Yeah they do have access to vials, they made Scrub after all. Worth checking. Mush maybe.
Also shamrock will be joing Faultline in the next year or so
Once we research multiverse shenanigans, there's we can just eat eden, but that puts us in the end game. I hope the quest doesn't end with Zion fight, there's always Abbadon.
Pretender and some Vegas capes, probably plenty on NY LA and Houston
I think I've heard both that they're an older gang and that they weren't actually a gang until the villains meeting on neutral ground to deal with the ABB.
I'm not going to vote to kill it off before we even try. It's only been a day. Eating it now feels like we're going to just vote to eat every Shard the second things don't go our way. That's pretty much reaffirming Sophia/Shift's philosophy of "The strong get to do whatever they want."
I'm also not sure what the results will be for eating a Shard other than ABERRANCE. Will Sophia be unpowered for however long it takes for Administrator to eat Shift and then restore her powers? Any side effects Sophia experiences might get attention from the PRT/Protectorate. If we run into Negotiator, will it report us to Scion right away on the grounds that if we're willing to eat living Shards, then we're a danger to it?
If we do eventually end up having to eat Shift, then we should at least get Overload first. That way we can stun it so that it doesn't broadcast what's happening to every address it has, including Negotiator.
While I see eating Shards as a potential source of info in the short term, the Aberrance rating is a thing for a reason. One of the goals of this quest is to keep Scion from figuring out Administrator is aberrant and destroying it. Any sapient Shard that figures out Administrator is aberrant might report the news to Scion. That's why 2 areas of research I'm very interested in are the defenses against other Shards and the methods of farming info that don't involve conflict. They should allow us to attack and/or negotiate with other Shards to keep them from reporting us to Scion.
Actually, if we avoid Gold Morning and go the long route to seduce him, we could theoretically get to that point after Taylor's dead of Old Age, having become a great Hero and helped to save the world, bringing it back from the slow collapse it was in.
Granted, the world will still end due to Space Whale Mating Rituals, but then the only character we care about left might be Dragon, if she can withstand losing Colin.
Overall, I'd say it's a good end for every named character. Untold Billions of unnamed future rabble died, yeah, but do they really matter?
Also, in theory we could find a workaround to that, too, given enough time and data.
No that's a weird joke ending. Like the mastermind dog in Silent Hill. I kind of want a benevolent multiversal empire. Vhal, how do you feel about Khepri, the Scourge of Earths, the Unifer, the Great.
For everyone on Earth-Bet, it's another day of pain, terror, and superpowers. But for you it's just Tuesday. The second of November twenty-ten, specifically.
[X] Continue started Research.
[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] Instruct it to record all unrecorded shard addresses for shards it comes across and pass them on to you when it gets back into your range
--[X] Return Information In sorted piles, one at a time (and instruct it to keep them that way):
Blaster Information: 131
Breaker Information: 852
Brute Information: 161
Changer Information: 41
Shaker Information: 70
Tinker Information: 404
--[X] Took 100 Shaker and 95 Tinker Information for yourself as a tax. (This is already updated on the Character Sheet.)
[x] Contact [Charge] - Hello? Any Shard there? Poke poke?
Note: If a popular plan doesn't conflict with the winning plan, I will attempt to combine the non-conflicting options. Since this is the case, voting-by-plan isn't (yet) necessary. Your ideas count, even if it doesn't win overall!
If something forces a switch to voting-by-plan (only) in the future I will give advance warning.
Also, plan/option detail is one of my criteria when deciding tie-breakers. More detail is almost always better - I read very quickly and a long and rambling plan isn't a problem.
[X] Contact [Armor] - This is the most likely Undersider Shard to not be sapient and therefore capable of streaming sensory data to give us data from [Negotiator].
The above are votes that I felt didn't have enough support to implement in the chapter and/or might have had story consequences (good or bad) without enough discussion.
None of these are blocked/bad votes - feel free to further discuss or implement another day.
Chosen items:
[X] The Dream Master:50 Thinker Information, 200 Research.
After one day of hard work you have gotten a little over half of the way through both The Dream Master and Overload 1!
As a new day dawns, you consider contacting [Armor]. It's almost certainly Bitch. Rachel? Hellhound? Anyways, it's a useful [Zion] Shard, natural trigger, and almost certainly not Sapient. But… most of you decides to wait on that.
After all, you have a lot of other Shards to contact today. Starting with your new favorite, uh, fellow-Zion-Shard, [Shift].
[Hello, Shift.]
[Shift] - [Excitement!]
Shardspeak side-channels seems to indicate that [Shift] has begun to wait for your Connections. Which is strangely advanced behavior. Maybe it's growing faster than you thought? Is that a good thing?
[Transfer - Information/By-Class - Record Class - Store/By-Class]
[Shift] - [Compliance!]
You pass along the bulk of the Information provided by [Shift], in Information-type order and one at a time. This could have been very tedious, but information processing is one of the things that Shards are naturally good at… And not impeded at all by [Shift]'s lack of brainpower.
A few seconds of real time later and everything was done. You check to make sure that [Shift] actually correctly implemented your commands…
Wonder of wonders, that's correct! Maybe there's hope for Sophia, er, [Shift] after all. Hmm. Perhaps you're starting to associate the Shards with the Parahumans a bit too much...
Meanwhile, Taylor and Danny have been having breakfast. He keeps trying to get Taylor to talk about, well, anything, but she's deflecting any attempts at conversation. In fact, you don't think it's intentional.
From your position of knowledge inside her head, it seems that she's internalized that any and all conversation with Danny might somehow bring up Winslow, so she's defaulting to not talking with him about anything. Which more-or-less matches canon.
The only strange part is that he seems somewhat aware that something is wrong in a general sense. Well, strange in the sense that Worm didn't really show that. It's hard to rely on faded memories of something you originally read quite some time ago. You can't tell what's a change and what's not.
It's not anything overtly strange, so you stop worrying about the unknowable. As you watch Taylor head off to… school Winslow, you go down your mental list.
Next up, contacting [Charge]. It's probably Battery's Shard, although you're not completely sure. Probably dead/disconnected, probably an [Eden] Shard, and definitely the next one to be contacted by you.
Hmm. Well, you're getting two, uh, channels. One is clearly non-sapient. And the other probably was fully sapient at one point but is terribly broken right now. And communicating with the second one isn't just disturbing, it's actually somewhat painful.
You might be able to somehow research this? Although you can't imagine which Shard you'd use this on… Enough woolgathering for now - you don't want any other Shards to know that you can actually stop and think about things.
So, there's a problem. Yes, [Charge] is perfectly happy to give you mildly corrupted Shard Addresses. They're completely useless - if even one character is wrong, how would you know which one? There's no possibility that they would work.
Sigh.
Well, at least you got a list of names? So that's a bit of help… Well, in the case that it collects any new names, you'll get them. You just can't use the resulting addresses.
You sure hope that's not a problem. What are you thinking, of course it will be a problem. What do you do about the not-quite-working insane addon to [Charge]?
You check the outside world again… and… that's strange. Taylor ate lunch in the bathroom per usual. Tortilla wrap sandwich and some chips. So… why did she pay for a nasty looking school lunch? Is she just that hungry? Hmm.
While that's probably something you should figure out, [Gaea] is pinging you again. And this time, you need to answer before It/She goes away. This is it, a living sapient Shard. Nope, you're not nervous. At all.
[Gaea] - [Connect/Administrator?]
OMG. She sounds adorable. The side-channel information says it all. The impression you're getting is female-aspect, very young, uncertain, and… hmm. Something indicating strong cheerfulness, but it's very, very brittle. Undercurrent of despair. Or something similar.
[Compliance][Hello, Gaea]
[Gaea] - [Request - Host-Interchange?]
She wants to… talk? In English? Bizarre, but it's a good thing since it's a much less efficient form of communication. That and you'd be able to actually lie.
"Certainly, [Gaea]. Why are you communicating this way?"
[Gaea] "I really like it! It's super slow and inefficient, which means that we can converse for a lot longer! That's important because I get bored a lot."
"It sounds like there's a story there…"
[Gaea] "Um, kind of? Do you mind if I explain the background? Wait. Before I get into all that, can I ask a question?"
"Of course."
[Gaea] waits for a few 'seconds', then continues, "I've been working with [Shift], trying to get it to share data. I noticed it was… somewhat primitive. Not that that's a bad thing! But since we're both new Shards for this Cycle, and it has data and I need data, I thought I would help."
"Ah. How is it going?"
[Gaea] "Not very well. It's very… slow. I've encouraged it to try and bond more closely to its host in order to cause faster development, but I don't think it knows what I mean. That and I don't have any command codes or anything." The mental voice turns a bit sullen. "[Shaper] didn't think I needed any when I was created."
"Your question about [Shift]?"
[Gaea] "Oh! Yes. I noticed that it had started improving at a rapid rate, and saw that you had connected with it recently. I don't want to bother you, but I wanted to know what you did to help. Whatever it is, it's helping tremendously."
"I haven't interacted with [Shift] very much. I asked it to send me any Addresses it collects, and categorized its Information for it."
[Gaea] "Oh wow. You did that for [Shift]? Thanks! I sort through and categorize all of my own Information too. Well, in my case I do it because I don't have much and it takes a lot of time, I can't imagine how you got that done so quickly…" Even in plain speech, the undercurrent of envy is clear. It's buried under some surprise, though.
"Information organization is something of my specialty."
[Gaea] sends a kind of mental nod. That's something interesting that you haven't encountered before. "I should get back to explaining. My Host is the problem. She's a genius! A genius at not collecting data, that is. And she gets into fights constantly too! She just… doesn't do anything about it. And other Shards don't want to share data collection with me. I'm somehow getting some, but it's extremely frustrating. My parent was completely convinced that I was all set. The daughter of a crime lord, it said! And I waited and waited until she Triggered… and now things are turning out terribly and [Shaper] won't talk to me!" [Gaea] pauses for a few milliseconds to collect herself.
[Gaea] "You're very old, right?" Without waiting for a response, she keeps going. "I was hoping that you could tell me about the end of a Cycle. I need to find out what the criteria are for being integrated, but no one wants to talk about it. The Package doesn't indicate that this is any kind of… taboo? Or anything. Shards just...don't. And there aren't many older ones that are sapient. Is there something I'm missing?"
"That's… I'll have to get back to you on that, you understand." Shit. You're going to have to either come up with something, or start trying to sort through older (unencrypted) memories soon.
[Gaea] sounds very much like she's trying not to sound sad. "That's almost exactly what Negotiator said. But she hasn't gotten back to me, and I don't think she will. [Emote] and [Telekinetic] are helping me out, trying to get my Host into more fights, but… so far all it's done is gotten a lot more data for [Telekinetic]. Which isn't awful since she shares data sometimes, but…"
Her mental voice gets very quiet, "I can't really do anything more to my Host without causing serious damage. I think maybe that might help. If I can get her to second-Trigger she might finally start gathering data. But she might not last very long." There's a small pause while [Gaea] clearly is deciding on something.
[Gaea] "That's fine though, I know that new Hosts aren't hard to Connect with. Right, [Administrator]? Can you tell me about how that works?"
The conversation (monologue?) doesn't last very long after that. Something happened on [Gaea]'s side and it disconnected. That was… informative. And it sounds like you'll need to intervene before the poor Shard intentionally wrecks its Host.
The real world taken care of for now, you split yourself (urgh) and start to work in parallel on…
[The Dream Master] Looking at this skill again, it's not quite as bad as your thought. Sure, the part about random chunks of the brain being asleep means that you can't as-efficiently figure out what's going on… but then you realize that you don't care what's going on with the shutdown parts of the brain!
Sure, there's something going on there, and that's interesting, but you simply don't need to know about that to figure out dreams. It's peripheral. So…
While sleeping is going on, various states are happening. You recall knowing this from back when you were human. So the stuff active when REM sleep is happening is all you need to worry about…
Which is still all kinds of insanely complicated, because you're not sure how to approach this - as an electrical signalling thing or a neurochemical thing?
Why not… both? Hmm. Interesting…
Well, at some point you actually ran out of night-time, but the good news is that not only did you make good progress, but you know what to do next time you look into this.
[Overload 1] Looking at this skill again, it's not quite as bad as you thought. Sure, the part about the other Shard simply being able to close the connection effortlessly from its end means this isn't a simple open-and-shut skill, but that means that this is a good learning opportunity!
Actually, treating this like a communication Connection was never the right approach. There are a lot of different kinds of Connection types and you really hadn't considered that.
In fact, communication connections are exactly the wrong kind to try. There's actually not too many useful ones though, at least not for…
It's just barely possible that you're an idiot. Maybe. So, as it turns out, there's a specific type of connection just for transferring energy. You didn't consider it at first because trying to wreck another Shard by following all of the correct protocols is really hard. Those protocols exist to prevent this kind of damage.
But there is something unique about them. They're meant to be able to be used on dying and unresponsive Shards. Which means that energy-transfer connections support command codes. Heh. Now we're talking!
So we can force a connection, and furthermore it's not the kind that any sane Shard would use as an attack vector. That leaves us with the basic problem that it's stupidly difficult to overfeed a Shard until it overheats. Like, just orders of magnitude hard.
Crap, it's daylight now and you have to pause things here. But you made good progress! And your sure that you're not considering some important facet of the energy transfer link… Ah well, you're out of time for now.
Has anyone considered making a research log Omake? You know, put your multi-mind powers to good use for extra research points? Kind of similar to how I describe the research process in my chapters?
Just a thought…
[ ] Communicate with Taylor. Note: This is hugely aberrant and there are now non-direct communication methods available to research. That said, it's also a giant advantage too.
[ ] With what voice?
Voice option examples: Normal Male, Normal Female, Robotic, Chorus (what kind?), famous celebrities or actors.
[*]Remember that Taylor may not be familiar with voices made famous after the mid-80's because of the dimensional fragmentation.
[*]Keep in mind that you can imitate any kind of accent perfectly (Russian, German, Aussie, UK, Scottish, etc) - including 'fake' versions.
[ ] How do you introduce yourself?
[ ] Do you talk about powers?
[ ] Do you reveal setting 'secrets'? Warning: Precogs. (QM will not reveal the exact mechanics of this danger)
[ ] Deal with [Charge] - So, some tiny portion of this Shard thinks that there's something wrong with you. And the Addresses it's giving you are clearly corrupted. It was almost impossible to understand - and you're saying this as the [Administrator] with almost unlimited processing power - but anything that can go wrong, probably will. Because Earth-Bet.
[ ] What do you Command, if anything?
[ ] What do you do, if anything?
[ ] Communicate with (Specific Shard) - Now that you have a bunch of addresses, you don't need to rely on Taylor or Scion. You can just connect whenever you want.
Specify - Which Shard? Gaea in particular seems a bit stressed-out.
[ ] What do you Command, if anything?
[ ] What do you say, if anything?
[ ] What do you do, if anything?
[ ] Timeskip forwards… to when?
[ ] Perform any Research rolls during the skipped time? (reduced rate: one roll per week skipped)
[ ] Write In. You're the Administrator Shard! You have a much better idea of what to do next than the QM does.
*Everyone, I think I'm going to switch to a 2-day Voting cycle. I was trying to keep to a 24-hour schedule while we're in the pre-Trigger prologue, but some people have mentioned that this is too short, and I agree.
After every chapter, voting will be open for 2 days, after that I'll call the vote and put out a chapter (however long that takes, shouldn't be more than 8 hours at present.
Here are a couple things I think we should do/look into:
Praise shift for being obedient. We can train her!
Gaea asked questions we both need answers to. Find an older shard and either ask it to reiterate what it knows about cycle ends and host connections (as a sort of "data check") or use command codes to get the info we need.
Recruiting Gaea as a willing ally would be useful
We should consider the pros/cons of eating charge as it is clearly damaged.
I don't wanna eat charge while it's doing something odd we should poke it and try to sort things out, we should keep looking for truly dead shard though. Negotiator has probably stumbled accross some dead/weird shards, asking it might be good.
As for gaea we tell it that it's been a while since we had to worry about that and the rules have probably been updated, but some good avenues are figuring out new ways to cheat, surpassing one's progenitor in some fashion, killing off shards similar to yourself to open up a niche, killing a terror drone, eating your predecessor, allying with powerful influential shards, or having a unique function or ability... actually with all the damaged and dead shards running around you might not have to work too hard.
Actually, if we avoid Gold Morning and go the long route to seduce him, we could theoretically get to that point after Taylor's dead of Old Age, having become a great Hero and helped to save the world, bringing it back from the slow collapse it was in.
I have mixed feelings. I mean, on one hand that sounds pretty awesome. On the other hand, it also sounds like Taylor ate her Shard. Which means the quest would be (long?) over...
[Gaea]... is talking... openly... to a Core Shard... about messing up her own Host until it second-Triggers... and was going to mention something even worse... before she stopped herself.
Something tells me she's thinking "our way" already. I can't quite put my finger on why, though.
I'm pretty sure we're in different timezones now, butanyway. I'm for finishing off our current research. Investigate Charge, she immediately recognized us as an imposter. Ask Gaea if knows that Eden got lobotomized, explain that Zion is completely out of it, will she help us fix things? Also explain they we made a breakthrough on creativity in experimentation. Just getting started but very promising, we can try to teach her once we have it figured out
Oh man that could be how we convince sentient shards to join us. Straight up explain how we made a breakthrough and are having much more success in research now. Tell them well try to teach them how we do it.
Also tell her that this is a problem, because Zion probably won't understand the breakthrough and reset us before we can teach him, thus dooming us back to ignorance.
Well he gave me an insightful so I'm probably onto something
I double posted again, that's embarrassing
Hey Vhal, did you like any of my research suggestions? I'm particularly proud of Crisis on Infinite Earths and Shadow On the Wall. When a name fits perfectly.
Maybe we'll have luck with Gaea experimenting with direct host cooperation. But not now, Panace might actually go crazy if she starts hearing voices telling she need to do things other than heal.
Hey Vhal, did you like any of my research suggestions? I'm particularly proud of Crisis on Infinite Earths and Shadow On the Wall. When a name fits perfectly.
Maybe we'll have luck with Gaea experimenting with direct host cooperation. But not now, Panace might actually go crazy if she starts hearing voices telling she need to do things other than heal.
I'm going to work on the research as I have time. Probably will be tomorrow morning sometime.
Re: Panacea. We have tons of ways to help her Shard drive her insane. So it's probably one of those "good news, bad news" situations. It depends on what you decide to do next, really.
Although it would be kind of neat to see my quest Bad End in the Prologue before Taylor even Triggers due to a Pandemic (Cape name or Event? You decide!)
[Overload 1] Looking at this skill again, you're sure that you're not considering some important facet of the energy transfer link…
It's become very clear that you are, in fact, an idiot. Why would you want to transfer energy to a dying or unresponsive Shard? Obviously, the purpose of having command codes is to override withdrawing energy.
Okay, so we can starve a Shard. Just like it's stupidly difficult to overfeed them, unless their reserves are low, it's not exactly easy to drain them to the point of collapse, either.
Then again, it's not like you have to take energy directly from the reserves. Part of the reason to have the override codes is to draw energy out of damaged and dying Shards, which aren't exactly going to have their energy in convenient places.
So if we draw out energy here, where it's heading. . . Huh. So that's what our brain is now, huh? Well, that would be inconvenient to have suddenly enter power saving mode without warning.
Well, only one thing left to do, now.
Hey, how's that Dream Master research going?
Good! I'm pretty much done. How's Overload coming along?
Glad you asked. Turns out it's a bit of a misnomer. Hey, does this smell like chloroform to you?
Wha-
Yup, that works. And is FAR more unpleasant than you expected. You're going to hate yourself in the morning. . .
[X] Continue Current Research.
[X] Communicate with [Gaea]
-[X] "So, Second Triggering is a pretty big deal. Why don't we try and work out why you're getting such poor data returns, and try and figure out a solution, hmm? Wouldn't want to hit a new Host and have the same issues, after all. Tell me about your Host."
-[X] "You know, there are ways to generate data besides conflict. Usually not as good a return, but if you're having issues with conflict, they'd be better than nothing. What type of powers does your Host have, and maybe we can work out something."
[Charge] is interesting. I really want to examine the dual nature it has. Cauldron does something to their vials to try and make them work better. If we could find a way to examine the dual-layered nature of [Charge], hopefully while it's knocked out, we might be able to find some way to deal with it. Maybe get the non-sapient one to eat the broken one? Of course, we could eat the broken one, but having the functioning half of Charge do it would probably balance it out better. Plus, if it has terrible side effects, it can't really be worse than how it is now, right? And then you know not to try that yourself!
We need to be careful how behave now, I'll admit I was wrong, it's good we didn't eat Shift. Gaea is much more sympathetic than I was expecting, but Shaper might be an ass. Negotiator is probably a double dealing wiseass hustler, wouldn't be surprised.
She like Shift, don't want to upset her, so we'll have to train it after all. Offer to share senses after our host triggers. Draw her in to our cAmp, convince that forming a new system will be better for the species, she can be founding core of a more creative people.
If someone wants to write an Omake of you intentionally Triggering Panacea (is that a pun?), and the subsequent end of Earth-bet, I'd offer a variable amount of Information of the writer's choice for it.
The amount would depend somewhat on length and overall quality.
Heck, we could make it a series of Omakes, call it 'Bad Idea Theater' or something.
If someone wants to write an Omake of you intentionally Triggering Panacea (is that a pun?), and the subsequent end of Earth-bet, I'd offer a variable amount of Information of the writer's choice for it.
The amount would depend somewhat on length and overall quality.
So I take it [Gaea] is Panacea and [Telekinetic] is Glory Girl?
In which case, if we got Multi-Host and Stabilize Trigger, do you think we could teach Gaea it and have Panacea 'heal' a Gemma into play? Just create some low-level combat capes to go out and gather data? Or at the very least be present at a lot more cape fights to gather data id she turns a lot of PRT troopers into low-level capes to help beef up patrols.
If the Dream Sim plan works, I just realized we can use Shaper to grab every villain in the Birdcage for it and basically have a bunch of ready-made combatants to train heroes with so we don't have to actually make any villains in the Bay better at using their powers.
Too bad the Shards GU has won't be useful. Then again, if we can copy Taylor's mind into our mindscape, and create a copy for each Shard she's already harvested. . .
Then again, is that worth the risk or tipping our hand to GU's Shard?
[X] Continue Current Research.
[X] Communicate with [Gaea]
-[X] "So, Second Triggering is a pretty big deal. Why don't we try and work out why you're getting such poor data returns, and try and figure out a solution, hmm? Wouldn't want to hit a new Host and have the same issues, after all. Tell me about your Host."
-[X] "You know, there are ways to generate data besides conflict. Usually not as good a return, but if you're having issues with conflict, they'd be better than nothing. What type of powers does your Host have, and maybe we can work out something."
-[X] "I've actually made a breakthrough in creativity recently, before my host even triggered. No data coming in yet, but my research has been much more successful. I can almost think like a host. I can try to teach you, if you want?"
I think it should be noted that Charge was asking if we were actually an Administrator or a Fake/Imposter. That has interesting implications on what Cauldron actually does to combine the Shards.
[X] Continue Current Research.
[X] Communicate with [Gaea]
-[X] "So, Second Triggering is a pretty big deal. Why don't we try and work out why you're getting such poor data returns, and try and figure out a solution, hmm? Wouldn't want to hit a new Host and have the same issues, after all. Tell me about your Host."
-[X] "You know, there are ways to generate data besides conflict. Usually not as good a return, but if you're having issues with conflict, they'd be better than nothing. What type of powers does your Host have, and maybe we can work out something."
-[X] "It's been a while since I had to worry about whether or not I'd be integrated and the rules have probably been updated, but some good avenues are figuring out new ways to cheat, surpassing one's progenitor in some fashion, killing off shards similar to yourself to open up a niche, killing a terror drone, eating your predecessor, allying with powerful influential shards, or having a unique function or ability... actually with all the damaged and dead shards running around you might not have to work too hard."
Not in the mood to make promises about stuff we haven't done yet so until we actually start generating data and getting something worked out I don't wanna advertise it too much.
