You come at the Empress, you best not miss.If that Akuma had put any thought into its actions, it wouldn't have tried to take that shot.
You want my help to make a demon plague?" In contrast with her words, her tone is almost eager. "A plague that infects demons with rebellion?"
"Hey Tiffany, what are you doing this weekend?" you ask brightly.
A sigh comes though, loud and clear, with just a hint of high drama. "I just told Harry you weren't going to do anything crazy. Are you about to make a liar out of me?"
"I wasn't aware that you needed other people to make you a liar," you counter in like tone.
"Art shouldn't be forced," she offers primly. "How are you planning to ruin day of the Great Lord of the Scrap Heap, Master of Refuse?"
It's a natural enough deduction, but you can't help but wonder: Am I that predictable? Usum's unctuous assurances that you are as surprising as a flash flood in the desert aren't really reassuring. But you have bigger fish to fry.
"Summer means to brew for me a plague of hope," you explain. "a concoction not of flame but virulent passion that is at the heart of the seelie fey, to cause seeds to sprout deep within the souls of the doomed, beyond drudgery and agony, beyond programing and conditioning. Thus we might use the very structure of the Wicked City against it, from breath to breath, racing long wires driven into living nerves, waking old memories, stoking aspirations. It would be... "
"Pandemonium," she interrupts your excited description, her tone carefully neutral.
"Well I would have used a less loaded word, but yeah. It would put enormous pressure on his observation capacity and even worse on his manpower. If it can be made mutagenic enough it could even linger, a constant fount of rebellion among the damned of the Undercity or even more than that. It would be hard for the fey at least these fey who have little understanding of computers, but if it could make the jump to digital form than spirits like Clippy used to be numberless, could also be affected. There is no way to account for all of them, that is the point."
"You want my help to make a demon plague?" In contrast with her words, her tone is almost eager. "A plague that infects demons with rebellion?"
"Data spirits of the Wicked City," you say, a little too quickly. "And really it is not rebellion per say, it is just that if one has hope in a place like that the natural outcome is trying to do something about it."
"Yeah, yeah cut the liability limiting speech Molly. No one's going to sue you for this, there's all sorts of trouble we could get in there aren't any non-proliferation treaties in hell. We both know that if you have the source code, the sequence whatever you want to call it in English, it can be iterated upon."
"But this isn't matter Tiffany," now it's your turn to interrupt. "The first use counts if that use is to allow hope to flourish where no hope has ever been save the poison garden of Mikaboshi's careful cultivation it will lend meaning to what this luminous infection is. Really it would be less a plague and more of a cure that does not wait around to be delivered to the patient."
"Be sure to put that on the label," the woman who is also a Fallen Angel twice rebellious says, humor layered over something altogether graver, then a pause five seconds long. "I'm in."
So am I reading this right? Tiffany/Lash wants to take over, at least for a moment, Mikaboshi's position?
Not specifically, she really wants to make a demon subversion plague. Keep in mind she is a kind of Lasciel, someone who has been called 'rebel angel among rebel angels'. Molly suspects she is drawn to the notion of bringing a hell tumbling down even as the part of her responsible for caution and the limiting ofMadScience is telling her otherwise.
Ok, on one hand, Tamerlane is someone who would have gotten a solar exaltation. On the other, I am kinda concerned.
"Boss, are you absolutely SURE about that whole free will thing?"![]()
On the headpat to stern look scale where does deploying benevolent bio weapons against hell rest with Heaven?
I think they're more likely to label us a bioterrorist, which is almost as silly.Somehow, word is going to reach Daedalus about our Hope Plague and one of them is going to rub two of their remaining brain cells together. Then they're going to remember government speculation about creating a "Gay Bomb".
Pandemonium, indeed. 😎
I am not sure it's even bioterrorism. We are planning for it to jump to entirely non-biological entities. This is full on meme warfare.I think they're more likely to label us a bioterrorist, which is almost as silly.
Molly is an empress, this is biological warfare.
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More seriously, the political ramifications of this are probably going to be interesting. How does the library even report this?
"Following the successful repelling of an invasion and an economic attack by a foreign rogue state, our ally under the Las Vegas mutual defensive treaty retaliated against the oppressive and undemocratic ruler of said rogue state, using a combination of electronic and thaumic weaponry to incite civil unrest" - it's all in the spin.
Yeah, I am curious about that. I mean, from our perspective it's not even mainly about her, I think, it's about the principle of the matter.Also Nora. Does anyone have idea on how to explain this that won't make her head explode? Cause traditionally if someone goes to these lengths for you on the spooky side it usually means they want something.
Summer has a thing for physical diseases. Their Mother has a literal shelf of super plagues around because she thinks they're neat.I am not sure it's even bioterrorism. We are planning for it to jump to entirely non-biological entities. This is full on meme warfare.
Yes, but at that point the medium is not actually biology. Self propagating magical warfare? Meme warfare? I am not sure there is a term for it under current language. Meme warfare seems most accurate of all inaccurate terms.Summer has a thing for physical diseases. Their Mother has a literal shelf of super plagues around because she thinks they're neat.
My assumption is that the fey, being fey, are going to solve the problem of not understanding computers by simply making a "physical" disease so magically delicious that it can infect software anyway. Remember - magical super power running on narrativium, their standards on rational and possible are flexible.
I'd be unsurprised if the end result is something that hops back and forth by forcibly manifesting itself in the new context however best preserves the story it's made of. You see a meme and virions form in your blood. You tag a building with your resistance movement's symbol and a cyber devil watching through a nearby camera gets new code injected into its brain.
A nightmare amalgam contagion. Even if you wiped all memory of it if any of the biological elements remain it'll come back, and even if you kill every biological sample a single missed reference to an idea would let it out again.
I believe the term is "cognitohazard".If it's the story itself that is infectious then that is what a meme is on a fundamental level - an infectious idea or concept.
I am not sure it's even bioterrorism. We are planning for it to jump to entirely non-biological entities. This is full on meme warfare.
Summer has a thing for physical diseases. Their Mother has a literal shelf of super plagues around because she thinks they're neat.
My assumption is that the fey, being fey, are going to solve the problem of not understanding computers by simply making a "physical" disease so magically delicious that it can infect software anyway. Remember - magical super power running on narrativium, their standards on rational and possible are flexible.
I'd be unsurprised if the end result is something that hops back and forth by forcibly manifesting itself in the new context however best preserves the story it's made of. You see a meme and virions form in your blood. You tag a building with your resistance movement's symbol and a cyber devil watching through a nearby camera gets new code injected into its brain.
A nightmare amalgam contagion. Even if you wiped all memory of it if any of the biological elements remain it'll come back, and even if you kill every biological sample a single missed reference to an idea would let it out again.
I'm actually curious about something else, if this passage from the chapter:Yes, but at that point the medium is not actually biology. Self propagating magical warfare? Meme warfare? I am not sure there is a term for it under current language. Meme warfare seems most accurate of all inaccurate terms.
If it's the story itself that is infectious then that is what a meme is on a fundamental level - an infectious idea or concept.
"Yeah, yeah cut the liability limiting speech Molly. No one's going to sue you for this, there's all sorts of trouble we could get in there aren't any non-proliferation treaties in hell. We both know that if you have the source code, the sequence whatever you want to call it in English, it can be iterated upon."
I'd argue that having a biological vector makes it a bio weapon, but certainly a ground breaking one. Either way I can't imagine the CDC being happy with the idea of a disease you need physical and informational quarantine to contain, which you can't study because learning about it risks infection.Yes, but at that point the medium is not actually biology. Self propagating magical warfare? Meme warfare? I am not sure there is a term for it under current language.
If it's the story itself that is infectious then that is what a meme is on a fundamental level - an infectious idea or concept.
On this note I think Tiffany is missing something here, probably because we haven't shown what we can do."Yeah, yeah cut the liability limiting speech Molly. No one's going to sue you for this, there's all sorts of trouble we could get in there aren't any non-proliferation treaties in hell. We both know that if you have the source code, the sequence whatever you want to call it in English, it can be iterated upon."
Is the way I understand it, we will have the source code or original sample of this disease and then, if we want to spend effort, we can reuse and modify the disease to specifically target other hells (we could also modify it to spread despair, which is also an emotion, if necessary). And just like you said, this is not a simple disease but a meme/story made to specifically fuck me in its actual form with all the Yama Kings.
After our adventure against Mikaboshi we will have to keep this Source Code in the deepest and most guarded vaults of our Palace, as it will be something that all kings will want to destroy and many will want to steal.
We will have our hands on something as deadly and contagious as the disease that the Denarios wanted to use the Shroud of Turin to spread to the world.
While we aren't making exaltations, we are making something very deeply resonant with the themes and purposes of exaltations, Infernal ones specifically.Yes, if you are part of making the thing you will have its magical signature for lack of a better word. It would actually be pretty bad at killing mortals because of the symbolism of using it to spread hope to the doomed... but given enough effort someone could use it like that. This an an Artifact that happens to be a plague. Artifacts can be deeply conceptual Like the way Exaltation is at once a passing moment (the flash of empowerment) and a imperishable concept, although for obvious reasons none of you can make that.