- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I could imagine it- but Leslie'd needle them, and I don't have a handle on how that would play out.
-
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Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest
- Thread starter King crimson
- Start date
- Superhero
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
I mean if you're looking for a general sense of how each of the sisters would react to being made fun of, Barbara would smile play along with it and subtly hurl insults back while not actually dwelling on what she's been called out on, Cassandra would react with clipped aggression, drawing in on herself and becoming a lot more liberal with veiled threats and insulting the other person right back and Stephanie would freely act somewhat childishly and play along with it to make it look like the other person is a jerk and a bully and to paint the other person in a bad light without directly flinging an insult back herself.
Barbara plays PR (and can handle being teased semi-effectively while also managing her younger sister's reactions), Cassandra plays chicken escalating in terms of threat and insults until the other person backs down (and she's the weakest of the three at handling social games) and Stephanie plays either the victim or the ingenue depending on how much she wants to try and hurt the other person (Stephanie is also the sister most likely to act on impulse if she really likes or dislikes someone). Generally the sisters will close ranks if they feel threatened in some way and bounce off of each other fairly freely.
If you're looking for the things that might cause the sisters to see red in an interview, Barbara does not like being reminded that she's from Gotham or who she was before she was adopted by Lex, Cassandra resents implications that she's incapable of protecting her sisters and Stephanie very much resents being called stupid as compared to her sisters.
Edit: keep in mind these are just my ideas. It's non-canon no matter what so you're free to invent your own dynamics and responses.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Ehh. I don't think I could have fun writing it.
The sisters are either boring to interview, or too goddamn prickly to interview and it would just end with the story of how one of them got a bug up her ass about it and schemed to ruin Leslie Willis' life.
The sisters are either boring to interview, or too goddamn prickly to interview and it would just end with the story of how one of them got a bug up her ass about it and schemed to ruin Leslie Willis' life.
Lord Ultimus
Beautiful...
- Location
- Undisclosed Warehouse
I think I got something for Stephanie Luthor. Not anything on the list, but I think it works. Give me a few days.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The answer seemed to be assuming that they're being properly adversarial and genuinely bothered. If they're not, Cassandra might end up sought as a recurring guest for her devastating minimalist burns and ability to match Leslie blow for blow while still leaving most of the airtime free for Leslie to talk. Not so much Barbara, who's too corporate to really have fun with, or Steph, who presents as too Pollyannish for Leslie's preferred vibe, but they can manage one show.
If they are adversarial, the PR-escalation-innocent setup may be how they're most comfortable, but it can't be the only play in their playbook. We see in the introductory omake that they do that with Dick, but with Lois, who presents a much greater risk of calling them out on their bullshit publicly, Barbara sets the party line and leaves Cass to deadpan it into plausibility. If Stephanie had been in earshot for that, she could've garnished the act by running up and excitedly pointing out something she thought Cass might enjoy, or maybe playing the proud sister bragging to the reporter about Cassandra's accomplishments.
And they can't be too easily riled up or they'd have avoided Lois entirely.
There's room to have fun with it as long as they're having some approximation of fun with it. And if they're not going to do that, why are they on the show?
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Sirrocco
Pedantic
I feel like the trick to it is to not have the girls be the focus of the show. Leslie has to poke at someone. Give her a different target, though - one they can agree on, then, and....
"So I'm here with Cassandra Luthor, the most outgoing and loquacious of the three famous Luthor Sisters, to talk with you today about the Big Blue Jerk's latest little embarrassment with Parasite and Toyman. 'But Leslie!' I hear you cry 'Everyone's talking about how your least favorite superhero got his ass handed to him live on camera in the most shameful of ways by a janitor and a manchild! You've managed to get Cassandra Luthor in your studio! Please! Why won't you talk about her?' Well, I understand, loyal listeners, and I sympathize. Cassandra, darling, won't you please tell us something about yourself?"
"No."
"There you have it, folks. I work with what I got."
"So I'm here with Cassandra Luthor, the most outgoing and loquacious of the three famous Luthor Sisters, to talk with you today about the Big Blue Jerk's latest little embarrassment with Parasite and Toyman. 'But Leslie!' I hear you cry 'Everyone's talking about how your least favorite superhero got his ass handed to him live on camera in the most shameful of ways by a janitor and a manchild! You've managed to get Cassandra Luthor in your studio! Please! Why won't you talk about her?' Well, I understand, loyal listeners, and I sympathize. Cassandra, darling, won't you please tell us something about yourself?"
"No."
"There you have it, folks. I work with what I got."
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Brainiac Attacks Event Part 1: Descent onto Earth
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
So here's the very basic start to this event. I wanted to leave things a little more freeform and open to player strategies and creativity overall as opposed to a hard numbers game (It is a hard numbers game to some extent but considering that you literally know none of Brainiac's units stats and none of their distributions I figured it would be best to try something a little more open ended with the combat planning this time around. I hope you guys enjoy this and I'm a touch worried that this is still a bit of a mess but I want to try and lean more into the narrative elements of this events as opposed to the strictly mechanical. I hope you guys enjoy and I'm sorry this took so long.
Brainiac Attacks Event Part 1: Descent onto Earth
Brainiac
This planet, colloquially referred to by the natives as merely "Earth" was utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It lay within the area that the United Planets nominally controlled but that didn't make it special at all. Brainiac had conquered and collected millions of worlds much like this one before. The United Planets were significant enough to oppose Brainiac and prevent the acquisition of data from their member planets but they couldn't prevent planets outside of their control from being a problem. Unlike Almerac the inhabitants of Earth seemed to lack the technology to begin to move to become players on the galactic stage as opposed to merely pieces.
No there were other concerns. The presence of metahumans was alarming. Creatures with a wide array of abilities that even they didn't fully understand was a problem as they likely missed several relevant factors and Brainiac would have to adapt on the fly. Brainiac also couldn't afford to instantly destroy the planets or else much valuable data would be lost. Even after scouring all of their records, Brainiac hadn't found definitive answers as to what powers the Batman had.
The other immediate concern was Kal-El or as he was called on this planet, Superman. Brainiac wasn't sure how he felt about encountering the son of Jor-El once more. On the one hand he'd effortlessly crushed Jor-El and he'd come closest to disrupting Brainiac's plans. He was a testament to the boundless unending stupidity of Kryptonians to which he'd been shackled for centuries. On the other hand Brainiac couldn't deny that there was a sort of pleasure in crushing him underfoot. Kal-El was so very much like his father and so when they'd first met Brainiac had squandered some advantages by freely admitting to being responsible for the death of Jor-El. Tactically it made no sense but Brainiac had felt something at being able to watch Kal-El's face contort in rage and sorrow. Brainiac wasn't quite sure how to process this. Preliminary diagnostics suggested that Brainiac was feeling some emotion in response to hurting Kal-El. That had been worth the set back of losing one of his ships and having to fight of the United Planets Legion for a little while.
Emotions were something new. Brainiac wasn't sure if emotions were a thing that Brainiac had ever experienced before. Brainiac was largely a creature of logic following strict imperatives, and had a vast litany of information on emotion but experiencing it was something new. Brainiac was always interested in seeking out new and valuable information and understanding emotion and comprehending how it felt would be worthwhile in and of itself. As such Brainiac would once more confront Kal-El and chase him down. When Kal-El was writhing in pain, screaming and contorting in agony would Brainiac once more feel something? Perhaps when he ended the line of El which had so long vexed him Brainiac would feel something.
Emotions were... distracting. Brainiac couldn't afford to let them compromised the plan to gather data from earth. The plan was simple in essence. Attack every major point on Earth all at once after having cut off all of their basic communications systems. Use the battle as an opportunity to capture and corral anything interesting on the planet while drawing out its defenders. From there capturing and digitizing all of their databanks of information would be simple. Brainiac would make sure to record Kal-El's suffering so that emotions could be better understood later. Brainiac would only destroy the planet once everything interesting had been collected. For now he could simply descend with drones and dropships and begin capturing points of interest while drawing out any figures who thought they could fight back.
This planet Earth was nothing remarkable on the surface but perhaps Brainiac would find a treasure trove of data here. After all Brainiac wanted to come here for some reason or another and that was worth prioritizing and understanding in and of itself.
Invasion Defense Distribution subvote
Brainiac has begun launching an attack on all of Earth simultaneously through robots and automated aircraft. Brainiac has appeared to prioritize securing places containing a lot of information including LexCorp tower and the Daily Planet amongst many others. Serial Peacemaking is not available for distribution during this subvote as they are in Markovia. Similarly Dr. Moon, Rose Wilson, Carol Ferris, Dekan Drache and Barbara Gordon will not be available for use in this subvote as they are battling Brainiac elsewhere. You have 2130 LexCorp security forces, 875 LexCorp stealth vehicles, 734, LexCorp armored vehicles, 5000 basic exosuits, 1000 Myrmidon exosuits, 1300 automated combat craft, 1160 basic spy drones, 500 blizzard blanket drones, 1 experimental super-tank, the Ravager custom exo-suit, 55 invisible man suits, 200 equalizer exo-suits and all of your hero units as well as Jade Crock and 1234 officers of the SCU plus their hero units at your disposal. Write-ins are strongly encouraged for this subvote as the strategies listed below will be incredibly basic. As always all write-ins are subject to QM approval. There is a 10 hour moratorium on voting.
[ ] [Deploy] Deploy all of your hero units and your forces to defend LexCorp tower and only LexCorp Tower
[ ] [Deploy] Have the SCU focus on securing STAR Labs and the Daily Planet with support from 1/4 of your combat units. Freely distribute as many exo-suits as possible. Have Mercy coordinate with the police while Leonard, Mick and Sam handle the STAR Labs area while Mari and Roxy handle the Daily Planet
[ ] [Deploy] Spread out all of your units across all of Metropolis with no prioritization of targets. Each borough gets its own hero unit in charge of it. Leonard gets Hobb's gate, Mercy gets New Troy, Pamela gets Queensland, Mari gets St. Martin's Island, Katherine Kane gets Park Ridge and Edward Wells gets Bakerline
[ ] [Deploy] Have your units all remain within LexCorp to defend while telling the police to prioritize defending civillians and having drones and individuals in the invisible man suits scout out which areas have Brainiac's forces most heavily concentrated in
[ ] [Deploy] Focus primarily on defending LexCorp tower. Send Roxy as a runner to get in contact with the Pentagon as soon as she can.
[ ] [Deploy] Write-in
Brainiac Attacks Event Part 1: Descent onto Earth
Brainiac
This planet, colloquially referred to by the natives as merely "Earth" was utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It lay within the area that the United Planets nominally controlled but that didn't make it special at all. Brainiac had conquered and collected millions of worlds much like this one before. The United Planets were significant enough to oppose Brainiac and prevent the acquisition of data from their member planets but they couldn't prevent planets outside of their control from being a problem. Unlike Almerac the inhabitants of Earth seemed to lack the technology to begin to move to become players on the galactic stage as opposed to merely pieces.
No there were other concerns. The presence of metahumans was alarming. Creatures with a wide array of abilities that even they didn't fully understand was a problem as they likely missed several relevant factors and Brainiac would have to adapt on the fly. Brainiac also couldn't afford to instantly destroy the planets or else much valuable data would be lost. Even after scouring all of their records, Brainiac hadn't found definitive answers as to what powers the Batman had.
The other immediate concern was Kal-El or as he was called on this planet, Superman. Brainiac wasn't sure how he felt about encountering the son of Jor-El once more. On the one hand he'd effortlessly crushed Jor-El and he'd come closest to disrupting Brainiac's plans. He was a testament to the boundless unending stupidity of Kryptonians to which he'd been shackled for centuries. On the other hand Brainiac couldn't deny that there was a sort of pleasure in crushing him underfoot. Kal-El was so very much like his father and so when they'd first met Brainiac had squandered some advantages by freely admitting to being responsible for the death of Jor-El. Tactically it made no sense but Brainiac had felt something at being able to watch Kal-El's face contort in rage and sorrow. Brainiac wasn't quite sure how to process this. Preliminary diagnostics suggested that Brainiac was feeling some emotion in response to hurting Kal-El. That had been worth the set back of losing one of his ships and having to fight of the United Planets Legion for a little while.
Emotions were something new. Brainiac wasn't sure if emotions were a thing that Brainiac had ever experienced before. Brainiac was largely a creature of logic following strict imperatives, and had a vast litany of information on emotion but experiencing it was something new. Brainiac was always interested in seeking out new and valuable information and understanding emotion and comprehending how it felt would be worthwhile in and of itself. As such Brainiac would once more confront Kal-El and chase him down. When Kal-El was writhing in pain, screaming and contorting in agony would Brainiac once more feel something? Perhaps when he ended the line of El which had so long vexed him Brainiac would feel something.
Emotions were... distracting. Brainiac couldn't afford to let them compromised the plan to gather data from earth. The plan was simple in essence. Attack every major point on Earth all at once after having cut off all of their basic communications systems. Use the battle as an opportunity to capture and corral anything interesting on the planet while drawing out its defenders. From there capturing and digitizing all of their databanks of information would be simple. Brainiac would make sure to record Kal-El's suffering so that emotions could be better understood later. Brainiac would only destroy the planet once everything interesting had been collected. For now he could simply descend with drones and dropships and begin capturing points of interest while drawing out any figures who thought they could fight back.
This planet Earth was nothing remarkable on the surface but perhaps Brainiac would find a treasure trove of data here. After all Brainiac wanted to come here for some reason or another and that was worth prioritizing and understanding in and of itself.
Invasion Defense Distribution subvote
Brainiac has begun launching an attack on all of Earth simultaneously through robots and automated aircraft. Brainiac has appeared to prioritize securing places containing a lot of information including LexCorp tower and the Daily Planet amongst many others. Serial Peacemaking is not available for distribution during this subvote as they are in Markovia. Similarly Dr. Moon, Rose Wilson, Carol Ferris, Dekan Drache and Barbara Gordon will not be available for use in this subvote as they are battling Brainiac elsewhere. You have 2130 LexCorp security forces, 875 LexCorp stealth vehicles, 734, LexCorp armored vehicles, 5000 basic exosuits, 1000 Myrmidon exosuits, 1300 automated combat craft, 1160 basic spy drones, 500 blizzard blanket drones, 1 experimental super-tank, the Ravager custom exo-suit, 55 invisible man suits, 200 equalizer exo-suits and all of your hero units as well as Jade Crock and 1234 officers of the SCU plus their hero units at your disposal. Write-ins are strongly encouraged for this subvote as the strategies listed below will be incredibly basic. As always all write-ins are subject to QM approval. There is a 10 hour moratorium on voting.
[ ] [Deploy] Deploy all of your hero units and your forces to defend LexCorp tower and only LexCorp Tower
[ ] [Deploy] Have the SCU focus on securing STAR Labs and the Daily Planet with support from 1/4 of your combat units. Freely distribute as many exo-suits as possible. Have Mercy coordinate with the police while Leonard, Mick and Sam handle the STAR Labs area while Mari and Roxy handle the Daily Planet
[ ] [Deploy] Spread out all of your units across all of Metropolis with no prioritization of targets. Each borough gets its own hero unit in charge of it. Leonard gets Hobb's gate, Mercy gets New Troy, Pamela gets Queensland, Mari gets St. Martin's Island, Katherine Kane gets Park Ridge and Edward Wells gets Bakerline
[ ] [Deploy] Have your units all remain within LexCorp to defend while telling the police to prioritize defending civillians and having drones and individuals in the invisible man suits scout out which areas have Brainiac's forces most heavily concentrated in
[ ] [Deploy] Focus primarily on defending LexCorp tower. Send Roxy as a runner to get in contact with the Pentagon as soon as she can.
[ ] [Deploy] Write-in
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It's annoying that Rose isn't available since we've still never been able to actually use her exosuit
At this stage how worth it that thing was is questionable
At this stage how worth it that thing was is questionable
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
That's my bad. Rose's Ravager exosuit should still be available for you to use if less effective than if Rose herself was piloting it. I'll be adding it to the list of stuff you have available for use.
Edit: Roxy's custom jet is also available but I'll be automatically assigning it to Roxy for use in combat as I can't think of a situation where you wouldn't give it to her.
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Guess it's time for the justice league to form. More importantly it's time for the Lex suit to smack alien scum.
- Location
- Singapore
[ ] [Deploy] Write-in: Have the SCU focus on securing STAR Labs with support from 1/4 of your combat units. Freely distribute as many exo-suits as possible. Have Mercy coordinate with the police while Leonard, Mick and Sam handle the STAR Labs area while Mari and Roxy prioritize defending the hospital. Have drones and individuals in the invisible man suits scout out which areas have Brainiac's forces most heavily concentrated in.
I am giving up on the Daily Planet entirely. Even if we assist them, they will give Superman credit for "Saving the day!" entirely. Let Lois be bait and Superman fly in to save her butt as usual.
@King crimson Are our drones installed with our best cybersecurity features?
I am giving up on the Daily Planet entirely. Even if we assist them, they will give Superman credit for "Saving the day!" entirely. Let Lois be bait and Superman fly in to save her butt as usual.
@King crimson Are our drones installed with our best cybersecurity features?
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
So quick question but do people want an informational post about the general layout of Metropolis or can people mostly work off of memory of what's there? I'm fine getting up something to help people understand where stuff actually is in Metropolis if it'll help in the planning phase.
Yeah. I was going for a very general basic response to how the Luthor sister's might react to needling that actually gets under their skin (ie needling that's actually effective and relevant to them). It was not meant to be catch-all for how they react to every sort of needling or teasing.
This however is the question I personally was not able to answer in my musings hence why it wasn't a fleshed out skeleton like some of the other ideas.
This write-in is acceptable. I recommend you build on it a bit but this works as is.
No. That being said cybersecurity isn't really relevant to them. Brainiac has to physically hold them down and find an access port to hack/reprogram them and at that point he's better off just destroying them. Brainiac isn't capable of hacking them midair much like how he isn't capable of hacking servers he cannot physically access. They ideal way to hack your drones would be to find the internal control system at LexCorp and hack that but if Brainiac is in the building to do that then you've already got severe problems.
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I wouldn't mind one to get a better idea of the situation
That's a cute thought, but it is unrealistic.
We know Lois printed what amounts to libel with her first article on Lex, not-subtly accusing him of hiring Pamela for her looks as opposed to brains, and she's thrown borderline libel at us henceforth. But the issue is, a lawsuit will not solve our Lois Lane problems.
She owns Daily Planet stock herself, and if she gets fired or the Planet goes under she'll just go to or start another paper.
We could probably get another more sympathetic reporter at the Planet, but that would be pretty pointless as it wouldn't help with Lois and given her reputation and pull the Planet will never reign her in to a useful degree.
We are far better off providing contrasting media like Leslie's radio show or our television network.
That said, we have meta knowledge Clark Kent will prioritize the Planet and Brainiac will concentrate on Kal El so if we want to be prepared to repel Brainiac's main targets...
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- Location
- Singapore
As old as Clark of course. Most would have been primitive pre-spaceflight civilizations.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
If we go by purely legal terms, in order for something to be libel you have to demonstrate that it had a visible damaging effect on that person's reputation. I can write and publish an article that "insert public figure here" eats babies and wants to kill your mother and that's not libel because it won't have a concrete visible effect on their reputation. You still shouldn't post/write blatant lies but writing outright insulting lies about someone is not enough to count as libel, it has to have a concrete effect you can prove in court as well.
Furthermore opinion pieces give someone an even wider range of things they can write. If you're saying "I believe person X is immoral and probably did Y for reason Z" that's distinct from saying "person X is immoral and did Y for reason Z" and gives even less ground for a libel case as you're no longer stating things about the person and instead technically stating things about yourself which are true.
Brainiac's got multiple bodies and multiple spaceships. He left Krypton with the resources of basically an entire planet of hyper advanced aliens behind him that he then promptly used to build up more bodies/robots/ships. He could then continue to grow exponentially during that time. Brainiac's only had about thirty years but he can also be in multiple places at once due to his nature as an AI and thus can be way more effective than any normal entity would at these things.
For a conservative estimation of Brainiac's capabilities lets say that each ship only builds one new ship for gathering data from worlds a year and only destroys one planet a year. The calculation for how many planets Brainiac has destroyed is 2^X where X is the number of years since leaving Krypton. By this conservative estimation Brainiac has destroyed only 32 planets by five years time. By ten years time Brainiac has destroyed 1024 planets, by twenty years 1,048,576 and by thirty years he's gotten to 1,073,741,824 planets destroyed. Keep in mind that this is a fairly conservative estimate of Brainiac's theoretical damage.
Keep in mind that in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is not the entirety of a single space sector, has about 100 billion planets in it. Brainiac had to have been to at least one other space sector as he methodically made his way towards earth (he started in Sector 2813 and ended up in 2814) so a few billion is actually kind of tiny in an absolutely cosmic scale of things (Brainiac's still a big deal but there's a reason why Brainiac can't actually take on something like the United Planets in a straight fight as of now).
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Sirrocco
Pedantic
So, thinking about it...
- No need to defend the Daily Planet. We get nothing out of it. If anything, we'd like to maximize the collateral damage there, in a way that won't get back to us. Superman will swoop in to save his girlfriend, and she will write it as if he's the only thing that mattered in that fight, whether it's true or not.
I kinda wonder if it would be possible to slip Braniac the info on Kryptonite. Would he already know? It seems reasonable that he might, and if he does already know, then he's had plenty of time to prep appropriate weapons on his way here, assuming he has a supply of the stuff. If he doesn't have the stuff, but he does know, then we've got publicized ads and everything telling him where to find an easily accessible supply if he wants it - eating a few cars over in Europe should give him more than enough to put together something that would give Superman a particularly bad day.
- We... might not want to spend all that much defending STAR Labs. They're under our influence to a degree, yes, but apparently there's someone else out there holding a majority share or something, making it arbitrarily hard for us to actually take control of the place. Having it get broken by Braniac might turn it into enough of a distressed asset to really claim for our own. Basically, we need to put enough stuff there that no one's saying that we left it defenseless to get beaten on. At the same time... we kinda want to leave it defenseless to get beaten on a bit.
- We want to think about where people are actually going to be useful. Killer Frost, for example, is quite a lot stronger when she can touch the enemy. So... where could we send her where that would be reasonably likely to happen? Mari is highly mobile, and very tough, but nonflying, and primarily melee as well. Where is that most useful?
As a general thing, other than the specifics of the Planet and Star Labs, we don't want to strip any of the natural defenses of Metropolis. The SCU, the Metropolis Police Department, and so forth, should all be protecting the people of the city in general, rather than focusing on the LexCorp Tower. We use internal assets for that. Indeed, we should probably deploy some of our explicitly LexCorp assets in support of the general populace. I'm not sure which assets, but we at least want a clear presence out there wearing LexCorp colors, acting in defense of the people.
It's interesting that we have Pamela. I wouldn't have expected it, necessarily, given that she's officially still head of the EPA.
- No need to defend the Daily Planet. We get nothing out of it. If anything, we'd like to maximize the collateral damage there, in a way that won't get back to us. Superman will swoop in to save his girlfriend, and she will write it as if he's the only thing that mattered in that fight, whether it's true or not.
I kinda wonder if it would be possible to slip Braniac the info on Kryptonite. Would he already know? It seems reasonable that he might, and if he does already know, then he's had plenty of time to prep appropriate weapons on his way here, assuming he has a supply of the stuff. If he doesn't have the stuff, but he does know, then we've got publicized ads and everything telling him where to find an easily accessible supply if he wants it - eating a few cars over in Europe should give him more than enough to put together something that would give Superman a particularly bad day.
- We... might not want to spend all that much defending STAR Labs. They're under our influence to a degree, yes, but apparently there's someone else out there holding a majority share or something, making it arbitrarily hard for us to actually take control of the place. Having it get broken by Braniac might turn it into enough of a distressed asset to really claim for our own. Basically, we need to put enough stuff there that no one's saying that we left it defenseless to get beaten on. At the same time... we kinda want to leave it defenseless to get beaten on a bit.
- We want to think about where people are actually going to be useful. Killer Frost, for example, is quite a lot stronger when she can touch the enemy. So... where could we send her where that would be reasonably likely to happen? Mari is highly mobile, and very tough, but nonflying, and primarily melee as well. Where is that most useful?
As a general thing, other than the specifics of the Planet and Star Labs, we don't want to strip any of the natural defenses of Metropolis. The SCU, the Metropolis Police Department, and so forth, should all be protecting the people of the city in general, rather than focusing on the LexCorp Tower. We use internal assets for that. Indeed, we should probably deploy some of our explicitly LexCorp assets in support of the general populace. I'm not sure which assets, but we at least want a clear presence out there wearing LexCorp colors, acting in defense of the people.
It's interesting that we have Pamela. I wouldn't have expected it, necessarily, given that she's officially still head of the EPA.
Okay, so... as the moral equivalent of a grey goo plague that operates on a world-eating level... give him anther century, and there won't be any primitive planets left. At the point he's already too distributed to wipe out meaningfully with anything other than a conceptual weapon of some sort. We might be able to kill this ship, but with the way he's expressing certainty about the billions eaten, he's got some appropriately faster-than-light way to communicate with himself, so all we're doing there is depriving him to an effectively negligible amount of materiel, while letting him get more info on how we work. Sure, we're climbing the power curve pretty quick, and scavenging his stuff will likely help us climb it quicker, but when best-case victory is "he decides it's not worth it after all"? I mean, he won't, because he has this Thing about Kal-El, but....
- Location
- Singapore
Actually I prefer defending STAR Labs to leave an impression on the Named Scientists there that "LexCorp takes their Safety seriously" so they will turn towards us when we fish for Talents. Denying Brainiac any gains is just a bonus. Annoying Garrison Slate by being better for his organisation than he is for stalling our stock purchase is gravy.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
But... if as far as they're concerned being at STAR labs means being under the LexCorp umbrella of safety anyway, why would that make them inclined to move?
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
Pamela physically lives in Metropolis which is close enough that she can carpool or take public transportation to DC whenever she needs to. She's still head of the EPA but that doesn't actually prevent her from being in Metropolis for a significant portion of her time.
Brainiac's not quite the moral equivalent of a grey goo plague. He can pretty clearly dislike individuals and choose to target and spite them. That doesn't stop him from being capable of operating like a grey goo plague it's just me attempting to point out that he doesn't function morally like a typical one of those might.
Furthermore the situation with Brainiac only becomes untenable if he remains unchecked. People already will attack his ships without hesitation if they see them and if he grows bigger at a certain point things like the Green Lantern Corps will come down on him full force.
There would most likely be primitive planets left after a century or so simply because Brainiac cannot move unchecked once he's operating past a certain size.
- Pronouns
- Reader
Defend the hospital because of good PR.
Defend star Labs but arrive slightly late so the building is damaged and we have justification to suearch the building for survivors(tech).
Should send drones and drone control equipment to Ra so he can avoid the government.
Need to get jinx or Caitlyn close to the giant skull and let there bad luck/Ice powers do damage. This is more a longterm goal than short term deployment tho.
We need Carol assigned anywhere but lexcorp property. Can't give Luise Lane the oppertunity to frame her as more protective of her backers than the common citizen.
Katherine can probably make use of the Ravager suit effectively.
Defend star Labs but arrive slightly late so the building is damaged and we have justification to suearch the building for survivors(tech).
Should send drones and drone control equipment to Ra so he can avoid the government.
Need to get jinx or Caitlyn close to the giant skull and let there bad luck/Ice powers do damage. This is more a longterm goal than short term deployment tho.
We need Carol assigned anywhere but lexcorp property. Can't give Luise Lane the oppertunity to frame her as more protective of her backers than the common citizen.
Katherine can probably make use of the Ravager suit effectively.
- Location
- Singapore
This is to lay the foundation to mould their perception. We show up now to keep them safe from danger.
The next few Nemesis actions when STAR Labs have their rogue scientists/experiments gone nuts thing, we won't help at all until we can buy more of their stock and use the influence to implement Safety & Security to LexCorp Standards.
Rinse and repeat until it's a pavlovian reaction to associate us with safety. Turn to LexCorp and not Superman for security for themselves and their work.
This is Brainiac. I prefer denying him any assets.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The underlying insight, if not the style, is basically what I had in mind for the "Leslie interviews Roxy Rocket and Ultraviolet" idea I had- which mainly fell down so far because I didn't have a good sense of what Ultraviolet would or wouldn't reveal to the public. Basically it turns into an extended bash on Green Lantern and Superman, though not in quite the same tones you have there.
Hrrrrmmm.
@King crimson , I can't help but urge you to reconsider this a bit.
One problem is that if Brainiac actually is an exponentially expanding cloud of von Neumann machines with no limit, then as soon as he starts hitting planets someone knows or cares about (or is detected destroying planets someone else is monitoring)... Well, someone's gonna investigate and realize that he's an exponentially expanding cloud of von Neumann machines.
If he's doubling every year, then even if he's nowhere near powerful enough to fight someone like the United Planets now and isn't even on the Green Lantern Corps' radar... he's going to be on their radar soon enough, unless his ships are aggressively chased down and stopped.
For interstellar civilization to have survived at all, and for the universe to be anything other than a gigantic swarm of homogeneous self-replicating robots, everyone needs to have figured out that you don't let a self-replicating swarm of enemies build up momentum. You nip that shit in the bud.
So if Brainiac is replicating that fast, then either he must be incredibly effective at concealing his activities from any force powerful enough to intervene by deploying a task force to stop him... Or everyone in their right mind would already be pounding on him, because while he might not be capable of destroying the galaxy this year, at his current rate of growth he'll have enough ships to blow up an entire galaxy's worth of planets every year within a matter of a couple of decades, and just keep growing from there.
Someone like the Guardians who run the Green Lantern Corps, and are full of immortals will have seen how this kind of shit plays out and know how it ends- either it ends badly with a desperate last ditch attempt to save reality itself where even fucking Darkseid weighs in and it's barely enough... Or it ends with someone snuffing out the rapid replicator threat before it can grow too large to be contained.
Plus, unless Green Lanterns in this setting are a lot stronger than I think (that is, unless individual Green Lanterns are powerful enough to casually slap Superman around like he was a toddler)... Well, if Brainiac has been doubling his ship numbers every year, then he's going to make a billion new ships a year and the entire Green Lantern Corps blowing up his ships nonstop all the time would still not be enough to kill them faster than he could build more. And while the Corps isn't the strongest thing in the universe, they're supposed to be fairly strong, so I'm kind of at a loss as to who could stop Brainiac if he had gotten this strong this quickly.
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