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Fragmentation (Original Superhero Setting)

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Locking the vote.
[X] Push for more things.
-[X] The intent of safety sense is to basically reassure her it's not the apocalypse. Can you do something like that?
-[X] Briefly explain that Skye isn't scared of just physical damage or restraint. Is there something else he can suggest?
-[X] Skye lost a lot of brainpower in her incarnation. We want that back. She shouldn't have to be crippled forever for her freedom.
-[X] Postcog with a time requirement would be completely fine as long as it's either running "in parallel" to her, or running very fast, or both. "Trancing" for meaningful durations would be problematic.
-[X] The IOU -- because Skye should get a choice in the matter, and while you're doing your best to help, it's not the same thing.
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I likely won't put up a full update today, but have a partial.


"Archive is now a secondary Node with Repeat and Interweave slaved to it. Interweave remains relatively unchanged while Repeat will make it significantly easier for me to cause any phenomena I have observed in the past, provided I've at least started down the right track. Repeat has another slaved Node, Replicate, which will grant me temporary use of any superpowers needed to recreate specific objects created by, or using, said powers. Although I believe this would include Upgrade once it began selectively suppressing one or more laws of reality to further improve a given object, I would only gain approximately one day of charge instead of enough energy to fully recreate it. I believe I can only borrow powers once per relevant object.

"I can maintain four additional simultaneous processes courtesy of the secondary node Parallel. If any one of my trains of thought is aware of the presence of a nearby sentient being, Disposition will let me sense or feel their emotions should I decide to do so. Precedent will let me assign one process to view a specific past event designated by rather loose criteria provided I am at or near wherever it took place. Being Collaboratively or otherwise telepathically linked to at least one of the individuals shown in such a record would work as a suitable substitute for geographical location.

"Precedent's slaved ability, Confirm, will let me designate a course of action and subsequently be informed if a large minority of those who previously performed similar actions suffered as a result. If they did, the search criteria will be narrowed to those with top-tier superpowers, and if that group suffered, it will consider whether there were more negative consequences than positive ones. Register is a completely new secondary Node and will make me aware of any objects I have personally created or significantly improved in an unknown, but large, radius. The slaved Manipulate will let me remotely move, control, and use any such items.

"Progenitor has also given me a second Cluster, Protect, which is both unintelligent and artificial. As far as I can tell, it is capable of blocking or repelling anything that would harm or restrain me, although physical force will still knock me backward. Emotional harm is not included while mind-effecting powers are. The remote sensors Backup is paired with will alert Progenitor if I or my power deliberately activate it or if said sensors miss an automatic six-hour check-in. I am also allowed to use Backup to call Progenitor for the 'IOU.' Retreat will give me the ability to teleport myself any location I have previously slept in for a period of more than three hours."

- SCIENCE! (Silver+Gold/White/Blue) {Sentient}
- Archive (???)​
- Interweave (???)
- Repeat (???)​
- Replicate (???)​
- Parallel (???)​
- Disposition (???)
- Precedent (???)​
- Confirm (???)​
- Register (???)​
- Manipulate (???)​

- Protect (???)
- Backup (???)
- Retreat (???)​
 
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I really like both Manipulate and Retreat. Manipulate allows her to be a super-robot-master, and Retreat is Teleportation between an unknown number of set locations, not as good as free teleportation, but is good all the same, and will probably bypass most anti-teleport measures, assuming Protect doesn't count those as "constrain", because that seems to be the free-movement power he was talking about, and I doubt he'd skimp out on the power there.
 
LostDeviljho said:
Aliv reads Practical Guide to Evil. This was an inevitability.
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The changes to the MGs actually predate me deciding to read through PGtE. EDIT: Specifically, they were born from thinking about all the various ways MG shows have either injured/killed love interests or given them a higher degree of plot armor. That made me realize it would probably be easier to track narratives than individual tropes.
 
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BBBence1111 said:
Not that I'm complaining, but have you thought about balancing this when we have someone who can only be stopped by BFR around?
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I'm not sure what BFR stands for, but yes. Armor, especially powered armor, is not counted as clothing for the purposes of being guarded by Protect, nor are most held objects safe. Protect doesn't give Sky superstrength, nor does it let her walk through most walls. There are various other limits, but I'm pretty sure telling you them would let you immediately figure out how it works without experimentation. :p

Really, Register and Manipulate are more of a concern for balance purposes. If another Builder makes the mistake of letting Skye significantly improve their own inventions, that counts. But while it's the biggest potential concern, that doesn't mean it's one that'll break the game. You won't be going up against unpowered people the vast majority of the time.

Trondason said:
Manipulate allows her to be a super-robot-master,
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She doesn't even need robots, although it may help free up some of her attention. She can outright levitate and operate weapons she's made from a distance.

You rather expect Celes to push recreating Cherub's iconic crystal wings ASAP given Skye's new abilities, even if it means outright visiting New York and tracking down Cherub's civilian identity. Your sister is just a bit of a fanatic fangirl when it comes to Mad Magic.
 
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Alivaril said:
"Archive is now a secondary Node with Repeat and Interweave slaved to it. Interweave remains relatively unchanged while Repeat will make it significantly easier for me to cause any phenomena I have observed in the past, provided I've at least started down the right track. Repeat has another slaved Node, Replicate, which will grant me temporary use of any superpowers needed to recreate specific objects created by, or using, said powers. Although I believe this would include Upgrade once it began selectively suppressing one or more laws of reality to further improve a given object, I would only gain approximately one day of charge instead of enough energy to fully recreate it. I believe I can only borrow powers once per relevant object.
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Did we ever get a node-by-node breakdown of her original power to compare this too? Because I didn't see one when I was reading the thread.
 
Alivaril said:
She doesn't even need robots, although it may help free up some of her attention. She can outright levitate and operate weapons she's made from a distance.
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What is Skye's multi-tasking ability like? Is each individual train of thought at modified-sorta-human-sorta-eldritch-being levels of multitasking?
macdjord said:
Did we ever get a node-by-node breakdown of her original power to compare this too? Because I didn't see one when I was reading the thread.
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Nope. She never told us before.
 
Trondason said:
What is Skye's multi-tasking ability like? Is each individual train of thought at modified-sorta-human-sorta-eldritch-being levels of multitasking?
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You don't know; only today did your mother finally admit that you even have any modifications.

macdjord said:
Did we ever get a node-by-node breakdown of her original power to compare this too? Because I didn't see one when I was reading the thread.
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Nodes Skye no longer has are marked in red.

EDIT: OH COME ON.

-Silver+Gold/White/Blue: SCIENCE! {Sentient}
- Silver+Blue: Interweave
- Purple+Blue: Extract​
- Purple+Blue: Forget​
- Purple+Blue: Substitute
- Purple+Blue: Ignore​
- Blue: Archive​
 
Basically, it looks very much like most, if not all, of Skye's more...questionable powers are gone. You know, the stuff that was almost certainly about manipulating people's memories? I can't say I'm sorry to see them go.
 
Alivaril said:
I'm not sure what BFR stands for, but yes. Armor, especially powered armor, is not counted as clothing for the purposes of being guarded by Protect, nor are most held objects safe. Protect doesn't give Sky superstrength, nor does it let her walk through most walls. There are various other limits, but I'm pretty sure telling you them would let you immediately figure out how it works without experimentation. :p
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I am inclined not to abuse or experiment upon Skye's Protect cluster, honestly. It doesn't sit well with me.
 
I do wonder how the Magical Girls are going to receive this, in the narrative sense.
Like, set the scene, it's the pilot episode and we're introduced to our two characters, Julia and Anya. They have some good chemistry, Julia's the peppy and upbeat heart of the two while Anya is the snarky and analytical loyal ally and lover of Julia, the two are sent personally to help tour a group of triplets who are so obviously going to be future villains from the get-go that even the main characters noticed it, the newly introduced upbeat member of the group gives out the usual casual expression of power to help solidify them as a Big DealTM ​despite the cheerful exterior, but then choose to help out with a certain trouble in the school, giving some early pointers towards an affable relationship, alright, so far so good.

And then things get fucky, a voice comes on over the intercoms, and the triplets clearly recognize it, one of them is terrified, but it's also clear that the other two don't seem too worried about it, they happily needle the voice and even give their third member the choice to just tell it to screw off, but the voice demonstrates obvious power by declaring it'll just teleport them in ten seconds, and also the third member is the voice's half-daughter or something, what?

So them and the two MCs get 'ported in, and it's Progenitor, the effective god of the setting, who silences the main characters and then offers to give the third member of the group (Who is, again, his pseudo-child?) an extra suite of powers or her very own universe, in the process dropping some really weird hints towards the nature of this quirky, but otherwise unremarkable emotionless girl. Her other sisters(?) then start bartering for more powers, until they settle on this suite that people would kill for, on top of whatever powers she must have had originally.

It just seems really interesting to me, how will this narrative magic react to something like this?
 
Execute/Dumbo said:
and the triplets clearly recognize it, one of them is terrified, but it's also clear that the other two don't seem too worried about it, they happily needle the voice and even give their third member the choice to just tell it to screw off
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It's even weirder than that. And I think that needling isn't the right word. It took the two a matter of seconds to start gleefully guilt-tripping the hell out of the maybe-father with accusations of neglect and abuse that the maybe-father couldn't muster any defense against and even admitted to and apologized for. When negotiating, they took the situation seriously and seemed to be motivated primarily by the well-being of their sister(?), but at the same time, they smelled blood and were downright vicious in taking Progenitor for everything he's worth. So they seem like good, nice people, but they're also obviously villains holy shit.

So what's their game? What's their story? Why are we being given such a deep look at the top end of the setting in the very first episode? What narrative role are the triplets going to fill? There's no way they're trying to escape some resource limitation or leash, they'd have asked for a solution when negotiating, and they're likely powerful enough to do something about it anyway. They're clearly part of the core cast. Are they being set up as antagonists so the opposition is relatively friendly, or as protagonists to provide tension in the group that's on-screen and a viewer surrogate to prompt explanations of the magical girl system that Julia and Ayna apparently already know about? Will they be attending prism? Is this a full-blown decoy protagonist situation?
 
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Vebyast said:
It's even weirder than that. And I think that needling isn't the right word. It took the two a matter of seconds to start gleefully guilt-tripping the hell out of the maybe-father with accusations of neglect and abuse that the maybe-father couldn't muster any defense against and even admitted to and apologized for. When negotiating, they took the situation seriously and seemed to be motivated primarily by the well-being of their sister(?), but at the same time, they smelled blood and were downright vicious in taking Progenitor for everything he's worth. So they seem like good, nice people, but they're also obviously villains holy shit.

So what's their game? What's their story? Why are we being given such a deep look at the top end of the setting in the very first episode? What narrative role are the triplets going to fill? There's no way they're trying to escape some resource limitation or leash, they'd have asked for a solution when negotiating, and they're likely powerful enough to do something about it anyway. They're clearly part of the core cast. Are they being set up as antagonists so the opposition is relatively friendly, or as protagonists to provide tension in the group that's on-screen and a viewer surrogate to prompt explanations of the magical girl system that Julia and Ayna apparently already know about? Will they be attending prism? Is this a full-blown decoy protagonist situation?
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Maybe this is a background for our two MG protagonists to begin their growth independent of their institution via a problem that nobody else is going to believe them about.

I don't know how they're actually going to respond, but they can't tell anybody of particular authority about the situation because the source of information is 'Progenitor said', which is something that any serious adult would not want to start believing, and could even potentially depower the Magical Girls even if people did believe them because that'd push narrative importance away from them and their frenemies, but that's secondary.

They, and the three other members of this tour, will be the only ones to have any knowledge of a dangerous increase in empowered individuals, and the existance of power-granters that will be transported to their planet, who would also likely be impressionable and very dangerous if they got subverted by a group with the right powers. Add on to this the possibility that they could get a birthday powerup (assuming they're unpowered) and you get a pretty juicy storyline as they worry about their close friends getting dangerous powers and move out to find these Sentinels because they're the only ones who will.

So, yeah, it could be chancy, but if they pull it off they'd have a lot going for them, and it'd also establish these triplets as their villainous but affable comrades due to a shared secret, instead of letting them get the spotlight.
 
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