Not buying this explanation personally. Joe is already a mercenary in public perception rather than a hero, and lord knows there are a laundry list of people who would like the S9 obliterated and could conceivably "afford" that revenge. Pretending to be limited to Brockton Bay is not going to make them seem like less of a threat than they already are in any way, nor would waiting for them to come to Brockton have any real benefits over just destroying them as part of some made up contract and posting a video(or doing it in some podunk town the S9 passes through). It's simply an overcomplication in search of justification.
Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)
- Thread starter LordRoustabout
- Start date
Gumiho
Reach heaven through violence!
Its so nobody else does something really stupid once they see the Forge move. So far the Forge has stayed in BB, the whole world is counting on that to feel like they can some what predict what the Forge will do.
Joe and co can easily handle anything less than Scion when they move, but right now, he doesnt want to deal with them.
The 9 are coming to him, he has them watched, distracted by drones etc etc. He has other concerns much closer to home right now.
In what possible way?
The Celestial Forge in one city is distinctly less than a Nilbog/Machine Army level threat - not only is it possible to contain, you don't even need to deploy a siege force to do it.
The Celestial Forge going wherever it wants is an existential threat that makes the Endbringers look like fluffy bunnies except for the false hope that you might be able to beat them with an Endbringer battle defense.
The problem with that reasoning is that for parahumans, shardspace is the afterlife. Her soul isn't just lying around; it's passed on.
So, talking about what to do with the S9; servo-skull them. Specifically their coronae, to use as targeting beacons in the shardspace void. Just need to figure out a way to generate a signal that will transmit through the pollentia and be detectable to the ship.
Last edited:
None of the PRT or Cauldron are seriously under the assumption that the CF will only stay in Brockton, and it wouldn't make them more of a threat than they already are if they temporarily go somewhere for a job. Faultline's crew don't even do most of their business in Brockton either. They are a threat, but containment like Nilbog was never an option to begin with.
The real mass panic information are the AIs, extent of the drones available, or biotinkering rather than simple maneuverability. Exposing any of that is completely unnecessary to take out the 9.
- Location
- US
It's containment in the sense that they view him as predictable, and passive unless provoked. They do in fact hold that opinion, because it's what Joe explicitly set his precog spoofer to.
Faultline's crew traveling is irrelevant, because Faultline's crew aren't a multi-S-tier threat.
You mean the drones that can fool FUCKING BONESAW as far as telling if they're normal humans or not?
Yeah some rando thinker is going to bust through the Washutech thinker spoofing due to examining the latest set of dead civilians in the days running up to the Nine's Transgression and subsequent wipeout.
I literally said the opposite of what you are implying. I know no rando is going to examine Fleet's dead drones and come up with anything, though if Bonesaw had examined them carefully something probably would have come up funky. It was just an example of potentially panic-inducing information compared to simply travelling elsewhere for jobs. He doesn't need to expose any of that to take out the 9, ergo it's not likely to set off any additional panic buttons with the PRT.
So far Joe and CF have sold themselves to the public as a group of mercenaries that have some standards but are available for hire. It would actually be weirder if they never left the city, and in fact they are planning to anyway after the S9. The explanation that they are staying in BB in order not to panic the PRT doesn't hold up to scrutiny and is unnecessary.
___
Nullius in verba
- Location
- a Pale Blue Dot
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
The problem with your interpretation, is that normal mercenaries don't count as an A-S class threat, also only Apeiron is explicitly confirmed as a mercenary, its a paper thin justification with only two publically known contracts, and Joe is sufficiently paranoid in that he refuses to reveal any element of the forge to outsiders.
edit:
from Worm WOG repositoryWildbow said:
Age of consent laws in New Hampshire are indeed set at 16, unless the older of the pair is acting in loco parentis, for example as a teacher, coach or manager.
Last edited:
I'm sorry, but that reasoning still doesn't add up for me.
What's the point in faking that thinkers can't predict him? You mean to say that he'll never act outside of Brockton Bay then? Or he'll wait for a more "worthy" occasion?
But the S9 are actually worth it.
What's happening is Joe's getting careless and not realizing the amount of damage those psychopaths could cause if they ended up fighting for their lifes inside the city.
And he's doing that for basically PR. Now he's both careless and irresponsible.
The S9 is gunning for him, and by extension, the brocktonites(?) due to his abilities. It's his responsability to shield those people from harm as best as he can.
He had a good plan: create an artificial battlefield that the S9 wouldn't be able to exploit in order to escape.
Now he's gonna let them roll in BB, the city which contains multiple gangs who would greatly benefit in a well-timed distraction.
___
Nullius in verba
- Location
- a Pale Blue Dot
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
That is what's happening though?
He's evacuated all civilians in the path and replaced them with fiat backed indistinguishable from human droids as well as the infrastructure, which can all be repaired using his nano forge.
And in addition he has stated that he will intervene as soon as they cross the border into New Hampshire.
Edit:Joe's Thinker immunity is fiat backed, but they can figure out they are being spoofed.
Last edited:
- Location
- Here
If I had to pinpoint why I'm not a fan of all this, it's that I have no interest in more of March's bullshit. She sucked in Ward and her survival here was egregiously annoying in the first place. I simply don't want any more of her as a character; at least Leet has some complexity, and Bakuda has stage presence. March in contrast is a plot device with a note reading "what if I unconvincingly and unsatisfyingly won at all times?" taped to her forehead. I want her to go away, not get beaten.
The S9 issue isn't that Joe's taking it slow, it's that he will not stop checking on them without doing anything. His logic is sound, but they're dragging as an upcoming plotline because Joe (and LordR) won't stop mentioning them and then doing nothing new about them. They've been dragged out so long that they've stopped feeling like fascinating antagonists and started feeling like increasingly bumbling comic relief.
The S9 issue isn't that Joe's taking it slow, it's that he will not stop checking on them without doing anything. His logic is sound, but they're dragging as an upcoming plotline because Joe (and LordR) won't stop mentioning them and then doing nothing new about them. They've been dragged out so long that they've stopped feeling like fascinating antagonists and started feeling like increasingly bumbling comic relief.
Last edited:
___
Nullius in verba
- Location
- a Pale Blue Dot
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Technically speaking March is dead, and her body is being puppeted by her Shard/s, for the S9, assuming the current pace continues, we are around 2-3 hours per chapter, the S9 will arrive in 24-36 hours, which means twelve more chapters not counting interludes or twenty-four IRL weeks.
So the S9 will arrive in next March's chapter, plenty of time, comparable to the wait for the summit.
That isn't the reason. He's deeply worried about revealing that the data he's been feeding to precognitive thinkers [which portrays him as definitely not being the kind of person to proactively attack the S9] has been fake, so he needs to wait until he has a good enough excuse i.e. them clearly attacking Brockton Bay.
___
Nullius in verba
- Location
- a Pale Blue Dot
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Actually, it's actually slightly more proactive than you think, it's entry across the border of New Hampshire which is grounds for immediate response, but murderhobos keep spending their whole time torturing the droids.
The Froggy Ninja
The Blade Will Never Die
So the two dissenting voices went quiet at the moment they received a message and power boost? This certainly won't cause any problems.
I'm a little surprised Survey didn't manage to spy on Butcher's meeting with Uber. Even just knowing about the dead drops might have allowed Joe to sneak a dimensional tracker into one of the supply chain.
I believe that the in-chapter excuse was that they were fooled by their own analysis, ironically enough, into believing that the Teeth were a low priority for realtime monitoring due to their intentions to only retaliate at the Empire. So Survey has them on the backburner at the moment.
- Location
- Philippines
It is worth remembering that Joe's sense of time is warped even before he got the ability to speed up the Workshop. In truth, the delay is overemphasized. Joe is impatient over the S9 "toying" with the droids, but if you look at it closely it probably hasn't even been an hour since Cherish and Shatterbird got directed towards the droid in question since it only happened around the start of the charity ball.
I can only assume that the two of them even only took the chance despite Jack telling them to get things done quickly because it was the kind of delay that could also happen if you were caught out in traffic. To which, they haven't been having since Joe basically manipulated the entire traffic grid, local weather system, and a hundred other factors in an attempt to streamline them into Brockton Bay. Heck this entire encounter literally just fell into their laps as opposed to having to spend time searching for a good target. Looking at it one way, they're wasting time precisely because they've been having such a lucky run that the two felt like they could afford to... overindulge, so to speak.
Last edited:
Since curing cancer usually involves killing cancer I don't think that her specialty being offensive and destructive in nature would impede her ability to do so. Field-testing things might be a bit tricky but they do have access to a teleportation device and the Teeth; bare minimum I would think that they'd be willing to throw a few bombs at Spree's clones or something.
Edit: though yes her being a Chaos Tinker would probably give her some trouble.
I mean they actually should, not because the drones themselves are a giveaway but because the way the Nine inflicted a normal level of random murders but none of them were missed by anyone is an impossible stroke of coincidence.
However, investigation to get to that point is likely to take long enough to not matter.
Honestly, could we all just agree to drop the S9 debate? Joe has them hemmed in, declawed, and will get around to deal with them in 24 to 48 hours of in-story time (which is much more time for us of course).
You could probably come up with a reason for him to act right now instead of waiting those hours, or just not buy the excuse that has been but forth in the story (about keeping the precog spoofing secret), but this won't happen for storytelling reasons.
One thing at a time. Garment's show has lots of social aspects that need to be told first, but if the CF dropped the hammer on the S9 the show would be cancelled. Roust has also spent all the time since the Summit chapter setting up the board for the confrontation between the Teeth, the Empire, the PRT, and anyone else wanting to stick their oar in - but the moment Apeiron goes after the S9 it will flip the board and make all this build-up for naught.
So. We're going to have the charity action with all the surrounding drama. The Teeth are going to fight and do their surprise tactics. The Empire will field Damsel of Distress and any other surprises they could shake up. The PRT and hero side gets the chance to regain some face if they handles this conflict decently - and finally some of the other members of the CF gets to show off their abilities in the field when the conflict inevitably escalates.
This is the upcoming story points that we want to get through before the S9 smack-down steals the show, so they're stuck on the backburner for now.
You could probably come up with a reason for him to act right now instead of waiting those hours, or just not buy the excuse that has been but forth in the story (about keeping the precog spoofing secret), but this won't happen for storytelling reasons.
One thing at a time. Garment's show has lots of social aspects that need to be told first, but if the CF dropped the hammer on the S9 the show would be cancelled. Roust has also spent all the time since the Summit chapter setting up the board for the confrontation between the Teeth, the Empire, the PRT, and anyone else wanting to stick their oar in - but the moment Apeiron goes after the S9 it will flip the board and make all this build-up for naught.
So. We're going to have the charity action with all the surrounding drama. The Teeth are going to fight and do their surprise tactics. The Empire will field Damsel of Distress and any other surprises they could shake up. The PRT and hero side gets the chance to regain some face if they handles this conflict decently - and finally some of the other members of the CF gets to show off their abilities in the field when the conflict inevitably escalates.
This is the upcoming story points that we want to get through before the S9 smack-down steals the show, so they're stuck on the backburner for now.
Yeah, people are really harping on him "putting off" a thing he has scheduled for tomorrow morning. Sure, that's like 6 years for us, but only a few hours in story. I'm literally putting off doing chores that don't even require leaving my room for longer than that right now. XD
- Location
- Titan
I think a combination of the real time waiting and the mere mention of the ABB remnants pissing people off by itself over the plot armor is the reason the S9 debate is coming up again, notwithstanding people simply not having read any discussion and simply commenting on the chapter putting their 2 cents out there with no intent of continuing an argument they don't know exists..