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Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

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Because no one's said it yet...

Yeah, Victor will see the Truth, but it'll cost him an arm and a leg.

Bookman said:
If Truth wanted to be really cruel (Oh god yes he would) he would take Victors ability to use the skills he steals.
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Oh, yes, this! The metaphysics balance perfectly!

No, no, the real danger isn't Victor (I think we've figured that he's headed for a large fall). Even if knowledge-of-Truth-Victor arises with top-notch prosthetics and some spiffy new no-circle-needed alchemist powers, pfef, he's just another rando parahuman. Big deal.

The real threat is Victor's proof-of-concept, the gradually spreading knowledge that alchemy is possible and that the human soul can be extracted and exploited for gain. In the dystopian world of Worm, that's going to lead to massive disaster. Can you imagine the CUI moving forward with that knowledge? Or the fallen? Or the (shudder) Slaughterhouse 9?
 
LordRoustabout said:
"That is unfortunate." Blasto didn't have much of a reputation as a negotiator, but did understand gang dynamics from his time in Boston. If the Merchants and Lost Garden were mixing it would have been simplicity itself to engineer some incident that would put the groups at odds with each other. An overdose, assault, or encouraging the careless use of one of their powers. It might still be possible, despite whatever deal had been hammered out, but an open line of communication meant any action was likely to lead to an investigation and reasoned response, rather than the escalating series of conflicts Victor would hope for.

"At the very least, I doubt we need to worry about a united front. Blasto came with a show of force that went beyond the capes under his control." Another set of pictures arrived and Victor quickly worked through them.

On the surface it looked like a joke. Blasto was in a costume that seemed more like a white pimp coat than any kind of serious work of tinkering. The fact that he was accompanied by two creatures that looked like monstrously oversized Bedlington Terriers didn't help matters. It was the closeups shots and details of subsequent pictures that made it clear what Victor was looking at.

Between shots the fibers of Blasto's coat would rearrange themselves, weaving into spikes, blades, or armored plates. It was a kind of living costume, one that exceeded any of the works the biotinker had demonstrated to date. Perhaps not in scale, the Woad giant still held that title, but there was a dexterity and power that set it apart. Blasto had reached the rooftop by climbing the exterior of the building along with his creatures, and doing so at surprising speed. Photos of rents in the concrete of the exterior wall were included with the rest of the images.

It seemed Blasto had decided the situation in Brockton Bay warranted a deviation from his usual strategies. After years of operating through autonomous creatures, Blasto had finally made his own unique attempt at power armor. The fact that it looked like a suit of moldy bread didn't mean much when weighed against the power and utility on display, or the fact that he was also deploying new creatures based on the technology.
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While everyone is focused on Victor and the implications of his involvement with Alchemy (me included), I'm also interested to see that what Blasto was planning to do with fibres in his interlude seems to have worked! A bio-suit capable of changing itself and giving him a boost to power, speed and dexterity. I wonder how this will affect any future creations he will make?
 
Somehow I dont think Victor is going to be good or kind enough to sacrifice an arm to attach Clara's soul to a suit of armour when he fucks this up and unleashes a homunculus into Brockton.
 
I honestly think this is more of a setup for Victor's 2nd trigger. He is in total disarray and latched onto this resurrection nonsense like its his last hope. He however lacks more esoteric knowledge so when he attempts to resurrect this girl all he does just creates a corpse that is not even living. He realizes that all of this were for nothing and he still is powerless when it ultimately matters. [DESTINATION] [AGREEMENT] [TRAJECTORY] [AGREEMENT] [[RE]CONNECTION].

Note that I am only vaguely familiar with FMA so if creating human body without knowing all the backend stuff is enough to trigger "Resurrection no-no" response from The Truth feel free to correct me.
 
Welp, calling it now, Victors toll from the Gate will be one of the lobes of his brain, seeing as Truth tends to favor irony in taking it's pound of flesh.
 
Well, there's a lot to be said about Victor, and he's definitely an interesting character, but first off...
LordRoustabout said:
Once he entered his mid-twenties it would become noticeable
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Is he really that young? It makes sense physiologically, but still. He's been around for a for a while and just also commented on being one of the keys to the Empires rise as more then just a gang. The E88 is clearly a lot older then him too, but Keiser's reign hasn't been a short one either. And while the Herren clans are definitely screwed enough to be arranging marriages for pre-teens...I doubt there was a middle-schooler Victor seeking to ingratiate himself to power, or getting powers and then responsibility of all the core organization of a well established gang.

I know he's older then Othala, but I could have sworn it was more like they married when she was a teenager, and now she's somewhere in the twenties while he's in the thirties.

As for the FMA hints...like there's, all kinds of bad-end flags, but realistically things shouldn't go that way? Unlike pretty much all actual alchemists, Victor know a lot more about a lot more things. And stuff like what makes a person a person? Soul, or patterns and information, that still has to come from . somewhere. And also unlike the source material, that elusive store of Parahuman 'data' has quite a number of potential leads, the very biggest of which is right there in the Bay (not that he'd be going to Apeiron unless he's desperate...but a lot of things could change quickly, and it's clear already that he's losing ties to the Empire and implied his own nature keeps him too aware to truly buy in to race rhetoric). Regardless though, the very biggest factor is all those self-control and analysis skills he already mentioned. There isn't going to be any taboo 'human' alchemy done until he's certain it'll work, no emotionally rushing off half-cocked for him. As a non-physical skill he's got years to experiment, investigate the nature of Parahumans, and try to nibble some more bits of Alchemy from Lethe. And all the stolen self-control and patience to actually use that time.

Very quickly though, it should become apparent that the body isn't the real issue - not when there are other Tinkers out there and mundane advancement into cloning to make acquiring a body the 'easy' part. The real issue is the information. Parahuman powers indicate that at least for other parahumans it is stored somewhere resistant to physical demise, but how do you access it? And how do you transfer it to another body? For those questions Alchemy flat out CAN'T answer the first, and for the second soul manipulation seems like the sort of esoterica that he didn't grab from Aisha (not sure she's even learned that yet), and that has no equivalent or lead in other sciences to base things off of.

At that point he might keep looking, but actual success would hinge on the Thinker net making a major breakthrough on powers (not friggin likely with Cauldron and maybe their own shards cleaning that info up), or he starts to cooperate with the Forge down the line (the Empire seems poised to collapse, and as an ambitious young man that wants more, is sick of the Gesselschafts nepotism, and would need protection as an unenhanced human with an equally fragile wife with no small number of enemies from being a friggin Nazi? Appealing to the major power of the city is definitely a possibility, and Victor does have a lot to offer (from his perspective), even if his power and past quite solidly eliminate actually being part of the team.

And presuming there is such a future, he could even 'sell' the idea with the fact that there are a lot of dead heroes out there too, not to mention people willing to pay to make them not dead. For a good-leaning mercenary like Apeiron is by rep, cooperating to work out a Parahuman revivification process at the cost of reviving a specific non-crazy Parahuman, and/or whatever assets Victor is able to salvage from the Empire or build up himself...well. Just saying there's not no case in the future, not for a person with Victor's skills in communication and negotiation (mind-control immunity kinda can't protect against a compelling argument).

Edit: If anything, being a Parahuman in Bet makes him less likely to get hit by a 'Toll'. Alchemists in Central had no clue if people truly had souls or where a person's information went, didn't know enough about brains to know consciousness is a continuous pattern and not just the meat (that they seem to rely on some sort of intent-based cludging to cover the finicky details of making trillions of cells anyway, which is probably part of the problem when it comes to things that can't be filled in by the user's knowledge or creativity), and were desperate enough to yolo it anyway and thus meet Truth.

But as there is an actual lead for the 'soul' on Earth Bet? Victor might make some brain-dead proof of concepts, but the full thing will definitely wait until he's actually got a lock on her information.
 
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ShockingWeasel said:
Human transmuation? It's not been nice knowing you Victor, but see ya later.
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It's more a question of how the Shard factors into this.
Alone, Victor is handling a bomb that will annihilate him - Truth was merciful, in how the rebound on the Elric brothers allowed them to survive the experience rather than simple annihilation of the boys.
Bone marrow, kidneys, lungs, eyes, ears, arms, legs. If Truth is merciful, then the rebound only targets organs thats function are not an immediate requirement for survival. If Victor proves himself UNWORTHY before Truth - too prideful of his amazing skills that are built upon thievery rather than dedication, spirit or passion - then Victor would be no more.
But then there's the Shard interactions. If Victors attempt at resurrection targets only the human, then the rebound will fall squarely on him. If he makes the split second decision to give up his power at the Gate in return for his first wife (sacrificing the Shard), then he might actually succeed in his endeavor.
It's hard to predict what will occur - because there's not just a human and a deceased, but at least one godawful stupid alien that's eagerly watching and influencing.
 
TurboLightning7 said:
I'm also interested to see that what Blasto was planning to do with fibres in his seems to have worked!
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You don't suppose he collected some leftover/blown-off Life Fibers from Tetra after the big battle? Uh... what was the original reference...
LordRoustabout said:
Between shots the fibers of Blasto's coat would rearrange themselves, weaving into spikes, blades, or armored plates. It was a kind of living costume, one that exceeded any of the works the biotinker had demonstrated to date.
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No... it couldn't be.
 
....there's actually a weird fringe case here. Souls exist in this fic, because some Forge stuff can interact with them. So they ARE real.
Do Shards catch their Parahuman's soul? I wouldn't think so. So a Shard keeps a mental backup of the person, and they can be fooled, or allow themselves to be fooled in regards to the connection to their Parahuman when using DNA marker stuff. That's how Cluster Trigger members can power up by preying on their Clustermates, by either fooling or 'fooling' the Shards attached. So a Shard can pass a full memory download, but not the soul? (Which gets into weird ship of theseus stuff like is there a new soul, is it auto-called back, or whats going on there with the canonical True Resurrections, but that's not what my fringe case is here-)

So if Victor goes for the body first without trying to attach the soul, (which he won't do, because c'mon) there's technically no Truth backlash. A body is easy, it really is just all those components he rattles off, which is how medical alchemy works at all, because it's not touching the soul so there's no cost backlash. So if he had the body and used more mundane means to 'resurrect' it, since it would presumably be in perfect biological shape, and have all the right DNA markers, it would be hypothetically possible to resuscitate it without paying any sort of cost, as the Shard might step in to reconnect, which would result in a user profile download. But only if he doesn't reach for the soul.

Does a Shard connect to that, a living cloned body of their host? Does it upload a 'user profile' automatically back into it? Bonesaw had to do some stuff with Cranial tech to 'half-trigger' her clones, but that's not how Glaistig Ulaine's method works, she's got some sort of setup where can actually directly access 'read-only user profiles' so the Shards she's collected provide their own user reflections... there's at least two somewhat conflicting(?) takes on cape resurrection from that backup that has to do with memory over DNA targeting.

Obviously he'll overreach and grab at the soul too and get slapped down by Truth, because c'mon. But it's an interesting case of he might actually have a working method if he wasn't so hubristic. And if you're willing to kill for your shot, killing a couple people in the ritual does actually pay the cost.... sort of. That's how Philosopher Stones work, 'What can rival the worth of a human soul' being, of course, another human soul, or multiple. Because there's the possibility of 'help from the other-side' from the Shard.... I think he succeeds, even if he does get punished for it.

Wait, is his original fiance, Lena, even a Parahuman? If not, none of this applies, nevermind. If she wasn't a Parahuman then there's no Shard user profile, so there's no auto-backup system he could take advantage of, he'd have to go for her soul to resurrect her as anything more than body. It's unclear if she was actually a cape or not, Victor doesn't reference her as being one directly, but he also talks about how 'Parahumans can be resurrected.'
LordRoustabout said:
He had the parahuman knowledge, recently acquired, to understand the theories on how resurrection capes functioned, how Bonesaw revival of dead capes, and how Glaistig Uaine summoned her ghosts.

Parahumans could be resurrected. The Butcher's objectives, Apeiron's secret, and even certain details being conspicuously absent from leaked reports made it clear, this was a possibility, and now it was one he could accomplish.
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This makes it seem like Lena might have been a Parahumans herself, since he's basing his entire 'it's possible' off something Parahuman exclusive, but it doesn't actually say that she was...
 
According to Word of LordRoustabout Blasto's creations only connection to Life Fibers is inspiration. It's actually mushroom fiber in the shape of the structures he wants.
 
SiegfriedisOP said:
Why are people afraid of Alchemy spreading? The strongest alchemist swallowed "God" or whatever but was still beaten by someone small enough to ride an ant.
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Mostly because Alchemy can do some rather horrific things even in exclusion of human transmutation. If someone with a genius understanding of combustion comes along, we are looking at a potential Mustang. Or they could be a Kimblee.

And then you get to Tinkers suddenly getting access to matter manipulation at a precise level and...
 
I'm wondering if Victor will do this in private or show off. I doubt he'd show off to more than just his wife though.

Although it would be nice if he accidentally committed suicide, he may just maim himself. This scene shows just how essential he is to keep the E88 running. Forget Kaiser. He isn't remotely actually important other the money guy. It's Victor doing teams worth of expert work.

What will be funny are folks in the E88 would be relieved that he was gone. It won't sink in what he was doing until later, but it'll really hit their faction hard.

Victor will be a lesson on not using Alchemy for biological stuff. If his network of thinkers is legit, they'll be able to pick up alchemy. Will they have the courage to try it after what happens to Victor? I've got a feeling that they will.

What's funny is that the shards don't care about bringing back the dead. They've got methods for doing that already. They'll be curious about watching this new method though. Then they'll wonder if Victor just screwed it up himself.
 
LordRoustabout said:
Finally, thanks to the art he had gained from Lethe, that he would make his own, he could gain something without losing something of equal value.
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Hahahahahahaha, no. That's breaking the laws of alchemy, and better people than you have tried and failed the exact same thing victor.

I think Victor's biggest flaw is his reliance on his power. He steals skills but doesn't seem to develop his own. It doesn't matter how skilled the person he's stealing from is, those skills are tailored to them, they won't work nearly as well for him as they did for them. It shows here in that the first time he gets a taste of a skill he can't just drain from whoever he wants, he immediately dives into the most dangerous part of it possible.

Now I'm also wondering (hoping) if Victor is going to get circleless alchemy or clap alchemy, whatever its called. That would be extremely interesting.

Now if only we knew who those other thinkers he's collaborating with are…. Wait shit, I hope they're not Gesellschaft.
 
SiegfriedisOP said:
Why are people afraid of Alchemy spreading? The strongest alchemist swallowed "God" or whatever but was still beaten by someone small enough to ride an ant.
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By Worm power standards? It really aint impressive but...

Theoretically everyone will know Apeiron is the one behind this.
And anyone can gain these powers with study and effort.

This may lead to an Alchemy Arms race which given the state of Earth-Bet not to mention Cauldron bullshit may lead to a destabilized status quo.

Joe would feel responsible.
 
Hope you liked your power Victor because your definitely losing that if you try and bring Lena back, you cant cheat D̶e̶a̶t̶h̶ Truth.
 
Kris-71854 said:
Although it would be nice if he accidentally committed suicide, he may just maim himself. This scene shows just how essential he is to keep the E88 running. Forget Kaiser. He isn't remotely actually important other the money guy. It's Victor doing teams worth of expert work.
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Kaiser is a symbol. This interlude shows that despite being backbone of the Empire no one would actually listen to Victor. Given that when Kaiser died in canon and command was split between Purity and Hookwolf ultimately causing a fracture, I'd say Kaiser is pretty damn important for E88. Nazis would function even without Victor albeit at significantly reduced efficiency however without Kaiser E88 will fall apart.
 
Hilarious thought: when Victor peered into Lethe's skillset, he found "Being the Sane Normal One" being among the recently most practiced skills for a super Stranger Power Armor Matter Manipulator Assassin and ended up shuddering at the implications.
 
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