[HALP] me! (WORM quest)

[ ] East? Hello and goodbye, Australia!

[ ] West? Hi there North America! (cover)

[ ] South? Bye-bye, Africa and Madagascar!

Okay, so one of these goes to Emote. Twin is broken, has no personality or ability to have one, and generates good Thinker data. It would fill another. Swap is also not only broken, and incapable of having a personality, they also don't have any protections from anything and are easily hijacked.

So, here's the thing. I say we eat both of them. Swap can get us data from the Travellers (Has Cody been shipped off yet, or can we butterfly that away?). Coil's a fine data farm and we can eventually use him as a meatsuit and no one will mourn his loss. In fact, there might be much rejoicing. The other Shards seem Salvageable. Although we might have to eat and transfer bits around to jigsaw things into a better working order.

Personally I think Emote to Australia, Swap to the Americas, and Twin to Africa to make those thinker bits nice and close to our own.
 
Vista is definitely not happy. And yes, Amy could turn Veronica back into a dude, but she doesn't have perfect memory so it wouldn't be Deans original body.

And we don have nearly enough blaster data to be messing around with that, so I'm trying to think of useful and original master upgrades different from Regent, Cherish, and Heart breaker. Maybe add a little bit of trump, shaker, or breaker in there?

To be fair that whole Vista - Gallant plotline is something that I didn't really like, even if Gallant didn't survive for long enough to make it somewhat relevant. Maybe it will allow Vista to grow up as a character in the long run.

Potential power could be something similar to Marianne from One Piece or Rainbow The Clown from Powerpuff Girls as more or less their powers are based on manipulating or removing colors, which also affect emotions of the user. Power is fun, although this may require Shaker data.

Maybe upgrade Veronica to spot Master effects as well as emotions and let the beams overwrite them?

Let her fix Heartbreaker's victims and maybe clear Simurgh bombs? Can you imagine if they proved that later bit, it would be a game-changer and put Valiant on the internationally famous level. Could be a big boost to New Wave's image.

This also makes Veronica as a potential target for S9 and few other groups of this type. Simurgh as well, which is even worse. Not sure if I would go for it, but it it an option I guess?

How do we sell it though. Say that by becoming a girl his power becomes more "girly." More mental less physical. That's redneck garbage but people will believe anything.

Veronica as a Magical Girl would amuse me here ;). Or it may be something similar to Circus to throw her/him a bone a bit? So he/she may transform to both male and female forms. Because I know MANY people wouldn't be comfortable with such a sudden gender swap. This could at least mitigate it somewhat, at least a bit.

How much do we tell Taylor about the Trio? That Sophia is SS? That Madison is going to be a tinker, and is thus deeply troubled internally? If we do, we should emphasize that these are some deeply screwed up girls, and that the PRT are uniformed, due to Blackwell and the handlers corruption. Don't want her to lash out.

She deserves to know the truth, but I wouldn't whitewash them. Yes, they went through trauma, but it shouldn't be an excuse to abuse others. Main people which allowed this to happen are teachers and their parents which didn't do anything to stop it. Imagine those girls later on as adults. Allowing them to act this way raises really corrupt and bad adults. I think best idea is mentioned already military style boot camp. Doing anything more drastic would be ridiculous, even if I REALLY don't like them as in the end trauma and them being teenagers can explain them somewhat. But personally if it wasn't for Shift, I would really suggest to simply move away Sophia and completely not care about her and potential plotline connected with her (after some punishment) and Emma may as well dissapear from plotline for me. Madison is slightly better as in the end sheer peer pressure, fear of Emma and Sophia makes her actions more explainable and in the end she still limited herself to mostly normal pranks.

Also on PRT and them 'not knowing' - it doesn't excuse them. If they didn't know in canon (and that WoG on Shadow Stalker is really iffy and you may take it as them knowing SOMETHING) then it shows how incompetent they are, which again isn't an excuse. When you have subordinates under you and you are part of forces like Protectorate/PRT you REVIEW work of your people to make sure they do proper job. Also in organizations of this type (in this case Piggot) is responsible and needs to keep an eye on actions of people which are supposed to work under her, because their actions when they work may affect reputation of the whole organization, which in organization so obssesed with PR such a neglect is really mindboggling. All that needed to happen in canon was some Nazis start digging, because Sophia subtle isn't for crap and if they discovered even if by accident she is Shadow Stalker... it would be bad. So no, I personally don't buy an excuse 'but handler and Blackwell were covering things up!'.

I mention this because when I read 'but PRT didn't know! It's ALL that EVUL Blackwell and Handler' I pretty much eyeroll and take it as my personal pet peeve.

Was it ever confirmed that Coil knew about Sophia via the handler and was deliberately letting the situation deteriorate? It seems like something he would do, letting Sophia dig a hole to make them look bad.

I don't remember anything about it in canon. But fanon wise this would make sense. Coil in the end had access to some sensitive PRT data and Tattletale could also possibly gather some information, just in case. And yeah, Sophia does look like a great way to ruin reputation of Piggot if revealed in the right moment.
 
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This also makes Veronica as a potential target for S9 and few other groups of this type. Simurgh as well, which is even worse. Not sure if I would go for it, but it it an option I guess?

I mean, they'd have to learn of it first, and that information could probably take a while to verify and release.
Plus, we've got High Priest and Broadcast's addresses. If those two seem like a threat we could go for it.
Plus, it's more a utility and travel reason if we wanted to try and spread our influence.


If we're just going to try and farm data, she'd probably want to go out with Vicky, which means we'd care about defense and mobility.
Which would be solved by just giving her Tinker powers. The public already thinks Gallant was a Tinker, so not much issue there.
Yeah, the PRT and people in the know would know something is up, but they'd probably either think Amy did it, making her even more valuable and pushing her to do more work like that, which creates more data, or think the fallout and Amy's flee somehow Second Triggered him and he hit on it from pretending to be a Tinker for so long.

Cauldron might be the most confused, but they'd likely think Amy just fixed his powers somehow, which, since we're friends and working on that very issue, we might actually be able to make her seem capable of doing. Which, again, just pushes her to create more data.

Which remind me, we really need to get Gaea to start sense sharing for data now that she's likely to be producing good amounts of it.

Really, giving her something obviously off the baseline has its benefits, since the event will shift blame off us and onto Amy. Gaea can cover for us fiddling with powers, we cover for Amy not actually doing it. Everyone wins!
 
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Which would be solved by just giving her Tinker powers. The public already thinks Gallant was a Tinker, so not much issue there.

Tinker should work. If we want to keep it close to the theme, behavioral tinker fits like a glove. In other words tinker which specializes in social, psychological and emotional based inventions.

In a way it may possibly create at one point anti-master inventions, while not have completely dedicated powerset towards this goal.

[] Behavioral Tinker
-[] Tinker 120. Pretty much Tinker data (and blueprints connected to it) connected to that specialty. It's hard to even classify Tinkers, but this should grant what is needed. Armsmaster is around that PRT rating, so yeah, more then good enough.
-[] Master 60. I think this should be more then enough to make it work. Technology with this amount of Master points as subcategory should grant abilities like emotion manipulation, etc.
-[] Thinker 120. Which should be around PRT Rating 6. Strong, but not completely broken. Thinker power would focus on abilities which obviously allow to understand behavioral patterns of others well. Body language, their emotions, etc.

Only problem with this is that this specialty doesn't really grant any specific defensive upgrades unless you get creative.


Really, giving her something obviously off the baseline has its benefits, since the event will shift blame off us and onto Amy. Gaea can cover for us fiddling with powers, we cover for Amy not actually doing it. Everyone wins!

I'm not against doing something off the baseline. What I'm worried is simply going for Anti-Master power per se, especially strong enough to remove Simurgh influence as it may paint massive target on her/his back. With us it should be far more manageable, but in this case we would need to make sure Veronica can handle the incoming heat.
 
But I want to second trigger them. Like Gallant and Triumph both have such crappy powers! Battery is alright. Coil we direct control, so why not. Case 53s we can fix, so I want too. Noelle doesn't deserve her suffering.

We need an excuse. Maybe make a tinker that can modify powers directly.
Lets see, we have a few categories:
1) Power tune up - In cases like Dean/Veronica, theres no reason or need to justify a second trigger. Its already known that powers change by not fully understood means, Moord Nag's power for instance, was 'fooled' for a time with cloned corpses, before it just gave her nothing until the debt was made up. A shift in efficiency or focus doesn't need a second trigger. Its also possible the change was psychologically rooted.

2) Major retool - Fake second trigger. Power keeps most of the sweeping themes, but the expression changes dramatically. Note that second triggers usually changes expression without changing the nature, Dean/Veronica might switch to a pure Blaster of powerful lasers or to a pure Master with their range and damage crippled, but they probably won't become a Brute.

3) Complete transformation - This is for repairing Case 53s and doing things like taking over Coil/Saint. This is hard to justify to anyone who knows the truth of things, in general we're better off 'disappearing' the original and re-instancing the changed person as a new one.
This also makes Veronica as a potential target for S9 and few other groups of this type. Simurgh as well, which is even worse. Not sure if I would go for it, but it it an option I guess?
S9 isn't a bad thing for us. It generates a lot of data.
However, S9 are opportunists, they don't attack cities unless everything's gone to fuck already in some way to make it easy.

The big issue with S9 is probably Broadcast, who's going to be an expert at shard infosecurity, given its role.
Veronica as a Magical Girl would amuse me here ;). Or it may be something similar to Circus to throw her/him a bone a bit? So he/she may transform to both male and female forms. Because I know MANY people wouldn't be comfortable with such a sudden gender swap. This could at least mitigate it somewhat, at least a bit.
Not really seeing how we can justify that without raising visibility. Gallant never had a Changer or biological element to his power, so the closest I can think to that is to pull out all the Blaster data and converting Veronica to a pure Master who can summon the old Gallant as a Stand or something.
Also on PRT and them 'not knowing' - it doesn't excuse them. If they didn't know in canon (and that WoG on Shadow Stalker is really iffy and you may take it as them knowing SOMETHING) then it shows how incompetent they are, which again isn't an excuse. When you have subordinates under you and you are part of forces like Protectorate/PRT you REVIEW work of your people to make sure they do proper job. Also in organizations of this type (in this case Piggot) is responsible and needs to keep an eye on actions of people which are supposed to work under her, because their actions when they work may affect reputation of the whole organization, which in organization so obssesed with PR such a neglect is really mindboggling. All that needed to happen in canon was some Nazis start digging, because Sophia subtle isn't for crap and if they discovered even if by accident she is Shadow Stalker... it would be bad. So no, I personally don't buy an excuse 'but handler and Blackwell were covering things up!'.

I mention this because when I read 'but PRT didn't know! It's ALL that EVUL Blackwell and Handler' I pretty much eyeroll and take it as my personal pet peeve.

Its not really that iffy though. If you know large organizations, it looks more like perfect storm of self-interest and incomeptence. Looking at the invested parties:
-The school - They get extra budget from the PRT in exchange for the trouble, and as established they don't give a shit about the students. As such the easiest and most self-interested thing to do is to do nothing. They get paid anyway, and if they raise enough hell they have no illusions that transferring Sophia to another school would give the PRT any grief.

-The parents - Just saying, most natural triggers don't tend to come from healthy home environments. Especially not the Shaker/Stranger/Master type, of which Sophia is a Stranger. Either they don't care or they care too much.

-The caseworker - Malice, laziness or incompetence? From what we've seen, Sophia is perfectly capable of keeping a front of playing along, as long as she gets to vent at some point. However, given the school's lack of giving a fuck the caseworker may have prioritized other situations like say, Vista's family breaking up since theres no fuss being made.

-The PRT - Piggot saw nothing amiss in the reports on her table, focused on the gangs instead. When the news broke a bunch of people probably got fired or their pay garnished, but Sophia was downright cooperative compared to say...Clockblocker and Kid Win. She was causing problems out of sight, but she's not the one bringing nuclear weaponry to a robbery or fouling up PR events for their own amusement.

Ultimately, nobody cared.
 
Research: Continue the current research as both provide benefits and we have already invested the info cost for focused research 1 (faster research speeds!)

However once we finish one of our current research then:
[Memetic Proxy Filtering 1]: 275 Tinker Information, 125 Research
Followed by:
[Memetic Proxy Filtering 2]: 200 Thinker Information, 350 Tinker Information, 450 Research


Are musts- the first gives us a defense against possible corruption which will be very useful, the 2nd level of filtering reduces the research penalty that imposes while keeping the defense constant so we won't be caught with our firewalls down. Of course to counter the research slow down we will want to grab:
[Improved Research 1]: 150 Thinker Information, 950 Research
[Faster Research 2]: 200 Thinker Information, 750 Research

Current thoughts:
Slot 1- Human Bio (326/400) 1.08 turns on average
Slot 2- Focused Research 1 (250/950) 10.22 turns on average
Slot 1 follow up- Memetic Proxy Filtering 1 0/125 1.82 turns on average
Slot 1 follow up- Memetic Proxy Filtering 2 0/450 6.57 turns on average
With no omake bonuses focused research 1 will finish after memetic proxy 2 finishes based on average rolls by about .75 turns (may be more due to research penalty from filtering 1 and 2

After that the below two take priority for research:
Improved Research 1 0/950 7.98 with Focused 1 and before penalties from Memetic 1 and 2. That should hopefully counter the penalties from memetic 1 and 2.
Faster Research 2 0/750 6.3 with Focused 1 and before penalties from Memetic 1 and 2 and bonuses from imp research 1. We are finding more and more projects we want to do, some of which do not need data to research, a third research action would be great.

Once both of these are down we will hopefully be sitting on 0 penalties from memtic 1 and 2 (offset by improved research 1 most of the time). With three research slots keeping one on focused research/improved research and every now and then dipping for the next faster research (if we get more no info research actions or get large amounts of info coming in) would be ideal as research speed will play a major role in how able we are to respond to issues.

Now the other things we need to do is keep an info flow coming, fortunately Shift is giving us small gains every day. Hopefully some of the other shards can give us additional streams each day or lump sums of info.

One of the ones we want down the road:
[Stranger Danger 1]: 250 Stranger Information, 300 Research
this one has hide from entities in its tree so if they can't find us that will help a lot against hostile shards and scion and if we encounter other entities.
While I'm interested in these research projects eventually, I thought we were aiming for Stabilize Trigger and Stronger Trigger as soon as possible to help Taylor. Also, we might need Basic Host Modification (Human) if we scan Taylor's body after completing Human Biology and find that we put her health at risk. I've been thinking that we'd follow Human Biology with Stabilize Trigger right away so that we can hopefully have it by Taylor's Trigger event. The research project after Focussed Research is more open IF we don't need Basic Host Modification (Human) to fix Taylor.

That statement is funnier than you can possibly imagine. Thanks, Gino! (I almost hurt myself laughing IRL)
It feels like we need more varied "Like" options. Have a couple of emoticons instead. o_O:o
Okay, so one of these goes to Emote. Twin is broken, has no personality or ability to have one, and generates good Thinker data. It would fill another. Swap is also not only broken, and incapable of having a personality, they also don't have any protections from anything and are easily hijacked.

So, here's the thing. I say we eat both of them. Swap can get us data from the Travellers (Has Cody been shipped off yet, or can we butterfly that away?). Coil's a fine data farm and we can eventually use him as a meatsuit and no one will mourn his loss. In fact, there might be much rejoicing. The other Shards seem Salvageable. Although we might have to eat and transfer bits around to jigsaw things into a better working order.

Personally I think Emote to Australia, Swap to the Americas, and Twin to Africa to make those thinker bits nice and close to our own.
We told Gaea that we wouldn't eat all of the Cauldron Shards and that we would try to fix them. To what extent are we obligated to try and fix them? Are we going to eat all of the Cauldron Shards that don't have a personality?

I'm interested in eating Swap and Twin, but I want to throw those questions out there so that we can start thinking about them now. We also might want to space out eating Shards to let Administrator adjust to the extra Energy and Mass. I'd hold off on eating any Shards this voting round and then eat one next time as long as no unexpected side effects occur.


Also, I've been thinking about Veronica's power. Shards tend to get data of the same kind as the powers they give their host so it should be ok to use Blaster and Tinker data for her AS LONG AS TAYLOR DOESN'T TRIGGER RIGHT AWAY. Basically, there's a risk but also the possibility of a stream of info of the desired type.

One possible issue with giving Veronica a Tinker power is that those tend to require a lot of resources. Her family is upset and might not be willing to shell out for even another Tinker suit like the one she had as Gallant. She's no longer with the Protectorate, and while the Dallons have a fair amount of cash, I don't know how much New Wave has for funding. I'd like a Tinker element because the public already considers her a Tinker and because Tinker info is useful for research, but it might not be good for her personally.
 
While I'm interested in these research projects eventually, I thought we were aiming for Stabilize Trigger and Stronger Trigger as soon as possible to help Taylor. Also, we might need Basic Host Modification (Human) if we scan Taylor's body after completing Human Biology and find that we put her health at risk. I've been thinking that we'd follow Human Biology with Stabilize Trigger right away so that we can hopefully have it by Taylor's Trigger event. The research project after Focussed Research is more open IF we don't need Basic Host Modification (Human) to fix Taylor.
What is the time frame we are looking to trigger Taylor in? That makes a difference on research path. Also I think mimetic defense has risen in my mind due to all the corruption we are seeing with the cauldron shards that we need a defense, one of them tried to overload us with data out of malice already (charge I think) and absorbing portions of a shard that is corrupted could be very bad for us.

If people can give me a time frame in x days we want to trigger Taylor then I can map out some rough research paths.

But the main thing is the various improved, focused and faster research let's us be better prepared. Focused alone drops about 5.88 days off of 950 research projects, and given that it takes about 13.86 it pays off during third research project it is used on, more so if we do improved research as the focused since that also boosts research speed and we would be getting that 5.88 days sooner and that cuts 3.73 days off a non focused 950 research and 1.4 days off the focused research so 5.13 days per two concurrent 950 projects. That pays off part way during the second set of concurrent projects.

Of course since we need to be able to deal with things we can't just rush all research in our slots which is why I have proposed in the past we keep one slot on a research improvement option, and with faster research 2 we can run 3 projects without penalty which gives us more flexibility.

Biggest thing we need is to keep a stream of info coming to be able to do what we want.
 
What is the time frame we are looking to trigger Taylor in? That makes a difference on research path. Also I think mimetic defense has risen in my mind due to all the corruption we are seeing with the cauldron shards that we need a defense, one of them tried to overload us with data out of malice already (charge I think) and absorbing portions of a shard that is corrupted could be very bad for us.

If people can give me a time frame in x days we want to trigger Taylor then I can map out some rough research paths.

But the main thing is the various improved, focused and faster research let's us be better prepared. Focused alone drops about 5.88 days off of 950 research projects, and given that it takes about 13.86 it pays off during third research project it is used on, more so if we do improved research as the focused since that also boosts research speed and we would be getting that 5.88 days sooner and that cuts 3.73 days off a non focused 950 research and 1.4 days off the focused research so 5.13 days per two concurrent 950 projects. That pays off part way during the second set of concurrent projects.

Of course since we need to be able to deal with things we can't just rush all research in our slots which is why I have proposed in the past we keep one slot on a research improvement option, and with faster research 2 we can run 3 projects without penalty which gives us more flexibility.

Biggest thing we need is to keep a stream of info coming to be able to do what we want.
We can also just hold off on eating any corrupted Cauldron Shards to avoid being infected by a memetic hazard. We should also avoid contacting any Shards that might be particularly strong like those attached to the Triumvirate and Cauldron members.

I think the problem is that we don't know when the next trigger opportunity will appear, and passing up too many trigger opportunities results in Taylor going crazy from stress and bad memories. The Stabilize Trigger project will probably take 10-11 days, taking Focussed Research into account and not counting any omakes. Stronger Trigger then takes another 10-11 days and will allow us to take advantage of weak trigger opportunities to give Taylor a stronger power than expected.

We don't really have control over when Taylor triggers right now, and while we can probably find a way, she's not likely to be happy with us if we break her mentally to trigger her.
 
I probably missed it in the discussion but how far before Taylor's cannon trigger event are we?

That should provide a good guideline for when we want her to trigger by, though for me ideally we would do so right before or during winter break or summer break depending on where we are in the time line to give her time to adjust without school.
 
We're at least a month before cannon, maybe a little more. As for Valiant, tinker/thinker can work. Make him a solid tinker 6 or 7, say 140 data. Now that gives him a lot to work with but to make him more survivable maybe we give some secondaries?

Like she can make potions that imbue power effects via mental state. Like rage potions give a brute rating. Fear potions give a stranger rating. That's not a good delivery system actually, I'll try to think if something better.

But a tinker/thinker power that lets her act as an anti-master/anti-thinker/anti-stranger. Maybe tinker tech that provides thinker, master and stranger sub ratings.

Maybe a tinker that doesn't require high tech startup.
A MAGIC KNIGHT!
She can forge a helmet with an anti-master rating. Weave a stranger cloak. Inset googles into the helmet with a thinker or anti-stranger rating. Weapons that apply emotional states. Like a sword that goes right through humans but makes them drop to the floor vomiting instead of hurting them. Magitech bombs that apply Vicky style overwhelming terror and submission. Healing potions that cure master effects and make the drinker unnaturally calm. But it's still tinkertech so she can send samples to Dragon and Armsmaster to work with. Have it be low maintenance on account of being medieval.

Bonus points if we research magic and use it later.

Let's hold off on eating more shards until we can manipulate powers with more variety. Let Valiant gather some data, get sense sharing with Gaea and help her gather more data. (Biosuit!)
 
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The first thing that comes to mind when people talk about 'emotions tinker' is Psyche-Taylor, sorry don't remember the title of the story.

That would actually be a thematic power that's useful without being too alarming.
 
Keep in mind the giant Shift and Gaea shaped butterflies. Sophia Hess is no longer looking for cheap jollies along with Emma because of Shift's new priorities, she wants purposeful action, and so just randomly fucking up Taylor feels increasingly hollow to her, especially if she's taking risks to fuck up Taylor. That was the old Emma driven bullying which was motivated by mostly displacement victimization so Emma feels powerful and in control.

No, the new and improved Sophia Hess is going to be fucking up Taylor as a recruitment pitch or as bait. To test for a potential packmate, or hopefully a pack alpha. Or to get someone with the balls to stand up for Taylor and well that's Alpha material too.
And well...it can sort of work. Destroy someone's self worth then saying they passed the test and are now One Of Us is a powerful(if terrible) bonding experience
 
The first thing that comes to mind when people talk about 'emotions tinker' is Psyche-Taylor, sorry don't remember the title of the story.

That would actually be a thematic power that's useful without being too alarming.
I thought if that too, it was Chromatic Quest maybe. And a Propensity for Wrath.
Like that a crazy emotion based tinker themed like Magitech Knight.
 
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[] Behavioral Tinker
-[] Tinker 120. Pretty much Tinker data (and blueprints connected to it) connected to that specialty. It's hard to even classify Tinkers, but this should grant what is needed. Armsmaster is around that PRT rating, so yeah, more then good enough.
-[] Master 60. I think this should be more then enough to make it work. Technology with this amount of Master points as subcategory should grant abilities like emotion manipulation, etc.
-[] Thinker 120. Which should be around PRT Rating 6. Strong, but not completely broken. Thinker power would focus on abilities which obviously allow to understand behavioral patterns of others well. Body language, their emotions, etc.
Add to the list.

I probably missed it in the discussion but how far before Taylor's cannon trigger event are we?
It is the day after
Thursday, the fourth of November twenty-ten is here.
 
Shoot the Medic First
  • Before reaching the end of the Tutorial, disrupt Panacea's canon story line.
Harsh Vhal

Valiant, Magitech Knight
Tinker power with master/trump sub ratings and separate but complimentary thinker power.
-[] Tinker 140: Magitech themed power infused items, similar to Chromatic Quest, AN essence of Spirit, and A Propensity For Wrath. Emotionally based color effects. Examples: A sword that cuts through anything but instead of harm inflicts overwhelming nausea/vomiting. Medieval bomb/grenades that emit Glory Girl style overwhelming terror/submission. Helmet of master immunity, inset with anti-stranger lens. Cloak that provides stranger power. Relatively low maintenance because low tech, but still tinkertech so Dragon can get something from it.
--[] Master 60
--[] Trump 80
—[] Multitasking
-[] Thinker 120: Retain original thinker power. Expanded range and precision. Increased understanding of behavior, emotions, body language and psychology.
—[] Multitasking
May need to add or decrease data.
Vhal how do tinker powers work for you? Like obviously my power would let Valiant do more than described, but would you roll for what he can build or do we give him ideas?
Like crossbow bolts of confusion, boots of joy for walking on air, etc.
 
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Okay so Taylor OTL triggered in January, do we want to aim for a winter break or Thanksgiving trigger as both would give her time off of school to adjust and practice first as well as time for us to communicate more with her directly/through dreams.

The time frame we are pushing does make a difference for research planning given certain research we want done before triggering. If we can decide on that along with which of the trigger and host modification options we want ( and what power plan for Taylor we want) I can crunch up a research plan taking into account current info storage plus potential gains we expect.

Also are we pushing her towards the wards (some info gain due to number of wards and protectorate, plus support and potential link to cauldron)?
 
We want to get stable trigger and preferably stronger strigger and host modification to really amp her up. I don't want her to join the Wards, I want to tell her what's going down and hav me her be the centerpiece of KETTLEs public face, a new powerful team of heroes that can rival the Triumvirate.
Maybe we can reinvigorate New Wave or just poach the younger members. We're alrwady friends with two of their shards and have Valiant by default.

Cauldron we can find anytime, we just need to contact their shards after we have sufficient defenses.
 
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We told Gaea that we wouldn't eat all of the Cauldron Shards and that we would try to fix them. To what extent are we obligated to try and fix them? Are we going to eat all of the Cauldron Shards that don't have a personality?

Well, it's not just that they have no personality, it's that they lack the ability to have one. Basically they're not just non-sapient, they're incapable of sapience. Twin is also running low on power reserves. Twenty years is a lot to humans, but to bullshit Space Whale shards used to traveling the cosmos? It's basically dead.

That said, I think we should look at the current Cauldron Shards we know:
1 - Audible. LOUD, to a painful degree, but overall probably salvageable. Need to work on the volume bit first.
2 - Charge. Salvageable. We've got good data on them. If possible we'll probably want to prioritize the non-sapient normal side over the hostile bit that tried to drown us in data.
3 - Prosthetic. Half-a-Shard and a chorus of ominous Shard bits. No data collection. Depending on if we can get them to properly deal with data we might be able to salvage them. Waiting on further data. At least warned us their data was corrupt.
4 - Swap. No personality (or ability to gain one), no command codes (no security at all), a possible weapon against us since any hostile Shard could order it into an attack. This is actually dangerous to us as well as being limited to automatic functions. Functionally the Shard equivalent of brain-dead.
5 - Sweat. Lazy. Uses Shardspeak to talk in English.
6 - Transparency. Mishmash of larger chunks. Quoting the Megas XLR theme and Lovecraftian references. Also a shopping list that included Nuka-Cola. Word salad basically. Probably not a good candidate for consumption. Once we have Charge and others sorted, we can try patching it and see exactly how rough a shape it's in.
7 - Twin. No personality (or ability to get one). Twenty years of power left in what should be a millennia surviving Space Whale spleen.

Now, I'm not saying eat them next turn. I am suggesting that Prosthetic, Swap, and Twin all start streaming us their data. And we take any data currency they have and have them send it to us in real-time (for those capable of it).

Also, I'm noticing that Case 53s have an odd amount of Host behavior, except Prosthetic. Since it's only capable of holding information for a week, if The Slug isn't removing their memories so much as pushing them Shard-side, that might explain that while also meaning Trainwreck's past is, sadly, unrecoverable.

Overall, so far only Swap and Twin seem unsalvageable. They're not only both non-sapient, but broken in other ways (basically lacking security and power-drain respectively). Since Twin's Host is a good choice for Assuming Direct Control (which should definitely wait until after Taylor has Triggered. Low priority), it makes it a prime candidate for om nom nomming. Personally, I have no problem with non-sapient Shards. They can eventually gain sapience. If we run across another Cauldron Shard incapable of sapience but lacking any other fatal flaws, I wouldn't mind keeping them around as basically an organic computer. Or possibly find a way to draw from that brain-dead Shard to feed another?

We could maybe use Swap as feedstock to help salvage other members of the Travellers. We can look into that later.

I'll try to draw up an Omake tonight, which should hopefully knock out Human Biology. I'd like to use the single turn of Research to knock out Charge data, then see how much Thinker data we grab from Twin before deciding on whether to grab another Research branch and try to pop out three things at once.

I might even give the PHO thing another shot, but trying to just show one page of posts from two or three different threads is hard from the sheer volume of personalities a board has. I may have to crib shamelessly from someone else's PHO stuff.
 
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I thought if that too, it was Chromatic Quest maybe. And a Propensity for Wrath.
Like that a crazy emotion based tinker themed like Magitech Knight.
Thanks, that was it. Great power for Veronica, strong without being too OP/eyebrow raising. And she spent a ton of time around Tinkers so a second trigger of "make emotion-holding/emitting metal" wouldn't seem too out of place.

EDIT: Despite my excitement at remembering which story this was, the above is not an endorsement or vote for a specific power.
 
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I'd really rather not introduce a tinker aspect to Stansfield's powers, I mean at most I'd be open to a minor tinker aspect for building/maintaining a simple suit of armor.
 
I'd really rather not introduce a tinker aspect to Stansfield's powers, I mean at most I'd be open to a minor tinker aspect for building/maintaining a simple suit of armor.
Well I'm for replacing the blaster aspect entirely with tinker and refining the thinker. You'll just have to provide a better alternative and convince people to vote for it. What's your idea?

So Cauldron shards. We send out our proper protocol for them to use. Communications, defenses, command authority. We want them to trust us, be able to defend from others, and gather and share data properly. Yes? Am I leaving anything out?

[] Plan Repair Protocols
-[] Send to each Cauldron shard we've spoken to, where applicable, the proper protocols for communication, shard defenses, and data collection.
-[] Include command codes, so they always listen to us first.
 
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[] Plan Repair Protocols
-[] Send to each Cauldron shard we've spoken to, where applicable, the proper protocols for communication, shard defenses, and data collection.
-[] Include command codes, so they always listen to us first.

Do we have those to send in an easy way? Shift took a lot of time to figure out Organizing data. I'm not sure if this is as easy as we'd like it to be.

Doesn't that age you years the longer you hold it? Well I suppose that's not a problem for Amy. It sounds pretty evil.

As well as filling everyone in an ever-growing range with suicidal levels of apathy while drawn, yes. There's a reason I called it the worst idea.
That and the Mindsword are reason why you wouldn't want to have that crossover, since it would just the world even more craptastic pretty much immediately.

Although Amy with Woundhealer would be pretty awesome.
 
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