[HALP] me! (WORM quest)

[veekie]

Is Bitch's power a master power? Because this is basically the same. The power is a master power, because it does create additional combatants with special abilities (senses we control). That we don't directly control them is immaterial.

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Bitch's power is indeed a Master-Trump power granting ability(short duration Brute version of Teacher and that E88 power granter), However the sensory switching is more of a debuff than enhanced combatant?

-[X] Order [Shift] to initiate sense-sharing.


You are correct about this but also not helping Taylor is counterproductive. If she dies all the info we spent on her is basically wasted, likewise if she refuses to help us. Now we could host body jack her but that is highly aberrant (and I suspect does not decay over time).

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Indeed, but that just means we want to set her up in a position where:
1) She is unlikely to die
2) She is going to get a lot of data

Fixing her life, in other words, is a nice bonus, but not the primary goal. Or really, even relevant

 

[Yog]

@Vhalidictes so, as a finalized power design, would you be willing to evaluate the costs for this kind of power:

[] Power design "sensate queen"
-[] Striker/Thinker primary: on touch, mark a person. Host gets access to all senses of all marked persons, as long as they are within range. Base range is one block. The mark is contagious - those marked will spread the mark to other people on touch. The marked serve as relays, extending the range of the power. The mark decays over a period of several weeks once a person is out of range.
--[] Multitasking necessary secondary power (thinker). Host gets multitasking capability scaling with the amount of marked persons they are connected to, in enough quantity to not be overwhelmed by all the senses
--[] Sensory administration control system (master/shaker). Host can switch sensory and mix inputs between marked people, so, for example, marked person A receives vision of marked person B, tactile sensations of marked persons C, D and E and proprioception of host, while still having their smell and hearing. Inner vocalization can also be shared.
---[] Necessary tetriary power: multitasking. Host can grant some amount of multitasking to those with shared senses, but might also withhold said multitasking
--[] Sense-linked power redistribution control system (master / breaker). Host can redistribute "power" linked to senses among those in the network with connected senses. For example, let's say people A1 through A10 receive vision input from person A0. Their own vision can be reduced to 1/10th of their own, while the vision of A0 will improve ten times (10*9/10+1=10). Same can be done with strength, and durability (linked to pain).

Bitch's power is indeed a Master-Trump power granting ability, However the sensory switching is more of a debuff than enhanced combatant?

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See above the finalized proposal. The benefits are coordination (link hearing of person A to person B, and vice versa, and you get communication), and, due to "shared burden" ability to produce superhuman combatants. It also allows you to train minions, as it gives you control over people and a great (if evil) training tool - Pavlovian conditioning and all. It can be used as a striker/brute package, yes. But it is meant for coordination and control of large groups of people, where you send orders through your network, and make people fight for you, with some people in the hospital receiving injuries so people on the frontline can fight better, etc.

 

[veekie]

See above the finalized proposal. The benefits are coordination (link hearing of person A to person B, and vice versa, and you get communication), and, due to "shared burden" ability to produce superhuman combatants. It also allows you to train minions, as it gives you control over people and a great (if evil) training tool - Pavlovian conditioning and all. It can be used as a striker/brute package, yes. But it is meant for coordination and control of large groups of people, where you send orders through your network, and make people fight for you, with some people in the hospital receiving injuries so people on the frontline can fight better, etc.

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Okay, thats clearer. Its a Trump-Master effectively granting Combat Thinker features

 

[Yog]

Okay, thats clearer. Its a Trump-Master effectively granting Combat Thinker features

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Something like that. It has three main uses, as I can see them:
1) It's master-stranger-thinker, creating sleeper agents who don't know they are sleeper agents, but still gather information for you. You tag people, observe events through their eyes, gather information. This is the nightmare scenario of PRT internal security, really.
2) It's a combat anti-crowd striker/brute power, where, if you are assaulted by a number of people, and you get to touch at least a few of them, you can mow them down. You touch (punch) a person, then you f*ck with their senses, while also making them more vulnerable and weak, while you yourself become stronger and tougher.
3) It's a master-trump power, where you produce combat thinker-strikers (because, again, the mark can spread, and you get to f*ck with senses of people your people are fighting, and drain them of strength).

It doesn't have direct control option, yes, but that's by design. If Taylor embraces the dark side, she could absolutely make unwilling minions through Pavlovian conditioning (go to a hospital, find a person in a coma, you now have sensory deprivation chamber on demand; now confine someone in a dungeon somewhere and make them suffer - you can now induce pain on demand). If she wants to be a hero only, she can use the striker/brute application, while concealing the self-propagating "Big Sister is Watching You" aspect. If she is more neutral, she can turn Dockworkers into a powerful gang quite easily.

It probably needs further tinkering with (a block radius might be too large, I think, and the drain might work better if it's not instant switch, etc), and I would appreciate help with that, but overall, this is indeed a master power.

EDIT: Possible downside to empathize "ruthless master" aspect would be durability boost, linked to pain, be to amplify pain proportional to toughness. Ie you feel it hurt more, while it damages you less. But that's way too monkey paw.

 

[unsanity]

Is Bitch's power a master power? Because this is basically the same. The power is a master power, because it does create additional combatants with special abilities (senses we control). That we don't directly control them is immaterial.

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It is in fact entirely material. Bitch is noted as an exception to how masters operate, because she's not actually a master. Being an exception, she can't be used to justify other powers as being masters just because they work like social thinkers.

Technically speaking, she'd be a striker, and then a social thinker for dogs instead of people. But the PRT calls her a master because they don't care about how the power works, just what they need to do to beat it. Bitch only ever fights with dogs that follow her orders, so it's more convenient to treat her as if her minions were being controlled somehow.

It's the same reasoning behind how Dragon is technically a thinker, but the PRT calls her a tinker. Because the PRT uses their threat rating system as a shorthand for counter-strategies, not to detail the technicalities of how parahumans are doing their things.

If you're wondering what the difference is: master powers work by controlling something's body or mind, compelling them to do what the master wants. If you have to actively resist and fight back against the control, then it's a master. If you can "resist" the control by just standing there, then it isn't a master and you aren't being controlled. Deceived, perhaps, but not controlled. Social thinkers, illusion strangers, object blasters, projection breakers, all that stuff can look like a master but really isn't, because nothing is being controlled.

Sense-linked power redistribution control system (master / breaker). Host can redistribute "power" linked to senses among those in the network with connected senses. For example, let's say people A1 through A10 receive vision input from person A0. Their own vision can be reduced to 1/10th of their own, while the vision of A0 will improve ten times (10*9/10+1=10). Same can be done with strength, and durability (linked to pain).

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That's... not a breaker power, like at all. Breaker powers are toggle powers, with clearly defined on/off states or that require a condition to be met before they can be activated (same thing), and their gimmick is that they "break" how physics work in relation to the parahuman with the breaker power.

Nothing like that is happening here: this is just more precisely redistributing senses, which falls under thinker.

 

[Yog]

It is in fact entirely material. Bitch is noted as an exception to how masters operate, because she's not actually a master. Being an exception, she can't be used to justify other powers as being masters just because they work like social thinkers.

Technically speaking, she'd be a striker, and then a social thinker for dogs instead of people. But the PRT calls her a master because they don't care about how the power works, just what they need to do to beat it. Bitch only ever fights with dogs that follow her orders, so it's more convenient to treat her as if her minions were being controlled somehow.

It's the same reasoning behind how Dragon is technically a thinker, but the PRT calls her a tinker. Because the PRT uses their threat rating system as a shorthand for counter-strategies, not to detail the technicalities of how parahumans are doing their things.

If you're wondering what the difference is: master powers work by controlling something's body or mind, compelling them to do what the master wants. If you have to actively resist and fight back against the control, then it's a master. If you can "resist" the control by just standing there, then it isn't a master and you aren't being controlled. Deceived, perhaps, but not controlled. Social thinkers, illusion strangers, object blasters, projection breakers, all that stuff can look like a master but really isn't, because nothing is being controlled.

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The classifications, ie master/striker/shaker etc, are entirely PRT convention, they only refer to how one operates. Master is "operates with minions". So, in response to this:
1) Citation, please, for Bitch being exception. When wards discuss her powers in canon, her not having direct power-based control over her dogs is noted, but is not considered something strange / exceptional at all.
2) You do remember that pain is a sensation? Do this or you experience pain is a master power. And this power allows for such conditioning (as long as you have some person somewhere in the network who is in pain).
3) Is Heartbreaker a master? He doesn't get direct control over someone, he can only manipulate their emotions.

The power as I outlined it, works by creating minions, and anti-master tactics are exactly what works (badly, but other tactics work even worse) against it.

That's... not a breaker power, like at all. Breaker powers are toggle powers, with clearly defined on/off states or that require a condition to be met before they can be activated (same thing), and their gimmick is that they "break" how physics work in relation to the parahuman with the breaker power.

Nothing like that is happening here: this is just more precisely redistributing senses, which falls under thinker.

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This is a breaker power, because it also allows redistribution of durability and strength. And sensory buffs are also a breaker state, if a subtle one.

 

[Parzival95]

Unsanity my man, I am totally with you on helping Taylor and eventually creating our own human avatar. Let's be good guy shard. I do like this viral sense sharing power, but I reiterate that I want to help Taylor both with a good power and eventualy by talking with her about the state of the world, and how to fix it.

 

[Captain Hunt]

[X] The Dream Master: 50 Thinker Information, 200 Research. The capability to interact with the sleeping state of connected Hosts. A indirect form of communication that causes less Aberrance.
[X] Overload I: 150 Thinker Information, 250 Research. The capability to offensively transfer energy to another Shard. You're not Sting, but you're not completely helpless. This version of the ability can't kill another Shard, but they will need time to cool off before they can resume operation. Effect is similar to sedatives in Humans. Some Shards may attempt to block the initial connection to defend themselves, but that is unlikely to work. Will have reduced effect on energy-manipulation Shards, though.
[X] Send a command to [Shift] - Now that you have its address, you don't need to rely on Taylor or Scion. You can just connect whenever you want.
-[X] Report known adresses.
-[X] Train [Shift] to properly organize information. We want to use it as a proxy to collect addresses of shards in return for this.
-[X] Give data on it's host and her psyche
-[X] Do not grab random information
-[X] Do not eat shift

 

[Redshirt Army]

Seeing how maximizing data income is expected behaviour, seeing how Queen Administrator's efficiency with Thinker powers means we're basically expected to give off a 400 equivalent level power (aka Thinker ~10), and given how QA is apparently a bit of a smartass when it comes to following the letter of her orders, I'm ever more inclined to give Taylor a planetary-range sensory power.

Then we can share data processing with every non-sentient shard on Earth, and use that ludicrous data income to both pay for as many upgrades as we can manage, and to become a massive trading mogul with all the sentient shards.

The downside is that being in a position of that much power is gonna cause some scrutiny, but as far as I can tell it's an "in-character" action for Queen Administrator.

 

[The_GrandMage]

The downside is that being in a position of that much power is gonna cause some scrutiny, but as far as I can tell it's an "in-character" action for Queen Administrator.

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There's also the downside that making Clairvoyant 2.0 will probably eat all her slots, and likely bring some interest to us.
If we want to go ahead with basically repairing the Cycle and playing dumb to [Zion], trying to hide our free will and play ourselves off as just Sapient, that's not too much an issue.

If we want to coup the Entities and take over, we should probably hold back on this and make it a tertiary or quaternary Host, once we've got enough data.
Or find a way to get a Cauldron vial in our ranges, make it subservient but not eat it, and give it the data and orders to give off that power, have it ping and give orders to non-sapient shards, and just scrap addresses and data from it on the regular.

 

[Mount. Elements]

QM timing question

While I will still wait until tomorrow to call a Vote, I would like some clarification - do you want to skip Research for the next turn while you decide what to do (if anything) with [Shift]?

For one example, if your winning plan is to interrogate Sophia's Shard, would you prefer to see the results of that before the end of the school day? If so, let me know.

Mechanically, the way this would work is that you would split up the next Turn into two chunks - daytime and nighttime. You would have to specify which Sub-Turn you wanted things to happen in.

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We still get to research; it just happens at night instead, correct? And we would get the results from our plan to interrogate Sophia's Shard and then be able to vote on what to do with it (take data, eat it, etc.) at the end of the day? If so, that sounds good.

 

[Bomrek]

[X] The Dream Master: 50 Thinker Information, 200 Research. The capability to interact with the sleeping state of connected Hosts. A indirect form of communication that causes less Aberrance.
[X] Overload I: 150 Thinker Information, 250 Research. The capability to offensively transfer energy to another Shard. You're not Sting, but you're not completely helpless. This version of the ability can't kill another Shard, but they will need time to cool off before they can resume operation. Effect is similar to sedatives in Humans. Some Shards may attempt to block the initial connection to defend themselves, but that is unlikely to work. Will have reduced effect on energy-manipulation Shards, though.
[X] Send a command to [Shift] - Now that you have its address, you don't need to rely on Taylor or Scion. You can just connect whenever you want.
-[X] Report known adresses.
-[X] Train [Shift] to properly organize information. We want to use it as a proxy to collect addresses of shards in return for this.
-[X] Order [Shift] to initiate sense-sharing.
-[X] Give data on it's host and her psyche
-[X] Do not grab random information
-[X] Do not eat shift

I added "-[ ] Order [Shift] to initiate sense-sharing." as it provides an extra information income and doesn't appear to have any downsides.

 

[Yog]

Seeing how maximizing data income is expected behaviour, seeing how Queen Administrator's efficiency with Thinker powers means we're basically expected to give off a 400 equivalent level power (aka Thinker ~10), and given how QA is apparently a bit of a smartass when it comes to following the letter of her orders, I'm ever more inclined to give Taylor a planetary-range sensory power.

Then we can share data processing with every non-sentient shard on Earth, and use that ludicrous data income to both pay for as many upgrades as we can manage, and to become a massive trading mogul with all the sentient shards.

The downside is that being in a position of that much power is gonna cause some scrutiny, but as far as I can tell it's an "in-character" action for Queen Administrator.

Click to shrink...

Maximizing data income also requires the power being used. I am unsure how Taylor would be able to use a planetary range sensory power.

We seriously need to figure out what we want, and whether we care about Taylor at all. If we do, and we want the end goal be something along the lines of "move entities from hunter-gatherers to farming society", ie where instead of going through worlds leaving nothing in their wake, they instead work in symbiosis with the creatures on those planets, we need something that:
1) Ensures Taylor's survival
2) Gives her agency, but one that puts her in conflict with other groups.
3) Incentivies both conflict (because right now that gives resources) and long term cooperation. Because that's what we want as the end result.

I am honestly not sure how to work this out. Some of the ideas I have rattling in my brain are:
1) Play around with the idea of consensual minions. We know that in canon there are powers that work only on consenting people (Teacher most specifically, needed permission, as shown by him approaching Lung).
2) Play around with random biological evolution. This is the "safest" way, I think, we can get hosts to jailbroken powers without attracting attention. Because, I remind you all, entity natural powers (dimension shifting) are a result of non-directed evolution, and are biologically possible in wormverse
3) Somehow try to utilize creativity of other people? And the idea of cooperative intelligence, rather than competitive one.


Hmm... How about this:

[] Librarian of Alexandria
-[] The archival: Host possesses a virtual mindscape. Essentially a VR area 100 cubic meters in size that is fully controllable by host's mind (including stuff like making it 5 dimensional, decreasing the flow of time, maybe increasing it within certain limits).
--[] On touch, host can make a copy of a mindstate of a person she touches. Multiple copies of the same person merge with each other.
---[] Each mindstate is added to the simulated mindscape, and each mindstate adds 100 cubic meters of space to the mindstate. What editing rights the copies have is up to the host
--[] Host can grant full or partial control of her body to any of the mindstates, including to multiple mindstates at once
-[] The lending: On touch host can give her mindstate (or any other mindstate) to other people for a limited duration // this part might be tweaked to be consensual, and whether this is CTRL+C or CTRL+X should also be worked out.
--[] Lent mindstates can take over the people they are lent to, whether consensually or not to be determined
-[] The boost: each consenting mindstate can enter hybernation. Each mindstate in hybernation mode gives host (or the person its lent to) a boost to an Alexandria package

Something like that. A sorta-kinda teacher, only far scarier.

 

[Parzival95]

We should probably vote on whether we want to be:
good guy shard genuinely trying to help Taylor, enter symbiosis with humanity, and do good.

Or sociopath shard, ruthlessly minmaxing our way through hosts trying to conquer all other shards and callously stomping anyone who doesn't help us achieve our goals.

While I'm all for maximizing research efficiency, I'm don't want to screw over hosts. Coil and Jack Slash we'll abuse the shit out of but let's actually help Taylor. We can always just straight up tell her what's going, we already have multiple ways of hiding what she knows from the wider world.

I've already experienced the latter option through Halping Quest!, what with repeatedly messing with Danny and Taylor, killing Leet, poking Fate and so on. We ended up causing a lot of our own problems as Configure. As Administrator, I want us to take the other route, and actually communicate and cooperate.

P.S. Also, while I'm all for trolling around in character with some crackery, I'm not about trolling the quest itself and the QM, he puts a lot of work into this, it's pretty cool of him.

P.S.S. For those suped up thinker master powers floating around, those defintely need master immunity. Infohazards like Mama Mathers would wreck Taylor.

P.S.S.S. For everyone reading but not participating, it'd be helpful if you chimed in on whether you're more interested in reading paragon shard or renegade shard, even if that's the only post you ever make. It's pretty important for the overall direction of the quest.

Thoughts, Vhal?

 

[The_GrandMage]

Can we take a neutral option?
Like, not sociopathically use everything and basically declare war, but also not overall n interested in being helpful and heroic?

I don't mind pulling back on the conflict drive and farming them for data for the foreseeable future, but I'm not particularly interested in stopping villains from being villanous or even letting humanity know we exist. I find not genociding them for the cycle or letting the lack of a controlling force have the shards give out unreliable and uncontrollable powers good enough.

 

[Vhalidictes]

We still get to research; it just happens at night instead, correct? And we would get the results from our plan to interrogate Sophia's Shard and then be able to vote on what to do with it (take data, eat it, etc.) at the end of the day? If so, that sounds good.

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Correct! You're not skipping anything, you're just making this turn a 2-part one.

 

[Parzival95]

That's pretty good for a neutral option, I'm down with that. There will always be villains just as there will always be crime. I didn't mean to imply that Paragon shard would be doubling down on building a perfect utopia, just that we generally try to the right thing.

I'd prefer our hosts be heroes though, or at least decent people like the Undersiders. We could get some Techno Queen going, maybe save Mouse Protector and give her a better rival. Helping our host with S-Class boss raids is more important then wiping out all crime, and almost certainly more fun. Also gives the host a better reputation and influence as powerful movers and shakers.

And yeah just straight up telling humanity about the Clarktech alien Illuminati would be a bad idea. I want to form our own shard-parahuman Illuminati with Taylor, Ziz, maybe Dragon and Tattletale.

 

[Vhalidictes]

We should probably vote on whether we want to be:
good guy shard genuinely trying to help Taylor, enter symbiosis with humanity, and do good.

Or sociopath shard, ruthlessly minmaxing our way through hosts trying to conquer all other shards and callously stomping anyone who doesn't help us achieve our goals.

Thoughts, Vhal?

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As QM, I'm not in a position to tell you what to do, so this is tough for me.

I think it's appropriate to point out that you should zoom out a bit and think about your Research options.

Hint: The 'contagious clairvoyance' power is awesome, but there's no need to give that power to Taylor. In fact, she could still have access to that power even if another Host has it. Hell, said Host doesn't even need to realize that they are Parahuman...

Edit: A vote on 'how we're going to vote' (good VS bad Shard) is a bad idea IMHO. If the readers accept the outcome of that vote they limit their own options. But there's no guarantee that all readers will abide by that vote...

Edit 2: To clarify, your main limitations here are three things:
1) The Human Corona Gemma.
2) Trigger events.
3) Too much Entity attention.

You can (and should) research those things. But you'll never be able to mitigate them entirely. You could, maybe, if you're insanely reckless, remove the 'limited corona' problem for Taylor (and only Taylor - this is a mild spoiler). But as you'd expect even that extreme option comes with tradeoffs.

 

[The_GrandMage]

I don't want to tell anyone. Just do our own thing, make it we always have an active host. I don't mind having Taylor be a hero, bit I wouldn't mind having another host as a villain and play both sides.

I don't mind helping Dragon if only because she's a good Host to have almost eternally active. And a good way to create a body to use to become human. Muahaha.

 

[Parzival95]

Well it would be weierdly meta to vote on that a few posts in, but I don't want the quest to develop split personality syndrome where we constantly playing tug of war over morality. Unless we literally split our mind to play angel and devil on Taylor's shoulder.
"Taylor, lets help the Undersiders get out from under Coil and form a badass hero team."
"Pshh you don't need them, let's release a selfpropagating super virus that shocks anyone who thinks about committing a crime."

That would actually probably be a fun quest all on its own actually.

P.S. ok so I'm agreeing with grand mage on what he saying, be better than the rest of the shard network but not trying to be the second coming, I'm down for being pragmatic. I don't want sound like an Knight Templar against fun, I'd just prefer to avoid explicitly evil fun.

And Vhal your right, voters gonna vote. As I see there's a scale of idealism vs pessimism in creating a setting, and Worm is solidly -3 crapsack world and getting worse. It like to reverse that to -1, pretty crappy but with a hopeful atmosphere, like a more run down DC or Marvel. Mostly that come down to S-Class threats and Endbringers. The triumvirate are powerful, but there's only 3 of them and they're no Thor, Hulk, or Wonder Woman. Our hosts can be like that, the terrifying but friendly hope-bringers

 

[Mount. Elements]

It feels a bit early to decide on the overall strategy for achieving The Administrator's goals right now. I think I'd like to see more of how other Shards interact with The Administrator first. For example, will sense-sharing with every non-sapient Shard we get the address for actually work, or is there some drawback/limitation that we haven't seen yet?

Generally, I prefer heroic characters or at least morally ambiguous villains, and I'd like to help Taylor. I'm just not sure whether we should be trying to convince Scion to let us eat all of the Cauldron Shards, farming all non-sapient Shards for info, creating some sort of conspiracy with other sapient Shards, or something else entirely.

 

[Vhalidictes]

That would actually probably be a fun quest all on its own actually.

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Uh, Gino... That is an aspect of this quest.

Have you noticed that I described 'you' as a multimind in the story-posts? That is fully intentional.

 

[Parzival95]

Oh yeah, I guess it does work as a multimind thing. It was even brought up in chapter that we should be careful about splitting research. I could totally see us accidently creating a rival clone sharing power with us but constantly arguing over how to behave

And I agree with the ambiguous villains like the Undersiders.

Your Black Cats, Catwomans, and such. Punisher too maybe, though he'd fit pretty well in canon worm as murderous vigilante

 

[Powerofmind]

@Vhalidictes how would one pay for the tinker-thinker thing with fields as a secondary?

 

[Kejmur]

I missed this quest somehow? Better join late then never as they say .

However, I would like to nab another host or two becausewe can do so much more like that.

I'm thinking we can torment Emma in her dreams and trigger her with changer/breaker powers to ping off of shift

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Another idea may be to try to keep pushing Danny. DWU gang/hero group could possibly be interesting in a way that it would destroy status quo, while open up LOTS of conflict options, depending on trigger. If he would end up with any Trump power (something similar to Teacher would be perfect) then it may work. Although to be fair even if it ended up with rat control (in his case) and canon anthropod control (Taylor) then those two combining together would cause massive amount of conflict mayhem.

Guys this is totally schmuck bait, eating shift will absolutely get us noticed. Let's hold off until we we can hide ourselves better.

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Personally I think using Sophia as a potential trigger event could work. She is REALLY aggresive and if pushed enough she would force something more then traumatic enough to get good power. Plus frankly any scenario where she gets shit beaten out of her is positive thing because as a character she is both stale and easy to despise. Schadenfreude in this case is always nice to see.

How keen are shards on planned multi-triggers? It would seem like the perfect buisness to give a host a bunch of powers that are planned to synergize.

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There is a risk that synergy depending on trigger event may be completely off and end up with a host which has few powers, but none of them connect together properly.

In this case though it would be best to pick up best shards to potentially organize cluster trigger event (I think Panacea+Lung buds for example would provide AWESOME things no matter the trigger) so risk is minimized.

But alas, my desire to mess around wars with the necessity of hiding our aberrance. Everyone would think Sophia was mastered, and they would technically be right(the best kind).

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I think if Sophia called Emma on doubting her 'being strong' and provided a 'duel' between Emma and Taylor (which Taylor wins) and AFTER this become Taylor's friend this could possible to hide. And it is an interesting option.

You... want to give... GREG... a Mass Effect / Fallout "Dialog Wheel"... with possible results from each option.

I. I can't. This is. Diabolic. Congrats, GrandMage, I think you might have "won" the thread?

Edit: I guess he would be Tattletale's funhouse mirror-cape, with the cape ID "Instigate"?

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It may also be hilarious in more 'visual novel' way. Like he gains minor precog which presents 'options' on how possibly target may retaliate while still keep up 'options' of choice in potential dialogues. Or without precog. It would also 'encourage' more romantic dialogue options and 'encourage' harem options, which would cause conflict based on relationship.

Casanova Greg would be absolutely ridiculous. And worst case scenario? We get School Days protagonist x_X.

P.S. We ultimately gave up on it in Halping Quest!, but will you let us resurrect our hosts from backup if we research it? Handwave it as preprepared tinkertech bullshit maybe.

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This could end up with something similar to Butcher? Each host dies and 'jumps' towards next one, while shard keep 'character back-ups' in each 'transfer'.

Also potential interesting power could be that host 'connects' with people and create 'copies' of their minds and may 'copy' them in form of invisible ghosts for example which follow host. It wouldn't be strong power, especially if it only copies humans without powers (no shard to connect powers with copied mind), but I think it could be pretty fun depending on picked humans. Engineers, medics, surgeons, soldiers, etc.

Or any power which 'recreates' minions which are humanoid. Like in The Price of a Mile where Taylor summons people which participated in World War One as her personal projections. Power is hella interesting, it's absolutely broken, but still more then possible to stop (Crawler and Siberian for example no sell it, unless tinkertech gets involved) and allows her to pretty much solo whole cape teams (outside of extreme outliers like Crawler) solo so if Taylor wants to deal with problems on her own, this is it.

Maybe I'm falling in to the trap of Taylor always being central but I really want her to go from nobody to nightmare

P.S. It never feels right when she's not a main character, though Panacea is my other favorite viewpoint character. Vista too, she and Flechette are best wards. Tattletale can work too and sometimes Vicky.

I'm realizing that Worm works best from the perspective of a teenage girl apparently.

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Personally I think Greg in more cracky stories work like a charm. But maybe I'm just one of the very few who doesn't mind him as a protagonist.

Sparky is clean state pretty much and depending on how Greg is presented may work for example as that 'comedic straight man' for example.

Aisha could also work.

Unsanity my man, I am totally with you on helping Taylor and eventually creating our own human avatar. Let's be good guy shard. I do like this viral sense sharing power, but I reiterate that I want to help Taylor both with a good power and eventualy by talking with her about the state of the world, and how to fix it.

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Sufficient Velocity Shard with all users acting as advisors and may also act personally as projections. Truly meta. Nothing can go wrong.

On more serious note variation of 'human projections' which help her out directly depending on who 'shard' copies for potential projections is something I wouldn't mind to go for.

Or something similar could work with Master / Trump, where Taylor for example read books or watch TV and may 'recreate' projections based on what she just finished reading/watching. Depending on what is available on Earth-Bet, for example Pokemon team would be pretty fun to have for example .