Alchemical Solutions [Worm/Exalted] Thread 9: Icon’s Idiosyncrasies Incite Irritating Inquisition

[FunkyEntropy]

Ignoring gravity =/= flight. Further, being able to ignore gravity would not allow her to change direction mid-jump, all it would do is alter her rate of ascent or descent.

 

[FunkyEntropy]

Fourth is Mannequin, who has the sensors to find us even in stealth mode, as well as offensive options due to being a Tinker.

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I'm not going to even bother addressing the rest of your stuff when you're suggesting things that are just dumb.

Given that the only things that can detect us while using Optical-Shroud are essence-based, and that previously Earth-Bet has had zero experience with essence in fact nobody aside from us being aware that essence is a thing...

What you wrote is dumb and you should feel dumb for having written it.

Given their access to Iris, I wouldn't want to risk what inspirations his presence might give him or Bonesaw.

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It does not follow that, "Mannequin and Bonesaw have access to Iris," therefore, "Mannequin and Bonesaw are able to successfully reverse-engineer understanding of essence and a method for detecting it." If The Iris of Innovation, 3rd Circle Deva and Fetich soul of Autochthon can't figure out how Earth-Bet physics work what makes you think that two mortal tinkers will have better luck figuring out Motonic physics?

 

[Alratan]

I'm not going to even bother addressing the rest of your stuff when you're suggesting things that are just dumb.

Given that the only things that can detect us while using Optical-Shroud are essence-based, and that previously Earth-Bet has had zero experience with essence in fact nobody aside from us being aware that essence is a thing...

What you wrote is dumb and you should feel dumb for having written it.

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I don't believe this is the case. Essence based sensors cannot detect us when we have optical shroud active. We are undetectable with sight and exotic senses. We can still be heard, smelt, or touched. Someone with both very acute hearing and very good sound processing could still detect us by the sound of our movement through the air.

 

[FunkyEntropy]

I don't believe this is the case. Essence based sensors cannot detect us when we have optical shroud active. We are undetectable with sight and exotic senses. We can still be heard, smelt, or touched. Someone with both very acute hearing and very good sound processing could still detect us by the sound of our movement through the air.

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You know, you could always check the charm text instead of just spouting off nonsense.

OPTICAL SHROUD
Cost: 3m [2m]; Mins: Appearance 2, Essence 2;
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Combo-OK
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisite Charms: None
A lattice of sand-sized crystals studded through the Exalt's flesh gives her a slightly iridescent sheen when viewed under bright lighting. Charged with Essence, the lattice generates an optic camouflage. The Alchemical wavers like a heatmirage for a moment, then vanishes. As long as the Exalt makes no rapid or violent motion (physical attacks, Dash or Jump actions, etc.) and does not move more than one yard per tick, she remains invisible and impossible to detect via sight, regardless of acuity. Unless she speaks or otherwise gives herself away, attempts to locate her through mundane sound or smell are made with an external penalty of (higher of her Essence or Appearance). She can be detected by touch and taste normally. Characters with superhumanly acute hearing or sense of smell ignore this camouflage and may interact with the Exalt normally, as can characters with exotic senses that do not depend at all on sight (such as heat detection and echolocation) or some form of Essence sight. Moving any faster than the permitted speed by means of personal locomotion does not end the Charm, but causes the Alchemical to appear as an Obvious rippling distortion in the air that is automatically visible. She fully vanishes again on the tick in which she next moves at an acceptable speed, though until she discreetly moves from that location, any attacks made against her by those who saw where she stopped ignore the Charm's protection. Traveling within a vehicle or by other external means does not disrupt the camouflage this way. Extremely rapid or violent movement (such as the activation of a Plasma Thruster Assembly or the initiation of an attack) terminates the Charm.

Submodules:
Dynamic Cloaking Module (Essence 3, 1xp): Each installation of this submodule increases by one the maximum number of yards per tick the Champion can move without disrupting the camouflage. Once Dynamic Cloaking Module has been installed a sufficient number of times to cloak the Exalt's maximum dashing speed, it is not disrupted by any movement, even much faster methods available via Charms or other effects.

Sense-Countering Upgrades (Essence 3, 4xp): With each installation of this submodule, the Alchemical may choose to immunize the Charm against being automatically bypassed by superhumanly acute hearing or smell. With both of these options integrated, a third installation covers all exotic senses and further renders the Champion as undetectable by these unusual senses as by normal vision.

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Touch and essence-based senses are the only things that work.

 

[Anasurimbor]

I can think of a lot of ways for a Tinker to detect at range via touch. They won't work quite so well at extreme ranges, but they could still be quite effective.

 

[Alratan]

You know, you could always check the charm text instead of just spouting off nonsense.

Touch and essence-based senses are the only things that work.

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You are incorrect. The charm is initially automatically bypassed by superhumanly acute hearing and smell. The later two installations removes that limitation, and that limitation only. Essence senses included in the exotic senses that the charm is referring to for the third submodule makes you undetectable by. Nothing removes the following clause:

Unless she speaks or otherwise gives herself away, attempts to locate her through mundane sound or smell are made with an external penalty of (higher of her Essence or Appearance).​

So people can still hear or smell her, they just suffer a -5 penalty to doing so. This is a big penalty, which is why I mention needing 'very good sound processing' to give a bonus to counteract the penalty.

 

[FunkyEntropy]

You are incorrect. The charm is initially automatically bypassed by superhumanly acute hearing and smell. The later two installations removes that limitation, and that limitation only. Essence senses included in the exotic senses that the charm is referring to for the third submodule makes you undetectable by. Nothing removes the following clause:

Unless she speaks or otherwise gives herself away, attempts to locate her through mundane sound or smell are made with an external penalty of (higher of her Essence or Appearance).​

So people can still hear or smell her, they just suffer a -5 penalty to doing so. This is a big penalty, which is why I mention needing 'very good sound processing' to give a bonus to counteract the penalty.

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Sense-Countering Upgrades (Essence 3, 4xp): With each installation of this submodule, the Alchemical may choose to immunize the Charm against being automatically bypassed by superhumanly acute hearing or smell. With both of these options integrated, a third installation covers all exotic senses and further renders the Champion as undetectable by these unusual senses as by normal vision.

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Since you apparently fail at reading comprehension forever, let me spell it out for you:

Can we be detected by smell, even superhuman smell? No.
Can we be detected by hearing, even superhuman hearing? No.

[edit: Belay that. I'm too tired to make sound judgements at this point so I might end up retracting the whole thing. In the meantime, apologies for being so obstinate.]

 

[Demonic Spoon]

Usually when looking for an Orichalcum you start with Motivated Asshole and then try to narrow it down to "Well Intentioned, but highly motivated Asshole"

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Accord. Why do people not want to use him? From what everyone's telling me he's a perfect fit.

 

[veekie]

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.

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Major oversight is that the S9 were never much of a man-to-man threat. The problem is they attack targets of opportunity and vulnerables. Counting on flight is also unwise, since one of their favorite ways to introduce themselves is with a Shatterbird Scream, breaking electronics before we even engage at all, not to mention Shatterbird can keep reusing it. Of course, all that is assuming that with two tinkers on their team they don't make something for flight.

So instead:
Jack Slash - Primary danger is that he will attack unprotected teammates, since while Broadcast amplifies a slash, I recall it also improves the sharpness. We need protective gear for all of them, though not necessarily powered armor. Secondary, but longer term issue is turning the parahumans of the city, especially the villains, against each other and us. He might be unable to fuck with us with SoPA down, but that does nothing for the various vulnerable and unstable targets in the city like Panacea

Crawler - IF we flew, he can't hurt us, and we can't hurt him. But he can rip chunks into everyone else and cause massive civilian casualties. Straight out killing him is a problem as well, since canonically he went down to a Bakuda Bomb Barrage. Need some kind of non-damaging attack. Containment foam multimissile? Would be VERY handy to have Personality Override Spike available here though. A reprogrammed Crawler would be excellent fodder for Endbringer fights.

Mannequin - Tinker, which is bad news if he had prepared for us, when his base loadout makes him very survivable. Expect anything, canonically Mannequin only went as easily as he did because the S9 never stopped anywhere long enough for him to do much complex work. Here we can almost be certain he would be in charge of base defense.

Burnscar - Arson risk, danger is mainly to infrastructure and civilians, but again, we have vulnerable teammates who need knockoffs of our gear.

Cherish - Apply Cherish to any number of mentally unstable parahumans(like at present, Panacea and all the BB Wards, and you'd find that immunity to shaping attacks is small comfort when everyone else had lost it.

Shatterbird - Probably the S9's introduction to Philly, we need to have non-silicon based equipment as a precaution. Might be possible to design around that, we do have Craft(Wood) after all.

Bonesaw - Personal augmentation and improvement on all the S9 except Manton(who she doesn't know about), massive collateral damage, with the same basic problem as Cherish. We might be immune, our friends aren't.

Siberian - I have to agree here, for different reasons. Siberian's biggest weakness is Manton. Find him and shoot him to end the threat, or at least force Siberian to spend her time safeguarding him instead of going on the offensive.

 

[Alratan]

Since you apparently fail at reading comprehension forever, let me spell it out for you:

Can we be detected by smell, even superhuman smell? No.
Can we be detected by hearing, even superhuman hearing? No.

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No. Once again, you are incorrect. Read exactly what it says, not what you want it to say.

Initially, you can be heard or smelt with mundane sense with a penalty, and automatically detected by superhuman hearing or smell or exotic senses.
Sub-module one means that you are no longer automatically detected by one of superhuman hearing or smell, but can be by the other, but can still be heard or smelt with a penalty, and automatically detected by exotic senses.
Sub-module two means that you are no longer automatically detected by the either superhuman hearing or smell, but can still be heard or smelt with a penalty, and automatically detected by exotic senses..
Sub-module three means that you are no longer automatically detected by either superhuman hearing or smell, but can still be heard or smelt with a penalty, and are totally undetectable by exotic senses.

The third sub-module only effects exotic senses. The meaning of the sentence is clear that the 'these unusual senses' refers to the 'all exotic senses' reference at the beginning, which itself refers back to the exotic senses discussed in the main body of the charm. Note that the exotic senses referred to are clearly separate to smell and hearing, even superhuman smell and hearing, and are such things as echolocation and heat detection.

You could try to claim that superhuman hearing is blocked but normal hearing isn't, but that's clearly not the intention or the language of the charm, and there's nothing there that ever stops mundane hearing working.

 

[veekie]

Because he's not just an asshole, he's also crazy. Also, pretty sure they're wrong about all Orichalcums being assholes.

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It is unfortunately, a job requirement, sorta.

For a soul to imbue an Archon with life, its past incarnations must have been visionaries who pursued larger-than-life
goals without restraint.

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These are the type of people to remark "You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs". They are the people who overwork themselves to pursue what they think is important no matter the cost, and often without considering the consequences of their success.

Very much like Cauldron(save the world, fuck the people), and Autochton himself(task: make a thousand indestructible Primordial-killing machines, consequence: has a thousand indestructible Primordial-killing machines with nothing to do). Think Armsmaster breaking the Endbringer Truce for his personal advancement. Khepri assuming direct control. Accord's actions against offenses to his orderly world.

Being recommended for orichalcum caste is not very complimentary. They get the job done, but everything else can go burn.

 

[veekie]

Bad idea doesn't even begin to describe it. But remember, Cauldron's(and to a lesser extent, Accord's) larger than life goals are also fundamentally "Save everyone", except they lost their way due to the sheer scale of the task.

 

[Anasurimbor]

Bad idea doesn't even begin to describe it. But remember, Cauldron's(and to a lesser extent, Accord's) larger than life goals are also fundamentally "Save everyone", except they lost their way due to the sheer scale of the task.

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No, their goals were to save as many as they could, which is a very different and much more achievable thing.

 

[Demonic Spoon]

Bad idea doesn't even begin to describe it. But remember, Cauldron's(and to a lesser extent, Accord's) larger than life goals are also fundamentally "Save everyone", except they lost their way due to the sheer scale of the task.

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Accord mostly lost his way because no one wanted to implement his plans. I can honestly see where he's coming from. Amass enough power so he can implement his plans personally.

No, their goals were to save as many as they could, which is a very different and much more achievable thing.

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Accord wanted to end world hunger. If that's not in the bracket of "saving everyone" I don't know what is.

 

[sun tzu]

By the way, just something I wanted to say about the last update:
"Offer rescinded" was such a laugh-out-loud line.

 

[Gromweld]

Real Life interrupted my Omake writing, so I'm tabling it for downtime between updates (when you guys are voting). I'm working on the Update now, so we'll see that first, but the Omake likely won't be too long afterwards.


For this Quest, full installation of Sense-Countering Upgrades hides the user of Optical Shroud from everything except touch and Essence Sight. This is a slight buff if you only go by a very specific interpretation of the charm/sub-module's wording, but it's what I've been using in my head for balancing combat in this quest.

On the other hand, a strict reading of the rules says that full installation of Dynamic Cloaking Module makes it so you don't uncloak even when you attack or activate aggressive charms. For balance purposes, I am not using that interpretation; passive/neutral movement of all types is protected, but taking a blatantly hostile action causes you to decloak when the attack is made (hooray for intent-based physics). I maaay allow a new custom sub-module later on to provide that benefit, but it'd have to have some form of drawback (only delays the de-cloak for a single DV refresh, for example) to be suitable.

 

[landcollector]

The Simurgh is quite likely the greatest user of Shaping attacks on Earth-Bet, and Spirits have notoriously terrible Shaping defenses. Also, underestimating the Simurgh is one of the few things worse tha underestimating Jack Slash. If the Simurgh were unable to affect Iris, wouldn't it have made more sense for her to dash it out into outer space rather than give it to S9?



Indeed, if Coil's power can get supercharged by coming into conflict with a simple Alchemical Exalt, think of what Jack's can do with prolonged exposure to the Eye of Autochton.




We don't know what he can do, dismissing him, as you seem to be doing, is most definitely underestimating him. He has (iirc) about a month of close contact with Iris before he meets up with us, and per Coil's power change, we know that bad things can happen when villains come into contact with Essence.

We don't know the details of the Simurgh's power to change things, or Iris's ability to resist change. I agree that It wouldn't be easy for Simurgh to do a major overhaul, but she doesn't really need to, Autochton and his Creations are borderline mad as it is. And if she couldn't change it, why didn't she try throwing it into a black hole rather than give it to S9?

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The Simurgh affecting Iris would be a gut punch for sure.

 

[1986ctcel]

The Simurgh is quite likely the greatest user of Shaping attacks on Earth-Bet, and Spirits have notoriously terrible Shaping defenses. Also, underestimating the Simurgh is one of the few things worse tha underestimating Jack Slash. If the Simurgh were unable to affect Iris, wouldn't it have made more sense for her to dash it out into outer space rather than give it to S9?



Indeed, if Coil's power can get supercharged by coming into conflict with a simple Alchemical Exalt, think of what Jack's can do with prolonged exposure to the Eye of Autochton.




We don't know what he can do, dismissing him, as you seem to be doing, is most definitely underestimating him. He has (iirc) about a month of close contact with Iris before he meets up with us, and per Coil's power change, we know that bad things can happen when villains come into contact with Essence.

We don't know the details of the Simurgh's power to change things, or Iris's ability to resist change. I agree that It wouldn't be easy for Simurgh to do a major overhaul, but she doesn't really need to, Autochton and his Creations are borderline mad as it is. And if she couldn't change it, why didn't she try throwing it into a black hole rather than give it to S9?

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1 Telekinesis is not Shaping, reality warping attacks are Shaping
2 who cares if he gets supercharged that won't help him when we unleash ALL DA MISSILES at his general vicinity or Snipe him with a tinkertech laser rifle from a mile up in the air
3 Simurgh wants Khepri to happen so that the Golden Idiot gets killed so she's obviously put Iris with the S9 to force Taylor into circumstances that will harden her resolve and stuff to make the decisions necessary to beat Scion.

 

[veekie]

Simurgh's scream is direct telekinetic manipulation of brain chemistry, so that counts as shaping. If Simurgh tried to slam Taylor with telekinesis, that would not be Shaping. Yay for intent based physics.

 

[1986ctcel]

1) I think you are referring to Telepathy, rather than Telekinesis. The former is not very well supported in Exalted, but one of the few places it is, (Scroll of Heroes p. 43) it is described as a Shaping attack. Further more, Shaping is a catch-all category for 'weird shit' and the Simurgh's messing with people definitely counts as 'weird shit' since she is not actually convincing people, but rather imposing changes on them.
2) If sniping or blowing up S9 was a feasible option, why are they still at large after 20 years (or however long)? Jack Slash is the second most dangerous cape in the Wormverse after Skitter, giving him a power boost is a recipe for disaster.
3) The Simurgh's motivations are nebulous at best. I will grant you that it is not impossible that she is placing Iris with S9 to force Taylor to meet them. But I don't think she would pass up an opportunity to mess with him if she had it, which we don't know if she had.

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1 Yes but Simurgh runs on Nowhere physics not Creation physics
2 Because Cauldron and the Triumvirate don't want the S9 (particularly Siberian and Shatterbird) to die and they HAVE done that stuff before, theres just the ingrained belied that normals can't do anything against capes (and Jack is a cape precog thanks to broadcast) and the rest of the S9 and their many former members serve as ablative armor for Jack, Bonesaw and Siberian, they've gone through over a hundred members but those three always get away and recruit new ones to replenish their numbers.
3 its stated in her interlude in the quest that Taylor's exaltation screwed up her plan to defeat Scion, plus the whole Nowhere physics and Iris being a 3rd circle and therefore being incredibly hard to mess with thing.

Interlude:


***


The Plan was falling apart.

Occasional glimpses of the original choices and consequences, causes and effects could be seen but even that understanding was tainted. Looking back revealed the existence of an actor that would appear and disappear from the Future at seemingly random points and could only be predicted by watching the Past. Compounding this was a growing field around the actor turning the normally-static Future into a distracting mess of chaotically-fluctuating possibilities, possibilities that cascaded further outwards in Space and forward in Time.

Worse, much worse, was that this actor would not be alone for long if left to its own devices. This could not be allowed if The Plan was to succeed.

The Plan was the only hope for survival.


***


Sixty-seven miles above the surface of the Earth, the Simurgh altered her gradual descent.




***

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[Gromweld]

QUESTION
Requesting clarification:
How does this work against active sensors like radar or sonar? Do you get a blind spot, or does it nope them too?
What of footprints?
Vibration/seismic sensors? Air motion sensors? Laser tripwires? Aerosolized flour? Pools of water or mud?

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It's magic and it's thematic; with all the sub-modules you currently have, you are rendered 'undetectable' except by direct physical contact with a thinking creature or through senses that detect essence.

Since only hostile actions break the effect, even someone chucking a cloud of flour in the air wouldn't be enough to detect you; it's not that the flour passes through you, but rather the flour in the air (and the air itself) just sort of moves out of the way for you in a manner that doesn't cause people to think something's amiss. In this way you're effectively a frictionless surface (unless you deliberately make contact with something), so you don't leave footprints or tracks as well. On the other hand, people watching you deliberately interact with the environment (ie: open a door) see the effect (the door opening) but don't see anything that would cause the effect. Unattended tripwires would be effectively immobile to you (and thus might make you fall over), you won't trigger a pressure plate, and laser tripwires would ignore you... unless you deliberately interact with these things. Two people holding up a rope, however, would feel you pull against it.

Bullshit Magic.

There are no other stealth charms for Alchemicals in the books and Alchemicals are already extremely limited in terms of the number of charms they can have at any one time, so I'm comfortable with Optical Shroud being this potent/efficient. I'd also be less lenient if you had a plethora of combat/defensive charms, or if you had charms to mute your anima so that you could re-activate Optical Shroud in combat with impunity, but as it stands now you only really have one or two chances to do something from concealment before your anima makes invisibility impossible.

 

[FunkyEntropy]

Jeez, I get downright cantankerous (read: I make a stubborn, confrontational, and obnoxious ass of myself) when I get tired.

My apologies, Alratan and uju32, that was uncalled for.

 

[landcollector]

I think we should leave off the conjecture on the S9 for now, since it's guaranteed that a lot of stuff will happen between then, which would could change the fight scenario drastically.

Question: if we studied a textbook or medical journal articles on Psychology and specifically how to deal with PTSD (in oneself and others) - would that count as training in Medicine? Socialize? Other?

Secondly, an idea on how to IC get the Undersiders to come to Philadelphia (since we only know OOC that they'll get there eventually)... I assume we have an official verified cape PHO account, and that there's some kind of networking/classifieds section of that forum. We should put up an ad addressed to Parian inquiring if she's interested in a business relationship working with our spider silk. This neatly avoids any PR issues trying to directly initiate contact with known villains (original Undersiders) and also avoids creating panic or drawing the wrong attention trying to contact Panacea. If she bites, then Amy and the rest of the Undersiders will follow to Philly, and offering a legit money making opportunity would help them to transition into a team of rogues so they don't have to remain villains.

Thoughts?

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I could get behind this. Once we get settled in Philly, we should stunt it in to an appropriate vote option.

 

[landcollector]

We should probably also get someone to look over the post before we make it, just in case our own Linguistics score will botch it.

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YES. Maybe have Missy or Chris be our proofreaders until we get another dot or two in Linguistics at the very least. Dragon would be a better option, but would she do it?

 

[1986ctcel]

YES. Maybe have Missy or Chris be our proofreaders until we get another dot or two in Linguistics at the very least. Dragon would be a better option, but would she do it?

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She's our "Cool Big Sis"/Aunt OF COURSE she would, probably for a chance to gossip with us and commiserate over Armsmaster being a doofus.