Great turn so far!

[X][Contact] Yes
[X][Tinker] Mender's Eye - Integration

Contact because we need the other races, and integration because I expect it to give boni to later study artifact/tinker actions, among other things.
 
[x][Tinker] Blackbody Mystery -Study
[x][Contact] Yes

Honestly, I really want to know what that void shard does, as something in my gut is telling me it could be very important in the future, possibly for the insight crew and their Thoughcasting. After all, it is a void crystal, and my interpretation of it says it could act as protection/avoidance mechanism for them, preventing future mishaps like the one that knocked out the insight crew's capability
 
[x][Tinker] Blackbody Mystery -Study
[x][Contact] Yes

// Wasn't there a limit on the number of artifacts that can be integrated?
 
Interesting results.
Noted the DC Comics reference there.
Vision and Iris now have a +30 bonus to Network actions.:o

Now we find out that Blades of Infinity is a multi-stage option. Good thing that we started it early.

Yay Secrets-bonus! Now we can get to Clear Skies, hopefully to improve combat nanorepair.
And we can maybe get a headstart on Practice in Unity.
Also something I meant to mention in the post-update post, mainly for the benefit of @uju32 was how your rollovers this turn on satisfied Research Actions are largely viable for study of the Unison Platforms. Earth-Gov is working on that, but they've not been making much progress so far.
I'll wait until you actively make it an option.
Is the rollover also viable for use in Practice in Unity?

VOTE
[X][Contact] Yes
[X][Tinker] Mender's Eye - Integration
 
Last edited:
Noted the DC Comics reference there.

It actually wasn't a comics reference. It was a mythology reference. But hey, I'll take it xD

I'll wait until you actively make it an option.

You're likely to be waiting a while, then. I'm deliberately not adding in extensive options lists because I don't want to clog things up. If you want to research something, propose a write-in. Please?

Is the rollover also viable for use in Practice in Unity?

The larger one that's applicable to Soul science, yes. The purely Secrets based one, no.

Wasn't there a limit on the number of artifacts that can be integrated?

Probably yes, but you're not sure what it is if there is one.

Let's do a tally:

Edit: that's certainly a result for Contact, and of course there's a draw on the Tinker vote. What else should I expect :V
Adhoc vote count started by Snowfire on Aug 23, 2018 at 3:38 PM, finished with 12114 posts and 20 votes.
 
Last edited:
[x][Tinker] Blackbody Mystery - Study
[x][Contact] Yes

I'd actually rather go for World's Remedy, but the mystery box is strong in its call.
 
[x][Tinker] Blackbody Mystery - Study
[x][Contact] Yes
I'd actually rather go for World's Remedy, but the mystery box is strong in its call.
The Mender's Eye was designed to provide bonuses for studying stuff.
You want to study the Blackbody, integrate it first.

It's kinda hard to plan to study microbes without a better microscope.
 
As a reminder, this was the design goal of the Mender's Eye, and the process of it's creation:
[X] A Mender's Forge (Write-in) - DC varies depending on write-in.
-[X] An oscilloscope
--[X] An ordinary oscilloscope is used to measure voltage waveforms, and can be adapted to observe other signals. Amanda's Practiced oscilloscope can observe... somewhat more esoteric phenomena.
All the pieces had come together easily enough, fitting easily into the shell you'd soft-forged with the help of your Aegis. Vega had passed that advice on from a friend in the Unisonbound who'd been and remained a Maker. It had surprised you at first, but given what an Aegis was, it made a certain amount of sense. The interaction with the malleable construction medium and your Aegis gloves had suffused the entire thing with your Practice, something you hadn't expected, but weren't going to complain about either. It had made fitting the parts into place incredibly easy, as the shell adapted itself to each component and formed the most efficient connections possible between them. That process had also passed on some of the resilience that anything touched by your Practice enjoyed.

It was at that point that you realised that you weren't building an oscilloscope anymore.

Empty space in the shell thanks to more efficient connections had allowed you to add more functionality to the system, including a multipurpose array of environmental sensors. There were limits on those, and even with your savings on space, you couldn't have everything you'd wanted. At the same time, what you'd created was capable of far more than just measuring electromagnetic waveforms, and it could do that at a distance to boot. Then again, your initial idea had just been a highly specialised handscanner of sorts, and on looking back at your first designs there'd not been any real possibility of not having the space to add in the rest of the systems one of those should have. Add Practice to the mix, and you got something much more than that, even if you hadn't found a good synchronicity point between the Artefact and your Focus.

Not finding a good point didn't mean you'd failed to find any synchronicity, though. Your ability to sense the links between things, fragmentary as it might be, proved remarkably useful. It lay at the core of the impossible efficiency of the device, and also was what made it capable of interactions at a distance that should require physical contact. But the real surprise didn't show up until you'd run the new Artefact through a test environment, and there you'd found something that could prove truly invaluable. The scanning emission of the device felt suspiciously similar to your own, that you'd used not a month and a half before now during the first parts of Second Contact.

If your aim is to study the high DC Void Crystal, the Mender's Eye is going to make things easier and better just by the nature of what it was created FOR.
The fact that it can detect Shiplord nano-shit is not it's only function.
Adhoc vote count started by uju32 on Aug 24, 2018 at 10:24 AM, finished with 12128 posts and 29 votes.
 
A Study of Beginnings
A Study of Beginnings

This story is set some time in the future. Never mind when, exactly.

Previously


"It's been quiet lately."

The clink of a cup against porcelain. Mary didn't answer Amanda's statement, but she didn't have to. Her housemate was right: It was quiet. If there had been a need, then the slightly hesitant way she reached for her tea would have let Amanda know she agreed.

It had, indeed, been quiet. Ever since Iris moved out, too quiet. She was still there, they saw each other every day, but even their daughter's effective omnipresence didn't make up for not living together.

"I'm always thinking…" She trailed off.

They had movie night, but they didn't have Iris spontaneously breaking into song, or pulling Lars past them while chattering with Aya — she'd wondered many times whose boyfriend he was, exactly — or even Nei's doomed and increasingly crazy attempts at one-upping Iris in their little showdowns, the scorch marks from which they still hadn't all cleaned up.

It was funny. For most of her life she'd valued silence, but now that she had it again, she didn't like it anymore. She'd gotten too used to the noise. To the house being full of life, artificial and otherwise.

"It's done, you know." Mary's voice, slightly shaky. "They asked me who I'd recommend. I say 'asked', but they meant you. They obviously meant you. Logically, reasonably— we raised Iris, you know."

Neither Amanda nor Mary were fond of sentence fragments, yet there they were. Her mind shied away from the conversation they were having. She tried to ignore the fact that Iris was inevitably listening in.

She spoke slowly, deliberately. "If we do this… It'll be different. I never once regretted Iris, but she's adopted. Making a child—" Her voice hitched. "That's a choice, and it has to be a careful one. It can't just be because we want normality." When had this become normality?

An encouraging smile. Mary laid her hand on top of Amanda's, who looked down at it.

"How about, 'Because we want her to have the best possible start to her life?'"

She didn't have a name for the feelings she felt.

"As I'm sure Iris would tell you, you're being silly. We don't get to choose if she'll exist; they'll go ahead with the project no matter what. Besides, we're not the only ones who get to decide. Iris?"

A still-young voice chimed in on the loudspeakers, full of more than a little outrage. "You've got that right. You promised me a little sister five years ago! I'm not letting you just give her away!"

"And we won't," Mary said firmly. "I'll talk her around, don't you worry."

An almost manic glee crept into Iris' voice. "You'd better! I already have a list of baby names. Aya suggested 'Rose', and Lars wants something boringly common like 'Sarah', but I like Nei's idea best. What do you think about Lily?"

"Like it's a trap," Amanda said, somewhat dryly. "I'm not sure how yet, but I'll find out. Fine. I—"

"You could go on arguing, but you know you'd give in eventually so you're just going to give Mary what she wants and save time?" Iris asked in a sing-song voice. "That's why it's such a great name!"

"I'll find out," she said, stressing the words.

As if she couldn't guess. Iris was nothing if not predictable.
 
Last edited:
[X][Contact] Yes
[X][Tinker] Mender's Eye - Integration

Also,
It's not easy to take an Artefact of Practice and break it down to something that doesn't require it, and you weren't sure that what you named a Clarion is completely uninfluenced by Practice. But they could be built without Potentials and that's what mattered in the end.
if Amanda's gut is correct here, that's more credence to the idea that Practice/Speaking are related to making Secrets or something similar somehow.
 
Back
Top