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Alchemical Solutions [Worm/Exalted] Thread 16: Playful Parasites Pervert Prayer, Perpetuate Plagues

Also, when things cool down we do need to register worship of the Great Maker as an official religion under U.S. law. Because it would be so awesome. :)
 
landcollector said:
Where is this stated again?
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dont know exact quote but without his cover iris mote taps us. if he doesn't mote tap us he still draws power from us. I would have to look it up to be sure or wait for grom to tell us. Either way iris gives us a reliable way of finding the nine because
  1. the nine might not know that he is affected by our master power, that as far as they know only affects insects.
  2. Jack will not want to leave iris behind.
 
crhoades said:
dont know exact quote but without his cover iris mote taps us. if he doesn't mote tap us he still draws power from us. I would have to look it up to be sure or wait for grom to tell us. Either way iris gives us a reliable way of finding the nine because
  1. the nine might not know that he is affected by our master power, that as far as they know only affects insects.
  2. Jack will not want to leave iris behind.
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He draws 1 mote per minute.
 
Cassiemouse said:
I personally think Chevalier as an Orichalcum is the next one we should consider. Depending on how we react to the PRT we might have to go rogue soon and taking him with us would be better than having him as an enemy.
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That depends if Chev thinks it's a good idea. Look what happened when we Exalted Marrow, he might want to avoid something that would screw up the chain of command.

Klaus said:
Jack has just shown, by blowing up the base, that he's not playing by narrative convention. If we simply accept the challenge of each day as it comes along he's going to get away. We need to get out ahead of them rather than merely reacting.

Fortunately, we DO actually know some things about their tactical situation, and we can make a few guesses.

Each of them is going to attempt to recruit a new member. Assuming Jack wasn't lying, he intends to take 9 days to do this. Normally, staying in the city for nine days would be suicide; Jack relies on being impossible to pin down. He's going to have trouble forcing us to play along with his daily challenge, so he will probably use Bakuda's bombs to blackmail us into playing along. The bombs will be distributed throughout the city, hidden inside the victims he's already taken (note: Decapitating someone and sucking their head into TIE is a valid emergency bomb-disarmament technique. We can rebuild the body later. We can also TIE bombs, and, judging by the door, possibly cranial implants), and probably hidden at the site of each day's attack(s). If we can find some way to disarm the bombs we may be able to cut this entire arc short.

If the Church of Jack is to remain on the air that gives us another weakness to exploit. The broadcast will make it possible to track him back to his true location. He may be disguising that location with tinker tech and conventional means, but we can get tinker tech too. We might be able to get away with jamming his transmission once, but he'll probably just blow people up in petulant frustration if we do.

Jack probably has his escape route mapped out already and he'll want to stay close to it. Unless he relies totally on bomb-blackmail he'll want it to be discreet, since nine days will gather a lot of attention. I would start looking with the river, particularly anyplace with underwater access. We should also keep an eye out for large "dead" areas where there are no bugs, since Bonesaw probably cleaned house.

Jack will continue to use drones and blackmailed parahumans. Not only should we have them all check in, we should have them all continuously check on each other, to make it harder for Jack to isolate them.

Some of these ideas will require tinkerers, but that's OK because there's a place we can get them: Toybox. We have Resources 4 and IEU so we have a lot to barter with for a rush job. If we can get them to build, say, a device that freezes electrical activity in semiconductors, a device like that would probably disable most of the bombs, as long as we have enough devices to blanket the city. Notes I said " freeze" rather than "cut" I don't want to sever the bombs from their power supply, because that might trigger a dead man switch, I want to prevent the detonator from functioning at all.

Or perhaps we hire them to build some signal tracking drones to help us locate Jack.

Narratively, it may not be possible for us to jump the rails, but if it is we can only do it by setting plans of our own in motion.
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Do we know if they are recruiting as of now? If they have 9 members already, then they'd probably spend it just commiting Human Rights violations and War Crimes.

So we investigate that as soon as possible.

Next is regrouping our forces. The Wyld Hunt are most likely reacting either now or soon after and will probably be offering assistance. Next are the villain groups: After the very public murder of Vox, every Villain will be itching to pitch in or leave the city itself. Let's not screw up like the PRT did in canon and keep workable ties with the villainous organization for the remainder of these 9 days. Send out a broadcast if we have too.

Master/Stranger protocols should remain in affect as Bonesaw has been known to modify hostages as distractions like in canon, so any one we THINK are the 9 could be decoys.
 
FunkyEntropy said:
Emergency Conversion: Sorry, Aisha, but I like Missy better than you. This isn't even getting into who would be more useful - Missy is extremely powerful while Optical Shroud + Industrial Survival Frame would essentially render Aisha invulnerable since Optical Shroud removes her one vulnerability of being detected by cameras while ISF lets her ignore anything that doesn't intend to cause her harm (which nothing will, because as far as the world is concerned she doesn't exist). Chevalier remains a good choice as he combines charisma (we still need someone with good social chops) and beatstick in one convenient package.
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Aisha is at least as powerful as Missy ; can you say Simurgh defense/cure?
Or even better, Personality Override Spike from range at higher levels?
Given that we will be dealing with Apostates eventually, this is kinda important, because we need countermeasures to deal with Mastered people.
Besides, a look at the charm Scion used to mindfuck every parahuman shard in existence would give us a major step up.

If I was statting Aisha at Essence 3, with 19 Personal Essence?
I would skip Optical Shroud(she has her power), and go in on 3 dots of artifacts: Beamklaive(2 dots) + Essence Cannon(2 dots) + Amulet of Shadowwalking(4 dots) + Omnimodal Wardrobe Unit(1 dot).
IAT + Aura Dampening Component are prereqs, of course; Husk-Changing Apparatus + Interpolative Syntax Emulator makes her the perfect Changer/Stranger.
Perfected Lotus Matrix gives her martial arts to maximize her weapons; start with Violet Bier of Sorrows and Laser Panther, add Overwhelming Ordnance Style.
Anticipatory Simulation Processor as a surprise negator, Accelerated Response System + Precalculated Evasion System for a perfect dodge.
Gear Driven Reflex Automation for counterattacks.
Chemical Fog Generator for non-lethal and lethal AoE attacks, and the whole ninja smoke thing.

TIE to store artifacts and stolen goods,and maybe later give her a familiar. Alloyed Reinforcement of Flesh for the whole extra lives thing.
Throw in DRES and IEU. +/- Optical Enhancement.
Add 4th Dexterity Augmentations, 4th Wits Augmentation, 4th Stamina and 4th Perception Augmentations into dedicated slots.
Give her mundane armor from EOA. And you have a deadly, deadly Exalt.

Depending on whether @Gromweld chooses to apply Revlid's fix to Alchemical familiars, you could even buy an additional array for ranged combat, focused around Dedicated Harmonic Targeting.
With an Essence cannon in play, that will do very bad things to anyone we want to kill.
 
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FunkyEntropy said:
You guys are over-thinking things. We get 9 successes on average for Perception + Investigation rolls (at the low low cost of 4m/2succ with the 2nd Perc Aug, which is low enough to be mote neutral and can thus be performed indefinitely), 11 sux if we channel conviction. This is more than enough to easily track down the Nine, and thanks to IEU it only takes two and half minutes to examine the video/crime scene for clues.
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1. By the time we are ready to track down the nine, they will have left already.
2. If it was really going to be that easy, we wouldn't have an arc dedicated to them, therefore this is not going to happen.
FunkyEntropy said:
Diagnostics Overlay + trick shot (-1 accuracy) = emergency bomb extraction via crossbow surgery.
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Assuming Bakuda is kind enough not to rig the bomb to explode if disturbed, and it's not inconveniently placed inside something important, like a brain or heart, and that she uses big loops of wires, rather than integrated circuits, or...
 
Hmm, is Oni-Lee dead? This Lung Interlude is becoming longer than I thought....

Maybe I should just focus and the Amy and Brian one......
 
landcollector said:
And how would she know this? The Sids didn't like teaching this to non-Sids.
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Violet Bier of Sorrows is explicitly mentioned as one of the CMAs that is known to Alchemicals, as the first style of the First Age.
It's not exclusively a Sidereal Martial Art; both Solars and Lunars know it, and Auto-kun took knowledge of it with him.

Not to mention that Iris spent several thousand years in Creation; access to CMAs and TMAs can quite easily be stunted as part of the knowledge he was acquiring.
 
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uju32 said:
Violet Bier of Sorrows is explicitly mentioned as one of the CMAs that is known to Alchemicals, as the first style of the First Age.
It's not exclusively a Sidereal Martial Art; both Solars and Lunars know it, and Auto-kun took knowledge of it with him.

Not to mention that Iris spent several thousand years in Creation; access to CMAs and TMAs can quite easily be stunted as part of the knowledge he was acquiring.
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I don't see that info in the Alchemical MA section. Where might I find that?
 
The relevant snippet (which I think ought to be fair use) from Exalted: The Autochthonians:

That's a first edition publication, so take that as you will.
 
1986ctcel said:
NO! Don't be hasty, aside from probably releasing some incredibly lethal plagues she's probably the only one who knows EXACTLY what operations were performed on Missy and everyone else, so instead of killing her we have FPoP literally SMACK THE CRAZY OUT OF HER! Then we have her working at gunpoint to undo whatever she did to them while possibly serving as a skilled tutor for our medicine stat.
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Sure, I know that logically, but at the time of posting, my logic was dragged out back by Hate and Rage and shot.
 
uju32 said:
I would skip Optical Shroud(she has her power)
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Dude, at least try to read my post before commenting on it. Optical Shroud covers the one weakness of Aisha's power - that she can be detected via robot or after-the-fact watching of video. Optical Shroud don't give a fuck if you're a robot or a video recorder, you ain't gonna see her.

This means that anything that's going to hurt her is going to do so by accident and is therefore unintentional. ISF makes you immune to things that aren't intended to hurt you.

Anything else is just gravy.

Klaus said:
1. By the time we are ready to track down the nine, they will have left already.
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At which point we can either examine the site for clues (with the same 2.5min, 9avg.sux pool as before) if we want to be fancy, or we can get straight to tracking them.

...

It should be noted here that tracking someone is a Perception + Survival roll which, conveniently, benefits from all the same charms that make our Investigation rolls so overwhelming. Unfortunately, we only have three dots in Survival so I guess we'll just have to make do with the just utterly terrible 8 successes we'll get on average and the fact that we can find Jack Slash six times faster than he can cover his tracks.

Woe is us, whatever shall we do.

Klaus said:
2. If it was really going to be that easy, we wouldn't have an arc dedicated to them, therefore this is not going to happen.
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But that would require obscenely gratuitous use of idiot balls and railroading, so I'm going to ignore it because it's dumb. Finding the Nine isn't hard. We get four successes on all the relevant actions before we've even bothered to roll anything. We move faster than he can because we've got a jet pack and we can track him faster than he can hide himself.

Finding them isn't the hard part - it's the part after that that's going to be difficult.
/cranky grumblefactory
 
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FunkyEntropy said:
Dude, at least try to read my post before commenting on it. Optical Shroud covers the one weakness of Aisha's power - that she can be detected via robot or after-the-fact watching of video. Optical Shroud don't give a fuck if you're a robot or a video recorder, you ain't gonna see her.

This means that anything that's going to hurt her is going to do so by accident and is therefore unintentional. ISF makes you immune to things that aren't intended to hurt you.

Anything else is just gravy.


At which point we can either examine the site for clues (with the same 2.5min, 9avg.sux pool as before) if we want to be fancy, or we can get straight to tracking them.

...

It should be noted here that tracking someone is a Perception + Survival roll which, conveniently, benefits from all the same charms that make our Investigation rolls so overwhelming. Unfortunately, we only have three dots in Survival so I guess we'll just have to make do with the just utterly terrible 8 successes we'll get on average and the fact that we can find Jack Slash six times faster than he can cover his tracks.

Woe is us, whatever shall we do.


But that would require obscenely gratuitous use of idiot balls and railroading, so I'm going to ignore it because it's dumb. Finding the Nine isn't hard. We got four successes on all the relevant actions before we've even bothered to roll anything. We move faster than he can because we've got a jet pack and we can track him faster than he can hide himself.

Finding them isn't the hard part - it's the part after that that's going to be difficult.
/cranky grumblefactory
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you also have to factor in iris which helps us know where they are as long as they keep him near. he can also serve as a set of eyes and ears for us if we can convince him to pretend that he still isn't active.
 
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