Nixeu
Lord of Madness, Harbinger of Llamas
- Location
- Your nightmares.
Well, being soaked in the blood of your creator does tend to make one that color. So it's not surprising they go "rouge".
Abrogation (Steampunk)
All that really means is that advanced intelligence should be reserved for those creations Lorelei intends to treat well; an assistant, a home, et cetera. Intelligent cannon fodder is a no-go. And as mentioned, if one's home is intelligent, one should take steps preventing it from turning into - or appearing to turn into - a Von Neumann machine, hopefully forestalling self-preservation from providing the trigger for flying off the rails.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Having our big reveal be during the sunrise, sounds great.
[X] Vebyast
[X] Vebyast
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
Something feels off with my vote but I'm not sure what it is. Something about using void portals to wake them up in the middle of the night. I don't think that they could search out three or five kilometers in the middle of the night, so I don't think that giving them warning is going to cause that kind of trouble for us. Something about it interfering with the trademark? Something about giving away to the Inspired what a void portal does?
Kai Merah
Hound Hearted Hedonist
- Location
- Somewhere in the corners of my imagination
...If they keep seeing our void portals, they might be Inspired into thinking of a way of countering them? Those fountains apparently make any Inspired who looks at them Surge. Maybe our portals might do the same? Especially with repeated exposure?
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
I think that we may be able to deal with that by restricting ourselves to a single operation, closing the void portal after we know someone's recognized it but before the Inspired have time to inspect it carefully.
I think that the next big failure mode is if they respond to our threat with a forced march instead of increased battle-readiness. Our current estimate is that they're a 14-hour march away from their destination:
If we assume they can march at double-time for that distance, which is somewhat unlikely, it'd take them seven hours. They'd have four hours before we woke up, realized that they tried to steal a march, and followed them. We'd probably leave Neighilist behind to conserve battery - a portal just big enough to crawl through probably costs about a quarter as much as a horse-size travel portal, giving us 40-some pairs per battery. So it wouldn't take us long at all to find them, and we'd still be able to hit them at sunrise as planned.
- Location
- A single human dimension
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Side note: You can't close rifts early. They shut on their own after a few minutes.
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
Ah, hm.
And I guess that explains how we've been so confident about leaving Nieghilist behind when going out attacking scouts - we don't need to know how to find our way back to him, since we can just leave the portal open back to him.
Would finding out way back to Neighilist become a problem if we let the portals close? Or can Lorelei depend on some help from Inspiration, or from her own natural expertise, to navigate her way back by dead reckoning?
Kai Merah
Hound Hearted Hedonist
- Location
- Somewhere in the corners of my imagination
So, the plan is to make a noisy portal within sight of them. They should recognise the work of the Lady of Blasphemy. At this point, they can react three ways.
1) Pursue. Send out soldiers to find us, or maybe the two Inspired collaborate to create a tracker/sniffer/whatever Inspired thing to hunt us down.
2) Neutral. Hunker down, prepare for battle, have a sleepless night, maybe the Inspired work feverishly through the night to make anti Lady of Blasphemy weaponry
3) Flee. Forced march, double-time to get to safety.
Given that we're dealing with prideful Inspired, my bet is they'll go for 1 or 2. 2 is ideal of course, or attempting 1 and failing, but I'm concerned if they don't fail when attempting 1. One of the Inspired has been in a wagon tinkering away for some time while the other rode up and down. Maybe he's working on an invention capable of harming/stopping us? They already positioned themselves in this way because they're worried about being ganked by us. It makes sense they'd be trying to work on countermeasures against us too, right?
If we give them warning, let them know the Lady of Blasphemy is nearby, and indeed coming after them, I'm worried that it'll be enough for their Inspirations to complete some project meant to harm us. That's why I wanted to set fire to their supplies rather than making it obvious that it was the Lady of Blasphemy coming after them. A couple of quiet portals and dropped torches, and no one will know for sure exactly how those tents got on fire. It's not like they'll starve or anything given how near to civilisation they are.
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
Hmm. We'll be doing the void rift from maximum distance to conserve battery because void rifts are a flat cost regardless of range and we'll want to camp more than 3km away. Scent or other tracking methods won't work because we're not crossing the intervening space. Basically they only thing they could track would be something like "residual aetheric energy". Given that all they can do is "normal people stuff but better", I'd be extremely surprised if they could pull that off. They may not have the materials, and even if they do, their audience believes that they're impotent and will be ruining their ability to build anything particularly exotic. They might go directly to a long-range bio-scanner or something, but I think that they'd still have to be pretty lucky, both with their Surge and their attempt to look for us. Making weapons won't work, they can't build a laser and anything slower than a laser will be intercepted by our defensive module. If they get a sufficiently good look at our void rift and have spectacular luck with their Inspiration and Surge and available materials and can fight through the hostile audience, they might be able to make something to suppress Skybreaker in an area, but that's so far down on the list that I think we can pretty much discard it.
@Alivaril, does Inspiration think it could offer a reasonable opinion on what the other Inspired might be able to get their Inspiration interested in?
@Alivaril, does Inspiration think it could offer a reasonable opinion on what the other Inspired might be able to get their Inspiration interested in?
- Location
- A single human dimension
- Pronouns
- She/Her
She thinks she'll be able to find her way back without any real trouble.
...You can't get it to stop laughing and you don't know why. Or at least, you're guessing that's what the overwhelming and somewhat contagious amusement is. (Apparently, no, it can't offer a reasonable explanation...?)
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Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
Cool.
I guess this means that there's only one Inspiration and everyone's sharing it. Interesting.
...What does Inspiration think of a device that could track its attention/presence/interaction with people/etc?
- Location
- A single human dimension
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Empowered Studies.
Judging by its apparent disgust(?) and focus on how Empowered get stronger from killing Inspired, you're guessing the answer to that is approximately "Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope..."
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
Fair enough. Ah, and I suppose it wouldn't detect Empowered, which would have been one of the major uses I'd have for it. Inspired aren't great at stealth and gadgetry can be detected by less exotic means, but I bet that Empowered are almost undetectable until they're tearing your face off.
Note to self: A device to detect Empowered. Maybe something about analyzing the movements of random people to look for super-strength or super-agility? Detecting the residual Inspiration could be abused so we won't ask that. I doubt we'll be able to find a way to shut them down entirely, and I bet such a device would also be too close to attacking Inspiration directly...
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Kai Merah
Hound Hearted Hedonist
- Location
- Somewhere in the corners of my imagination
I'm not entirely sure they can't build a laser gun. As pathetic as they are, aren't laser zappy guns like, the basics of what an Inspired can do? Basing my opinion on Girl Genius, where I would be very surprised if any Spark was incapable of building an energy weapon. Uninterested maybe, if their focus was on more biological things, but incapable? How hard can it be for an Inspired to make something that fires a beam of energy?
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
Components
-Long thin Ruby rod
-Holmium arclamp (use Sapphire envelope for arclamp for durability)
-Reflective cavity
-Mirrors
-Beryllium Oxide output coupler
-Focusing Lenses
-Coolant Turbopump
-Heatsink
-Power Supply
(As demonstrated in Children Of A Dead Earth)
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- Location
- A single human dimension
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Weaponizing light is supposedly much more difficult than just making a comparatively destructive steam cannon.
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
What about a lightning gun?
- Location
- A single human dimension
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A little easier, but the lightning so produced tends to be much slower than lightning should be; as such, they're typically nicknamed "Thunder Guns." True lightning guns are even harder than weaponized light.
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
Presumably, going nuclear and blasting our enemies with ionizing radiation is also off the table? (I'm thinking basically a reactor-pumped particle beam here).
Kai Merah
Hound Hearted Hedonist
- Location
- Somewhere in the corners of my imagination
By the way, my personal interpretation of this is that most Inspired don't even realise they need to court their Inspiration's attention, and just try to brute force make things work. I'm picturing Inspiration-chan absolutely gloating about what a responsive host she has in contrast.
Alternatively, their Inspirations are nowhere near as personable as ours, and we just did the equivalent of earnestly asking our best friend what she thinks would be the interests of those screwdrivers over there, the ones with smiley faces painted on them.
Nixeu
Lord of Madness, Harbinger of Llamas
- Location
- Your nightmares.
Actually, even in Girl Genius, that's not hugely common. Agatha's death rays are rather notably better than what the majority of Spark and Spark creations seem to be packing. You'll note most of them use projectile weapons.
If I had to guess a reason, it's probably that producing that much electrical power, in GG and in this, is difficult. Without stuff like reality-bending batteries or Dyne Water engines, it probably requires far more energy than their steam and clockwork power sources can easily produce. Also, there's more energy conversions in energy weapons than in steam-powered projectile weapons (potential->heat->kinetic->light/electricity, versus potential->heat->kinetic), so yeah, the projectiles would be more efficient in many cases.
.
LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
Will we ever be able to make a Mobile Fortress: "Destroyer" of our very very own?
- Location
- A single human dimension
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Of course you will. What's the point of being Inspired if you don't make a giant clockwork Warclock at some point or another? It's practically tradition.