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Hive Keeper (Worm/DungeonKeeper/WFTO Alt!Power)

I’ve had writers block for over a year on ch16. What solution would you all like to see?

  • - [ ] Minor Retcon — Taylor meets U&L’s squad at the door and makes them an offer

    Votes: 115 64.2%

  • - [ ] Lampshading — Keep plan as-is, just ignore ‘normal’ reactions and do a proper dungeon crawl

    Votes: 17 9.5%

  • - [ ] Short Time Skip — Taylor wakes up & discovers she’s captured U&L and some others.

    Votes: 47 26.3%
  • Total voters
    179
  • Poll closed .
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I kind of want either a scene or an Odmake where the minions want there pay during power testing and then leave for a night on the town. I would love to see what they do on there own. Like the Nagas going to a bar and getting blackout drunk and one of them getting into a one night stand or the stages crashing one of the empires dog fighting rings and renting it to fight with each other or an Oculi going to the movies.
 
Isebas said:
She did. They watched her convert the drugs into gold and she sent it and the cash back to her lair, keeping the cash intact. At least that's my take on it.

"Miss Militia led the way into the building, where she drafted two of the PRT troopers to assist in inventorying the contents of the stash house. As each item was catalogued it was then either fed into an imp's bag, or, in the case of cash, was handed off to one to be carried. In either case, they everything was quickly processed, and Taylor soon found herself in possession of a staggering amount of gold and metal, alongside not an inconsiderable quantity of actual cash."
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I just figured it would be easier to take the money than try and convert too much loot over until later.
Easier for them to find a reason to keep a eye on her if she's selling gold and jewelry than if she has money to pay for her needs. I'm all for her making gold but only where they can't see it.

Give them a inch into her life and they'd try to take a light year.
 
Shadowcub said:
I just figured it would be easier to take the money than try and convert too much loot over until later.
Easier for them to find a reason to keep a eye on her if she's selling gold and jewelry than if she has money to pay for her needs. I'm all for her making gold but only where they can't see it.

Give them a inch into her life and they'd try to take a light year.
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The thing is, her long/medium-term plans involve IIRC making a dungeon themed amusement park. And if the PRT are going to let people go into that, they will need a through understanding of her powers anyways. So while it's a bit earlier than she might like, she did plan to reveal her power's details to them sooner or later.
 
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ironwar32 said:
I would love to see what they do on there own. Like the Nagas going to a bar and getting blackout drunk
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This reminds me that I still have Codex entries that never got posted bit are already more than half-written. I should get back on that at some point.

The reason I mention it is that in... I think it's DK2, minions will occasionally go to the Casino and spend a portion of their pay there, which you get back. WFTO has a similar mechanic in place as part of the Tavern.

Shadowcub said:
Easier for them to find a reason to keep a eye on her if she's selling gold and jewelry than if she has money to pay for her needs.
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This is a non issue, as what she's got isn't real gold. Note that she was very careful to point this out to MM :p

Hydroplatypus said:
So while it's a bit earlier than she might like, she did plan to reveal her power's details to them sooner or later.
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This is exactly it, just as Aegis commented. (And Taylor too, for that matter)
 
Thanks for the update!

Ashkari said:
She took the cash and converted the drugs and weapons, yes.
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I want to point one thing... I don't know about that very well, but police need to make an expertise to see if that weapon already participated in some crime. Like, if someone been killed with this gun and so on.
 
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Hydroplatypus said:
The thing is, her long/medium-term plans involve IIRC making a dungeon themed amusement park. And if the PRT are going to let people go into that, they will need a through understanding of her powers anyways. So while it's a bit earlier than she might like, she did plan to reveal her power's details to them sooner or later.
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But the testing would have to be at the dungeon to be complete and i do think that she would have preferred to have it expanded a bit more before she shows it to them
 
Ashkari said:
She took the cash and converted the drugs and weapons, yes.
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Koraan said:
I want to point one thing... I don't know about that very well, but police need to make an expertise to see if that weapon already participated in some crime. Like, if someone been killed with this gun and so on.
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They would also have to check the money for counterfeits, drug trafficking is one of the main entry points of counterfeit money into the economy.
Also, they have to know how much to tax her. :)
 
I guess a few of the irregularities with just letting her take everything can be explained by the PRT looking the other way and bending regulations on purpose in hopes of getting on the good side of the new cape that supposedly can heal.

PRT power testing might include seeing if her power reacts to counterfeit money and converts it for full value, just a fraction of its value but still a lot since it can be used as payment or simply counts it as printed paper or 'art' or does nothing with it and then give her additional instructions on what to do in the future based on that.

It might also be explained away by poitning out that Brockton Bay is a hive of villainy and that everything is so hopelessly broken and corrupt that no murder weapons on similar she finds would make a difference anyway.
 
Sheylenna said:
I'd actually like to see a villainous Taylor do her villainy is such a way that everyone sees her as a hero. Does a Bank Robbery has to defuse a bomb that could take out a city block while doing it. PRT finds out the owner of the bank was headed for bankruptcy and was going to kill several hundred people just to cover up his fraud to get insurance money, and possibably his own theft of the contents if his vaults. PRT praises Taylor for finding out and doesn't make a stink about the money and jewels she stole cause she saved a whole heck of a lot of people doing it.... or something. Everytime she tries to do something villainous she also stumbles on someone else's plot that she has to stop to get to her own plans, thus everyone thinks she a hero, but she doesn't stop because she is still getting rich doing it cause nobody cares about the stuff she steals. You could play it straight or for laughs... but I think it would be fun. I know I could not do it justice. I don't know if it's been done before. But I thought I'd throw this thought out there.
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This is an absolutely terrific idea that should be written. The Tale of an accidental hero. Can you see the scene like this?

Taylor enters a casino.

Before she manages to get a word of this is a robbery ou Merchants explosively enter the scene.

A fight ensues after Taylor defeats them.

"Now, #pants# this is a phew this fight took a whole lot more than I thought #pant, gulp# a robb...

random casino goer screams "She had saved us praise our hero!"Celebration ensues praising the hero.

Taylor mutters, to herself. "Oh Come On not this again this is the Fifth time this week alone!"
 
Ashkari said:
The reason I mention it is that in... I think it's DK2, minions will occasionally go to the Casino and spend a portion of their pay there, which you get back. WFTO has a similar mechanic in place as part of the Tavern.
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The main thing I remember about the DK casino, was that if one of the hires actually won big, you could pick them up, drop them somewhere out of sight and beat the prize money out of them via slapping.
 
By the way, I hope someone will prepare ambulance for Piggot for the powertesting... Or, better, get Panacea. Because Piggot will explode! :whistle:
 
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Loki-L said:
It might also be explained away by poitning out that Brockton Bay is a hive of villainy and that everything is so hopelessly broken and corrupt that no murder weapons on similar she finds would make a difference anyway.
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So, fun fact that pretty much every Worm Fanfic author seems to forget:

Being a member of a known criminal organization is a crime in and of itself. In many states, it is actually even a felony to simply walk around wearing their gang sign.

New Hampshire's laws on the subject are particularly harsh:

644:20 Criminal Street Gang; Solicitation.
–Any person who solicits, invites, recruits, encourages, or otherwise causes or attempts to cause another individual to become a member of, remain in, or actively participate in what the person knows to be a criminal street gang, as defined in RSA 651:6, I-a(c), shall be guilty of a class A felony.

For reference, under NH law that means anywhere from 10-30 years in state prison.

That 'as defined' is super broad as well:
I-a. As used in this section:
(a) "Law enforcement officer" means a sheriff or deputy sheriff of any county, a state police officer, a constable or police officer of any city or town, an official or employee of any prison, jail, or corrections institution, a probation-parole officer, a juvenile probation and parole officer, or a conservation officer.
(b) "Criminal street gang member" means an individual to whom 2 or more of the following apply:
(1) Admits to criminal street gang membership;
(2) Is identified as a criminal street gang member by a law enforcement officer, parent, guardian, or documented reliable informant;
(3) Resides in or frequents a particular criminal street gang's area and adopts its style of dress, its use of hand or other signs, tattoos, or other physical markings, and associates with known criminal street gang members; or
(4) Has been arrested more than once in the company of individuals who are identified as criminal street gang members by law enforcement, for offenses that are consistent with usual criminal street gang activity.
(c) "Criminal street gang" means a formal or informal ongoing organization, association, or group of 3 or more persons, which has as one of its primary objectives or activities the commission of criminal activity, whose members share a common name, identifying sign, symbol, physical marking, style of dress, or use of hand sign, and whose members individually or collectively have engaged in the commission, attempted commission, solicitation to commit, or conspiracy to commit 2 or more the following offenses, or a reasonably equivalent offense in another jurisdiction, on separate occasions within the preceding 3 years:
(1) Violent crimes, as defined in RSA 651:5, XIII;
(2) Distribution, sale, or manufacture of a controlled drug in violation of RSA 318-B:2;
(3) Class A felony theft;
(4) Unlawful sale of a pistol or revolver; or
(5) Witness tampering.

Ergo, seeing as how vigilante / independent heroes have been established to be informal law enforcement in Hive Keeper (and the Protectorate and PRT most certainly are in canon), simply arresting a member of the 3 major BB gangs in the process of them committing a violent crime would be enough to put them away for years, all on its own.

Basically... they don't actually need additional evidence to put these people away. The real problem is keeping the supervillains from breaking them out. Personally, I imagine that every jailhouse in the city looks like Swiss Cheese from all the break-ins, or else they just let people out on bail non-stop because quite frankly it's safer for the police to not even bother trying to hold people.
 
I think it's also that the Gangs in Worm are a lot bigger due to both Parahumans and what I can only assume is a Global Depressed considering that 30+ city's/towns have been wiped off the map, some very large and important.

I Imagen that the scale of these gangs, plus the ability for the gangs capes to fight on mostly even turns with the authorities, means that the police won't both just arresting people for wearing a gang sign and only do so when they have ether alot of evidence or backup.
 
Loki-L said:
PRT power testing might include seeing if her power reacts to counterfeit money and converts it for full value, just a fraction of its value but still a lot since it can be used as payment or simply counts it as printed paper, or 'art' or does nothing with it and then give her additional instructions on what to do in the future based on that.
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This is actually a great idea. I'll add that to my list of potential powers testing bits.

In case it ends up not making in, here's the answer:
Her power would convert it to Wood. The reason for this is because paper money is made of (either / or / a mix of, depending on what we're talking about) silk, cloth fiber, and actual paper. All of these things eventually fall under 'used to be alive', which translates to 'Wood' as far as Taylor's power is concerned.

Real money though would convert more or less 1:1, regardless of what form it came it, whether it's paper bills, coins, or even a hard drive full of bitcoin. Because useable money in any form would count as 'treasure'. Some forms might even convert better than 1:1, like rare/ancient coins with a high value to collectors.

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Tiberianfest said:
I Imagine that the scale of these gangs, plus the ability for the gangs capes to fight on mostly even turns with the authorities, means that the police won't both just arresting people for wearing a gang sign and only do so when they have ether alot of evidence or backup.
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I think this is a pretty reasonable assumption, yeah. Though I wouldn't really say 'a lot of evidence', but rather 'sufficient motivation' IE they're actually committing a crime right there in front of them, because cruising around gang territory hassling E88 Members is a good way to end up dead.

A group of them that have already been subdued by a cape, however, is a different story :p
 
Ashkari said:
(2) Is identified as a criminal street gang member by a law enforcement officer, parent, guardian, or documented reliable informant;
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Wait isn't that self-fulfilling?
I mean, basically "identified as a criminal street gang member by a law enforcement officer" means that when this:
Ashkari said:
(3) Resides in or frequents a particular criminal street gang's area and adopts its style of dress, its use of hand or other signs
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is true, immediately one can be arrested as Gang Member.
So if I live in a bad street an officier in a bad mood can detain me as a member?!?
 
Axel said:
is true, immediately one can be arrested as Gang Member.
So if I live in a bad street an officier in a bad mood can detain me as a member?!?
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Depends on your skin colour; if you're not white then an officer in a bad mood won't bother detaining you, they'll just shoot you for 'resisting arrest'.
 
Axel said:
So if I live in a bad street an officier in a bad mood can detain me as a member?!?
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If you're dressed in their colors or sporting symbols associated with them, then yes. (As someone else said... Welcome to America. There's a reason we're having mass protests all across the country right now.)

Cynicism and real-world politics aside, I assume this is almost certainly true for the PRT. Canon shows us pretty damn clearly that they're practically an extra-legal organization to begin with.

Wildbow has even commented to the effect that the PRT regularly uses inflated threat ratings for political motives and to bypass legal requirements for various threshholds, and we even see some of that in play with how Tagg labels Taylor with a minimum rating of 2 in every category, regardless of appropriateness. Thus, we know that at least some members of the PRT aren't above outright lying about a perp in order to bust them.

Mind you, that's not the kind of PRT we'll be seeing in Hive Keeper, but i could absolutely see that happening in canon Worm.
 
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Ashkari said:
and we even see some of that in play with how Tagg labels Taylor with a minimum rating of 2 in every category, regardless of appropriateness
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Uh, nitpick: Tagg did so because too many got in fights with Taylor on the ground "She merely control bugs, I can take her", so he decided "Sod this, I'm putting her at least a 2 in every category and perhaps this time they will think twice before leaping for her".
 
Sethraw said:
This stood out to me. Does that mean if the guns you and your friends are illegally selling are larger than a pistol, you won't count as a street gang?
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US law has to walk a fine line between coming down on gang-on-gang violence (which heavily, heavily favors concealable pistols and actually comprises the vast majority of the US's large-by-developed-world-standards gun death rate) and the ability of law-abiding citizens to access firearms for all the other things they want to do with them (which favors things you want a long-gun or shotgun for- hunting, target shooting, recreation, home defense). Then there's the whole concealed/open-carry personal self-defense thing, which is a whole 'nother ball of wax.

Thus there's a huge social, cultural, and legal dichotomy going on between long-guns and pistols that seeps into everything.

It's one of the reasons home-made sawed-off shotguns are such a no-no: there's really no reason to do it besides concealment (it kinda wrecks the shotgun) they're basically a statement that "I have modified this non-concealable thing into a concealable thing". (Short-barrel shotguns, manufactured that way, are basically treated the same way as automatic firearms- Title II weapons for police/military use and heavily restricted to carefully-vetted civilians.)
 
MWKillKenny84 said:
Uh, nitpick: Tagg did so because too many got in fights with Taylor on the ground "She merely control bugs, I can take her", so he decided "Sod this, I'm putting her at least a 2 in every category and perhaps this time they will think twice before leaping for her".
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Not quite accurate. He wasn't discouraging people to capture her, they'd already done that. He wanted whoever was in charge of keeping her prisoner to not underestimate her as she's shown herself to be extremely good at thinking outside of the box.

However, it is also a political expediency because PRT Threat Ratings dictate PRT Policy regarding how they are supposed to approach dealing with said threat in terms of allowable personnel, weapons authorizations, and so on. This means that they are allowed to automatically bring greater force to bear against her without needing to seek approval from other parts of the chain of command.

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Sethraw said:
This stood out to me. Does that mean if the guns you and your friends are illegally selling are larger than a pistol, you won't count as a street gang?
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Yeah I assume so. However, while I haven't looked in detail, I suspect that if you're caught illegally selling something larger it counts as being 'engaged in a violent crime' or perhaps is an even worse offense of some sort.

New Hampshire law can be kinda wierdly labeled in a lot of places. I mean, I suspect that's true everywhere, but a quick perusal of what 'violent crime' is defined as in the mentioned section turned up all sorts of weird examples — like incest, of all things. I mean, a crime, sure, but 'violent'? Not so much in and of itself. But hey, apparently a 3-person family selling pistols illegally who engages in incest qualifies as a street gang in New Hampshire.

/facepalm.
 
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