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[HALP] me! (WORM quest)

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Extensive alterations like the trust root thing may be something we wanna restrict to non-sapient shards, and maybe shards that The Warrior isn't paying much direct attention to.
 
Retrueno said:
Wouldn't beign a Badass Normal get us Contessa'd?
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You do realize she's only Badass Normal to us, right?
The Taymaster plan actually qualifies as a Parahuman for pretty much everyone else. She's got an active Corona, qualifies on the power scale, in some areas well above what a human normally could. Heck, even Taylor herself suspects she's a parahuman.

There's no reason to think she's not a parahuman without the knowledge only we have.

w34v3r said:
shards that The Warrior isn't paying much direct attention to.
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I'm pretty sure that's all of them.
 
Contessa may actually become a problem in time, given how her power works. If she has a path running to prevent normals from being on the same level as capes in modern society, PtV would classify Taylor as non-parahuman as long as we don't give her a power. Sure, to everybody around it'll look like she's a parahuman, but PtV won't care and make Contessa target Taylor, directly or indirectly. It really depends on how Contessa phrases her paths. It may actually go so far as to make Cauldron pay attention to us, given how any paths directly interacting with Taylor would change very frequently due to our actions, which PtV is restricted from taking into account. We may want to watch out for this.
 
Metoto said:
PtV would classify Taylor as non-parahuman as long as we don't give her a power.
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Would it?

We gave Taylor an active 0-Point Corona. Something which has never happened before, and active Coronas are usually restricted to parahumans.
I think we'd be more likely to show up as a false positive than to show up as a non-parahuman.
 
The_GrandMage said:
Would it?

We gave Taylor an active 0-Point Corona. Something which has never happened before, and active Coronas are usually restricted to parahumans.
I think we'd be more likely to show up as a false positive than to show up as a non-parahuman.
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Well, that depends entirely on how Contessa phrased that path back when she first started it. If she formulated it as 'people with powers', then Taylor doesn't count. If she said 'parahumans', then it depends on whether she considers people with a corona, but without powers parahumans. If she took 'people with active coronas', on the other hand, Taylor would be considered someone who is allowed to defeat capes by her power.

The thing is, we don't know exactly how she phrased that path. Could be Contessa will never become a problem until we decide to deal with Cauldron. Could be her power makes her arrange events so Taylor dies/is crippled/loses the first time she fights a cape without having a power herself. Could be Contessa realizes something is up when her path to keep the normies down keeps changing drastically whenever we influence events from behind the scenes and suddenly we have Cauldron abducting/disappearing/murderizing Taylor because they think she's got a power that influences PtV negatively, having investigated how it seems to not work right when pointed at her.

Now, while all of this is a bit paranoid, this is Contessa we're talking about. She is the perhaps most bullshit overpowered host in the entirety of Worm (so long as none of her blindspots are involved). We may never see her coming if one of her many paths somehow involves killing off Taylor. She doesn't even need to be in the same city as her to set in motion a series of events that ends with Taylor run over by a car without even knowing herself what she did and why. Contessa is a host to be wary of until Taylor is immune to just about everything.
 
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So, since this is canon,

The_GrandMage said:
► Winged_One
Replied on November 8, 2010:

Thanks for your help, GM. Good to see someone is willing to fix what they're breaking.

Took a lot of planning to set that all up, you know. RA, you have the right idea. K, I don't think you realize how hard our job actually is. I'd rather a vacation than more finicky tasks.

M, don't even think about it. I'm watching you.

Watch out for TT's betrayal.
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any ideas on who is being referenced? Best I've got is TT as possibly Tattletale and RA as possibly Replacement Administrator (i.e. us).
 
Everyone, voting officially closes Midnight (12AM) US-Pacific time on Thursday, February 14th. Be sure to complete all voting/vote changes by then.

Late votes might be counted, no guarantees.

EDIT: Voting is closed. Writing commences.
 
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Metoto said:
Well, that depends entirely on how Contessa phrased that path back when she first started it. If she formulated it as 'people with powers', then Taylor doesn't count. If she said 'parahumans', then it depends on whether she considers people with a corona, but without powers parahumans. If she took 'people with active coronas', on the other hand, Taylor would be considered someone who is allowed to defeat capes by her power.
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Most likely, given Case 53s and vials and such, it was probably phrased something like, "people with an active Agent," or "people connected to an Agent" or something like that. Which, with our system, we count as.

Parahumans is weird with some Case 53s (Are they even human anymore?) and "people with powers" could be odd around some people as well, since they might not seem to have an active 'power' when the vial seemed to mostly changed their physiology.

Also, I really doubt the wording is as broad as you state, or it'd be pinged when PRT Agents and Strike Teams attempt to take down Parahumans, as well.

Most likely it's targeted more to stop the idea from entering mainstream thought than to stop every individual instance. Managing a PR campaign to keep things separate is probably a lot easier and has fewer steps than the ever-changing path of influencing every random Joe on the streets.
 
The_GrandMage said:
Most likely, given Case 53s and vials and such, it was probably phrased something like, "people with an active Agent," or "people connected to an Agent" or something like that. Which, with our system, we count as.

Parahumans is weird with some Case 53s (Are they even human anymore?) and "people with powers" could be odd around some people as well, since they might not seem to have an active 'power' when the vial seemed to mostly changed their physiology.

Also, I really doubt the wording is as broad as you state, or it'd be pinged when PRT Agents and Strike Teams attempt to take down Parahumans, as well.

Most likely it's targeted more to stop the idea from entering mainstream thought than to stop every individual instance. Managing a PR campaign to keep things separate is probably a lot easier and has fewer steps than the ever-changing path of influencing every random Joe on the streets.
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Well, yeah, I agree that it's unlikely to become a problem, but we still ought to be careful. I remember reading a comment from Wildbow on why snipers aren't a thing in Worm. Specifically, anybody who tries finds that he has some seriously 'bad luck' by way of Contessa, often dying or being discovered before they can even aim. That's why a professional won't even take the job unless the target has a kill order.

Additionally, we should just try to avoid getting on Cauldron's radar before we even give Taylor a power. That'd just be such a mess to sort out, really. But either way, we're not at that point of the plot, yet, so who knows what might happen before this ever becomes a concern.
 
banjo2E said:
So, since this is canon,
any ideas on who is being referenced? Best I've got is TT as possibly Tattletale and RA as possibly Replacement Administrator (i.e. us).
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I dunno. They're watching someone, though. I suppose you could search the thread and try to find mentions of who's what, but do we even know for sure who Winged_One is in the Quest's continuity? Pretty sure it's entirely a fanon character, and therefore runs a gambit of who it could be.

Heck, if the people they're mentioning aren't someone Vhal has mentioned, yet, it might entirely be some form of foreshadowing what with her precog (if it is Ziz, could just as easily be some coded message passed between Thinkers - In which case it's just Narrative foreshadowing).
 
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The_GrandMage said:
Heck, if the people they're mentioning aren't someone Vhal has mentioned, yet, it might entirely be some form of foreshadowing what with her precog (if it is Ziz, could just as easily be some coded message passed between Thinkers - In which case it's just Narrative foreshadowing).
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One of the more interesting points in Worm is that all of the Endbringers were sandbagging to an extreme.

Untangling the constituents of a collective-mind from observed behavior is probably not beyond Ziz.
 
@Vahlidictes - did you see my question on if it would count as problematic shard behavior to have Taylor (and/or other hosts) run their body remotely from inside queen admin?

I figure given QAs nature they're uniquely suited to handle the bandwidth and as it's still essentially a human running things data is still being collected so at worst it's odd but and edge case and not outright deviant...

Or do we not have enough data to know if it's deviant or not?
 
Katsuragi said:
@Vahlidictes - did you see my question on if it would count as problematic shard behavior to have Taylor (and/or other hosts) run their body remotely from inside queen admin?

I figure given QAs nature they're uniquely suited to handle the bandwidth and as it's still essentially a human running things data is still being collected so at worst it's odd but and edge case and not outright deviant...

Or do we not have enough data to know if it's deviant or not?
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I'm sorry, I must have missed it. It shouldn't be problematic, no.

There's probably a way to do this without Taylor even being aware of it. Running an Artificial Stupidity / Taylor VI wouldn't be hard at all.

As far as Aberrance: This is so far beyond normal Shard capabilities there's just no way to judge. Potentially it could count for a lot, or perhaps none at all....
 
Clearly were just developing a way to more efficently use resources.

As far as I'm aware, breakers basically pilot their bodies from a shard via while in breaker form anyhow. We're just extropolating from that as a way to hang on to hosts that produce particularly useful quantities of data.

One potential justificaton: if a future cycle was particularly low on generating useful data we could upload a few copies of hosts that produced good data to stir things up. Kinda sorta taking the endbreaker concept (OCP to the world to stimulate conflict) and scaling it down to a scalpel instead of a hammer shaped nuke. :p
 
ccstat said:
And a question about hosts, and potential powers. We have some awesome local omniscience via our shard senses around each active host. Is there any way to grant those senses to our host, either by streaming them directly or by giving those senses as a power? It's a lot of information, and I don't want to burn out a host's brain, but giving someone (like Taylor) that degree of awareness would be powerful, and her brainmeats might be able to handle it even if a regular human couldn't. If it's a power, what sort of data would we need to spend for it? Thinker, probably? If it's a matter of sharing the senses directly that runs headlong into restrictions on shard-host communication, but since it's sensory we might be able to skirt the rules a bit to hide/mask the aberrance.
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@Vhalidictes just reiterating a question you might have missed (If you are choosing not to answer, that's fine.)
 
On that topic, given we already had to backup Taylor once;

How much shard realistate does it take to emmulate a human? IE, how many hosts could we have backed up before it was a noticeable impact on our resources?
 
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@Vhalidictes Senpai, notice our Omakes:
Redshirt Army said:
[Basic Dimensional Theory Omake 2]

Alright. This is a key component of how Shards work, so it's well past time that you cracked down on this some more.

First things first - how does the targeting on your "in-plane" portals work? You take aim at Venus, and... wait, hang on. How do you know where Venus is? Huh. Some sort of subconscious ability to detect gravitational distortions, it looks like? Intriguing - does that mean that major gravity wells interfere with Shard operations somehow?

In any case, now that you're examining the math behind targeting a portal, and knowing what you're looking for, you can see where it "skims" slightly out of phase from your current dimension. You've been meaning to increase the amount of usable space you have access to anyway, so you go ahead and open the gate.

Aaaand you've opened a gate to the exact centre of Venus's gravity well. Man, targeting the surface of the moon when you could see it was way easier. Still, you know that Venus is supposed to be right about the same size as Earth, so you adjust your aim and... you're a bit too high, this time. Still, with Shard senses seeing through Venus's cloud cover is trivial, and your third attempt works out perfectly.

As a side note, when you stretch a bit of your mass through the portal, a few instinctive environmental adaptations immediately kick in. Looks like Shards can handle tougher environments than Venus just fine. Still, sightseeing isn't really what you're here for.

You know how to make trans-dimensional portals, and how to make intra-dimensional portals... so now you want to figure out how to effectively combine the two. You open up a Gate to Earth-Emote, observing the many and varied parameters you're decoding from the Shard Address to do so. And then... you tweak a few of them.

A few hours later, you've spent a lot of energy experimenting, but you've also got some results. Eleven of the values you're decoding are directional co-ordinates - telling you where to "aim", for lack of a better term, only in a higher-dimensional space than exists inside a universe. A few of the values are nearly identical across all current Shard addresses, and seem to be correction values based on planetary and solar masses for the current solar system you're all inhabiting. One of the values seems to be a temporal correction factor - it's incredibly minor, only a few picoseconds, but based on changes in the luminosity patterns of distant galaxies you can tell that Earth-Admin and Earth-Emote are slightly out-of-synch.

But it's actually comparing and contrasting Shard addresses to the Warrior's address that gives you the missing piece of the puzzle needed to work out how the spacial stabilization factors work - and once you know where to look, you can intentionally de-synchronize them. You crunch the numbers, aim down the sights, and on the very first try, open a gate from Moon-Admin to Venus-Emote. Or, well, within sight of Venus-Emote, at least. Precision targeting is gonna be a work in progress, you think, but you've got the basics.
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Mount. Elements said:
I'm going to try writing an omake for Stranger Danger now. Let's see how this goes:

While Zion seems pleased with what you're doing so far, that might not always be the case. Plus, there's the possibility of Shards trying to attack you as well, probably because they're aberrant and/or damaged. You really should look into how to hide from Shards and entities.
  • Hiding from Zion is probably WAY too difficult to consider right now, considering the bright line connecting you to him. So let's start by focusing on how to hide from Shards.
  • The first step is to consider how exactly Shards can detect you. Your Shard senses allow you to pick up the full EM spectrum and the biological data of everything within 500 meters of your triggered hosts. Most Shards must limit the data they pay attention to because the amount of data you can pick up is difficult for even you to keep track of it all.
  • Maybe there's a component of Shard senses that can be detected by other Shards? You can test this out by waiting for Vicky to leave the range of your Shard senses around Veronica and then return to see if you can detect Telekinetic's Shard senses.
  • Oh boy, you forgot that Vicky and Veronica have been staying pretty close to each other ever since Veronica's transformation, and they go to the same school.
  • Finally! Vicky left during lunch to get some money from the bank. Since she didn't expect it to take long with her flight, Veronica decided to stay behind.
  • Ok, it looks like you're detecting 2 things - Telekinetic's Shard senses and her micro-portal. That would explain how you have the Shard addresses for Shards connected to untriggered hosts.
  • While it wouldn't be a good idea to close the micro-portals to your hosts, maybe you could try withdrawing your Shard senses and minimizing the portal, just to see whether it's possible and if you're on the right track.
  • Veronica is probably the best choice here, considering that Taylor hasn't triggered and Lilac's body is dependent on her Breaker powers. You should still probably limit the test to no more than 50 microseconds though so that hopefully Veronica won't notice anything. She's already stressed out. No need to further reduce her Sanity.
  • You should probably also do this while out of the range of any other Shards as well. While you don't think Telekinetic would care all that much, she and Gaea talk to each other a lot, and Gaea is a bit of a blabbermouth. Fortunately(?), Carol has said that Veronica needs to work on finding her own place. It looks like Veronica has decided to scout out possible places to live while Vicky joins her family to catch up on the Amy search. They're planning to meet up again later, but you've got some time to work with.
  • That was unpleasant. You're not meant to withdraw your Shard senses, given the general Shard mission of collecting as much data as possible. You managed to pull it off, but it left you blind, deaf, numb, etc. to everything on Earth Bet for the duration. Also, you could only shrink your micro-portal to the size for an untriggered host. Veronica seems slightly unsettled but blames it on the verbal harrasment from an especially lecherous passerby.
  • Still, you have something to work with now. Hopefully, you'll find a way to disguise your Shard senses and micro-portal instead. You also need to figure out what to do if a Shard contacts you using your Shard address. Maybe you can move yourself to one of the other Earths and "forward" any calls to your old Shard address to your new location? That would require scouting out the other Earths we have access to and more confidence with portals to move yourself safely.
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The_GrandMage said:
[Basic Magic Theory 1] Okay, we know this exists, the Entities have records. But for some reason they don't think it exists, and cut off research from it. That's just odd. Let's see if we can work out why such logical, yet stupid, beings would deny the existence of a thing they're got evidence exists.
  • Okay, so the Entities collect and review data in-between Cycles. While moving through space to the next Host planet. So they're probably looking into it then. So they'd think it doesn't exist, why? Because it doesn't exist in space.
  • Okay, so why does it exist on planets, but not in space? Is it something to do with Hosts themselves, like Chi or something, or is it something to do with the planet?
  • Well, we have two ideas, and infinite multitasking, so only one solution. Check them both.
    • Let's start with, ironically enough, ourselves. Give the ol' Shard-bod a once over and see what we've got. Okay, we know what all that energy is. Nothing unexpected.
    • While you're busy with that, I'll scan the energy around Veronica, since as a non-Breaker she'll have the most baseline human data with full sensors online. . . Yup, gravity, radiation from the sun, heat, everything checks out. Mmmhmmm.
    • Time to examine the true depths of Earth Admin. Got some gravity, heat, core spinning around, lots of complex energy signatures for a whole planet, you know.
  • Okay, let's condense back up and see what we found. Holy shit, ley lines are real. Well, probably not in the way humans understand and mean the term, but there are definitely weird currents of energy in the planet.
  • Okay, so, that's probably 'mana' then, right? So how do we . . . I mean, there's gotta be some way to interact with it, right? This is very confusing. And it's so weak.
  • Maybe it's just Earth Admin, what does this look like on Veronica's end?
  • . . . Oh holy fuckballs. Okay, since we are the only life on Earth Admin, and Earth Bet has a ton of life (used to have more before we released a few Endbringers on it), this must tie into not only the planet but life, because while Earth Admin has some stray wisps, Earth Bet has raging goddamn rivers of mana.
  • And it's flaring up, too, reaching out past the surface and brushing against the Hosts. How can this not be noticed.
  • How did we not notice it until we found it otherwise? Let's stop focusing on it and. . . Oh. The energy signatures of literally every other energy drown it out. That's. . . How does that even work? You can only see it when looking only for it because everything else will drown it out?
  • Anyway, okay, we know what it is, and where it is. Now how do we interact with it? Especially when most of it is where we aren't?
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Katsuragi said:
On that tooic, given we already had to backup Taylor once;

How much shard realistate does it take to emmulate a human? IE, how many hosts could we have backed up before it was a noticeable impact on our resources?
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Memory space? To back up a Human? Almost none. Teenagers don't even have large amounts of long-term memory to worry about.

Given your current size and capabilities, I definitely wouldn't recommend storing more than roughly twelve million people.
 
That's interesting.

In a different game I think Id be interested in administrating allocations of personalities in addition to powers.

Back up a bunch of personalities, run a few precog ish simulatons on how they would interact with various hot spots on earth. Sort through and find the best personality. Assign an oppopriate power. Run a few more tailored training simulations with that chosen personality and power to further shape them to the situation.

Get ahold of a shard operating in that area that would listen to us without asking too many questions and get them to upload our designed person+power as a full over write on one of their parahuman's triggers.

Reap our share of the bounty of produced data.
 
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Vhalidictes said:
Memory space? To back up a Human? Almost none. Teenagers don't even have large amounts of long-term memory to worry about.

Given your current size and capabilities, I definitely wouldn't recommend storing more than roughly twelve million people.
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Alright, let's get to planning. What are we gonna do with about eleven million hosts (safety margin of 1 million)? How about the universes largest tournament of three dimensional chess? Populating a few empty earths? Convince all of them they're secretly Batman?
 
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