Officially? No; they were supposed to do so this week, but Slaughterhouse Interruptus.
Unofficially? Pretty sure they know what's up by now; they're not idiots.
Alchemical Solutions [Worm/Exalted] Thread 18: Ravaging Rapscallions Rapidly Regret Regular Rampages
- Thread starter Gromweld
- Start date
Unofficially? Pretty sure they know what's up by now; they're not idiots.
- Location
- Fabulously Rainbow Ireland
But getting the talk over with asap means that we don't have to worry about Lisa later on, there's at the most nine days anyway so why not use some time to make sure Lisa doesn't get it into her head to "save humanity" from us and our "dark god"?
And meantime Vista/Uzu/Tatsu/Assault/Battery remain at risk of death, and are used to kill other people.
Or we suffer avoidable casualties(Chevy, Hannah,Colin, Wards) because we are not in the field to coordinate.
That is simply unacceptable.
I mean, it's like abandoning coordination during the Behemoth fight to go and diplomance Danny.
Lisa is a powerful Thinker, but she is not an asset for whom we sacrifice everyone else.
The problem is that you think it will require one talk, while her shard is feeding her contradictory information.
Did one talk solve the Danny issue?
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We can fit it in where room allows. Her refusal to accept IEU is inefficient.
The problem is much the same as Danny really, improperly specified conversation circumstances. It's like visiting Danny while he's asleep and had to be blasted awake by water jets, or in the heat of combat, looking more inhuman than ever.
If we're talking to her, it needs to be
1) Properly allocated action. If we're doing something else she'd find an opportunity to duck out of it. And she's very good at avoiding things if she wants to.
2) Specifically working with Loom Server Migration active, even if we're working through relays. Her shard picks up on our alien nature even if we ask someone else to talk to her for us. This will be difficult during this crisis.
3) Right place, right time. SV alas, is terrible at it.
The problem is much the same as Danny really, improperly specified conversation circumstances. It's like visiting Danny while he's asleep and had to be blasted awake by water jets, or in the heat of combat, looking more inhuman than ever.
If we're talking to her, it needs to be
1) Properly allocated action. If we're doing something else she'd find an opportunity to duck out of it. And she's very good at avoiding things if she wants to.
2) Specifically working with Loom Server Migration active, even if we're working through relays. Her shard picks up on our alien nature even if we ask someone else to talk to her for us. This will be difficult during this crisis.
3) Right place, right time. SV alas, is terrible at it.
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Trauma.
She was the only person who had IEU active while swallowed by Noelle.
Cognitive acceleration+sensory deprivation would make for one hell of a case of PTSD, even before you account for the fact that she seems to have undergone something similar to a nervous breakdown due to examining consequences of her actions.
Talking to Lisa is something better since by our Ally, Dragon. She knows us both, knows Lisa well enough to know if it's salvageable, and has the pull to get her stationed far enough away to be out of story if it's not salvageable.
On the other hand, S9 now, deal with hostile minor character later.
On the other hand, S9 now, deal with hostile minor character later.
Have Amy infodump her on her findings. WHILE we still have Loom Server Migration up.
Regardless of who talks to her, as long as Loom Server Migration is offline, thinking about us at all hurts.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Who said anything about them dying? If they were being subjected to, like, the worst pepper spray ever that would hurt like hell but it wouldn't kill them. Same deal.
Again, I'm just trying to figure out the most likely explanation given the data on hand.
I can assure you that basic poisons aren't Shaping - remember when we were discussing how to deal with Crawler and I suggest Marrow launch him into orbit? IIR one of Crawler's defenses - that really nasty acid that he's got - Grom was treating as a Poison.
So yeah. Without going into anything weird like how Motonic physics handles Earth-Bet chemical reactions, Poison works just fine on us.
Maybe. To quote the rulebook, "Shaping effects change the character by altering reality. They bypass the laws of Creation." This is actually a bit of a difficult question to answer because Space Whale Bullshit is supposed to be both completely mundane (it's not "mind control," just altering your synapses and neuro chemistry), but at the same time it's also flipping physics the bird often by conjuring the effect seemingly out of nowhere.
THIS. The glaring, obvious potential fallout of not getting our issues with Lisa settled is that she very well might try to stop us or sabotage our efforts to convert someone (we already saw her try to do this on-screen with Aisha) at a really inopportune moment. Whether she'll be able to pull it off is an entirely separate question, but it's not one that I want to have to answer when we're in the middle of trying to whisk Vista (or any other candidate, for that matter) off to the Cradle for emergency conversion.
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This has my support.
Cassiemouse
Market Atheist
I have to say I did expect for us to actually talk to Lisa this update but I can understand how our choices made that difficult. Yep.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Yep. Lesson learned. Lisa is slippery like eel so if we want to actually get her completely understandable misconceptions sorted out we'll have to not just dedicate the action to actually sorting out those misconceptions, we'll probably have to be clever in our stunting to make sure that she can't just conveniently slip away. Initial thought is to have a meeting with Dragon (maybe Narwhal too, since she's the WH's handler IIR), so that Lisa can't just make excuses and leave.
Entirely unrelated...
@Gromweld - I am rather disappointed at the continued absence of Lisa flailing in the background about ZOMG POD PEOPLE. ROBO DEATH CULTS are, perhaps, more accurate but not nearly as funny IMO.
The quote you mention is here:
It reads to me like a comparison about the level of damage it can output, not about how it does so.
This really is something we should get aruling from Gromweld on; given that Taylor spent a significant amount of this week being having her powers re-tested, she should know IC.
@Gromweld
Can you please rule on this?
Would Earth-Bet/spacewhalehax poison work on us in Alchemical form?
As a direct attack? What of as an AoE thing?
Something else for the GM to rule on.
Certainly.
I know I mentioned this a page or so back, that she could run interference with Grue over Aisha.
But the middle of an S-class situation, with our Clarity rising, is most certainly not the time.
And it would impact unfavorably with PRT/Protectorate figures as well as PR , who actually wield more power and influence over us than a teenage former-villain Thinker who works for our closest Ally.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Two initial things, 1st, why would Grom mention it in part of detailing how Crawler is a legit threat to an Exalt if it didn't contribute to his being a threat and, 2nd, part of this information is not available in-quest due to Conversations with Grom about it.
The other thing is...think about the implications of this.
If poison counts as Shaping, why wouldn't everything else aside from the most basic things like bulkier muscles to hit us harder also count as Shaping? If someone like Glory Girl uses force fields to enhance the strength of her blows, well, that's warping reality to harm us so I guess that's Shaping. Ditto lasers, or Behemoth's fireballs.
I have to admit that it's rather funny to imagine everyone with powers running around like slightly-less insane Raksha all telling reality to go fuck itself in their own special, individual ways...but that's not what we've seen happen so far.
We were hurt by Behemoth's attacks that didn't involve trying to change our internal organs natural state to being on fire.
We were hurt by the Siberian, walking embodiment of sending physics to go cry in a corner.
I concur that it's not likely that she'll be able to pull it off. But unlikely =/= impossible, and that's really not something I want to have to us discover we were wrong about while we're trying to emergency convert someone.
Here's my point:
Behemoth does straight physical damage. Ditto Siberian.
Even the Simurgh could do straight physical damage using TK.
But Earth-Bet poisons require interaction with organic chemistry, which is something that Taylor lacks.
Hell, you might even rule Crawler as a straight physical attack, due to caustic effect.
But an airborne poison that induces vomiting as well as eye tearing and sinus irritation?
Should not work on a synthetic biology running on a motonic reality engine.
Especially with IAT inactive.
It's the same reason I wouldn't expect tear gas to have any effect on an Alchemical without IAT; it relies on chemistry that our EOA's body has no truck with.
I don't see how we can do anything about this now without sacrificing more important stuff.
If it was proposed during downtime, sure.
But not during an active event.
So, another attempt at defusing Lisa's hostility should specify
- we are fully humanoid with IAT and LSM running.
- we have Dragon sponsoring our chat and not letting her wiggle out of it.
- a time slot explicitly for talking cleared of other business so she can't divert the conversation. It doesn't have to be long but if we try and combine it with a task then she'll try and stick to the task and communicate via notes again.
- a trusted mediator - ?Dragon. Skein might be a useful neutral too, Brian or Amelia would make the conversation more dangerous, Alex and Rachel would just be unhelpful.
Doesn't matter if you're not buying it, 'cause they're not selling it! They're giving it away! Thioacetone for everyone!
You're quick. Anyway, it still shouldn't affect us.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
I have to agree - the fact that it smells awful shouldn't matter to us because we don't need to breathe. It would be much more appropriate for us to wonder why the fuck everyone else is tossing their cookies left and right, and then someone mentions the smell and - if we were really, really dumb - a Stam + Resist roll at Diff 5 would follow.
Cassiemouse
Market Atheist
Eh. Being able to no-sell entire categories of threats is pretty boring. That is why they are getting rid of the charms that do that in the new edition. Besides, Tinker weapons should at least be able to challenge us.
Thioacetone is not a poison that causes vomiting. Vomiting is our reaction to smelling it. We still have a sense of smell - it is integral to being a great cook, indeed our sense of smell must stronger and more refined than most. No doubt we can suppress the gag reflex once we work out what's happening - maybe a resistance roll channeling conviction.
