Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns
So, firstly, primium isn't a fundamental element that exists outside of everyone's paradigm. It's just countermagic in material form. Get it into a hostile paradigm space, and it'll rot or corrode or warp as appropriate. It's just such spaces are very rare, partly because the Traditions have internalised that primium works and is fucking unfair. They believe in it, because they've seen the effects and are like "Man that's cheap bullshit". But complaining about it is still belief. The other part is that primium is fully inside Hermetic, Etherite and VA paradigms.
But for places hostile to primium, you'd need to bring True Primium and that's the Prime 5 version infused with Quint that's basically just spending quint to offset the paradox of its existence.
As for the question of karma - well, clearly something like that exists, because Entropy plays off it. There's some kind of fate/destiny thing. "Dark Fate" is a Flaw you can take. It doesn't mean Janice is necessarily right when she says this phenomenon is karma - but Resonance is certainly a thing and getting too much unhealthy resonance is baaaaaaaaaaaaad for you. And mythic threads are certainly a thing, and everyone knows traitors meet bad ends and there are some things even death can't stop.
Maybe it's because most humans subconsciously believe in Just World theory where good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Maybe it's a Resonance-based thing where Ami twisted herself up with her Betrayal and Guilt and Wasting. Maybe it's a curse born of how Ami was the sole survivor of her family and their yurei haunt her because she didn't honour them properly. Maybe it's because Avatars are the fragmented parts of the Sidereal Exaltations and they still weave a Fate across the world, one hundred fragments spread between seven billion people. Maybe it's because Ami literally died in a Caul, taking the option that leads to you dying horrifically rather than Falling and her soul got mutilated by the claws of horrors from outside reality.
Could be none of them. Could be several at once.
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I mean, canonically speaking, technically all of them are true at once, including the entirely contradictory ones like how karma doesn't exist at all and it's just an expression of the human tendency to construct narratives around largely arbitrary events and use confirmation bias and skewed pattern-matching to invent a correlation that's actually no more than standard deviance around a mean.
Consensus reality is kind of fucked, yo.
Well, for the Primium thing I was thinking for "NWO agent with Hyperpsych vs. Exojock with a braincase." Both parties believe that the agent is just talking real good rather than using magic, and neither party believes that a braincase interferes with or alters your ability to think normally - but IIRC we've specifically seen "you can't just use Mind to talk this guy into doing what you want, he's completely loaded with primium" in this quest.
But that makes sense - thanks for the info!
- Location
- NY
I believe those would both mechanically be countermagic, just the agent (not Agent) is using Mind to counter Mind, while the Exojock has innate countermagic by virtue of Primium that can be applied to anything, including Mind.
But I mean, neither the agent nor the exojock think that magic is being used - nor, for that matter, would the person making the primium have considered what the agent is doing to be magic. Yet Primium's countermagic still applies. It's one of those weird things that just kinda nettles me - the NWO paradigm doesn't seem to have room for Primium to resist it, yet it does get resisted, so how does the paradigm survive that?
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A primium braincase does provide a buffer against hyperpsych effects, as a side effect of how it protects against Reality Deviancy - which is after all a cousin to Genius. The interference patterns in the metal stabilise brainwaves and reduce the effect of targeted memetic techniques.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
NWO is about being Just That Good, and also having sufficiently fancy gadgets. To a JB, Primium is basically a kind of radioactive gold: It's both horribly expensive and can power someone's doomsday device. Primium can nullify your peak-human abilities, allowing an enemy's mind to be stubborn through your hyperpsych or a giant robot's weak points to retain structural integrity. Primium can also work for you, too: A Primuim knife is sufficiently fancy to survive any challenge, Primium bullets are just the ace-in-the-hole needed to nail the target, a Primium radio can keep you in contact with HQ even in the deepest jungles, etc.
Edit: I wrote the "resist hyperpsych" thinking of someone wearing a Primium necklace, not a full braincase, but either works and the second is probably more effective.
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- Location
- Spain
Eh.
When you start using post-hoc explanations to make everything fit perfectly the base mechanics paradigm stops having any meaning.
Origami Clock
Right twice a day
- Location
- Brighton, UK
Well...it could be argued that paradigms don't have any intrinsic meaning. After all, just aseverything is true, from a certain perspective, so is everything false. Though that might be where you get the edgy nihilists from.
- Location
- NY
Why would the agent or exojock ever have reason to believe they're using magic in the first place? They aren't RDs after all.
If your question is "how can Primium countermagic NWO Mind when NWO Mind isn't materialist", you're basically asking the sort of question that theoretically, eventually leads to Arete/Enlightenment 6. Paradigms disagree with each other all the time. Verbena, for example, are explicitly called out in one of the TradWiki posts in this quest as not meshing with Primium at all, because they don't believe there's power in cold, dead things, yet Primium still works just fine as countermagic against a Verbena.
If your question is "how do the agent/exojock understand Primium countering NWO Mind", there's probably a dozen long hyperpsych papers out there detailing how the increased confidence of Primium-equipped scientists places them in an appropriate psychological mindset to resist otherwise effective memetic attacks. As well as at least one snarky paper explaining how psychological warfare often relies on higher intelligence functions that tend to be lacking in ItX steelheads.
One of the very few, often unmentioned (aka I just made it up because it seems like a fun explanation) side effects of extended contact with Primium is a small increase in unpredictable and irrational decisions. This effect is small enough that no one is really bothered about it in most situations, but when a technocrat is pushing the borders of Hyperpsychology even that small divergence can throw them off.
Or maybe the side effects are actually more serious and well known. Pretty much every Primium creation is of course designed with countermeasures, but when you are an Exojock with strong opinions staring down some NWO spook a bit of Primium contamination is still a lot better than just doing everything the nice person in the suit is telling you to do.
Or maybe the side effects are actually more serious and well known. Pretty much every Primium creation is of course designed with countermeasures, but when you are an Exojock with strong opinions staring down some NWO spook a bit of Primium contamination is still a lot better than just doing everything the nice person in the suit is telling you to do.
The problem is the more you accept exalted stuff more it kind of undermines the central themes of omage, imo.
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- Location
- Spain
Primium works against a Verbena because the Union believes it works. What the verbena believes is irrelevant, since it's the TU imposing their beliefs by force. (Of course, the verbena might be able ro resist, that's what there is a roll-off).
But that leads us to question, why should primium work against things that the technocrats don't believe are affected by it? It doesn't have metaphysical backing in this case, no belief to give it force.
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Correlation not causation
People who get tons of Primium tend to be much harder to sway socially and more fanatical period. It comes in part with the fact that anyone who is willing to heavily cyborg themselves enough to get significant amounts of Primium protection is pretty hardcore already.
The fact that this is particularly apparent with brute force hyperpsych applications is unexpected but not unbelievable.
The Technocracy believes that people with heavy Primium protection are harder to sway because you don't put that much Primium in people who are easy to convince in the first place.
But in this case people with bigger shoe sizes are in fact actually smarter, or the countermagic equivalent.
More seriously this is why things like "correlation is not causation" and "the placebo effect" are Technocratic concepts.
They help smooth out some of the weird interactions the Technocracy have with their Daat Yichud-ish legacy code.
Also they make it easier to come back from behind and disprove Traditions attempts to put things in consensus like that remarkably successful attempt by Asian magi to make acupuncture a consensual miracle cure.
They help smooth out some of the weird interactions the Technocracy have with their Daat Yichud-ish legacy code.
Also they make it easier to come back from behind and disprove Traditions attempts to put things in consensus like that remarkably successful attempt by Asian magi to make acupuncture a consensual miracle cure.
Also, I'd just like to point out that a lot of the time, it's the mage's own paradigm that matters most of all.
Janice is a witch. Janice believes in things like karma and fate and mythic threads.
Maybe if Ami had reincarnated into, I don't know, a Virtual Adept or Etherite who didn't believe in fate, she could have gotten away with bringing Ami back for a while. Then again, maybe not. It's not like Ami needed the help, after all; it's not like this wasn't, at least hypothetically, something predictable in advance, a natural consequence of Ami's personality and Janice's needs and Roth's position.
But there's no real way to know - and in-universe, there is, in fact, no single shining truth at the bottom. That's what "there is no single truth" looks like from the outside - you can't tell.
But it was real for Janice, in more ways than one.
Janice is a witch. Janice believes in things like karma and fate and mythic threads.
Maybe if Ami had reincarnated into, I don't know, a Virtual Adept or Etherite who didn't believe in fate, she could have gotten away with bringing Ami back for a while. Then again, maybe not. It's not like Ami needed the help, after all; it's not like this wasn't, at least hypothetically, something predictable in advance, a natural consequence of Ami's personality and Janice's needs and Roth's position.
But there's no real way to know - and in-universe, there is, in fact, no single shining truth at the bottom. That's what "there is no single truth" looks like from the outside - you can't tell.
But it was real for Janice, in more ways than one.
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- Location
- NY
Because Primium isn't a Union thing, it's a holdover from back when the Order looked a whole lot like the Hermetics, alchemy and all. It's actually pointed out by one of the viewpoint characters in the TradWiki post that silver (soft, easily molten metal) + gold (soft, easily molten metal) = Primium (stuff that can tank plasma cannon bolts) makes no sense from a Technodigm (read: modern scientific) point of view, but made all the sense back when it was first made if you look at what the components symbolize. In the words of MJ12, it's legacy code.
Your view is just weird. What possible reason would the Trads have to force Verbena to be countermagic'd by Primium? The stuff is only in-paradigm for Hermetics, SoE, and VA, and the latter two only became Traditions last century. It makes absolutely zero sense for the Traditions to accept Hermetics telling all other six Traditions they "have to" be countermagic'd by Primium. It's not a matter of belief to start with, just like you can't sit there and believe your way to Arete 6. Prime is the countermagic Sphere, and Primium is a thing made by Prime to have countermagic properties. That's like saying Avatars only exist because the Traditions believe they do and impose their believes on the Union by force.
- Location
- Spain
No, Primium is totally a Union thing. They are the ones making it. Sure, the reasons why they believe in the effectiveness of primium have changed, but they still believe it works and it still works because they believe it does. And therefore it shouldn't be capable of doing things they don't believe it can't do.
(That thing above was a typo. Just replace trad with Union
).Spheres aren't a thing in-universe. They are a rules-construct.
Primium can countermagic things because the technocrats believe it has reality-stabilizing properties. And since they believe so, it does, and so it shuts down reality-deviancy.
What the other party believes doesn't matter as long as the technocrats have more belief backing them. Which they do. (They, after all, make primium out of large amounts of money, and money is made of faith).
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Sirrocco
Pedantic
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Admittedly, sometimes they're just making it out of enormous amounts of energy coming out of an ItX generator... but given ItX, that's *also* threaded heavily through with faith.
Actually that is a good question
Why can't you have them all
Because you totally can
Sometimes I surprise even myself with my generosity. I was looking for people's thoughts and since so many people provided interesting speculation and reasoning I will reward you.
Had people just voted with no discussion this probably wouldn't have happened.
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- Location
- U.S.
Based QM is Based.
Stuff like this is why we love you, and Earthscorpion can never take your place in our hearts.
(Unless he picks us AGSITV again, but that will never happen. He would then fight you for it, in a battle consisting entirely of making up increasingly awesome magical bullshit for our entertainment, while Aleph laughs at you both from the sidelines)
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
Partly because some if us wanted some of them we threatened to write them ourselves anyhow if they didn't win.
- Location
- in the trash
The holding cell is spartan, but not uncomfortable. Four sterile, spotless planes of featureless white, not so much as a single speck of dirt littering the place. Designed to keep all sorts of subjects in confinement, from inhumanely strong shapeshifters to experimental homonculi with EDE plasmid derived powers, and other, more esoteric specimens, it ends up coming off as complete overkill for its current occupant. Even for someone of his intellect, there's not much one can do when one is kept completely isolated in a high tech prison cell with every possible point of entry or exit carefully monitored at all times--and there are only three such points in the holding cell, anyway.
Not that trying to escape would do him any good, Dr Gregor Leon muses. He's already calculated all the possible outcomes in his mind, after all. Escaping a high security Technocratic facility is no mean feat to begin with, and then he'd be on the run, with no allies or resources to call upon and the Technocratic Union--both Technocratic Unions--hunting him. Doesn't take a genius level intellect to figure the outcome of that.
It's been five days and thirteen hours since they extracted the EDE parasite and tossed him in this cell. They didn't let him have a timepiece, obviously, and there's no way to tell whether it's day or night outside, but it's a simple enough thing to keep count. The Union locked him up in this cell designed for Progenitor lab subjects, stripped him of anything that he could use to hurt himself--though suicide is such a pointless, irrational action--and kept him deliberately isolated from any and all possible human contact. Three meals a day, delivered through an automated dispenser in the wall, and he's received anything he's requested so long as it's been judged not to be something he could use to harm himself or try to escape--again, despite the sheer pointlessness of even attempting either action.
Really, the worst thing about this confinement is that he gets bored with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. He wonders how much longer he'll have to wait until the interrogator arrives. He can tell that they're afraid of him, that he'll manage to twist anyone they send to talk to him around his finger. But if they want him to talk, they'll have to send someone or something eventually, even if it's a Bob remoted by the actual interrogator in a place he can't see.
Two more hours pass before Gregor Leon hears the humming click of the cell's doors sliding opening and closing in sequence. He's sitting on the bed when it happens; a solid concrete slab embedded in the wall with a soft mattress on top. The newcomer is a woman, black hair framing a face he knows all too well.
"Dr Rosario. I've been expecting you." Gregor Leon says smoothly, without skipping a beat. "I'd offer you a seat, but, well, there aren't exactly any chairs in this cell." He sweeps his hands around for emphasis, making no moves to get up from his seated position.
"It's fine. I'll stand. How did you guess it would be me, by the way?"
"You were simply one of the more likely possibilities. I figured you might have enough pull with Professor Li to get this as a favour, with everything you've been up to recently." Gregor smiles.
"Humour me for a bit," Serafina says, eyes cold and mirthless. "Who else did you consider might come to interrogate you?"
"The next most likely probability was an assassin. Even now, they still have people everywhere."
"Are you implying that there are more traitors within the Progenitors apart from your group?" Serafina asks, folding her arms across her chest. If Gregor hadn't left behind such base desires a long time ago, the action might have warranted more than a cursory glance.
"I never said as much. And technically, it's your lot who are the traitors here. But I suppose, hypothetically, if such people existed, I might be able to provide you with some names. And things other than names, as well. Given proper incentive to do so, of course."
"You should already know that a full pardon is out of the question. Your gambit back in Izanagi failed; you have no more cards left to play." Serafina replies, still standing.
"Neural self-destruct. The Union won't be able to get anything useful out of my brain even with a trawl if I do that."
"You wouldn't go that far; the only purpose it would serve would be to spite us, at great cost to your own self."
"Who knows? Under extreme circumstances, people can behave in unpredictable ways."
Serafina frowns. "Let's cut out the bullshit. I can offer you a number of concessions, though exactly what form those will take will be dependent on your behaviour."
"Depending on how much I cooperate and how valuable the information I give you is, you mean." Gregor says. "Nice try, but I'll need something a little more concrete than that. So, let's talk terms, unless you want to continue to be frustratingly vague, in which case I can also be frustratingly vague and we'll be here all day."
"Yes. Let's talk."
Not that trying to escape would do him any good, Dr Gregor Leon muses. He's already calculated all the possible outcomes in his mind, after all. Escaping a high security Technocratic facility is no mean feat to begin with, and then he'd be on the run, with no allies or resources to call upon and the Technocratic Union--both Technocratic Unions--hunting him. Doesn't take a genius level intellect to figure the outcome of that.
It's been five days and thirteen hours since they extracted the EDE parasite and tossed him in this cell. They didn't let him have a timepiece, obviously, and there's no way to tell whether it's day or night outside, but it's a simple enough thing to keep count. The Union locked him up in this cell designed for Progenitor lab subjects, stripped him of anything that he could use to hurt himself--though suicide is such a pointless, irrational action--and kept him deliberately isolated from any and all possible human contact. Three meals a day, delivered through an automated dispenser in the wall, and he's received anything he's requested so long as it's been judged not to be something he could use to harm himself or try to escape--again, despite the sheer pointlessness of even attempting either action.
Really, the worst thing about this confinement is that he gets bored with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. He wonders how much longer he'll have to wait until the interrogator arrives. He can tell that they're afraid of him, that he'll manage to twist anyone they send to talk to him around his finger. But if they want him to talk, they'll have to send someone or something eventually, even if it's a Bob remoted by the actual interrogator in a place he can't see.
Two more hours pass before Gregor Leon hears the humming click of the cell's doors sliding opening and closing in sequence. He's sitting on the bed when it happens; a solid concrete slab embedded in the wall with a soft mattress on top. The newcomer is a woman, black hair framing a face he knows all too well.
"Dr Rosario. I've been expecting you." Gregor Leon says smoothly, without skipping a beat. "I'd offer you a seat, but, well, there aren't exactly any chairs in this cell." He sweeps his hands around for emphasis, making no moves to get up from his seated position.
"It's fine. I'll stand. How did you guess it would be me, by the way?"
"You were simply one of the more likely possibilities. I figured you might have enough pull with Professor Li to get this as a favour, with everything you've been up to recently." Gregor smiles.
"Humour me for a bit," Serafina says, eyes cold and mirthless. "Who else did you consider might come to interrogate you?"
"The next most likely probability was an assassin. Even now, they still have people everywhere."
"Are you implying that there are more traitors within the Progenitors apart from your group?" Serafina asks, folding her arms across her chest. If Gregor hadn't left behind such base desires a long time ago, the action might have warranted more than a cursory glance.
"I never said as much. And technically, it's your lot who are the traitors here. But I suppose, hypothetically, if such people existed, I might be able to provide you with some names. And things other than names, as well. Given proper incentive to do so, of course."
"You should already know that a full pardon is out of the question. Your gambit back in Izanagi failed; you have no more cards left to play." Serafina replies, still standing.
"Neural self-destruct. The Union won't be able to get anything useful out of my brain even with a trawl if I do that."
"You wouldn't go that far; the only purpose it would serve would be to spite us, at great cost to your own self."
"Who knows? Under extreme circumstances, people can behave in unpredictable ways."
Serafina frowns. "Let's cut out the bullshit. I can offer you a number of concessions, though exactly what form those will take will be dependent on your behaviour."
"Depending on how much I cooperate and how valuable the information I give you is, you mean." Gregor says. "Nice try, but I'll need something a little more concrete than that. So, let's talk terms, unless you want to continue to be frustratingly vague, in which case I can also be frustratingly vague and we'll be here all day."
"Yes. Let's talk."
EDIT:
Partly because some if us wanted some of them we threatened to write them ourselves anyhow if they didn't win.
Threats? What threats?