Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

Actually ...
You remember that scene in Emma's interlude when lil' Taylor came over to the Barnes' residence after summer camp and complimented Emma on her new haircut? That's the exact moment when Emma decided to make Taylor's life hell.

still a pretty weak-ass reason. how was Taylor supposed to realize that Emma had gone though something traumatic and that she hated her haircut because of it?
 
Oh, I just had a thought.

Trickster tries to kidnap Joe.
"Must teleport things of semi-equal mass".
Joe = Most of an actual mountain.

...Yeah, good luck with that.

Joe already had the defensive property of a piece of metal with an extreme mass (through I don't remember which one) for inertia, so he was immune to Trickster trick since quite some time now.
 
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I was beginning to see why tinkers gained so much from working together. Once things settled in the city and once the issues in his cell of the Elite had been addressed I wonder if Uppercrust might want to do a working session? It would be interesting to see what his specialization would come up with when presented with something like element zero.

I'm curious to see what the Protectorate tinkers have come up with from studying the Ungodly Hour's Dust and I-field emissions.

Any ideas and inspiration will get peer reviewed and reverse-engineered by Dragon, who is setting up shop in Brockton Bay.

Like someone who only had clockwork trying to make a supercomputer and figuring out improvements in computational techniques that someone with access to modern technology would never have considered.

The ⏰ CLOCKWORK comment got me thinking.

The author said [Minor Blessing] from Poseidon would give him understanding of hydraulics and fluid mechanics.

Hydraulics would have lots of steampunk style synergy with [Unnatural Skill: Clockmaking].
 
"I have begun cross-referencing known individuals with Simurgh exposure, but records have not been well maintained. The tattooing program was relatively short lived and had a poor retention rate. Several agencies were known to have erased records of the Simurgh victims they were responsible for monitoring, rather than admit to losing track of their charges." She explained.

"Which doesn't put us in the best position to identify him." I said, considering the situation. "Does the Nine know he's out there? I mean, there wasn't an indication that they were accounting for anyone else."
Isn't Manton incredibly famous? Or have his years as a crazy murderhobo left him too changed for even Survey's facial recognition?
It was an ingenious solution to a problem I never had, but it was also a feature that I could integrate into Tetra's Kamui form to allow faster reconfiguration and finer detail when emulating technology. Honestly, it was kind of brilliant. Like someone who only had clockwork trying to make a supercomputer and figuring out improvements in computational techniques that someone with access to modern technology would never have considered.
I understood that reference.
 
Joe already had the defensive property of a piece of metal with an extreme mass (through I don't remember which one) for inertia, so he was immune to Trickster trick since quite some time now.

Shit you right, I completely forgot Trickster is bound by object's mass.

Isn't Manton incredibly famous? Or have his years as a crazy murderhobo left him too changed for even Survey's facial recognition?

IIRC Cauldron scrubbed records of him wherever they could as well as his daughter so they can keep Siberian alive.
 
It was possible that, without the Siberian, someone like Alexandria could body the entire team. Still, based on what I had picked up from my passenger, there was something about Jack's power that would prevent that from happening.

How exactly could Jack stop her if he wanted?
I get that if he started talking he could create a lot of trouble, but given Alexandrias sheer speed (traveling around the World takes her only minutes compared to Legends Seconds) she could splatter all of them before they could even react.

Cauldron kept the S9 around because they were convenient for their goals, not because they were a threat.

If Information came to light that would motivate her to actually fight them instead of just pretending to (considering that Jack would probably be smart enough to go along with the ruse instead of making her actually try to kill them via releasing her Secrets) she could kill Manton before his Human Mind catches up with her movement and after that none of them could really hurt her.
Sphere and Jack could maybe threaten to reveal her Secrets via the internet. Or Burnscar could theoretically create a self sustaining flame in her lungs to choke her so she can't escape via just flying away.

The only Problem is Bonesaws Modifications/potential implanted Bio-Weapons which she really doesn't have an answer for (considering that throwing her into Space probably takes a few seconds and risks getting whatever Contaminent spreading through the Atmosphere) and maybe getting Crawler into Space so he dies due to losing the connection to his Shard.

I really don't see how in any way shape or form the S9 could be anything but an inconvenience for an actually motivated Alexandria, especially with her knowledge, never mind the potential execution Plans she might have made once they're no longer useful (which considering their responsibility for killing her friend Hero isn't even that unlikely)

It feels like I am missing something obvious.
It's because it is governed by the biggest, blindest Taylor simp admirer wearing the opaquest rose-tinted glasses possible. Taylor is their goddess and queen and everything else is secondary.
...There is a possibility that it's an alternate-reality Queen Administrator.

Or in other words the Worm Fanon Community, as IIRC confirmed by Lord.

I understood that reference.

I didn't.
Would you mind enlightening the rest of us mere mortals?

That mystery paperwork and who ever is behind it may become important. We won't find out except the hard and painful way.

Now, if only Survey would track stuff like that down, and bring it to Joe's attention that one of his allies is being targetted by some odd group.

The way I understood it was that all the Paperwork was just a way from the School to cover their own negligence and incompetence, due to new Interest in the case via the PRT and being able to put Documents signed by Taylor against her potential Testimonies, which combined with her own abysmal reputation would probably help them a lot.
 
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But he has an effect named after him. Plus, I feel like Legend would have noticed that, considering the lie they told him.

A lot of people know Maxwell's demon, do you think many know Maxwell's face? Also, Manton's daughter is not his carbon copy so its understandable that Legend never made a connection. I read Worm A LONG time ago but I think Legend when confronted Manton himself recognized him. But do not quote me on that, my memory is very murky.
 
How exactly could Jack stop her if he wanted?
I get that if he started talking he could create a lot of trouble, but given Alexandrias sheer speed (traveling around the World takes her only minutes compared to Legends Seconds) she could splatter all of them before they could even react.

Cauldron kept the S9 around because they were convenient for their goals, not because they were a threat.

If Information came to light that would motivate her to actually fight them instead of just pretending to (considering that Jack would probably be smart enough to go along with the ruse instead of making her actually try to kill them via releasing her Secrets) she could kill Manton before his Human Mind catches up with her movement and after that none of them could really hurt her.
Sphere and Jack could maybe threaten to reveal her Secrets via the internet. Or Burnscar could theoretically create a self sustaining flame in her lungs to choke her so she can't escape via just flying away.

The only Problem is Bonesaws Modifications/potential implanted Bio-Weapons which she really doesn't have an answer for (considering that throwing her into Space probably takes a few seconds and risks getting whatever Contaminent spreading through the Atmosphere) and maybe getting Crawler into Space so he dies due to losing the connection to his Shard.

I really don't see how in any way shape or form the S9 could be anything but an inconvenience for an actually motivated Alexandria, especially with her knowledge, never mind the potential execution Plans she might have made once they're no longer useful (which considering their responsibility for killing her friend Hero isn't even that unlikely)

It feels like I am missing something obvious.


Or in other words the Worm Fanon Community, as IIRC confirmed by Lord.



I didn't.
Would you mind enlightening the rest of us mere mortals?

Jacks power has a precog element, and her speed doesn't include the ability to track people on the other side of the world. So, his best defense 1v1 would simply not be where she happened to look and only act when she's occupied with more important tasks.

Doormaker would seemingly negate that difficulty but the issue with precog powers is they can stay under your radar never quite rising to the level where you act unless he has some way to escape or talk her down. That's not free as it would limit his actions, but he still avoids death.
 
The thing about Taylor is that she really, really self-important, only what she thinks is important is important (AKA only the things she doesn't want to ignore), things can only be done how she thinks should be done. But right now she is in that transitory stage where she can get slightly high on hopium that her dad isn't an useless adult that was too busy with his own stuff instead of worrying for his daughter, and there is someone justifying the shit decisions she have been taking lately, someone who 'gets' her, someone who also admired her mom who she sees with rosy tinted glasses, so she is taking some smart desicions as well, but still ignoring some really important facts unconciously.

EDIT: Alos she is 16, with the cocktail of hormones that makes 16 years old entitled knobs :V
16 is a horrible age for logical thinking. Honestly, put her in bubble wrap and come back when the brain meat matures .
 
How exactly could Jack stop her if he wanted?
I get that if he started talking he could create a lot of trouble, but given Alexandrias sheer speed (traveling around the World takes her only minutes compared to Legends Seconds) she could splatter all of them before they could even react.
Loads of people have asked a similar question over the years, and the answer we have gotten is that Jack Slash Does Not Lose To Parahumans.

Essentially, Wildbow has stated that Broadcast simps for Jack so much that it does literally everything it can to keep him alive. So if a parahuman decides to attack the S9, they're hit with hesitance and a gut feeling that they're making the wrong choice in an effort to get them to stop. Should they continue to try and attack Jack, Broadcast has their Shard nerf them as heavily as possible, making powers unreliable, amplifying existing drawbacks, and compromising decision making. In addition, Broadcast is capable of controlling the SH9 to make countermeasures to opponents they had no clue existed, an example given was waking Crawler up and making him crash through a wall for seemingly no reason to counter a hypothetical Imp that was about to stab Jack.

In short, Wildbow basically made Jack's power PtV, Parahuman edition, as an explanation for why no one had ganked him.
 
It feels like I am missing something obvious.
Joe isn't saying that Lexi can't body entire S9. He's saying that even without Siberian, no cape would think to body the entire S9 (or go about it in an intelligent way), including Alexandria, because Jack's power is bullshit.

Here's a quote from chapter 80 of BFC:
Jack Slash had not led the Nine to success through brilliant insight and tactical genius. He achieved victory through the incompetence of his opponents.

It wasn't always obvious, but if you looked at enough data, and by God had I done that, it became clear. Every time the noose was closing around their team somebody would come down with a case of stupid. They would reassess targets, deviate from their usual tactical behavior, order sudden shifts in operation, or any number of other deviations. The Nine had been active for over twenty years and should have been wiped out a hundred times. Probably ten times that, if there was actually a coordinated effort against them, rather than the mess of analysis and cross purpose operations.

Parahumans were the weak link. It was a terrifying concept, but seriously, who would suspect a master of only being able to affect parahumans, especially if the manipulations were as subtle as they appeared, only being overt at the direst of situations?
So, yeah, Lexi can't defeat S9 not because she ain't powerful enough to do so, but because thanks to Jack she will be too stupid for that.


Jacks power has a precog element
Nah, it doesn't. Jack isn't super precog like Contessa or some thinker mastermind like March. He doesn't even know that his power has a thinker part in it. Just a decently smart mass murderer with delusion of grandeur, to whom author bestowed an idiot ball dispenser as a superpower. Hell, even in canon his whole shtick is up the moment some non-capes are acting against him.

That kinda hilarious how all the strongest heroes can't beat that schmuck, but one competent operative is all it would take to end the threat once and for all. It's a shame that Worm is short on competent normals, or else Jack's career would be cut short waaay before his years as a cape reached double digits.
 
"Right. If everyone is shorter than you anyway, I guess it doesn't matter if it's by feet or inches." She teased, though I could tell she was craning her neck to be able to speak with me. Still, less disruptive than when I was in full titan form.
Might want to set up some variable-height walkways for individuals of variable height.
I checked through both Survey's summaries and her full report. They were as comprehensive as expected, but she had left out any mention of the whole 'people showing up after they died' thing. She had also noted that information was being excluded, but Aisha seemed happy to leave well enough alone. Considering her sudden skill following exposure to the Prismatic Laboratory's impossible colors I would need to actually show her the lab at some point, which meant showing her the souls that I'd been sent from Hell.

That would at least provide some context for why the idea of dead spirits potentially manifesting in my workshop was more of an inconvenience rather than a world-shaking event. I hadn't had a chance to touch on any of the theological stuff that I'd been dealing with during my session with Dr. Campbell. Well, at least I was able to cover the basics, even with the unexpected interruptions. I could save the heavy stuff for next time.
You know given her Shards functions it would make sense for her to be able to decide after the fact whether she wanted to be aware of things of theological importance.
"It's going to be complicated." I agreed. "There's no easy way to roll out those kinds of changes. It's going to get messy. Worse, it's going to get political. We can manage it, but it's going to be a lot of managing, not just flying around throwing out presents and hoping things sort themselves out on their own."
With Joe having vast knowledge of sociology and memetics and how politics is basically a tool for simplifying public opinion I would have thought that it getting political would have made things much easier; at most requiring a few bribes to get the leverage over people to get leverage over the rest of the people involved. Then again I might have just answered my own question there; Joe might have A Thing against simplifying public opinion.
I could tell where she was going. "Aisha, do you want to become a Jedi?"

Her face lit up and I think I might have just hit another 'do you want the unicorn?' moment for her.

"Well, I mean, if we're breaking out the lightsabers we might as well go all the way." She looked up at my face. "What? Is something wrong?"

"Not with Alma." I assured her. "But while yes, I can make you force sensitive, and in a negligible amount of time once the Spiritron Core is fully loaded, this isn't just a powerup. There are implications to using the Force that aren't present with the other types of powers I can hand out."

She blinked. "You mean the Dark Side? There's actually a Dark Side of the Force?"

I nodded. "As far as I can tell, this is actual Star Wars, not something dressed up to look like it." I closed my eyes and felt out my growing connection to the Force. "Pretty much everything they showed in the movies is true. You have to be careful about how you use it, because this is a power that could very easily go astray."

"So you're going to tell me that if I start down the dark path it will forever dominate my destiny?" She asked.

"Basically." I said, then noticed she appeared to be waiting for something. "Okay, fine. Aisha, beware the Dark Side of the Force, because once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

Considering I had just issued a dire warning about the corruptive nature of a potential power, it wasn't really appropriate for Aisha to be grinning from ear to ear. I gave her a stern look and she reined it in.

"Okay, okay, I got it." She said, "So, assuming we can break out the Force powers, how are we going to head off the whole dark lord thing?"

"A cautious approach is a good place, but we can't be second guessing everything to do with the Force." I explained. "Fortunately, the 'Dark Side' concerns only apply to what you do with the Force itself, not general behavior." Aisha nodded. "Like I said, I'm going to be handing this over to Tybalt."
It should be easily possible to provide a anti-addiction effect and a circuit breaker that cuts her off in non-emergency and non-Dark-Side-authorizing-emergency-seeking situations. A color-wheel of Kyber Crystals attuned to a array of mental-states, including those conductive to Dark Side Force attunement, might be healthy for decision-making though.
"Can't use that as a shortcut." I said. I concentrated and drew forth a mote of light from my reserves of spiritual energy.

Taking it in hand, I shaped it between my fingers, drawing it into a long, thin blade. A fencing saber composed of pure spiritual energy. My resource powers allowed me to extend a tiny mote to cover the material requirements for an entire sword. In fact, I had specifically chosen a sword to take advantage of Waste Not, which only applied to weapons and armor.

I showed Aisha the glowing blade. She watched it with wide eyes as I turned it slowly to display the workmanship. Then I drew on my Scrapper power and reduced the weapon to base components. The structure collapsed into a glowing cloud of energy much larger than the initial mote.

"If I want to make things out of spiritual energy I can start with a sliver of it and duplicate as much as I need, but this?" I held up the glowing nimbus of energy contained between my hands. "It's general spiritual energy, not MY spiritual energy. I can't use it for Elven enchanting or to power my Teigu or fuel the Glove of the East. It's like how magical energy can exist in the environment, but unless it's part of my reserves I can't use it for most applications."

She eyed the glowing cloud of energy. "You can't like, absorb it or something? Turn it into a potion or snack bar?"

"Sort of." I said. "It's something my duplicates are looking into, but even then it takes time to reabsorb the energy. You can also let it dissipate into the environment." I said, releasing the cloud. It spread out through the hall, lightly shimmering as it did. "It creates a kind of spiritual area. Good for recovery of energy, but if you push it too far you can start breaking down the division between the physical and spiritual realms."
Should give some of that to Taylor; she might end up figuring out how to use a font of spiritual wholeness to commit war-crimes but at that point it would be more impressive then regretful.
"Pretty much." I agreed. "We might actually be able to make that work with Fortune Energy, but that's got its own problems."

"The 'mortal's disintegrate' thing?" She asked.

"In high enough levels that it creates a divine realm." I said. "But mainly, the challenge is actually working with it." I frowned. "I know it can be extracted, but I didn't get any practical skills with that power, just an explanation of what I might be able to do." I shook my head. "Fortune energy can be reabsorbed and it is possible to use it in place of spiritual energy. It'll be huge once I get it down, basically all the fortune energy we could want, I just need to figure out the mechanism."
I don't see what the problem is here; make a Divine Realm using Fortune Energy and then siphon Fortune Energy from it since Divine Realms is definitely the sort of thing that you could make a duplicating recycling loop out of.
Early experimentation with crafting in Titan form had examined both large- and small-scale projects.

Fortunately, for detail work I still had the benefit of my micromanipulators. Honestly, they weren't even necessary, considering what was possible with Unnatural Skills: Smith. That skill improved my hand eye coordination and skill with detail work. When it was enhanced with Monstrous Strength to the degree that came with my full transformation I gained more talent for detail than I lost due to the scale of my growth. I could actually handle finer detail work as a titan than I could when human sized.

Large scale works were another matter. I'd shown what was possible with the lava bird, but being able to simply lift and shape huge quantities of materials completely changed the logistics of a project. Add in the speed I already worked at and you could recreate more intricate and refined versions of national landmarks in trivial amounts of time.

That pyramid wasn't just a pyramid. It was anchoring and enhancing ley lines flowing through my Workshop. It was the kind of monument that would have been the work of lifetimes for a magic using civilization and it had been thrown together with less time than a child would have needed to assemble a sandcastle.
I'm picturing something closer to the original marble-coated and precious-metal-tipped pyramids then the more modern sandstone ones and closer to a archology then a temple or tomb.
Survey's new tools weren't conventional objects, they were masses of energy bound into functional shape. A mirror cast from light, divining rods composed of spatial disruptions, sound condensed and stretched into a membrane, shadow and darkness woven into a map.
A compass made out of a chunk of magnetic field? Or, less useful for the purpose of investigation or navigation, a thermos or stein made out of condensed vacuum?
It was always emotionally wrenching to see what got sent to that sight. If it wasn't limited to only be accessible from within Brockton Bay it would have probably been a thousand times worse.

This kind of stuff was easier to ignore when it was buried in the spam, jokes and other nonsense, but Survey had been using her expanded capabilities to verify messages, including requests for medical treatment. She was able to link specific messages to medical cases, including test results and the doctor's prognosis. It would have been a massive invasion of privacy, but considering how broadly Survey spread her net information wise and how they had been the ones to reach out, either directly or from someone on their behalf, I think it could be forgiven.

'You got into the message logs.' I felt the message as one of my duplicates established a telepathic link. It conveyed emotions and understanding as well information, which was probably how they picked up on what I was working on.

'Yeah.' I sent back. 'It's as bad as I thought it would be.' I skimmed through the most severe cases. The ones that probably wouldn't last until we were able to act openly. That was just a week away, but some of these were critical. 'We need to do something about this.'

'Do you want to do another stealth healing run?' My second duplicate asked. 'I'm sure Aisha would be down for that.'

'No.' I sent back. 'We were lucky to get away with that the first time. Too many people are looking at Brockton Bay for it to sneak past again.' I checked over the cases. 'We just need to kick this down the road long enough for the other problems to be dealt with. A week or two would be enough.'

'Just enough life support to keep everyone going until we can work openly?' My first duplicate responded, along with his own ideas for a range of options that could be used to accomplish that. 'Actually, it's more complicated than throwing out full heals, but we can manage it.'

'Do you want to extend this beyond the city?' My second duplicate asked, transmitting Survey's accounts of the messages we had received on PHO. 'Because it's basically the same situation out there.'

'That's definitely a bigger job.' I said, reviewing the slew of messages that had folded my PHO account and eventually those of the rest of the Forge. PHO actually had excellent security, but that didn't matter when it came to Survey. She had been able to identify, verify, and categorize the requests that had come in since I first went on line.

'Bigger job, but we're big enough to handle it.' He replied.

It did occur to me that both of my duplicates were currently in their largest possible size, titan form with zoanthrope transformation and manifested familiar. I knew how heady it could get, being that connected to the power of Monstrous Strength. Or it might be more accurate to call it a disconnection. It separated you from the normal limits that would restrain you. From that perspective, it made perfect sense why they thought we could handle it.

And they were right. I skimmed over the suggestions. Talisman magic used generated shikigamis forged from life energy and assembled with medical instructions specific to each case. Or the potential of using applied fortune energy to tide things over and maybe even trigger a few miraculous recoveries. None of it should be detectable using normal means, and even if someone suspected something unusual was happening, there would be no direct link tying it to us.

At the very least, everyone who asked for help would be looked after. It was the kind of thing I wished I could have done from the start, but I had finally hit a threshold where I could deal with the problem and any problems that were caused by dealing with said problem.

'You can leave it to us.' My first duplicate said. 'We'll get everything in place and coordinate with Survey. You stay focused on Tetra. And the actual message Survey was pointing out.'
Do you want worshipers? Because that's how you get worshipers.

Actually literally saving peoples souls would probably be the best way to save people without appearing to save them anyway.
"Okay, I'm definitely stealing that." I said, outlining the branching mechanism he had used to address the limits that would normally have prevented attempts to get protein strands to act like Life Fibers.

Survey nodded. "It is a creative workaround to the issues he would have encountered in his attempts to replicate the proposed functions within his specialization."

Tinkers were, of course, bullshit. I had been well aware of that from the point I got my own proper tinker powers. Normally, no matter how much you might want to, you aren't going to be able to copy even the most superficial aspects of something like Tetra through conventional biology. But tinkers don't work in 'normal', and in his attempts Blasto had come up with an adaptive branching system that let him handle reconfiguration on a macro level without the kind of neural complexity that Tetra had.

It was an ingenious solution to a problem I never had, but it was also a feature that I could integrate into Tetra's Kamui form to allow faster reconfiguration and finer detail when emulating technology. Honestly, it was kind of brilliant. Like someone who only had clockwork trying to make a supercomputer and figuring out improvements in computational techniques that someone with access to modern technology would never have considered.

I was beginning to see why tinkers gained so much from working together. Once things settled in the city and once the issues in his cell of the Elite had been addressed I wonder if Uppercrust might want to do a working session? It would be interesting to see what his specialization would come up with when presented with something like element zero.
Ah I see that Joe is getting inspired in the same way that Entities do.
I was jared from my thoughts by a connection forming to the Personal Reality constellation. It was a massive cluster from which my power managed to secure two mid-sized motes. I looked to Survey as the information on what had arrived flooded into my head, and the live feeds from the Workshop were provided to her.

I took a breath, then summoned a portal, taking us directly to the Workshop's new housing complex.

I had been aware that the Lofty Loft was intended to be personal space, but that never really clicked. Frankly, there just wasn't much difference between the square of land that sat above the much larger square of land, except for the fact that one looked down on the other.

That wasn't the case anymore. Now the loft's square was occupied by my new 'Housing Complex'. It was an item from the Personal Reality constellation that provided basic housing for me and everyone else in my workshop. In this case that meant Garment, Tetra, Survey, Fleet, The Matrix, Tybalt, and even Aisha.

Normally the accommodations would have been fairly basic. Small bedrooms, shared bathrooms, a simple kitchen and dining room, and a few general-purpose rooms. That would have been the case, except for the larger mote that was secured along with the Housing Complex. A mote called Opulent Housing, and it certainly lived up to its name.

There were three mansions built on the eight-hundred-meter square of the loft. One on each end and one at the center, with each looking over the wider expanse of the main area, including the landmarks and monuments that it had been dotted with. There were rooms for each member of the team spread between the houses, with each 'room' actually being closer to an apartment complex than anything a sane person would want.

They had ridiculously oversized bedrooms, attached seating areas, reading nook, a complete office, an attached day spa, and an en suite sauna, even for the Matrix, who seemed largely perplexed by the arrangement. The rooms were also immaculately decorated, which is to say nearly to the standard that you would see from my casual work. Each room, actually each house, was personalized to the occupants.

Fleet, Tybalt, and the Matrix shared the house on the freshwater side of the loft, which was a sleek, modern affair. In contrast, the central house had a more classic, regal look to it. It contained the rooms for myself, Survey, Garment, and Tetra. Then there was the house on the salt water side, the smallest of the three and built with direct beach access. It had what could best be described as a pseudo-fantasy design, like a miniature stylized castle, and only one occupant.
Housing Complex (Personal Reality) 200:
Having space for all your Companions and Followers can be tricky. Sure, you could pay to have some houses built, but with this option you and each Companion and every child of yours or of a Companion gains their own bedroom. Every three bedrooms gain a full bathroom and your bedroom has a master bath. It's not luxurious by any means, but this house (or houses) have 1 kitchen & dining room, 2 half baths, two general purpose rooms (offices, living rooms, game rooms), a few of small closets, and a pantry for every 6 people. Individual rooms tailor themselves to the general likes of the individual and come with basic but not quality furniture. Companions who decide to share a room can cause their rooms to merge to create a larger room, but each basic room defaults to 4 meters by 5 meters by 3 meters. Non-bedrooms are on the small side but large enough to function. Floors are basic linoleum and walls are basic low grade paint. Appliances and fixtures are pretty bare bones and the walls are little more than plywood and wood frame. The bedrooms don't have closets. Any other Personal Reality Extensions can be made part of the Housing Complex or kept separated. Each house must have a kitchen. That's the rule. No more houses than total number of kitchens. A house may, of course, have more than one kitchen.

Opulent Housing (Personal Reality) 300:
This Housing Complex Upgrade does everything that Luxury does and does it better. Rooms are frankly too big, fixtures and furniture are all unique handcrafted pieces, the walls have murals, the floor mosaics… everything isn't just top of the line, it passed that miles back. High Ceilings, beautiful feng shui, custom decor for each room… huge closets. Additional Rooms generated every three persons. All Bedrooms are now Master Bedrooms and come with ensuite saunas, day spas, and personal office with reading nook. If you have an incremental purchase scheme, you do not get a refund if you bought Upscale Housing or Luxury Housing first. Opulent does not require Upscale or Luxury to be bought first.
I wonder whether Alma counts as either of those.
Taylor has contact with a superhacker and a highlevel tinker and wants to solve the mystery by spying more with her bugs.
To be fair that can be explained as [Queen] wanting Taylor to solve the mystery by spying more with her bugs.
The thing about Taylor is that she really, really self-important, only what she thinks is important is important (AKA only the things she doesn't want to ignore), things can only be done how she thinks should be done. But right now she is in that transitory stage where she can get slightly high on hopium that her dad isn't an useless adult that was too busy with his own stuff instead of worrying for his daughter, and there is someone justifying the shit decisions she have been taking lately, someone who 'gets' her, someone who also admired her mom who she sees with rosy tinted glasses, so she is taking some smart desicions as well, but still ignoring some really important facts unconciously.

EDIT: Alos she is 16, with the cocktail of hormones that makes 16 years old entitled knobs :V
If you can find someone who thinks that the things that they don't think are important are important then please direct them to the nearest mental health institution.
 
The idea of recreating that scene with Tybalt… Well, I suppose there are worse reasons for building a moon sized space station.
A few more expansions to Personal Reality, and Joe might have the room to build one in the workshop. And if I recall correctly, the Vehicle Bay is able to launch vehicles that wouldn't fit through the doors.

I'm just imagining the look on everyone's faces when Apeiron snaps his fingers and summons a ship the size of the moon. Or at least the look on the Simurgh's face.

It's been mentioned that people are trying to figure out where Joe could have been hiding the Gundam. Now imagine trying to do the same for a hidden Death Star. At least you'd have fewer options to consider!

The fight with Lung and the aftermath had been bad and we never really talked about it. To be fair, I had maybe a day of proper downtime since then and at that point the last thing any of us wanted to do was dive into that mess.
Didn't they have a full year of downtime during their simulation vacation?

You know given her Shards functions it would make sense for her to be able to decide after the fact whether she wanted to be aware of things of theological importance.
Aisha has a second trigger just to give her the ability to say "I don't want to know and you can't make me"? :lol:
 
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Loads of people have asked a similar question over the years, and the answer we have gotten is that Jack Slash Does Not Lose To Parahumans.

Essentially, Wildbow has stated that Broadcast simps for Jack so much that it does literally everything it can to keep him alive. So if a parahuman decides to attack the S9, they're hit with hesitance and a gut feeling that they're making the wrong choice in an effort to get them to stop. Should they continue to try and attack Jack, Broadcast has their Shard nerf them as heavily as possible, making powers unreliable, amplifying existing drawbacks, and compromising decision making. In addition, Broadcast is capable of controlling the SH9 to make countermeasures to opponents they had no clue existed, an example given was waking Crawler up and making him crash through a wall for seemingly no reason to counter a hypothetical Imp that was about to stab Jack.

In short, Wildbow basically made Jack's power PtV, Parahuman edition, as an explanation for why no one had ganked him.

... y'know, I think Wildbow wrote himself into a corner with Jack's reason for surviving so well, but it's not as egregious as the existence of PTV.
 
A lot of people know Maxwell's demon, do you think many know Maxwell's face? Also, Manton's daughter is not his carbon copy so its understandable that Legend never made a connection. I read Worm A LONG time ago but I think Legend when confronted Manton himself recognized him. But do not quote me on that, my memory is very murky.
I meant he would have noticed them scrubbing the records of him, despite having no reason to do so and in fact (based on what they told him) having reason to want people to be able to recognize him. And I'll bet you Survey knows Maxwell's face.
 
Nah, it doesn't. Jack isn't super precog like Contessa or some thinker mastermind like March. He doesn't even know that his power has a thinker part in it. Just a decently smart mass murderer with delusion of grandeur, to whom author bestowed an idiot ball dispenser as a superpower. Hell, even in canon his whole shtick is up the moment some non-capes are acting against him.

That kinda hilarious how all the strongest heroes can't beat that schmuck, but one competent operative is all it would take to end the threat once and for all. It's a shame that Worm is short on competent normals, or else Jack's career would be cut short waaay before his years as a cape reached double digits.

There are WOG stating he has precog and master powers even if he isn't directly aware of it. For example in a confrontation with Imp (Lethe):

"A combination of what Jaki said (Imp gets nudged away by her shard, she gets a bad feeling as she prepares to attack, and if and when she does attack her attack is off-target, or she hesitates, creating a window), intuition on Jack's part (suspicion, a hyperawareness of odd details, the movement of air in the room, 'it's too quiet', etc., happening to move to another location just as Imp strikes out), and leverage of the broadcast... Crawler wakes to initial commotion, he uses his full senses with his shard happening to kick into full gear (a la Skitter and her varying range) and/or moves across room, forcing Imp to back up from Jack, Shatterbird lashes out in a blind attack that happens to connect."

It's even directly mentioned in Interlude 26: "To strike the one with the mature passenger was akin to trying to catch a leaf in the wind. The hand moved the air which moved the leaf, and it slid just out of reach, just beyond the hand's grasp. Ah. There. A narrow miss. The male slid out of reach, and he prepared to go on the offensive."

Critically both of these fail directly vs Joe but there's a reason he needs to keep other Parahumans out of the loop.
 
A few more expansions to Personal Reality, and Joe might have the room to build one in the workshop. And if I recall correctly, the Vehicle Bay is able to launch vehicles that wouldn't fit through the doors.

I'm just imagining the look on everyone's faces when Apeiron snaps his fingers and summons a ship the size of the moon. Or at least the look on the Simurgh's face.

It's been mentioned that people are trying to figure out where Joe could have been hiding the Gundam. Now imagine trying to do the same for a hidden Death Star. At least you'd have fewer options to consider!
Luna's about eleven-hundred kilometers wide and Joe definitely has the ability to Mechashit shit down by a factor of a hundred given that he managed to fit a wooden ship into a suitcase so even without resorting to disassembling it into modules or Digistructing it or something he could probably store a Death Star in his Warehouse.

Wait I'm not taking the square-cube law into account...Eh, I was failing to take it into account both when figuring out how good Joe was at Mechashifting shit and when applying that number to a shrunken Death Star so it evens out.

Most importantly of all the sky above Joe's storage space valley can be used to store objects in flight, not supported structurally, so he should be able to assemble a Death Star in flight above it without too much trouble.
 
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