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Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest

What sort of tone should I shoot for with this Quest?

  • Go as crack fueled as you can we want Ambush Bug, Snowflame and Duckseid

    Votes: 30 7.7%

  • Go for something silly but keep a little bit of reason

    Votes: 31 7.9%

  • Adam West Camp

    Votes: 27 6.9%

  • Balanced as all things should be

    Votes: 195 50.0%

  • Mostly serious but not self-involvedly so

    Votes: 73 18.7%

  • Dark and brooding but with light at the end of the tunnel

    Votes: 12 3.1%

  • We're evil and we don't want anyone to be happy

    Votes: 22 5.6%
  • Total voters
    390
  • Poll closed .
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wabbitking said:
Is one of them magically transferring her soul to another body? I've already thought of that I just can't remember if I've mentioned it yet. Plus Fixit and the lmds have already given us an obvious and marketable option.
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It's close but not quite one of the solutions I came up with. I'm not going to spoil too much but I'll say with magic, why move to a new body when you can use magic to change the old one?
 
Adrian XXIV said:
@King crimson

When two characters (for example, Marie & Supergirl) are mind-swapped, which stats are "swapped" between them too (and which "stay")?
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Outside of learning none of the stats swap or stay, they shift. Learning remains consistent for the most part (it can sometimes shift). All other stats don't perfectly align with either of the swapped characters.

To use the Marie-Supergirl swap for example, Marie would gain all of Supergirl's physical capabilities but lose any gains to martial that Supergirl gets from having practice using powers on earth or having tactical insight from being trained to be a soldier on Kandor, meaning she'd have a lower martial than Supergirl but a much higher martial than Marie naturally does. Her diplomacy would shift because while Marie would be happier with a body that resembles a blond teenage girl, she would also struggle with the fact that she's in Supergirl's body and thus has a different reputation and needs to be careful when getting angry or annoyed in ways she didn't before. Her stewardship likely would trend downwards a bit as she'd be a lot more distractable with all the new senses that would mess with her ability to focus. Her intrigue meanwhile would probably raise a bit because Marie would retain most of her ability to lie but suddenly be way better at finding secrets so she'd end up with a higher stat than she normally has or Supergirl has.

The numbers don't remain consistent with the stats on either body.

Edit: After Learning, Stewardship is the next most stable stat with mindswaps but Intrigue, Martial and Diplomacy all tend to shift unless you swap really similar people.
 
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Negation said:
Hence my preference for crouching our approach to them as medical commercial applications. It'd be a cynical cash grab and not supervillainy.
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I think you'd have much better luck touting the military application frankly. I can't imagine the government wanting this kind of technology to be widespread, or even used widely and controlled from a central point. There's certainly tons of ethical uses but it's obviously open to misuse and beyond the moral implications the political ones are very tricky. With the military, at least you can say 'we'll keep this secret and only use it to empower good soldiers by taking the power of evil criminals'.
 
drake_azathoth said:
With the military, at least you can say 'we'll keep this secret and only use it to empower good soldiers by taking the power of evil criminals'.
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That's essentially my idea how to deal with captured Zod's Kryptonian Soldiers.

Mind-swap them with Veteran Soldiers, then send latter onto battlefield (after obligatory training in "using their 'new bodies' effectively")
 
drake_azathoth said:
I think you'd have much better luck touting the military application frankly. I can't imagine the government wanting this kind of technology to be widespread, or even used widely and controlled from a central point. There's certainly tons of ethical uses but it's obviously open to misuse and beyond the moral implications the political ones are very tricky. With the military, at least you can say 'we'll keep this secret and only use it to empower good soldiers by taking the power of evil criminals'.
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Or sell the idea as "never losing good soldiers" be giving wounded, aged, retired soldiers new younger bodies. Hence my preference for plant people project.
 
So this is the last minute warning, I will close the vote soon, I'm going to get food and then close the vote. At most you have an hour and a half left.
 
ZainAlJester said:
what if we use the lasso of truth to learn about zod and then find his deal with brainiac in the brainiac archives and use it to convince supergirl to become our double agent
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Randino Treviani said:
We can certainly take actions related to brainiacs archives, but there is no guarantee we have the specific database the brainiac/zod deal was stored on. Winning immediate salvage plan picked computers once, metropolis three times, and a single intact ship fished from the pacific ocean.
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Along similar lines we also have that strange sphere we recovered from Brainiac's ship which I'm 99% sure is one of his memory orbs, detailing pretty much the entire history of their respective planet,

Assuming that the one we have is the Krypton orb and not some other random planet we could almost certainly learn about the truth of Brainiac and Zod's deal from that and tempt Kara in with access to the single largest repository of her people's history.
Randino Treviani said:
We can see about getting a team together next turn.
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To be fair while a good team would be preferable we don't strictly need one. In the worst case scenario where we can't spare anyone else Fixit is guaranteed to make decent progress on the LMD's just by himself and we could have the twins build a dedicated robotics lab to lower the DC for the future.

Which may be the best course of action because Fixit doesn't exactly have the best coop scores with our other scientists.
drake_azathoth said:
The thing about the mind switch device is that the government knows about it. Eiling and Diana know about it.

Even if we could convince the shadier people like Eiling to let us use it to mind switch Supergirl with what he'd view as an unreliable civilian as opposed to a trustworthy pawn of his own, it would ruin Diana's trust in Lex if she found out, and it would provide Eiling with blackmail on Lex.

We'd be better off just summoning up a demon to resolve the situation or using the Life Model Decoy and Fixit's trait.
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Additionally, even if we could convince Eiling, Diana and the government in general to go along with uploading Marie into Kara's body it will leaves us with a mess we have to clean up.

Even ignoring Marie having to get used to her new powers we'd need to deal with Kara in Marie's body, people potentially asking where Marie went, Clark being suspicious about his cousins sudden change in behaviour and people being curious why Supergirl is suddenly doing PR for LexCorp.
King crimson said:
Outside of learning none of the stats swap or stay, they shift. Learning remains consistent for the most part (it can sometimes shift). All other stats don't perfectly align with either of the swapped characters.

To use the Marie-Supergirl swap for example, Marie would gain all of Supergirl's physical capabilities but lose any gains to martial that Supergirl gets from having practice using powers on earth or having tactical insight from being trained to be a soldier on Kandor, meaning she'd have a lower martial than Supergirl but a much higher martial than Marie naturally does. Her diplomacy would shift because while Marie would be happier with a body that resembles a blond teenage girl, she would also struggle with the fact that she's in Supergirl's body and thus has a different reputation and needs to be careful when getting angry or annoyed in ways she didn't before. Her stewardship likely would trend downwards a bit as she'd be a lot more distractable with all the new senses that would mess with her ability to focus. Her intrigue meanwhile would probably raise a bit because Marie would retain most of her ability to lie but suddenly be way better at finding secrets so she'd end up with a higher stat than she normally has or Supergirl has.

The numbers don't remain consistent with the stats on either body.

Edit: After Learning, Stewardship is the next most stable stat with mindswaps but Intrigue, Martial and Diplomacy all tend to shift unless you swap really similar people.
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A related question if you don't mind @King crimson, robotic conversion is stated to give hero units that undergo it a set bonus but can they get additional bonuses on top of that?

For example, if we have Marie undergo robotic conversion and invest all of the points she gets from that into Diplomacy to boost her to 43 could she gain an additional boost as a result of her, say, becoming less acerbic and confrontational or is there a hard limit on that?
 
jonasquinn said:
@King crimson, robotic conversion is stated to give hero units that undergo it a set bonus but can they get additional bonuses on top of that?

For example, if we have Marie undergo robotic conversion and invest all of the points she gets from that into Diplomacy to boost her to 43 could she gain an additional boost as a result of her, say, becoming less acerbic and confrontational or is there a hard limit on that?
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No. I'm probably not giving additional bonuses immediately, there'd likely need to be some other character developing action to raise the stats further.

Additionally as a general rule the higher a stat is the harder it is to raise. If you dump all of your boost into Marie's diplomacy to the point where it's at 43, you'll have a very, very difficult time raising it higher. It's not a hard limit, but it means that even if I were giving additional boosts, I wouldn't give boosts to already exorbitantly high stats.
 
Additionally I don't really consider this too exciting a post but I figured I ought to answer some info about Ozzyland since it was asked of me. IIRC (I could be off), Ozzyland is not quite in Alexandria proper and instead is slightly southeast of the city. Assuming I did my mental geography right, it should be located near where the IRL US 101 freeway would be. For those not aware of the significance the 101 freeway is that it's considered one of the most scenic highways in the US and is especially popular in Northern California as it cuts through the state and national Redwood parks.

It's a decently sized park, not as big as some of the largest theme parks out there but it's still pretty big to the point where you could easily spend a day there doing new things and not run out of stuff to do (assuming you're not constantly running from thing to thing). It's more comparable in size to the 269 acres of Six Flags Magic Mountain California than the 550 acres of Disney in California, though these aren't hard numbers.

I do want to leave wiggle room for omake writers to do their own thing, but how I imagine things for the park (especially since it's something with wiggle room) is largely pulling on the canon "L.A.P.D.O.G. Ozzyland suggestions pt.1" omake minus America Land and all of the second/third gate with maybe a few attractions or locales a little different (to give some room to omake writers to not need to read everything written and check it one to one if they want to do something a little different). There is room to add in additional rides, stores and attractions than what was in the omake.

Jonasquinn got in the ground floor and I liked the basis for the park so I'm loosely using his canon omake as the backbone of the park and leaving some things ambiguous so people can fill in additional details if they want to write about it. Does that make sense?

I apologize if it's not really an in depth exploration of Ozzyland, but I do want to leave room open for omake writers rather than defining everything myself.

Edit: It's probably smaller than actual Six Flags Magic Mountain but Ozzyland is much bigger than a place like Knotts Berry Farm (yes that is a theme park in California with a Snoopy theme).

Edit #2: I have ideas for locations and bathroom placement and staff uniforms and potential merch sold, but I don't want to make statements that would limit omake writers too much. Maybe I'll write an omake set there, but for now I want to leave it largely ambiguous what's there. In terms of relevant details, it's a decently sized park located on good real estate that generates a solid amount of revenue. No one's flying to Alexandria from say Italy to go there, but if someone's already headed to Northern California with a family, they'll probably go visit.
 
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King crimson said:
No. I'm probably not giving additional bonuses immediately, there'd likely need to be some other character developing action to raise the stats further.

Additionally as a general rule the higher a stat is the harder it is to raise. If you dump all of your boost into Marie's diplomacy to the point where it's at 43, you'll have a very, very difficult time raising it higher. It's not a hard limit, but it means that even if I were giving additional boosts, I wouldn't give boosts to already exorbitantly high stats.
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That's fair, if a little odd from a narrative perspective. After all the main reason that Marie has such an abysmal Martial score is because of her childlike body so it would be somewhat strange for it to stay the same when she has an adult body, never mind one made out of metal.
King crimson said:
No one's flying to Alexandria from say Italy to go there, but if someone's already headed to Northern California with a family, they'll probably go visit.
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So you're telling me… we have more work to do.
 
jonasquinn said:
That's fair, if a little odd from a narrative perspective. After all the main reason that Marie has such an abysmal Martial score is because of her childlike body so it would be somewhat strange for it to stay the same when she has an adult body, never mind one made out of metal.
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It's generally a balancing thing.

You can poke at the narrative fiat a little bit because of it but I don't think it's a huge stretch to not have stats move besides the points you get to allocate, especially since it can get messy gameplay wise (for example if it automatically raised to a baseline martial, it would always be suboptimal to spend points on martial more than any other stat).
 
King crimson said:
It's generally a balancing thing.

You can poke at the narrative fiat a little bit because of it but I don't think it's a huge stretch to not have stats move besides the points you get to allocate, especially since it can get messy gameplay wise (for example if it automatically raised to a baseline martial, it would always be suboptimal to spend points on martial more than any other stat).
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The stats allocation comes from Fixit's trait and is not inherent in the robotic conversion itself. In other words, the conversion itself doesn't offer any statistical benefits or shifts and the benefits from it come purely from the fact that it's Fixit specifically who is doing it.
 
WheelOfTime said:
The stats allocation comes from Fixit's trait and is not inherent in the robotic conversion itself. In other words, the conversion itself doesn't offer any statistical benefits or shifts and the benefits from it come purely from the fact that it's Fixit specifically who is doing it.
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Not quite. Robotic conversion can provide statistical benefits or shifts. I'm just not going to give them to you and give you the Fixit specific benefit at the same time.

I may have phrased things poorly, and I apologize for that, but generally speaking the more correct way to put things is there's no statistical benefits or shifts from a guaranteed auto-success via Fixit. If you attempt robotic conversion without Fixit's traits kicking in, there are likely going to be a few statistical shifts, though likely not incredible ones.
 
King crimson said:
It's generally a balancing thing.

You can poke at the narrative fiat a little bit because of it but I don't think it's a huge stretch to not have stats move besides the points you get to allocate, especially since it can get messy gameplay wise (for example if it automatically raised to a baseline martial, it would always be suboptimal to spend points on martial more than any other stat).
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While I definitely understand the reasoning and don't really mind it I also can't quite agree with the idea that it would make spending points on Martial suboptimal.

For example, let's say that after undergoing robotic conversion Marie's Martial was automatically boosted to 10 that doesn't necessarily make spending more points in it suboptimal because if WHATS e want is someone with a higher Martial it could just be that whatever points we spend on it are in addition to that boost. Similarly in a more likely scenario if Marie being happier would increase her Diplomacy slightly that wouldn't necessarily have to come out of the points we spend but rather be in addition to them.

Again I completely understand having that not be the case for balance reasons I'm just making the point that I don't think the suboptimal example really works.
 
jonasquinn said:
While I definitely understand the reasoning and don't really mind it I also can't quite agree with the idea that it would make spending points on Martial suboptimal.

For example, let's say that after undergoing robotic conversion Marie's Martial was automatically boosted to 10 that doesn't necessarily make spending more points in it suboptimal because if WHATS e want is someone with a higher Martial it could just be that whatever points we spend on it are in addition to that boost. Similarly in a more likely scenario if Marie being happier would increase her Diplomacy slightly that wouldn't necessarily have to come out of the points we spend but rather be in addition to them.

Again I completely understand having that not be the case for balance reasons I'm just making the point that I don't think the suboptimal example really works.
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To clarify, what I was thinking was if you got to allocate the points and only after the points did the automatic boost kick in.

For example if the automatic boost to Marie's martial to 10 occurred after you spent the points, then every point spending the martial to 10, was a point you could have spent elsewhere and gotten the same result. That would make spending points on martial suboptimal because you'd need burn points achieving nothing for a bit. That's what I meant when I said that.

Admittedly it's a pretty specific interpretation informed by a very strict definition of "on top of that" (meaning points first then automatic boosts no matter what), and the statement is wrong regardless, but I think my example is internally consistent and makes sense in isolation, even if the "suboptimal" issue can be fixed without much fuss.

Edit: I feel like a bit of a pedantic asshole here, but what I'm basically saying is, I think the example doesn't work in a different way from what you are pointing out here, and that in isolation it makes sense how it could be a problem (it just also has a very easy and obvious solution).
 
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Additionally sorry for the double post but I wanted to give a quick status update on things. I'm most of the way through the update already. Unfortunately the remaining section is currently the hardest for me to write and I fear it'll be a struggle. I'll do my best to get it out by tomorrow but I wouldn't bank on it. I should at least get you guys a teaser out, and I'll definitely have something light, low effort and fun up tomorrow.
 
So this is meant to be something fun for you guys. I ultimately settled on giving a brief description of Cassandra's exclusive living area. This is obviously subject to change but I don't think I've ever really meaningfully described how Cassandra's living area looks. I've touched on it a bit but I think it might be interesting to expand on.

Cassandra's room is very big and spacious. There are no windows in it but it is large enough that the multiple doors connecting to it are fairly spaced apart. Cassandra's room connects to the shared living space with Lex, her own private bathroom, her own private gym, and her walk-in closet. The walls of her room are largely black, with some little purple filigree here and there and the flooring is largely a deep purple carpet.

At the end furthest from the door to the shared living area is a large black canopy bed that Cassandra makes use of. The bed is probably large enough that most adults could raise their hands over their head, lie down on it, and never touch either end of the bed. The canopy bed also has lights affixed to the frame at key points and a remote so that Cassandra can functionally have reading lights at multiple places within the bed. Additionally Cassandra has a large dresser chest that she keeps near her bed and stores a wide variety of objects in.

Several bookshelves line the walls of Cassandra's room, with most of them being filled primarily with various kinds of textbooks, including a few in different languages. Cassandra doesn't really read all that much for fun but she does have books so that she can look up and study things as necessary whilst also having them double as props or impromptu weapons if need be.

The doors to her private bathroom runs parallel to her bedframe, but are not the furthest they could possibly be (they are 90 degrees from the doors to the shared living area which is as far as possible from the bed). The double doors are fairly lightly weighted and have door handles. The bathroom is spacious and well lit, with it having bright lights that activate automatically when something moves in there. Cassandra keeps a large laundry hamper near the doors where she puts dirty laundry in before depositing her laundry somewhere else so that someone else can take care of things. The bathroom has black marble tiling for the floor and a large white counter wherein there are two sinks and a number of cupboards. Above the counter is a mirror that Cassandra can see her face in as well as a contraption with numerous arms and mirrors attached so she can see her head from multiple angles.

By the sink closer to the door Cassandra keeps her toothbrush, a mug, floss, a large box with a number of cosmetic products and some deodorant. By the sink closer to the toilet on the far end of the room, Cassandra keeps a number of hand soaps and maybe a few skin care products. The toilet has its own door that can be closed and locked for additional privacy.

Cassandra's bathroom contains a large walk-in shower which is surrounded by glass paneling and has multiple showerheads, controlled by a number of nobs, and a large tub that besides working as a bath has jacuzzi like features. I imagine that Cassandra keeps soap and hair care products near both.

Returning back to her main room, if you head further down the wall you'd get to Cassandra's walk-in closet. Cassandra's closet is big enough that you could comfortably slide her bed into it and still be able to make your way from one end to the other without ever touching the bed. In addition to clothes and shoes, Cassandra keeps a number of backpacks, purses, handbags and more types of backs in said closet. The backside of the doors to said closet are covered in mirrors so Cassandra can see how she looks wearing any given outfit using said mirrors.

Returning once more to Cassandra's bedroom/main room on the side away from the bathroom and closet is Cassandra's desk and a number of cabinets. Once more Cassandra stores a large amount of objects in the cabinets but notably she keeps a large collection of animal skulls, ranging from hippo to bear to anaconda to wolf fish, to marabou stork and more.

Cassandra's desk proper is a large dark metal desk with a cut out of level stone flooring near it where Cassandra keeps her chair. Cassandra keeps several knives on her desk, only nominally excused as letter openers, as well as a state of the art personal computer with a large monitor that she doesn't really make too much use of. Cassandra has several dozen notebooks, a large number of fountain pens, pencils, markers and highlighters, a stapler, a pair of scissors, a printer and a copier.
 
So I feel kind of terrible about the speed at which I've been getting things out. I'm likely to be fairly busy until the 26th so I'm not confident I'll get the update out before then. I'll do my best but make no promises. Thank you all for your patience and understanding.
 
King crimson said:
So I feel kind of terrible about the speed at which I've been getting things out. I'm likely to be fairly busy until the 26th so I'm not confident I'll get the update out before then. I'll do my best but make no promises. Thank you all for your patience and understanding.
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Don't worry about it man, slow and steady win the race and real life obviously takes priority.

Take all the time you need.
 
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a lot of time passed since this quest started and lots of people came and went and theres a lot of retrospective. my question is if looking back at things you guys would've taken different deciscions knowing what you know and how things panned out and if so what?
 
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