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[HALP] me! (WORM quest)

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In order to deal with Bakuda, we first have to figure out what's going on with her Shard. Anyone have any ideas on how to do this?
Something about Singular… You're almost positive it's not sapient, but you get a creeping suspicion that it isn't right.
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Welp, now you're able to spy on Bakuda, so that's a thing. The disquieting sensation that something isn't right doesn't recede.
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You feel better after the disconnection.
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Edit: Does anyone else have the problem when they try to quote only a small section of a post by highlighting that section and choosing the "Quote" option, only to instead get the entire post in the Quotes? It's happening to me on both this site and SB.
 
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Let's not forget, even without her trigger, Taylor has what amounts to superhuman intellect at this point, just do to what we've done fixing her brain.
So, I believe she would qualify at least as Thinker 1, if not 2 at this point.. and we havn't even triggered her yet. Hmm, can we research controlled trigger, to gain the ability to trigger her at will?
 
One thing that we do have to investigate is the targets of the Endbringers. The reason for this has to do with the two commands we can be pretty sure that Eidolon gave them, give him a challenge and make sure humanity survives. I would rather not find out that the Endbringers have been assassinating people who are about to do some dooms day shit or to teach humanity harsh lessons (within the variables Eidolon gave). To underline my point, try to imagine a version of earth bet where the Simurgh did not make everyone paranoid about masters and teach them about the potential horrors of tinkers.
 
Kejmur said:
Magical Girl Ziz-Chan strikes again! Especially with magic being a thing here.
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. . .
Zion, off the coast of Admin Korea. "Admin, Eden's died! Recruit a team of Conflict Engines with attitude!"
Admin: "Ai yi yi!"

Mighty Morphin' Endbringer Rangers!
Red Ranger Behemoth!
Blue Ranger Leviathan!
Pink Ranger Simurgh!
Black Ranger Khonsu!
Yellow Ranger Bohu!
Green Ranger Tohu!

Krule said:
Taylor has what amounts to superhuman intellect at this point
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:Citation Needed:
Vhalidictes said:
You also don't think that Taylor will be quite as smart as you'd feared
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We could probably time travel. I think ther was a WoG that entities could time travel but don't because it costs more energy than it saves. Not worth it.
 
I believe that there are a very few parahumans with time related abilities: Phir Sē , Epoch, Grey Boy. Also the endbringer Khonsu could affect time, but there wasn't anyone with broadscale time travel abilities, though Phir Sē could apparently open gateways that reached several minutes backwards in time.
 
Vhal can you add [Memory Manipulation] or maybe [Mental Manipulation] to the research list. Basically an add on to host modification that lets edit host minds, memories, and personality without having to roll for it. Maybe something more general that also covers shardside simulation and reunification like we were talking about, to avoid direct communication.

Unless advanced host modification already covers that?

Obviously I want to use this ethically, not to screw around rewirng everyone's minds.

Just so we can do the shardside sim and merging, fix problems, do a little stranger work....

Make ADCing Coil much easier. Keep a copy of host memories and wipe the rest so he's not fighting back. Because screw him.

P.S. Oh my god! We make Perry our avatar and then pretend that Panacea accidentally uplifted us to human intelligence. And then obviously, we seek out her or Taylor. An Agent of KETTLE is born!
 
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Just thought of a power idea that ties into our specialty as The Administrator but gives lots of versatility. Quite of a few of us seem to want Taylor to have a power that lets her do future tech, so here's my suggestion. I don't know much info this will take though. ...Probably went into a bit too much detail here.

Breaker ~8 (Brute 5, Mover 3, Master 3, Changer 4): Converts her body into a large swarm of nanobots, totally weighing in at five times her normal mass. The nanobots are flight-capable, somewhat resistant, partially immune to EMPs, and are able to copy themselves at Taylor's will by eating the environment (this is not Manton-limited), but she gets bad headaches above her normal mass limit. Also gets bad headaches if she tries to split up too much - effective range of about half of the Bay between any two major concentrations of bots. (She can destroy them at will to avoid this from crippling her.) Somewhat annoying to destroy, as attacks often damage only a few and send the rest flying unharmed. She is unharmed by partial transformations from human to nanobot (allowing her to convert only areas under her skin into nanobots without any problem, giving her boosted strength/speed). As long as she has one Taylor-mass of nanobots, she can convert back to normal. If she has less, she converts back missing parts. If she has more, she can convert into at most five Taylors, form one Taylor and four Taylor-masses of nanobots, or do any combination of clones and nanobots. The nanobots cannot teleport between Taylors, so recombining must be done in person. The Taylor copies are biologically accurate (with cells and all that) controlled by a single mind. Can also convert into other people, but any form of biological inspection will show these people are obviously made of nanobots, even if they look completely normal. As long as one nanobot survives, Taylor does too. As a side effect, Taylor doesn't have real biological needs, as converting to bots and turning back fixes any of those problems. Taylor automatically becomes nanobots if she takes an attack that severely injures her.

Thinker 3: Can multi-task infinitely with her nanobots and has passive very short-range senses around them even without forming a camera. Also has her perfect memory and slightly enhanced processing speed. Minor passive boost to learning skills.

Tinker/Master 6: Can convert her nanobots into any technology she has examined with them before, regardless of materials it may need. Has complete control over any tech she creates, spread over all bots - creating a supercomputer boosts her processing speed all-round. Regular tech is quick to be examined, while Tinkertech is a lot slower. Examined tech, Tinker or not, becomes a blueprint in her mind. Examined Tinkertech is understandable to normal scientists, but super-advanced tech is often really difficult to produce and maintain. Can also transform into anything new she invents, using any knowledge she has of tech and Tinkertech. This invented tech is not blackboxed, and is understandable. It likely won't be more than a dozen years in the future though. Capable of adapting tech and Tinkertech to some extent - if she examines power armour with motors in it, she can adapt the motors to replace her legs.

Trump 2?: Favourably Manton-limited - as long as her body has a single nanobot transformed, or her bots have a single cell retained, she counts as both living and non-living in such a way that most limited powers are restricted against her. Immune to Master effects if she doesn't retain her brain, and Stranger effects only work in person fail against her nanobots or cameras she creates. Nanobots have a soft-restriction that prevents them from attacking humans directly unless Taylor explicitly wishes to do that.
 
I think the thinker headaches are unessecary but otherwise I like. It's pretty much the same as a power I already posted though, the first one I did. More detailed, more restricted.
 
Look, we may as well all admit it. We're basically all dancing around what we really want.
And what we really want is full on Manager/Mauling Snarks dogpiled powers bullshit.

[] Trolling Shards
-[] Thinker 70 - Ability to connect with and communicate with Shards in a 100m range. Connect to ourselves via bullshit and full-on Maul powerset her. Multitasking thrown in because we give that to everybody.
-[] Trump 200 - Ability to permanently remove and transfer powers at touch. Has two temporary powers they can trade around at will to anyone in their Thinker power range, or keep to themselves: A minor regenerative power only good for one person, and a Massive power boost that can be split any number of ways, splitting the boost effectiveness that much as well.
-[] Tinker 50 - Psionics. [Insert what we learn about it here]
-[] Tinker 50 - Magic. [Insert what we learn about it here]
-[] Tinker 50 - Unrestricted, Unspecialized, Unblackboxed Tinker power. Grants ability to just push Tech forward, and repair and maintain Tinkertech.
-[] Brute 0 - Human Modification her up to physical perfection like Veronica is. Not really a power, just an abuse of being allowed to make changes at Trigger event. Probably want these set and ease in over the course of two or three months as a "late bloomer" period.
 
That's good but Mauling Snarks is just so painful to read. I'm not sure you got the data right but it's so hard to tell how much data translates to an effect.

Also defintely aberrant as hell to let her directly communicate with Shards. But potentially hilarious. So tempting.
 
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Kejmur said:
Not a fan of giving any serious powerset to Madison. She was still part of The Trio even if she becomes apologestic later on. Especially great power which also means great responsibility. Can you see someone like Madison making really good use of it? I ask it just in case people are interested in this idea, not you per se ;). But if there is any character from The Trio who may receive redemption, it's her.
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The fanon mess over the Trio really complicates trying to achieve an objective analysis of the situation...but its just a Perfect Storm scenario:
-Sophia - Someone who wants to be a lone badass who can do what they want, yet trapped by the need for validation and companionship.(basically Breaker with Stranger and Mover components, someone who wants to escape attention but also craves it)

-Emma - Someone terrified of the world and lashing out in order to prove that she is still in control and safe.

-Madison - Someone who wants to fit in, to be cute and popular.

They're projecting onto each other to make everything worse.
Emma is bullying Taylor because it makes her feel powerful, its easy(she knows everything about Taylor, so she doesn't have to risk bullying a stranger and getting hurt) and she thinks that this is how Sophia would want her to prove that she's strong(she's wrong, Sophia doesn't even really recognize the social violence as proving anything).
Sophia is bullying Taylor because Emma suggested it, and she's not getting her conflict dose due to various reasons. Once she started it became part of her self validation.
Madison is trying to fit in and to contribute to be in with the queen bee of the school(Emma).

Its just regular teen insecurities compounding. They did monstrous things without actually being monsters.
 
Personally, I consider deliberately doing monstrous things to make you monsters by definition. Even mere willingness is enough for me. But I'm already infamous for my high and unusual standards (like considering thr Undersides pretty terrible people)
 
veekie said:
They did monstrous things without actually being monsters.
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This is the only point I have a serious disagreement with. They were willing to continually push, farther and farther, escalating the issues, because they were spiraling off one-another, but that means that in order to validate their self worth among their peers, they were willing to basically ruin another person's life.

That's a monstrous action. They became monsters, by their own hand.
Madison is the worst of all.
Sophia had an external factor that ramped her issues up to 11.
Emma had the psychological issue of her trauma.
Madison did it to be popular. Of the three, she has the least excuses and is the one most bullshit to be "redeemed" by fanfiction.
 
She's the only one to be even close to seeking redemption in canon. Wildbows GlowWorm has reflect on herself and look for answers.
 
Lets just say that all of the Trio are bitches and move on.

Say... how will all the changes that QA has made to itself affect Taylor's future trigger? Also... are the voters likely to let her canon trigger event go through? Would she even trigger from the locker with the changes made to her brain?

I'm asking because I've only started reading this recently, and while I've read the story posts I haven't had the time to read through any questions the QM has answered.
 
And yet, by seeking redemption, how is she changing from being as self-serving and interested in her own validation she was when she caused this mess?

She keeps digging, trying to find out if she's responsible. She doesn't just own up that yes, she was a factor, and she'll never know how much.
She needs to find proof of it, is constantly looking for outside validation that it wasn't her fault.

Jeez, look at how she talks about the photo shoot. They were bitches and bad people for making fun of the disable kid where she could hear them. But giving the staff grief is "part of the fun." Looking back, and being little shits is still part of the fun, but obviously bad thing was them being bitches. And she needs outside confirmation of how much she's responsible for, which you only ever need if you're trying to offload responsibility.

HatsuZ said:
Say... how will all the changes that QA has made to itself affect Taylor's future trigger? Also... are the voters likely to let her canon trigger event go through? Would she even trigger from the locker with the changes made to her brain?
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Hard to say on that first one. Butterflies like Mothra. Chances are it won't happen as in canon.

As to the second, it's hard to say. I think we're trying to push her towards not. She's really easy to Trigger right now, and although upping her Sanity might lower the bar a bit on that, it shouldn't be impossible.

Yeah, she'd still Trigger. Her brainmeats don't play into that at all. It's just a different format so QA could stuff a bomb in it. It's just optimized to store data, and maybe because her memories and such have moved she might have a bit more processing speed. Overall, not too much change. It was still built to Trigger normally since that's how QA was going to hit us with the bomb.
 
If your considering morality of worm, you've been caught in the essence of wildbow's story, nothing is black and white, everything has it's shades. Generally, I consider the trio and their issues to be, to a lesser degree aspects of what it means to be human, also, teenagers are often monsters without intending to be, because they can't see outside their own problems, but I'm also a fan of redemption stories, and I say this as someone who delt with some pretty bad bullying in my life, so I like it just fine when they come to realizations about themselves and change, Madison is the easiest for that to do, because she's the least broken of the three, so she's the one who most often comes to realizations of what a horrible thing they were doing.

All of that said, moving onto the story as we have in our hands, I'm not sure if we're going to let our Taylor go though the canon trigger or not, I'm not sure how we want to set things up, after all, if we want to prevent the locker incident, we have ways of warning Taylor.
 
Krule said:
If your considering morality of worm, you've been caught in the essence of wildbow's story, nothing is black and white, everything has it's shades. Generally, I consider the trio and their issues to be, to a lesser degree aspects of what it means to be human, also, teenagers are often monsters without intending to be, because they can't see outside their own problems, but I'm also a fan of redemption stories, and I say this as someone who delt with some pretty bad bullying in my life, so I like it just fine when they come to realizations about themselves and change, Madison is the easiest for that to do, because she's the least broken of the three, so she's the one who most often comes to realizations of what a horrible thing they were doing.

All of that said, moving onto the story as we have in our hands, I'm not sure if we're going to let our Taylor go though the canon trigger or not, I'm not sure how we want to set things up, after all, if we want to prevent the locker incident, we have ways of warning Taylor.
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Basically, nothing the Trio did in school hadn't been done by real people in real life. A lot of said bullies go on to live perfectly normal lives too(the victims less often, though some put it behind them, they're never really going to talk about those days with any kind of fondness). Group mentality can take some pretty nasty turns in adults, much less teenagers. In teens, the core problems are:
-Inability to judge long term consequences over instant gratification or immediate discomfort. This translates to not seeking help, of doing things which feel good now but make it worse later.
-The desire to be validated and stay validated. This translates to never admitting fault, on casting blame on third parties and perpetuate behaviors
-The tendency to escalate out of poor ability to gauge social norms. The Trio started with 'normal' bullying. Tripping, water dumping, etc. Due to being poor at estimating each other's opinion, they worry about not doing enough to retain the approval of the other two, so they get more extreme...which signals to the other two that they aren't doing enough. And so it keep stacking.

Worm has a background theme of the cycle of abuse, with the Entities' Cycle being just a bigger version of it. But in the school, adults are supposed to intercede for teenage deficiencies. They don't.

As for canon trigger here? Sophia's taken a pretty steep swerve now. She no longer feels any joy from abusing Taylor, but is rather seeking a bigger and worthier social group.
I don't think they'd pull the tampon stunt anymore, but they're likely to form a gang of their own if they could actually get enough power(what with being three teenage girls not really going very far)
 
Kejmur said:
[] Perfect 'Two'
-[] Trump 40. Weakening Aura. This low level Trump ability allows to weaken parahuman powers depending on how strong and versatile they are and how close potential parahuman is to the host. It's an aura-like effect, which becomes weaker with distance.
-[] Brute 40. Improved Healing Factor. This Brute rating grants additional improved healing factor superior to the one normal humans have. Effectiveness is based on how serious potential injuries are. The more serious they are, the longer it takes to heal them. Although as long as organ isn't completely destroyed or host isn't missing completely a limb for example, full recovery is possible even if normally this wouldn't be possible, like a broken spine.
-[] Blaster 40. Echolocation Beam. This special Blaster ability allows host to shoot Echolocation beams, which once they hit something, they grant an effect identical to the one standard echolocation provides. Good for detecting hidden enemies.
-[] Striker 40. Power-Up Touch. This ability grants special effect via touch which simply improves effectiveness or firepower of touched item like a gun or flash grenade.
-[] Mover 40. Every Surface Walking. This is pretty basic Mover ability, which grants host ability to walk freely on all kinds of surfaces without any issues. Things like Water Walking, Tree Walking, etc. with this ability is more then doable. It doesn't grant any additional speed bonus.
-[] Changer 40. Most Basic Human Shapeshifting. This power allows a host to change his or her appearence as long as it's reasonably close to his or her current age and same gender. Changing genders as mention is impossible here and potential different human form can't be too different age wise (so child host can't suddenly become a grandparent for example).
-[] Shaker 40. Environmental Shifting. Basic ability which allows host to directly manipulate environment as long as it's something of the same material type. So for example host may for example change solid ground into a mud, but can't make it a liquid concrete.
-[] Thinker 40. Accelerated Learning. Very basic Thinker ability, which improves ability to learn new abilities and memorization of them. This ability is affected by complexity of a current skillset and current skills of a host. So for example professional soldier trying to learn Master Level hacking may take longer with this ability then if it was something military based instead, even if potential host would learn this faster then without this power anyway.
-[] Stranger 40. Mirage (Fata Morgana). Ability which mimics weather phenomenon called fata morgana, but very closely to the host. It's also reasonably easy to break as long as opponents is focused enough or it happens in a place with low amount of light around, as light is one of the neccesary components for this ability to truly 'kick in'.
-[] Master 40. Animal Companion. Very basic Master power which allows host to completely control one chosen animal companion. Requires concentration and the bigger animal companion is, the harder it is to control.
-[] Tinker 40. Utility Items Tinker. Tinker specialty here is utility non-combat items. They may be used in combat, but they won't be truly as good in it.
-[] Breaker 40. Liquid Form. User may turn from a solid body state into a liquid form of his or her choice as long as host has contact with a chosen liquid recently.
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The_GrandMage said:
[] Trolling Shards
-[] Thinker 70 - Ability to connect with and communicate with Shards in a 100m range. Connect to ourselves via bullshit and full-on Maul powerset her. Multitasking thrown in because we give that to everybody.
-[] Trump 200 - Ability to permanently remove and transfer powers at touch. Has two temporary powers they can trade around at will to anyone in their Thinker power range, or keep to themselves: A minor regenerative power only good for one person, and a Massive power boost that can be split any number of ways, splitting the boost effectiveness that much as well.
-[] Tinker 50 - Psionics. [Insert what we learn about it here]
-[] Tinker 50 - Magic. [Insert what we learn about it here]
-[] Tinker 50 - Unrestricted, Unspecialized, Unblackboxed Tinker power. Grants ability to just push Tech forward, and repair and maintain Tinkertech.
-[] Brute 0 - Human Modification her up to physical perfection like Veronica is. Not really a power, just an abuse of being allowed to make changes at Trigger event. Probably want these set and ease in over the course of two or three months as a "late bloomer" period.
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Added to the list.

As a reminder to everyone, and a PSA to new commentors, to be added to the power list a power suggestion MUST include the information cost.

To help me avoid accidentally missing a suggestion everyone is welcome to tag me when suggesting a power.

Do note, because of our multihost nature and potential, powers don't need to be intended for Taylor to be added to the list.
 
I am aware that what they do isn't abnormal. My conclusion is simply that: being a terrible person is normal and that's partly why humanity sucks.
 
veekie said:
As for canon trigger here? Sophia's taken a pretty steep swerve now. She no longer feels any joy from abusing Taylor, but is rather seeking a bigger and worthier social group.
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I'm worried here because this could meant Emma'd get creative and do something like the Locker.

---
Also my dream team for Taylor:
Claire: Healer and Biotinker and Heavy hitter.
Lilac: Heavy hitter and Team Tinker.
Labyrinth: Area control.
Lisa: Information gathering and social manipulation.
Taylor: Team Leader and Escalation Queen.
Ciara: The Secret Weapon! No one knows she's in the Team, not even Taylor.
---
Power:
[] Autoimprovement

-[] 500 Trump - each day Taylor recieves a charge that she can use to either, give herself a little power, or improve one of her existings powers. Reached a point it's also possible to use all the charges put in one power to recive another one better (for example if she has put 100 charges in to improving her strength and durability, she could change all that to simply recive the Siberian's strength and durability (because no matter how much she improved them, it's impossible to reach that kind of level with strength alone)). It's also possible to bank charges, but unless it's to use them as a power comodin in a moment of necessity it's pretty useless to not use them.

-[] 50 Thinker - ability to always know exactly how many charges she has banked, what powers does she've, the number of charges she's spent in any power and if it's possible to change it for another qualitatively better. She also would know what power she'd recive in the exchange. This information is presented as a blue gamer screen, listing each power as "Power" and asigning them a level that equals the number of charges spent. She doesn't need to summon the screen to exactly know it's contents.

-About the power exchange it'd be like ranking up a skill in a video game "Power: Improved Strength and Durability Lv 100" -> "Power: Reality Hole Lv 1".
 
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