an internal JUPITER lightning gun. Why does he need to have one of these? I read the wiki page on microkinetics and they're not great against anything much tougher than a normal person? -ParryHotter
-----> Probably an option for utility, or for minimal collateral damage in his case. -IAskedForThis
This is Bullshit
How did we manage to fight the Technocracy when they had things like... him? -NewBee
--> We had similar allies. Gods. Dragons. Monsters. They were just in the Umbra, for we could never afford to use them like this. -TheHighDragun
---> I think we still have a handful, after the Avatar Storm. It's just that nobody has had much of a reason to go and do a in-depth inventory of this stuff, because half of it is self-aware and might bite your face off. -Thig4Life.
--> Most of the time you just didn't stick your head out far enough that they could send something like this to you, because they were too busy dealing with murdering some gods in the spirit realms or something. And it's not like these weapons are invincible. A sufficiently prepared master, and you find out that without some equivalent force, even something like Piero or a HITMark VI isn't enough. -FightDamian
More importantly, how the fuck does he know all these martial arts? And are half of these stolen from us? -ZenZen
-> Yes. Several of these are our katas and techniques, repurposed. The two PsiCQC variants listed, for example. -MonkOnTheMountain (Supermoderator)
-> Gunslinger? Has he been working with NWO tactical teams? -QuoNemoSequiPotest
--> I saw him using that stance in a reprisal op. Pretty standard machine pistol + knife Gunslinger stance. Looked like a custom Mjolnir VI and his regular blade at minimum, CQC length. -Grailseeker
---> I see. Odd choice for a superhuman cyborg. Maybe he's learning from them. -QuoNemoSequiPotest
Piero Goes Painting?
Get this. He apparently now has an art page. On the Sleeper internet. -Thig4Life
-> Is it as edgy as a teenager's? -FightDamian
--> That's what I thought it would be-all blood and guts and naked men and maybe some naked women. But it's, get this, fucking landscape paintings all the way down. -Thig4Life
---> Is this some sort of metaphor or something? Someone should analyze everything he's posted! -Li1337
----> I can tell he's a fan of Bob Ross. Beyond that... -Aesthete
-> Any memetic threat? -SteamQueen
--> Minor. Just some hyperpsych to make people more inclined to give his paintings the benefit of the doubt. They're actually not that bad. -Thig4Life
---> Well of course not. Superhuman coordination and cognitive augmentation make up for a lot. -DeaExMachina
----> Piero uses that cognitive augmentation? -IAskedForThis
-----> Just because he's violent doesn't mean he's stupid. And he was designed as a C3 system. -FightDamian
Just a reminder to everyone that if you decide to go onto the page of a superhuman demigod with anger management problems and troll him, you probably deserve whatever happens to you next. Please don't. -Wingz (moderator)
WTF Japan?
WTF is happening in Japan? Confirmed Piero sighting-they had his VR casket delivered there a while ago. -Caaaanada
-> If he's been delivered like that it means a heavy assault, and possibly a long-term deployment. Normally they'd just drop him out of a bomber or something while flying reinforcements in via air. That only happens when there's something serious going down. -FightDamian
-> Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit -CrabbyHime
--> Do we know who his target is? Seconding the 'oh shit' too. -StreetSamurai
--> This won't be another Moscow, right? -InTheNameofTheMoon
---> I don't think anyone knows at this point. I'm willing to help with evacuating if it's necessary. At least if you have friends or loved ones try to get them out of the way. -FightDamian
----> Seconded. Our chantry is a little cramped but we can put up a few spare beds. -Thig4Life
-----> Thirded. More than willing to help get people out of his line of fire. I bought up some property cheap after its vampire owner vanished to who-knows-where a few months ago, and I can house a few people like that. -LondonLass
Heh. Kidding, but.)
