Wooooo its fun coming into an argument five pages later. Quotebombs ahoy!
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Vista segment first
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@Silently Watches , was Vista wanting the actual arm done just now? I know some of us hoped to vote for her to get a /comparable level/ of mods even if the arm itself wasn't necessarily that far, but she didn't covey that sort of nuance or bring up any additional mods she might want. Anyways, I did love that she brought up the argument "yeah I'm just a kid, but getting this sort of thing makes me safer!" or however it was phrased.
Dragon though.... it felt like she was just repeating Tim, rather than make another approach at the argument. Its fine to want to reinforce him sure, but a pure repeat will seem to Vista like shouting her down rather than engaging, and isn't especially effective of Dragon therefore.
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So because it wasn't a one-off, it didn't get the yellow time-sensitive sticker, and the fact it had jumped ahead to part three is something nobody noticed.
You also knew that things tend to happen with unchosen quest lines. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that all of you know that.
I did know we lose the questline if it's not finished before the arc ends, but I didn't expect we can lose it in the middle of the arc just by delaying for a one week.
It's not nice thing to know.
Whatever the questline was called that involved checking on the Brockton Containment comes to mind. That definitely had a visible change to its vote description every week, as events progressed over there. Things like "theres some trouble with outsider raids" becoming "Oh hell the Teeth have shown up" and then "Oh welp theres a Breakout now". Along with the obvious Purity and possibly Beast storylines, and others I've forgotten (Coil in a way, since we didn't go after him the easy way pre-Simurgh?). That sort of concern, even if its rare that it happens mid-arc, is part of what drove the addition of Social actions.
Three, it's kind of a big deal you gave no information that we'd lose the Privateers in their entirety unless we'd take the Part 2 quest.
There may not have quite been a WoG , perhaps because said God is telling you that your description isn't quite accurate (even if half the faction is militant, we could probably confine one or two ringleaders while taking the rest on a non-lethal gang hunt and earn the cred to step them back down, as one theory). But to me it felt pretty clear after the last time King won, with that big scary argument, that they were pretty well unsalvageable. Its why I kept motivating people not to pick it again
After all, that scene consisted of nothing more than "Show up, try to talk, get ignored and shouted down". It practically felt like an ending in itself, as we didn't get a chance to try and push our points more. Or rather, more of an interludey status-update rather than a full event which prompts votes. Sooo not entirely unforeseeable that they'd go to shit and quick?
That bloc lost one fucking vote, and you throw this shit at us.
Always the trouble with Quests it seems like, especially on issues where there are defined vote blocks separated by a tenth of the total base (hey there Lancer, fancy seeing you here!) so the winning side shifts from one stance to another with updates. Buuut on the other hand it was "one or two failed votes to catch it before total-blowup, after half a dozen missed votes after we knew they started a gangwar, after several arcs of almost never voting to go on group patrols or interactions".
While i
AM sympathetic in that the interactions we have had were largely giving them shiny toys while they never actually called us up with an invite on /their/ patrols (I think Squealer, and I know the MS-13 Luchador, were a matter of independently joining the same raid or else midway through? And nothing in between) , so neglect is more their fault and they are damned ungrateful, stories do tend to turn on what the Protagonists choose to do more than what others do, so its not unexpected that interaction with them relies on our reaching out. (We see it too with both Adepts and Vista sulking by the phone for a while and only calling us with last-chances of sorts)
The Privateers are busy shitting on the kindness we've showed them, so fuck them.
Taylor can always escalate more.
Pretty well encapsulates the response of SV to anytime the voters feel personally challenged by NPCs xD. Sufficient Escalation should be an alternate motto. (I'm hardly innocent of this).
Also, why's everyone choosing to take her to the Protectorate? Wouldn't that add even more problem down the line with Fairyland?
Somewhat relevant to plans here.... we don't really care what Fairyland thinks of us sending her to prison, right? Like... they are villains and drug dealers, and the outsiders coming for a power vacuum is not (yet) nearly at the level of a formal truce the way Beasts (and the Mara's breach of THAT truce) was. Its entirely to be expected that they'd get raided and sent to prison after a beating, they don't get a freebie just because someone (who we're stopping) went overboard.
We just gotta make sure we DO stop them or we'll look rather similar to being the Panacea to the privateers Glory Girl yah?
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soo, reactions to argument past, now to more planning
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This is also the only choice that both earns the Privateers' ire and involves Tim, which may be good or bad. I'm not going to reveal that.
It might be that Tim has even more influence over them than we do, seeing as how...ya know... they are only able to carry out this raid because of the Power Armor and Laser Rifle he's given them. Pretty hard to say that he's done nothing to help the gang problem, right? Moreso when he's elbow deep in some poor saps chest pulling out bullets.
And the aforementioned points about keeping this somewhat in-house, as we preserve the Villain and get a chance to turn them in (maybe after some questioning? I don't know the limits on vigilante behavior) but don't immediately send the Buccaneers on the path to Jail.
Between the protection Taylor/Samantha can give him, his own stock of power armor and such, and the fact that he's soon to have a very grateful Unison Device at his side...I don't feel we
should need to be very worried about reprisals against Tim.
If you tried to help both, the Privateers present would refuse and would see it the same as you choosing to help Snow White alone.
See, I view this as more of a feature than a bug. It would seem a valid vote, I hope, to say "TRY to help both, visibly, if the Privateers want to sit and bleed out of spite then alright we'll send their wives flowers." (Yeah they can likely get help on their own, but still).
I say Ring Bind the offenders and teleport everyone to the PRT.
I was under the impression were are a teleporter, why do we have to choose who to rescue?
Anyone within 10 feet, it takes /more/ time to selectively exclude some but I think there's still enough of a baseline that its not suitable for say combat grabbing. Don't think consent is required though? But touch is for Samantha, I think we trained past that? Anyways yeah, we have /two/ teleporters here xD
One option is to try and non-lethally drop the privateers so we can transport the lot of them to the Protectorate to sort out, but with laser and powerarmor that's pretty risky....
@Silently Watches I thought it was only four or so of them? Kurt, Martinez, Vince, Big John... did some of the unnamed others also come along? (The ones searching through the crowbars and such, which weapons aren't present here... if they were gathering rifles what did Vince and Big John do to get mentioned separately?) . We can grab five with one ring bind after all, and if we took the most dangerous first (do the suits have the strength to break a bind? And Martinez is under our boot atm) the others might be cowed enough to come along.
What if we got sneaky?Teleport the Privateers first then rescue snow white?
They'd wonder in short order why Samantha didn't come with, and it doesn't take much to make the leap that you're helping a villain. And the Protectorate would have even more questions for you.
It seems like we should be able to think up a sufficiently plausible excuse for her (leave behind the Brute to mop up fleeing gangers and search/secure the place, she's never been involved enough to be present for an argument the way Taylor might be so thats why she wasn't the one to take them), but thats never stopped anyone from baselessly leaping to the (coincidentally correct) conclusion out of paranoid emotion.
As to answering the Protectorate about the injury... could be a malfunction on the tinker-weapon they were using, if we can produce a non-lethal version fast enough to show them (tinkertech isn't the most reliable), buuut thats risky and why should we. We can always throw them under the bus, of course...I mean, what were the FairyLand gangsters loading their pistols with, tiny beanbags?
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[X] Help the injured Privateers
-[X] Have PS feed you statistics on BirdCage and other-prison escape rates for Villains to spout at them.
-[X] Try even if they are unlikely to appreciate it
[X] Help Snow White
-[x] Send Sam to guard Tim from retaliation.
[X] Take the wounded to the Protectorate. They have medical staff on hand.
Inclined to something like this. Ring Bind is a tempting option if they refuse to get taken to help, it should be "gentle restraint" enough to minimize any hard feelings from the rest of the Privateers (compared to say using Frost Beam , which I'd otherwise vote to use afterwards on whoever we can't Bind) .
But I do want to make clear, though not sure how in the vote itself, that Taylor has no problem with going on anti-gang hunts during this arc. Hell, I wanted her to do a patrol with someone as well as respond to the Gangland event. Its just that like it or not (the gangsters using guns here has me honestly
befuddled that unpowered people aren't supposed to use lethal in return) the Privateers are functionally Vigilantes and so hunting down criminals to use lethal force on is harshly frowned upon and completely unnecessary. If they can acquire rifles they can probably acquire a variety of tasers and pepper spray and beanbug-shotguns (maybe even tear gas? depends if those were civvie-rifles... and yes I know hilariously the rifles are MORE LEGAL in some real-world states than the taser or spray would be) even without Tim building them something quite yet, and the suits give enough leeway to take that extra risk.
Meh, theres enough here that its hard to form thoughts properly.
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