[HALP] me! (WORM quest)

[Parzival95]

So once again, we cannot contact anyone else until Trainwreck is either dead or fixed. Only one comms connection at a time. We can only use what data Administrator and Prosthetic have on hand. If we close the connection with Prosthetic, it is so broken that it can never be reopened, as it says in the chapter.

I don't mind the tinker specialty though. Just want it to be cosmetically steampunk. Also power affecting tinkertech would require trump data.

Research omake

[Basic Host Modification (Human)] So I may have fried Taylor's pain reception, that's pretty bad. Time to use my newfound understanding of human biology to make things right again! And maybe I'll give her a peak human package as apology.

• So let's take a scan and see what's not what's not supposed to be there, and compare it to what Veronica has for good measure.
  
• Oh, pretty sure burning your hand is supposed to hurt, those nerves are actually meant to connect like this....
• So to improve reflexes and grant minor improvements to electrical resistance we could just move the individual nerves a little closer and give them a better coating of insulation.
• Taylor's eyesight is actually terrible, I forgot about that. But Veronica has better than 20/20, I'm sure Taylor would really appreciate that.
  
• Who needs echolocation as a power when you can manipulate your ears purely biologically! Suck it Cricket.

 

[The_GrandMage]

We can set up sense sharing without too much issue to people we know. I'd say try to limit shard interacts to around three a turn.

We could probably Research around the communication limit, but no one's suggested anything for it. It might even be down the Multi-Host line, building up on making multiple connections we're only really supposed to have one of. We do have some Brute info (65), and have 25 Favor to trade other shards for info. Hopefully large amounts of info, but we don't exactly have any idea on the conversion rate. Although it is early in the cycle and the other Shards don't do anything with info. Hopefully the rate is in our favor.

Then again, we can always copy an instance of ourselves to overwrite him, fill in everything, and have it try to administrate powers while we wheel and deal for information we need to do stuff.

[] Trainwreck Power "Cover for our Case 53 work"
-[] Tinker 160, Trump 20. Prosthetics and integrated tech.
-[] Breaker 100, Changer 80, Brute 20. Allows Host to integrate self as a power-source (Produces steam. I suppose we could vent that in from boiling an ocean, keeps a steampunk theme for his own work, lets stuff for others be less stuck to that theme) and controls for their own tech, create limited pseudo-pods for creation while in base form, consume biomass (food or fat reserves, and restrict it to only those two - No eating your own brains, Trainwreck!) to regenerate a base human state. Host controls how far the regeneration goes, allowing them to stop at points for integrating prosthetic limbs. Yes, I know it's more Changer than Brute, but we're low on Changer data. Hopefully since Body Modification uses Brute data we can use that as the part of the power than controls how his body is built from biomass (We can scan Vicky to get some Peak Human info, though the gender difference will mean Trainwreck likely isn't quite that good). His body won't be as great but hopefully the ability to rebuild himself means he'll be able to give himself enough mass to make up for the lack of Change data.

I figure a minor Trump aspect lets him both run on the assumption that a piece of Tech we give him is what allows his body to return to human, and give us a reason to work with Case 53s. We could probably spin it as working with panacea to try and get everything working properly, and using his Tinkering time to try and solve background issues on a Shard level. This means the pressure isn't on Amy to change powers or fix Case 53s, but that she's there to act as a biology expert and help fine-tune how the Tinkertech works.

This also means he'd be a good person for the Travelers to look for to fix Noelle. Could possibly spin up using Swap as a Memetic weapon carrier by saying they'd need to have Krouse risk losing his powers to fix her. You know he'd do it. And a device to separate the Shard's hunger from Noelle could buy time, and, if we use it as a firewall to send energy to Clone without risking ourselves, maybe settle it down without giving it a hunger for eating Shards.

 

[veekie]

What should be monstrous Tsunamis for anything smaller than you flow off to batter and reshape the western coastlines of the Americas. What would have been Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia on a inhabited version of Earth help support your bulk and keep the thinner oceanic crust from ripping apart underneath you. Actually, it might have torn a little as that area does feel a bit warm. Just a tad.

Click to shrink...

Thats the Ring of Fire you're feeling there. Good geothermal source.

You sort through and spend 100 Information of the Blaster, Thinker, and Master types to integrate into this replacement power, and then send it down the link to her Corona. You include a link to your own multitasking system for good measure - that doesn't cost you anything.

You feel minor pain from the feedback for a long few minutes of real-time as her mind re-adjusts to her powers. You suspect that this could or should have been a lot worse except for the fact that her new and old powers are so similar. It's likely also beneficial that she's still asleep.


Due to your efforts, Veronica Stansfield actually Triggers for real! Corona misfire roll: 1D100+14 => 75 - minor alterations.

Click to shrink...

Whoops.
We broke her sense of touch. She can't feel anything and if she's not careful this could lead to cumulative injuries and incontinent episodes(funny how many things key off your sense of touch).

You blink mentally. Wait, what? Math is simple for you now, easier than breathing used to be. And that looks very off. 250 kilos is 2452 newton/meters is… call it 1809 foot-pounds because you're old-fashioned. Which is about a low-end sniper rifle bullet at max power. The standard 5cm ray would hit about as hard as a weak pistol shot over the entire area. That's a lot more kinetic energy than you were expecting. Then again, how strong were Gallant's thicker blasts supposed to be in canon? You're just not sure.

Still, a hair-thin beam at maximum power could be pretty damaging. A smaller impact cross-section than a rifle round for one thing. Something to keep in mind for later. Because for right now, you're really busy.

Click to shrink...

Pretty sure it's gonna penetrate like an anti-material rifle.

Guesswork, eh? Regarding that - you take a in-depth look at Veronica as she wakes up. While you're not finished integrating Human biology in any sense, you know some things. And the general outline that you're getting from Veronica is that she's perfect. Biologically, in a literal sense.

Nothing is wrong, and nothing can easily go wrong, either. While it's a long stretch to call her superhuman in any way, you can't find anything that was overlooked. Cellular repair? Perfect-looking. Immune system? Somehow at peak function without the usual associated autoimmune issues. However Panacea did this, whether there was help from Gaea or not, Veronica might have what counts for a superpower all its own.

Tentatively you'd label it "peak Human". Nothing in particular strikes you as superhuman, but she doesn't have any flaws or weaknesses. At all. Not even at a genetic level. You spend a few milliseconds amused at the thought of informing the Empire of this, but discard the idea as not worth thinking more about.

You definitely want to finish sorting through this knowledge so you can examine Veronica with more understanding. You could probably apply these lessons to your other hosts. Well, excepting the various cosmetic changes. You get the sense that Amy has a definite type after looking at what was done.

Click to shrink...

Ah, Amy added a Brute 1 Peak Human tuneup!

Whoa. Victoria looks angrier than you expected! You take a few milliseconds to consider that you could provide fairly decent combat warnings to your Hosts… assuming you could talk to them. But as it is, you remain silent as Victoria slaps Veronica hard.

Who then starts babbling apologies from her spot on the floor. "Sorry! Bad joke not work! Stop! Help?" You could share senses to feel exactly how hard a hit that was, but you wisely choose not to. From how red her face is, it looks substantial.

Click to shrink...

So basically a love tap.
Glory Girl can punch through brick walls without slowing.

• [ ] Eat the sapient Chunk?
  
  
• [ ] Stun Charge and format the sapient Chunk?
  
  
• [ ] Order Charge to eat the sapient Chunk?
  
  
• [ ] Order Charge to format the sapient Chunk and then eat it?
  
  
• [ ] Something else?
  
  
• [ ] Stop messing with Charge for now - leave her alone.

Click to shrink...

Think we want to try something more reversible first before we move to eating.

• [ ] Eat (Prosthetic)?

• [ ] Stun (Prosthetic) and see if it comes back?

• [ ] Close the connection and not worry about it?

• [ ] Something else?

• [ ] Stop messing with (Prosthetic). Trainwreck will lose his powers at some point but for now he's fine. And no one else besides Scion would be able to do anything anyways.

Click to shrink...

Its toast anyway, might as well eat it and reformat the power properly.

I don't think that we can do anything about Transform for now since it's possibly infected. Fusion MIGHT need to place more restrictions on Sundancer's power usage because it could run out of Energy in a few decades, but I don't know how important that is to decide right now. Plus, if Sundancer or one of the other Travellers notice, then how will that affect things? Maybe we should do the whole group at once so that they can think it's due to their environment or a commonality of the vials somehow.

Click to shrink...

Sundancer is the most reluctant of the Travelers to use her power, so it evens out.

 

[Parzival95]

We can ask Shift for more brute data I suppose, no issue there. But 20 trump is rating 1. I don't imagine that will let Trainwreck do much of anything.

 

[veekie]

[X] Plan Try to help the Sapient Chunk
-[X] Try to diagnose the malfunction of Sapient chunk. Order Charge to produce diagnostics of the Sapient portion.
-[X] Communicate with the Sapient Chunk, ask what it recalls from its side.
-[X] If corruption is too severe to be repaired without a reformat, ask the Sapient Chunk to attempt to generate a core memory and personality data dump/backup to you, you'd attempt to clone that over to the normal portion if it can manage that.

[X] Plan Good things come to those who wait.
-[X] Eat (Prosthetic)?
-[X] Rebuild its power after that in a separate plan, we can't come up with that without an updated data budget.
-[X] If possible, defer the power modification to after you do some data trading.
-[X] If you can't wait on the power modification, then hold off on eating it until your current Host gets you some data the good way. Nudge Veronica towards searching in the bad parts of town with a small dose of adrenaline to stimulate a growing concern for Amy as the search progresses without result. Even one fight worth of data should be enough to paper over the cracks.


[x] Plan Slow Your Roll
-[x] DON'T give Taylor any other dreams just yet.
--[x] Examine Taylor's psychological state in more detail. Something's up with her.


Okay, so we have a sapient Eden shard. We shouldn't wipe it until we do data recovery.
As for Prosthetic...its fucked to hell anyway. Just eat it.

 

[The_GrandMage]

Research Omake

• [Stabilize Trigger] Okay, knowing what we do about Humans, let's look at the basic info pack for connecting to Hosts, what information we ate from Emote, and try to figure out exactly why Triggers are messing up powers and how to fix it.
  • Okay, so the Corone Pollentia is put into place first. It's fairly standardized to a location and doesn't cause to much brain damage wedging its way into the neural pathways. In fact, this just shows how well powers should integrate. So the Trigger event happens, and we look around and tie the Gemma into. . . the most active part of the brain during the event.
  • Well, that explains why it messes up. We've got massive amounts of changes, spikes in neural activity, and we just wedge more neurons right into the middle of it, while the brain is in a state of flux. Of course it's going to change while we're adding it, which will warp how the powers work. Once again, our entire species is real dumb.
  • Okay, so how do we correct this? Every human brain is different, being shaped by life experiences and the very act of making memories. Stress causes histone protein modifications, and can even affect the genetic level of the human brain. In fact, that means the brain is changing on an even more fundamental level during the stress of a Trigger event! So going for the neurons currently in play is a bad idea. Make it too removed, and you'll lose a conscious connection to the Host by connecting to something like long-term memory storage or something.
  • Wait, let's look at Emote's data to compare how it connected, since there was no Trigger event. Let's see, it's still basing it off data around the Host and what they're currently feeling, which is why his anxiety over the vial switched him from Blaster to more a Thinker. However, the lower stress means it's not shifting as much. This must be why broken Shards still create usable powers as often as they do, and why second Triggers are more stable towards what the Shard intended, the lower stress of the event is warping the Gemma less, although the fact it's plugging into to currently used neurons, which means they're actively changing, still warps the power and forces it towards what the Host is feeling.
  • So, if we do enough scans, and probably have a minor instance watching her brain activity for a while, we can properly map out her brain and the changes she experiences. This should let us not only map out her brain patterns to find bits she's using and how they connect, but know what bits are best to connect to that aren't in flux at the moment we connect. Then we can stabilize the connections before those neurons shift out of the way, making everything work as intended.
  • We can also project how we think her brain will shift, letting us set things up a bit ahead of possible Triggers, and time connections for in between pulses of activity if we know what to expect. That won't be perfect, but if we absolutely need to connect to something she's currently overwriting, it'll give us a better guess to work from than just plugging it in haphazardly and hoping it works.
  • Actually, knowing this, it means you could actually plan out a Noctis build without difficulty. You're pretty sure that just means connecting to the right areas. Which also explains why Optimize doesn't have it for Armsmaster although they'd probably both prefer it, and Miss Militia does. It's all because of the neural activity they had when forming the Gemma.

We can ask Shift for more brute data I suppose, no issue there. But 20 trump is rating 1. I don't imagine that will let Trainwreck do much of anything.

Click to shrink...

I never claimed to be good at this. What would you suggest? Trump 5? That'd be around 100 data. We do have it, and he'd start producing more, I guess. I just wanted to try keeping it on the lower end of the scale so if it only worked on certain parahumans somewhat randomly it wouldn't seem odd (Perhaps only work on Cauldron shards? Maybe get Veronica to use him to deflect from Amy?). Give me a good number and I'll edit it in, I'm just not sure what to start with, here.

 

[Redshirt Army]

Once again, I'm gonna strongly recommend we keep Trainwreck's powers as similar as possible to his existing ones. If we end up with a pattern of powers suddenly shifting in Brockton Bay, that's suspicious to both other shards and to Cauldron.

 

[Parzival95]

Vhal can you please confirm that when eating Proshthetic we must give Trainwreck data for a power. His power will not just carry over yes.

And for trump, I don't want to add that but it would have to at least be 100 data, probably more like 200.

Remember Ingenue is in the birdcage, and powerful enough to be a cell block leader. And her owner only lets her manipulate a slider between power and control. So for Trainwreck to permanently alter powers with precise control, he'd have to be one of the most powerful trumps on record. Eidolon and Glastig Uaine are the trumps, and even they can't permanently modify the functioning of individual powers. Really what you want is something shards handle. I'm with Redshirt, that's way over the line of what I'm willing to give some minor Case 53.

 

[The_GrandMage]

That's why I'm keeping his powers mostly the same (as far as I can see, based on what I know of his character) but giving his tinkertech a Trump ability. It explains away his change and any further changes are a result of his tinkertech, which we can definitely play out to take a long time to personalize for the individual it's going to work on. We can even hide his own form ability by making him build a device that does basically nothing but seems like it is.

We're upgrading the type of Tech he can make, but no one outside of Cauldron knows him, and even they might just think it was a Second Trigger from his status, or just Tech he hadn't had the insight for yet during any power testing they did.

This way we can use Trainwreck as a cover for any further changes that happen, and we'll probably want quite a few to happen to change the course of canon.

 

[Parzival95]

We could give him a very minor trump just for himself, maybe, but that's all.

Just realized: Vhal allowing multiple votes that don't directly contradict each other is a double edged sword. He's giving us rope to hang ourselves with. We could build airtight cautious plans but if a couple people ignore that and vote to open ourselves to Clone, well that doesn't contradict contacting Negotiator does it? Just an example.

Maybe we should research Unification of Parallel Thoughts, so that only the most popular plans go through.

Or maybe I'm really overthinking this.

 

[The_GrandMage]

Doesn't this depend on what the Trump ability is doing?
I mean, we can control what devices he gets the ideas for, we can limit what his Trump works on.
I'm not suggesting he can build a thing too powerful, since a majority of what his impressive devices can do would be us, doing it shard-side, using him as a smokescreen to hide our involvement.

What he can do without us, based entirely on his Tinkertech, should be minor and only there to hide what we're doing. Some basic power-restrictive devices, maybe, that depend on being near the person long enough to design something specific for them. That's fairly useless to the PRT who'd have to be holding someone already for him to do anything with it, but would be useful to people with powers out of control or broken. Or someone like AMy, who'd like to be able to turn parts of her power (sensing biology around her) off.

As such, nowhere near the power of the Trumps you mentioned, but useful to Case 53s, or people who wish they could turn their own power down or off. As long as he can't improve powers unless they're already broken somehow, we can get around him being thought of as useful to anyone besides Cauldron. And getting reintegrated to them gives us access to Eden.

 

[Parzival95]

Maybe power nullifying collars like they have in Marvel and DC.

 

[Mount. Elements]

I had Labyrinth in mind when I suggested that we have his tech boost or limit powers, but maybe it would be better to leave that out. Also, I'm wondering whether we should keep the whole "let him slowly regrow his body" issue. It's making things a lot more complicated. We should be able to make some changes though because he's pretty unknown. Here's an edited version on the previous plan:

[ ] Plan "Support Devices Specialization"
-[ ] Use 160 Tinker info to give Trainwreck Tinker powers with a specialization towards devices that can be used to support people, either by boosting their physical abilities or by limiting them. The devices should have a steampunk theme whenever possible.
-[ ] Use 150 Breaker and 50 Changer info to keep Trainwreck alive.

We might also want to send him a dream where he thinks he's woken up and heard people talking about Faultline's Crew. That can lead him to Faultline without tipping him off that he's getting useful information in his dreams.

[X] Plan Try to help the Sapient Chunk
-[X] Try to diagnose the malfunction of Sapient chunk. Order Charge to produce diagnostics of the Sapient portion.
-[X] Communicate with the Sapient Chunk, ask what it recalls from its side.
-[X] If corruption is too severe to be repaired without a reformat, ask the Sapient Chunk to attempt to generate a core memory and personality data dump/backup to you, you'd attempt to clone that over to the normal portion if it can manage that.

[X] Plan Good things come to those who wait.
-[X] Eat (Prosthetic)?
-[X] Rebuild its power after that in a separate plan, we can't come up with that without an updated data budget.
-[X] If possible, defer the power modification to after you do some data trading.
-[X] If you can't wait on the power modification, then hold off on eating it until your current Host gets you some data the good way. Nudge Veronica towards searching in the bad parts of town with a small dose of adrenaline to stimulate a growing concern for Amy as the search progresses without result. Even one fight worth of data should be enough to paper over the cracks.

Click to shrink...

We have data from Charge already, and it sent us that data in the form of an attack. We just need to finish decoding it. The problem is that doing so actively can slow down current research.

We can't hold off on deciding what to do about Prosthetic because we won't be able to contact it again if we close the communication channel, no one else can contact us while the communication channel is open, and its host's power is currently running on auto pilot.

 

[Parzival95]

When you put it like that, I agree MT. Elements. If we can get any kind of thread agreement I'll alter my vote later.

 

[The_GrandMage]

I had Labyrinth in mind when I suggested that we have his tech boost or limit powers, but maybe it would be better to leave that out. Also, I'm wondering whether we should keep the whole "let him slowly regrow his body" issue. It's making things a lot more complicated. We should be able to make some changes though because he's pretty unknown. Here's an edited version on the previous plan:

Click to shrink...

The thing is, if we have him as a way to explain away power changes in the area, it becomes a smokescreen for what's going on. Because we can use him to explain away things in the future. If we keep him as-is, we have this same issues come up every time this happens in the future, and there are a lot of Cauldron Shards that have issues and may need eating and thus powers restructured.

Granted, I think power boosting is a bad idea. But being able to temporarily limit powers with Tinkertech isn't bad. Could help Labyrinth and others, get his name out. Now, if while figuring this out he sees his own power has basically got some sort of tripped breaker he can flip, and it allows him to unlock something that maybe he always had but didn't know, we can use that to help with fixing other Cauldron Shard by having his minor Trump ability act to basically flip abreaker to turn something on that had previously been off.

Thus, it's not really his tech doing anything (since it's all done Shard-side), but it acts to hide our involvement bu letting people think his Tech is doing something.

 

[Mount. Elements]

Ok, here's a possible write-up for the plan to get Trainwreck to Faultline:

[ ] Plan "Waking Dream"
-[ ] Eat Prosthetic and give Trainwreck useful Tinker powers as defined in a separate plan.
-[ ] Send Trainwreck a dream where he thinks he's woken up to hear a couple of people nearby talking about going to Faultline's club, the Palanquin. One of them should wonder about the ethics of going to a club run by a mercenary. The other responds that at least her crew doesn't kill people like the gangs do. Plus, she takes in "those weird mutated capes with no memories".

@The_GrandMage, I accept that it would be useful to have a cover for altering Cauldron Shards, but I don't know whether we can actually fix Cauldron Shards on command at this point. Plus, I don't know how much we need that cover RIGHT NOW. We could probably do the Travellers by fixing the whole group at once to hide what's going on. No one other than Coil knows what his power is. The Standard Information Packet probably isn't going to fix Gregor and Newter, and we're still in the process of decoding Charge's data. Unfortunately, we can't really put off dealing with Prosthetic for a more convenient time.

 

[The_GrandMage]

We don't need to be able to fix them on command if we can work with the Shards they have to try and fix them. We'd likely have a while before Trainwreck became known enough or had the materials to try and fix anyone. We can make this take as long as we need. "Oh, I'll need some pretty in-depths readings to try and do anything with you, have this sensory implant for a month and we'll see what happens."

By pushing this off, when we have a Tinker who's pretty much an unknown and needs his power rebuilt from scratch because we have no templates, it just means we have to find someone else to act as our cover, who might be a worse fit. Veronica will eventually use her power in such a way it's obvious it changed. We either need a way for her to lie convincingly, or we set up Amy to be able to influence powers.
Which has a high likelihood of breaking Amy in my opinion.
If that's what the majority of us want to do, then that's the way we'll go.

 

[Parzival95]

Well Veronica has no idea about Trainwreck and thinks Amy did it. We can't direct control her, and won't as she's a good guy. And what you described is fixing Cauldron shards on demand, which we won't be able to do for some time if ever. Even if we gave TW power altering tech, it doesn't explain Veronica or the Travelers or anything really, because he'd only be able to use it for Gregor and Newter. Both of whom have uncooperative shards who we can't command and who are too risky to eat. No, having an external lie will have to wait.

Also, even if we do everything right he could still die. We saw that Veronica had to roll for her new powers despite the data we put in. If TW roll too low, his power won't be enough to sustain his inhuman form, and he dies. Nat 1s might even result in a broken trigger. Additionally, in the chapter it was noted that Beronica has an easy trigger because the power was so similar, if we diverge to lo much, it kill him.

So minimum possible changes.

 

[Mount. Elements]

I wish we could do Administrative Archaeology now because it might be helpful for figuring out HOW to deal with damaged Shards that don't listen to us, but unfortunately we have quite a lot of research projects to do before then.

I think it might be ok to blame Amy for Valiant's power change if she tells people that (1) she has absolutely no idea how she did that because she was drunk, and (2) it could be the result of a better match between body and mind (since Veronica's comfort with her new body suggests that Dean was trans) so it would be unlikely for such drastic results to occur in the future. No one should know about Trainwreck except possibly Coil at this point, and I think he's supposed to be new so he probably hasn't figured out his exact specialization yet.

 

[Vhalidictes]

Vhal can you please confirm that when eating Proshthetic we must give Trainwreck data for a power. His power will not just carry over yes.

Click to shrink...

The Shard is blank as blank can be (from what you can tell). Trainwreck's Corona and simple inertia is the only reason that he still has power.

Also, as a Case 53 his power is (somewhat) needed for him to survive, although it's not quite as bad as you seem to think. Being stuck with 50% functional organs and no limbs isn't instant death or anything. With some longer-term medical care he could potentially have a normal lifespan (of course, it's also impossible to tell how old he originally was...)

 

[Vhalidictes]

So basically a love tap.
Glory Girl can punch through brick walls without slowing.

Click to shrink...

Veronica is a peak human Brute .75 - this was a lot more than a love tap because Vicky is terrible at modulating her Touch-TK/'Super strength'.

Basically, they both got lucky. It could have been a problem with Amy away. (I rolled on this)

I wish we could do Administrative Archaeology now because it might be helpful for figuring out HOW to deal with damaged Shards that don't listen to us, but unfortunately we have quite a lot of research projects to do before then.

Click to shrink...

It's almost as if the Quest is designed for you to have to prioritize.

May the best argument for researching order win?

EDIT: Note - I would take a long look at the current timeline, what's going on outside your purview, and possible future events before getting decision-paralyzed by potential research.

At one turn per day (assuming you don't vote to change that) you're looking at having at least 45 days/turns to do things before anything (besides Taylor's mental state) becomes critical.

Presuming nothing else changes in that time, of course.

 

[w34v3r]

Guys dont forget sense sharing data links.

[X] Loop shift into the data feed from Verona, to pay it back for looping you into sophia.
[X] Make sure you got telekinetics (glory girl's shard) looped in.
[X] Offer same deal to Gaea.

Also if we ate prosthetic, and then didn't alter Trainwreck's power could we make our lives easier?

 

[Parzival95]

Well yes I'm down for not altering his power at all but I don't think we can do that. Can we do that Vhal, eat Prosthetic and leave the power as is? I thought the shards was so bad off that eating it would disrupt the power.

I'm pretty sure you meant we had to make the power manually.

 

[Mount. Elements]

Guys dont forget sense sharing data links.

[X] Loop shift into the data feed from Verona, to pay it back for looping you into sophia.
[X] Make sure you got telekinetics (glory girl's shard) looped in.
[X] Offer same deal to Gaea.

Also if we ate prosthetic, and then didn't alter Trainwreck's power could we make our lives easier?

Click to shrink...

I thought that Shift couldn't get info from sense-sharing. Something about how it doesn't have the channel for it? It wasn't in an update and I read it before starting my Shard Info post so I don't know what exactly was going on there.

Also, one of the winning votes for the last update had us asking to sense-share with Gaea. Assuming that we're still doing the remaining winning votes after dealing with Prosthetic, then that should be done.

I have been wondering whether we should amend the Negotiator vote to include asking her to sense-share, but I'm not quite sure what's going on with her. Is she a human intelligence who would be willing to ally with us? Is she secretly ambitious and willing to backstab us? Sense-sharing seems harmless enough, but her host is skilled at figuring out stuff from raw data, and we don't know everything about how Shards work yet. On the other hand, if we don't offer to share senses, are we telling her that we don't trust her? I guess I'd be willing to go either way on this one.

I would like to set up some more sense-sharing in the future, assuming that we manage to fix Taylor and she doesn't trigger. Optimize would probably agree since it's efficient. Stasis (Clockblocker) would give us Striker data and possibly info from the other Wards. Maybe Alternate (Night) for Changer data? Though she's so messed up that her Shard might be hard to deal with. A Brute would also be good, but contacting Escalation (Lung) feels like a bad idea and I don't know if Aegis is a Brute. Maybe we can contact Repurpose (Aegis) before Alternate because Aegis should be either a Brute or a Changer.

Two problems with contacting more Shards are that we still don't have memetic proxy filtering, and we haven't done Administrative Archaeology to know all of the stuff that Administrator is supposed to know. It should be safe enough to contact Optimize since we've already done that, but we're taking a risk whenever we contact a new Shard.

 

[The_GrandMage]

No, Shift gets info, just without another host she wasn't getting any. Really, it's best when you have a host nearby. She'll be able to draw some data from us, more when our ranges overlap, but wasn't getting anything from us before we had a Host.

In the specific case of [Shift], you would get 1d4 points of Breaker Information and [Shift] would get its own 1d4 points of Breaker Information. You would both see the same data and would generate more or less identical Information from that.

Which is better than you NOT getting 1d4 Breaker Information and only [Shift] collecting that.

Now, if Taylor was a Cape and witnessed that fight, both Shift and You would get 1d4 Breaker Information for Shift's collected data and both Shift and You would get an additional, say, 1d6 Breaker Information from Your data. For a grand total of 1d4+1d6 for each of you.

As you can tell, data-sharing scales with the number of participants sharing data, which is why it's so common among Shards from the same Entity.

Click to shrink...

As far as Shards go, most aren't sentient and sapience shouldn't be terribly common. I'm not sure exactly what information Administrator should know that they would be expecting?