I'm sure there isn't anything restricting multiple Alchemical's from have the same motivation.landcollector said:
Alchemical Solutions [Worm/Exalted] Thread 9: Icon’s Idiosyncrasies Incite Irritating Inquisition
- Thread starter Gromweld
- Start date
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- Tags
- exalted (white wolf) worm
- Location
- The end of all things
Omake? Could it be... GSP!Auto-kun?
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
You mean GSP!Taylor, who is either a Defiler or favors She Who Lives in Her Name...probably Defiler that favors Kimbery.Anasurimbor said:
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
So in preparation of the S9 showing up...whenever it is that they show up, I decided to do a threat assessment for who'd be a danger to us personally.
Jack Slash - All his basic (non-communication) power does is allow him to extend the range of his slash attacks. That's it. Even if he's been augmented to superhuman levels by Bonesaw (which we know not to be the case because canon!Taylor's armor was effective vs him) his base damage is still going to be less than 10L because pocket knives aren't exactly all that strong. Most likely around Str 3~4 with +1 from the knife for no more than 5L plus threshold successes. So our armor is almost guaranteed to no-sell him on that front. As for the Communication-shard shenanigans, all we need to do is turn off SoPA and then snipe him. Called shot through the eye ought to do it.
Crawler - He can't fly. QED.
Mannequin - Can't fly. Has ranged options, but, like Jack Slash, probably doesn't have the raw power necessary to get past our armor.
Siberian - Also can't fly.
Burnscar - Can't fly, has ways around that via fire teleportation. Suit's enviro hazard features make her less of a threat than normal.
Cherish - HAHAHA no. Unless her ability counts as UMI and not shaping in which case she jumps all the way to the top of the list by a significant margin as long as we're not suffering from any Clarity. The more Clarity we have, the less of a danger she is to us. SoPA will almost certainly help.
Sand Leviathan Shatterbird - Can fly and fuck with our hardware. High priority because we'll want to take her out before she becomes too annoying. Unlikely to be able to damage us through our suit, but might be able to disrupt some suit functions.
Bonesaw - Vacuum-sealed suit means her plagues are not a concern. Threat of collateral damage extreme enough to warrant being a high priority target anyway.
Jack Slash - All his basic (non-communication) power does is allow him to extend the range of his slash attacks. That's it. Even if he's been augmented to superhuman levels by Bonesaw (which we know not to be the case because canon!Taylor's armor was effective vs him) his base damage is still going to be less than 10L because pocket knives aren't exactly all that strong. Most likely around Str 3~4 with +1 from the knife for no more than 5L plus threshold successes. So our armor is almost guaranteed to no-sell him on that front. As for the Communication-shard shenanigans, all we need to do is turn off SoPA and then snipe him. Called shot through the eye ought to do it.
Crawler - He can't fly. QED.
Mannequin - Can't fly. Has ranged options, but, like Jack Slash, probably doesn't have the raw power necessary to get past our armor.
Siberian - Also can't fly.
Burnscar - Can't fly, has ways around that via fire teleportation. Suit's enviro hazard features make her less of a threat than normal.
Cherish - HAHAHA no. Unless her ability counts as UMI and not shaping in which case she jumps all the way to the top of the list by a significant margin as long as we're not suffering from any Clarity. The more Clarity we have, the less of a danger she is to us. SoPA will almost certainly help.
Bonesaw - Vacuum-sealed suit means her plagues are not a concern. Threat of collateral damage extreme enough to warrant being a high priority target anyway.
What about Hatchet Face/Hack Job? In regards to Cherish, would we be able to sneak up to her with Optical Stealth up and running (provided our Anima banner isn't flaring anyway)?FunkyEntropy said:
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
If Taylor becoming an Alchemical is the only point of divergence from canon, then Cherish killed Hatchet Face to join the Nine. The other thing is that Hack Job's existence is contingent on Bonesaw getting her hands on Oni Lee. The odds of that are rather low unless the ABB decided to follow us to Philly for some reason. Oni Lee might have died to Behemoth for all I know; I don't think so, but I can't be arsed to look it up right now.landcollector said:
But to do an assessment anyway...
Hatchet Face - Can't fly. Too bad, so sad.
Hack Job - Teleport makes him a bit of a concern, but at most he'd be able to cause SoPA to stop working. Can't surprise us via teleporting behind us thanks to 360 degree vision. Super Strength plus a hatchet puts him in the 6~10L range, which means he might have a chance of scratching our paint. Since he's working on oWoD physics he has to split his dice pool between offense and defense so if he attacks us we can just dodge and then shoot him in the face.
RE: Optical Shroud - it NOPES! everything except essence-based senses so Cherish and Jack Slash will never see us coming...
Re: Oni Lee- From 4.7FunkyEntropy said:
So he's still alive.
Re: Cherish and Jack Slash- Cool, that's good. Still probably a good idea to have SoPA off just to be safe, though. We'd need to minimize any chance of Jack's shard pinging off of an active SoPA and give away to him that he's not alone.
See above.Z000 said:
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Exactly. That's why she's a high priority target instead of, "ignore unless she makes a nuisance of herself."Klaus said:
Thankfully her power has a windup associated with the bigger effects so if we can time our cloaks properly she shouldn't ever be able to mess with us.
Also, she dies to sniper bullets to the face from cloak. Surprise is a bitch and we're a really good shot.
Thanks mostly to the Communication Shard allowing Jack to stay one step ahead of the opposition. We no-sell that. Cauldron is one of the other reasons why the S9 hasn't been put down hard - such as pulling in old favors to make sure that Siberian and Shatterbird survive.
This is correct; however, I prefer to error on the side of caution. But it's not like being unable to use SoPA is a terrible handicap - we still have 360 vision, can see out to a mile with perfect clarity, can see through walls, etc.Z000 said:
Hatchet Face/Hack Job and Jack Slash are not threats by any means. I'd put them at One-dot Hazards, myself. Two-dots if I'm feeling generous.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Crawler is one of those challenges that you defeat by avoiding conflict. We can't really do anything about him so instead we just stay out of his range via flight while we pick off the more dangerous targets (Cherish first, followed by Shatterbird and then Bonesaw) from cloak.DragonBard said:
If we have to deal with him our best option is to just keep him occupied, staying just out of range while holding his attention, until someone capable of dealing with him shows up. Like, say, Alexandria who punts him into the sun or something. Or Legend with a freeze beam.
Refusing to wank Jack Slash =/= underestimating him. He is dangerous, but physically he's not a threat to us at all. More importantly, he has no way of seeing us coming if we do things like a proper Soulsteel Alchemical.Esbilon said:
The Simurgh "improving" Iris is unfounded speculation. You have to work hard - really hard - to mess with a 3rd Circle Deva. This is before taking into account that he's our Familiar and therefore has additional protections in place.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
...In which case we reabsorb our armor and wait like 15min to an hour for it to repair, then go about our business. And if Shatterbird is pulling off this tactic then that means it's being at such an extreme range that we can just go into stealth and wait until the repairs are complete.Klaus said:
Not a concern.
1. Talking about us, as in just Taylor. No allies were included in the threat assessment.
2. OOC knowledge is irrelevant since Taylor is perfectly aware that she has stealth that is so good that peoples powers - like Vistas - which are normally hampered by the Manton Effect act like she isn't even there. It is perfectly in character for someone with a perfect stealth effect to go Lone Wolf and pull ambushes ahead of the main party.
Yep. Kinda hard for them to keep us on the rails if nobody can keep track of us because of stealth though.
Which is why Optical Shroud is the best approach because it no-sells that hard. Can't communicate with someone you don't even know is there!scope said:
Broadcast shard sends out a signal. Other shard receives it and sends back information.FunkyEntropy said:
It doesn't targets specific shards when 'communicating', it hits everything in range.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
And our shard, since it can't be detected by any means outside of essence-based senses, doesn't receive said signal because our cloak means that, for all intents and purposes, we're "not there."scope said:
Unless use of Optical Shroud cuts off use of SoPA and doesn't let our own shard perceive us, I doubt that our shard won't receive the signal.FunkyEntropy said:
It's like saying just because someone doesn't know Imp/Who exist that it means she can't hear you when she is right next to you.
One problem with that: wouldn't Crawler be at least 3 times our size? Too big to qualify as a valid target in any event.charysa said:
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
To be perfectly honest the best explanation I can give is, "It's magic. I ain't got to explain shit." SoPA works through our cloak thanks to bullshit magic. The broadcast shard's signal doesn't reach us because bullshit magic.scope said:
Because this is obviously nothing.Z000 said:
Auto-kun took our brainmeats and the Corona Gemma and Corona Pollentia configuration. QA Shard is possibly still on whatever planet it landed using the link through that configuration to make the SoPA charm possible.
The two organs/lobes/whatever in the brain is not the shard, it is a link to the shard.
If you remember, Taylor's original body did not have it's brain missing. There is no reason for the QA Shard to dissipate into non-existence. It could have possibly been rendered braindead somehow through the Corona lobes linking to Taylor.
I don't recall any of what you guys said to be Word of God, just assumptions based on what happened and treating it as if it was a fact rather than speculation. Maybe you should actually meditate on the charms for once and figure out how it ticks before stating things as facts.
Your quotelink actually leads to this post.Z000 said:
It ends with 'you are being pulled'. No confirmation on what actually happened, it ends on a cliffhanger.Gromweld said:
The Soulgem thing happened just as Taylor triggered, the post you quoted says that the connection was barely solidified(the Gemma coming into existence) so what might have happened was that QA got sucked into the soulgem as well but we don't know for sure. We might be another Khepri, might not. The charm fighting us deactivating it points to 'not' though.Z000 said:
If Auto-kun took all of the QA shard, why do we only have bug control? Only one way to find out, but apparently we aren't doing anything with our 'sleep' time but sleep as of late. Didn't we meditate on stuff when we slept before Behemoth wrecked our shit or were we meditating during our waking hours because of our injuries? I don't recall.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
IIR, one of the tactics for "dealing" with Siberian was to drop her in a hole to buy time. This wouldn't have been a viable strategy if she could ignore gravity.Peanuckle said:
Wait, lemme check canon...
Supplementary evidence is that we never see her fly in canon, and that if she wants to gain vertical distance she always jumps (which can give her good height, but is not comparable to true flight).Sting 26.5 said:
Snare 13.6 said:
Prey 14.3 said:
I think it's safe to say that if Siberian could fly we'd have seen her do it given the number of situations where she could have used it to make it easier to protect Manton or to kill pesky heroes.Prey 14.7 said:
FunkyEntropy said:
Wildbow said: