While I'm working on the results post, here's a reminder that any omakes you write for the quest during and about the Negation Crisis will contribute to your progress. The details are in the turn's status effects. Should you need any help figuring out what to write, or how to write it, feel free to DM me your draft or your ideas and I'll give you some advice.
UNESCO has been in a lot of trouble this year, warding off some major Negation attacks against Chinese and Korean heritage sites(432/1200). UN Home is still lighting up the darkest corners of our megacities, which incidentally keeps any vampires out (108/200). They've also given a small boost to our simulant first contact protocols (185/300). ISCRA and OHCSSR are holding firm in their commitment to simulant embodiment, though they've partly refocused their efforts on the volunteers of Project Icon (797/1500). Finally, the ITU is keeping up our network strength, now turning to major urban interlinks rather than government connections per se (217/600).
Negation Crisis Progress: 54% resolved
Negation Crisis Progress Report: The preparations of last year have now given rise to a full-on assault on the Negation's positions. Having secured all major urban centers against potential subversion–an achievement we partly owe to the General Exorcism Division–we can now spread out into the relatively abandoned territories of the UN hinterlands. These are the same regions that are supposed to be revitalized by our Popular Consolidation programs, and we have used this fact to our advantage by recruiting local hamlets into the Bella Ciao Initiative. Isolated as these new marches might be, the mobile forces established by Operation Rohirrim are able to keep them safe from any surprise attacks. And all the while, the iconic heroes of our popular history and mythology are planning new missions daily. If we can keep up this pace, and especially if we can cut off the hydra's head in Japan itself, the Negation might soon be done for.
"New From UNESCO: Sea Shepherd Simulator! Inspired by the real UNEA initiative, take a trip back into the dark past of the 21st century, and defend the noble sea life of Earth's oceans against an onslaught of rapacious capitalists! Take up the mantle of history's greatest pirates and environmentalists, and destroy the seasteads before they take root!
Compared to the project's previous phase, its present expansion is a bona fide speedrun. It's clear that none of your people enjoy being stuck inside their biodomes, however much they might love the biomes they contain. Instead, they have taken to the immediate outside world–in climate-controlled outfits, of course–in order to start building out a zone of habitability. In these initial efforts, most of that work comes down to the establishment of some kind of solar shading. A variety of proposals are put into action, from diffuse lensing sheets in the upper atmosphere to gossamer mega-domes which act as giant sunglasses. Notably, more general strategies like aerosol injections are actively being avoided, since these could have a regional if not global knock-on effect. So far, the impact of these local SRM techniques seems promising, and it might be time to restart some of the basic ecosystems in these ever-precarious areas.
UNIEEC (+5)
The Commensal Program: Project Hype Man (9/200) 5d | 9+61+95+12+61+97+25 (Department Bonus x5)+15 (Simulation Support) = 375/200 (Completed, 175 overflow to Project Gaki) (Completed The Commensal Program)
"Did you hear? The UN is offering broad amnesties now."
"An amnesty for us bloodsuckers? Fat chance. They only let you in if you join their little crusade against the Japanese."
"Nah, it's no strings attached, just as long as we stick to the empty places."
"You idiot, that's exactly where the Negation hangs out. They just wanna put us between them and their problems."
"Think of it this way: whoever loses, we win. Either we move into our new haunt, freed from UN oversight, or else we get to enjoy whatever Amaterasu has planned for the world."
"I don't really trust those hungry ghosts."
"All the more reason to take the UN offer. If they win, what do you think they're gonna do with Japan? They don't have the people to settle it. It's gonna be free real estate, same as with Australia."
"You're awfully eager about this. Did you take the fucking deal?"
"Have I ever said no to free stuff?"
"Unbelievable."
"I know, that's why you love me."
UNIEEC Bonus increased to +10
Libertalia: First Communes (219/200) (Completed, 19/300 Even More Communes)
As the narrowest of silver linings, the recent flurry of anti-Negation activity has given a shot in the arm to the project of Popular Consolidation. Borderlands that were once only of interest to scavengers and military planners are now seeing an influx of fresh migrants. These are all volunteer outfits, naturally, and tend to consist of a mix of Indigenous reclaimants, veteran fanatics, and experimental utopians. The initiative has quickly found a place in the popular mythology of UN members, being compared to various historical attempts at frontier settlement. To keep this sentiment from falling into full-fledged settlerism, various UNESCO and PFII liaisons have been attached to these settlements, whose job is to continuously emphasize the inherent liminality of any historical border regime. As long as we can make this nuance apparent in our cultural productions, any neo-colonial romanticism should be avoidable.
"Kublai Khan Command, Fourth Division, Third Regiment, Political Officer Pak Je-Hoon reporting.
My counterpart will be sure to hand in their tactical report later today. For now, I want to stress the dangerous potential for schismogenetic essentialism in our anti-Negation activities. The troops have been a bit too eager in pursuing this kind of spectral warfare. While LARPing is acceptable to a degree, the present fanaticism borders on inverse chauvinism, expressing itself in this instance as "Anti-Japaneseism". Not just its historical instantiation, mind you, but an aesthetic obsession with every historical opponent to the nation of Japan. I've seen many soldiers modify their rifles to resemble M1 Garands, for instance, while others go so far as to affect the uniforms of the Yuan Dynasty. Even worse, command itself is implicitly encouraging some of these sentiments in their operational designations and mission briefings. This sort of behavior must be attenuated.
To be clear, my objections have nothing to do with the merits of Japanese nationalism as such. The problem, as should be obvious from any cursory account of anti-essentialist theory, is that we are reinforcing the Negation's essence through our absolute opposition to it. Instead of treating the idea of Japan as what it is–an illusory object of civilizational ideation–we are confirming the fundamental claim of our enemy, that they are what Japan is supposed to be.
In short, if we must stare into this nationalist abyss, let us be mindful of how it also stares into us."
At first, the expeditions into the abandoned seasteads go about as well as planned. To the task force, the Atlantic Ocean becomes a latter-day Valley of Pharaohs, with each pitiful settlement presenting as a tomb for the ultra-rich and their erstwhile indentures. In most cases, the missions are purely archeological, aimed at uncovering the particular breakdown of this or that marine dystopia. The handful of notable exceptions are marked by the presence of some kind of survivor. Either the seasteads' intranets contain some last traces of a simulation or a mental backup, or else a few sad diving droids still wander the ocean floor in their misery. All are successfully recovered.
It is only when your task force runs out of 'low-diving fruit' that some difficult choices start being made. After all, the most significant and intact sites are also those most likely to be dangerous in some way. Still, the reverse also holds true: if someone needs our help out there, whether they're trapped in some oligarch's nightmare or enslaved in some other fashion, then we should not refrain from action. With this in mind, the first 'risky' sortie is made around August, targeting a site which has been actively transmitting erratic signal patterns. Some kind of distress or malfunction seems likely.
Upon arrival, it does appear that all hell has broken loose on the high seas. However intact this sea platform might have been before, it is now on fire, with various boats and rafts trying to make their way out of the inferno. Before the flotilla can even begin to bring the first evacuees on board, they come under attack from an undersea threat. As suspected, this whole emergency was just the bait for a submarine pirate attack, and these guys are no small fry. Thankfully, your forces aren't either, and it seems they weren't counting on a professional military opposing them. After a few back-and-forth hits, the pirates are quickly chased away, and the rescue operation resumes.
Later on, you'll learn from various West African authorities that these submarine pirate bands are a known threat out here in the Atlantic. Ironically, they consider themselves to be noble defenders of property, as they see the whole ocean as their private domain. From their point of view, it was you who interfered with their sovereignty to begin with. Well, there's more where that came from.
"This is a good thing, don't get me wrong. I'm glad that my friends will soon start getting the bodies they deserve. But it's not happening fast enough. Even if dysphoria treatments have come a long way in the past century–thank god for sufficient simulation–feeling bad about your body is more than just an illness to be cured. If the free development of each is a necessary prerequisite to the free development of all, then you only need to look at the waiting list for these new sleeves to see that we're a long way from full communism. Look, I know you the UN has bigger problems, especially these days, just…don't forget about us, okay?"
Thanks to the supplies brought in by the new Aldrin cyclers, the UN's colonies on Mars are finally approaching self-sufficiency. With that achievement behind you, the main issues for our settlements on 'Barsoom' are fast becoming political rather than existential in nature. Put simply, you now have an open invitation from the New Barsoomian Coalition to become an associate member of their polity. This would effectively turn the UN's Mars effort into another appendage of the red revolutionary supra-state, and thereby snuff out the last independent power on the planet. On the other hand, relations with the Barsoomians have markedly improved now that you're co-belligerents against the Negation, and this could help to influence their politics from the inside. It's your call.
[] Accept the Association Proposal
[] Refuse the Association Proposal, Maintain Independence
[] Propose a Treaty of Friendship (Free Trade and Mutual Defense)
UNOCHA
Operation Rohirrim (193/250) 3d | 193+49+73+63= 378/250 (Completed, 128 overflow to Libertalia)
Operation Blair Mountain, Debriefing:
"We were stuck in some nowhere town in the Appalachians, barred in by a horde of demonic Pinkertons. The whole situation was as absurd as it sounded. The reason we were there in the first place was because the region had some archeological value to UNESCO. We were supposed to dig for any remnant of the region's old mining towns, including those of the Labor Wars era. I suppose those drones were reading our minds or something, as they dressed themselves for the occasion.
[...]
We had just packed up for lunch when the shooting started. Now I'm a WW4 veteran, took part in the evacuation of Sri Lanka. Even got blown to bits myself a few times, not that I remember it. But no matter how recent the backup, it's never any fun to see your friend's face pop like a balloon. It was a nasty kind of ammo too, as it started eating right into your gear upon impact. Must have had something nano in it. I was vaxxed for that of course, but others were just normal folks. Watched them dissolve as they fled.
[...]
Of course we had our emergency printer with us. But the skirmish had drained our batteries, and we didn't have the time to stay put for long. I might have risked it just to get some bigger guns, give those bastards some payback. But we would lose, and be rebooted, and lose much of our data. Plus, no one would know where these drones even came from.
What did they look like? Big beasts with bowler hats, their bodies arranged in some mock version of a three-piece suit. Their guns could be mistaken for simple revolvers, were it not that they were fused into the arm itself. I found it all somewhat comical, but I could tell it was freaking the others out. Especially when you got one in the chest, and they just kept coming.
[...]
So yeah, we were happy when the cavalry showed up. Just weren't expecting a suborbital to come crashing through the clouds, drop troopers falling off it like fleas. For a second there, I thought y'all would come down on our heads. That would have been no rescue at all. Instead, you burned the hell out of those scab-herders, your fleas pumping them full of holes before hauling us into the shuttle. It all must have taken less than a minute, though it sure felt longer in the moment. But yeah, we were safe, you succeeded, everybody happy. How's that?"
Gained It's Raining Men: Every anti-Negation dice roll is increased by 5. Bonus increased by 1 (up to a maximum of +10) for every omake featuring the troops of Operation Rohirrim.
ILO
Project Pannekoek: BAT Signal (141/150) 1d | 141+31=172/150 (Completed, 22 overflow)
A common misconception about the field of cybernetics is that it's all about central management. You just put your data into the big machine, and out rolls the perfect plan! Nothing could be less true, of course. Cybernetics is about the universal laws of any organized system, regardless of how 'central' or 'decentral' it appears from the outside. And yet, despite the deep immersion of Humanity into all kinds of cybernetic infrastructures, such ignorance has persisted well into the 22nd century.
Perhaps the broad institution of the Balina Assessment Technique could begin to do something about that ignorance. After all, it is just a slightly more elaborate version of something which all sapients should be familiar with: the setting of priorities. That is all the BAT does! It measures the bureaucracy's stress points through such methods as subconscious self-reporting and workplace performance analysis, collates this data into a holistic model, and then transmits the resulting warning and emergency signals in a direct and minimal fashion. It's a way for both workers and managers to know what the departments are doing at a glance, and to see where further aid might be required.
You are free to disregard its advice, of course. It's your funeral.
Gained BAT Reports: The three most urgent actions will be marked each turn
"Wait, why are we letting these poindexters run all over the office again?"
"Assessment, my dude. Cybernetic feedback. How else are we going to know if we're successful?"
"I dunno, haven't we been completing a lot of projects, lately? Meeting our targets and all that?"
"Yeah, but how do you know those projects are effective? That the targets themselves make any kind of sense?"
"Not my department. Doesn't the General Assembly set those?"
"And you think they're any smarter than you, simply because they're higher on the org chart? The opposite is true. You really should read some Beer."
"I'd rather drink it, hehe. So these folks are gonna set out targets?"
"That they are. Also, what the hell is a poindexter?"
"It's a meme."
"Ah."
New Statistics will be available next turn.
Politics
Formalize Your Appointment 1d | 85
You find your resolve at the end of a cigarette. Another vice they should have left in the past. Being able to survive the aftershock–cancer, addiction, whatever–does not make the harm any less severe. Yet you are hooked nonetheless. Cigarettes. Love. War. It hurts all the same.
You're still not sure why this loss has hit you harder than usual. How could one life compare to an entire country? That's a silly thought: there's no such thing as the nation of Italy. Especially nowadays. But therein lies the truth. After the last war, you decided to move on with your life, to focus on other matters than the constant fight against an impossible enemy. You were going to build something instead, and that was going to protect you from further loss.
It didn't work. But what fucking does? The world turns, and you'll keep going. You put out the cigarette, and get back to work.
Gained Giovanna Rossi: + 10 bonus on rolls relating to insurgent activities and posthuman R&D. 1 additional politics die, or +20 to a politics project if unused.
Pick a Deputy 1d | 35
The UN personnel reserve is pretty meager this year. Everyone and everything is being mobilized against the Negation, and reconstruction is not yet on the agenda. Still, a few opportune meetings here and there, plus the use of a novel BAT extension, allows you to have at least three candidates to choose from:
[] Guanyin-Avalokitasvara: An experimental Gaia-type personality derived from project Lovelock. The archetype itself is based on the Sinic representation of Avalokitasvara, the bodhisattva of infinite compassion. While not directly related to ecology, they are associated with vegetarianism and a beneficent type of soil. In terms of UNIDA management, we can expect them to focus on ecological remediation and cultural stewardship.
[] Cheryl Khan: A diplomat who grew up in an Australian escapist colony during the Bad Times, where she developed a firm dislike for "all that is insufficient, illusory, or otherwise unsustainable". Still, her personal contacts made her a key negotiator to the Canberra Accords, and she has since become an advocate for 'supplementary association'–the official euphemism for sanctioned escapism. Similar to Gaze, they could help us to extend UN influence into nominally essentialist territory, or else to free more of the simulated world.
[] Gabriel Ndambuki: A Kenyan economist who won a nobel prize for his work in energy economics. By elaborating on the basic conditions of low-energy, post-scarcity regimes, and thereby setting the terms for UN logisticians everywhere, he probably saved a lot of lives during the latter Emergency Period. He's all about doing more with less, and that kind of expertise is always useful.
Insurgent Connections 1d | 32
Pigeons. That is how secret communications are facilitated in the 22nd century. Sufficiently advanced pigeons, of course, whose preternatural sense of direction has been developed further, and whose DNA carries the one-time pads necessary to decrypt the separately delivered messages. It's relatively easy to know when one's gone missing, especially when a separate gene blocks most cloning equipment. Overall, it's a simple solution for a complicated age.
And so, pigeons begin to fly off in all directions. Their targets? A hidden redoubt in the Once-Fertile Crescent. An abandoned farm shed in the Himalayas. A subterranean base in the Antarctic. Soon, some bemused teamster will even be loading one of your birds into a shuttle bound for Venus. And these are just a few of your contacts. As long as some of them remain active–and up to date on their codes–you should be able to initiate a selection of covert operations, each of which might augment UNIDA's capabilities. But these will take a bit more work yet.
Covert Operations will be available next turn.
As you can hopefully tell, these results posts take a lot of effort. To make them somewhat more manageable, I'm cutting out the global political stuff and saving that for an intermediate post. I've also stopped giving out a special bonus for each phase of a project you complete, both to stop the modifier tab from growing out of proportion, and because I want to make those bonuses/maluses feel more special. If you need a Watsonian explanation for that, just imagine that your organization has taken care of all the low-hanging fruit in terms of increasing its level of expertise. Anyway, feel free to vote for the Barsoomian association proposal and the UNIDA deputy, starting now.
Also, because I feel like I should value my labor at least a little bit (as should all writers, of course), I am once again plugging my Patreon here in case you feel like this quest or any of my other ones are worth a few bucks.
[x] Accept the Association Proposal
It's a little sad to remove the last independent Martian polity, but they asked to join.
[x] Guanyin-Avalokitasvara
Just so you are aware, it's not the New Barsoom Coalition becoming a part of the UN. It's the New Barsoom Coalition asking the UN to let the UN Mars Colony become part of the New Barsoom Coalition.
[X] Propose a Treaty of Friendship (Free Trade and Mutual Defense)
[X] Cheryl Khan
As someone with a bit of numbers-go-up addiction, it was really hard not to vote for Gabriel. But getting more help with freeing people from virtual hellscapes is probably more important. Plus, whoever we pick here might end up as the next Vice-Chairman.
"All the more reason to take the UN offer. If they win, what do you think they're gonna do with Japan? They don't have the people to settle it. It's gonna be free real estate, same as with Australia."
...I hope this is just a bunch of vampires just saw something that isn't there in our offer. Essentially offering people to settle the place we just cleanse the old inhabitants out have a rather disturbing implication.
Put simply, you now have an open invitation from the New Barsoomian Coalition to become an associate member of their polity. This would effectively turn the UN's Mars effort into another appendage of the red revolutionary supra-state, and thereby snuff out the last independent power on the planet. On the other hand, relations with the Barsoomians have markedly improved now that you're co-belligerents against the Negation, and this could help to influence their politics from the inside. It's your call.
Finally, we can finally do the planing part of the plan quest!
...Why do I have a feeling the result is going to be something like "everything is on fire"
[X] Cheryl Khan
The recent events has show that we can not hope to gain our peace as long as the rest of world is under the thrall of Essentialist regimes. Please ignore that part where Negaiton crisis start because we start poking around Japan without sufficient preparation.
...I hope this is just a bunch of vampires just saw something that isn't there in our offer. Essentially offering people to settle the place we just cleanse the old inhabitants out have a rather disturbing implication.
I just think it would be interesting to have an AI be our deputy but gaze also had a thing for cultural stewardship
and going hard on the greening could be fun
we just have so much to tackle in general really
[X] Propose a Treaty of Friendship (Free Trade and Mutual Defense)
[X] Guanyin-Avalokitasvara: An experimental Gaia-type personality derived from project Lovelock. The archetype itself is based on the Sinic representation of Avalokitasvara, the bodhisattva of infinite compassion. While not directly related to ecology, they are associated with vegetarianism and a beneficent type of soil. In terms of UNIDA management, we can expect them to focus on ecological remediation and cultural stewardship.
[x] [] Propose a Treaty of Friendship (Free Trade and Mutual Defense)
[x] [] Guanyin-Avalokitasvara: An experimental Gaia-type personality derived from project Lovelock. The archetype itself is based on the Sinic representation of Avalokitasvara, the bodhisattva of infinite compassion. While not directly related to ecology, they are associated with vegetarianism and a beneficent type of soil. In terms of UNIDA management, we can expect them to focus on ecological remediation and cultural stewardship.
[X] Propose a Treaty of Friendship (Free Trade and Mutual Defense)
[X] Gabriel Ndambuki
Having finally gotten around to reading this quest, it's certainly very fascinating. I do appreciate the future and archaic slang in the updates. It helps paint a colourful and weird picture of terminology in the future. It's very strange and unnerving at times, and at other times fun. It's neat to see either way. The crisis every turn was kind of funny, if a bit silly.
The Barsoomians was definitely interesting. They are some of the weirdest most bespoke motherfuckers in the solar system going on about Lemuria and Atlantis and openly engaging with esoteric fascism and pseudo-history. They're definitely a potential threat, even if economically and politically they're leaning more leftwards. Then again esotericism and spiritualism appears to be on the rise in general.
I definitely expected something to come out of Japan given its abandoned state. An entire country doesn't go dark without someone knowing why. The integration of VR and AR into the "Ultra Japan" simulation was very interesting, including the wandering robots help to facilitate the fantasy even further. It feels like the ground itself is infected and alive with fiber-optic cables like they're nerves in a massive cancerous brain. It brings to mind the work of Simon Stalenhag, with massive towers of cables and drones servicing them for builders long since dead.
That's why the Negation Crisis almost feels a bit boring and underwhelming. Stochastic terrorism on a grand scale? That's it? And they're doing it because they were annoyed at being poked? It feels a bit more like try hards dressing up drones and biomechanical war machines to larp historical atrocities. Which is still fucked up, but feels less pressing than Eurasia. When I was reading the update it felt like the Negation Crisis was going to be a lot more insidious than that. I initially imagined a mix of Japanese code attacking networks to shut them down or begin converting them into simulations of "Ultra Japan" as some sort of maintenance program gone astray. I guess that could also be somewhat easily contained like Eurasian spamware, but I don't know, it felt like it'd be more of a technological and erring threat.
The dead haunting the world wouldn't be from larpers, but figurative with unthinking machines attempting to incorporate UN systems into the Japanese network like ghosts consuming the living. Living combatants are more a physical threat, so I understand that, but it still feels like a bit of a let down given how strong the set up was for the initial Japanese expedition.
Initially vampire communities didn't feel like that big a threat honestly. They were siphoning power, bandwidth, and printers for themselves. The initial impression is that they were like modern militia libertarians, where they seize plots of land and harass everyone around them. So a threat, but otherwise content to mostly mind their own business if left alone. It also felt open that there were other political reasons for going off the grid and going vamp. The flux of rehabilitated and turncoat vamps kind of proves that for a number of them they felt they had legit reasons to distrust the UN, even with the Canberra Accords affording Escapist communities official recognition.
We really need to handle whatever the General Sectratary gave us. It can't keep getting put off every single turn. I hope that's not something serious and that she's spent the last six years acting coy about a major UN project.
Also, the UN is filled with revisionists who will betray revolution.
Thanks for all the feedback! Glad to see that a lot of the vibes I've been trying to communicate here are landing. As for the Negation Crisis, I'll endeavor to make it seem more insidious, as you will already start to see in the upcoming news update.
