Magical Girl Flesh Horror~!

[x] plan: MG Scarlet's Genesis

[x] plan: MG Scarlet's Genesis

Nyarky said:

Stalwart is actually playing this role there, it is about being sure of ourself and more clear in what we want out of this. I also personally dislike *cold* social words (ones like analytical), and prefer *warm* ones (trustworthy, friendly, and others like them), but I am willing to replace Doppelganger by one of those, even if there will also be others on our side, there will be more people in general. Hence: Empathetic, to read the mood and steer it.

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Ah, I think the Keyord system led to a small misunderstanding here. I didn't intent analytical to be a proposed keyword, more a direction on the spectrum 'Understanding others so you have more info to use in persuasion' vs 'Be better at convincing others with what info you have'. Example: Perceptive vs Persuasive, Lie Detector vs Trustworthy, Etc.

Empathetic seems like a good pick, and Stalwart should keep Scarlet from being swept away in others emotions.

[x] plan: MG Scarlet's Genesis

Okay I'm going to suggest a bit of a different approach.
First I would rather not recycle the Alibi Spy. For just 2 biomass we can keep up patrolling our street and get 2 biomass per turn as well as keeping updated on local going ons. Assigning the Super spy to it is inefficient because the super spy currently has a large number of other keywords. So I would rather continue to use the super spy as our "magical girl" body.
(Also the continuity of our first asset still going out and adventuring rather then being retired is pleasing to me.)

Also the current plans don't give the "Scarlet Flesh" asset the "Disguise" keyword, so I'm worried they may be too bio-horror-y. Hidden Features seems to be more about hiding a personal identity then hiding bio-horror-ness. And we really really don't want suspicions of bio-horror-ness. Best to keep at least a veneer of it just being weird magic for now.

The Necroshroom on the other hand I would like to recycle. It's not useful until we make a connection to the sewers, and sounds like a better job for a new asset rather then trying to get the Necroshroom to do it.

[X] Plan: Stone Shaper
-[x] Recycle Trustworthy from Alibi Spy
-[x] Recycle Necroshroom
-[X] Add Trustworthy, Empathetic, Magical Girl to Super Spy
-[x] Add Refresh (Snake Skin) to Super Spy
-[X] Create an asset (Secret Architect): Stone Shaper, Engineer, High Precision, Artificer
-[x] Use Assets:
--[x] Secret Architect: Build secret doors connecting Your Tunnels to other locations. Start with one to The Sewer first, and the connection point to Your Building second.
--[x] Super Spy: Meet the Alliance on Snapps roof
--[x] Alibi Spy: Patrol Your Street
--[x] Underground Ghost: Explore the armory

So rather then just tunneling to the sewer we can make a secret door. Just in case someone comes through the portal and looks around. Maybe do some other refurbishment of our tunnels too. Stone Shaper to do the work. Engineer to make a good design, High Precision so the door and mechanisms are exact and seamless.


Meanwhile the Super Spy gets some more keywords and goes to the meeting. Trustworthy seems like the perfect word for the meeting. It's description last update was:

TheMaskedReader said:

you sing a small song of calm and openness into your new self. People will be able to tell that your intentions are good (Trustworthy), which should help in smoothing over any differences.

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We are going to be asking for a lot of trust so letting them tell that we are being genuine should help smooth over a lot of friction. Considering Patty was throwing around an authority aura I feel a bit of being supernaturally open with our intentions is totally fair. Empathetic because it could also be helpful, and Fluid flesh just to try it out.

Mage because we are going to be meeting a bunch of magical girls, each presumably with their own bits of magic. Patty's authority aura tripped us up this turn, so having a better understanding of magic should help us avoid similar problems with her teammates.

Tentacle Skirt seemed unnecessary because well, we already have tentacles whenever we want. We have used them plenty before. I figure it is just something all our assets get because of our core's Magical Biohorror keyword.

Edit: Changed a few keywords.

[X] Plan: Stone Shaper

JayTar said:

Okay I'm going to suggest a bit of a different approach.
First I would rather not recycle the Alibi Spy. For just 2 biomass we can keep up patrolling our street and get 2 biomass per turn as well as keeping updated on local going ons. Assigning the Super spy to it is inefficient because the super spy currently has a large number of other keywords. So I would rather continue to use the super spy as our "magical girl" body.
(Also the continuity of our first asset still going out and adventuring rather then being retired is pleasing to me.)

Also the current plans don't give the "Scarlet Flesh" asset the "Disguise" keyword, so I'm worried they may be too bio-horror-y. Hidden Features seems to be more about hiding a personal identity then hiding bio-horror-ness. And we really really don't want suspicions of bio-horror-ness. Best to keep at least a veneer of it just being weird magic for now.

The Necroshroom on the other hand I would like to recycle. It's not useful until we make a connection to the sewers, and sounds like a better job for a new asset rather then trying to get the Necroshroom to do it.

[] Plan: Stone Shaper
-[x] Recycle Trustworthy from Alibi Spy
-[x] Recycle Necroshroom
-[x] Add Trustworthy, Empathetic, Fluid flesh, Mage to Super Spy
-[x] Add Refresh (Snake Skin) to Super Spy
-[x] Create an asset (Secret Architect): Stone Shaper, Engineer, High Precision
-[x] Use Assets:
--[x] Secret Architect: Build secret doors connecting Your Tunnels to other locations. Start with one to The Sewer first, and the connection point to Your Building second.
--[x] Super Spy: Meet the Alliance on Snapps roof
--[x] Alibi Spy: Patrol Your Street
--[x] Underground Ghost: Explore the armory

So rather then just tunneling to the sewer we can make a secret door. Just in case someone comes through the portal and looks around. Maybe do some other refurbishment of our tunnels too. Stone Shaper to do the work. Engineer to make a good design, High Precision so the door and mechanisms are exact and seamless.


Meanwhile the Super Spy gets some more keywords and goes to the meeting. Trustworthy seems like the perfect word for the meeting. It's description last update was:

We are going to be asking for a lot of trust so letting them tell that we are being genuine should help smooth over a lot of friction. Considering Patty was throwing around an authority aura I feel a bit of being supernaturally open with our intentions is totally fair. Empathetic because it could also be helpful, and Fluid flesh just to try it out.

Mage because we are going to be meeting a bunch of magical girls, each presumably with their own bits of magic. Patty's authority aura tripped us up this turn, so having a better understanding of magic should help us avoid similar problems with her teammates.

Tentacle Skirt seemed unnecessary because well, we already have tentacles whenever we want. We have used them plenty before. I figure it is just something all our assets get because of our core's Magical Biohorror keyword.

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Why mage vs magical girl? Need to go out as an mg in the next few days so it will need to be added soon anyhow.

Re flesh horror/disguise, we have cute and likable from our base self, so those will do a bit of the work of trustworthy. In my mind disguise was to pass off as a run of the mill human. In this case the scarlet flesh represents a transformed magical girl, so some amount of theming/unnaturalness makes sense. I feel like being upfront about it makes it so that it can't be something held over us later if it's revealed that we're flesh-horrory in a way not of our choosing.

Finally, I do like where you're going with the tunneling n such. I'm wondering it's worthwhile if we're planning on occupying the entire area in a turn or two anyway though?

Anti magic or unaffected could help

JayTar said:

Tentacle Skirt seemed unnecessary because well, we already have tentacles whenever we want. We have used them plenty before. I figure it is just something all our assets get because of our core's Magical Biohorror keyword.

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This is correct. It can be generally assumed that, as needed by the asset/moment, you have mouths, tentacles, teeth, etc etc, in various unconventional places, or things which can be used as those. After all, when your relationship with flesh is akin to that of a sculptor with clay, it's not like you can't make an arm stretch a little further when you don't have to care about needing to heal up your bones and joints after the fact. Scarlet's savvy like that!

TheMaskedReader said:

it's not like you can't make an arm stretch a little further

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Fair enough, but we still need arms to stretch out, right? If we have a skirt made of tentacles thats another four or so limbs to do things with on top of what we can mould from our existing 4 from the humanoid bodyplan.

Piling additional biomass onto one unit certainly won't hurt, but isn't strictly necessary.

You could just as easily just add the 'hidden appendages' or 'tendril fighter' or such keywords to a unit directly.

Eater said:

Why mage vs magical girl? Need to go out as an mg in the next few days so it will need to be added soon anyhow.

Re flesh horror/disguise, we have cute and likable from our base self, so those will do a bit of the work of trustworthy. In my mind disguise was to pass off as a run of the mill human. In this case the scarlet flesh represents a transformed magical girl, so some amount of theming/unnaturalness makes sense. I feel like being upfront about it makes it so that it can't be something held over us later if it's revealed that we're flesh-horrory in a way not of our choosing.

Finally, I do like where you're going with the tunneling n such. I'm wondering it's worthwhile if we're planning on occupying the entire area in a turn or two anyway though?

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Mage vs magical girl mostly because we have used mage before. That said on reflection I would be willing to change it. Having the "magical girl" keyword for a meeting of magical girls seems useful, just to see what it does if nothing else.

What do people think about swapping Mage for Magical Girl? Or maybe drop Fluid Flesh for Magical Girl instead?

Cute and likable are helpful, but trustworthy I feel will really help because well, we are asking for them to take a bunch of stuff on trust. Like trust that we can heal people. And trust that we aren't going to be grabbing Sabrina and running. I suppose it's not essential, but it feels like it would help.
Disguise, well I feel that we should make sure there is just a little bit of "run of the mill human" in any of our person-forms. Mostly because I don't really trust Scarlet's atheistic senses. Without something like disguise to moderate things a bit we are probably going to scare people by just looking too alien. Maybe slowly ease people into our otherness slowly. Even with disguise I expect enough unnaturalness will be leaking through to stay on theme.

As for architect stuff, I think it's worth it. If we can get better security or stealth by manipulating inorganic material then that saves us more biomass to put into other things. Plus we still don't know what is up with that sewer portal so having an open connection to our tunnels feels like a (small) security hole.

Eater said:

Fair enough, but we still need arms to stretch out, right? If we have a skirt made of tentacles thats another four or so limbs to do things with on top of what we can mould from our existing 4 from the humanoid bodyplan.

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Sure - Additional biomass and keywords are always going to give you more to work with, same with synergistic combos and the usage of your keywords in your tactics/write-ins. Remember - I am pretty much always going to reward being creative and experimenting with your keywords!

JayTar said:

Mage vs magical girl mostly because we have used mage before. That said on reflection I would be willing to change it. Having the "magical girl" keyword for a meeting of magical girls seems useful, just to see what it does if nothing else.

What do people think about swapping Mage for Magical Girl? Or maybe drop Fluid Flesh for Magical Girl instead?

Cute and likable are helpful, but trustworthy I feel will really help because well, we are asking for them to take a bunch of stuff on trust. Like trust that we can heal people. And trust that we aren't going to be grabbing Sabrina and running. I suppose it's not essential, but it feels like it would help.
Disguise, well I feel that we should make sure there is just a little bit of "run of the mill human" in any of our person-forms. Mostly because I don't really trust Scarlet's atheistic senses. Without something like disguise to moderate things a bit we are probably going to scare people by just looking too alien. Maybe slowly ease people into our otherness slowly. Even with disguise I expect enough unnaturalness will be leaking through to stay on theme.

As for architect stuff, I think it's worth it. If we can get better security or stealth by manipulating inorganic material then that saves us more biomass to put into other things. Plus we still don't know what is up with that sewer portal so having an open connection to our tunnels feels like a (small) security hole.

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You have me convinced wrt the architect, I think that's a good idea. I'm going to stick by my earlier stance that we should keep Super Spy away from the action for fear of loosing that chunk o soul stuck to it. I quite like having a second capable asset that we can have around to do things while our primary magical girl asset is doing things, so I don't really see it as a waste to leave super spy with its current capabilities. If someone stumbles on our apartment and our main body, for instance, Super Spy is on hand to notice and respond when patrolling our street.

I've put together another iteration on Scarlet's Genesis:
[x] plan: MG Scarlet's Genesis v2
-[x] Modify Assets
—[x] Super Spy: remove stalwart and fast. Add perceptive
-[x] Recycle Assets: Alibi Spy, Necroshroom
-[x] Create Assets:
--[x] 'the Scarlet Flesh' with: Magical Girl, Hidden Features, Tentacle Skirt, Fluid Flesh, Stalwart, Empathetic, Trustworthy, Refresh (snakeskin)
--[x] 'Stoneworm' with: tunneler, stone shaper, earthworm
-[x] Use Assets
—[x] Super Spy: Patrol Your Street
—[x] the Scarlet Flesh: Meet the Alliance on Snapps roof
—[x] Underground Ghost: explore the armory
—[x] Stoneworm: expand the tunnels to connect to every area underground, making the entrances to each area hidden in corners or behind furniture, with several switchbacks so it isn't clear how far the tunnel goes. Additionally, make the new tunnels no wider than three rats need to pass one another. Start with access to the sewers.

This slightly modifies JayTar's tunneling concept, relying on the underground aspect of the area for concealment more so than engineering, as well as the size constraints; we and the rats should be the only things which can traverse these tunnels easily. I figured three rats wide lets us fill a third of the tunnel with a flesh conduit of some sort, once we spread into the area and still lets any potential rat friends/ flexible assets use them. For the hidden entrances, we can go back later to put in hatches and the like later if we want; this is likely to be a multi turn project anyway.

To top it off, I added Trustworthy and Refresh to the Scarlet Flesh because JayTar's right, social keywords have been very useful.

Eater said:

You have me convinced wrt the architect, I think that's a good idea. I'm going to stick by my earlier stance that we should keep Super Spy away from the action for fear of loosing that chunk o soul stuck to it. I quite like having a second capable asset that we can have around to do things while our primary magical girl asset is doing things, so I don't really see it as a waste to leave super spy with its current capabilities. If someone stumbles on our apartment and our main body, for instance, Super Spy is on hand to notice and respond when patrolling our street.

I've put together another iteration on Scarlet's Genesis:
[x] plan: MG Scarlet's Genesis v2
-[x] Modify Assets
—[x] Super Spy: remove stalwart and fast. Add perceptive
-[x] Recycle Assets: Alibi Spy, Necroshroom
-[x] Create Assets:
--[x] 'the Scarlet Flesh' with: Magical Girl, Hidden Features, Tentacle Skirt, Fluid Flesh, Stalwart, Empathetic, Trustworthy, Refresh (snakeskin)
--[x] 'Stoneworm' with: tunneler, stone shaper, earthworm
-[x] Use Assets
—[x] Super Spy: Patrol Your Street
—[x] the Scarlet Flesh: Meet the Alliance on Snapps roof
—[x] Underground Ghost: explore the armory
—[x] Stoneworm: expand the tunnels to connect to every area underground, making the entrances to each area hidden in corners or behind furniture, with several switchbacks so it isn't clear how far the tunnel goes. Additionally, make the new tunnels no wider than three rats need to pass one another. Start with access to the sewers.

This slightly modifies JayTar's tunneling concept, relying on the underground aspect of the area for concealment more so than engineering, as well as the size constraints; we and the rats should be the only things which can traverse these tunnels easily. I figured three rats wide lets us fill a third of the tunnel with a flesh conduit of some sort, once we spread into the area and still lets any potential rat friends/ flexible assets use them. For the hidden entrances, we can go back later to put in hatches and the like later if we want; this is likely to be a multi turn project anyway.

To top it off, I added Trustworthy and Refresh to the Scarlet Flesh because JayTar's right, social keywords have been very useful.

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Mmm. I still prefer the idea of having the Super Spy out and doing things. The idea of "retiring" it on the back line just feels sad to me.
Plus the faint soul may come useful in some circumstance. But we won't ever know if we keep the super spy back.
No matter what happens though I don't expect losing the Super spy will hurt us. Whatever bit of soul is in it is disconnected from us. We won't be any worse off then we currently are.
(Plus with all the keywords that will be on it I expect actually killing the super spy would be really hard. Worst case if there is a really dangerous mission we can keep the super spy back. But the meeting with the rooftop alliance should be fine.)

Now as for the tunneling, hmm, I don't know. Having hidden tunnels to each location does seem like a good idea, but a sudden hole in solid rock would be a bit suspicious. Someone with the right magic might be able to trace them once they know they exist. Do we really need tunnels into people's basements or like?

Honestly a good part of why I wanted the Secret Architect was to experiment with doing more engineering-y stuff. We already know we can make tunnels, but being able to make mechanisms and like would open up interesting options. Like instead of only spending biomass on powers for our Magical Girl self, we could make gadgets and devices. Or build traps for defense. Stuff like that. Our ability to cheat on tech levels is one of our advantages after all. And we might be able to mix magic in too.


Anyway, FYI to everyone I'll be making the following changes to my plan "[] Plan: Stone Shaper"
-[] Add Trustworthy, Empathetic, Fluid flesh, Mage to Super Spy
=>
-[] Add Trustworthy, Empathetic, Magical Girl to Super Spy


-[] Create an asset (Secret Architect): Stone Shaper, Engineer, High Precision
=>
-[] Create an asset (Secret Architect): Stone Shaper, Engineer, High Precision, Artificer

We have seen various examples of enchanted objects, magitech and the like. Herman's glasses, the sewer portal, the soul machines, etc. I want to get in on that.

JayTar said:

Also the current plans don't give the "Scarlet Flesh" asset the "Disguise" keyword, so I'm worried they may be too bio-horror-y.

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JayTar said:

Mostly because I don't really trust Scarlet's atheistic senses.

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Meanwhile, what I want:

JayTar said:

The idea of "retiring" it on the back line just feels sad to me.

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On the one hand, I do consider Super Spy our *true* body.

On the other hand, I fear that the faint soul could lead to it becoming a daughteru and my instincts are screaming *PROTTEC DAUGHTERU*

On the third tentacle, see the pic above.

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Changing vote, to keep super spy as our main:

[x] Plan: Stone Shaper

Meh. I'd rather use super spy as a spy, to do our non public facing work, rather than our MG work. If we have two assets specializing in each activity i think that's better long term. The majority of what we're going to be doing is probably not public MG stuff all the time, so I don't really see this as putting Super Spy on the back shelf at all.

Or, if we are going to make Super Spy our main MG asset, could we change the name to something that more appropriately fit its current role?

Super Spy has not been a spy for quite some time, it is our first asset and has evolved quite a lot since then, but I love how the name is not a good indicator now, and I have no intentions of ever changing it, let it stay, there but everchanging with the circumstances, a testament to how fluid we are.

[X] Plan: Stone Shaper

Gathering info, participating in a daily routine, performing infiltrations of hostile environments are all spy things, so I'd say it has been doing spy stuff all this time. Just a name so I'll deal with it sticking in my craw if y'all are attached to it, no big.

Eater said:

Gathering info, participating in a daily routine, performing infiltrations of hostile environments are all spy things, so I'd say it has been doing spy stuff all this time.

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It's sort of true sort of not?

Part of it is the way it's seen, a spy does it to infiltrate, and that is indeed Part of why Super-Spy had the name and kept it at first, though it also was partially a joke when it was just our first scout asset, made to *infiltrate* our apartment.

Then we met Sabrina, gave it the Doll, and the act became genuine, it is no longer spying, Super-Spy is more of an avatar than a spy nowadays, but the name stuck because it also is the only asset we never completely recycled, and thus never gave a new name.

Edit:

Well, never completely recycled in one go, at least, I am pretty sure that every keyword except false humanoid has been changed at least once by now, as we refined our standard kit and got new objectives.

Hmmmm, on one hand, the MG plan is like the one that I proposed a while ago and I really like the keywords it has. On the other hand, stone shaper has a lot of long-term benefits and lets us keep SS as our main, which I've kinda started to become attached to.
...
Eh, we could probably wait a little longer to make our MG asset, get some more biomass and think of good keywords.
[x] Plan: Stone Shaper
I really like the ideas you had for the MG asset though, we should defiantly take ideas from it in the future.

My only objection to using Super Spy in a front line role is actually the False Humanoid not the Faint Soul. We have demonstrated that we can manipulate souls. And while we have not learned very much about souls yet I would not put it past us being able to grow our soul or even make new ones at some point. So Faint Soul, while an investment now, is potentially replaceable.

On the other False Humanoid is from the doll, which is the only physical link we have to our DONOR, and thus it is irreplaceable. I would really like to keep that doll safe.

We do already get the humanoid bodyplan from using the magical girl keyword. Could transfer the actual doll to alibi spy to get another keyword for free, essentially. Though I'll raise the issue of not having much on hand to react to emergencies at home with this plan as well, it's problem a good idea to beef up alibi spy a fair bit if it's going to take over from super spy.

[X] Plan: Stone Shaper