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

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Sometimes there is no way out. Everyone and everything has a time to die.

[X] Give Up Her Life: There's nothing that defines your life like how it ends - and a witch can always die on her own terms. Her life force should be enough to burn this abomination from the world, setting the soul within free - and maybe paying off her own debt too.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Um. Buddy.

The "someone else" who will stop him getting his hands on Ami is Janice. By giving her back her body at the worst possible time and going "kthanks bai solve this for me".

Because Ami is an awful human being.
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I actually assumed that at first, but then I convinced myself that it couldnt be what she meant, because:
1. "someone else is coming" is an awkward thing to say about someone who is currently blacked out but still sharing the same body.
2. Wolfs reaction of calling it a lie is weird, since she literally just explained how she came back to him, meaning he should be aware of the possibility of her switching back.
3. Switching back in the middle of trying to deny his accusation makes it seem as if she was both not in control of the switch and invested in trying to make him believe it. I guess the timing of the isnt actually intended to be an accident, but breaks in the middle of a word are heavily associated with being cut off and stuff like that.
So, I get now what you were going for, but you might want to clear that part up a bit, especially since the whole "Did Ami really have a backup plan or was she just bluffing?" dynamic totally seems like something you would add to spice up a vote.
 
Ami you are the worst Senshi member of Beauty and the Beast Unit. :V

[X]Give Up Her Life: "I give my life, not for honor but for you fuck Amiiii~"
 
[x] Fight For Her Life: The storm is overhead, crackling with power. She is a weather witch. Even in the face of an ATLAS, she'll fight for her life.

This has a nice ring to it. Ami has given up and run, because in the end she betrayed everybody who cared about her, kind of including herself. Now Janice stands and fights, because she can't abandon the people who value her.

And in the end, to paraphrase, dying for the cause is easy. Living for it, not so much.
 
Mm.

Remind me. Does Janice have Prime 1?

Actually, what are Janice's Spheres, in general?

If Janice has Prime 1, I'd be willing to risk fighting. But I think the worst possible end here is "fight, lose, get turned into an ATLAS or similar, Ami gets ripped back out to play again." And that's also preeetty much what Wolf is aiming for right now - and Wolf is going to be pretty damn hard to kill.

(I assume that either Ami didn't have Prime 1 or can't use her Spheres, or she'd have, ahem, self-terminated a long long time ago.)
 
linkhyrule5 said:
Mm.

Remind me. Does Janice have Prime 1?

Actually, what are Janice's Spheres, in general?

If Janice has Prime 1, I'd be willing to risk fighting. But I think the worst possible end here is "fight, lose, get turned into an ATLAS or similar, Ami gets ripped back out to play again." And that's also preeetty much what Wolf is aiming for right now - and Wolf is going to be pretty damn hard to kill.

(I assume that either Ami didn't have Prime 1 or can't use her Spheres, or she'd have, ahem, self-terminated a long long time ago.)
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Janice has Prime 2, yes.

EarthScorpion said:
Janice Moulin

Virtue&Vice: Explorer/Celebrant - Janice is curious, a born experimenter, and loves finding new things out. There's an edge of obsession under her curiosity, though, and a burning fire which means she throws herself into any cause she finds. She has a mind like a locomotive - powerful, but hard to divert.

The embarrassing thing, Janice knows, is that by most reckonings she's not a very good Verbena. She Awakened in 2003, and the entire teaching structure had basically collapsed in '99. Her first mentor was barely more experienced than she was, and they basically managed to kludge some magic together from leftover books and pop-culture rituals. She didn't have a real apprenticeship to a more experienced witch - she learned more from Hermetics, Ecstatics and applying her own training as a psychiatric nurse to magic as she did from any old crone. Her attempts to find a mentor in her past lives left her haunted with nightmares which still won't go away, a decade on.

Her paradigm is not very rigorous, and derives from 'things she has found to work'. The unifying element is not any core school or principle of thought - it is instead her iron-hard determination and certainty that the world must be made a better place. So she'll invoke Greek or Norse gods with equal equanimity, and pick from pantheons based on her needs. She doesn't believe that anyone has the right concept of the gods, and that everyone is just trying to name fundamental principles of the universe through their own limited insight. There is undoubtedly a sun-god, but Apollo and Ra are both names for lesser aspects of that principle of the universe - so by honouring one of them, one can shape the results. Sometimes one needs to invoke Artemis, and other times Astarte or Inanna would be more useful.

Before her Awakening, she was a trainee psychiatric nurse, and sometimes she wonders what things would have been like if the Progenitors had found her first. She dropped out, but she's carried on her study on her own and knows too well the power of words and prejudice that the Technocracy has ingrained in society. She'll mix conventional medicine and natural remedies - although she prefers using natural remedies on the grounds that she can't always trust drugs that the Technocracy might have tampered with. She's built up a wide array of 'things she knows that work', but when she has to improvise she tends to throw things together and hope for the best, and never gets around to cleaning up the spells she invents on the fly. She sometimes gets wild magic-like effects on spells she isn't using rotes for.

She's conversant with computers, statistics and modern technology (hence the WickedWitchOfTheWeb monicker) and knows very well how to play off expectations, prejudice and appearance to achieve her goals. She's dabbled in blood magic and Hermeticism alike, and has personally stripped several rituals down to their core elements through trial and error, removing all that junk that Hermetics put in to something she can pull off on the fly with cheap materials she has on hand. She's also an experienced astral voyager, and maps out those places in the High Umbra as a hobby. Her casting is frequently bastardised and post-modern, and when things go wrong the Paradox backlashes can be dangerously unpredictable.

The fact that she's now worryingly senior among the modern Traditions and - even more crucially - has respect as someone with contacts and hooks in the world of the Sleepers - well, some oldschool witches take it as an insult and consider her little more than an Orphan parading around with stolen magic. Usually she doesn't care. Bigotry and prejudice is the same everywhere, whether it's being maintained by the power structures of Sleeper society or by stuck-up witches who tell her she's wrong to manipulate people by picking out a business suit and being white and well-spoken. She's not going to bow to them and their preference that she'd dabble with pins and wax dolls. But sometimes it causes trouble.

Appearance-wise, while back in the day she was a too-thin neopagan with dyed green hair, these days she's a lot more superficially respectable. She's put on weight and dyes her hair to cover that she's going grey at the temples, and puts effort into dressing like a professional. The time in the Demise has left her with bags under her eyes and a nervous air that she tries to hide - she looks like she's tired and running on caffeine. Which admittedly helps the appearance of an urban professional in NY. She keeps prepared charms and material for workings hidden in her handbag and in her jacket, and a small icon of Mary in a locket that she uses for invoking the Mother Goddess.
Tradition: Verbena (post-modernist, technodigm-adapted, open paradigm)
Avatar Essence: Questing (doesn't show itself, despite her best efforts)
Arete: 4
Magic: Mind 4 (Social Justice), Forces 4 (Weather Control), Entropy 4 (Hex Girl), Spirit 3, Life 2, Correspondence 2, Prime 2, Time 1 (Time 2 as an uncontrolled Sphere)
WP: 9
Notable other traits: Has a black cat (named Seth) as a witch's familiar. Bard's Tongue flaw - will sometimes blurt out unwanted truths. Haunted by nightmares of a past life where she was some kind of serial killer.
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[X] Give Up Her Life: There's nothing that defines your life like how it ends - and a witch can always die on her own terms. Her life force should be enough to burn this abomination from the world, setting the soul within free - and maybe paying off her own debt too.

Yeah, we can die and stop Wolf. Bring Vigilance one step closer to it's end.
 
Guys. He's an ATLAS. He's literally made of pure primium, or near enough as makes no difference. And he's accurate enough to reliably hit the brainstem from extreme range. Fighting is not going to work here. Fleeing is, at best, horrifyingly risky. Alpha-striking with Prime (Self) in a mutual kill... might work. It certainly has a better chance of working than the other two, and of the three, "Fight" is by far the least likely to succeed. Even with some really good rote write-ins.

As for Ami... uuurgh. Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit. Her legend is the poison-pill who turned on anyone who trusted her. And we did, by making that deal. Fuck. This was telegraphed from ages back.

Fucking... urgh. I'm half-tempted to vote for the willing sacrifice just to Prime-purge that karmic debt away in the fire of the Old Gods and the echoes of witch-burning flames, and sear all trace of her awful, sad, self-destructive mythic thread from our shared soul. Which is what she wants, the bitch; she wants to be dead and stay dead and never have to face it again. She wants freedom-in-non-being. Maybe she even deserves freedom, despite being a big huge backstabbing bitch. Wolf probably deserves freedom-in-death, for all that he's a sadistic vengeful dick right now.

Urgh. But does Janice deserve that?

Fuck, Ami. Really hate her right now. I need to think about this some more.
 
[X] Give Up Her Life: There's nothing that defines your life like how it ends - and a witch can always die on her own terms. Her life force should be enough to burn this abomination from the world, setting the soul within free - and maybe paying off her own debt too.
 
[X] Give Up Her Life: There's nothing that defines your life like how it ends - and a witch can always die on her own terms. Her life force should be enough to burn this abomination from the world, setting the soul within free - and maybe paying off her own debt too.
 
EarthScorpion said:
"Don't die yourself," Chris says. "I want to be able to scream at you for this later."
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Sarcastic passive-aggression, it's how New Englanders say they care! :V
EarthScorpion said:
Like I said:
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EarthScorpion said:
And I do believe I'll call the vote there.

@Strypgia's betrayal won it for Team Chris thanks to the modifier. How fitting...
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:D

[X] Fight For Her Life: The storm is overhead, crackling with power. She is a weather witch. Even in the face of an ATLAS, she'll fight for her life.

May not, probably won't work, but I'd still rather try first than just go for the mutual kill. Not least because the mutual kill/karmic purge is what Ami wants, and fuck her.
 
[X] Fight For Her Life: The storm is overhead, crackling with power. She is a weather witch. Even in the face of an ATLAS, she'll fight for her life.

fuk u ami
 
For the people voting Fight for Her Life, I might want to note that Janice is at her weakest here, even if she's in a relatively friendly paradigm space because the only buffs people voted for were @Aleph's "draw the enemy away from Selene and her folks," whereas Wolf is almost certainly running his own combat buffs and at this point probably cares exactly jack shit about Vulgarity because he's doing a direct assault on hostile paradigm space.

Also, an ATLAS is Pretty Serious Business. An ATLAS is basically a miniature giant killer robot which is approximately 50% weapons by weight (it is another 50% armor, 50% muscles, and 50% sensors, support systems, and electronics-Correspondence 4 is pretty amazing), both mundane and hypertech. This includes close combat weapons, micromissiles, grenade launchers, plasma cannon, and HITMark classics like cyber-limb weapons or the deployable chaingun. Wolf is using a rifle right now but that may well be one of the less dangerous weapons facing Janice.

In terms of which members of the Main Team could take it on with this sort of minimum preptime and no weapons, you have Kessler and maybe Rose. Jamelia and Donald would find excellent excuses to not be there, Henriette would eat the dox and teleport, and Serafina would probably fake her death in the hopes of escaping later.

I think if you're voting for this choice you should have some kind of idea of how you're going to actually fight and survive because this is not an ideal scenario.
 
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...and on another point against fighting for your life... well, she's a reasonably powerful mage, in a friendly paradigm. He's got an unfriendly paradigm. She could absolutely try to counter his vulgarity with trollcasting, but he's got buffs on top of his enhancements, has some high-powered actual firearms, and he's *right there*. She's actually within arm's reach. Any attempt to strip buffs off of him is going to have to punch through his primium, and any attempt to not get shot instantly is going to have to somehow get out of his line of fire. I'm pretty sure that Spirit 3 isn't enough to call down a paradox spirit, which leaves... what? Ami left, so she doesn't even have the hyper-etiquette to play with anymore.

...and here we see that Ami was such a toxic, horrible mess that she even wound up betraying *herself*. I'm not sure that trying to do something futile and wasteful with what's left of your life is really the appropriate way to try to get back at yourself for screwing yourself over. It seems... kind of backwards, really.


[X] Give Up Her Life: There's nothing that defines your life like how it ends - and a witch can always die on her own terms. Her life force should be enough to burn this abomination from the world, setting the soul within free - and maybe paying off her own debt too.
 
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[X] Fight For Her Life: The storm is overhead, crackling with power. She is a weather witch. Even in the face of an ATLAS, she'll fight for her life.

I'll be honest, I don't know how to use the magic system. If I did, maybe I'd be able to figure out the exact procedures to win this fight. But that's the mechanics side of things. The narrative side of it is pretty simple: Janice was willing to die here, but there's still one hundred miles of difference between fighting for your life even when you expect to fail and die, and simple comitting suicide because you feel the situation is hopeless.

The situation is not hopeless: Janice is on home turf, she has a full power storm above her, she might have her allies assist, and most importantly she's willing to give everything she has in this fight. Giving up, however, plays into the cycle of betrayal that Janice and her past lives have been caught in. We went really damn far for Janice to change Roth, to possibly break him out of that cycle, but if Janice gives up here it will be her accepting Ami's betrayal. We may have given Roth a chance, but comitting suicide here will be dooming Janice's next life toward more betrayal. Simply giving up, accapting Ami's last betrayal as the only solution, is cnoosing to perpetuate the cycle of fate even further. Fighting, even if it's likely to fail, is again rejecting the failures of the past to try and change the future.

Again, I don't know the mechanics inside-out. I can't tell you the exact spell Janice would use to avoid getting shot at the start of the next update. But Janice does know that exact spell. If the choices given in the update are the choices she's thinking of, then Janice thinks fighting, perhaps even surviving, is possible. Someone more versed in the game's mechanics might say "there's only one choice here". Me, I see three choices. Fleeing will only delay things. Giving up might pay back some karmic debts, but most of that load will be sent on to burden Janice's next life, dooming her to another cycle. Fighting, even should it lead to her death, is the only choice that has a chance of breaking the cycle and really making a difference.

If you really, truly believe that Janice's story must end here, then I belive it's best ended by going down fighting to the very last, not meekly accepting Ami's betryal as the true nature of Janice's destiny.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
For the people voting Fight for Her Life, I might want to note that Janice is at her weakest here, even if she's in a relatively friendly paradigm space because the only buffs people voted for were @Aleph's "draw the enemy away from Selene and her folks," whereas Wolf is almost certainly running his own combat buffs and at this point probably cares exactly jack shit about Vulgarity because he's doing a direct assault on hostile paradigm space.

Also, an ATLAS is Pretty Serious Business. An ATLAS is basically a miniature giant killer robot which is approximately 50% weapons by weight (it is another 50% armor, 50% muscles, and 50% sensors, support systems, and electronics-Correspondence 4 is pretty amazing), both mundane and hypertech. This includes close combat weapons, micromissiles, grenade launchers, plasma cannon, and HITMark classics like cyber-limb weapons or the deployable chaingun. Wolf is using a rifle right now but that may well be one of the less dangerous weapons facing Janice.

In terms of which members of the Main Team could take it on with this sort of minimum preptime and no weapons, you have Kessler and maybe Rose. Jamelia and Donald would find excellent excuses to not be there, Henriette would eat the dox and teleport, and Serafina would probably fake her death in the hopes of escaping later.

I think if you're voting for this choice you should have some kind of idea of how you're going to actually fight and survive because this is not an ideal scenario.
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Oh, I think we got a damn fine chance we just gonna die - but I want it to be on our terms. We'll die if it means doing the right thing, but we're not going to go willingly because our treacherous idiot past life is suicidal. We were willing to die to turn Roth, because that was fundamentally about something bigger than us. But this isn't bigger than we are, it's just older and nastier, a matter of our past life's terrible circumstances and choices. We fight here because we want to live, because we're going to make Fate work for our life instead of just giving it up freely.

And yeah, this guy is Pretty Serious Business alright - I'd say he is, in terms of personal power and horrifying implications, the second worst thing she's ever encountered.

But we fought the fucking Anathema. And this man is no Anathema. Even in the Demise, even facing down an aggressively assimilating godmind and its worm-armies, even facing a fate even worse than what he was given, we chose to stay and fight and grind and take the risk that is living. We didn't go out a martyr trying to put down robo-god's personal kitty cat. Like hell we're going out a martyr to a golden robot with a more-literal-than-usual murder-boner for us.

Plus, I, personally, don't want this to be the story of how Janice was ground down by the weight of the world and her duties, how she gave and gave and gave of herself until she committed suicide to atone for the sins of another. That's just... Not what I want to read. And if someone who knew the rules had a quality write-in about how we were going to defeat this asshole, we'd already be bandwagoning on that instead of mashing the "glorious death" button.

EDIT: Ninja'd by derpmind.
 
I do see an argument that if Control is kind of being rolled back, Janice might end up being freed?

Could happen. If that person is Roth, even more hilarious.

[X] Fight For Her Life: The storm is overhead, crackling with power. She is a weather witch. Even in the face of an ATLAS, she'll fight for her life.
 
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