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

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Ami insists on a stop, Janice has an Ami pre-massacre infiltrator dream, Janice walks through the wards with Ami, massacre by killers who bypassed the wards begins.

What did you do in those five hours Ami?
 
[X] Yinzheng Li: Debriefing
[X] Piero Dominici: Retrieval
[X] Jane Clarent: Round Table

Probably the most relevant people given the plot of the arc? Well, except for Gregor but I kinda just don't care and would be fine with him in a dark hole offscreen.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Janice XXII: Red Riding Hood
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Victory Theme to Secret Betrayal? Really?

You're awful.
EarthScorpion said:
There's always a price.

Someone - or something - is coming.

Also, remember, @MJ12 Commando just updated with the main story. Remember to vote for that too!

At the Door
[ ] There's no time for Selene's sappiness - not when she's a living archive of so much of the Verbena knowledge. With Chris to support her, and Janice to try to cut away the bonds before they can hurt her, they might be able to get out. It'll be abandoning people who rely on Selene, and they'll lose so much. (x0.5)
[ ] Maybe it's coming for her. Just her. Janice can try to draw it off and stop anyone else dying. If she's wrong, though, she's abandoning them. And if she's right, she's going to face it alone.
[ ] This is a Traditions town. Selene will have defences and arrangements. Janice and Chris can try to rally the defences and fight back against… whatever this is. This is Verbena home turf, even if it's got the general technodigm overlapping it. They might be in with a chance. But in the time that takes, a lot of people will probably die.
[ ] Write-in

Buffs
[ ] Write-in any effects you want Janice to put up beforehand
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And, uh... well...

... shit.

Hmm.

Okay. Okay, this is... fucked up. And not a good scenario. So. This is a continuation of the story, a consequence of what Janice has been doing, and a culmination of the narrative arc being written here. And narrative arcs are important. Just look at what Rose just did. Janice knows full well that patterns of karma and fate like this are meaningful. They can't just be ignored.

So with that in mind, option 1 is an absolute no-go. We do not and cannot abandon these people. It'll pervert everything she's just done and weigh her karmic debt even higher; doubling down on Ami's mythic thread of the traitor who poisons every group that takes her in.

Fighting is an option. But we're up against the Technocracy here. 'Crats with insider info, no less. Liam sold us out, they know what they're dealing with and they'll have countermeasures prepared. A straight fight against the Union is not one that Chantries are predisposed to winning, not even the cut-down poor man's Union of the modern day when it's only the radicals attacking us.

That leaves option 2. Turn right into the teeth of Ami's legend and break them - with the risk of breaking ourselves on them. Act, not as the poisonous traitor that dooms a group, but as the one who bleeds the poison out and swallows it. Turn her mythic thread on its head and make it devour its own tail by inverting it, and perhaps pay off some of her karmic debt in an act purely and utterly opposed to the things she did when she was alive.

Of course, she may not approve of acting in defence of a Traditions base. She may even have drawn them here in the first place. But on the other hand, she may feel that it's a fair way of alleviating the guilt she still bears over all those betrayals, all those wetwork operations, all those backstabbings.

And Janice can still use her Fate magic freely. Which means she can drop magic on making sure that the attacking forces follow her, and don't stay to kill people she's abandoning.

Of course, the consequence of this is that she's fairly likely to not survive it. It was a minor miracle that she survived Roth. But in a way, she was already prepared to die tonight, and perhaps even expecting to. I'd say it's not out-of-character for her to still be sunk partly into that fatalistic mindset, at least long enough to make this one choice. And she might still make it through. One woman can worm her way through a network that an entire Wiccan group couldn't escape.

So with that all in mind, I'm voting for:

At the Door
[X] Maybe it's coming for her. Just her. Janice can try to draw it off and stop anyone else dying. If she's wrong, though, she's abandoning them. And if she's right, she's going to face it alone.

Buffs
Without going into too much detail yet, since I'm still considering and am not too good at writing rotes anyway...
  • Fate buff that draws directly on Ami's karmic debt as a focus to draw the attackers away from Selene's group, following our cursed fate as we lead them away and blind them to the innocents behind us. Mechanically, it would probably be compelling them or making it more likely that they find us, and veiling the Wiccans (who hold no curses or bad karma and are thus invisible under the spell logic of "they go after the cursed one").
  • Mind/Fate buff to help us slip past notice - the Mind part will have to be Ami-ok, but both she and Janice are well-versed in how to dress and act to either make people think of you a certain way or how to let people's gazes slide off you. This one is very important or we get caught and die quite fast.
Oh, and as far as the main quest vote goes...

[X] Yinzheng Li: Debriefing
[X] Piero Dominici: Retrieval
[X] Gregor Leon: Plea Bargain
 
Aleph said:
That leaves option 2. Turn right into the teeth of Ami's legend and break them - with the risk of breaking ourselves on them. Act, not as the poisonous traitor that dooms a group, but as the one who bleeds the poison out and swallows it. Turn her mythic thread on its head and make it devour its own tail by inverting it, and perhaps pay off some of her karmic debt in an act purely and utterly opposed to the things she did when she was alive.
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Actually, I have a sinking suspicion that Liam being the source of information might be a red herring here. Because Ami clearly did something while Janice was out of it:
EarthScorpion said:
"Then sleep," Ami says unsympathetically. "Find a safe place to stop, do whatever witchery you need to, then grab a few hours. It'll do neither of us any good if you smear us over a wall when you fall asleep and crash. And it reduces the risk you'll lead them to your Selene's place if you make sure you're not being tailed."

There's something off about Ami's logic, but Janice can't pin it down. She's just too exhausted to think clearly - and that's a good sign that Ami is right.
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EarthScorpion said:
That much produces a laugh from her. She starts the engines and huddles her hands over the heater in the car until she feels up to typing. Fumbling in her pocket, she has a moment of panic when she can't find her phone. Oh wait, it was in her outside pocket. She must have been exhausted to put it there. It's a bad idea to keep a phone somewhere vulnerable in New York. Even a witch can be pickpocketed.
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I'm not sure about her exact motivations if she was the one who leaked the location, but trusting a Technocrat super-infiltraitor ultra-black-ops honeypot's ghost/memory-imprint while you are a Tradition's member, even if you are nominally on the same side temporarily? That could end up badly.

Or maybe that is a red herring too, and what Ami did (if she did do anything) was related to something else completely. Putting the phone into the wrong pocket after borrowing and using it seems kind of like an amateur mistake. I might have to read again the parts about her and Janicequest to refresh my memory to see what is the more likely option.
 
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[X] Yinzheng Li: Debriefing
[X] Piero Dominici: Retrieval
[X] Ling Clarent: The Dream of Rhonabwy

... Who is Winston anyway? The name sounds familiar but I can't place it.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
"I'm a Progenitor," Rose says. "That's what we do."
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Somewhere meta, Lilith and Adam nod sagely.
MJ12 Commando said:
fair no better.
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fare

[X] Yinzheng Li: Debriefing
[X] Piero Dominici: Retrieval
[X] Ling Clarent: The Dream of Rhonabwy

Gregor Leon is a too-smart-for-anyone's-good asshole that deserves nothing more than an obscure death and oblivion. Let's not waste a slot on him. We can hear from others what he gets sentenced too. Hopefully being lobotomized into a P-zombie.

But Piero has grown along with Rose, becoming more than the mere murder-machine he began as, and fits well with both the meta-theme of growing to break the cycle, and with the look at the quasi-family that is the EXEMPLARs and Serafina. This will hopefully include a bit of Rose and Alex, too.

Yizheng could have been one of ours, and spent a lot of time hanging on the line between Control and the Union. She was there at the eye of the storm, along with Ling, and we spent a lot of effort to avoid just killing them. So lets see what happened to those we saved from being devoured by the insatiable appetite that Control had become, and set free from Control whispering in their brains. And as ES pointed out, Ling also provides the closure to Henriette's story too, and the final catharsis.


At the Door
[X] Maybe it's coming for her. Just her. Janice can try to draw it off and stop anyone else dying. If she's wrong, though, she's abandoning them. And if she's right, she's going to face it alone.

I'd prefer to fight more generally, but as Aleph noted, the defenses have probably been compromised or the Union forces are at the least ready for them. And with Ami's karmic debt hanging over us... this is the way. Janice already bargained away her life to make the fight with Roth work. This is paying for it, and hopefully turning the weight of that debt into mass for us to swing back.
 
[X] Yinzheng Li: Debriefing
[X] Winston Kingsley: The Ballad of the Green Berets
[X] Ling Clarent: The Dream of Rhonabwy

With honorable mention to [ ] Elsa Naryshkin: Liaison

It's about time Snake got some screentime, given the impact he's had via backstory. As for the other two, I really want to see the resolution to Yinzheng's story and see what end Henriette's mercy brings.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
[ ] Winston Kingsley (Syndicate), Killin' things like the biggest boss. Syndicate Enforcer, Age 72. He's got no augmentations or special gear, just 50+ years of experience in a 20 year old body. He's seen combat in every sort, from acting as a Mafia soldier to the leader of Martial Solutions Focus, a private military corporation which has 'advised' in almost every major conflict in the past 20 years. Right now he's working at Cestus Corporation, a "patent troll" company which occasionally takes its patent trolling to lethal extremes when dealing with companies selling New Age bullshit, and he'd love to get his hands on a serious challenge . Of course, the reason he's still not in a leadership position despite his qualifications and age is because he has slight issues with authority. Furthermore, although perfectly capable of discreetness, he has a bit of a sadistic streak, and has been known to take trophies from his kills. Trophies such as body parts.
: Spheres: Entropy 4(f), Mind 2, Forces 2, Life 2, Primal Utility 1
: Notable Traits: Most combat skills at 5, Brawl 6 (CQC + 3), Broad understanding of enemies and internal Technocratic Union politics.
: Advantages: Subtle Like An Invisible Ninja, Deadliest Warrior
: Disadvantages: YOU'RE A LOOSE CANNON TURN IN YOUR GUN AND YOUR BADGE, sociopathic snake eater
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Here we go! This isn't the only potential recruit who didn't get screentime; I recommend checking the old post out.
 
[X] Winston Kingsley: The Ballad of the Green Berets
SNAAAKE??? SNAAAAAAAKKKEEEE!!!!!
But seriously Winston is one of the only HELMETSHRIKE people we havent really had a chance to get to know in the present, and he also has Baptysme.

As this is the endgame I assume Winston ; "has died for those oppressed Leaving [Baptysme] his last request"

[X] Elsa Naryshkin: Liaison
IDK about this I just want more Elsa.

[X] Jane Clarent: Round Table
I actually liked commander Shepard!Clarent, I dont find the mech one interesting, nor do I care what happens to her.
 
[X] Yinzheng Li: Debriefing
[X] Piero Dominici: Retrieval
[X] Gregor Leon: Plea Bargain
[X] Winston Kingsley: The Ballad of the Green Berets
[X] Ling Clarent: The Dream of Rhonabwy

I'm stuck and having a hard time choosing. I wanna pick both Yinzheng and Gregor because the chances of Augustine Aleph's Panopticon making another on-screen appearance increases in those interludes. Or so I'm guessing, anyway. Gregor they want because of information, and Donald made a deal with them for it; and Gregor did get captured successfully, so... now I want to see what comes of that. I want to see Augustine's group in action. Yinzheng Li was being influenced, or set up as a sleeper agent or something?, by the same Panopticon too; so if the General wants to take an interest in how his investment paid off and checks in on her -- or even just checks to see if she survived and is okay or whatever -- and tries to find out what happened with his Command Code and why it didn't precisely work... I wanna see that. And because Yinzheng just had her world turned upside down.

Ling Clarent is because she was Henriette's rival and classmate growing up. And because I want to see how she's going to handle having lost and then undergoing deprogramming. Plus, how she handles Henriette again when she shows up; because I'm sure Henriette will show up. How will Ling and Yinzheng act after all this? How'll they move on? How have they changed?

Piero and Winston... I'm less sure about these two. Some of the arguments of how "Well Piero might have dodged a Doom or destiny here a bit" and "He's led an assault in a major operation and probably qualified for Hero of the Technocratic Union once (the Godzilla) or twice (stopping Control) over; that's going to change how the Technocracy looks upon him, upon Constructs." stuck with me. Winston... I'm curious why he's on here to begin with. Did he get involved somehow? If so, was it from Jamelia's side of things or something? Or with the "interns"* we had maybe? I do want to see him finally in the quest though, yeah.


Since I can only pick 3, I have to drop 2... I'm not sure which ones I'm going to drop yet. Maybe Piero and Winston. Or... I dunno. I guess.

*Speaking of our interns... They've gone through some shit, haven't they? I was surprised to see Brakowsky having taken part in this too; dude's seen some major shit go down in just one year of being with us, and as a very lowly NWOoblet of low rank and Enlightenment. Surviving Hellsing OVA 3. Hanging around and learning from the TYRANTS. Being on the outskirts of a major conspiracy for the sake of the world. And now, taking part on a assault on a storied Progenitor base. He'll have an interesting resume and some very interesting stories to tell, after his first internship. While he hasn't quite managed to have his missions reports read like "transcripts of Call of Duty scripts" exactly, he's definitely gotten into or survived some shit.
 
Inserted tally.
Adhoc vote count started by Derpmind on May 19, 2018 at 9:25 PM, finished with 123 posts and 45 votes.
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FourthWall said:
So do all avatars of Friend Computer have Angel cores, or is MIW special? :V
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EXEMPLAR IV had angel cores like Yinzheng yes. They were partially based on her body. If you had voted to disable his field effects Gregor would have had to strip out the drivers and neural interfaces because they didn't play very well with the rest of them. The real reason Gregor Leon thinks he can get a plea bargain is that he has mastered the power of the one foe which fells Iterators and Virtual Adepts and Progenitors alike.

Poor code commenting.

But more relevant is that the Man in White wasn't an avatar of Friend Computer, he was an avatar of Control, which is something else entirely.

Control, like Friend Computer, is a powerful incarna in and of itself, which leads and is intertwined with additional pretty powerful incarna. It's basically an Exalted Primordial with another Exalted Primordial as a buddy and a lot of allies held together by Conditioning to compensate for its weaknesses.
 
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[X] Yinzheng Li: Debriefing
[X] Gregor Leon: Plea Bargain
[X] Ling Clarent: The Dream of Rhonabwy

[X] Maybe it's coming for her. Just her. Janice can try to draw it off and stop anyone else dying. If she's wrong, though, she's abandoning them. And if she's right, she's going to face it alone.
 
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@TenfoldShields sold me pretty well on this choice.

[X] Gregor Leon: Plea Bargain
[x] Yinzheng Li: Debriefing
[X] Piero Dominici: Retrieval

And @Aleph convinced me for this one.

At the Door
[X] Maybe it's coming for her. Just her. Janice can try to draw it off and stop anyone else dying. If she's wrong, though, she's abandoning them. And if she's right, she's going to face it alone.
 
[x] Piero Dominici: Retrieval
[x] Winston Kingsley: The Ballad of the Green Berets
[x] Jane Clarent: Round Table

Piero because of his character growth away from VERY ANGRY MARINE and coming to terms with his little sister ending Control. Winston because it seems opportune for him to get screentime after being on the periphery for so long, and to reflect on how the mentee (Jamelia) has, like the mentor before, stepped aside. Jane because I want to see a clear end to Gretkov and how she sees all this. What bigger king has the Kingslayer missed out than Control, after all?

No idea what to do with Janice, so abstaining...

but there is one thing I'm curious about. Rereading Moscow, there was the Phase 5 Shockwave NEMESIS PROJECT, alternate timeline dredging to try to find something to stop Henrietta, but near-guaranteed death by 'dox for everyone. Since it's so far behind us, MJ, can you spoil what would have resulted if that had been chosen?
 
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