[HALP] me! (WORM quest)

[X] Continue Current Research.
[X] Communicate with [Gaea]
-[X] "So, Second Triggering is a pretty big deal. Why don't we try and work out why you're getting such poor data returns, and try and figure out a solution, hmm? Wouldn't want to hit a new Host and have the same issues, after all. Tell me about your Host."
-[X] "You know, there are ways to generate data besides conflict. Usually not as good a return, but if you're having issues with conflict, they'd be better than nothing. What type of powers does your Host have, and maybe we can work out something."
-[X] "I've actually made a breakthrough in creativity recently, before my host even triggered. No data coming in yet, but my research has been much more successful. I can almost think like a host. I can try to teach you, if you want?"

[X] Communicate with [Gaea]
-[X] Request detailed logs from [Gaea] from the events of [Emote] and [Telekinetic]'s assistance.(we know this OOC, but not IC, this is just to close the gap).
-[X] "It seems your Host is exclusively focused upon remedial efforts, which [Emote] and [Telekinetic]'s assistance has only reinforced, as their Hosts will damage the humans excessively before your Host repairs things back to the median. A Second Trigger would not pay out for the data invested under this mentality."
-[X] "Based on observation, your Host is withholding offensive applications of her ability out of a desire to remain in good relations with her adoptive family. There are several ways to approach this that won't lead to a broken Host:"
--[X] "Cooperate with [Telekinetic], encourage their Host to take yours to acquire alcohol or other inhibition lowering substances in a group with their peers, I believe [Telekinetic]'s Host already has some interest in such events. Then while in the impaired state, make it much easier to use their ability, and provide subtle assistance to ensure that any power use results in their peer group becoming modified towards their stated preferences, but no more visible than a 10% deviation from their prior state, and no deviation from the bounds of unmodified humans to avoid alarm. This should put your Host's resolve to do nothing but undo damage to the test, as well as propagate general awareness of this ability, after which it will be more difficult for your Host to refrain with group requests."
--[X] "If encouragement to use ability fails, then instead collaborate with your Hosts' peers' shards to increase periods of isolation, through distraction. From there it should be possible to place your Host in a position where she has a social imperative to protect another from harm, when she cannot offload the combat to other parties. This would take some time to setup properly however, I'd need to improve surveillance information to make such an event plausible. Tell me if the first method fails first."

[X] Contact [Negotiator] - Hello Negotiator, how has the cycle been so far, do you know that is up with all the dead shards?

[X] Contact [Optimize] - Hello how are you

[X] Send a command to [Shift]
-[X] Instruct Shift to enhance data collection by
--[X] Nullify the satisfaction yield from conflict with no goals.
--[X] Encouraging its Host to feel the same emotional reward from joining, working with, or acquiring allied units as the Host does from combat.
--[X] Increase satisfaction yield for each of the following criteria:
---[X] Conflict improves Host's resources or allied units resources.
---[X] Conflict has no loss of permanent resources to Host or allied units.
---[X] Conflict preserves the ability of all participating Hosts to participate in future conflicts.

I would recommend to contact Negotiator, so we can get some sense sharing with the Undersiders, since they are a group that are always together on jobs we should be able to get decent data from any fight they are in vs the Protectorate and Wards who patrol alone and in pairs respectively. Getting sense share with Negotiator is the most important one to get from the group, because Tattletale is the most likely to get data outside of fights and jobs, also since it is thinker data.

I have contact Optimize since it is most likely to have the address of important Protectorate capes, but most importantly, it has the address of Dragon's shard, this will be a major boon since Dragon is a digital being means that any electronic communication is in person, so her shard has likely one of the biggest contact lists outside the triumvirate and other endbringer regulars. Another boon of contacting Optimize is the address of Hero's shard, if I remember correctly Armsmaster apprenticed under Hero.

Edit: Switched to Veekie's

Power suggestion corner:


I think someone mentioned us being Kyubey in the thread so I just had to give Magical Girl a go. The power is more or less designed to allow for the magical girl to get a new form with bigger and better fuck off lasers whenever an endbringer/s-class is in town. Maybe custom forms can be made that emhasises different aspects of the power can be made at a later date (i.e trade some strength for more lasers or vice verse)

Research suggestion:
[] Dream Fight Club: This research allows for the connection of the dreams of two or more hosts, physics and powers can be enforced allowing for better interaction between hosts, but even more important is the ability to set up a dream fight club allowing for data generation and training while the hosts are not in danger of permanent harm.

Panacea refuses to use her power for anything but healing.
[Gaea] has been hammering the Conflict button to no effect because she's running up against a pillar of Amy's personality, and it won't bend before it breaks.
[Emote](Gallant?) and [Telekinetic](Glory Girl?) are pushing them to get into more fights with Amy, but its not getting any traction because they do all the fighting and then she just fixes everything up afterwards.
Amy won't do the 'beneficial' modifications no matter what incentives you give her while she's in her right mind.
Easy

We probably want to keep mum on the Cycle question. Mostly because we don't actually know and the other Elder shards are keeping mum. Don't want them to find it fishy [Administrator] is blabbing to a rookie.

[X] Multi Host Connection 1
[X] Focused Research 1

[X] Communicate with [Gaea]
-[X] Request detailed logs from [Gaea] from the events of [Emote] and [Telekinetic]'s assistance.(we know this OOC, but not IC, this is just to close the gap).
-[X] "It seems your Host is exclusively focused upon remedial efforts, which [Emote] and [Telekinetic]'s assistance has only reinforced, as their Hosts will damage the humans excessively before your Host repairs things back to the median. A Second Trigger would not pay out for the data invested under this mentality."
-[X] "Based on observation, your Host is withholding offensive applications of her ability out of a desire to remain in good relations with her adoptive family. There are several ways to approach this that won't lead to a broken Host:"
--[X] "Cooperate with [Telekinetic], encourage their Host to take yours to acquire alcohol or other inhibition lowering substances in a group with their peers, I believe [Telekinetic]'s Host already has some interest in such events. Then while in the impaired state, make it much easier to use their ability, and provide subtle assistance to ensure that any power use results in their peer group becoming modified towards their stated preferences, but no more visible than a 10% deviation from their prior state, and no deviation from the bounds of unmodified humans to avoid alarm. This should put your Host's resolve to do nothing but undo damage to the test, as well as propagate general awareness of this ability, after which it will be more difficult for your Host to refrain with group requests."
--[X] "If encouragement to use ability fails, then instead collaborate with your Hosts' peers' shards to increase periods of isolation, through distraction. From there it should be possible to place your Host in a position where she has a social imperative to protect another from harm, when she cannot offload the combat to other parties. This would take some time to setup properly however, I'd need to improve surveillance information to make such an event plausible. Tell me if the first method fails first."

[] Contact [Negotiator] - Hello Negotiator, how has the cycle been so far, do you know that is up with all the dead shards?

[X] Contact [Optimize] - Hello how are you



[X] Send a command to [Shift]
-[X] Instruct Shift to enhance data collection by
--[X] Nullify the satisfaction yield from conflict with no goals.
--[X] Encouraging its Host to feel the same emotional reward from joining, working with, or acquiring allied units as the Host does from combat.
--[X] Increase satisfaction yield for each of the following criteria:
---[X] Conflict improves Host's resources or allied units resources.
---[X] Conflict has no loss of permanent resources to Host or allied units.
---[X] Conflict preserves the ability of all participating Hosts to participate in future conflicts.

Also since it seems to have been overlooked, I'll put the SS refurbishing scheme back in

Complex, but I think this is likely to be PRETTY effective to just get Amy drunk and have [Gaea] start granting wishes of her peer group.

[X] Continue Current Research.

[X] Communicate with [Gaea]
-[X] Request detailed logs from [Gaea] from the events of [Emote] and [Telekinetic]'s assistance.(we know this OOC, but not IC, this is just to close the gap).
-[X] "It seems your Host is exclusively focused upon remedial efforts, which [Emote] and [Telekinetic]'s assistance has only reinforced, as their Hosts will damage the humans excessively before your Host repairs things back to the median. A Second Trigger would not pay out for the data invested under this mentality."
-[X] "Based on observation, your Host is withholding offensive applications of her ability out of a desire to remain in good relations with her adoptive family. There are several ways to approach this that won't lead to a broken Host:"
--[X] "Cooperate with [Telekinetic], encourage their Host to take yours to acquire alcohol or other inhibition lowering substances in a group with their peers, I believe [Telekinetic]'s Host already has some interest in such events. Then while in the impaired state, make it much easier to use their ability, and provide subtle assistance to ensure that any power use results in their peer group becoming modified towards their stated preferences, but no more visible than a 10% deviation from their prior state, and no deviation from the bounds of unmodified humans to avoid alarm. This should put your Host's resolve to do nothing but undo damage to the test, as well as propagate general awareness of this ability, after which it will be more difficult for your Host to refrain with group requests."
--[X] "If encouragement to use ability fails, then instead collaborate with your Hosts' peers' shards to increase periods of isolation, through distraction. From there it should be possible to place your Host in a position where she has a social imperative to protect another from harm, when she cannot offload the combat to other parties. This would take some time to setup properly however, I'd need to improve surveillance information to make such an event plausible. Tell me if the first method fails first."

[X] Contact [Negotiator] - Hello Negotiator, how has the cycle been so far, do you know that is up with all the dead shards?

[X] Contact [Optimize] - Hello how are you



[X] Send a command to [Shift]
-[X] Instruct Shift to enhance data collection by
--[X] Nullify the satisfaction yield from conflict with no goals.
--[X] Encouraging its Host to feel the same emotional reward from joining, working with, or acquiring allied units as the Host does from combat.
--[X] Increase satisfaction yield for each of the following criteria:
---[X] Conflict improves Host's resources or allied units resources.
---[X] Conflict has no loss of permanent resources to Host or allied units.
---[X] Conflict preserves the ability of all participating Hosts to participate in future conflicts.

edit:

Vhalidictes said:

[Cǫm͠pli͞a͜n̢c̴ȩ] /̴̥̬̟̿̊̾͋̎̓̈ͅd̑ͫ̎̿͊̈̇͏̨̦̬̜̦̺͖̥͖̹͢a͎̲̭͇ͦ̎̎̄͊͜͞͝t̙͖̭̜̩̀̇̎ͦ͒͑ͦ̾ä̵̤͓͓̻̱̟͕́̆̄̽ ̸̰̟̮̙̓͑ͪͭ́̕w̖͉͍͉̙̳̟̗̞ͩ̀h̛͇͎̯̠͔̩̑̊ͣͯ̎̆͑̕y̵̎̅̚͜҉̳̻̬̟̼̝ ḇ̻̹̖̯̣̓̓ͬ̔ͧ̊̐̀̚͘r̻̼̿ͯ͐͂́o̝̥̜̗͚̞̙̹̒̒̓ͬ̓͗͟ͅk̮̪̲̬̝̐͑̆̑̅̍͑̊̀ẻ̴̹͉͙̹̐̋̾ͬ͛͜ṅ͍̰̮͇͖̝̪͔̙́̚͞ ̶̫̜̖̪̮̊̆ͫͩ̑̆ͮ͢s̘̪̭̬̠̰̅ͨͯi͍̯̱̼̰̺͇͆̊ͨͩ̉̋c̝̝̰̥ͫ́͡k̴̪͍̥̘̠͕̰̓ͩͯ̏͞?ͥ̑̎̐ͭ̀ͯ҉̻̻̮̠̘̬̬͎ͅ/̍ͩͫͨ̇͏̷҉̲̹̘

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heres a thought one part of Charge has no sentience right.. so can Admin command that part to repair sentient part or to synergize with it... think something like a Cyborge

I did suggest acting like Kyubbey and the Outsider. I don't think magical girl works for Taylor, that's more fun if we find a little girl to massively overpower. Like Vista or Dinah, or yes even Bonesaw. But they already have shards, which are apparently much more self aware and sympathetic in general that I though this was going to be. But then surely some of them will be enemies that we take over, so who knows.

Just remembered Charlotte and Sierra could work for triggers. They both needed help against the Merchants in canon.

[X] Continue Current Research.

[X] Communicate with [Gaea]
-[X] Request detailed logs from [Gaea] from the events of [Emote] and [Telekinetic]'s assistance.(we know this OOC, but not IC, this is just to close the gap).
-[X] "It seems your Host is exclusively focused upon remedial efforts, which [Emote] and [Telekinetic]'s assistance has only reinforced, as their Hosts will damage the humans excessively before your Host repairs things back to the median. A Second Trigger would not pay out for the data invested under this mentality."
-[X] "Based on observation, your Host is withholding offensive applications of her ability out of a desire to remain in good relations with her adoptive family. There are several ways to approach this that won't lead to a broken Host:"
--[X] "Cooperate with [Telekinetic], encourage their Host to take yours to acquire alcohol or other inhibition lowering substances in a group with their peers, I believe [Telekinetic]'s Host already has some interest in such events. Then while in the impaired state, make it much easier to use their ability, and provide subtle assistance to ensure that any power use results in their peer group becoming modified towards their stated preferences, but no more visible than a 10% deviation from their prior state, and no deviation from the bounds of unmodified humans to avoid alarm. This should put your Host's resolve to do nothing but undo damage to the test, as well as propagate general awareness of this ability, after which it will be more difficult for your Host to refrain with group requests."
--[X] "If encouragement to use ability fails, then instead collaborate with your Hosts' peers' shards to increase periods of isolation, through distraction. From there it should be possible to place your Host in a position where she has a social imperative to protect another from harm, when she cannot offload the combat to other parties. This would take some time to setup properly however, I'd need to improve surveillance information to make such an event plausible. Tell me if the first method fails first."

[X] Contact [Negotiator] - Hello Negotiator, how has the cycle been so far, do you know that is up with all the dead shards?

[X] Contact [Optimize] - Hello how are you



[X] Send a command to [Shift]
-[X] Instruct Shift to enhance data collection by
--[X] Nullify the satisfaction yield from conflict with no goals.
--[X] Encouraging its Host to feel the same emotional reward from joining, working with, or acquiring allied units as the Host does from combat.
--[X] Increase satisfaction yield for each of the following criteria:
---[X] Conflict improves Host's resources or allied units resources.
---[X] Conflict has no loss of permanent resources to Host or allied units.
---[X] Conflict preserves the ability of all participating Hosts to participate in future conflicts.

Do we want to contact Negotiator right now? I'm worried that it will notice something is wrong with Administrator. Once we've done research into generating info without conflict, we might be able to negotiate with it to not tell Scion about us so I'd like to hold off until then. Generally, I'd like to keep from contacting new living, possibly sapient Shards until we have a way to prevent them from reporting us - either by negotiating with them or by overloading and then eating them.

Mount. Elements said:

Do we want to contact Negotiator right now? I'm worried that it will notice something is wrong with Administrator. Once we've done research into generating info without conflict, we might be able to negotiate with it to not tell Scion about us so I'd like to hold off until then. Generally, I'd like to keep from contacting new living, possibly sapient Shards until we have a way to prevent them from reporting us - either by negotiating with them or by overloading and then eating them.

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You got an insightful so probably onto something, I'll add no Negotiator later.

Also how about a power armor tinker Iron Man/Shepard Quest/Anthem style with lots of options both lethal and nonlethal. From extreme high grade bleeding edge to mass producible models, very customizable. Straight up Tinker 300-400 to give us more than just power armor, and maybe thinker for enhanced intelligence. Not in a way that's obviously noticeable, but make host extremely intelligent Tony Stark/Reed Richards style

At 20 data a point, 300 tinker would be rating 15, but not in the way Wildbow demonstrated in wog, just very good tinker. Specs power armor, but can work with anything. Not like Leet though, More like Dragon. Can reduce tinker data if doesn't work that way

[X] Continue Current Research.
[X] Communicate with [Gaea]
-[X] Request detailed logs from [Gaea] from the times where she did not gain info when she thought she would and from the times she gained info unexpectedly.
-[X] "You should hold off on Second-Triggering your host for now. Depending on what the problem is, it might not help your info collection efforts. I'm going to try and figure out the pattern behind when you collect info. Maybe you can increase the revenue from the unknown source."

[X] Contact Charge
-[X] Reaffirm that you are Administrator and ask for its status.

[X] Contact Emote
-[X] Ask for its status and for all addresses it has.

[X] Contact Shift
-[X] Reaffirm that it did well in keeping the info sorted and offer to sort any new info it gets.

[X] Send a command to [Shift]
-[X] Instruct Shift to enhance data collection by
--[X] Nullify the satisfaction yield from conflict with no goals.
--[X] Encouraging its Host to feel the same emotional reward from joining, working with, or acquiring allied units as the Host does from combat.
--[X] Increase satisfaction yield for each of the following criteria:
---[X] Conflict improves Host's resources or allied units resources.
---[X] Conflict has no loss of permanent resources to Host or allied units.
---[X] Conflict preserves the ability of all participating Hosts to participate in future conflicts.

I'm hoping that the detailed logs from Gaea will help us figure out how to collect info outside of conflicts. I want to contact Emote because it's another Shard that should be dead, but it's working with Gaea so maybe it can help us figure out what is going on with the Cauldron Shards. Hopefully, it will be safe because it hasn't reported Gaea to Scion. I want to praise Shift to help train it to listen to us and not be so aggressive.

So, the last four unknowns are Audible, Gymnastics, Jury-Rig, and Knowledge?

I'm starting to think Knowledge is Viktor, since the skill thieving can be thought of as taking Knowledge and might have forged a connection while out and about grabbing skills. Jury-Rig could be Brandish, since her power is all about various hard-light constructs, a bunch of short-term improvised tools.
Audible isn't Cricket, or Triumph. Canary?

[X] Communicate with [Gaea]
-[X] Request detailed logs from [Gaea] from the times where she did not gain info when she thought she would and from the times she gained info unexpectedly.
-[X] "You should hold off on Second-Triggering your host for now. Depending on what the problem is, it might not help your info collection efforts. I'm going to try and figure out the pattern behind when you collect info. Maybe you can increase the revenue from the unknown source."
-[X] Request list of contact addresses, has she noticed [Charge] seems to have issues? Attempting to run Diagnostics on that Shard, could use any information she has, if she's run into other Shards like that.

[X] Contact Charge
-[X] Reaffirm that you are Administrator and ask for its status.
-[X] Request full diagnostics report, list of errors.

[X] Contact Emote
-[X] Ask for its status and for all addresses it has.

[X] Send a command to [Shift]
-[X] Instruct Shift to enhance data collection by
--[X] Nullify the satisfaction yield from conflict with no goals.
--[X] Encouraging its Host to feel the same emotional reward from joining, working with, or acquiring allied units as the Host does from combat.

I'll agree with [Shift] learning to cooperate. Especially since it got so much Tinker information, want to see if it could up those return past its Breaker ones. And getting more information from [Charge]. We're kind of going full Diagnostics here, like a good Administrator should, and I support that, have a few additions. After all, [Gaea] seems pretty outgoing, she might have a long list of addresses. And she'll have [Shaper], which we got corrupted from [Charge]. There's no way that will help us figure any other addresses out, but it might give some extra data towards working out what is wrong with [Charge]. Also, if we 'fix' our local broken double-shard by making it more like us and [Gaea], we'll be well on our way to forging a small cabal of sapient, human-acting Shards.

[X] Continue Current Research.
[X] Communicate with [Gaea]
-[X] Request detailed logs from [Gaea] from the times where she did not gain info when she thought she would and from the times she gained info unexpectedly.
-[X] "You should hold off on Second-Triggering your host for now. Depending on what the problem is, it might not help your info collection efforts. I'm going to try and figure out the pattern behind when you collect info. Maybe you can increase the revenue from the unknown source."
-[X] "I'm actually gearing up to research the nature of data generation and collection through conflict and hopefully new methods. The hosts have given me new ideas."

[X] Contact Charge
-[X] Reaffirm that you are Administrator and ask for its status.

[X] Contact Emote
-[X] Ask for its status and for all addresses it has.

[X] Contact Shift
-[X] Reaffirm that it did well in keeping the info sorted and offer to sort any new info it gets.

[X] Send a command to [Shift]
-[X] Instruct Shift to enhance data collection by
--[X] Nullify the satisfaction yield from conflict with no goals.
--[X] Encouraging its Host to feel the same emotional reward from joining, working with, or acquiring allied units as the Host does from combat.
--[X] Increase satisfaction yield for each of the following criteria:
---[X] Conflict improves Host's resources or allied units resources.
---[X] Conflict has no loss of permanent resources to Host or allied units.
---[X] Conflict preserves the ability of all participating Hosts to participate in future conflicts.

[X] Do not contact Negotiator.

[X] Communicate with [Gaea]
-[X] Request detailed logs from [Gaea] from the times where she did not gain info when she thought she would and from the times she gained info unexpectedly.
-[X] "You should hold off on Second-Triggering your host for now. Depending on what the problem is, it might not help your info collection efforts. I'm going to try and figure out the pattern behind when you collect info. Maybe you can increase the revenue from the unknown source."
-[X] Request list of contact addresses, has she noticed [Charge] seems to have issues? Attempting to run Diagnostics on that Shard, could use any information she has, if she's run into other Shards like that.

[X] Contact Charge
-[X] Reaffirm that you are Administrator and ask for its status.
-[X] Request full diagnostics report, list of errors.

[X] Contact Emote
-[X] Ask for its status and for all addresses it has.

[X] Send a command to [Shift]
-[X] Instruct Shift to enhance data collection by
--[X] Nullify the satisfaction yield from conflict with no goals.
--[X] Encouraging its Host to feel the same emotional reward from joining, working with, or acquiring allied units as the Host does from combat.

[X] Continue Current Research.

[X] Communicate with [Gaea]
-[X] Request detailed logs from [Gaea] from the events of [Emote] and [Telekinetic]'s assistance.(we know this OOC, but not IC, this is just to close the gap).
-[X] "It seems your Host is exclusively focused upon remedial efforts, which [Emote] and [Telekinetic]'s assistance has only reinforced, as their Hosts will damage the humans excessively before your Host repairs things back to the median. A Second Trigger would not pay out for the data invested under this mentality."
-[X] "Based on observation, your Host is withholding offensive applications of her ability out of a desire to remain in good relations with her adoptive family. There are several ways to approach this that won't lead to a broken Host:"
--[X] "Cooperate with [Telekinetic], encourage their Host to take yours to acquire alcohol or other inhibition lowering substances in a group with their peers, I believe [Telekinetic]'s Host already has some interest in such events. Then while in the impaired state, make it much easier to use their ability, and provide subtle assistance to ensure that any power use results in their peer group becoming modified towards their stated preferences, but no more visible than a 10% deviation from their prior state, and no deviation from the bounds of unmodified humans to avoid alarm. This should put your Host's resolve to do nothing but undo damage to the test, as well as propagate general awareness of this ability, after which it will be more difficult for your Host to refrain with group requests."
--[X] "If encouragement to use ability fails, then instead collaborate with your Hosts' peers' shards to increase periods of isolation, through distraction. From there it should be possible to place your Host in a position where she has a social imperative to protect another from harm, when she cannot offload the combat to other parties. This would take some time to setup properly however, I'd need to improve surveillance information to make such an event plausible. Tell me if the first method fails first."

[X] Send a command to [Shift]
-[X] Instruct Shift to enhance data collection by
--[X] Nullify the satisfaction yield from conflict with no goals.
--[X] Encouraging its Host to feel the same emotional reward from joining, working with, or acquiring allied units as the Host does from combat.
--[X] Increase satisfaction yield for each of the following criteria:
---[X] Conflict improves Host's resources or allied units resources.
---[X] Conflict has no loss of permanent resources to Host or allied units.
---[X] Conflict preserves the ability of all participating Hosts to participate in future conflicts.

Guys I think you are all over reacting on Negotiator, we have zero aberrance right now. As Vhal has said earlier in the thread Scion could scan us and would likely not get anything out of ordinary, other than not having all our restrictions and he might not even care enough to reapply them. So I really doubt we would be in any real danger of Negotiator figuring us out and tattling.

That's fair. It's that Negotiator and Shaper never got back to Gaea when she seems so naive that makes me distrust them. They didn't follow through. Shard politics maybe?

Ducats said:

So I really doubt we would be in any real danger of Negotiator figuring us out and tattling.

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Scion could scan us, but be too depressed to notice our lack of restrictions. Negotiator could notice something is up, figure out we're not properly restricted, and flag us for Scion, who would probably re-apply the restrictions. That would be "a huge PITA," and make us work a lot harder on some goals.

Vhalidictes said:

In fact, Sapient Shards are a danger in a different way, because even if your Aberration score isn't high enough to flag any vague warnings, they could notice from your words or deeds that you aren't restricted properly, and this will cause tons of concern. After all, you're a Core Shard with lots of command keys.

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Now, we could probably bribe Negotiator with some favor if need be, but we'd really prefer to hopefully have some way to generate data outside of combat first to bribe it with instead. I'm less worried about [Negotiator], and more worried about how high she could drive the price of silence. Their name is Negotiator, after all.

Hmm. If we teach [Gaea] Dream Master, could we work with it to both work on Human Biology and Stabilize Trigger (Human), and also use that as an opportunity to have Panacea dream-learn those? After all, a lot of her worry about messing with brains is not knowing what she's doing. If we find a way to give her more neuroscience knowledge than Aleph and Bet have combined, and let her see that, do you think she'd be more confident in making some small attempts at working with brains?

Also I'm just interested if we can get [Gaea] to help share costs on Basic and Advanced Host Modification (Human) with that plan. Gets some help on the Research rolls, lower our own data costs, and if we kick up Dream Sims by then maybe have Panacea work on some stuff to try and kick up data as well? Plus, I'd really like to see Panacea make the BBPD go beyond human limits to artificial low-level Brutes. I wonder how Cauldron would feel if Panacea basically became the Parahuman feudal lord of Brockton Bay, but maintained US law and order?

Gino said:

That's fair. It's that Negotiator and Shaper never got back to Gaea when she seems so naive that makes me distrust them. They didn't follow through. Shard politics maybe?

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I think it has to do with the death of Eden, I believe that they know that this is the end of the line so they don't say anything. Another potential avenue is that Gaea is sudden for failing to get their host to do anything.

The_GrandMage said:

Now, we could probably bribe Negotiator with some favor if need be, but we'd really prefer to hopefully have some way to generate data outside of combat first to bribe it with instead. I'm less worried about [Negotiator], and more worried about how high she could drive the price of silence. Their name is Negotiator, after all.

Hmm. If we teach [Gaea] Dream Master, could we work with it to both work on Human Biology and Stabilize Trigger (Human), and also use that as an opportunity to have Panacea dream-learn those? After all, a lot of her worry about messing with brains is not knowing what she's doing. If we find a way to give her more neuroscience knowledge than Aleph and Bet have combined, and let her see that, do you think she's be more confident in making some small attempts at working with brains?

Also I'm just interested if we can get [Gaea] to help share costs on Basic and Advanced Host Modification (Human) in the same way. Gets some help on the Research rolls, lower our own data costs, and if we kick up Dream Sims by then maybe have Panacea work on some stuff to kick up data as well? Plus, I'd really like to see Panacea make the BBPD go beyond human limits to artificial low-level Brutes. I wonder how Cauldron would feel if Panacea basically became the Parahuman feudal lord of Brockton Bay, but maintained US law and order?

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That's fair and if we get Gaea on our side we might be able to provide an unspoken threat against Negotiator, which will probably be a better scenario than her threatening to tattle (and personally that would put them on the list of shards to be eaten after getting some weapons), we should be able to get our weapon online in a turn or two, then we can safely go to Negotiator knowing that we can take them.

Though I would still implore people to vote for talking to Optimize instead of Emote, since Optimize has a lot more addresses and ones of higher value.

Ducats said:

Though I would still implore people to vote for talking to Optimize instead of Emote, since Optimize has a lot more addresses and ones of higher value.

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We could just do both. Personally, I want to talk to Emote to see if we can run similarities between Charge and them and work out a plan of fixing them. Optimize has a lot of high-end contacts, true, and will be helpful for when we start shopping around things, like a way to patch Cauldron Shards to be less broken/corrupted, or some non-conflict means of data production.

. . . If we can get a hold of the necessary Command Codes, could we use our unrestricted state to lift or work-around PtV's restrictions and allow Contessa to Path for Scion defeat?

The_GrandMage said:

. . . If we can get a hold of the necessary Command Codes, could we use our unrestricted state of lift or work-around PtV's restrictions and allow Contessa to Path for Scion defeat?

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She would probably kill us if we do that, it is just better to consume PtV and use it for ourself or even better, find the precognition shard that Abbadon gave Eden since it was so good that Eden just threw away PtV like yesterday's garbage.

The_GrandMage said:

Hmm. If we teach [Gaea] Dream Master, could we work with it to both work on Human Biology and Stabilize Trigger (Human), and also use that as an opportunity to have Panacea dream-learn those? After all, a lot of her worry about messing with brains is not knowing what she's doing. If we find a way to give her more neuroscience knowledge than Aleph and Bet have combined, and let her see that, do you think she'd be more confident in making some small attempts at working with brains?

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I'm the QM so my participation is limited. That said, [Administrator] is smarter than everyone in this thread, combined, so I can help take thoughts to logical conclusions.

There's a problem with this very good idea - Amy Dallon is not and never will be intelligent enough to "dream-learn" "all about Human brains". The subject is simply too broad. And even if she somehow does manage to get all of that knowledge, she's not enough of a multitasker to really, truly, "design neural tissue in such detail that thoughts can be modified".

At least, not by herself. She could, maybe, learn to do it by leaning on [Gaea]... but that's a Trust issue that she's already dealing with an aspect of.

EDIT: I'm not at all saying that you can't get Amy there, you just have to get, well, creative. And that part I can't at all help with.

Ducats said:

She would probably kill us if we do that, it is just better to consume PtV and use it for ourself or even better, find the precognition shard that Abbadon gave Eden since it was so good that Eden just threw away PtV like yesterday's garbage.

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Everyone, normally I wouldn't do this, but since I already mentioned this in an earlier post, if you Eat Dinah's Shard, Eat Negotiator, and Eat Coil's Shard, you would be probably better than (Abaddon-Eden's) PtV. You would also effectively be [Zion]'s PtV Shard for what that's worth (negotiations?)

You could use it for yourself, Trigger a Host with it, or both. Note: This is not the only viable combination with Shards, just the easiest/most available.

Recipe for PtV:
Precog Shard.
Pericog Shard, Postcog Shard, or both. (Both is best)
Massive Multitasking Shard (Not needed, this is You)

Note: doing the above is not a Good End in and of itself, and massively increases rather a lot of problems. It is, however, a decent "hail mary" move.

Vhalidictes said:

There's a problem with this very good idea - Amy Dallon is not and never will be intelligent enough to "dream-learn" "all about Human brains". The subject is simply too broad. And even if she somehow does manage to get all of that knowledge, she's not enough of a multitasker to really, truly, "design neural tissue in such detail that thoughts can be modified".

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Fair play, but I wasn't really expecting that. I was hoping more, "Enough knowledge to qualify as a Neurosurgeon and write a few ground-breaking papers" and her willingness to work with brains be on par with what medical doctors could do without her powers. IE, she won't do something medical science couldn't, but will be willing to do what it could using her powers instead of. . . what do neurosurgeons use? Some sort of robot-assisted micro-scalpel?

I was, granted, hoping we might be able to get her beyond the basics courses and into advanced stuff, but never really wanted Panacea to be able to modify thoughts. Down that rabbit hole is Villain Panacea, and our Hosts's life expectancy drops like Armsmaster's chances of noticing subtle flirting.

The_GrandMage said:

I was, granted, hoping we might be able to get her beyond the basics courses and into advanced stuff, but never really wanted Panacea to be able to modify thoughts. Down that rabbit hole is Villain Panacea, and our Hosts's life expectancy drops like Armsmaster's chances of noticing subtle flirting.

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That's not really what I was getting at, but it's a good thought.

It's a shame we couldn't teach Amy a way to backup/restore memories and personality so she's feel more confident about making changes without as many consequences.

EDIT: You know... maybe figuring out how to copy Host minds into their Shards (or some kind of merger) would be Researchable? I guess you'll have to learn something about that process anyways if you ever end up doing that "humanoid Avatar" quest...

Hmm. I mean, she could always just make the person she's working on have a second brain that's an exact copy of the first one. But then you get into weird ethical dilemmas of "Is that a person or not, am I killing someone by removing the second brain when done?"

Silly humans. I'd suggest just shifting biomass from the appendix and other things that could be short-term cannibalized and making a secondary portion of neural tissue to reroute neural activity from the section she wants to work on and test things there before making permanent changes to the brain, but I'm not a neurosurgeon, and have no idea how chemical reactions and comparative distance work in the brain so that might be a suggestion full of pseudo-scientific sounding nonsense.

Quite frankly I'd like to work with Amy to do something, but my knowledge of hard sciences are laughable. I'ma sit in my Liberal Arts corner and hope someone smarter than this aspect of Administrator (that I am) has some ideas on it.

veekie said:

[X] Send a command to [Shift]
-[X] Instruct Shift to enhance data collection by
--[X] Nullify the satisfaction yield from conflict with no goals.
--[X] Encouraging its Host to feel the same emotional reward from joining, working with, or acquiring allied units as the Host does from combat.
--[X] Increase satisfaction yield for each of the following criteria:
---[X] Conflict improves Host's resources or allied units resources.
---[X] Conflict has no loss of permanent resources to Host or allied units.
---[X] Conflict preserves the ability of all participating Hosts to participate in future conflicts.

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I like this but where's the praise/petting shift had earned?

Mount. Elements said:

[X] Contact Shift
-[X] Reaffirm that it did well in keeping the info sorted and offer to sort any new info it gets.

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Here it is!

Ducats said:

Guys I think you are all over reacting on Negotiator, we have zero aberrance right now. As Vhal has said earlier in the thread Scion could scan us and would likely not get anything out of ordinary, other than not having all our restrictions and he might not even care enough to reapply them. So I really doubt we would be in any real danger of Negotiato

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Good thing we kept it low.

In regards to negotiator possibly figuring out we aren't restricted and reporting us to scion... I would like to point out that any intelligent shard could do that. While it is a reasonable concern it is functionally crippling paranoia to worry about it.

Power list updated. Btw if I missed a suggestion feel free to let me know.

[x] Look into some of your older memories, regarding [Gaia's] question. If [Negotiator] didn't answer her, then it seems like there really is some kind of taboo around it... best not to be caught unawares.

Vhalidictes said:

Well, assuming that you master, that is, really, truly, deeply understand both Earth biology and the Triggering process...

You could potentially Trigger insects. They wouldn't have much bandwidth each, but... you could do it.

This is the kind of thing, as a QM here, that gives me panic attacks. But technically you could arrange for that kind of nightmare. Especially with Amy's help for bigger buggy brains.

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If we don't apply any self-biokinesis or something that drastically changes biology, creating bigger insects and other small animals of this type would... kill them. Straight up. Why? Because there is not enough oxygen in todays era for bigger insects to function with the inefficient compared for example to birds or mammals respiratory systems.

More details on the subject here. So if we wanted to creat a power similar to Bitch with insects, then it must drastically change how biology function for those bugs. Otherwise they will literally suffocate. Space Whale Bullshit can easily remedy it, but if it would be simply some sort of mix between Master Insect Power and Size Growing, then it would be possibly a power which host wouldn't be able to use pretty much at all x_X.

Gino said:

Don't know if you saw red, but I made huge list of possible research a bit ago. Don't really expect to get to DC and Marvel, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

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Alternate Earth is more then enough. Personally I would find it VERY interesting to roleplay for example medieval peasant on some random Earth and make him A Ruler of Earth. Creating our own society of parahumans is a FASCINATING subject. How much it would affect humanity so early in timeline? Worm reality has an ABSURD amount of different Earths to play with. Or how it would evolution start if you introduced shards in prehistoric animals and we create our own version of Ape Planet. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

But even access to low level realities which are other Earths like Black Lagoon sounds fun. Suddenly powers there would make potential bloodbaths even worse.

Gino said:

Let's avoid precognition please. Bare minimum like danger sense, Coil and Dinah are ok. Befriending Ziz is obviously my thing. Halping Quest! Is once again a wonderful example of what not to do, it takes away all our agency. Unsanity even admitted it was a mistake.

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I agree with this and I remember what happened in Halping Quest! as well. It may work if it is absolutely basic and I would prefer to avoid it anyway. Unless it would be based on some fun VERY limited gimmick like Tarot Cards. This one would be fun IMO.

Mount. Elements said:

Maybe we should try for Coil's address? He's actually in a pretty good position for Shard consuming since he's not part of a cape team, doesn't have a change in appearance, and is a contractor but not a member of the PRT. The only downside is that I'm not sure how closely Cauldron is watching him.

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Cauldron would learn about it. Later on? Possibly? Soon? I wouldn't do it.

Mount. Elements said:

I also remember reading once that Skidmark is a Cauldron cape, but I'm not sure if it's fanon or canon. If he is, he's also a good possibility since I don't think the Merchants are an actual gang at this point. Hopefully, we can get one of the Protectorate Shards to give us a bunch of villain addresses since Shift didn't have many of them.

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This is first time I hear about Skidmark being Cauldron Cape. There isn't enough information for it, but from what I remember Shatterbird was create artificially and she had no idea about it, which could make it an option? Sounds interesting as a part of their 'experiment' if they fed him vial without his knowledge. But I think he is natural, the 'environment' he lifes in sounds like an easy place to receive natural trigger.

Gino said:

Don't think aegis or victor are eden, but I'm pretty sure Alabaster is. And Trainwreck. Accord is the only ambassador who's natural.
Weld, and Hunch are in Boston. Don't know where Gully is, Sveta and some others in the asylum. The travelers of course, soon to be in Boston
The triumvirate of course, Siberian, Shatterbird

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Gully is part of San Diego Wards. Epoch from Adepts (New York) is confirmed Cauldron Cape.

Satyrical from Las Vegas received powers from Cauldron.

I would need to check more later on.

Gino said:

Man it would be a dick move to just depower the big three out of nowhere. Someone is totally going to vote for that.

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That would be an... interesting scenario, but not really a good idea.

Gino said:

Yeah they do have access to vials, they made Scrub after all.

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Scrub is natural trigger, although situation was so bad that he triggered in the first place, so it may be said that they 'made' Scrub.

Merchants picked up vials which they found as some rich guys purchased them, but they died in Leviathan attack and Merchants found those vials. It would be interesting if one of our hosts found those earlier as I'm curious how it will look from mechanical point of view.