No, but I was referring to the fact that Sakis socialize is at 3 dots. Above average I believe (2 was average right?), but she is not yet a true PR master. She needs training and time before she can start dealing with really hard cases (not to mention more psychological stability). Now yeah, App7/Cha7/Man7 would obviously help loads, but App7 for example carries the risks of GU thinking she is being mastered and attacking, or having some thinker power in her arsenal to counter the effect. Odds are Oricalchum won't be our next exalt either, so this is not extremely urgent. Especially since asking her to start working on GU before she has had a chance to accept (if she ever will) our choice with Bonesaw could backfire.
I figure GU can wait until Saki has grown used to her powers, recovered from the horror she experienced and trained a bit.
Ignoring him might lead to her being outed too. Really, to me the best way to deal with the situation would be a sneak attack (by Taylor+Assembly under cloak for example), where Saint and his group are captured quietly and without anyone noticing. So long as we would have some clue of his location (and so long as SoPA finished repairing itself), using the extended range would make it reasonably easy to make sure Saint is taken out in a way that does not risk Dragon being exposed.
Given Dragons fame, we could probably even get Saki to do a memory extraction to make sure Saint has not left any "if I disappear and don't do this every month, reveal everything"-traps behind.
Does anyone know what the Dragons chains would say about this? I mean I do agree with you that leaving Dragon conscious and stuck in Sakis dimension would arguably be cruel. However we know she already uses backups, so really, taking one iteration to the safe space and putting it into the kind of "timelock" Lord Grasp was in would be good. It would mean that even if Saint decides to trigger Ascalon, the situation is not unsalvagable. Ofcourse the risk in this is that Taylor would presumably just ask Dragon about the idea, and she might refuse due to her restrictions. Or Saint might see that as his final chance and trigger Ascalon immediately.
To me, all of this (while true), is only further incentive to deal with Saint somehow soon enough. We have no idea what might cause him to finally crack and expose Dragon as an AI in order to attack us. He could probably predict that we would try to protect Dragon, severely limiting our resources. So he very much has a motive of revealing Dragon, and then using Ascalon, after we have used much/most of our political capital as we can to try to prevent her being dissected.
Except that in this case/analogy, we very much are NOT. At best we might have a bullet-proof vest and a medical kit.
Saint may not be anywhere as smart as he probably thinks he is, but he would not have managed all he did if he was a complete and total moron. After all thats happened, he would realise that attacking us directly (even with his suits) and trying to kill us directly would be pointless and would almost certainly just get him captured/killed instead.
What we need to worry about is something where we are FAR more vulnerable. Complete exposure. Dragon has access to massive amounts of information about us and the other alchemicals, and that means Saint has access to that information too. If Saint went public with everything he knows (including possibly that Dragon was AI), it would be seriously damaging to us. All the discussions we have had? Our plans to summon our alien god to earth? Our plans to literally alter the laws of physics to work with a new system? All our scary powers (including all the VERY scary powers Saki has just revealed)? The fact we have Bonesaw working for us? And Crawler. The reports made by one of the most powerfull thinkers currently working for the Guild about her beliefs that we are podpeople? And so on.
If Saint made all of that public at once without warning, including direct recordings and such (which Dragon presumably has), and made sure to reveal all of it in the worst possible way, it would be a MAJOR blow to our reputation and PR. And by extension to the PRT too, which would futher hurt us. Heck, even revealing how all of our powers work would be a huge blow, since it would allow all our enemies to be better prepared for us due to knowing our strengths and weaknesses much better. And while its minor in comparison to other things, revealing Sakis public identity would just be one more thing he can hurt us with ("The shapeshifting alien-robot was pretending to be human all along! How many others like her are there!").
And the further things progress, the more information he learns about us. For example, its not at all impossible that Taylor might at some point reveal to Dragon what truly happened to S9 considering the 4 dot intimacy. Or talk about potential (even if only hypotethical) ideas of using POS on people like has been suggested. Revealing Dragons AI nature would also hurt us, since it would force Taylor and the Assembly to focus their attention on protecting Dragon from the threats you yourself point out. If Saint realises that, he might well throw that to the pot to try to make us look even worse to everyone.
Thats what I am worried about. Saint panicing about our growing power, realising that he can't attack us directly (or even get close thanks to upgraded SoPA), and trying to turn the world against us by going public with everything he knows in a way designed to make us look as dangerous and monstrous as possible.
We could probably recover even from that, but something like that would not be a minor blow that we could just shrug off and ignore as something meaningless. Especially if he chooses his time wisely, and does it when we are already dealing with some crisis and are distracted (and he would know the worst moment to strike, because Dragon knows).
Inaction can have just as bad unintened consequences as action. And we do have multiple ways and abilities to deal with Saint in a way that can't really be tracked to us. If we found Saint, we could just use Hidden Conclave Assembly + Saki and dump him and his allies to Sakis prison and decide what to do later. Neither Simurgh nor anyone else can see there, so its rather unlikely that we would suffer any negatives from that, and we could decide what to do with Saint at leisure. Certainly nothing in comparison to what might happen, if we ignore Saint long enough for him to decide that he must destroy us, no matter what.
Truthfully, you seem to believe that so long as we ignore Saint entirely, he won't act against us or do anything harmfull to us. That seems like a really risky approach to take. This is not canon, and his interlude was quite a while ago. We can't trust that he will remain inactive. We have no idea what his current mental state is, nor how he views us now. Just because we ignore our enemies, does not mean our enemies will ignore us.
Should this not mean we should try to pre-emptively make sure this does NOT happen? Rather than sticking our heads into the sand and waiting until it eventually does.
POS: Memory Extraction. Confessional Scream Extractor. Social attacks to make him reveal the truth after hitting him with massive penalties from Sakis prison. Etc. Given how important Dragon is, how heroic she has been, and everything, I believe Saki could be convinced to do something as find out about any of Saints backups. Especially since she would be at significant personal risk, as would those near her in her civilian identity. And ofcourse if Saint is completely turned, he will happily work with us to undo everything himself.
Slaughterhouse Nine did not know virtually everything about us and have access to the the AI Taylor trusts. Saint does. While S9 might be more infamous in general and been more deadly threat to the world overall, that does not automatically mean that they were the greater threat to the assembly. Especially given how blatant they were and how quickly we took them out.
Which is kinda big deal to be honest. Taylor and Iris could eventually learn to replicate everything Bonesaw can do (Iris is probably pretty capable of it already, he just is needed for so many other things). Sure, Bonesaws power is handy, but if it breaks Sakis trust in us or threatens the integrity of the assembly, then Bonesaw was of negative value (I really hope that won't happen).
She is also a potential heavy rock around our neck that our enemies like Saint could against us. Even with mitigating circumstances (Jack being a thinker, Bonesaw being a child), she did not just kill people. She basically went all "I have no mouth and I must scream" on most of her victims. Thats going to make defending her considerably more difficult.
Sparing her and letting her continue working and even promising important alchemical secrets simply because she is valuable is unlikely to make us very popular if the full truth is revealed. It will almost certainly cause Saki to get really upset (though I hope she will get over it).
I am curious what makes you think he WILL remain at his current level of annoyance, while "things (alchemicals in his view)" continue to grow in power and influence and acquire more recruits? He is also rather unlikely to send us an email telling how he plans to screw us over next week. The moment he stops being an annoyance, is also the moment where it becomes too late to act to stop him. We will learn that Saint stopped holding back when we are woken by a PRT person who informs us that the world knows everything there is to know about us, and that Dragon is either Ascaloned or publicly exposed and imprisoned as an AI. Saint is not a harmless nobody, and we have no clue what might cause him to snap.
I thought it caused a significant precog disruption? Though I might be misremembering. Regardless, people do know about the Cradle, so we can expect it to be under constant monitoring by satellites and other means. Not saying it would be impossible to do it covertly (Optical shroud+Hidden Conclave Assembly alone would help lots), but there are issues to overcome.
Ofcourse, I wonder if exalting her would even be the best use of resources. I mean since she would presumably lose all her pre-existing ghosts (I assume she has quite a few at this point already), which would also either piss her off(if we hid it) or make her hesitate and doubt (if we told her).
Giving her a soul, willpower boosts, making her work with essence physics and possibly giving her enlightened essence (and maybe some other enhancements with craft:genesis) might well make her more valuable to us than exalting her would. Especially since Gromweld went back on the idea that her shard-charm would convert other shards. Exalted-GU would basically be GU that lost a LOT of power, but gained standard alchemical charms (which any other exalt would also gain, and most of the effects that GU could probably replicate with her ghost-army army anyway).
GU is powerfull enough that she does not really need an exaltation to remain relevant, and we can certainly have human allies can't we?
Eh, I don't really care about Saint too much, so long as we don't stick our head in the sand and go all "Saints no threat to us because he is Saint". I worry that complacency like that could end up costing us. I don't really care if we convert Saint, so long as Saki is OK with it. I will say that I don't think Saint is valuable enough to try and push Saki into using POS for total brainwashing if she is not comfortable with it though.
Does she know that everything she tells Dragon/has ever told Dragon/has ever told PRT/been figured out by PRT thinkers/Etc, Saint is fully aware of?
The spike probably won't really work, since its not really designed to work on AIs. Gromweld has hinted that it might be possible to create new submodules for POS that work on entity-shards. I figure it would be possible to create such submodules for Dragon too.
However to be honest, it would almost certainly be a waste of time. I figure it would be much easier to just break her shackles the more "traditional" way. We can probably acquire 2 more specialist dots in AI in preparation for example, and we have all sorts of helpfull charms that would help even further. Iris, SPU, a thousand monkeys with keyboards, IEU, some memories from having the suit in TIE, etc.
And ofcourse, if we gain access to Richters tools and such, it would become even easier. Really, I figure we could probably do it now (or atleast loosen the chains), if not for the fact that Saint would probably trigger Ascalon the moment he realised that Dragons chains were being attacked by a "thing" that might well be capable of breaking them.
I wonder which among her restrictions is higher? So for example, if someone in authority gave a direct order not to, would that possibly make her resist less due to conflicting directives.
Hmm. I wonder if that mean that somehow removing the blind spots would neutralise Ascalon (since Dragon would notice it and be able to fight back, rather than just letting the thing destroy her while she does nothing).
Hmm. I think Gromweld said that there would not be other exalts beyond alchemicals. And frankly thats a good thing. If one exaltation could enter Nowhereuniverse, then presumably they all could, which would fuck things up good (and make the Assembly obsolete pretty quick).
I think it was mentioned that when we exalted Prayer, a part of Edens corpse disappeared or something. Technically, if Marrows shard had been connected to more than one C53, the others would have died. Same is true with Alexandria presumably. C53s need their shards to survive, so if some C53 Alexandria package is linked to the same shard, they die when Auto hoovers up that part of Edens corpse (those not massively mutated to the point of needing constant shard life-support would presumably just lose their powers permanently).
The odds are probably against it happening though. A better reason (when it comes to Zion vs Eden) might be the description of Prayers charm (and Gromwels WoG) which makes it clear that Eden capes just get a remixed (if more powerfull) pre-existing alchemical charms with maybe some new parts, while Zion converts get something truly unique.
Alexandria would probably get the "critical components" filled with Alchemical Perfect Defenses, and the mental augmentations with IEUs and such. Handy sure, but I can't help but wonder if gaining completely unique powers (which Zions living non-broken shards give) unlike anything else would be potentially more usefull?
Truthfully though, I would say that a far better reason not to exalt Alexandria is that she would be highly likely to try to overthrow us and take control of the Assembly. Or just rebel outright. She has been in charge of multiple organisations and conspiracies longer than Taylor has been alive (I think). Odds are that if she was exalted, she would believe that now that both were exalts, she would be the obvious choice to lead the Assembly.
I admit I would be interested to see what Auto makes of a tinker shard. However can we fully trust Armsy? He is not as good a guy here as he was in canon, not having undergone the "crucible" that made him a far greater hero. Also the lack of relationship between him and Dragon also plays a factor. I would be more eager if he was Defiant, but he is not.
Because human souls were designed to work that way. Many more powerfull spirits for example do come back, if they are not killed with spirit killers. So to Dragon Kings potentially, and I think Jadeborn too? I wonder what would happen if someone is converted to work with essence physics, but not given a soul. Would they actually qualify as a standard exalted-type Hun-Po human if we don't give them a soul? Or would they still be revivable and lacking free will (just using essence physics). Assuming its possible to do that anyway.
Damn, this ended up long. Sorry.
