It is not like we did not consider that the device is alien in nature, it is that we believed that Ra's is competent enough to figure it out. His organization is fairly old, so it is not impossible that he will just store the device waiting for a time when he or some other Demon Head (Lex doesn't know about the immortality yet) could use it. He could hire some mad scientists if he doesn't already have one. Finally, we didn't know beforehand just how user-friendly the device is going to be - it could have been just a vial containing a super plaque that you just have to uncork. It is not as if he had to build it from incomplete schematics or reverse engineer it - the device was already present and operable.
And presenting as with a corpse was a trick he pulled before. Why was Ubu's miraculous revival not discussed at all?
[X] [Box] Tell the truth and reveal that you don't understand the box's true function beyond the bizarre double coordinates thing
No real reason to lie.
It is not like we did not consider that the device is alien in nature, it is that we believed that Ra's is competent enough to figure it out. His organization is fairly old, so it is not impossible that he will just store the device waiting for a time when he or some other Demon Head (Lex doesn't know about the immortality yet) could use it. He could hire some mad scientists if he doesn't already have one. Finally, we didn't know beforehand just how user-friendly the device is going to be - it could have been just a vial containing a super plaque that you just have to uncork. It is not as if he had to build it from incomplete schematics or reverse engineer it - the device was already present and operable.
And presenting as with a corpse was a trick he pulled before. Why was Ubu's miraculous revival not discussed at all?
[X] [Box] Tell the truth and reveal that you don't understand the box's true function beyond the bizarre double coordinates thing
No real reason to lie.
I apologise for the fact I might have insulted you. The thing is alien technology is not user friendly and there is reverse engineering going on. They are not user friendly and this Doomsday device in particular is a problem to deal with.
Yes Ra's could have stored it and hired people to attempt to undo it but he has shown little interest in doing so. Ra's already has had plenty of time to access plagues and weapons of mass destruction. The alien Doomsday device is not relevant to him because it is inherently less user friendly than the current ways he can kill everyone (in his first appearance in Batman the animated series he already has a plan to kill off 90% of the world's population just using the Lazarus pits which he already has and he could easily steal plagues from the CDC or chemical weapons from Khandaq or nuclear weaponry from an ex Soviet Union state if he truly wanted to end the world ASAP).
While you didn't know how user-friendly it would be you did see what Intergang used. None of their stuff was biological. Furthermore their stuff when mishandled tended to explode. A bioplague that was easy to use and had no repercussions for the user would be completely out of left field and thus dismissed as unlikely. It is an assumption but the fact that Intergang exclusively used technology with an emphasis on physics defying energy output made it seem like it was a perfectly logical assumption to make that their superweapon would also be technology with a physics defying energy output.
Ra's has never presented you with a corpse before and Ubu's revival was discussed in the post (Luthor doesn't know how they did it and suspects they had an incredible plastic surgeon create a body double for Ubu and killed that one rather than the more fantastical real answer and explicitly stated that he should look into it).
I feel like you are making mountains out of molehills. Luthor made a relatively minor mistake by simultaneously over and under estimating Ra's Al Ghul at the same time. I don't think any of what happened warrants truly being insulted. The mistake Luthor thinks he made and the mistake you actually made are different. Luthor's supposed mistake was thinking that Ra's would instantly know how best to use the weapon. The mistake the thread made was assuming that Ra's did not already have a viable doomsday weapon and thus would want to procure a different one.
The only reason why Ra's has not attempted to end the world just yet is that he is too afraid of death and is seeking a successor before carrying out his plans to ensure his legacy survives.
[X] [Box] Tell the truth and reveal that you don't understand the box's true function beyond the bizarre double coordinates thing
-[X] [Box] Further explain that the double coordinates could have multiple possible meanings including teleporting reinforcements, acting as an easy escape, or linking to some planet-shattering hazard. You'd need extensive study to know more.
I feel kind of bad for how out of her league Roxanne is, so arranging for an upgrade would be nice. Though our only really substantial option right now is Plant Meta, given our lack of major Augs.
We could and probably should develop better cybernetics. It's probably an easier action than supersoldier serums, and there's a clearly defined upgrade path, whereas if we give Roxanne a shot of chemicals and zap her with Not!Vita-Rays there's an upper bound on what she's going to get out of being Captain LexCorp.
Why would we? We don't know exactly what alien powers Whisper had, though we can hopefully find out the answer to the question. Maybe we'll learn a few interesting things about alien DNA and biochemistry that we can use to our advantage. Maybe not.
It is not like we did not consider that the device is alien in nature, it is that we believed that Ra's is competent enough to figure it out. His organization is fairly old, so it is not impossible that he will just store the device waiting for a time when he or some other Demon Head (Lex doesn't know about the immortality yet) could use it. He could hire some mad scientists if he doesn't already have one. Finally, we didn't know beforehand just how user-friendly the device is going to be - it could have been just a vial containing a super plaque that you just have to uncork. It is not as if he had to build it from incomplete schematics or reverse engineer it - the device was already present and operable.
It honestly sounds as if Ra's himself is uninterested in advanced physical technology (probably true given that his organization's main strength is its stable of martial artists, not hackers or engineers or anything). And we did, in point of fact, underestimate that possibility- it didn't cross our minds that Ra's might simply give away this advanced and potentially dangerous technology to an uninvolved third party like Count Vertigo.
And presenting as with a corpse was a trick he pulled before. Why was Ubu's miraculous revival not discussed at all?
I apologise for the fact I might have insulted you. The thing is alien technology is not user friendly and there is reverse engineering going on. They are not user friendly and this Doomsday device in particular is a problem to deal with.
Yes Ra's could have stored it and hired people to attempt to undo it but he has shown little interest in doing so. Ra's already has had plenty of time to access plagues and weapons of mass destruction. The alien Doomsday device is not relevant to him because it is inherently less user friendly than the current ways he can kill everyone (in his first appearance in Batman the animated series he already has a plan to kill off 90% of the world's population just using the Lazarus pits which he already has and he could easily steal plagues from the CDC or chemical weapons from Khandaq or nuclear weaponry from an ex Soviet Union state if he truly wanted to end the world ASAP).
I feel like you are making mountains out of molehills. Luthor made a relatively minor mistake by simultaneously over and under estimating Ra's Al Ghul at the same time. I don't think any of what happened warrants truly being insulted. The mistake Luthor thinks he made and the mistake you actually made are different. Luthor's supposed mistake was thinking that Ra's would instantly know how best to use the weapon.
Well, Luthor, if directly asked, might have said "Sure, Ra's may need some time to figure out how it works, but he'll crack it eventually if the device is in his control."
And that's not an unreasonable hypothesis. It's not like Ra's couldn't get some good scientists on payroll, if he really wanted.
The mistake the thread made was assuming that Ra's did not already have a viable doomsday weapon and thus would want to procure a different one.
To be fair, Ra's might reasonably want multiple options, or be curious about Whisper's weapon and want to procure it anyway in case it turns out to be better than the one he has in some way.
[X] [Box] Tell the truth and reveal that you don't understand the box's true function beyond the bizarre double coordinates thing
-[X] [Box] Further explain that the double coordinates could have multiple possible meanings including teleporting reinforcements, acting as an easy escape, and more and that to truly know what it does you would have to figure out the locations the coordinates refer to. If it is a planet then it might be reinforcements or an escape route. If it is a star then it is probably going to teleport the planet into it or open a portal to expose it to the radiation. If it is empty space it could teleport the world to it and have it freeze or teleport a section of the earth and cause those to in the area to suffocate in the vacuum of space. It all depends on the coordinates.
You address the overheating problems with a little attention to the sort of brass used in the gun, and of course a great deal more weight to the water jacket. It makes the gun heavier, but it's still so much lighter than a field artillery piece that you can't imagine it being a problem. Good enough.
And little Leo has his first patent! On a day when you were hopelessly bogged down with railroad paperwork, the boy carefully disassembled one of your prototypes with help from a bemused artisan strong enough to handle the bigger parts safely. Then he looked it over, took his little pocketknife and the set of miniature drafting tools you got him for his birthday, and set to whittling and sketching.
Two days later, he had a wooden mock-up of a tool for prying jammed cartridges out of the Luthor gun's chamber, and a surprisingly neat set of diagrams you seriously considered forwarding to the U.S. Patent Office as-is. Patent number 38972, and you've never been prouder of the boy!
The Luthor gun was not deployed during the Chancellorsville campaign. General Hooker's opinion at the time was that the supply of brass cartridges for the guns could not be guaranteed in extended fighting.
However, by the time the Army of the Potomac mobilized to meet Lee in Pennsylvania, these issues had been partially addressed. Moreover, General Meade, the new commander, was more sanguine about the prospects of the Luthor gun, as additional supplies of ammunition poured into his encampments every day from the brassworks of Metropolis.
As a result, Meade's army deployed Luthor gun batteries all along their lines as they dug in on the ridges southeast of Gettysburg- and even managed to spare a gun battery for the rush to put troops on top of Little Round Top on the second day of the battle. This urgent rush to secure the strategic hill overlooking both sides' positions did not permit much conventional artillery to be towed into position, but the lighter Luthor guns were more mobile.
The guns, well sited, inflicted severe loss on the Confederates, but ultimately ran dry of ammunition. Hooker had been proven right. This was the first use of machine guns in open battle. At the time, an infantryman could fight all day with no more than a hundred rounds of ammunition; no one on Earth had experience with a weapon that could fire off a thousand rounds in ten minutes' heavy fighting. The Union Luthor gunners had significantly underestimated their needs.
However, the withering fire of the Luthor gun battery had bought further time for the defenders to stabilize their position, even though Hood's Texan infantry were undaunted and launched several further assaults. The fighting on Little Round Top raged for some time before Joshua Chamberlain led his 20th Maine Infantry Regiment into history with a bayonet charge that drove the Texans down the hill in disarray. His division mauled, General Hood declined to launch further assaults, concluding that the Union position on Little Round Top was impregnable. His conclusion was underlined by a few bursts of fire from the Luthor guns, after a string of porters made runs up the hill with knapsacks full of loose cartridges and laboriously reloaded the weapons.
None of this, however, could compare to the impression made by the new weapon on the third day of the battle...
South of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
July 3, 1863
2:05 p.m.
You are Robert Edward Lee, an officer and a gentleman of Virginia. You keep your outward expression calm; younger men are watching.
You've thrown the heaviest cannonade ever unleashed on the North American continent at the Union line, enough to overawe the federal gunners on the ridge. They're hardly shooting back at all now. You're directing Pickett, Pettigrew, and Timble's divisions at the weakest spot in that line, informed by every scrap of knowledge and judgment you possess about the art of war and of reading battlefield terrain.
And yet, after two years of brutal conflict, after the slaughters of Antietam and Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, you know just how much horror and madness can come from an attack into the teeth of prepared defenders. The sun is hot, and the field is wide. You have misgivings, and James has warned you against this- but what choice do you have? You must break Meade's army or return to Virginia in defeat.
At least the federal artillery seem to have fallen silent, though George Meade has already surprised you more than once.
You remember the reports from General Hood's Texans, in the repulse from Little Round Top. Some new kind of light artillery, they'd said. Something that erupted with a hail of bullets, each delivering a fusillade like a hundred men, all firing one after another in succession. "Endless repeaters," Hood had called the battery of weapons that had opened up from the crest of the hill. The name seemed troublingly apt, though the bolder of the Texans claimed that the guns' fire did indeed cease for long, unpredictable periods of time now and again, and that the balls they threw were no heavier than ordinary rifle bullets.
A frightening weapon, perhaps. But your telescopic inspections of Meade's positions show no sign of them. Perhaps the one battery was all those people had.
Your men approach, the blue-and-red battle flags you favor advancing with them, waving in the wind.
Then to your horror, great gouts of cannon-smoke rise from the Union lines, and the hills anchoring Meade's flanks. Men go down in bloody rows,ripped apart by the exploding bursts of shrapnel shell in midair. On they march, grimly set. Your men, fighting for "Marse Robert." You've never let them down, after all. But a chill passes through you.
If they fail, if they die, it is all your fault.
Farther from the Union line than you'd thought likely, after enough slaughter to claw at your very soul, puffs of rifle-smoke emerge along Meade's lines.
But the rifle-smoke doesn't rise in the normal fashion, from long ranks of men firing at once. No, not at first. You focus the telescope, trying not to think- there is a rhythmic flash, as though a rifle were being fired at every beat of a drum, more and more smoke pouring up and around the invisible weapon, forming a tremendous cloud.
And then you hear the sound, under the sickening, familiar bark of the Union field artillery that continue to tear at the advancing Confederate ranks in the same old way. There is a faint, perversely merry sound on the breeze, a clattering, popping, steady chatter. Dozens of mechanically-cycling endless repeaters, chattering away. Chattering on. Peppering the men of Pickett's division, and the others, with bullets in between the barks of the heavier cannon.
The big guns were already massacring your boys, and these new weapons add to the horror, with streams of bullets that seem as easily directed as water pouring from a hose. Dozens of hoses. Their fire cannot be drawn; there is no gap, no respite. Men standing in the open have no defense save to fire back, but to stop on that killing ground is to die. They're already too close, still advancing from sheer courage and dedication- dedication to you. If they turned and skedaddled, they'd be shot to pieces all over again, and for nothing...
This is worse than what the Federals faced at Marye's Heights, you realize. This may be worse than any field of fire stormed by the frail body of man in the history of this shuddering world. And it gets worse. The Federal troops join in with their own rifles, compounding the death and doom. The cold fills you, and hooks of despair twist in your vitals. Regimental flags swirl, falter. One, then another, fall and are not picked back up.
You thought you knew what could go wrong.
You didn't. You knew nothing
But now, you know one thing, and one thing only.
You know in your belly that you have just made the most terrible mistake of your life. The most terrible mistake of the war.
...
The offensive Lee commanded against the Union lines would go down in history as "Pickett's Charge," so named because it was Pickett's division that was most heavily engaged.
Unlike the scratch force rushed onto Little Round Top, Meade's main army had entire wagons packed full of cartridges and belts. They'd enjoyed plenty of time to distribute the ammunition and make sure all the parts of their Luthor guns were in prime condition. Dozens of machine guns opened fire on the attacking troops as soon as they were judged to be in range.
Combined with the already brutally intense fire of the Army of the Potomac's artillery and rifles, this was more than any force, however bold or aggressive, could take. At no point did the Confederates reach the Union lines or make any lasting impression on those lines. The Confederates sent approximately twelve thousand men against the Union lines; by the end of the assault, almost two thousand lay dead on the field of battle. Another six thousand were wounded, many of them captured by U.S. forces in the aftermath. The minority of survivors who made it back to the Confederate lines uninjured were entirely helpless as a combat force. Overall Union casualties, killed and wounded combined, were less than a thousand from the entire battle, including the artillery barrage.
Lee was left defeated, despondent, and facing bitter recriminations from several of his subordinate generals- including Pickett and his immediate superior, James Longstreet. He ordered his forces to pack up and begin the march back to Virginia the next day, on July 4th.
It was a time of jubilation for the Union, especially as news spread that even while General Meade's machine guns had been tearing apart Lee's army at Gettysburg, Ulysses S. Grant had captured the fortress city of Vicksburg, securing control of the Mississippi River and slicing the Confederacy in half.
[X] [Box] Tell the truth and reveal that you don't understand the box's true function beyond the bizarre double coordinates thing
-[X] [Box] Further explain that the double coordinates could have multiple possible meanings including teleporting reinforcements, acting as an easy escape, or linking to some planet-shattering hazard. You'd need extensive study to know more.
X] [Box] Tell the truth and reveal that you don't understand the box's true function beyond the bizarre double coordinates thing
-[X] [Box] Further explain that the double coordinates could have multiple possible meanings including teleporting reinforcements, acting as an easy escape, or linking to some planet-shattering hazard. You'd need extensive study to know more.
[X] [Box] Tell the truth and reveal that you don't understand the box's true function beyond the bizarre double coordinates thing
-[X] [Box] Further explain that the double coordinates could have multiple possible meanings including teleporting reinforcements, acting as an easy escape, or linking to some planet-shattering hazard. You'd need extensive study to know more.
You address the overheating problems with a little attention to the sort of brass used in the gun, and of course a great deal more weight to the water jacket. It makes the gun heavier, but it's still so much lighter than a field artillery piece that you can't imagine it being a problem. Good enough.
And little Leo has his first patent! On a day when you were hopelessly bogged down with railroad paperwork, the boy carefully disassembled one of your prototypes with help from a bemused artisan strong enough to handle the bigger parts safely. Then he looked it over, took his little pocketknife and the set of miniature drafting tools you got him for his birthday, and set to whittling and sketching.
Two days later, he had a wooden mock-up of a tool for prying jammed cartridges out of the Luthor gun's chamber, and a surprisingly neat set of diagrams you seriously considered forwarding to the U.S. Patent Office as-is. Patent number 38972, and you've never been prouder of the boy!
The Luthor gun was not deployed during the Chancellorsville campaign. General Hooker's opinion at the time was that the supply of brass cartridges for the guns could not be guaranteed in extended fighting.
However, by the time the Army of the Potomac mobilized to meet Lee in Pennsylvania, these issues had been partially addressed. Moreover, General Meade, the new commander, was more sanguine about the prospects of the Luthor gun, as additional supplies of ammunition poured into his encampments every day from the brassworks of Metropolis.
As a result, Meade's army deployed Luthor gun batteries all along their lines as they dug in on the ridges southeast of Gettysburg- and even managed to spare a gun battery for the rush to put troops on top of Little Round Top on the second day of the battle. This urgent rush to secure the strategic hill overlooking both sides' positions did not permit much conventional artillery to be towed into position, but the lighter Luthor guns were more mobile.
The guns, well sited, inflicted severe loss on the Confederates, but ultimately ran dry of ammunition. Hooker had been proven right. This was the first use of machine guns in open battle. At the time, an infantryman could fight all day with no more than a hundred rounds of ammunition; no one on Earth had experience with a weapon that could fire off a thousand rounds in ten minutes' heavy fighting. The Union Luthor gunners had significantly underestimated their needs.
However, the withering fire of the Luthor gun battery had bought further time for the defenders to stabilize their position, even though Hood's Texan infantry were undaunted and launched several further assaults. The fighting on Little Round Top raged for some time before Joshua Chamberlain led his 20th Maine Infantry Regiment into history with a bayonet charge that drove the Texans down the hill in disarray. His division mauled, General Hood declined to launch further assaults, concluding that the Union position on Little Round Top was impregnable. His conclusion was underlined by a few bursts of fire from the Luthor guns, after a string of porters made runs up the hill with knapsacks full of loose cartridges and laboriously reloaded the weapons.
None of this, however, could compare to the impression made by the new weapon on the third day of the battle...
South of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
July 3, 1863
2:05 p.m.
You are Robert Edward Lee, an officer and a gentleman of Virginia. You keep your outward expression calm; younger men are watching.
You've thrown the heaviest cannonade ever unleashed on the North American continent at the Union line, enough to overawe the federal gunners on the ridge. They're hardly shooting back at all now. You're directing Pickett, Pettigrew, and Timble's divisions at the weakest spot in that line, informed by every scrap of knowledge and judgment you possess about the art of war and of reading battlefield terrain.
And yet, after two years of brutal conflict, after the slaughters of Antietam and Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, you know just how much horror and madness can come from an attack into the teeth of prepared defenders. The sun is hot, and the field is wide. You have misgivings, and James has warned you against this- but what choice do you have? You must break Meade's army or return to Virginia in defeat.
At least the federal artillery seem to have fallen silent, though George Meade has already surprised you more than once.
You remember the reports from General Hood's Texans, in the repulse from Little Round Top. Some new kind of light artillery, they'd said. Something that erupted with a hail of bullets, each delivering a fusillade like a hundred men, all firing one after another in succession. "Endless repeaters," Hood had called the battery of weapons that had opened up from the crest of the hill. The name seemed troublingly apt, though the bolder of the Texans claimed that the guns' fire did indeed cease for long, unpredictable periods of time now and again, and that the balls they threw were no heavier than ordinary rifle bullets.
A frightening weapon, perhaps. But your telescopic inspections of Meade's positions show no sign of them. Perhaps the one battery was all those people had.
Your men approach, the blue-and-red battle flags you favor advancing with them, waving in the wind.
Then to your horror, great gouts of cannon-smoke rise from the Union lines, and the hills anchoring Meade's flanks. Men go down in bloody rows,ripped apart by the exploding bursts of shrapnel shell in midair. On they march, grimly set. Your men, fighting for "Marse Robert." You've never let them down, after all. But a chill passes through you.
If they fail, if they die, it is all your fault.
Farther from the Union line than you'd thought likely, after enough slaughter to claw at your very soul, puffs of rifle-smoke emerge along Meade's lines.
But the rifle-smoke doesn't rise in the normal fashion, from long ranks of men firing at once. No, not at first. You focus the telescope, trying not to think- there is a rhythmic flash, as though a rifle were being fired at every beat of a drum, more and more smoke pouring up and around the invisible weapon, forming a tremendous cloud.
And then you hear the sound, under the sickening, familiar bark of the Union field artillery that continue to tear at the advancing Confederate ranks in the same old way. There is a faint, perversely merry sound on the breeze, a clattering, popping, steady chatter. Dozens of mechanically-cycling endless repeaters, chattering away. Chattering on. Peppering the men of Pickett's division, and the others, with bullets in between the barks of the heavier cannon.
The big guns were already massacring your boys, and these new weapons add to the horror, with streams of bullets that seem as easily directed as water pouring from a hose. Dozens of hoses. Their fire cannot be drawn; there is no gap, no respite. Men standing in the open have no defense save to fire back, but to stop on that killing ground is to die. They're already too close, still advancing from sheer courage and dedication- dedication to you. If they turned and skedaddled, they'd be shot to pieces all over again, and for nothing...
This is worse than what the Federals faced at Marye's Heights, you realize. This may be worse than any field of fire stormed by the frail body of man in the history of this shuddering world. And it gets worse. The Federal troops join in with their own rifles, compounding the death and doom. The cold fills you, and hooks of despair twist in your vitals. Regimental flags swirl, falter. One, then another, fall and are not picked back up.
You thought you knew what could go wrong.
You didn't. You knew nothing
But now, you know one thing, and one thing only.
You know in your belly that you have just made the most terrible mistake of your life. The most terrible mistake of the war.
...
The offensive Lee commanded against the Union lines would go down in history as "Pickett's Charge," so named because it was Pickett's division that was most heavily engaged.
Unlike the scratch force rushed onto Little Round Top, Meade's main army had entire wagons packed full of cartridges and belts. They'd enjoyed plenty of time to distribute the ammunition and make sure all the parts of their Luthor guns were in prime condition. Dozens of machine guns opened fire on the attacking troops as soon as they were judged to be in range.
Combined with the already brutally intense fire of the Army of the Potomac's artillery and rifles, this was more than any force, however bold or aggressive, could take. At no point did the Confederates reach the Union lines or make any lasting impression on those lines. The Confederates sent approximately twelve thousand men against the Union lines; by the end of the assault, almost two thousand lay dead on the field of battle. Another six thousand were wounded, many of them captured by U.S. forces in the aftermath. The minority of survivors who made it back to the Confederate lines uninjured were entirely helpless as a combat force. Overall Union casualties, killed and wounded combined, were less than a thousand from the entire battle, including the artillery barrage.
Lee was left defeated, despondent, and facing bitter recriminations from several of his subordinate generals- including Pickett and his immediate superior, James Longstreet. He ordered his forces to pack up and begin the march back to Virginia the next day, on July 4th.
It was a time of jubilation for the Union, especially as news spread that even while General Meade's machine guns had been tearing apart Lee's army at Gettysburg, Ulysses S. Grant had captured the fortress city of Vicksburg, securing control of the Mississippi River and slicing the Confederacy in half.
[X] [Box] Tell the truth and reveal that you don't understand the box's true function beyond the bizarre double coordinates thing
-[X] [Box] Further explain that the double coordinates could have multiple possible meanings including teleporting reinforcements, acting as an easy escape, or linking to some planet-shattering hazard. You'd need extensive study to know more.
[X] [Box] Tell the truth and reveal that you don't understand the box's true function beyond the bizarre double coordinates thing
-[X] [Box] Further explain that the double coordinates could have multiple possible meanings including teleporting reinforcements, acting as an easy escape, or linking to some planet-shattering hazard. You'd need extensive study to know more.
[X] [Box] Tell the truth and reveal that you don't understand the box's true function beyond the bizarre double coordinates thing
-[X] [Box] Further explain that the double coordinates could have multiple possible meanings including teleporting reinforcements, acting as an easy escape, or linking to some planet-shattering hazard. You'd need extensive study to know more.
[X] [Box] Lie and state that it summons an interstellar army
[X] [Box] Tell the truth and reveal that you don't understand the box's true function beyond the bizarre double coordinates thing
-[X] [Box] Further explain that the double coordinates could have multiple possible meanings including teleporting reinforcements, acting as an easy escape, or linking to some planet-shattering hazard. You'd need extensive study to know more.
I can't help but feel like this is a very sudden end to the alliance, every alliance in history has had moments of distrust, especially in the teething stages, never mind one between two criminal megalomaniacs who don't trust anyone as far as they can throw them
It feels out of character for Ras to completely cut ties with the extraordinarily rich and influential tech genius who could help him immensely rather than just say something like "that was a stupid thing you did, you owe me and if you want this alliance to last you need to pay me back"
I can't help but feel like this is a very sudden end to the alliance, every alliance in history has had moments of distrust, especially in the teething stages, never mind one between two criminal megalomaniacs who don't trust anyone as far as they can throw them
It feels out of character for Ras to completely cut ties with the extraordinarily rich and influential tech genius who could help him immensely rather than just say something like "that was a stupid thing you did, you owe me and if you want this alliance to last you need to pay me back"
Ra's didn't care about receiving tech from Lex though, so the only thing he really cared about was our information gathering and ability to help hide their presence.
Dude is effectively immortal, and his ultimate goal just involves humanity as a whole surviving. So he's probably willing to just wait things out, as he's in no particular rush.
Really, given how long he's been around, Ra's has undoubtedly faced mistrust and betrayal before. Thus ending things now on amicable terms, instead of keeping Lex around who has already shown suspicion and willingness to invade a country because of it. Basically, he's cutting us off now before we go full Starscream.
I can't help but feel like this is a very sudden end to the alliance, every alliance in history has had moments of distrust, especially in the teething stages, never mind one between two criminal megalomaniacs who don't trust anyone as far as they can throw them
It feels out of character for Ras to completely cut ties with the extraordinarily rich and influential tech genius who could help him immensely rather than just say something like "that was a stupid thing you did, you owe me and if you want this alliance to last you need to pay me back"
Remember that we haven't actually DONE much with the alliance except pass him information. The potential benefits to him if we were inclined to cooperate are not remotely in line with the actual benefits he's directly observed.
As I mentioned before, Ra's has certain natural advantages that have historically given him an incentive to play the long game. This alliance emerged as a result of the existence of a common enemy. That common enemy is now on the ropes, having lost vast amounts of assets including the alien who supplies its tech, and being targeted by powerful enemies.
Ra's has to consider, is it in his own long term benefits to be closely tied to a man whose natural skills and interests are very different, whose goals for the world are at most semi-compatible... And who has already decided at least once that he just HAD to interfere in the situation specifically to stop some advantage from accruing to Ra's?
@King crimson: Oh right, regarding studying the Super-Tank we captured, is that something we need to dedicate an action to? I'm guessing it would be easier due to us having already cleared the "Intergang Tech" option from before.
@King crimson: Oh right, regarding studying the Super-Tank we captured, is that something we need to dedicate an action to? I'm guessing it would be easier due to us having already cleared the "Intergang Tech" option from before.
By the outbreak of the Civil War in the 1860s, Metropolis had expanded to a population of over 160,000. It was the sixth-largest city in America, surpassed only by New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Boston, and New Orleans. [1] Raw materials poured into the city along the M&O railroad, and the Metropolis Iron Works formed the center of a thriving web of industrial operations, including metalworking, machining, and shipbuilding. Drainage and land reclamation efforts continued to carve out territory along the Patuxent estuary and the Chesapeake. But racial and ethnic tensions rose during the 1840s and '50s as disputes over slavery came to a head.
Whites descended from the colonial-era population of southern Maryland had formed the vast majority of the population of Metropolis in 1800, and remained a plurality up through the Civil War. When the war came, many of these families remained pro-slavery and broadly sympathetic to the Confederacy. The old plantation lineages still had a great deal of political influence in the city, given that as the state capital it was 'home away from home' to many prominent Maryland political figures. But these demographics were now only one part of a growing industrial Metropolis, whose population had swollen from the arrival of tens of thousands of artisans from north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
The city's population was relatively mixed. Nearly fifteen thousand free blacks and roughly five thousand slaves (a large fraction of them owned by the Luthors' companies) coexisted with large communities of Irish-American and German-American immigrants; Anglo-Americans formed only a narrow majority of the city's population. By contrast, most southern cities had attracted few immigrants, and most northern cities had proportionately much smaller black populations.
The minority populations of the city did not always get along well. Immigrant labor from Europe had partially displaced free black wage-earners in the city, reducing their economic position. With both groups impoverished, many black and immigrant workers lived commingled near the waterfront and industrial centers of the city, in the area that has since become colorfully known as "Suicide Slum." Disputes, and occasionally violent conflicts, arose in these districts between free blacks, Irish-Americans (many of whom had arrived as refugees from the Great Famine of the late 1840s), and German-Americans (many of whom, unable to speak English, struggled within Metropolis' economy and politics).
This created a paradoxical situation. The city's black minority faced discrimination or hostility from most of the white groups in Metropolis, and sensationalist journalism denigrating blacks and 'race mixing' was rampant. At the same time, migrants from the North and immigrants from overseas had little prior attachment to the institution of slavery. Metropolis was, simultaneously, a major stop on the Underground Railroad and an increasingly unsafe place for free blacks to live. All of these trends continued, amplified, into the 1860s and the Civil War.
On The Edge of the Union
Metropolis, much like her sister city, Baltimore, saw significant pro-Confederate agitation in early 1861. There was no pivotal event like the riot in Baltimore on April 19, possibly because no large bodies of Federal troops marched through the city during the secession crisis itself. However, demonstrations were common.
Moreover, secession was still spreading- North Carolina and Virginia were still in the process of leaving the Union at this point, and there was great uncertainty as to which was Maryland would swing. Metropolis in particular was near the southern border of the state, relatively exposed to rebel action after Virginia joined the CSA, though shielded by the line of the Potomac River and the overall superiority of the U.S. Navy. Given its strategic position on the Chesapeake, effectively anchoring one corner of the Union's supply lines for action against the rebels, the federal government treated Metropolis' security and loyalty as a high priority.
The garrison at Fort Hunter was significantly reinforced in response, and the Lincoln Presidential Library includes an exchange of telegrams with Lucius Luthor seeking assurance that the rail lines from Washington to Baltimore and Metropolis would remain available at all times to permit quick reinforcement of the city from the capital's larger garrison in an emergency. Lincoln declared a suspension of certain civil rights for the duration of the conflict, and this was felt heavily in Metropolis. Over the course of the war, hundreds of Metropolitan Confederate sympathizers were arrested and interrogated on suspicion- often well-founded suspicion- of espionage or sabotage.
As the war ran on, opinion in Metropolis shifted slightly. Lucius Luthor, a prominent figure in local and state politics, remained strongly pro-Union. While the state was de facto occupied by Union troops to prevent secession, Lucius supported Metropolis and Maryland leaders more inclined to compromise and accept the federal government's authority.
The elder Luthor's assassination by Confederate agents in March 1862 set the city astir. Lucius, in addition to being an occasional philanthropist, had played a huge role in Metropolis' 19th century industrial boom. "The Steel Man" had brought the city back to national prominence as a center of commerce on the same level as Boston and Philadelphia, and was widely regarded as one of the great American innovators and builders of his time. His conspicuous loyalty to the Union cause- though perhaps a calculated decision that his business interests would fare better with the North than with the South- had significantly shifted the balance of opinion in Metropolis against secession.
To have Lucius killed by Confederate spies stirred outrage. His son openly swore revenge and threw the resources of Luthor Steam and Steel fully behind the war effort. The Metropolis Iron Works manufactured every kind of weapon then known to man for the U.S. military, and Leland Luthor personally invented at least two new kinds entirely his own in the remaining years of the war. But while even Confederate sympathizers sometimes sympathized with the fury of Leland Luthor's desire to avenge his father, the assassination did not entirely seal the city's affections to the Union cause.
Emancipation
Slavery lay at the root of the entire Civil War. While even after war broke out, Lincoln expressed caution about the limits of his own power as president to end slavery, more radical figures within the Republican Party advocated emancipating all slaves, or at least all slaves held in Confederate territory, as a way of destroying the rebels' economy and galvanizing the Union cause into a moral crusade.
The first steps in this direction were taken in March 1862, when Congress passed a law banning U.S. military officers from returning escaped slaves to their owners. In April 1862, the federal government announced plans to compensate slaveholders who freed their slaves, and shortly afterward freed all slaves within the confines of the District of Columbia. This decree did not affect the still-loyal slave states on the border with the Confederacy, including Maryland. Nor did the following decree in June, abolishing slavery in all U.S. territories not already established as states- an aggressive repudiation of Roger Taney's Dred v. Scott Supreme Court decision of 1857.
While Congress also took steps to free slaves in Confederate territory, Lincoln argued that Congress did not, as such, have the power to do so- but that he, as commander in chief of the armed forces, did. This, he proceeded to do. President Lincoln first began laying public relations groundwork, emphasizing that his greatest priority was to preserve the Union and end the war… but he had already drafted a proclamation freeing Confederate-held slaves, to be issued after the next major Union military victory.
The costly Battle of Antietam gave him his victory. He warned all Confederate citizens that if they did not return to the Union within a hundred days, he would declare their slaves free. No Confederate state deserted to the Union after this announcement, and on January 1, 1863, Lincoln formally issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The effect was electrifying throughout North America.
Maryland, which was not in a state of rebellion, was exempt from the Proclamation. However, this, combined with the earlier congressional rulings, made it clear that slavery was no longer tenable. Vast numbers of slaves escaped to Pennsylvania or the District of Columbia, gaining their freedom and in some cases enlisting in the U.S. Army's new colored regiments. The plantation economy, still dominant in most of Maryland, was greatly disrupted, and even industrial such as Metropolis experienced major shocks. Many of Metropolis' immigrant laborers anticipated vast numbers of freed slaves entering the city in a wave in the near future, and feared that this might displace Irish- and German-Americans from their jobs in Metropolitan factories. The racial tensions already present in the city rose to a peak.
[1] Some of this growth comes at the expense of OTL Baltimore, and some of it is induced. 1860 Baltimore is smaller than in OTL, though the combined population of the two cities is significantly larger than Baltimore's would have been alone.
By the outbreak of the Civil War in the 1860s, Metropolis had expanded to a population of over 160,000. It was the sixth-largest city in America, surpassed only by New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Boston, and New Orleans. [1] Raw materials poured into the city along the M&O railroad, and the Metropolis Iron Works formed the center of a thriving web of industrial operations, including metalworking, machining, and shipbuilding. Drainage and land reclamation efforts continued to carve out territory along the Patuxent estuary and the Chesapeake. But racial and ethnic tensions rose during the 1840s and '50s as disputes over slavery came to a head.
Whites descended from the colonial-era population of southern Maryland had formed the vast majority of the population of Metropolis in 1800, and remained a plurality up through the Civil War. When the war came, many of these families remained pro-slavery and broadly sympathetic to the Confederacy. The old plantation lineages still had a great deal of political influence in the city, given that as the state capital it was 'home away from home' to many prominent Maryland political figures. But these demographics were now only one part of a growing industrial Metropolis, whose population had swollen from the arrival of tens of thousands of artisans from north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
The city's population was relatively mixed. Nearly fifteen thousand free blacks and roughly five thousand slaves (a large fraction of them owned by the Luthors' companies) coexisted with large communities of Irish-American and German-American immigrants; Anglo-Americans formed only a narrow majority of the city's population. By contrast, most southern cities had attracted few immigrants, and most northern cities had proportionately much smaller black populations.
The minority populations of the city did not always get along well. Immigrant labor from Europe had partially displaced free black wage-earners in the city, reducing their economic position. With both groups impoverished, many black and immigrant workers lived commingled near the waterfront and industrial centers of the city, in the area that has since become colorfully known as "Suicide Slum." Disputes, and occasionally violent conflicts, arose in these districts between free blacks, Irish-Americans (many of whom had arrived as refugees from the Great Famine of the late 1840s), and German-Americans (many of whom, unable to speak English, struggled within Metropolis' economy and politics).
This created a paradoxical situation. The city's black minority faced discrimination or hostility from most of the white groups in Metropolis, and sensationalist journalism denigrating blacks and 'race mixing' was rampant. At the same time, migrants from the North and immigrants from overseas had little prior attachment to the institution of slavery. Metropolis was, simultaneously, a major stop on the Underground Railroad and an increasingly unsafe place for free blacks to live. All of these trends continued, amplified, into the 1860s and the Civil War.
On The Edge of the Union
Metropolis, much like her sister city, Baltimore, saw significant pro-Confederate agitation in early 1861. There was no pivotal event like the riot in Baltimore on April 19, possibly because no large bodies of Federal troops marched through the city during the secession crisis itself. However, demonstrations were common.
Moreover, secession was still spreading- North Carolina and Virginia were still in the process of leaving the Union at this point, and there was great uncertainty as to which was Maryland would swing. Metropolis in particular was near the southern border of the state, relatively exposed to rebel action after Virginia joined the CSA, though shielded by the line of the Potomac River and the overall superiority of the U.S. Navy. Given its strategic position on the Chesapeake, effectively anchoring one corner of the Union's supply lines for action against the rebels, the federal government treated Metropolis' security and loyalty as a high priority.
The garrison at Fort Hunter was significantly reinforced in response, and the Lincoln Presidential Library includes an exchange of telegrams with Lucius Luthor seeking assurance that the rail lines from Washington to Baltimore and Metropolis would remain available at all times to permit quick reinforcement of the city from the capital's larger garrison in an emergency. Lincoln declared a suspension of certain civil rights for the duration of the conflict, and this was felt heavily in Metropolis. Over the course of the war, hundreds of Metropolitan Confederate sympathizers were arrested and interrogated on suspicion- often well-founded suspicion- of espionage or sabotage.
As the war ran on, opinion in Metropolis shifted slightly. Lucius Luthor, a prominent figure in local and state politics, remained strongly pro-Union. While the state was de facto occupied by Union troops to prevent secession, Lucius supported Metropolis and Maryland leaders more inclined to compromise and accept the federal government's authority.
The elder Luthor's assassination by Confederate agents in March 1862 set the city astir. Lucius, in addition to being an occasional philanthropist, had played a huge role in Metropolis' 19th century industrial boom. "The Steel Man" had brought the city back to national prominence as a center of commerce on the same level as Boston and Philadelphia, and was widely regarded as one of the great American innovators and builders of his time. His conspicuous loyalty to the Union cause- though perhaps a calculated decision that his business interests would fare better with the North than with the South- had significantly shifted the balance of opinion in Metropolis against secession.
To have Lucius killed by Confederate spies stirred outrage. His son openly swore revenge and threw the resources of Luthor Steam and Steel fully behind the war effort. The Metropolis Iron Works manufactured every kind of weapon then known to man for the U.S. military, and Leland Luthor personally invented at least two new kinds entirely his own in the remaining years of the war. But while even Confederate sympathizers sometimes sympathized with the fury of Leland Luthor's desire to avenge his father, the assassination did not entirely seal the city's affections to the Union cause.
Emancipation
Slavery lay at the root of the entire Civil War. While even after war broke out, Lincoln expressed caution about the limits of his own power as president to end slavery, more radical figures within the Republican Party advocated emancipating all slaves, or at least all slaves held in Confederate territory, as a way of destroying the rebels' economy and galvanizing the Union cause into a moral crusade.
The first steps in this direction were taken in March 1862, when Congress passed a law banning U.S. military officers from returning escaped slaves to their owners. In April 1862, the federal government announced plans to compensate slaveholders who freed their slaves, and shortly afterward freed all slaves within the confines of the District of Columbia. This decree did not affect the still-loyal slave states on the border with the Confederacy, including Maryland. Nor did the following decree in June, abolishing slavery in all U.S. territories not already established as states- an aggressive repudiation of Roger Taney's Dred v. Scott Supreme Court decision of 1857.
While Congress also took steps to free slaves in Confederate territory, Lincoln argued that Congress did not, as such, have the power to do so- but that he, as commander in chief of the armed forces, did. This, he proceeded to do. President Lincoln first began laying public relations groundwork, emphasizing that his greatest priority was to preserve the Union and end the war… but he had already drafted a proclamation freeing Confederate-held slaves, to be issued after the next major Union military victory.
The costly Battle of Antietam gave him his victory. He warned all Confederate citizens that if they did not return to the Union within a hundred days, he would declare their slaves free. No Confederate state deserted to the Union after this announcement, and on January 1, 1863, Lincoln formally issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The effect was electrifying throughout North America.
Maryland, which was not in a state of rebellion, was exempt from the Proclamation. However, this, combined with the earlier congressional rulings, made it clear that slavery was no longer tenable. Vast numbers of slaves escaped to Pennsylvania or the District of Columbia, gaining their freedom and in some cases enlisting in the U.S. Army's new colored regiments. The plantation economy, still dominant in most of Maryland, was greatly disrupted, and even industrial such as Metropolis experienced major shocks. Many of Metropolis' immigrant laborers anticipated vast numbers of freed slaves entering the city in a wave in the near future, and feared that this might displace Irish- and German-Americans from their jobs in Metropolitan factories. The racial tensions already present in the city rose to a peak.
[1] Some of this growth comes at the expense of OTL Baltimore, and some of it is induced. 1860 Baltimore is smaller than in OTL, though the combined population of the two cities is significantly larger than Baltimore's would have been alone.
Finally got around to reading this and I enjoyed it. The origin of the Suicide Slums was a highlight for me and the racial tension built into that area would work well for possible story lines later on (Black Lightning and Steel would have two very different perspectives on the same place and make for an interesting examination of how race relations continue to affect life in Metropolis). You've earned 500 exp.
