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

[Kkutlord]

[ ] go green make lex corp Eco friendly

I don't know what to write in for that. solar panels maybe and it might get Ra's of our backs for a while at least.

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Oh right, we actually should devote some actions related to "saving mother Earth". Pamela Isley is clearly the real talent, Anthony is just a supervillain-in-the-making who'll disappointingly squander his potential by becoming Evil Mega Man.

We should also secure Lucy Lane's loyalty, and given how Lois just made Santa Prisca a problem... Okay, we should definitely deal with Santa Prisca for Turn 3, before they start regularly employing Venom.

 

[QueenPally]

I can see Lex being somewhat interested in environmental conservation; after all, Earth is where he keeps his stuff.

 

[tri2]

I can see Lex being somewhat interested in environmental conservation; after all, Earth is where he keeps his stuff.

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or entire farms dedicated to growing rare expensive trees to sell, harvest, etc. lots of medicinal/recreational plants, and tax cuts. mass produce rapid growing GMO food to give wholesale to the poor for PR.

 

[King crimson]

The Lucy Lane interlude was daunting with the lack of paragraph breaks. I broke it up to make it easier to read (and may have tossed in some commas, everyone loves commas). Sorry for jumping in and back seat editing, but the first thing I thought at that interlude was: Dang that's a dense chunk of text.

Spoiler: Lucy Lane Paragraph breaks

Lucy Lane
Being the younger of the two Lane sisters was always a little frustrating. No matter how hard she tried she could never escape her big sister's shadow. Her teachers and peers and even her mother always wanted her to be more like Lois when they were growing up. Everyone except dear old daddy, who honestly was more disappointed that he didn't have any boys than he was disappointed in Lucy specifically, preferred Lois to her.

Honestly it was enough to breed a little resentment in a girl. Don't get her wrong, Lucy still loved her sister she just wished that she could be known as something other than "Lois Lane's younger more disappointing sister". The worst part was that even after they grew older she still couldn't escape Lois' shadow.

Take recently, for example. Lucy had managed to pass the bar exam and find work in an excellent firm (Siegel and Shuster were the premier business law firm in Metropolis) and was hoping to make a name for herself. The firm had recently been acquired by Mr. Luthor and there were bound to be monumental cases in any endeavor he was involved in. She was on the ground floor of something incredible. Sure Lois disliked the man but Lucy never really got that and honestly neither did the average person on the street. But of course Lois had to go and make things harder for Lucy again.

Lois had gone to Santa Prisca to investigate the crimes going on in that dictatorship. With the information she had gained during her investigation Lois had gone on to write a pulitzer prize winning article about the horrific crimes being committed by the regime there including but not limited to human experimentation and locking up babies in prisons for adults for the crimes of their parents.

Lucy was of course horrified at what had happened in the small country but she wondered why Lois couldn't have kept things secret and reported her findings to dad. Sure, dad was a bit of a jerk but he would take care of human rights violations and solve the problem. Instead, Lois had to go and blab the truth to the whole world and now Sant Prisca had locked down and the regime had grown harsher. The whole country went silent and Lucy wouldn't be surprised if the country was gearing up to fight a defensive war.

Yet, while Lucy could see the flaws in Lois' approach and how it might have made conditions worse, everyone else had nothing but heaps of praise for Lois about how brave she was and how exposing the truth was the right thing to do. And now with her credibility at an all time high Lois was most likely going to try and investigate Luthor to find what was wrong with him. Lucy was not going to let Lois pull the rug out from under her. Luthor was her chance to be something more than Lois' inferior little sister and if Lois was inadvertently going to ruin Lucy's chances of being viewed as her own person the Lucy was going to take steps to stop her.

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@King crimson: So how many XP Points are actually floating around for people to use? There doesn't seem to be an Informational keeping track of that, and it makes it difficult for us to plan how to pool our XP together.

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I'll get on editing the interlude and making that informational post once I am off work and have access to a computer. Expect the stuff at around 7:00 pm PST.

 

[King crimson]

[ ] go green make lex corp Eco friendly

I don't know what to write in for that. solar panels maybe and it might get Ra's of our backs for a while at least.

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This one is only rejected because I already planned on putting it on the next vote

 

[Warmach1ne32]

@King crimson: So how many XP Points are actually floating around for people to use? There doesn't seem to be an Informational keeping track of that, and it makes it difficult for us to plan how to pool our XP together.

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It is mentioned in the character sheet

Here are a lot write-ins I come up with
[ ] Save the Rainforest (to find a possible new drug and profit, Roll to get new drug and increase Pamela SL)
[ ] Hydroponics Research (the new farming method)
[ ] Lex Pharmaceuticals (with some of Pamela's already identified plants as a base for new drugs)
[ ] Construct Metropolis Greenhouse (for Pamela to keep more exotic plants in the Lex Corp section, along with some extra money from tourism, once we got construction company)
[ ] Research higher yield plants for Lex Farms
[ ] Construct Lex Farms (once we got Construction company)
[ ] Research Vegan Meat Substitute (South East Asia have a local vegan food that is high in protein made of deep fried blocks of fermented beans {Tempe}, the Vegans will probably like it solely because it isn't raw vegetable salad)
[ ] Recycling Research
[ ] Compost Fertilizer Production from City Trash

I'll also put my 500XP to Luthor's Diplomacy

 

[Kkutlord]

It is mentioned in the character sheet

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I meant XP for us to spend, not the XP that has already been used. I know I have 100 XP, but 27 pages with no immediate identifier makes it difficult for me to figure out who still has XP & how much of it.

Speaking of, I'm all for either increasing Diplomacy or Learning, but prefer waiting until I know we can get a point now. Diplomacy so we can counter Lois' biased attacks on us, and Learning so Anthony isn't actually better than us at it. Seriously, I hope we're just using him for AMAZO, he is a bad look for us...

 

[tri2]

I meant XP for us to spend, not the XP that has already been used. I know I have 100 XP, but 27 pages with no immediate identifier makes it difficult for me to figure out who still has XP & how much of it.

Speaking of, I'm all for either increasing Diplomacy or Learning, but prefer waiting until I know we can get a point now. Diplomacy so we can counter Lois' biased attacks on us, and Learning so Anthony isn't actually better than us at it. Seriously, I hope we're just using him for AMAZO, he is a bad look for us...

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just keep him underground in a lab, he would likely prefer it that way

 

[Nystical]

[] build casino hotel in las vegas
[] build production facilities in Nevada
[] buy real estate in nevada for solar panels

[] get tax break / money from government of Nevada & nearby states for renewable energy

 

[Redhead222]

[x] [LoS] Interrogate the captured assassins
[x] [LoS] Turn in the captured assassins to the authorities
[x] [Party] Attend the party
[x] [Interview] Skip the interview

lex lutor hide? why?

the assassin failed of course he would flaunt that.
also why would he give this reporter that been nothing but trouble the time of day?

 

[Kkutlord]

just keep him underground in a lab, he would likely prefer it that way

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I mean, he's really only good for robotics and even then Will Magnus would of been just as good. Better actually, since he was a student of T.O. Morrow and not a morally disgusting person. Seriously, Pamela Isley is amazingly brilliant and driven.

But back to the robotics: Sure it has plenty of uses and applications, such as mechanical labor and drones. Yet Anthony's specialty is Amazo, whose whole thing is Power Copying. Which, yeah, sounds amazing but... that means actually finding abilities worth copying.

Plus, I'm incredibly wary of us actually making "Full Body Cyborgs" a thing. That's just asking for some Transhuman Treachery, and it would become a popular method for creating super-soldiers. Given how morally bankrupt DC governments and Supervillains/Criminals can be...

It disgusts me there's only two sensible options: Either hoard the Amazo technology, or install kill-switches that could potentially get exploited or removed by smart criminals.

Ultimately, Anthony is only useful for the Amazo tech, and the Amazo tech specifically is only good for mass-applying superpowers... most of which don't have socially useful applications.

Seriously, copying the Canary Cry is only good for making sonic weaponry and copying Super-Strength or Super-Speed is mainly limited to construction & transportation related fields.

Sure, copying the Flash means we could make physics-defying planes and bullet trains that allow people to visit every country in one day... Certainly nothing to sneeze at, but ultimately it just makes things faster to save time.

Hmm... copying Superman and the Flash would revolutionize space exploration though, even making it feasible for people to visit other planets... Still, while it does have actually ridiculous potential to revolutionize the world (assuming you scan the right targets), we also have to be very careful Amazo tech doesn't get into criminal hands.

... We're going to have to be very careful with Anthony. Whatever, once he invents Amazo, we'll just prevent him from uploading himself. Dude would only use it for supervilliany anyways, like he cares about revolutionizing the world.

 

[Nystical]

We will need some intrigue stuff to prepare for when we backstab Ivo.

Recruiting an assassin? Preparing an accident to pass off his death as a result of his own failures in his research?

 

[tri2]

I mean, he's really only good for robotics and even then Will Magnus would of been just as good. Better actually, since he was a student of T.O. Morrow and not a morally disgusting person. Seriously, Pamela Isley is amazingly brilliant and driven.

But back to the robotics: Sure it has plenty of uses and applications, such as mechanical labor and drones. Yet Anthony's specialty is Amazo, whose whole thing is Power Copying. Which, yeah, sounds amazing but... that means actually finding abilities worth copying.

Plus, I'm incredibly wary of us actually making "Full Body Cyborgs" a thing. That's just asking for some Transhuman Treachery, and it would become a popular method for creating super-soldiers. Given how morally bankrupt DC governments and Supervillains/Criminals can be...

It disgusts me there's only two sensible options: Either hoard the Amazo technology, or install kill-switches that could potentially get exploited or removed by smart criminals.

Ultimately, Anthony is only useful for the Amazo tech, and the Amazo tech specifically is only good for mass-applying superpowers... most of which don't have socially useful applications.

Seriously, copying the Canary Cry is only good for making sonic weaponry and copying Super-Strength or Super-Speed is mainly limited to construction & transportation related fields.

Sure, copying the Flash means we could make physics-defying planes and bullet trains that allow people to visit every country in one day... Certainly nothing to sneeze at, but ultimately it just makes things faster to save time.

Hmm... copying Superman and the Flash would revolutionize space exploration though, even making it feasible for people to visit other planets... Still, while it does have actually ridiculous potential to revolutionize the world (assuming you scan the right targets), we also have to be very careful Amazo tech doesn't get into criminal hands.

... We're going to have to be very careful with Anthony. Whatever, once he invents Amazo, we'll just prevent him from uploading himself. Dude would only use it for supervilliany anyways, like he cares about revolutionizing the world.

Click to shrink...

or, make machine that scans and copies power, then create/copy nanites with specific powers from the machine that we can sell, essentially mass produce and sell temporary super powers (make nanites degrade over time)
sell brute and mover powers to cops and construction workers, intellect powers to academics, etc etc or just sell to governments

 

[Kkutlord]

or, make machine that scans and copies power, then create/copy nanites with specific powers from the machine that we can sell, essentially mass produce and sell temporary super powers (make nanites degrade over time)
sell brute and mover powers to cops and construction workers, intellect powers to academics, etc etc or just sell to governments

Click to shrink...

No, that's just asking for all kinds of problems making superpowers a commercial product. For one, we'll have to constantly fend off people wanting free superpowers. Two, the geniuses out there would figure out a way to make it permanent.

If we're going to commercialize superpowers, then it is by exclusively keeping it to technology. So we'll sell super-fast cars but never Super-Speed pills, so that way nobody ever gets that rush of personal true power.

Furthermore, if we commercialize the application of Amazo tech, then we have to make sure it doesn't actually have power copying potential anywhere. Keep it exclusively to specifically programmed functions, so that way nobody could jury-rig a Power Copying super-suit.

 

[tri2]

No, that's just asking for all kinds of problems making superpowers a commercial product. For one, we'll have to constantly fend off people wanting free superpowers. Two, the geniuses out there would figure out a way to make it permanent.

If we're going to commercialize superpowers, then it is by exclusively keeping it to technology. So we'll sell super-fast cars but never Super-Speed pills, so that way nobody ever gets that rush of personal true power.

Furthermore, if we commercialize the application of Amazo tech, then we have to make sure it doesn't actually have power copying potential anywhere. Keep it exclusively to specifically programmed functions, so that way nobody could jury-rig a Power Copying super-suit.

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nah power copy function only for Luthor. Bow before your new Overlord, for God is now beneath him!

Spoiler

 

[Trondason]

For T1 criminals, they're not worth our time. We can help bankroll the cops, and provide equipment, but at the end of the day, crime will always be around. Sure we can have plants, moles, etc. on the police force, but focusing on this as a priority takes away from more important things.

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I feel that is very short sighted. Your average person might not be able to put an end to crime, but we are Lex Luthor. I feel we DO have the means to put the end to "low level" crime. And all we'd have to do to do so, is do stuff we would anyways. Take over the city. If we own the ports, we'll make them so advanced that nothing will get by them that we don't want to, rather putting a end to smuggling by sea. If we do Construction and Security, we can put listening devices and security in every building, making it next to impossible to do anything without our knowing of it. There is the question of processing all that information, but again, we are Lex Luthor, we can make an AI of decent enough skill to recognize when a crime is happening and notify a human operative. And so on and so forth. Every aspect of the city we aquire, crime ceases to exist there, till we own everything.

Let me explain what you are fundamentaly getting wrong.
This isn't about money, we don't care about money, Lex doesn't care about money, the quest doesn't track money and if you think earning money is a primary reason for anything at any point you are wrong and should stop

The reasons to take over the criminal empire are twofold. POWER and CONTROL.

Need something smugled ? Done.
Someone being dificult ? Acidents happen.
Need test subjects ? Grab a couple undesirables.

The criminal element are deniable assets to act our will and that is POWER.

Now see you can't end crime, there will always be a dark side of of the city, things happening in the shadows. You can't end it.
But if we own crime we know when things happen, we decide what happens and nothing happens whitout our knowledge or say-so.
And so we CONTROL the night just as we aim to control the day , to make ALL of Metropolis ours.

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Thing is, we don't need to become a Mob Boss to do that. Doing so would actually make things harder on us. Real Life Companies find ways to deal with all those things without becoming directly affiliated with a crime family after all.

 

[Warmach1ne32]

Super powers I'd want copied for Lex to use/profit
- Superman's Invulnerable armor or force field
- Green Lantern's Insta weapon
- Flash's Speed Force can be used in many applications involving Transportation
- Wonder woman, Martian Manhunter, Superman or any other flight capable hero's flight method for personal jet packs to be installed in our robot army or power armor
- Can Amazo copy magic, if so this might give us access to magic
- Martian Shapeshifting body suit for Infiltration/ invisibility
- Ray Palmer's atomic shrink powers
- Get Bane's Venom just by analyzing him
- Static Shock's near free infinite energy
- Cryo tech from Ice Villains
- Energy weapons from Starfire's plasma to Superman's lasers

All of this is after reading a list of DC characters. If we can get Amazo to be our champion, a lot of threats including Superman becomes manageable. Thanagarian invasion? Meet Army of Amazos. We just need to make sure that it only has basic programming so it doesn't gain sentience, kill Ivo before he can transfer over by cutting out the power to his section of the lab and then have Mercy shot him in the head.

 

[King crimson]

[ ] Save the Rainforest (to find a possible new drug and profit, Roll to get new drug and increase Pamela SL)
[ ] Hydroponics Research (the new farming method)
[ ] Lex Pharmaceuticals (with some of Pamela's already identified plants as a base for new drugs)
[ ] Construct Metropolis Greenhouse (for Pamela to keep more exotic plants in the Lex Corp section, along with some extra money from tourism, once we got construction company)
[ ] Research higher yield plants for Lex Farms
[ ] Construct Lex Farms (once we got Construction company)
[ ] Research Vegan Meat Substitute (South East Asia have a local vegan food that is high in protein made of deep fried blocks of fermented beans {Tempe}, the Vegans will probably like it solely because it isn't raw vegetable salad)
[ ] Recycling Research
[ ] Compost Fertilizer Production from City Trash

Click to shrink...

Rainforest, hydroponics, vegan meat sub and compost accepted write-ins giving 400 exp

 

[tri2]

[ ] Creation of robot workers (Roll for success and Ivo SL)
[ ] Creation of combat robots (Roll for success and Ivo SL)
[ ] Creation of surveillance robots (Roll for success and Ivo SL)
[ ] Creation of infiltration robots (Roll for success and Ivo SL)
[ ] Creation of construction robots (Roll for success and Ivo SL)

provides boost to relevant actions upon completion? such as construction company gets permanent +5 boost to its rolls with construction robots done?

 

[Warmach1ne32]

Rainforest, hydroponics, vegan meat sub and compost accepted write-ins giving 400 exp

Click to shrink...

I'll add 400XP to Diplomacy = 900XP in Diplomacy

 

[King crimson]

[ ] Creation of robot workers (Roll for success and Ivo SL)
[ ] Creation of combat robots (Roll for success and Ivo SL)
[ ] Creation of surveillance robots (Roll for success and Ivo SL)
[ ] Creation of infiltration robots (Roll for success and Ivo SL)
[ ] Creation of construction robots (Roll for success and Ivo SL)

provides boost to relevant actions upon completion? such as construction company gets permanent +5 boost to its rolls with construction robots done?

Click to shrink...

All of these are rejected since I had plans for them

 

[King crimson]

[] build casino hotel in las vegas
[] build production facilities in Nevada
[] buy real estate in nevada for solar panels

[] get tax break / money from government of Nevada & nearby states for renewable energy

Click to shrink...

This falls into the buy land option and the subvotes that would ensue so this write-in is rejected.

 

[Kkutlord]

I'll add 400XP to Diplomacy = 900XP in Diplomacy

Click to shrink...

@King crimson: Would this be accurate, and if so is it for Lex? If true, then I'd like to toss my 100 XP at Diplomacy as well.

 

[Erumpet]

got a write in
[] Develop hair growth formula

could we create a world were Lex has hair?

 

[Revan4221X]

I mean, he's really only good for robotics and even then Will Magnus would of been just as good. Better actually, since he was a student of T.O. Morrow and not a morally disgusting person. Seriously, Pamela Isley is amazingly brilliant and driven.

But back to the robotics: Sure it has plenty of uses and applications, such as mechanical labor and drones. Yet Anthony's specialty is Amazo, whose whole thing is Power Copying. Which, yeah, sounds amazing but... that means actually finding abilities worth copying.

Plus, I'm incredibly wary of us actually making "Full Body Cyborgs" a thing. That's just asking for some Transhuman Treachery, and it would become a popular method for creating super-soldiers. Given how morally bankrupt DC governments and Supervillains/Criminals can be...

It disgusts me there's only two sensible options: Either hoard the Amazo technology, or install kill-switches that could potentially get exploited or removed by smart criminals.

Ultimately, Anthony is only useful for the Amazo tech, and the Amazo tech specifically is only good for mass-applying superpowers... most of which don't have socially useful applications.

Seriously, copying the Canary Cry is only good for making sonic weaponry and copying Super-Strength or Super-Speed is mainly limited to construction & transportation related fields.

Sure, copying the Flash means we could make physics-defying planes and bullet trains that allow people to visit every country in one day... Certainly nothing to sneeze at, but ultimately it just makes things faster to save time.

Hmm... copying Superman and the Flash would revolutionize space exploration though, even making it feasible for people to visit other planets... Still, while it does have actually ridiculous potential to revolutionize the world (assuming you scan the right targets), we also have to be very careful Amazo tech doesn't get into criminal hands.

... We're going to have to be very careful with Anthony. Whatever, once he invents Amazo, we'll just prevent him from uploading himself. Dude would only use it for supervilliany anyways, like he cares about revolutionizing the world.

Click to shrink...

Did you forget we are Lex Luthor? He is capable of being unstoppable. Hell the writers had to find a way to get rid of him so there would actually be some kind of threat, and that solution was dumb when Amazo could have just punched Grundy's head clean off.