Remove ads

Combinatorial Explosion (Worm/Original)

Reader mode
And she'll get to control the narrative ala Armsmaster in canon.
 
[X][Concessions] Write-in. Alright. Fine. We still won't be signing on for restrictions or anything. But we will talk to the police and PRT. We will take down the traps, but we will keep (and later improve) our surveillance, and we will reinforce the internals of the walls. Nothing illegal about that. We go introduce ourselves. Explain what happened. Give them the information they need to deal with it and little else. We will also insist on providing a weapon for dad to defend themselves with if this happens again.

I know we want to keep things a secret, but lets be real. We are freaking out. We spill things when we freak out.
We tell dad everything, maybe have an emotional breakdown, then when we calm down we take care of things.


Dad is right. There is no way the PRT would let some nameless vigilante get away with an attack on an innocent biotinker in their own home. That's how you get nillbog 2.0. As evidenced by our overkill security.
 
bioticgrunt said:
So I'm guess, Sophia is gonna attack us and make herself look like the hero for stopping a dangerous parahuman
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
cryptoam said:
And she'll get to control the narrative ala Armsmaster in canon.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Or, we control the narrative by calling the super cops and saying a vigilante broke into our house to leave a threatening photo and then shot at us when we investigated a lead on who might have done it. Shadow Stalker is currently wanted for shooting a bunch of people, she's not a ward yet because we triggered way ahead of canon.
 
Switched
[X][Concessions] Write-in. Alright. Fine. We still won't be signing on for restrictions or anything. But we will talk to the police and PRT. We will take down the traps, but we will keep (and later improve) our surveillance, and we will reinforce the internals of the walls. Nothing illegal about that. We go introduce ourselves. Explain what happened. Give them the information they need to deal with it and little else. We will also insist on providing a weapon for dad to defend themselves with if this happens again.
 
Switched*2
[X][Concessions] Write-in. Alright. Fine. We still won't be signing on for restrictions or anything. But we will talk to the police and PRT. We will take down the traps, but we will keep (and later improve) our surveillance, and we will reinforce the internals of the walls. Nothing illegal about that. We go introduce ourselves. Explain what happened. Give them the information they need to deal with it and little else. We will also insist on providing a weapon for dad to defend themselves with if this happens again.
 
BTW, Taylor still has her diary about all of the bullying incidents right?
 
That....COULD be used as a form of evidence. Not exactly court viable on its own, but we could point at it and be like "This was before I even got my powers" and lend us some extra weight and legitimacy.

But would we really want to pop that open for the world? Spilling during something like this is one thing. Opening up the diary another.

Ah. Ok so thats a limitation. If its still a recent trend it might not be as useful.
 
[X][Concessions] Write-in. Alright. Fine. We still won't be signing on for restrictions or anything. But we will talk to the police and PRT. We will take down the traps, but we will keep (and later improve) our surveillance, and we will reinforce the internals of the walls. Nothing illegal about that. We go introduce ourselves. Explain what happened. Give them the information they need to deal with it and little else. We will also insist on providing a weapon for dad to defend themselves with if this happens again.

[X][Concessions] Write-in. Alright, fine. But we will keep protecting the house at least to the legal limit. Cooperate with the Protectorate but don't reveal anything more than Taylor's plant-based powers. Also make sure to tell them you are a shaker and not a Tinker (if that makes any difference).

Layering the house in obvious biotinker material is even worse than not protecting it at all. It will increase the risk of being found out massive, or of something going wrong. Taylor's tech may not break down conventionally, but plants still change over time. This is baiting the dice into randomly killing Danny because Taylor is upset and the traps are on a hair trigger. Also, we would have to talk to the PRT anyway. Might have waited a bit but it was inevitable. Better to do it on our terms and make a good impression by doing things (mostly) by the books.

Question for the thread: Do we want to reveal that we are working on healing powers? This might make Taylor valuable enough not to throw under the bus too much. Or it might have them play hardball to force her into signing up as a Ward instead.
 
Last edited:
As a side note, what do you all think of this quest so far? Has anything pissed any of you off?

I've been making an effort to portray at least somewhat believable human and legal behavior in this fic.
 
Well we aren't actively working on healing right this second, aside from the occasional mana test.
Let me rephrase, we aren't FOCUSING on that.

But they may guess that we can, even if we say nothing about it.
They might assume, or even WANT to assume that our power just deals in plants. But they are likely to consider that we can work with anything.
 
[X][Concessions] Write-in. Alright. Fine. We still won't be signing on for restrictions or anything. But we will talk to the police and PRT. We will take down the traps, but we will keep (and later improve) our surveillance, and we will reinforce the internals of the walls. Nothing illegal about that. We go introduce ourselves. Explain what happened. Give them the information they need to deal with it and little else. We will also insist on providing a weapon for dad to defend themselves with if this happens again.

Personally, I'm fine with working with the PRT. The time period seems to be before SS joins the Wards, so getting their help dealing with her could be useful. Not to mention getting to work with tinkers who I bet would love to get their hands on some of our more exotic materials and might help us acquire more exotic elements ourselves. Has Panacea triggered yet? Working with her could be pretty useful to figure out healing spells. Plus we can find out what happens when QA gives other shards research.
Going full biotinker murder house might have been a bit too far, but definitely keep up a surveillance/defense system. As for the trio, well they didn't do anything too severe yet? Honestly, I was willing to just mind our own business if they left us alone which they didn't. I think our next project will be to make something to protect against arrows for obvious reasons.

As for the quest, my biggest complaint is there is a bit of a disconnect between what Taylor can do and what we've actually tested. There are scenes where she throws together some mana and gets a working spell, but the description/effect is slightly different/more effective then anything in the Google Spreadsheet of tests. I think this makes coming up with new spells more difficult because we don't get too see what specific mana mixtures are the most successful. However, I do expect part of the point of this quest is that approaching the problem of magic from a comprehensive standpoint (like QA failed at) won't be as successful since magic is typically focused more on intent, meaning and associations. At this point in the quest, I personally care more about figuring out how to abuse the magic system than the human interactions, though I haven't noticed anything off about those. I can't really recall any Worm fanfic that had Taylor go to the PRT for help with SS (before she becomes a Ward) so I'm am interested to see how that goes.
 
Shadestyle said:
As a side note, what do you all think of this quest so far? Has anything pissed any of you off?

I've been making an effort to portray at least somewhat believable human and legal behavior in this fic.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nah, the writing is really good, chapters are interesting even if we're still in the stage where we're building up, and the powers themselves are just fun to play around with.

Great job, overall from me.
 
Mordiggian said:
snip
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That is a very helpful critique!

If it makes any difference, Taylor's ability to slap magic together to get effects different from what is on the doc isn't inaccessible to players. If someone so wished, they could attempt to do specific things using the "wrong" mana type, or multiple magics combined, it would simply require a dice check checking Taylor's magical ability to do so.

Edit* That said, Taylor will only ever "automatically" do magic within her current rank of Magical ability. The higher you raise her stats, the more she'll be able to improvise on the spot, obviously.
 
Last edited:
Something to experiment with is how we can use mana to affect things without it rapidly attuning into uselessness (such as by using sand mana to erode something when its attunement wouldn't result in erosion) or attune to something without affecting it with mana type (such as attuning sand mana to gold without damaging the gold or attuning bone mana to eye without rotting it out) indicating that we can effectively will mana into attuning at different speeds or to not affect certain things.
 
[X][Concessions] Write-in. Alright. Fine. We still won't be signing on for restrictions or anything. But we will talk to the police and PRT. We will take down the traps, but we will keep (and later improve) our surveillance, and we will reinforce the internals of the walls. Nothing illegal about that. We go introduce ourselves. Explain what happened. Give them the information they need to deal with it and little else. We will also insist on providing a weapon for dad to defend themselves with if this happens again.

Not letting Sophia and Emma present Taylor as a dangerous Villain is way better
 
[X][Concessions] Write-in. Alright. Fine. We still won't be signing on for restrictions or anything. But we will talk to the police and PRT. We will take down the traps, but we will keep (and later improve) our surveillance, and we will reinforce the internals of the walls. Nothing illegal about that. We go introduce ourselves. Explain what happened. Give them the information they need to deal with it and little else. We will also insist on providing a weapon for dad to defend themselves with if this happens again.
 
[X][Concessions] Write-in. Alright. Fine. We still won't be signing on for restrictions or anything. But we will talk to the police and PRT. We will take down the traps, but we will keep (and later improve) our surveillance, and we will reinforce the internals of the walls. Nothing illegal about that. We go introduce ourselves. Explain what happened. Give them the information they need to deal with it and little else. We will also insist on providing a weapon for dad to defend themselves with if this happens again.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top