Ignition (MTG/Multicross, Planeswalker PC)

Powerofmind · Feb 10, 2019

I patiently await the first time a plasma weapon is fired at us in live combat.

fictionfan · Feb 10, 2019

Powerofmind said:
I patiently await the first time a plasma weapon is fired at us in live combat.

Hope that you won't be too upset if we block it with an indestructible shield just to be safe.

Carrnage · Feb 10, 2019

fictionfan said:
Hope that you won't be too upset if we block it with an indestructible shield just to be safe.

Can we drink plasma through our soulgem?

fictionfan · Feb 10, 2019

Carrnage said:
Can we drink plasma through our soulgem?

Was talking about Mom in shield form.

恐Drake · Feb 10, 2019

[x] Alien motivations. Aside from stealing a bunch of human bodies, what are the Ethereals after? You suspect finding out might be rather difficult.

Nachtigall · Feb 10, 2019

Gnarker said:
Everyone, what are our medium-term plans here? I'm going to assume allying most of the rebel factions, and working to either free humanity outright or influence Advent and the Ethereals to be less exploitative.

One of many options would be to build on what ADVENT oh so graciously offers:

Nachtigall said:
Actually, could we covertly eliminate their leadership and take over ADVENT? Get rid of the Ethereals and Chosen, impersonate the Speaker with a governor AI, profit?
We can decry the avatar project as a rogue scientist. It's not as if XCOM didn't have those as well, right, Dr. Vahlen?
I'd want to see XCOM's reaction if we turn ADVENT into actual benevolent alien overlords...

Sapient_Ham said:
I'd prefer to test a softer target. We don't know much about this world's capabilities.

Me as well, usually I'd prefer caution. I really dislike the thought of confronting a Chosen, especially since

Nachtigall said:
Jade thinks the Chosen are on par with Agni royal vessels, so even someone as mismatched as the Assassin is a danger. Add psionics (every Chosen has e.g. "extract knowledge") and they become threats.

Nachtigall said:
The real problem are mental/hacking attacks. If there is the slightest risk of our friends, devices, knowledge or technology falling into enemy hands, we shouldn't go anywhere near psionic individuals. On other planes, nobody has both mind control and the tech level to reproduce Agni tech. If the Ethereals get their hands on Agneyastra's database? We condemn that plane by making them basically unbeatable.

However, if we won't get the chance to scry again, it's pretty much now or never. The Sleeper is the only Chosen I'd risk this against, since they're weakest on the defense and probably absent. Scout the fortress with Agneyastra's sensors, hack into its systems, disable what we can, use one of the Stalker's missiles to breach it take out a large group of enemies if necessary, take whatever isn't pinned down and scan & destroy everything else, then vanish.
Nanoha doesn't have Firewall, Mitra isn't specialized in e-war, and Sidhe lacks shields, so we can't risk them on this.

Vebyast said:
I don't really think that our planeswalker info will help too much with getting network access.

If we can get info on abstract things like the ritual to purge the Black City, the spiritual balance if the Avatar plane, or the Ethereal's state of undeath... why would we have problems looking into a psychic network? Encoding isn't a problem for our visions, as the "Madness" interlude shows.
Besides, the main advantage would be that Agneyastra would know how to infiltrate it undetected (e.g. evading Codices assuming they exist) so that she can use her specialty: information acquisition, e-war, and network superiority.

Alivaril said:
Agneyastra is great when it comes to rapid takeover of some open systems, rapid information assimilation, ignoring jamming, detecting sources of magical power, and keeping track of objects within a medium-sized area.

Nixeu said:
I think Astra is good enough at it to not risk bringing down too much pain on our heads.

She can only evade what she knows about. Codices are a OCP for her, which is why we need to look first.

Network superiority would allow us to take down any soldier with a control chip, steal a large part of their reach base, find prospective raid targets, ...
It's the single biggest advantage we can get. Imagine an XCOM 2 game where you have unlimited "Data". It's ridiculously broken.

As Sapient_Ham stated, their motivations aren't all that useful if we don't plan to act on them. We can't stay for long, so at least until after the JS incident (and preferably after Thread) we'll only do short raids and maybe trade with XCOM - and the Sleeper really ruined the latter. Apart from being basically guaranteed to be mistaken for them, as long as it lives, any tech or information we might offer would eventually land in the hands of the Ethereals.

curiosity · Feb 10, 2019

Sapient_Ham said:
Geez, if Jade's having this much trouble sensing through Hexproof, then Sidhe's having an even worse time of it. I don't think either of them are going to make much progress on this project for a while.

Blue channeling is probably a workaround.

Gnarker said:
Would it make it easier to cast this if we leveraged our skill with Red by making the subject not just sleep, but also Dream?

Inb4 mana version of Isolation Barrier?

Captain Hunt · Feb 10, 2019

[X] Look for a low-risk outpost you could steal some technology from. Preferably one ruled by a gang; you don't want to alienate any of the Resistance factions.
[X] Try to find the highest concentration(s) of reusable Elerium on the planet.
[X] See if you can pinpoint the HQ of one of the resistance factions.
-[X] One of XCOM's two supply bases.

Ayashi · Feb 10, 2019

[X] Find out what Internet equivalent(s) this world has, whether Mom would be able to establish supremacy over them, and how normal people would get access.
~~[] Look for a low-risk outpost you could steal some technology from. Preferably one ruled by a gang; you don't want to alienate any of the Resistance factions.~~
[X] Alien motivations. Aside from stealing a bunch of human bodies, what are the Ethereals after? You suspect finding out might be rather difficult.
[X] Try to find the highest concentration(s) of reusable Elerium on the planet.

Internet is always a good place to start gathering intel... Then going up the ladder to get the low hanging fruits seem the best for a low risk, high speed and good results operation.
We can come back latter for better stuff...

[edit] I would have voted for a write-in: find a safe place to use as a base of operations on this plane, but considering why some of the options were removed i'm guessing this would be it too.

AramilOniasha · Feb 10, 2019

[X] You think this option will be harder, but try to locate the fortress containing the Sleeper's Soul-Obelisk.

[X] Find out what Internet equivalent(s) this world has, whether Mom would be able to establish supremacy over them, and how normal people would get access.

curiosity · Feb 10, 2019

[x] Alien motivations. Aside from stealing a bunch of human bodies, what are the Ethereals after? You suspect finding out might be rather difficult.[/QUOTE]

This would tell us whether we could have a deal with the Elders or they need to be dealt with.

[x] Find out what Internet equivalent(s) this world has, whether Mom would be able to establish supremacy over them, and how normal people would get access.
~~[] Look for a low-risk outpost you could steal some technology from. Preferably one ruled by a gang; you don't want to alienate any of the Resistance factions.~~

Either of these options can give us the anti-air weapons we planned to get.

edit: Outpost vote removed, see below. Internet access is useful aside from that, so still voting for it, if possibly for different reasons.

Alivaril · Feb 10, 2019

[] Look for a low-risk outpost you could steal some technology from. Preferably one ruled by a gang; you don't want to alienate any of the Resistance factions.

@Deathbybunnies, @Ayashi, @Sapient_Ham, @Captain Hunt, @curiosity

The arguments against the "unaffiliated outpost" option (IE that you can find one without too much effort) have been enough to remove it as a default option and almost cause an outright veto. Jade would rather look for something harder to find manually, such as the largest caches of Elerium or alloys (hidden or not). I recommend switching to something else.

EDIT: (Translation: It's a waste. You probably want to pick one of the other options.)

Sapient_Ham · Feb 10, 2019

Right, changing vote.

[X] Alien motivations. Aside from stealing a bunch of human bodies, what are the Ethereals after? You suspect finding out might be rather difficult.
[] Try to find the highest concentration(s) of reusable Elerium on the planet.

Basically, long term gain over short term rewards. This isn't a strong preference, though; depending on vote totals and/or whim, I may end up switching to one or both of these:

[] Find out what Internet equivalent(s) this world has, whether Mom would be able to establish supremacy over them, and how normal people would get access.
[X] Try to find sizable and abandoned concentration(s) of reusable Elerium.

EDIT: It's n-not like I switched options again because the author recommended it, b-baka! I said I might switch anyway!

Alivaril · Feb 10, 2019

Sapient_Ham said:
Basically, long term gain over short term rewards. This isn't a strong preference, though; depending on vote totals and/or whim, I may end up switching to one or both of these:

If you're after long-term gain, you might actually be better off going for the largest abandoned caches over the largest overall ones or looking into Internet access. Smaller though they'd likely end up being, it would be notoriety-free loot.

You suspect the Resistance knows about the other two categories, but can't attack them on account of excessive fortification. EDIT: Or at least, that likely holds true for something like droid factories. Internet write access might be harder for them to learn about, but you're not sure you'll have enough time for that, only what pitfalls to avoid.

(Haaaalping!)

Alivaril · Feb 10, 2019

Special thanks to @saganatsu, @DB_Explorer, @BunnyLord, and my five other patrons not mentioned here. @Torgamous and @fictionfan get an even more enthusiastic "Thank you."

[x] Alien motivations. Aside from stealing a bunch of human bodies, what are the Ethereals after? You suspect finding out might be rather difficult.

You turn your attention toward finding out what, exactly, motivates the Ethereals. Much like the humans they invaded, you don't entirely understand what they want out of Earth. You sift through records encrypted in a language Mother couldn't read, view the weakened edges of the plane, make note of every last whisper from your soul, and slowly begin to piece together a rather sad tale.

As it turns out, your first guess regarding the state of this plane had been correct. The Endless Hunger, or Eldrazi, had been here — or, more specifically, they'd been in a different portion of the same plane. One that's now lifeless and grey.

The Ethereals once had a major multi-system empire before some horrible project or another drew the attention of the Eldrazi. You can't say which of their projects was responsible — the Ethereals believe that strength of soul and moral value are one and the same, and since their souls were artificially enhanced far beyond what lesser species could boast of, they had no issues with enslaving or experimenting on lesser races. Fortunately, your soul is strong enough for them to consider you an actual person, if one they'd disagree with most strenuously and would (try to) kill if they felt it necessary. That's a definite improvement over them considering humans little better than livestock.

You don't have enough time to watch the Ethereal-Eldrazi conflict in detail, but the broad strokes are apparent enough. The Ethereals were corrupted by mere proximity to the Eldrazi, some of the survivors realized what was happening, and the uninfected fought against their insane fellows. Both sides were eventually destroyed and the Eldrazi pushed away, but the corruption had infiltrated even what few survivors remained. Given as said survivors also happened to be the most skilled soul mages of their already powerful species, they were well aware of this fact. As far as the Ethereals were concerned, they had only one choice: to surgically excise and destroy the infected portions of their souls and bodies, losing most of their remaining body-swaps in the process.

The Ethereals spent the next century desperately searching both for allies against the Eldrazi and individuals capable of solving their impending death issue. What they found were primitive species who could act as neither, only subordinates. Had their search been less urgent, the Ethereals would welcome the new workers. As it is? Choosing to wipe out all those who didn't serve them was an easy choice. Less food for the Eldrazi, they felt.

Despite their best efforts, the spare Ethereal bodies decayed more with every passing month and many of the Ethereals simply... stopped. They went from a force of five thousand refugees to a fraction of that number. As far as the dead were concerned, they were sacrificing themselves to let their companions continue living.

Once the Ethereals had reached Earth, a world with beings who held genuine promise and the potential of strong soul magic, the Ethereals split into two major political factions. The first wanted to uplift the resident humans and obtain their technical aid. The second believed that to be courting disaster and simply wished to begin stealing human bodies for themselves. They ultimately compromised: the Ethereals would "invade" with expendable units, but at a slow enough rate that a clever race could, in theory, survive and grow from it.

The rest is just history. Humanity lost the "war," approximately three hundred of the Ethereals stayed on Earth, and the other half continued their search for a species who could solve their problems for them. Those who remain could live with the current state of affairs were it not for one simple fact: as far as they know, the Eldrazi are still going to come back. If the Ethereals aren't back to full strength upon their return, the plane will die and them with it. Even the more reasonable among them would consider sacrificing all of humanity to be a fair trade for regaining proper forms.

Fortunately for them, they've now been dragged into the isolated "Multiplanar Shard" constructed by your ancestors for any of their newly planeswalking family members. Until one of the planes does something to invite the Eldrazi over, this new plane is as safe from them as every other universe in your hidden pocket of Eternity.

...Actually, you're a little worried about the turtle-plane now. Pushing them out of the Shard to make room for another plane seems rather cold-blooded. At least they seemed to have pretty good soul mages over there? Yes, you're sure they'll be fine. Your ancestors might've been selfish at times, but they wouldn't condemn entire planes to death by eldritch abominations. And... and anyway, aren't there almost certainly yummier planes for the Eldrazi to eat? The departing plane will be okay, you're sure.

You still have time to look into one more topic. If you've voted already, you don't need to revote unless you want to change your decision; this round will be counted as part of the last one. You no longer have time to look for the Sleeper, though...

[] Try to find sizable and abandoned concentration(s) of reusable Elerium.

[] Try to find the highest concentration(s) of reusable Elerium on the planet.

[] Find out what Internet equivalent(s) this world has, ~~whether Mom would be able to establish supremacy over them,~~ how normal people would get access, and where you'd go to get temporary write access.
Agneyastra definitely wouldn't be able to get Supremacy until she learned the alien language at the very least. With no books for her to copy and only the most basic of words used by ADVENT soldiers, teaching her is a project you'll have to devote some significant time toward.

[] Write-in

Demojay · Feb 10, 2019