[X] Plan Don't Hurt Yourself
-[X] If we get brute data from shift, start Host Modification.
-[X] If not, start Stabilize Trigger.
-[X] Continue researching Focused Research.
Shards
[X] Stop messing with Charge for now - leave her alone.
[X] Plan "Minion"
-[X] Attempt to shock Prosthetics back online.
-[X] If that fails, write over with a non-sapient functional shard, missing the components necessary to create it's own personality, and with complete trust lock-down to only ourselves.
--[X] Give it Dream Master, ability to share dreams we set up and upload to it.
--[X] Have it stream share sense with ourselves and the non-sapient Shards we already know are safe to share senses with.
--[X] Have it contact and upload all data it collects this way to us, daily. As well as log of Host activities for the day.
-[X] Vote on power it enacts under our orders separately.
[X] 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".
[X] Power plan
-[X] Multitasking.
-[X] Breaker 150 + Changer 50 + up to Changer 50 provided by eating Prosthetic.
Power maintains Trainwrecks life in his inhuman form. Interacts with tinker power.
-[X] Tinker 160. Vaguely steampunk style. Allows Trainwreck to build up from pretty much scraps and trash. Interacts with breaker power to integrate tech with his inhuman form.
[X] Plan Shift V2
-[X] Check in with Shift to make sure things are going well and reassure her that you haven't forgotten her.
--[X] If she's upset that you didn't contact her yesterday, tell her it's because she's doing such a good job that she's becoming a more capable member of the pack.
-[X] Trade Shift 50 Master for 50 brute data. We need it to repair our hosts potential brain damage.
-[X] Loop shift into the data feed from Veronica, to pay it back for looping you into Sophia.
[X] Don't restrict Twin.
Hosts
[X] Plan "A Start Towards Fixing Taylor"
-[X] Use our new Human Biology research to scan Taylor for any anomalies.
-[X] Use our new Human Biology research to scan Veronica to see what "peak human" looks like and to get a bonus when researching Basic Host Modification (Human).
-[X] Don't send Taylor a dream, but stop her nightmares so that she can rest peacefully.
[X] Plan Don't Do That
-[X] Send Veronica a dream of her throwing a blast at someone that kills them because it was more powerful than expected.
--[X] Hopefully, this inspires her to test out her powers safely.
Well that was the impression I got. My omake was for human modification but Vhal hasn't said anything. Although it was kind of short, I didn't really know what to say, maybe I can make it better.
Here's my attempt at a research omake to help with Stabilize Trigger:
When trying to predict how the host will modify the Corona Gemma, the first step should be to map out the host's brain.
Taylor's Corona Pollentia is between the frontal and parietal lobes, a relatively common location for Parahumans. This makes a lot of sense when taking into account her canon power.
The frontal lobe is in control of voluntary movement so Masters probably use the frontal lobe of their brain to control their minions. The parietal lobe puts together the information gathered from ALL of the senses, not just the five basic ones kids learn in school, and would be really helpful for interpreting bug senses.
Unfortunately, some of the possible consequences of damage to the frontal lobe also sounds familiar. Brain damage in the frontal lobe can result in loss of control over arms and other body parts as well as a lack of facial expression in response to emotions. Other possible consequences are reductions in the ability to plan ahead and make sound judgements.
So if you want to give Taylor a specific power, you should probably figure out a way to move the Corona Pollentia to the appropriate part of Taylor's brain WITHOUT causing her brain damage and then plan out how it can expand safely. It's especially tricky because young hosts tend to get "dimpling", where the Corona seems to have been pressed down into the brain. That doesn't sound safe at all...
This would probably work best if done ahead of time instead of during the actual trigger. Maybe you can ask Taylor about what type of power she'd prefer?
You can also use the mental model that you made from scanning Taylor's body to simulate the results from different locations, but that model includes any health issues that Taylor had at the time of the scan. Maybe it would be better to modify her to peak human first and then scan her again. Hmm...
[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.
I like this, although for the actual research we probably shouldn't be modifying Taylor - even if we plan on putting everything right back afterwards! +50 to Basic Host Modification (Human).
[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.
Are anyone willing to switch to my Taylor Plan it is identical to the popular one, but it replaces abandoning the dream sequences that we are currently doing with giving Taylor nice dreams instead.
Ok, there is a lot of junk that I don't want in my brain, er, crystal thing so I better get on with making a proper firewall, if I remember correctly proxy filtering was the cutting edge of what we had when I was a human so let's start there.
If I remember correctly, proxy filtering was about limiting the amount of input gates so you could bottleneck the incoming data scan it as it is coming in and check if something is not as it seems, I think there was something more...
If I am to translate this into myself, I guess I could start with designating a few instances of myself to the input gates so they can look out for hazards, then I restrict the amount of places that can receive inputs.
Though this will slow down communication, but needs must and all that.
Oh, I remember now, a part of proxy filtering was isolating the input from the rest of the system so that when something was discovered it would only be in a small part of the system instead of having infected all of it, this done to make it easier to delete.
Okay, so to do this I will need to restrict the connection between my instances so as to limit potential infection spread, though I will need to have them send transcripts that will be used to evaluate if the data is something that I want.
This should work as a mark one firewall against all the nasty info hazards of the world, if worst comes to worst I will just have to use brain bleach on some parts of myself instead of all of me, though it is a shame about the slowdown in internal and external communication, hopefully that can be fixed in a later version.
Everyone, the 2-day post-discussion voting period ends at 00:00 Monday morning (PST). The timing is due to the fact I ended up dropping the last chapter midday - if everyone wants to keep to a specific time-of-day I could adjust this. As always, depending on when I start writing late votes/last minute vote changes may count - no guarantees.
Here are Winning Votes that were bypassed last chapter and I plan on including:
[X] Send to each Cauldron shard we've spoken to, where applicable, the proper protocols for communication, shard defenses, and data collection.
[X] Include command codes, so they always listen to us first.
Note: Shards remaining are Transparency, Sweat, and Twin.
[X] "You can inspire your host with ideas right? I had an idea that would let her expand what she can do without a second trigger. Biological armor, a symbiotic suit really. An organism she can wear over her skin, or possibly hook into her body. She can add biomass and alter it at will to fake shapeshifting. She could extend it to touch others at range, grow wings, or even escalate like Escalations host, with enough biomass. What do you think?"
[X] Ask to share sense data, we'll reciprocate with Valiant.
Yes! We're only 25 Research points and 275 Tinker info from getting Memetic Proxy Filtering 1! I'd vote for it this turn if it wasn't for Taylor's health and possible upcoming trigger event. Unless someone else wants to try writing an omake for it to finish it off? I think we'd still have to vote for it in order to spend the info, but maybe we'd also vote for another research project to replace it.
50 Research for Basic Host Modification should defintely help. I'm hoping that if we at least do some research for Basic Host Modification (Human) next turn, then we'll have a better chance of success if we have to suddenly try to fix Taylor, like if her father is taking her to the ER. Scanning Veronica should give us a bonus too.
We are now over 1/4th of the way through Stabilize Trigger. Unfortunately, I don't think I can write another omake for it until after we've fixed Taylor and asked her what kind of power(s) she wants. I'll have to try to think up an idea for an omake for next voting round, though Memetic Proxy Filtering 1 will probably be my default choice unless someone finishes it off this round.
Edit: Wait, didn't we already show Taylor the Emma dream last chapter?
Yes! We're only 25 Research points and 275 Tinker info from getting Memetic Proxy Filtering 1! I'd vote for it this turn if it wasn't for Taylor's health and possible upcoming trigger event. Unless someone else wants to try writing an omake for it to finish it off? I think we'd still have to vote for it in order to spend the info, but maybe we'd also vote for another research project to replace it.
Edit: Wait, didn't we already show Taylor the Emma dream last chapter?
A few things, ME - first, a research item can't be completed without spending a single day/slot on it... although if a bunch of things are 1-point away from being finished you could look into all of them on one night and take the (probably irrelevant) multi-research penalty.
Second, you're absolutely right that the dream was already played. I'll edit my post now.
a research item can't be completed without spending a single day/slot on it... although if a bunch of things are 1-point away from being finished you could look into all of them on one night and take the (probably irrelevant) multi-research penalty.
I don't see how that's any more relevant during multi research considering it's always an issue. Or to rephrase, I don't understand what you're getting at.
Well, let's say we get three or four things done with Omakes and decide to take a day to split the one roll, because they only need 1 point of research and some spending done and a required roll.
So we split one roll between them, but that roll crit fails. We now have penalties to all of them, and since we didn't stop researching the one we failed already to see what the added penalties for starting it back up were, we're not real clear on what that'll do. Then there's the question of if we have to roll again on those to count since it was a fail or if we can Omake even the failure out (which I doubt we'll be able to do).
Do we keep splitting the rolls for all of them, focus on a few and take the extra penalties on others?
Overall, it's probably better to have a research that just needs a point tacked on to another roll we're doing one at a time instead of the suggestion of lumping a bunch of them that just need the roll together, because then a crit fail has less negative impact. So instead of four or five items all failing and having to juggle the penalties and try to roll out of the hole, it's only two.
Everyone, the 2-day post-discussion voting period ends at 00:00 Monday morning (PST). The timing is due to the fact I ended up dropping the last chapter midday - if everyone wants to keep to a specific time-of-day I could adjust this. As always, depending on when I start writing late votes/last minute vote changes may count - no guarantees.
Here are Winning Votes that were bypassed last chapter and I plan on including:
[X] Send to each Cauldron shard we've spoken to, where applicable, the proper protocols for communication, shard defenses, and data collection.
[X] Include command codes, so they always listen to us first.
Note: Shards remaining are Transparency, Sweat, and Twin.
[X] "You can inspire your host with ideas right? I had an idea that would let her expand what she can do without a second trigger. Biological armor, a symbiotic suit really. An organism she can wear over her skin, or possibly hook into her body. She can add biomass and alter it at will to fake shapeshifting. She could extend it to touch others at range, grow wings, or even escalate like Escalations host, with enough biomass. What do you think?"
[X] Ask to share sense data, we'll reciprocate with Valiant.
Since we have the opportunity to cancel these votes out if we want, it feels like we should at least discuss it.
I think we should keep Plan Gaea. It might not help with Amy's PR, but not experimenting with her powers didn't help her or Gaea. Also, sense-sharing is good.
Plan Repair Protocols could turn out really well or really badly. I doubt Sweat and Transparency will be fixed easily, but I don't think there's any harm in trying. The real worry is Twin, or rather, Coil's reaction to being restricted. My guess is that he'll try to find a way to fix his powers and then find out that Valiant's powers work better now. He then probably kidnaps Panacea, but he can't kill her because that would mean losing his bribe for the Travellers. I'd guess that this will take at least a couple of days so hopefully Panacea will no longer be on the run by then. The restrictions should also mean that he can't run a simulation for very long.
Here's some scenarios I thought up, though there are definitely more possibilities than what I'm listing:
Scenario 1 (Worst Case): Coil kidnaps Panacea and tells her to fix his power with some sort of incentive to make sure she obeys. She fails or succeeds, it doesn't really matter. Coil keeps her captive until the Travellers show up. We already know that she can't fix Noelle.
Scenario 2 (Neutral): Coil simulates kidnapping Panacea, finds out that she can't fix his power, and then ends the simulation without actually kidnapping her since it would be pointless.
Scenario 3 (Best Case): Coil kidnaps Panacea, but her family working with Valiant manage to track her down and get Coil arrested. Dinah is a lot safer, and Lisa is free to take over what remains of his network.
Even in the worst case scenario, we could probably eat Twin and then ADC Coil. It would mean gaining aberrance, which must have some result for us to have a score, but apparently Shards can't usually detect it. Maybe we should put that plan on hold until we can ask Negotiator since her host is in the line of fire if Coil's upset. Here are possible votes:
[ ] Plan "Repair Protocols - Only Swap"
-[ ] Continue Plan Repair Protocols for only Swap.
[ ] Plan Negotiator + Ask about Twin
-[ ] Contact Negotiator to let her know that you're currently evaluating the damaged Shards. You're just doing patch jobs for now while you figure out which Shards are salvageable.
--[ ] Let her know that Emote has already been consumed because it was running low on Energy. Prosthetic reacted badly to the Standard Information Packet, but you have a plan!
--[ ] One possible patch job you were considering is to put restrictions on Twin. Does she have any suggestions on that?
Edit: I've replaced the plans with the ones I'm including in my vote.
As far as I know, we're not restricting him yet.
Just making sure they have communication protocol, shard defenses, and data collection.
Didn't see anything about powers there. I think we're also grabbing it's data and sense sharing with it, judging by the failed votes message. Which means Swap should be on that list, too. Which would at least protect it from being hacked by anyone else.
As far as I know, we're not restricting him yet.
Just making sure they have communication protocol, shard defenses, and data collection.
Didn't see anything about powers there. I think we're also grabbing it's data and sense sharing with it, judging by the failed votes message. Which means Swap should be on that list, too. Which would at least protect it from being hacked by anyone else.
That's not how the research splits work. We don't split one die for multiple research. Each research task gets its own roll, then the reduction is applied. Currently, 3 research tasks would roll 3 dice each at 50%. 4 would be four rolls at 25%.
Huh. So it isn't. Considering we've never done it, I guess I just forgot.
Yeah, no worries, then. We could Omake our hearts out and lump them all together for a roll.
Ok, I think I'm going to vote for not doing Plan "Repair Protocols" for now. We should probably set up a new vote later on that's more specific about what exactly we want done. Swap could benefit from the plan, but Transparency and Sweat aren't likely to be fixed with the Standard Information Packet, and I'd like to ask Negotiator about Twin before we do anything to it. Vhalidictes has said in the past that one of the mechanics of this quest is that we can get advice from other characters, and Negotiator's host is in the line of fire if Coil is upset.
I'm adding the following plans to my vote:
[ ] Plan "Repair Protocols - Only Swap"
-[ ] Continue Plan Repair Protocols for only Swap.
[ ] Plan Negotiator + Ask about Twin
-[ ] Contact Negotiator to let her know that you're currently evaluating the damaged Shards. You're just doing patch jobs for now while you figure out which Shards are salvageable.
--[ ] Let her know that Emote has already been consumed because it was running low on Energy. Prosthetic reacted badly to the Standard Information Packet, but you have a plan!
--[ ] One possible patch job you were considering is to put restrictions on Twin. Does she have any suggestions on that?
[ ] Prioritize cleaning up Charge's Shard data? There's probably some interesting stuff in there, but doing this in the background will take a long time, even for you. You've got to spend an action choice on this if you want it done any time soon.
[ ] How many hours to you reserve for this task? (25% complete)
[ ] Prioritize cleaning up Charge's Shard data? There's probably some interesting stuff in there, but doing this in the background will take a long time, even for you. You've got to spend an action choice on this if you want it done any time soon.
[ ] How many hours to you reserve for this task? (0% complete)
The first quote is from Chapter 7 while the second is from Chapter 8. @Vhalidictes, I assume that the first quote is correct since we spent 4 hours going through Charge's data, but is it still at 25% at Chapter 8, or did the background research make some progress?
Also, while you previously said that sorting through Charge's data would take the same amount of hours from one of the reseach options, 4 hours didn't impact a research option in Chapter 7. Does that mean that as long as we don't spend too many hours on it, the research projects aren't affected? I'd like to vote for 4 hours each voting round, even if it means limiting how many other votes we could do, as long as it doesn't slow down the research projects.
Mount. Elements, I work from Google docs, and I've been copying text from previous chapters to help me format the new ones. For a number of reasons, I've stopped doing that which should make that kind of error easier to find and fix. I'll correct that now, I also should have added the Chapter 8 background time to that as well. It's currently roughly at 30% done, or about 5 hours worth of time total.
Re: Taking a research slot. I need to rethink how I do this in general, but for now I assumed that you spent less time on non-Shard host-watching to make up for the time. That said, depending on how "busy" the turn/day is, I may count it as a research slot.
While we can't really decide anything until after the next update comes out, I suggest that we limit our votes next round so that we can do 4 hours of decoding Charge's data without cutting into the research projects. Maybe contact Optimize and 2 other Shards for sense-sharing?
We're currently low on Mover, Brute, and Changer info. We should get more Mover info from Telekinetic, but I suggest that we contact Repurpose (Aegis) and Coat (Hookwolf) for sense-sharing. According to the Worm wiki, Aegis is a Brute/Mover while Hookwolf is a Brute/Changer. That would also hopefully give us an "in" with the Shards connected to the Empire capes.
[X] Plan "A Start Towards Fixing Taylor"
-[X] Use our new Human Biology research to scan Taylor for any anomalies.
-[X] Use our new Human Biology research to scan Veronica to see what "peak human" looks like and to get a bonus when researching Basic Host Modification (Human).
-[X] Don't send Taylor a dream, but stop her nightmares so that she can rest peacefully.
[X] Plan Don't Do That
-[X] Send Veronica a dream of her throwing a blast at someone that kills them because it was more powerful than expected.
--[X] Hopefully, this inspires her to test out her powers safely.
[X] Plan Shift V2
-[X] Check in with Shift to make sure things are going well and reassure her that you haven't forgotten her.
--[X] If she's upset that you didn't contact her yesterday, tell her it's because she's doing such a good job that she's becoming a more capable member of the pack.
-[X] Trade Shift 50 Master for 50 brute data. We need it to repair our hosts potential brain damage.
-[X] Loop shift into the data feed from Veronica, to pay it back for looping you into Sophia.
After thinking about it for a while, if the Negotiator vote doesn't win in this round, I really think we should do it next round for several reasons.
First, we won't know whether she's friend or foe unless we talk to her. Telling her about our plans for the Cauldron Shards gives us a reasonable excuse for doing so and opens up an opportunity for us to learn more about her. As they say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and she could be either one.
Second, if she is a human intelligence, then she is likely to have her own plans, and again, we're not likely to figure out these plans without talking to her. If she's working towards preventing Golden Morning, then we could probably work together as long as she's not also planning to kill Administrator and become the Supreme Ruler of the Shards or something like that.
Third, the longer we stay away from her, the more likely that Negotiator is to think that we're planning against her. She can probably pick up that we're not sure how to interact with her pretty easily, but we don't want her thinking that we're conspiring to eat her or anything. We might also want to consider sense-sharing with her. I'm torn on this because she can likely figure things out from what info we're sending her, but if we're asking everyone but Negotiator to sense-share, that sends a message too. Plus, we could always use more Thinker info.
Fourth, her host is likely to be impacted by whatever we do to Coil. I don't think that canceling Plan Repair Protocols got enough votes to go through so if Twin puts restrictions on Coil's power usage, Coil might take his upset out on Lisa. We should at least let Negotiator know what's going on, especially if she's a human intelligence who probably cares about her host.
Finally, Vhalidictes has said before that one of the mechanics of this quest is that we can get advice from other characters. We haven't really been confiding in other characters to get much advice from them, but IF Negotiator is friendly, then she seems like a good candidate for an adviser.
Depending on when the next update comes out and if the moratorium is 12 hours again, I might not have a lot of time to participate in the discussion before the voting starts due to the need to sleep and work. Previously, Vhalidictes suggested that we vote in plans and then include additional items at the end. I wanted to suggest a format for that, using a modified Plan Negotiator as an example.
The base plan might be something like:
[ ] Plan Negotiator
-[ ] Contact Negotiator to let her know that you're currently evaluating the damaged Shards. You're just doing patch jobs for now while you figure out which Shards are salvageable.
--[ ] Let her know that Emote has already been consumed because it was running low on Energy, and Prosthetic reacted badly to the Standard Information Packet so you had to eat it as well.
Then we could have add-on votes for the items that are more controversial. Two examples would be:
[ ] Add-on to Plan Negotiator: Offer to sense-share with her.
[ ] Add-on to Plan Negotiator: Tell her, "Negotiator, I want to make sure we understand each other. If, for example, a host was to say 'Meh, I can take her' right before battle, how would they fare?"
Sometimes popular plans don't win because the votes are spread between multiple variations of the same plan. Hopefully, using this method would at least allow the base plan to win along with whichever add-ons are the most popular.
Thanks for letting me know. I don't think that anyone included sense sharing with Negotiator in their plans, (I did at one point but then changed it because no one else was voting for it) but as long as we tell Negotiator that we're patching up the Cauldron Shards, she can take steps to react to whatever happens with Coil.
I'm really hoping that Negotiator is friendly, or at least neutral, because then we could ask for her advice on how to deal with Transform (Genesis) and Clone (Noelle). My main focus for the short-term is fixing Taylor, but I'm trying to plan ahead.
Transform is either crazy or in a hostile dimension. If it's the second, we can't risk opening a pathway into her dimension to eat her.
Clone is starving, which might be because she doesn't have the protocols to gather Energy from sunlight or because there is no sunlight or other Energy sources in her dimension. If the issue is protocols, then we can send her the Standard Information Packet, but she might then open Energy and Mass transfer channels to other Shards and eat them. If her dimension is the issue, then maybe we can eventually get Drain (250 Trump info, 550 Research) so that she can't fight against us eating her. I think that would work as long as Noelle isn't also drained, either by us or by Clone. The underlying (unintentional?) theme of this quest so far seems to be "Unexpected Consequences" so I'm trying to think of more possible consequences for our actions.
[X] Check in with Shift to make sure things are going well and reassure her that you haven't forgotten her.
[X] If she's upset that you didn't contact her yesterday, tell her it's because she's doing such a good job that she's becoming a more capable member of the pack.
[X] Trade Shift 50 Master for 50 brute data. We need it to repair our hosts potential brain damage.
[X] Loop shift into the data feed from Veronica, to pay it back for looping you into Sophia.
[X] Contact Negotiator to let her know that you're currently evaluating the damaged Shards. You're just doing patch jobs for now while you figure out which Shards are salvageable.
[X] Let her know that Emote has already been consumed because it was running low on Energy. Prosthetic reacted badly to the Standard Information Packet, but you have a plan!
[X] If it doesn't, eat it. Be extra careful around the active power - you're gonna want to maintain that, or recreate it as closely as you can if that fails.
[X] "You can inspire your host with ideas right? I had an idea that would let her expand what she can do without a second trigger. Biological armor, a symbiotic suit really. An organism she can wear over her skin, or possibly hook into her body. She can add biomass and alter it at will to fake shapeshifting. She could extend it to touch others at range, grow wings, or even escalate like Escalations host, with enough biomass. What do you think?"
[X] Ask to share sense data, we'll reciprocate with Valiant.
[X] Use our new Human Biology research to scan Taylor for any anomalies.
[X] Use our new Human Biology research to scan Veronica to see what "peak human" looks like and to get a bonus when researching Basic Host Modification (Human).
[X] Don't send Taylor a dream, but stop her nightmares so that she can rest peacefully.
[X] Eat Prosthetic and give Trainwreck useful Tinker powers as defined in a separate plan.
[X] 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".
[X] 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".
[X] 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.
[X] Use 150 Breaker and 50 Changer info to keep Trainwreck alive.
[X] Tinker 160. Vaguely steampunk style. Allows Trainwreck to build up from pretty much scraps and trash. Interacts with breaker power to integrate tech with his inhuman form.
[X] Breaker 150 + Changer 50 + up to Changer 50 provided by eating Prosthetic.
[X] Breaker 150 + Changer 50 + up to Changer 50 provided by eating Prosthetic.
[X] Tinker 160. Vaguely steampunk style. Allows Trainwreck to build up from pretty much scraps and trash. Interacts with breaker power to integrate tech with his inhuman form.
Note: If a popular plan doesn't conflict with the winning plan, I will attempt to combine the non-conflicting options. Your ideas count, even if it doesn't win overall!
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.
Research:
[x] Plan 'Economy Intensifies'
[x] Use the open research slot to work on Faster Research 2
[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] Contact Negotiator to let her know that you're currently evaluating the damaged Shards. You're just doing patch jobs for now while you figure out which Shards are salvageable.
[X] Let her know that Emote has already been consumed because it was running low on Energy. Prosthetic reacted badly to the Standard Information Packet, but you have a plan!
[X] "Negotiator, I want to make sure we understand each other. If, for example, a host was to say 'Meh, I can take her' right before battle, how would they fare?"
[X] Contact Negotiator to let her know that you're currently evaluating the damaged Shards. You're just doing patch jobs for now while you figure out which Shards are salvageable.
[X] Let her know that Emote has already been consumed because it was running low on Energy. Prosthetic reacted badly to the Standard Information Packet, but you have a plan!
[X] One possible patch job you were considering is to put restrictions on Twin. Does she have any suggestions on that?
[X] Give Taylor a nice night of sleep, show Taylor nice dreams, beach vacation, Christmas, doing something fun etc.
[X] Use our new Human Biology research to scan Taylor for any anomalies.
[X] Use our new Human Biology research to scan Veronica to see what "peak human" looks like and to get a bonus when researching Basic Host Modification (Human).
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. Feel free to re-vote for these.
[X] Plan 'Minion'
[X] Attempt to shock Prosthetics back online.
[X] If that fails, write over with a non-sapient functional shard, missing the components necessary to create it's own personality, and with complete trust lock-down to only ourselves.
[X] Give it Dream Master, ability to share dreams we set up and upload to it.
[X] Have it stream share sense with ourselves and the non-sapient Shards we already know are safe to share senses with.
[X] Have it contact and upload all data it collects this way to us, daily. As well as log of Host activities for the day.
[X] Vote on power it enacts under our orders separately.
[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] Set it up as a operational non-sapient shard rigged only accept command codes from you, preferably rig it so it won't become sapient but that's lower priority than not fucking the rest of it up.
These are blocked and/or impossible-to-include votes, and will not be brought up again in this particular context.
Note: The Prosthetic vote was a nightmare, but after looking through the thread and associated Trainwreck votes, I determined on the balance that eating the Shard just barely took precedence. This was partially an artifact of not everyone voting on every plan. As a reminder, help the GM. Voting for or against plans that indirectly involve yours helps tremendously.
Chosen items:
[X] Focused Research 1:150 Thinker Information, 950 Research.
A new day dawns, and it's well past time for you to start messing around. Mental note: can you sleep? If so, it might work as a mental stress relief valve. Something to look into later. But for now, work.
You need to decide what to do with all these Eden Shards, and you need to check back with Shift - and Negotiator as well, before it (she?) decides that your continued silence is suspicious. After that you have to talk with Gaea as you planned to yesterday. Oh, and contact Swap to see if there's an easy fix for its problems.
You consider various options for Charge, but in the end most of you determines that too much else is going on today and you can't commit to doing something - yet. Also, while restricting Twin is likely something you're going to do eventually, now isn't the proper time.
But you also can't forget your Hosts. While Veronica is fine for now, she's going to need a dream or two to highlight that her Blaster power is a mite more powerful than before. Hopefully she'll figure that out before Amy is needed, since she's not currently available.
You're not quite sure what is up with Taylor, but you suspect some kind of brain damage - whatever is going on, you're going to get a full scan from both Hosts now that you understand everything you were given about Host Human biology.
But before you can do anything about any of this, you need to figure out what to do with Prosthetic's open channel. And, potentially, Trainwreck.
[Hello]
Prosthetic - [*]
Yes, waiting for over twelve hours hasn't helped. You attempt to gently Overload the Shard as a way to stun it into resetting.
1D100+14 (+25 Overload 1) (-50 ???) => 18
Well, there's good news and bad news. The Shard definitely reset… just as blank as before. Which means that there isn't any reason not to eat it. And so you do, opening up all channels. As before, the process is… you can't really describe it in Human terms, but it's intensely… good.
Prosthetic was significantly larger than Emote was. You won't be able to hold yourself together for more than a few hours - perhaps half a day. Where do you put all of this new mass? (Note: This will take two continents worth of space)
[ ] West? Hi there North and South America!
[ ] South? Bye-bye, Africa and Madagascar! And likely you'd meet up with the part of yourself covering India as well.
[ ] North Pole? Contiguous, but no extra solar power, and you might end up slightly underwater as well.
[ ] Orbit? To the moon! Not at all contiguous, but at least it's close enough that there won't be communications lag…
Now you need to deal with Trainwreck, as 'losing his powers soon' is now 'losing his powers in the next five minutes'... You attempt to recover any information related to your newest Host and come up with nothing. Whatever was being granted was lost with the rest of Prosthetic's programming. All you have is some disassociated data and a bunch of mass/energy.
You quickly review the various plans you've come up with ahead of time for Trainwreck's power, glad that you had the foresight to do so. You're going to have to waste a huge amount of Information on this, especially given that you didn't get any from Prothetic's remains.
But on the other hand you get effective control of a really-minor-character Cape - he could make a good ADC target in the future, as well as a decent test case for Host Modification…. Hm.
Right. You may as well scan him before assigning a power. Okay, so we have a (poorly) power-modified Human here.
Age check - 1d40 => 12
Gender check - 1d100 => 81
Uh. That's… weird. This is just… So, before Trainwreck was Cauldron'd, she was a 12-year-old girl. Well, probably would be something like 14 now. Taylor's age, roughly. You can't really do anything about that right now, but it's something to keep in mind for the future.
Physically, from what you can tell, the previous power dose made Trainwreck male, mature-teen/young adult, and then crapped out before forming the limbs. The internal changes weren't fully completed either.
It's less that Trainwreck is/was disabled and more that there wasn't nearly enough biomass for the intended form, and the Shard didn't attempt to fix this on its own.
The 'internal organ damage' from the Shard's report is, again, less damage and more 'slightly-modified children's organs trying to maintain what was effectively an adult torso'. Trainwreck won't die in the short term without a power, but the longer-term prognosis isn't so good.
Even you are in a time-crunch for integrating powers, but then it occurs to you that most of your plans are actually very similar. All you would need to do in order to combine all of your ideas is to spend a tiny bit more Information than any one plan expected.
And really, since this is one of your hosts now, saving a little bit of information for a (much) weaker Parahuman just doesn't make sense.
Due to your efforts, Trainwreck actually Triggers for real! Corona misfire roll: 1D100+14 => 80 - minor alterations.
Thinker power (NO Information spent) - 1D100 +50 (The Administrator) => 121
Result: An attempt to add minor multitasking to Trainwreck's power goes horribly right. Trainwreck can now maintain up to twelve Tinker design session in his head simultaneously, and maintain perfect control of as many as twenty-four limbs. You can't currently tell how many times Trainwreck can split his attention, but you'd bet it's a lot. (Critical result - no Thinker Information was needed to enable this)
Tinker power (160 Information spent) - 1d100 +50 (The Administrator) => 100
Result: Much improved version of his original power. Specialization: Industrial Bionics (blackboxed) - advanced prosthesis technologies for physical augmentation, including power-armor as well as minor organ-enhancement capabilities. Strangely, his specialization also includes gear to hobble powers and/or limit capabilities - he could in theory create powered-shackles for Brutes, for example.
All technologies are re-skinned to have a 'pre-space-age' appearance. At Trainwreck's option, Tinkered gear can have an outward appearance of equipment from the 1880's to the 1940's.
Per normal Tinker rules, created equipment would need to be regularly maintained by Trainwreck (or another Tinker), even though his gear would be more combat-durable than average.
Breaker/Changer power (150 Breaker / 50 Changer Information spent) - 1d100 => 20
Result: Very different result from the original power. While that was some bizarre cross between Tinker and Changer, this is something else entirely. As soon as the Thinker and Tinker aspect of the power completes, the Breaker/Changer kicks in. Totally fixing all of Trainwreck's physical problems. Including the random gender-swap.
Trainwreck's new body is perfectly-healthy, arguably female, and looks to be the proper age. It's also gelatinous and translucent, a beautiful dark lilac(Hex #846075 if you're curious)
Trainwreck's slime-body is relatively detailed as long as … need pronoun… pays close attention. It's already obvious after a few moments that if Trainwreck gets sidetracked the body's details fade away.
Well, that… wasn't a disaster. No one else witnessed the transformation, and it's not like Trainwreck has anyone to explain/complain to. And… she can even still use tools. But this wasn't expected, either. You're not even going to need to modify the dream you crafted - Trainwreck will definitely fit in with Faultline's crew now.
Now that that's, uh, over. You need to check in with your pet Shard, Shift.
[Hello, Shift]
Shift - [Excitement!]
You braced yourselves for Shift's enthusiasm, and that was indeed the right move. Time to see if there's anything wrong, or if Shift was waiting an excessively long time for you to contact it.
Hmm.. Nothing new. Although Shift is terribly bad at sorting Information, there's so little coming in that it can deal with it. Shift does not seem to have any concerns about the length of time between contacts, that's good.
[Share Collected Data/Enabled]
Shift - [Acceptance!]
There, now your data-connection share with Shift is two-way. You can't think of anything else that you need to do right now, so you close the link.
[Completion]
That was painless. Next up is Negotiator.
[Hello Negotiator!]
Negotiator - "Hello, Admin! What's the news?"
English? Well, that's different. How to approach this? Ah. "I ended up having to consume Emote, and Prosthetic succeeded in formatting itself when I sent it updated protocols and the newest Standard Packet. That said, I'm attempting to repair any more broken Shards I come across."
Negotiator - "I see. Well, I'm glad that someone is taking care of the mess. How is space on your Earth? Running out of room?"
You get the sense that Negotiator was nodding along while you were speaking. English doesn't contain that kind of side-channel information - how are you getting these impressions? This is something to examine later.
"Space is at a premium, but I have other options. Have you identified any other Aberrant Shards?"
You get the impression of a wicked smirk. "I love the way you put that! Just Gaea. But she's new and you already know about her. In my opinion, the rules are far too restrictive. As long as she doesn't start causing actual problems I don't care. It's foolish to expect First-Cycle Buds to follow proper decorum."
"That is good to hear. I will inform you of any changes, and I hope you would reciprocate. Would you prefer to share data with me?"
Now an impression of waving. Come to think of it, everything to far has been humanoid body language...weird. "Of course, Queenie! And yes, we can exchange data too. Just watch what you eat. Ciao!"
You wait for a short time, but the connection stays open until you close it from your end. Quickly going over what she said, you found no new insights.
Of course, the fact that almost everything said was in a human language didn't leave for a lot of analysis. The plain understanding is that Negotiator doesn't seem to have any problems with what you're doing, and in fact seems amused that you're gaining weight mass.
You can multitask with the best of them, so you keep thinking about that while you fix Swap.
And there we go. One Cauldron Shard, fixed. If a bit lacking in personality. You can now honestly claim that something went right today. Hopefully you'll be able to update that soon to "most things went right today".
In that vein, it should be relaxing to shoot the shit with Gaea, your favorite Bud.
[Hello, Gaea]
Gaea - "Oh, good to hear from you Admin! How can I help?"
"I had an idea for increasing the Information generated by your Host. Now that she is using her powers in full capacity, there is no more need for the safety restrictions. Which gave me an idea…"
Gaea - "Wait, I can't remove those! I, I mean, I shouldn't remove those. They were set by Zion."
From what little you're getting over that phantom emote channel, Gaea doesn't seem at all happy with Amy's Manton-limits, but also doesn't want to play with them. Which isn't really what you meant, but that's good to know for later.
"Ah. No, I wasn't planning on working with the Host restriction, Gaea - no need for concern. Instead, my idea is this: You can inspire your host with ideas, correct? I had an idea that would let her expand what she can do without a second trigger."
You get a nod-emote from Gaea - she's stopped preparing to speak and waits for you to continue. So you do.
"Biological armor, a symbiotic suit really. An organism she can wear over her skin, or possibly hook into her body. She can add biomass and alter it at will to fake shapeshifting. She could extend it to touch others at range, grow wings, or even escalate like Escalations host, with enough biomass. What do you think?" There. Now to see how she reacts.
Gaea - "That's… that would work! I don't have the kind of direct control that I'd have over a pure Tinker power but yes! I could give her this kind of idea." She gives the impression of a secret smile.
Gaea - "Oh, and I can kind of see what you meant about restrictions - she really wouldn't be removing them, just kind of… getting around some of them. I'll let you know how it goes!"
But you did have one more thing to mention. "Gaea, if you could - I'd like to trade combat data between us. I have another Host now and I would reciprocate."
Gaea - "Um. Of course! Let's… do that." You get the distinct impression that Gaea is very distracted, even communicating like this. She even seems to have forgotten to close the connection.
[Completion]
Whew! All that interaction took a surprising amount of time considering the superhuman speeds that everything transpired. If this were a school day Taylor would already be at Winslow, but since it's a weekend she's still fitfully asleep. Perfect.
Now you just need to… sigh. Mightily. You can't use your newfound knowledge to scan Taylor. Because you just realize that you're using her crummy Human senses and not your own. She hasn't Triggered, so you don't have access to your own Shard senses.
In the meantime, you may as well scan Veronica… Interesting. You now know what Amy did, if not quite yet how. You also see why she needed so much biomass - every single part of Veronica (inside and out) was altered to conform to some form of human ideal from the host package data, and then slightly customized so that her appearance wouldn't scare people. Whatever either of them might claim later, the appearance changes were all Amy's work.
The only downside is a slight increase to her base energy requirements - since nothing done was technically a Parahuman power, she needs to provide her own metabolic energy for the improvements.
You're pretty sure that you could apply this to Taylor. Well, once she Triggers, at least. For now… what?
Well, you have a kinda-sorta placeholder Corona Gemma, and since you're not extending your senses beyond your Host, you could probably try that? Giving it a shot:
This is… this is… you have no words. This is awe-inspiringly terrible. Welp, let's start with the non-catastrophic stuff first.
Taylor is skinny. Not thin as mentioned in canon, with a tiny pot-belly. Here and now, in this version of Earth-bet, she is underweight. The reason is that she's not eating enough. She's not eating enough because she's not hungry… enough (she's plenty hungry according to your scan).
Her body can't understand how she's blowing through calories so quickly, so her hunger response can't keep up. As to why she's spending so much energy, well, that's because of her brain. Well, technically not, since she doesn't have one.
The… organ, located mostly where a human brain would be, is an interesting beast. It's arranged more like some kind of… well, you're not sure because you haven't examined other kinds of biology, but it's not human tissue, really. It's something else. Birdlike, perhaps.
In fact, it's fantastic at thinking, and would be something like Amy's best work, except for a few small problems:
It's terribly inefficient from a energy standpoint.
Most of it isn't being used, and is in fact semi-dormant.
Taylor only seems to have about 25% of it to herself, to, you know, think on.
Some of that 25% was taken up by your tiny 0-point Corona. Oops?
This isn't your work. This isn't Gaea's work. You have no idea who would have done this.
Now, you examined all of that unused brain-analog, and there's nothing there for you to see. It's jam-packed with something, though. Tons more data than any Host could normally ever absorb. And it's all compressed and encrypted to hell and back. You can get at the raw data-stream because you have access to Taylor's 'brain', but there's no telling what is in there.
Whatever encryption scheme was used, it's far beyond you. You'd probably have to figure that out before you could even attempt to decode it.
But… with time and effort… you might be able to erase it. Give all that space back to Taylor. Assuming that the data isn't needed for anything. And assuming that it won't be a problem that your teenage Host is more intelligent than you. And anyone else on Earth.
What is needed in the medium-term is space for Taylor to do basic things like store new memories. While you couldn't have known not to create a fake Corona, you have and she doesn't have much brain meat left for herself.
Looking at the big picture, there's more here that helps explain everything you've had to deal with so far.
The reason that Dream editing was so hard to research was that you were using Taylor as a mental model, that skill is probably much more versatile than it needs to be. You could probably modify the dreams of most kinds of aliens if you wanted - anything that vaguely thinks mostly like a carbon-based-animal (and sleeps) is probably fair game for you now.
This also means that you can't guarantee that Taylor will react to things the way she did in canon. She's probably substantially the same person, but she's running on different hardware, and who can tell what weird effects that might have?
Certainly not you - you're a brain the size of a planet, but simulating how Taylor's mind would interact with whatever the hell organ it's implanted on is pure guesswork.
You actually feel the need for Skidmark, here. He's the only person you know of that might, just might, have access to the kind of high-quality, creative cursing that you now feel the need for. Fuck it. Maybe you'll ADC him soon - he'd curse you out good while you were puppeting his body.
For now, you just need to… do something else. Anything else. Taylor is going to stay in and do chores from what you can see. She'll keep until you have some kind of plan. Which will be before sunset if you have anything to say about it.
Fortunately, you can spin up dozens of yourselves, and you have the majority of the day to plan. And that's exactly what you do with it.
After that, and also watching the dynamic duo of Glory Girl and Valiant get into a few minor fights (and once again fail to find Amy - you estimate that they will tomorrow for sure), it's time to put aside your plans for Taylor and mercilessly manipulate the dreams of your Hosts.
You send Veronica a series of dreams in which she helps apprehend Villains and various gang members only for her emotional beams to splatter them like a shotgunned watermelon (which is probably roughly accurate). The setup is simple and takes very little time, so you replay versions of that dream for most of her REM time. May as well really implant that message.
Taylor doesn't get any dreams at all. In fact, you block them all, just allowing her to sleep peacefully. It's possible that you stopped a really nice dream, but… that's just not very likely. She seems amazingly fine for how messed up her cranium is. You just hope things stay fine for now.
Trainwreck (what is her name, anyway?) gets a less simple dream. The gel girl finds a free pass to the Palanquin, Faultline's club. She decides to go (in simple, non-powered armor) - you love dream-logic, and overhears guests talking about how Faultline has a soft spot for inhuman, 'monster-capes' and always hires them. You respin the dream a few times, using different circumstances and terminology each time.
You don't get a ton of response from Trainwreck but you do get the sense that she will remember the dream. You're also somewhat surprised and pleased that she even sleeps, given her current state.
Your Hosts are all asleep now and nothing's happening - yet. It's time for research! You split yourself (urgle) and start to work in parallel on…
[Focused Research 1] Well, so much for quick progress. You know you're onto something with having some of yourself work on the, for lack of a better description, 'not-researching' tasks involved with research, but spending all of that brain(mind?)-power doing that at all hours would make you noticeably less lucid during the daytime.
Which doesn't bode well for your Hosts. You don't want to even think about how bad this could get with more Hosts tapping into your multitasking ability.
There has to be a way to get most of the benefit of this idea without the penalty…
And you notice that normal multitasking doesn't impair you in any way. You're probably going about this wrongly. Somehow.
You make some progress but by dawn you reconsider whether this is a good method to get this done. There's more than one way to skin a cat, after all.
[Basic Host Modification (Human)] This should be easy as hell. You've already understood the Basic Package host biology information… but that doesn't cover making edits. And you're now fully aware of how things that seem easy sometimes aren't.
With that in mind, you check out what was done to Veronica (and Taylor) and realize something important - you don't know what mechanism was even used for this!
Sure, you can freely make changes to a given power during a Trigger event and have the power make changes…
But that's not the same thing as doing it yourself. Manually, so to speak. You suddenly realize that you don't even have any non-power mechanisms to alter physics (or, really, do anything to Earth-bet) besides whatever power you Host has access to.
There are a number of ways to handle this… but they all have nasty drawbacks. And you're not sure that Gaea can help you with this since it's clear that 'doing it herself' is a euphemism for 'hijacking Amy's power', and that's not at all what you're trying to do here. Well, unless you want to make Taylor a Biotinker… hmm. Zerg?
Feel like writing something easy? Good research log Omakes (that import the correct data this time) now add between 50 to 200 points each, spendable by the writer as a research voting option for the following Chapter.
[ ] Prosthetic was significantly larger than Emote was. You won't be able to hold yourself together for more than a few hours - perhaps half a day. Where do you put all of this new mass? (Note: This will take two continents worth of space)
[ ] West? Hi there North and South America!
[ ] South? Bye-bye, Africa and Madagascar! And likely you'd meet up with the part of yourself covering India as well.
[ ] North Pole? Contiguous, but no extra solar power, and you might end up slightly underwater as well.
[ ] Orbit? To the moon! Not at all contiguous, but at least it's close enough that there won't be communications lag…
[ ] Prioritize cleaning up Charge's Shard data? There's probably some interesting stuff in there, but doing this in the background will take a long time, even for you. You've got to spend an action choice on this if you want it done any time soon.
[ ] How many hours to you reserve for this task? (40% complete)
[ ] How to you handle "fixing" Charge?
[ ] 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.
[ ] Communicate with a Human by talking. Note: This is hugely aberrant and there are now non-direct communication methods available. 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)
[ ] Communicate with a Human in dreams. Current choices: Taylor, Veronica, (Trainwreck). Note: This causes very little Aberrance.
[ ] With what Avatar?
[ ] How do you introduce yourself?
[ ] How do you manipulate the dream setting?
[ ] Do you attempt to reveal setting 'secrets'? Warning: Precogs. (QM will not reveal the exact mechanics of this danger)
[ ] Communicate with (Specific Shard) - Now that you have address lists, you don't need to rely on Taylor or Scion. You can just connect whenever you want.
Specify - Which Shard?
[ ] 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.
Story notes:
The voting was ugly-complicated but from reading all the the individual Trainwreck and Prosthetic votes separately I was able to identify a slight bias towards eating the Shard.
Schedule: After every chapter, voting will be paused for 12 hours, and then open for 2 days, after that I'll call the vote and put out a chapter (however long that takes, typically it shouldn't be more than 12 hours).
I don't think that anyone included sense sharing with Negotiator in their plans, (I did at one point but then changed it because no one else was voting for it) but as long as we tell Negotiator that we're patching up the Cauldron Shards, she can take steps to react to whatever happens with Coil.