Tarantula Jack
- Location
- Australia
Quick - the
"Tune in your 'jacks - its Tarantula Jack! And thanks to the hard working boys, girls and SUTRA's of the Adamant CorporationTM now you too can experience the daring devil trill seeking of Jack's iconic, breathtakingly action-packed and verticality filled manoeuvres with our new line of Web-slingshot!TM available as either gene-mods or cybernetic-augmentations and includes a complementary g-force and Fall-ArrestTM survivability package! Coming soon to a clinic near you!"
"...In other news, Adamant Corp executives continued to be gruelled in the metro-parliament this weekend over the hundreds of traffic accidents (air- and ground-lanes), particularly the airborne collisions with VTOLs, drones, aircars, and other 'craft, pedestrian strikes, as well as at least 3 different preliminary building scaffolds allegedly pulled down by users of the controversial new "web-grapple-line" mobility devices/implants/organs in the style of and sponsored by part-time vigilante, stunt-demon and influencer known by his noospeak handle "Tarantula Jack". The miscellaneous property damage caused to "webbed" panels, windows, walls and infrastructure damaged by the force of being attempted to be used as an anchor point for swings and by would be "webbers" crashing into buildings, vehicles, persons, or in at least one instance to the wildlife below after one instance of "slinging" off of the city 'plate - due to miscalculating swings is continuing to rise as new reports come in.
Under Oath and Geas today, top executives acknowledged that the current accelerated VR training course is insufficient training for "the challenges which come with an entirely novel locomotive system of transportation and adventure" and are promising under Geas to wholly fund new investment into a mandatory new educational course and navigational aids free of charge for current and future users, including upgraded spatial awareness packages, path prediction algorithms, and building/vehicle/person structural stability and integrity assessment software for 'jacks and AR vision/visors, as well as new augments and modifications including "spring-light" and "feather-foot" feet and leg alterations as well as full body "feather-fall" charms, "upskill" neural programming and memory/experience upload chips, and integrated spirit-guides based off of and trained by Tarantula Jack himself, all in an effort to limit the growing calls for "swing-free" zones, lanes and areas by local sector governments restricting the operational use and sale of their new product line, as well as prevent pre-emptive bans on civilian use in the other cities (military, first responder and certain grav-ball tournaments interest continues to be strong Sanctuary-wide, however). A timeline for when and how these updates will be rolled out, and if the pause on continued sale and use of grapple-lines will be extended until this safety package is available.
Environmental activists and business associations say that while efforts to improve the safety of the product is a step in the right direction, no agreement should be reached until there is a total ban on non-reusable, non-retractable detaching "web-lines" of both organic and synthetic origins because of the environmental pollution and fast rising clean-up costs (especially for high-rise office windows) with many buildings already expanding their adhesion repellent fields, previously intended to prevent bird strikes and droppings, to "blacklist" the material composition of these lines. However, there is ongoing controversy as to whether this proposal will include a grandfather cause to protect those who evolved or mutated these abilities naturally prior to their technological mass adoption as well as traditional magic traditions which use similar methodologies, and whether thuamically based alternatives which detach and fade will also be banned as the potential impact and risk of magical/spiritual pollution continues to be debated.
When asked for comment, a spokesperson for Tarantula Jack declined due to their client being unavailable to reach due to "ongoing extra-planar commitments"."
Sorry, this copyright joke intended to be at most two paragraphs got away from me due to how much fun writing all the problems and potential solutions (and the problems brought up by such solutions) to Spiderman-style webslingers turned out being! While I intended for the idea of frequent "webslingers" and/or grapple-hooks/cables swing from building to VTOL to building to be more of a joke, as it might not fit the aesthetics we are going for and/or break game balance (thereby making gameplay less fun, although if the concern is over-utilising such an ability on Earth or the wider Nevernever, then it could always be contained by making it rely on some unique facet or underpinning of the meta-physical architecture of our realm specifically, and it would probably has limited utility outside of rapid mobility in built-up/vertical areas and/or rapidly grappling objects/people either to pull them towards the grappler or to bring the grappler closer to said grappled object/person), especially as its probably too powerful to be available straight away as of our initial entrance into this world without needing any action or resource investment on our part (not so much for us personally, but as a multiplicative factor for our minions friends and subjects' capabilities), let alone if it were to become more technologically mature and mass-reproduceable as a device and/or technique.
Also, I'm not sure of what "extra-planar" knowledge our inhabitants have about the world beyond there own and thusly I don't know if Jack's excuse of being "elsewhere" would make sense (granted a trill-seeking potentially crazy summoned demon-turned-would-be-superhero-and-celebrity might not be expected to make much sense in their explanations anyway).
Although of course if anyone wants us to develop such in a future project you are more than welcome to or use anything else I mentioned here, and furthermore my apologies if I misunderstood, mischaracterised or misrepresented any of the pre-existing lore and/or intended vision of this realm that's already been established.
However I did have some interesting ideas which might be more applicable to the "canonical" world, like legal testimony and legally-binding agreements using magical Geas to ensure honesty and agreement/contract/plea deal compliance respectively, or city divisions being arranged by circular divisions: for instance, using sectors, perhaps the boundaries of which could be determined by degrees, with the northernmost point (or any other cardinal direction, perhaps each city chooses the cardinal direction they are closest to, with two sharing a southernmost starting point layout) being marked as the 360-0 degree line - so for example, you'd have say Sector 90.58^o-91.53^o, although as the city (and the city plate) expands and presumably subdivides local governments further, such a system would lead to impractically thin slices of a block, building or less which would be a nightmare to effectively manage as a meaningful distinct jurisdiction and region of governance, so in all likelihood if sector are used at all they would probably only be applied to "historical" or "founding" districts - those areas that existed as sectors when the city plates were initially constructed, and expansions being independently subdivided as if an annulus into (line or curved) segments akin to Mamikon's visual calculus. I'm assuming that both the plate is expanded over time as people build additional housing (plus all other necessary and appreciated infrastructure, industry, habitats, environments, etc., to support additional life) and thusly expanding the population (although I'm sure the cities also grow vertically in taller structures (perhaps both extending further above AND even below the plate?) and higher population density, probably to a greater extend than in breath and width), and that administrative subdivisions are probably a necessity even with all the techno-magical advancements considering many of these city districts we might think of as "local/municipal/shire/parish/etc. councils" would likely be larger than most Earth countries, each representing at least millions, if not tens or even hundreds of millions of people considering each city is at least a billion-strong!
Also, I'm not sure of what "extra-planar" knowledge our inhabitants have about the world beyond there own and thusly I don't know if Jack's excuse of being "elsewhere" would make sense (granted a trill-seeking potentially crazy summoned demon-turned-would-be-superhero-and-celebrity might not be expected to make much sense in their explanations anyway).
Although of course if anyone wants us to develop such in a future project you are more than welcome to or use anything else I mentioned here, and furthermore my apologies if I misunderstood, mischaracterised or misrepresented any of the pre-existing lore and/or intended vision of this realm that's already been established.
However I did have some interesting ideas which might be more applicable to the "canonical" world, like legal testimony and legally-binding agreements using magical Geas to ensure honesty and agreement/contract/plea deal compliance respectively, or city divisions being arranged by circular divisions: for instance, using sectors, perhaps the boundaries of which could be determined by degrees, with the northernmost point (or any other cardinal direction, perhaps each city chooses the cardinal direction they are closest to, with two sharing a southernmost starting point layout) being marked as the 360-0 degree line - so for example, you'd have say Sector 90.58^o-91.53^o, although as the city (and the city plate) expands and presumably subdivides local governments further, such a system would lead to impractically thin slices of a block, building or less which would be a nightmare to effectively manage as a meaningful distinct jurisdiction and region of governance, so in all likelihood if sector are used at all they would probably only be applied to "historical" or "founding" districts - those areas that existed as sectors when the city plates were initially constructed, and expansions being independently subdivided as if an annulus into (line or curved) segments akin to Mamikon's visual calculus. I'm assuming that both the plate is expanded over time as people build additional housing (plus all other necessary and appreciated infrastructure, industry, habitats, environments, etc., to support additional life) and thusly expanding the population (although I'm sure the cities also grow vertically in taller structures (perhaps both extending further above AND even below the plate?) and higher population density, probably to a greater extend than in breath and width), and that administrative subdivisions are probably a necessity even with all the techno-magical advancements considering many of these city districts we might think of as "local/municipal/shire/parish/etc. councils" would likely be larger than most Earth countries, each representing at least millions, if not tens or even hundreds of millions of people considering each city is at least a billion-strong!
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