Alchemical Solutions [Worm/Exalted] Thread 3: Choosy Chosen Choose Cheering Choices

Alratan · Feb 10, 2014

What is it with people voting for impossible stunts?

CatOnTheWeb · Feb 10, 2014

Guys, that's not how stunts work in Exalted. That's describing the action, saying it was done, then going on ahead. Stunts can be no more than set up, a description of you preparing to do something.

sun tzu · Feb 10, 2014

A question for Gromweld:
Which options allow us to incorporate Armsmaster's lie detector in our suit? I voted for the "fully remaking your costume" option with that goal in mind, but, if it can be accomplished within a single interval, I'll go for that.

FunkyEntropy · Feb 10, 2014

veekie said:
^^
Can't get Armsmaster's help. We're explicitly waiting for him to come back while we do other stuff.

Intervals are roughly 3~5 hours in length. Armsmaster isn't expected back for four. So we do the social stuff while we wait for him to get back, then switch to costume-making once he's back or just get started on the stuff we don't need him for if he's really late.

Oh, and a note about my stunt: I'm assuming that we're using our charms and submodules to their full potential - Omnitool Implant for exception quality and extra dice on detail work, buying successes with 2nd Perception Aug, IEU, TIE + EAR, etc. I left that out of the stunt for brevity's sake. I can add it in if people think I need to for clarity's sake.

veekie · Feb 10, 2014

ZiPeppe said:
Wouldn't the approval paperwork leave a trail for the mole anyway? maybe just something verbal only for this (at least until the mole situation has been dealt with)?

It's already proven tech, so pretty much all we need is Piggot to say "yes" I think.

CatOnTheWeb · Feb 10, 2014

[x] Investigate our father's kidnapping
- [x] Stunt: Review the video of Danny's kidnapping, burning Essence furiously [2nd Perception Augmentation]. Through replay after replay, some with your microscopic lenses activated, you're resolved to pore over every detail of what happened. Going over their placement and actions throughout looking for details, clues and insight into where they came from, where they might be going, and especially what they're saying

[X] The Wards are in school, so take it easy this afternoon (to facilitate healing) and write emails to (re)connect with Sally, Dragon, Panacea (thank for healing attempt), the Outcasts, the Cheerleaders, and Coach Sato. Also do some light cooking for the PRT day-shift folk, making enough to cover most of their lunches, and talk to them about what's going on and how the PRT is responding to yesterday's events.

veekie · Feb 10, 2014

FunkyEntropy said:
Oh, and a note about my stunt: I'm assuming that we're using our charms and submodules to their full potential - Omnitool Implant for exception quality and extra dice on detail work, buying successes with 2nd Perception Aug, IEU, TIE + EAR, etc. I left that out of the stunt for brevity's sake. I can add it in if people think I need to for clarity's sake.

Gromweld has been pretty good with the charm usages, especially for crafting, which we've done often enough that IEU and Omnitools are a given.

veekie · Feb 10, 2014

Not touching that when we're looking at information security problems.

veekie · Feb 10, 2014

Roll mining for XP attempt!

You're in your base form when they arrive as the doctors urged you to deactivate as many of your powers as you could to help them work on you without any possible complications, but you kept Industrial Survival Frame active just on the off-chance that something worse happened - not counting it as paranoia, as you had just almost just been assassinated. As a result, when Glory Girl barges into the room in front of the guards that were ostensibly leading her there, you only feel something wash over your mind - not, apparently, the aura of overwhelming despair and rage that has caused Gallant and Vista to back into the far corner.

Successful MDV use(probably due to the Willpower maxing out) or ISF blocking the mental Shaping effect? Glory Girl rebuffed anyway.
She's using something like Majestic Radiant Presence I guess.

You manage to refrain from blurting out your findings right then and there, though you're not sure you manage to keep the look of horror or condemnation off your face.

Panacea certainly notices your face, however, her own undergoing a mixture of confusion and concern before another look - hope? - flashes briefly across her features before she settles into a determined mien and approaches the side of your bed.

Panacea penetrates our Manipulation + Socialize with her Perception + Investigation. She probably got a good look at what we just realized.

Again, you get the feeling of something washing over you but being rejected immediately. Panacea gives a start and drops your hand as she pulls away quickly with a wince and a yelp - which catches the attention of the others in the room.

Shaping effect blocked.

"No, no, it's ok. Just going over what I saw is actually causing more of a headache than when your power pushed me out. It's like… my power was telling me you're both biological and…something else… but when, I try to figure out anything beyond that it just starts giving me this headache that feels like some kind of grinding noise mixed with… screaming?"

Just remembered. Panacea can read biological information on contact in great detail. It's how she can control the biology manipulation. She probably read the magical materials and clay as alive.

Gallant gives a look to Vista and shrugs in acceptance, but Glory Girl looks like she wants to tear you a new one for possibly injuring her sister. Panacea, on the other hand, is giving you a look that says she isn't buying it. After a moment or two, however, she just grimaces lightly in pain and nods her head.

Manipulation + Socialize or Presence. Success on distracting Gallant and Glory Girl, failure on Panacea.

Probably a general Charisma + Presence or Socialize for chatting and making nice. Successful.

Glenn, who is still on-hand from earlier, stops by a few times to give you updates on the PR side of things as events unfold - you ask for a tablet or laptop so that you can keep up on your own, but the doctors deny your requests in hopes that you'll focus on recovering.

Charisma + Presence, failed.

Despite Glenn's claims, you're reasonably certain that this is, in fact, all your fault. You try not to let your face betray your thoughts, but it becomes more difficult when Glenn moves onto his next topic; rubbing his hands together for a moment before crossing his arms, the PRT Head of PR gives you an expression that almost borders on sympathy.

Manipulation + Socialize. Probably failed(it's social behemoth Glenn). Glenn recognizes that we think it IS our fault, but has insufficient information to draw more of a conclusion.

You do not sleep well.

Failed Conviction roll for willpower recovery. May be suffering penalties from the mental stress.

Various Diagnostic Overlay Scans

Perception + Investigation. Mostly succeeded with ease.

Some part of you wonders if you should feel bothered by the fact that doing so would further remove you from the Taylor Hebert you once were, but the lack of any negative responses from the rest of your mind dispells that errant thought.

Some kind of virtue check, can't be sure which though. Or even if it succeeded or failed.

Almost as if called, your mind absently drifts into the swarms under your control and the natural impulses the insects have been going through when you leave them to their own devices. There's a soothing nature to their simple minds, their natural desires and instincts free of any human-like motives like greed, jealousy, or even despair - they have no concept of death, so at most there is only the frantic need to flee from a source of pain. You notice, however, that all the Black Widow spiders in your range have congregated overnight to underneath the helipad overhang. You must have ordered them there for collection when you return to Protectorate Headquarters, but you don't remember consciously issuing that directive. Strange.

Effects of our rising War? We're at effective War 5 for swarms.

Pulling together the swarm you had building under the tarmac to help deposit the 238 Black Widows into your care, you augment it with a few extra hundred thousand flyers. This gets the attention of the overlooks, but Armsmaster calls them off with a notice that you've got them under control.

And then your team is marching out on the tarmac, into a tunnel shaped of bees.

Charisma + War, rally unit. Possibly Shard of Perfect Administration uses a stat we're better at.

You note that all the old spiders are still there, and two new undershirts have been crafted in your absence with a third halfway through completion. Moving some spiders over the two finished products, you see that they're the same size as the previous versions. Perhaps this means that they'll follow whatever your last orders were?

General weirdness. Could be the War going up. Could be altering the spiders with long term essence exposure(Enlightened spiders?), could just be programming the spiders with new instincts after extended control.

Knowing how thorough the PRT has been so far with regards to equipment, though, you'll probably be hit with 'improper distribution' forms to fill out if you don't just go through the proper channels. Might as well just requisition them normally.

Intelligence + Bureacracy to realize it's a bad idea?

You have all three hover in mid-air and then bob up and down in the approximation of a nod, then have them clump up and fly in the direction of your room. When she doesn't move for a moment, you have them circle back and repeat the motion.

"You want me to follow these bugs?"

Manipulation + Presence, communicate nonverbally. Success.

Surprisingly, Miss Militia doesn't react past the surprise of hearing your voice as if your mouth was up against her ear. You see her mulling it over, her eyes darting around the room as she crosses her arms for a moment before nodding once and then striding out the door. You keep a few paces behind her after she closes the door a few moments later and carries on back towards her own room.

Charisma + Presence. Success. It helps that she would be receptive to begin with. Followed by Perception + Investigation to present all the relevant facts. Succeeds as well.

"It's possible that the PRT isn't corrupted and that this controller is just that good. I don't know. But even though I want to go out there and try to search for my dad myself, I don't want to throw away everything here to do it. Do you… have any ideas?"

Manipulation + Presence, get Miss Militia to reexamine her options. Success

You're still getting the hang of throwing your voice with the sub-module, so this time you try to make it sound as if you're ten steps to her left while still keeping the cone of sound directed into her ear.

"Sorry."

Judging by the way the Director reflexively strikes out with her left hand, you suspect you weren't very successful with that attempt.

Manipulation + Presence. Fails to fool Piggot. Pisses her off to boot.

Which reminds you of a suspicion you had last night after Assault's comment.

"Director, do you think the attack on me and my dad yesterday could have also been to discredit you?"

"That self-centered twit better have a good reason for disobeying orders or he can kiss that Halberd goodbye for a week. I thought the man had better sen-"

"Wait-" you interrupt, stalling the Director's rant mid-stride. "Wait. Did you give those orders to him directly?"

For several seconds, the Brockton Bay Director of the PRT is very quiet. When she speaks again, her voice is ice.

"Kenneth."

She snaps out of her focus briefly to point at Hannah.

"Hannah, you keep watch over who gives orders to whom around here. I want you looking over anything that has to do with the security details for the reveal event, checking to make sure every direction was followed to the letter - any deviations are to be noted and kept under your hat for now."

Perception + Investigation, success to get that insight

"Follow me out, Hebert."

She punches the door release and is out the door, with only a nod to the room's owner and the barest, "Hannah" as she leaves.

You don't feel like disobeying Piggot right now, so you just whisper a quick, "Thank you," to Hannah as you skirt out quickly with the Director and begin to make your way down to your own room.

MDV fail to resist Piggot? Though there's perfectly good reasons to just go along. We got a piece of tinkertech basically preapproved.

Alratan · Feb 10, 2014

Jinnt said:
Since people don't seem to like the panacea stunts for one with the people (fuck if I know why)

Because it's likely to be a disaster and isn't anything resembling urgent?

Jinnt said:
what about a stunt for trying to contact Lisa through parahumans online.

Well, if we want to kill her,. we could try that, I suppose. Not sure why we'd want to though.

The stunt I proposed for the social action is this:

- Stunt: You hate to admit it, but you need expert advice on this, and, apart from Glenn, you only know one expert. Coach Sato. It is with a certain nervousness that you track down her office phone number and ring her during one of the breaks in her timetable. You're in luck though, and she's more than happy to help you plan out what you want to say, and to read out your message to the cheerleading team. Of course, you do all this invisibly.

For people voting to take that goal, can I suggest you strongly consider it, for the following reason. We have Linguistics 0, and the goal involves us writing emails. Linguistics 0 means we are incredibly bad at writing, to the degree that we're actually off-putting. This stunt allows us to get around that problem.

Alratan · Feb 10, 2014

Jinnt said:
You really think Coil reads parahumans online?

I think he probably has people to do it for him - and his new powers effectively give him infinite time to keep up to date himself to.

Jinnt said:
Not to mention we could easily leave a message only she could decipher.

Coil can brute force almost any algorithm we could create, or, after we send the message, torture Tattletale to death in a simulation to make her reveal what the message contained.

Jinnt said:
Also how are the Panacea stunts asking her too meet us going to be a disaster?

We have poor social skills when we're not trying to manipulate people, Panacea doesn't know us, we're talking about raising intensely personal matter.

There is no urgency here and we've been grinding social training, so in a few weeks we'll be much more capable of dealing with this kind of thing.

Elero · Feb 10, 2014

[x] Refit your costume with base materials from the other outfits and items so that it only needs PR Approval and not a Tech Review review. This will take 1 Interval to complete.
[x] Meditate to recuperate your essence and speed up your healing. Review your charms and how your essence helps shape their functions so that you have a more complete understanding of how they work.

Alratan · Feb 10, 2014

Jinnt said:
Where did I say make an algorithim leave a message that most people would see as just another nonsense post but Lisa's power would fill in the blanks.

Yes, and after she reads it Coil can run a simulation of himself torturing Lisa until she tells him what she knows.

Hell, he could run a simulation every few minutes of torturing everyone he knows for information after injecting them with Tinker-tech truth drugs to make them uninhibited in spilling out information.

DragonBard said:
Is there a limit on how many Backgrounds we can have?

Not normally.

Alratan · Feb 10, 2014

Jinnt said:
Seriously you think leaving this for weeks is a good idea if we aren't going to bring it up then we should try and get to know her so we can do it right.

Why? We're many months before canon here. This is not an urgent issue.

Alratan · Feb 10, 2014

Jinnt said:
I entirely agree but we aren't dedicating a separate action here One with the people is already winning we just need a proper stunt that everyone can agree with.

Without a proper stunt, the current social action is very likely to backfire, thanks to Linguistics 0. We need to spend that stunt slot to avoid that happening.

What you're proposing is also not really a stunt. Stunts, as said many times before, are meant to describe how you accomplish the goal. They're not sub-votes or attempts to do extra-stuff. The Panacea stunt does not do that. It has a completely separate goal, so it should be a Write In goal with its own stunt, rather than try to distort the intention of One with the People into something else.

veekie · Feb 10, 2014

Given that information security is THE big thing until we can snare Coil, making contact with Tattletale before tracking Coil back to his identity would defeat the purpose of the subterfuge involved in setting up the plotting earlier in such a way that would disrupt Thinkers without their notice.

Alratan · Feb 10, 2014

Jinnt said:
You really think he's tracking every single piece of data coming in and out of a massive office like the PRT building? It'd be inane and a huge time sink.

Coil has functionally infinite time, as far as we can tell. He can just run multiple simulations of him doing everything he wants, and then cancel them. Anything that happened before he triggered his power is pretty much fair game for him to find out.

veekie · Feb 10, 2014

I'm thinking it's an unnecessary risk for today. Tomorrow, maybe, depending on how the investigation advanced. But not right now.

veekie · Feb 10, 2014

I'd say a possible option would be to expand our efforts and make an attempt to reach and meet as many PRT staff as possible so we can get more Diagnostic Overlay data.

FunkyEntropy · Feb 10, 2014

Jinnt said:
Since people don't seem to like the panacea stunts for one with the people (fuck if I know why) what about a stunt for trying to contact Lisa through parahumans online.

Anything that involves pointing out that Panacea has a problem necessitates that we reveal that we know that Panacea has a problem. Which leads to questions about how we'd know. Rather not go down that road at this point given our security concerns.

FunkyEntropy · Feb 10, 2014

ZiPeppe said:
Wouldn't the approval paperwork leave a trail for the mole anyway? maybe just something verbal only for this (at least until the mole situation has been dealt with)?

For PR? I don't see why it should. PR is about image and presentation, not the materials or hardware that make the suit.

Alratan · Feb 10, 2014

uju32 said:
Why are people bandwagoning a written Social option today?
When our Linguistics is 0? And we frankly have more pressing problems?

I think we can manage this with an appropriate stunt. I suggested one above.

Cheshire · Feb 10, 2014

[X] Meditate to recuperate your essence and speed up your healing. Review your charms and how your essence helps shape their functions so that you have a more complete understanding of how they work.
-[x]Stunt: Your swarms are taking actions you do not recall giving instructions for, and seem to have acquired the ability to follow their last instruction.
Explore this further.

Alratan · Feb 10, 2014

uju32 said:
As opposed to the fact that our very abilities are exhibiting facets that we are unaware of?

We have two votes. I did vote for investigating our charms. They are not necessarily in competition. I think the social option is the best second choice, with an appropriate stunt to get around our non-existent linguistics (i.e., get an editor).

uju32 said:
Facets that could throw us off in an Investigation or combat situation?

If spiders, for example, are now following last instructions because of our acquisition of War(Swarms) that means we can give them instructions and do other stuff; that has implications for both crafting and investigation.

Our only approved tools are our innate abilities.
Figuring them out now should take priority.
Especially as we're healing at the same time.

I personally think our insects are doing better because they're on the edge of becoming our hive-minded familiar, but I could be wrong.

overmind · Feb 10, 2014

[X] Meditate to recuperate your essence and speed up your healing. Review your charms and how your essence helps shape their functions so that you have a more complete understanding of how they work.

[X] The Wards are in school, so take it easy this afternoon (to facilitate healing) and write emails to (re)connect with Sally, Dragon, Panacea (thank for healing attempt), the Outcasts, the Cheerleaders, and Coach Sato. Also do some light cooking for the PRT day-shift folk, making enough to cover most of their lunches, and talk to them about what's going on and how the PRT is responding to yesterday's events.

[X] Overmind's XP Plan
-[X] Familiar (?) -4xp

Alchemical Solutions [Worm/Exalted] Thread 3: Choosy Chosen Choose Cheering Choices

Alratan

CatOnTheWeb

sun tzu

FunkyEntropy

Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy

veekie

CatOnTheWeb

veekie

veekie

veekie

Alratan

Alratan

Elero

Alratan

Alratan

Alratan

veekie

Alratan

veekie

veekie

FunkyEntropy

Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy

FunkyEntropy

Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy

Alratan

Cheshire

Alratan

overmind

Ruler of the Swarm