- Location
- Philippines
"Finally, some valid targets for the skulls. They have been eyeing the Matrix too much recently - these should let them vent just a bit."
Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)
- Thread starter LordRoustabout
- Start date
- Location
- Deep inside the sand
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
What will Joe do to
If it's AI then he can get the machine skulls to kill them. If it's shard schenangans then it might be much harder than that. Then he might just need to blast all dimensions instead of just killing its mind.
Is the Machine Army an AI gone wrong or is it a Shard gone wrong? I mean depending on which it is his method might be different.
If it's AI then he can get the machine skulls to kill them. If it's shard schenangans then it might be much harder than that. Then he might just need to blast all dimensions instead of just killing its mind.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
A few replies to comments I didn't get a chance to answer from last chapter:
The work of Heartbreaker's shard was slightly different than what I had theorized for Joe's shard, and the whole point of entities was having combinations of shards work together for greater utility. In this scenario you would get communication between the shards in question as part of the preparation for the cycle.
Joe is going to be very careful with exotic applications of both the neathbow colors and the correspondence. 'Standard' uses are probably moderately safe, but experimentation could result in almost anything happening. Additionally, I am not going to be getting into Wand Creation in terms of Harry Potter. Generally I haven't seen it handled particularly well in other fics and I don't want to get caught up in that mess. Joe might be able to recreate conventional wands, meaning wood and magical animal part, but I'm not going to be going into wands made out of crazy materials with exotic cores. There is almost nothing canon about wandcraft and Joe doesn't have any perks specific to it, so I'm going to stay hands off. Conventional wands boosted by his other perks will be more than enough.
To access that afterlife Joe would need some fiat backed method of resurrection or a way to change the fundamental metaphysics of the universe. He could probably manage it with the Mater perk from Darksiders (not currently included), but in that case he'd be basically building a custom afterlife for his own purposes.
Taking your advice, I've run through a let's play and Asura's Wrath is now in the Forge. I'm sad to say it was actually the quality of your Jumpdoc that kept me from trying that sooner. With the level of detail used to lay out the mechanics of the setting I was anticipating some 80 hour epic with variable gear loadouts, management of mantra sources, and some kind of complex development curve, not a half dozen hours of rail shooting and FMV gameplay with the occasional beat up section. Nothing against the game, wonderful spectacle, but I think I was expecting a lot more nuance that was actually present.
A big part of the challenge of including Fallen London has been the effort needed to dive into the lore. The game has a serious time commitment as well as locked content that made getting even a basic level of understanding a challenge. My knowledge of the Rubbery Men's connections doesn't extend beyond the Flukes, and even that is a bit nebulous. It seems like even veteran players aren't completely clear on the details of the game's lore, which seems to be somewhat by design. The inability to just sit down and marathon a session of the game is also frustrating when it comes to getting a handle on things. I've had to pull a lot of my knowledge from secondary sources, so things might not line up perfectly. Of course, that seems to be par for the course in Fallen London, so maybe it's for the best.
First edition 40k (Rogue Trader) had a lot of early installment weirdness that was dialed down in later editions. The course the game's lore took was heavily influenced by the culture around it, and it's safe to say we could have ended up with a very different product with just a tiny shift early on. The Earth Bet version probably doesn't look anything like what we know as 40k since I doubt people living with Endbringer attacks are hunting for grim dark media (I had the amusing idea that it ended up morphing into 'Space Opera', the game Greg Veder was obsessed with). You could get something closer on Earth Alph, but this is something built over 25 years by multiple authors and seeing 3-4 editions of rules at that point. Joe isn't likely to be able to pull up source books as reference for what his technology can do or how it should work.
This is an amusing scenario, but neathbow lightsabers are probably going to be MUCH worse than this. Irrigo steals memories and can cause personality death, so you won't just be forgetting it, every moment of contact with a blade would erode your mind, and injuries could cause drastic mental damage. Violant is the color of a traumatic experience that refuses to leave your mind, so count on any injuries from a violant hurting forever. It would probably be next to impossible to regard a viric lightsaber as a threat and injuries from such a weapon could end up ignored and untreated until they festered. Given the force perception used in lightsaber duels Cosmogone, Peligin, and Apocyan would probably have dramatic effects on Jedi's facing them, and potentially some crazy impact on the nature of the blades themselves. A Gant lightsaber would probably be incredibly horrible in some unspecified way both in terms of the weapon and the impact it would have on the world around it.
Yeah, from my own playthrough of New Vegas, once I realized what Dead Money was about I 100%ed it on my first go, every achievement, item, and potential bonus, all from the determination to NEVER need to play any part of it ever again. Even knowing what you were getting into that expansion was a special kind of bullshit, and the knowledge that Joe will get the technology for both the Cloud and the Holograms from the Certified Tech perk is a seriously disturbing concept. Fallout may not have the highest technology base out there, but the unique offerings it brings to play make up for it in spades.
Joe could potentially make an item out of solidified fire or plasma, but it would be a lot of effort for some very minor benefits, probably elemental affinity and nothing more. Same with using hardlight or an other kind of energy. Most of the work would go into making sure the medium was stable, and it would mean Joe wasn't using any of his other extremely powerful materials.
The work of Heartbreaker's shard was slightly different than what I had theorized for Joe's shard, and the whole point of entities was having combinations of shards work together for greater utility. In this scenario you would get communication between the shards in question as part of the preparation for the cycle.
Joe is going to be very careful with exotic applications of both the neathbow colors and the correspondence. 'Standard' uses are probably moderately safe, but experimentation could result in almost anything happening. Additionally, I am not going to be getting into Wand Creation in terms of Harry Potter. Generally I haven't seen it handled particularly well in other fics and I don't want to get caught up in that mess. Joe might be able to recreate conventional wands, meaning wood and magical animal part, but I'm not going to be going into wands made out of crazy materials with exotic cores. There is almost nothing canon about wandcraft and Joe doesn't have any perks specific to it, so I'm going to stay hands off. Conventional wands boosted by his other perks will be more than enough.
Fixer gave Joe an 'extremely heretical to own database detailing how to build and maintain Admech servitors and cybernetic parts', meaning any admech cybernetics that would have shown up in the hive over the past 10,000 years are in the database. That is a significant amount to draw on, and probably only lacks extremely specific things you see in the Skitarii forces or the near-custom work of an arch-magus.
Something like that might be possible, but would be limited to 'household' applications, and there is a hard limit to how much 'training' can fall under a household concern. At some point it's going to go from exercise and hobby practice into military conditioning and professional development. There's some amount of training boost that you can get away with, and Joe is certainly going to make use of SSS for that purpose, but he's not going to be able to instantly train to master Magus status or expert martial artist just because it's technically something that could be done at home in a person's spare time.
The colors of Fallen London could be incredibly hazardous for thinkers, particularly clairvoyants and precogs. Of course, in Ziz's case, I'm not sure an irrigo addled Endbringer would really be that much of a step up. As bad as she is, we've been seeing the 'sane' version of her plans, meaning calculated damage and precision strikes. The right combination of neathbow colors could severely damage her mind, and that's not necessarily a good thing.
If Endgame happens the brakes are completely taken off of spiral and it's all out, no holds barred for everyone. No limits on how far Spiral can grow, and Joe can throw it out like candy. He won't even need to do some aura unlocking ritual, just basically make the intention and boom, spiral power for whoever. Please understand, the Jumpchain endgame is actually WORSE than what happened in the show. It specifically states "events play out similarly to how they did originally but with much stronger foes trying to destroy the earth". This is an End Jump. It's designed to still be a challenge for jumpers with dozens worlds behind them and tens of thousands of points of abilities and items. The prospect of triggering the endgame is in no way a happy one, and even with a significant portion of the Celestial Forge success is not guaranteed.
While I usually take the most generous interpretation of perks, I also try to go with the intention behind them. In this case 'Epic' is clearly referring to items of massive scale. The fact that Joe can build the Tower of Babel out of popsicle sticks and have it be structurally sound it enough for this perk, particularly when combined with the free spiral energy perk. There's no specific basis for nanobots in the series, so this perk is appropriately pointed towards the heavens, not towards the ground.
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Couple points worth making in light of the latest update:
1)Canonically, PRT directors have specialties.
Director Armstrong over in Boston is research and parahuman science; hence he had more than a few Case 53s on staff and in his vicinity.
Piggot's specialty is canonically supposed to be PR and the social integration of parahumans.
2)Its canon that Blasto received a provisional kill order as a biotinker.
The details were explicitly leaked to him as a deterrent and warning to prevent him developing self-replicating organisms.
Its also canon that Bakuda did not get a kill order even when she was masterminding the bombing campaign of Brockton Bay and both the National Guard and Homeland Security were activated and in the city, along with outsider capes. Because at that point, a kill order was only likely to make things worse by drawing in crazies and bounty hunters and making her escalate.
You see the same dynamic with String Theory, who perpetrated mass casualty events in multiple countries from Wales to Indonesia for money, and literally threatened to knock the moon out of the sky; she was the subject of an international manhunt, and very carefully captured alive.
Because kill orders would have made a bad situation worse.
I find it very difficult to believe that six different PRT directors are going to look at the facts of the case and then choose to escalate pressure on a cape who has already displayed multiple WMD-scale applications as well as strategic-effect powers. I find it difficult to believe that Piggot would push for that either; like I said, her specialty is PR, which involves understanding some of the potential repercussions of escalatory pressure.
Which suggests that whatever is happening in that meeting is a bit of internal political theater.
For whose benefit, I have no idea.
Maybe there's political pressure coming in from out of city/out of state.
1)Canonically, PRT directors have specialties.
Director Armstrong over in Boston is research and parahuman science; hence he had more than a few Case 53s on staff and in his vicinity.
Piggot's specialty is canonically supposed to be PR and the social integration of parahumans.
He knew, but he assumed she would prefer to explain. Besides, how she explained would inform him a great deal about his new boss's personality. "Not really."
"You likely know Director Armstrong in Boston, how he tends to prioritize research and understanding parahumans. I concern myself with more concrete affairs. Public relations, parahumans as a part of America."
Weld nodded.
"What Armstrong continually fails to grasp is that if we do not integrate parahumans into society, help society bend to accommodate your kind, there is no point in lab experiments or classifications. As bad as things might be with the periodic arrival of Endbringers and parahuman criminals, matters could be ten times worse if panic or prejudice takes hold from the public. You understand?"
"One thing, ma'am," Weld spoke.
"You likely know Director Armstrong in Boston, how he tends to prioritize research and understanding parahumans. I concern myself with more concrete affairs. Public relations, parahumans as a part of America."
Weld nodded.
"What Armstrong continually fails to grasp is that if we do not integrate parahumans into society, help society bend to accommodate your kind, there is no point in lab experiments or classifications. As bad as things might be with the periodic arrival of Endbringers and parahuman criminals, matters could be ten times worse if panic or prejudice takes hold from the public. You understand?"
"One thing, ma'am," Weld spoke.
2)Its canon that Blasto received a provisional kill order as a biotinker.
The details were explicitly leaked to him as a deterrent and warning to prevent him developing self-replicating organisms.
Its also canon that Bakuda did not get a kill order even when she was masterminding the bombing campaign of Brockton Bay and both the National Guard and Homeland Security were activated and in the city, along with outsider capes. Because at that point, a kill order was only likely to make things worse by drawing in crazies and bounty hunters and making her escalate.
You see the same dynamic with String Theory, who perpetrated mass casualty events in multiple countries from Wales to Indonesia for money, and literally threatened to knock the moon out of the sky; she was the subject of an international manhunt, and very carefully captured alive.
Because kill orders would have made a bad situation worse.
I find it very difficult to believe that six different PRT directors are going to look at the facts of the case and then choose to escalate pressure on a cape who has already displayed multiple WMD-scale applications as well as strategic-effect powers. I find it difficult to believe that Piggot would push for that either; like I said, her specialty is PR, which involves understanding some of the potential repercussions of escalatory pressure.
Which suggests that whatever is happening in that meeting is a bit of internal political theater.
For whose benefit, I have no idea.
Maybe there's political pressure coming in from out of city/out of state.
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- Location
- New Zealand
I must now wonder if an "Epic" construction could get around that by building a massive Mecha out of nano-bots.
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Now I need to see this happen in story. We need more things to go horribly right.
"Good news. The colors work on the Simurgh. Bad news. The colors work on the Simurgh."
Four words. Mono-moleculor 'ribbon' space elevator...
- Pronouns
- He
The need to talk about the potential of a kill oder, but they will also want to know about the situation and how she handled it, Piggott could have called in a S-Class Response but did not, this meeting will be just as much about her and Aperion.
And she may liked a pre signed kill order, but what she wanted was the ability to draw away the press with the idea of Aperion getting a kill order so that they will be off her back and discredit Aperion.
I didn't know she was PR centric, but I totally agree with you. There is absolutely nothing to gain from a resigned kill order. Specially since they don't have anything they know for a fact can kill him.
All a kill order would do is effectively cut off any possible communication between him and the lawful authorities. It would actually be more likely treat he does things they don't want after that point. It would also drive him to deal with only villains as opposed to his neutral stance (publicly that's his stance) .
The most logic outcome is to have someone who has certain level of authority that has an acceptable standing with Joe initiate contact. In this case it would be Director Armstrong, probably through Weld reaching out to Joe on PHO and setting up the meeting. As Joe is now a national matter, not something 1 branch can decide what the policy regarding him would be.
The PRT's current agenda in regards to Joe is to make sure that there is no hostility between him and the PRT, and to convince him to be at the next endbringer fight. Even if only in a healing capacity.
Blasto is a tinker who makes living organisms. He will still die from a bullet to the head, or from the use of enough force. Sure it might result casualties on their side, but it is doable. Joe has show that he can take on lung and regenerate from near death, and might go berserk in that state. So they can't just treat him on the basis that he is a biotinker.
What Piggot can do is do something stupid before the meeting between PRT directors. Since people will be asking her to make a statement. And she has already fucked up the situation with Joe, so it's possible she would use that window of time to try and strengthen her position at the expense of Joe.
It would be a super stupid thing to do. But people tend to do stupid things, specially when backed into a corner. So if she thought her career was going to end, she might do something stupid to try and save it or as a last fùck you.
I wouldn't count them out just yet. Those things have managed to fight off Daemons in the past. Either way it might be a better idea to passify and/or reprogram a rogue AI or Shard the to try to destroy it. He's got his own AIs that might want to learn from other AI, if only in the sense of seeing how they were put together/put themselves together, and a passified Shard would doubtlessly be interesting to research.
I think that it's better to think of it as a anime with interactive elements more then a game with story elements.
A solid core of the Lore seems to be the Bazaar if that helps.
Peligin or Apocyan would probably give the impression of a attack being a feint or a feint being a attack. That something wasn't what it seemed to be or that it was exactly what it seemed to be.
A Gant weapon or any kind would probably be the most threatening thing in existence and possibly harm you just by being looked at.
Edit: of particular note is the fact that a Neathbow Hologram would not merely be a Neathbow colored object but the Neathbow itself shaped in a particular way. This presumably means that rather then, for example, fondly remembering a favorite mug you may very well remember fondness for a mug fondly or remember fondness mugly.
I would also like to bring up the utility of Irrigo for the purposes of things like transferring memories or preventing the sapience of a given organism.
Edit: also holy shit I just realized that Joes issues with creating sapient beings is because that would make them family. As in it would make him their family.
Well either that or it'd be even more grimderp to compensate. I remember reading something somewhere about how tragedies are meant to make ones own life feel better by comparison.
So probably a Twenty Percent Time made thing including things like trait infusion, Garment, and possibly a machine specifically made to spin flames into threads?
The trick, I imagine, would be damaging it in exactly the correct way.
Probably good for turning the ground into something though. As in all of the ground. I'm talking Death Star levels of engineering here.
I think that it's specifically for the purpose of preventing exponential effects ramping up. Smothering a threat in the crib by all forces in the area. Things like String Theory and Bakuda would burn themselves up under those conditions and can't really scale up any more then they already are. The only thing complicating the Apeiron situation is that he's kind of both.[/QUOTE]
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- Location
- Not here. Maybe on SB.
Nutpicking: That doesn't looks like an official specialties. Just something they pay more attention to because of personal views of importance.
I have to point that she can try to strengthen her position at the expense of not-Joe as well. Not a high chance, but that's possible.
So alot of people belive that Joe is a mad tinker. I am wondering what would happen if Joe actually got a perk that turned him into a mad tinker. Im of course refering to the strong spark perk from girl genius a web comics of mad scientists. Of course theres only like a 2% chance of him geting it so it will probably be fine.
Couldn't he just take his current wand's core out for a second and put it back together, thereby making it better than the Elder Wand because it would be divinely mastercrafted?
- Pronouns
- Male
No because he would have to build it from scratch for that, and that counts as a repair.
Didn't he have to disguise a car into looking crappy because basically one touch made the crappy pickup into a batmobile equivalent?
Yeah, he still seems to be slightly traumatised by very nearly getting a power all about "How to Make Friends and Influence People" in the worst possible way.
That would depend entirely on whether it's that simple, or if there is some special technique, ingredient, or equipment that Joe might need to use. For example: if the core needs to be sealed into the wand using a glue made from bubotuber pus, and then packed in fairy dust and left to cure for a week. Joe's abilities would be able to substitute the materials, and cut down the curing time, but only if he knows/realises those steps are necessary. Otherwise, he might wind up wrecking his wand, and needing to wait for fiat to restore it.
Seems rather foolish to try until after he's made a couple of wands from scratch to get the techniques down, unless he gets wandcrafting knowledge from a perk. ("Fingers of Silver" won't work, because "bullshit magic")
Yes, because it turned into a very nice car. "Master Craftsman (King Arthur)" and "Robust Engineering (Dune)" won't kick in, although "Master Craftsman (Forgotten Realms)" might. He could probably (eventually) get a much better result crafting a wand from scratch. What do you think for a core: demigod hair should count as a magical creature part, even if life fibres don't...
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- Location
- Pennsylvania
It might have an offswitch, or it might be manually suppressed. There was no mention of it from his POV during that fight, but it went off anyway.
- Location
- Not here. Maybe on SB.
I think Depraved talked about different trauma - those people who caused Joe's Trigger. His family.
Specifically how they were influencing/conditioning him.
Piggot can't know exactly HOW it will backfire. She knows it's highly likely to.
Making Joe the PR scapegoat for everything that happened - which is the goal- has some very obvious potential to escalate and cause untold drama (especially if the story takes on a life of its own).
We know this because we've literally seen what mislabeling Joe has done - robbed the PRT of a potential ally in the worst times in the city. At least back then the original mislabeling wasn't intentionally malicious and selfserving.
And that's putting aside the damage it does to all the people who want to stay on the good side of the PRT but need Joe's help ( the Case-53s).
That's just one very obvious mess, amongst the others she could have caused.
If you pour gasoline all over the place the fact that you don't know which spark will set it off doesn't change much.
MagicalAmbitions
the rose in your vase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Chronocidal's point still stands though - Joe is explicitly creeped out by biotinkering because he knows he would've become a terrifying bio-tinker if not for the intervention of the Forge.
There is also the fact that there is the very real fact that Joe is much stronger than the PRT in BB. If he wanted to conquer the city, he could. Easily.
- Location
- Not here. Maybe on SB.
Indeed. Just have no direct relation to the Depraved's thought he replied to.
Well, also you need to take to consideration that biotinkers (and biokinetics) have really, really bad reputation on Earth Bet. That's one of the reasons why he ignored all the possible good applications of his "discarded power".
He grew up in a society with the conviction "Biotinkers = bad".
edit:
FTFY.
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- Location
- Odessa
While I do somewhat agree, backfiring and escalating are not necessary the same thing.
Joe is escalating as is, he is becoming observably stronger. Thus forcing PRT to handle potential mad scientist in some way might be a solution from Piggot's point of view. For all Piggot knows, Joe will turn 'three blasphemies' mode On in a month and she would rather 'handle' dangerous semi-reasonable cape now, while she can and while Joe is unlikely to start throwing WMDs around like candies.
For all we know, Piggot was counting on Joe escalating, thus 'proving' her point and bringing in Triumvirate to handle the mad scientist. It is not 'backfiring' if you expect it.
This also might be a part of a plan to delay arrival of case-53s, if Piggot portrays Apeiron as a mad scientist with a kill order, less C53s arrive to the city. The city is a 'powder keg' as is, arrival of more case-53s is undesirable.
We know it will backfire, but she likely expects some specific, 'combatative' scenarios, not whatever Joe will do.
Piggot is operating from assumption that Cape psychology applies to Joe. Which means that she expects Joe to overreact, do something stupid, escalate... Piggot thinks of Joe as a tickling, charging bomb which she would rather trigger on her own terms than let the thing charge up. She doesn't expect him to be reasonable! And if he is not reasonable and escalates like any Cape would, Piggot assumes that in worst case, Triumvirate will be enough to handle him.
Plus political side of things of course...
That's a somewhat reasonable argument, and an inaction. Capes do not do 'reasonable' and absolutely do not do 'inaction' as far as Piggot is concerned.
Short term, from PRT's point of view, it might be better to escalate pressure or even have a hundred bounty hunters making things difficult for a month than to have a 'Three Blasphemies: WMD Edition' scenario in a month on a more permanent basis. Better some trouble in BB over multiple nucked cities.
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Cosmic
Novel Addict
- Location
- Library Nexus
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Chronocidal's point also indirectly points out the difference in how Joe views AI creation and biotinkering creations and one of the likely causes for that. Besides the cultural aversion, it's also the trauma and mechanics of his original power. Chronocidal points out that it's not just the trauma of that his original power involved biotinkering but also in how it worked and in how it would have defined biotinkering for him.
It's technically not making a sapient life and raising it that's the problem, it's that biotinkering is very linked to his trauma and his original power which is specialized in Making Friends and Changing Minds. It's that biotinkering has been seared in Joe's mind as molding creatures to his desires, creating 'followers' or 'friends'. With the neurology component it's like mastering people to be your friend or follow except from birth. More specifically growing them in a certain way that their brains can be conditioned, making it so that they'd get a shot of dopamine and serotonin and other chemicals whenever they're his friend. They're very existence and life is linked to him and his happiness.
That's probably the difference when it comes to the AIs, besides it not being biotinkering, the AIs have agency and they have purpose outside of Joe's needs. WoG is that they'd still be able to function if Joe got time bubbled. Like Joe said about why he doesn't make a combat AI, their purpose is something that can last indefinitely, it's very unlikely for them to no longer have a purpose or to lose their purpose of existence.
Of course there's also a component of his trauma from his own family involved. Joe probably has thought a lot about family and about how you don't get to choose family and so to physically impose that choice of family and friend on sapient beings to the point where they can't refuse or cut ties and they physically can't live without it is monsterous to him. Especially since Joe also personally experienced family trying to mold you into what they want and not letting you be what you yourself want.
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