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[HALP] me! (WORM quest)

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Well, that's. . . FUCK.

Okay, okay, maybe we can fix this? Okay, we grab memetic filtering, copy the data over, and focus on decypting it while getting her close enough to Panacea to have Gaea give her an actual brain.
 
Okay, wow. That. Uh. Okay.

Someone is fucking with us. First Lisa's shard is run by a copy of her personality from an alternate timeline (2% my ass), now Taylor has a customized superbrain probably waiting for some sort of condition to activate and make our life even more confusing.

Can we just copy the whole thing? Not decode, just back up? If so, I say we do that, then wipe it. Let Taylor do an unpowered Tinker run, Tony Stark style, while we figure out what's up with that mass of data.

Edit: also I say we come clean to smugshard and compare notes. At this point, I'm not excluding the possibility that there's multiple inserts running around.
 
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The only difficulty with copying it is, what if it's dangerous?

Also, she's still burning too many calories, which is an issue. Best to get rid of it, or at least enough of it she doesn't eat herself out of house and home and still starve.
 
Vhalidictes said:
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.
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Interesting.

Vhalidictes said:
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)
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That went well.

Vhalidictes said:
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.
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Useful. Power attachments ala kancolle style rigging for her friends?

Vhalidictes said:
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)
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That went sideways. But it at least kinda fixed her body.

Vhalidictes said:
and in fact seems amused that you're gaining weight mass.
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She better not call us fat! :rage::mob:

Vhalidictes said:
Gaea, your favorite Bud.
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I don't know about that. She's cute, but Shift!

Vhalidictes said:
This isn't your work. This isn't Gaea's work. You have no idea who would have done this.
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It must be the work of an enemy Stand!
 
FeepingCreature said:
Can we just copy the whole thing? Not decode, just back up? If so, I say we do that, then wipe it. Let Taylor do an unpowered Tinker run, Tony Stark style, while we figure out what's up with that mass of data.
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Agreed. Going further, I want a backup of all our hosts, and a method of restoring them from that backup. Also, can we just emulate a normal human brain and run Taylor off that instead? It's a good research option at least.
 
Does anyone get the impression that Negotiator was advertising that she's actually a human intelligence with how she was speaking in English and sending human body language? Also, I think that when we were checking on Coil, we noticed that he seemed to be recruiting the Travelers earlier than Administrator remembered in canon. I wonder if that's part of Negotiator's plan somehow.

I was NOT expecting Taylor to be that bad off. I don't even know what to do other than continuing to research Basic Host Modification (Human). I guess we can try to get Changer data in case we need to research Advanced Host Modification (Human) as well. Coat (Hookwolf) and Mush (Integrate) are Changers so we can try to set up sense-sharing with them.
 
Oooookay then. Some Weird ShitTM​ is happening. Some third party has been fucking with things since before we woke up, and I want to find out who.

I recommend we get Bio Manipulation and Memetic Filtering done ASAP, copy Taylor's weirdass brain wholesale, then decrypt the thing while getting her a normal human brain - or barring that, running her mindstate on our own hardware, Alexandria style.
 
Well now, Trainwreck is a smol slimegirl now(can she even age? None of those functions are there). Thats actually pretty useful for tinkering and synergistic with Prosthetic's Tinker specialty. Especially the multi-limb thing since they now have unlimited docking points.

[] Keep working on Basic Host Modification(Human)
[] Nudge Veronica into passing near Taylor during part of the random search, you don't need much, as long as Taylor falls within that range you have your full shard-senses to leverage.

Seems reasonable, we need to know enough to unfuck Taylor.
Specifically, we need high resolution scans.
Which means we need to put her in range of Veronica or Trainwreck.

[] 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)
-[] Orbit? To the moon! Not at all contiguous, but at least it's close enough that there won't be communications lag…

My thought on this is that Prosthetic is low priority and basically blank so we don't need to worry about it going rogue. Just park it on the Moon, which has enough space on it that we could dump another blank shard up there.


[] 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.
-[] Until completion
-[] Don't mess with Charge until you have this completed

And on this...we can't really do Charge properly without having the cleaned up data.
 
Vhal, a few times you wrote Victoria when you meant Veronica.

So I'm for playing some word games with Negotiator, dancing around the topic until we're both sure we're on the same page. We work more with Gaea, learn more about her, and maybe bring her onboard more generally. Shift is loyal so long as we treat her well, and is training up nicely.

Also we should share what we just learned with Gaea and express how this way beyond what we thought it was.

"Gaea, take a look at this! I thought I might have accidentally damaged my hosts sense of touch and pain, but this is far beyond my knowledge of human biology. (Send a copy of Taylor's scan). I think my host might have been tampered with, I'm not even sure how she's functioning normally. I'm definitely going to arrange a meeting with your host, if you would. Can you tell me where she's located?"

Otherwise I think this went very well. I especially like that gruff, mercenary Train-wreck is a little girl Vista's age. That's great.

Oh man, would you roll like that for every Case-53? Newter, Gregor, and Weld might all be little girls?
 
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I've updated the Shard information threadmark, but if anyone notices anything major left out, please let me know.

For the vote, I think we just need to focus on what we CAN do. We should continue researching Focussed Research and Basic Host Modification (Human) since they're both pretty important. We need to decide where to put Prosthetic. I'd like to put it in a place where it can get sunlight to gather Energy.

We can also work on Charge's data. It seems to be about 5% completed for each hour in an active slot or each day in the background. Since it's currently 40% complete, that's 12 active hours. I suggest that we break it up into 2 days to avoid any change of slowing down our current research projects. Also that should allow us to do a couple of minor tasks as well. Maybe contact Repurpose (Aegis), Integrate, and Coat for sense-sharing in hopes of getting more Brute, Mover, and Changer info.

The general plan for those contacts could be:

[ ] Plan "Contact ? for Sense-Sharing"
-[ ] Contact ? and ask for a status report
-[ ] If ? does not seem hostile or badly damaged, ask to share senses.

Another option would be to contact Negotiator again, admit that Administrator is a human intelligence, and ask for advice. I think I'd like to get Charge's data done first, but it's not a bad option.

It doesn't look like the roll about admitting things to Danny occurred again. We would probably have to send another dream for that, but I'd rather fix Taylor first in case Danny decides to take her to the ER. Do we want to send nice dreams to Taylor or just prevent her from having nightmares?
 
The Froggy Ninja said:
Could we download the encrypted data into our own storage and slowing start giving Taylor bits of her thinkmeats back until she's just Tesla levels of clever?
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We have no idea who or what modified Taylor in this way and if they're benign/friendly.

I'd strongly caution against letting Taylor use that hypercomputer of a brain, at least until we spend the time needed to decypher how it works and make sure there aren't any nasty surprises hidden in it.

Given how advanced whoever made it was, I'd really like to get Memetic Filtering up first, too - cognitohazards are in no way out of the question here.
 
I think we should probably send Taylor a dream to attempt the Challenger.

Based off what data we got about her hunger and metabolism, I think she could probably take it, and it might help keep her out of getting so low on calories as to have actual medical issues.

Plus, if there's anyplace to have a good source of biomass for Amy's suit, it's Fugly Bob's. If we're lucky, they might pass close enough to each other for Gaea to at least get an idea of how to fix it.
 
Yes, memetics as soon as we have a free slot. More omakes for the Demon! Also, let's spitball ideas for getting Taylor to Amy, because this is not acceptable. I like the Challenger idea. Can we give Gaea a copy of dream master and ask her to send a dream of the Challenger? Like, now that she's got the suit idea, Amy dreams of just inhaling Challengers for biomass.

I like the tone we've developed. We have serious problems and drama which we solve through ridiculous loopholes, drunken logic, and pure luck.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
We have no idea who or what modified Taylor in this way and if they're benign/friendly.

I'd strongly caution against letting Taylor use that hypercomputer of a brain, at least until we spend the time needed to decypher how it works and make sure there aren't any nasty surprises hidden in it.

Given how advanced whoever made it was, I'd really like to get Memetic Filtering up first, too - cognitohazards are in no way out of the question here.
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I'm not suggesting we integrate it or let Taylor have the whole space. I'm suggesting downloading it into a quarantine for later study and drip feeding her intellect until we hit a good medium.
I wonder if converting ourselves to that substrate would make us better since she'd apparently be smarter than a continent sized mass of crystalline computing with only a brain sized Masan of magic thinkmeats.
 
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Downloading a copy into quarantine is a good idea but without host modification or memetic filtering to give us a bonus those will be risky rolls. We could make it worse. Asking Gaea for help is probably safer.

P.S. Has Vhal given out any omake bonuses for rolls outside research? That could help but I don't think he does.
 
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Gino said:
Downloading a copy into quarantine is a good idea but without host modification or memetic filtering to give us a bonus those will be risky rolls. We could make it worse. Asking Gaea for help is probably safer.

P.S. Has Vhal given out any omake bonuses for rolls outside research? That could help but I don't think he does.
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I don't see how memetic filtering helps when we're not even going to look at the sata. Host modification on the other hand would be nice.
 
Gino said:
P.S. Has Vhal given out any omake bonuses for rolls outside research? That could help but I don't think he does.
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I'm open to Omake bonuses for non-research stuff. It depends on the quality and what you're attempting, but I'd most likely give you something. It doesn't hurt to try!

Note that I still only allow one Omake per chapter per reader.
 
TigerTitian said:
I don't know about that. She's cute, but Shift!
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Gino said:
Oh man, would you roll like that for every Case-53? Newter, Gregor, and Weld might all be little girls?
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Why do I get the feeling that the quest in which we pilot a planet-sized eldritch horror is somehow going to devolve into a two front waifu war?

Also, is it worthwhile to start spending some data to pick up some low-research tech like magic and psionics? Might be interesting to at least see what's up with the next level of the tech tree.
 
Gino said:
Downloading a copy into quarantine is a good idea but without host modification or memetic filtering to give us a bonus those will be risky rolls. We could make it worse. Asking Gaea for help is probably safer.
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Yeah.

In fact, I'm gonna get the ball rolling with a proto-vote:

[ ] Plan Play It Cool
-[ ] Don't download/modify anything stored on Taylor's weird magic brain until you have proper Memetic Filtering available.
-[ ] Try to subtly nudge Valerie into entering into range of Taylor, so you can get a full resolution scan of the brain.
-[ ] Share the weirdness with Gaia, mention that your host was modified by someone other than you.

Something to consider is potentially contacting [Shaper]. She's [Gaia's] parent, and another Core Shard - if anyone knows what the fuck is potentially going on here, it's her. Issue is that as a Core Shard, she's one of the most likely to realize something's up with Administrator, so it's risky.

Actually, since [Negotiator] is acting weird too, what do we think are the chances of [Shaper] being another member of the "Self Insert" club? It'd explain why she apparently budded and fucked off while leaving her kid to handle her fanon role as Amy's shard.
 
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