But that could leave a lot of potential evidence behind, or just as bad, lack of evidence towards the fake cause of death. We've got the attention and suspicion of people capable of investigation.
But that could leave a lot of potential evidence behind, or just as bad, lack of evidence towards the fake cause of death. We've got the attention and suspicion of people capable of investigation.
Maybe we will add autopilot into those hover vehicles, why pay for city surveillance when you can sell the cameras as extra security features. People gladly trade privacy for convenience.
Wait, don't I have some exp? I thought I had 200 exp. Also, did the Amazon options end up being condensed/combined into one or was the Amazon marketplace the only new option (and renting internet infrastructure to sell/rent fall under something else)?
Maybe we will add autopilot into those hover vehicles, why pay for city surveillance when you can sell the cameras as extra security features. People gladly trade privacy for convenience.
Extend this service model to everything we do. I mean, it works for Google. Yes we're harvesting your data in masse, and we're using it to make life great for you!
Hover tracks! - Make train lines that have multiple 'stories' to make train stations a lot more space efficient and cheaper because of the lower land size requirement.
Vote is now closed. The update will be out in ten minute tops. Its a doozy and its one of the first times Lex gets to show his nasty side as well as revealing the twist with the assassination attempt.
We learn about computers, and with Ivo build an AI. Convince him to use his mind as a template so the AI has his knowledge while we modify it to be more pleasant (Obedient) to us.
Later we can decide to upload AI Ivo into a robot that looks like him if we need him for public appearances or just claim that he's a shut-in after we 'dealt' with him.
That way we have all of his knowledge on robotics and computers without worrying about his possible/very likely betrayal.
So this interlude got dark at times and showed off some of Luthor's traits that make him a villain (in comics). I hope this one was still enjoyable. At the end of the interlude I included an outline for an experimental type of voting I am calling speech voting. I hope you find the mechanic interesting and interactive. If it works and is liked I'll bring it back after this but if it is not successful I'll retire it here.
The winning votes were
[ ] attend the interview
[ ] skip the party
[ ] Lex-Phone
[ ]Interrogate the captured assassins
[ ]Turn over the captured assassins to the authorities
Here is the interlude
Interlude: Hateful declarations
Alan Gibbons As a kid Alan used to think ninja's were cool. He viewed them as these supercool badass warriors with a code of honor and an ancient tradition. Then he met actual ninjas at his job as a LexCorp Security Enforcer (and wasn't that a semi-ominous name) and he learned that real ninjas are assholes.
He and his buddy Dave had been trying to get something useful out of the fourteen assassins captured last week. What they actually succeeded in getting was a bunch of curses being spewed at them in a variety of languages that neither Alan nor Dave understood (and really that kind of undermined the whole point of insulting them in the first place. If Dave and Alan couldn't understand it then they couldn't take offence. The assassins could say " 'Ant Muhbil" all they wanted he wasn't going to understand why being called an antmobile was particularly insulting.), being told that their boss was a blot upon the world and that their efforts were in vain since they'd never turn on the great Ra's al Ghul.
Alan honestly just wanted to go home and take a nice long shower and be done with this. Dave looks ten years older than when they started this interrogation. They had gotten no results and the boss was insanely pissed off by these assassins attempt at killing him. Alan couldn't really fault him for that, no one appreciated having someone try to kill him. What Alan was worried about was that when Lex Luthor really truly got mad, heads started to roll both literally and figuratively. Alan wanted to be as far away from the chopping block as possible. In his desperation he had even tried torturing the prisoners despite knowing that answers gained through torture were unreliable. He still got nothing but insults and mockery. Alan desperately wanted more time to try and give a tangible result that would keep him safely out of harm's way.
Unfortunately the boss himself had headed down to the interrogation room himself accompanied by Mercy (who had a name Alan might have told her was incredibly ironic if he wasn't so very terrified of angering her). Alan was not prepared for this at all and Dave looked like he wanted to bolt at any moment. Grunts like him and Dave never had to interact with the boss and they definitely never had to deliver bad news to him in person. Just having to tell Mercy that you failed was bad enough but there were rumors that Lionel Luthor had infamously strangled workers who delivered him bad news and Alan had no desire to see if the apple fell far from the tree when it came to his boss.
"Have you gotten anything from the prisoners?" the boss rumbled out in a growly sonorous tone. Alan idly wondered, as he tried to find some way to delay and deflect telling the boss that he and Dave had nothing, if this was how a wounded antelope felt right before a tiger tore out it's throat. Alan tried to find someone who he could pass on the need to deliver bad news to the boss. Dave looked like he was seconds away from wetting himself and Mercy seemed to be quietly snickering at the sheer fear the pair of enforcers were feeling. Well it was all up to Alan to deliver the news.
"Well, um you see it's all been a very delicate complicated process and uh, while we haven't got a, um solid result as of yet we have err begun laying out groundwork. Uh for success l-later on down the line. Y-you know how these things are right?" Alan attempted to prevaricate. The boss had a rather wry grin on his face.
"You have nothing"
The tone was flat and level but it terrified and chilled Alan to his very core. This was the Luthor the world didn't get to see and honestly Alan wished he didn't have to see it.
"Well uh I wouldn't quite put it like that.." Alan tried to salvage this trainwreck of a conversation. The boss didn't buy it at all.
"Well, I'll tell you how I would put it." Luthor said as he calmly walked closer to Alan. Alan's heart was beating so hard he fought it might jump out of his chest. Dave had turned as pale as a ghost.
"You. Have. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Do I need to put it in other words to comprehend exactly how you have failed in what I asked of you? Because I remember ordering the prisoners to be interrogated which means I expect something to come out of their mouths." Luthor said his voice increasing into a booming crescendo. He wasn't quite yelling but his voice was practically echoing in the small cell (actually just a storage basement that doubled as a cell. Every room in LexCorp tower doubled as a cell) the prisoners were kept in. Alan felt as though Luthor had already consigned him to death. At that moment one of the prisoners decided to get cheeky and blithely said to Luthor " 'Ant muhbil".
Lex calmly yet swiftly pulled out a handgun and shot the snarky assassin squarely between the eyes.
Dave flinched as the gun went off and the assassins brains splattered against the wall. Alan was desperate to come out of this one in one piece.
"Please sir don't strangle us for having failed you and I swear we'll make it up to you somehow" Alan plaintively pleaded out of panic. He didn't want to die via strangulation at his bosses hands.
Dave fainted from the sheer terror of having had his coworker ask his boss how just killed a man not to strangle them to death. Mercy burst out into loud guffaws finding mirth in the ridiculousness of Alan's plea. Luthor just stared at him with the driest most judgemental and sardonic look before replying. "It was my father's raisone d'tere to pointlessly waste lives in childish temper tantrums. I'd like to think I'm a better man than him".
Alan let out a sigh of relief. He was alright. He was going to be alright.
"I'd like you to watch how to interrogate someone" Luthor interrupted.
Alan paled and all of his relief came crashing down. He wasn't out quite yet.
"Where are you from?" Luthor asked the nearest still living assassin. The man refused to answer the boss remaining as still as a statue. Luthor then ordered Mercy to shoot the furthest assassin from him in a non-fatal area. She promptly complied.
Again Luthor asked "Where are you from?" and again the assassin refused to answer and again the furthest assassin from Luthor was shot by Mercy in a non-fatal area. This repeated several times. When the assassin eventually succumbed to the blood loss and their injuries Mercy merely moved on to shooting the next furthest assassin.
Again and again and again Luthor asked "Where are you from?" in his calm, even voice which was somehow still perceptible over the howls of pain. Alan was terrified. When only five assassins were left alive the man who was asked the question broke. He whispered in the quiet haunted voice of a man utterly defeated two words "Nanda Parbat" before collapsing.
Lex Luthor smugly then reveals that it only took him about half an hour what Alan and Dave couldn't accomplish in a week. He then assigned Mercy to sedate the remaining living people assassins "for their own good" and dispose of the corpses left behind of those killed when they were "threatening his employees". He was going to turn over the assassins to the authorities and use the attack and the buildings swift defense against the attack to build sympathy for his person and serve as an advertisement for his weapons and defenses. After all every and any opportunity should be exploited in the boss' world.
Alan was glad the boss didn't really care about him and Dave and that he wanted to maintain a good image. A Lex Luthor who didn't want to be seen as a hero was a monster Alan wasn't sure anyone on this earth could match.
Ra's Al Ghul Ra's al Ghul was an old man. He was ancient having lived a long and storied life since the time of the crusades. He had seen empires rise and fall, people come and go and borne witness to countless ineffable miracles and horrors.
Thus when Lex Luthor became a world figure he hadn't been to interested. The Demon's head had seen the kind of man countless times across the centuries, a man with a brilliant mind whose hubris and vanity caused his soul to grow twisted as he gorged himself on the earth's resources in order to sate his own corporeal desires.
This had not been anything new. These Lex-phones were an interesting trinket that show-cased both its creators ego and his genius. As much as Ra's despised the avaricious consumerist market these trinkets fostered he understood that killing Luthor would do nothing to help create the eden Ra's so desired to one day see come to fruition. Mankind had already been seduced by luxury, comfort and excess to the point where the well was inherently poisoned. Even if Luthor never made the situation worse mankind would still inevitably spiral into self-destruction with or without the arrogant man's contributions.
As such Ra's was content to allow the man to inevitably create his own destruction. Parasites like Luthor inevitably ate out the very foundation under their feet in their desire for excess. He was nothing special. He merely sent out a team of assassins to ensure that the situation remained stable in Metropolis. One did not live as long as Ra's had without learning the value of caution.
But then everything had gone wrong. All of a sudden his team spying on LexCorp had attempted to kill the man without giving any advanced warning to Ra's as to why killing Luthor was suddenly so important. Ra's shuddered to think what monstrosity Luthor had devised that his assassins felt they needed to kill him immediately.
The situation was made even worse when the squad failed and the vast majority of them were killed and the rest were doubtless interrogated. How Luthor had managed to so thoroughly outmaneuver his underlings made Ra's al Ghul grow cautious as he had underestimated the man's strength and cunning
A week after the failed assassination attempt Luthor released the five survivors into the custody of the authorities. Ra's had breathed a sigh of relief. Things were still manageable. Then everything took a turn for the worse again. His five remaining assassins were mutilated and murdered inside of their cells and no one could figure out who did it and how the killings actually occurred. Yet that wasn't what chilled Ra's to his bones.
In the assassins blood was a message written on the wall. "Ra's al Ghul, no more hiding in the shadows". The world had no idea what it meant but the message was for Ra's alone and the implications terrified him.
He knew. Somehow Luthor knew about the League of Shadows and even of Ra's own existence and he was blatantly and flagrantly displaying that knowledge and challenging Ra's al Ghul. The Demon's Head was no fool he knew how much his plans relied on remaining secret.
And Luthor was threatening all of that. Ra's al Ghul would not allow some young upstart to undo everything the League of Shadows had tirelessly worked at for centuries. Lex Luthor wanted him to step out of the shadows? Fine. Ra's al Ghul would bring down the full might of the league on this upstarts head.
Results: Luthor now aware of Nanda Parbat. ??? instigated a war between the League of Shadows and LexCorp. ??? has foiled your plans once.
Interview Speech Vote Subvote Write-in how you want to approach the interview with Lois Lane. The most voted for write-in will win and be used as the general plan for how Luthor approaches the interview. I'm trying out something a little more experimental to increase player involvement with this bit but not rely on super tight voting periods. This vote should be in a specific type of plan format I will demonstrate below.
You can include as many in each category except Main approach. The more things you include the more angles you can cover but the weaker each individual thing will be. I have already constructed a plan for Lois in this format that she will use. I will soon post an informational on this debate style experimental voting if there are questions. Thank you for indulging my experimentations and I hope you find this bit fun.
whelp, someone is going to get their heads cut off...and god-dammit someone really wants either us dead or Ra's dead....and i cant think of anyone to match this damn thing...
*grumbles*
of course everything will go to shit-show, should've have taken things a bit lighter tone, but hell...I hope we get whoever started this little war and we hang them by the rope that they gave us. I am NOT feeling merciful at the moment of wasted lives and resources...this is going to tie us down so damn much!
Wait, don't I have some exp? I thought I had 200 exp. Also, did the Amazon options end up being condensed/combined into one or was the Amazon marketplace the only new option (and renting internet infrastructure to sell/rent fall under something else)?
Sorry I missed yours the first time I read through. The amazon options got condensed you do have 100 exp listed as what you earned in the vote replying but because I messed up when I shouldn't have and misplaced your accepted write-in I'll give you 200 exp.
We really could have avoided this had we went for the option to try and recruit the assassins, because if that option succeeded, then our mystery mastermind wouldn't have had the opportunity to murder the assassins in prison and make it look like we knew about the League of Shadows.
Oh fuck, this was nasty. I mean, I expected something nasty to happen considering the ruthless nature of Lex, but challenging Ra's Al Ghoul is really bald (though I believe that a third party killed the assassins in prison by the mention of ???) and could really backfire on us now. We need to train our body and build that panic room ASAP.
Topic you want to hit A: Cellphones
A1. Argument: Talk about the work that has been put into it subtly imply how much your input made it a reality.
A2. Argument: Talk about what our plans for the for future L-Phones.
Topic you want to hit B: The Environment
B1. Argument: Express concern about the lackluster state of affairs when it comes to the Environment speak and how you feel that company's need to do more.
B2. Argument: Speak about the new Green initiatives that Lexcorp will be rolling out in the next few years praise Pamila Isely and how she will assisting on making the operation a reality
Topic you want to hit C: Space
C1 Argument: Toward the end of the interview speak on long goal plans of colonizing other worlds
C2 Argument: Conclude with a Speech about a desire to bring humanity to a better tomorrow
Rebuttals to expected challenge
Question 1: Why all the added security?
Rebuttal 1 : State that as cutting edge research is being made we most insure that the upmost safety for our employees as while as protect from corporate espionage.
Question 2: Question about our past as a weapons producer
Rebuttal 2: state that while your are proud to make tools that keep people safe (mention how we donated weapons to the local police department) and how we will continue to do so but state that you feel that you can do more to help others which is why we have chosen to expand into new Sectors .
Question 3 the men who attempted to kill you were found dead any comments?
Rebuttal 3 Flatly deny any involvement, state that your were disgusted with the savagery of their deaths and how you wanted to see them face justice for their crimes
is this plan formatted correctly? I see some issues with it but for the most part I think it works, one of the main things I wanted to avoid was the use of the assassins as a justification for why we improved our security since that draws more questions to the dead body's. love to hear everybodys thoughts
And guys. Lex is'nt the one to kill the assassins. Its a new annoying manipulator. Someone suggested these are the League of Assassins? Are they different from League of Shadows? Are these the ones Green Arrow is gonna be against?
And are you sure about pointing Space as our next frontier? Yoy might not be able to make good on that claim if Voters dislike it enough, or it just doesnt fit the next action plan.
Maybe instead of space, a softball praise towards scientists in general and how we are planning LexCorps scientists to be the leaders in their fields?
So I will be posting demonstration of how the speech vote works and dissecting it piece by piece in this post.
Plan name. This part is obvious its what you want to name your plan. In this case I want to make a plan that I know is bad so I will call this plan [ ]Plan Bad Plan
Now that I've got a name for my plan I need to come up with a Main approach. A main approach is how you want to frame the argument/speech as a whole. The main approach is how you take on the whole speech. You can pick things like Main approach: Stay cool calm and collected, Main approach: Appear contrite to gather sympathy or Main approach play on the listeners prebuilt anger. Really the main approach can be anything you want it to be since it will color the tone of your whole argument and affect things like body language which can't be expressed all that well in outline form. Since I am deliberately constructing a bad plan the main approach of this argument will be
Main approach: Scream and shout and let it all out
Next I need to come up with my Topics. I can have as many topics as I want. While having more topics allows you to cover more angles it comes at the cost of each individual topic being made weaker. For example if I pick the topics of Superman causing super villains, Superman doesn't help with repairs and superman is an illegal alien who hides at the north pole . With those three options I am going to have a range of things to speak about but I will not be able to go as into depth on each topic as I would have if it was the only one I selected. As such the ideal number of topics is context sensitive and is dependent on what you are trying to accomplish. I am trying to make a bad argument so I am going to select a single topic (it also helps cut down on bloat). I'm going to select
Topic you want to hit: Armless Tiger Man is the greatest villain of all time
Once we've selected a topic we then need to pick some arguments. Arguments are what they sound like, they are the points with which you try to convince people to believe that you are right. You can have as many arguments as you like for each topic but they suffer from the similar breadth or depth balancing that topics do. There are three main types of appeals in arguments. I'm going to select three arguments for my deliberately bad argument. These arguments will each demonstrate one of the three avenues of arguments (albeit badly)
Since not needing your arms to fight is cool and tigers are cool him being armless and a tiger that makes him twice as cool (appeal to logic)
I'm the QM so I'm right (appeal to reputation)
Look at this beautiful creature how can you not love him?
Next we have the rebuttals. Rebuttals take an unusual form in this format essentially they require you to predict your opponents thrusts against your arguments and they give you a counterattack. These counterattacks do not have to be good arguments or even logical retorts but unless you plan on bulldozing through your diplomacy stat you probably are better off trying to find a good response. I will give an example of a good rebuttal and a bad rebuttal where both are valid. You can have as many rebuttals as you want but they too suffer from a breadth or depth type of balancing. My example rebuttals are Rebuttals to expected Challenge
Question 1: Isn't this character too goofy to be considered a great villain?
Rebuttal 1: The nature of comic books has been fundamentally goofy for years. Discounting it just because of tone not only is improper but it also dismisses a large part of comic book history. (good rebuttal)
Question 2: Doesn't Armless Tiger Man have no character arc beyond being a generic bad guy? Doesn't that make him a weak character.
Rebuttal 2: Armless Tiger Man was made in WW2 to help raise moral. If you don't like Armless Tiger Man you are anti-allies and pro-axis (bad rebuttal)
Put it all together and you have a plan that can be voted on.
Example
[ ] Plan Bad Plan
Main approach: scream and shout and let it all out
Topic you want to hit: Armless Tiger Man is the greatest villain of all time
Since not needing your arms to fight is cool and tigers are cool him being armless and a tiger that makes him twice as cool (appeal to logic)
I'm the QM so I'm right (appeal to reputation)
Look at this beautiful creature how can you not love him?
Rebuttals to expected Challenge
Question 1: Isn't this character too goofy to be considered a great villain?
Rebuttal 1: The nature of comic books has been fundamentally goofy for years. Discounting it just because of tone not only is improper but it also dismisses a large part of comic book history. (good rebuttal)
Question 2: Doesn't Armless Tiger Man have no character arc beyond being a generic bad guy? Doesn't that make him a weak character.
Rebuttal 2: Armless Tiger Man was made in WW2 to help raise moral. If you don't like Armless Tiger Man you are anti-allies and pro-axis (bad rebuttal)
Hope this helps clear up how this vote format is supposed to work.
