Dumping a corpse is kinda easy ngl when you don't have to worry about carrying it around.

I would recommend looking for a scalable hill that's hard but easy enough to climb while being out of the way, first dig up some strips/patches of grass from there get a shovel and dig a hole deep enough to burry the body then fill in the hole and place the grass strips on top. To be extra careful maybe get buckets to put the dirt in so the nearby grass doesn't have dirt on it.

Beyond that if you really want to send a message dump the body in Kaiser's septic tank if he has one.

Shouldn't be too hard just look up where he lives (he's a public figure) then go to the library and find the blueprints to the house or look online. From there plan out when he goes to work and find the hatch and dump the body. Kaiser would be to busy being paranoid and jumping at shadows to annoy you.
 
For example, being literally twice as strong physically vs 5 lb telekinesis with a shortish range is a heck of a decision.
Telekinesis every time. The hardest part of any blue collar work is trying to get a good angle on whatever screw, nut, or nail you are working on. The ability to hold a tool at any angle and position without dislocating your arm or getting your fat ass stuck is a godsend.

Bonus point, always being able to pick up the remote/phone after it fell under the couch/bed.
 
Huh, progress!
Also... shouldnt ACCESS DENIED have a higher level since the PRT thinkers are currently heavily thinking about Al?
 
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Thing is, letting others know what you're doing is fighting fair. So don't. Not fighting fair means not letting people know what you're doing. This is part of why Coil was so effective; he used seemingly unconnected patsies to accomplish things, rather than doing anything openly.

Ahh, I see the disconnect now. I was thinking more on a personal combat level, and not at all like a supervillain. And Al has already demonstrated (twice!) that he's plenty willing to out-escalate any of the Nazis he's had run-ins with. Not that any of them can share much of that info any more...

How sad for them.
 
... So first off: Killing people bad. I don't suggest anyone do it.

That said, this bit gave me a mental image of a woman crying out: "Won't somebody PLEASE think about the poor helpless Nazi terrorists!?"
I mean, there's a difference between killing and murdering someone, Murdering someone is bad, Killing, well killing includes murder, which again bad, mostly bad cases, but the killing done between soldiers, that of a soldier killing a soldier, so that there side can gain more land to help their people, is a neutral act, and killing is only a good act when quite literally no other option works, aka if you can't rehabilitate or imprison someone.

Edit: in short life is nuanced, and people think of Murder when they say kill, when those are two related things, but one is a subcategory of another, that is Murder is a subcategory of Killing.
 
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If that seems too little for the level of investment, I could do increments of 10 instead?

They're direct combat enhancements, after all.
My concern was less the power level of the enhancement, since as the author you have complete control over just how useful any given advantage is, and more that it seemed inconsistent with the rules on enhancements.

The van has a supplementary 'uses x% less fuel per mile' enhancement simply from getting points, which suggest that the basic function of the object improves, or at least becomes more efficient, by default.

Less recoil and less noise are basic functions of the object working more efficiently by using less force to propel the round, I would expect the gun to have those effects showing up at a similar rate to the van getting more fuel efficient, even if it's modified to be reduced because its a combat item and combat items are more expensive to improve.

What I was expecting is for the power to add a trait to the weapon that it wouldn't normally have - accepting any kind of ammunition without issue, automatically being stable as if a secured bipod was in use, or (as suggested above) ignoring atmospheric effects that would foul your aim. Things that are explicitly para human effects.
 
Uh-oh! The gangs and the PRT/Protectorate keep tabs on hardware stores in the hopes of finding newly-triggered Tinkers.

Alec (A) buying so much in one go and (B) paying in cash may trip enough red flags for informants to send word to the ABB, E88, Merchants, Coil, etc.

Tinkers are sought-after gang recruits and very vulnerable if they're confronted before they have a chance to ramp up their tinkertech.

What they'd look for is large orders, frequent ones or setting up of a ton of equipment and he didn't get that much way too little for them to check out everyone who gets them. Additionally, he's probably fine because out of the tinkers we know of none do welding with most of them doing electronics that's what would be mainly monitored with some other things like materials and chemicals too.

It wasn't that long ago that a Nazi gangbanger shot a cape in her home.

Max also barely explained what happened, and she immediately jumped on board. Knowing the poisoner's motive and opportunity would have been critical information to determine if Purity was at risk, or if they deserved it.

No, this doesn't look like she was trying to protect herself. This looks like her old friends were hurt and even if she was distancing herself from them, she wants revenge.

He wasn't a gangbanger at the time the whole reason he did the assassination is he was under the impression it would let him join at a higher than normal entry position and was right because he was a minor and broke down on the stand so got off with no jail time only to immediately join the empire at a higher than normal entry position (tho granted that's probably part of wildbow's aiming to destroy all fanon that people liked while writing ward in this case that guy getting crucified and otherwise made an example out of by Kaiser).

Would also add Kaiser lied to her to make it sound more serious by saying they were poisoned in their homes or in other words separately instead of only one instance.
 
I mean, there's a difference between killing and murdering someone, Murdering someone is bad, Killing, well killing includes murder, which again bad, mostly bad cases, but the killing done between soldiers, that of a soldier killing a soldier, so that there side can gain more land to help their people, is a neutral act, and killing is only a good act when quite literally no other option works, aka if you can't rehabilitate or imprison someone.

Edit: in short life is nuanced, and people think of Murder when they say kill, when those are two related things, but one is a subcategory of another, that is Murder is a subcategory of Killing.

Yep exactly. Alec murdered two people with a pie and then killed one in a fight. People that, while twisted, were trying to help him. One being a 20 year old girl trapped in a forced marriage. Vigilante justice is really fucking bad, actually. To be clear, the first iteration of this character would never have done this.
 
I mean, there's a difference between killing and murdering someone, Murdering someone is bad, Killing, well killing includes murder, which again bad, mostly bad cases, but the killing done between soldiers, that of a soldier killing a soldier, so that there side can gain more land to help their people, is a neutral act, and killing is only a good act when quite literally no other option works, aka if you can't rehabilitate or imprison someone.

Edit: in short life is nuanced, and people think of Murder when they say kill, when those are two related things, but one is a subcategory of another, that is Murder is a subcategory of Killing.
Murder is illegal killing, by definition. The only difference between murder and killing is that of legality (with "killing" being simply the taking of life, regardless of legality). That doesn't mean that murder is immoral. In fact, it can be the right thing to do. After all, murdering most of Shinra's leadership (excluding Reeve, of course) and their vile lackeys was entirely justified and moral, despite it being highly illegal.
 
Yep exactly. Alec murdered two people with a pie and then killed one in a fight. People that, while twisted, were trying to help him. One being a 20 year old girl trapped in a forced marriage. Vigilante justice is really fucking bad, actually. To be clear, the first iteration of this character would never have done this.
Kinda? I mean Alchemist wouldn't do that, but except for the very very first couple of things he did, he had vastly more power and also had much more competent systems to support him. In DC if he called the cops on someone they would go to jail. Here he is on his own, barely had any powers, and the cops are like 50% nazi at best. If he handed them over if some how they actually got to the PRT they haven't managed to send a single prisoner to jail if they had a friend to break them out in months.
Despite being kinda tragic the girl was the most important cape in the empire as far as logistics goes, and the other two were both on the higher priority end of capes that need to go away before you can deal with the gang.
 
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Dumping a corpse is kinda easy ngl when you don't have to worry about carrying it around.

I would recommend looking for a scalable hill that's hard but easy enough to climb while being out of the way, first dig up some strips/patches of grass from there get a shovel and dig a hole deep enough to burry the body then fill in the hole and place the grass strips on top. To be extra careful maybe get buckets to put the dirt in so the nearby grass doesn't have dirt on it.

Beyond that if you really want to send a message dump the body in Kaiser's septic tank if he has one.

Shouldn't be too hard just look up where he lives (he's a public figure) then go to the library and find the blueprints to the house or look online. From there plan out when he goes to work and find the hatch and dump the body. Kaiser would be to busy being paranoid and jumping at shadows to annoy you.

Well, you'd likely want to find somewhere where the terrain is fairly lumpy or where there's a lot of clay or rocks in the soil, because as the cadaver decays it 'collapses' down on itself.

A fairly common way for unmarked graves to get discovered is the surface sagging down into a divot once the body decomposes enough.

Covering it woth something that'll hold its shape well (clay soil, not exactly ideal) or that will semi interlock with more of itself (slate, large gravel/shale, larger slag if you have a semi-local place).

You will probably also want to cover the cadaver with a layer of pelletized lime and/or coffee grounds before anything else. It's supposed to limit some aspect of the decay to make it harder to find, though I don't know how, precisely.

As always, a deeper hole is definitely better, since ot mitigates the intensity of the "there's a body here" irregularities, though heavy machinery is not precisely subtle.

I'm sure there are more efficient ways to hide a body though.

Freeze it and run it through a wood chipper, then bury it, or cast the remains out to sea, perhaps
 
My concern was less the power level of the enhancement, since as the author you have complete control over just how useful any given advantage is, and more that it seemed inconsistent with the rules on enhancements.

The van has a supplementary 'uses x% less fuel per mile' enhancement simply from getting points, which suggest that the basic function of the object improves, or at least becomes more efficient, by default.

Less recoil and less noise are basic functions of the object working more efficiently by using less force to propel the round, I would expect the gun to have those effects showing up at a similar rate to the van getting more fuel efficient, even if it's modified to be reduced because its a combat item and combat items are more expensive to improve.

What I was expecting is for the power to add a trait to the weapon that it wouldn't normally have - accepting any kind of ammunition without issue, automatically being stable as if a secured bipod was in use, or (as suggested above) ignoring atmospheric effects that would foul your aim. Things that are explicitly para human effects.

I suppose that wrapping the silencing effect into a Stranger effect, making the gun overall harder to track, might be doable. Reduce noise, reduce muzzle flash, higher levels might even confuse basic forensics.

As to the recoil- Possibly kinetic reflection? Better intended for a shield, it could absorb and store a bit of kinetic charge to empower its attacks. So it eats some of its own recoil to power up the bullets even further, with higher levels being more efficient.

I'm sure there are more efficient ways to hide a body though.

There's always a pig farm somewhere nearby.

Of course, what if you -want- the body to be found?
 
Thing is. This is supposed to be a copy of dauntless' power.

"Eventually able to become any stationary tool" is just not that aspirational a final goal for the genre. A pocket sized sphere that can perform the function of any manufacturing or repair tool while remaining portable, sure, but turning it into a drill press would be more impressive in a more grounded, less super human setting.

As for the rifle ... Improving the function of an object is what every investment does. A milestone really should be a qualitative change to the object's function, rather than improving statistics.

Even "subsequent shots all land 20% closer to the first shot until you reload or change targets" is better than +20% accuracy. Even if they both get you a tighter grouping, one of them opens a space for the empowered item to do something that you couldn't do with just a better version of the same item.
I agree with that, unless lv 10 of the skill is what unlocks that because otherwise is lowball.

Dauntless is one of the strongest capes, becoming slowly a literal juggernaut so overpowered that because the author is an grimdark fetishis had to put out of the game because Dauntless would give hope in Worm. His limitation was the number of charges, a very limited number per day that our MC managed to work around thanks to INT/WIS build.

I suppose that wrapping the silencing effect into a Stranger effect, making the gun overall harder to track, might be doable. Reduce noise, reduce muzzle flash, higher levels might even confuse basic forensics.

As to the recoil- Possibly kinetic reflection? Better intended for a shield, it could absorb and store a bit of kinetic charge to empower its attacks. So it eats some of its own recoil to power up the bullets even further, with higher levels being more efficient.
Now that genuinely feels like something out of Dauntless powers, a genuine power given and growing up minor powers that become something that becomes part of a big league cape.
 
The welder, mask, magnets and clamps, then nearly twenty-five meters of steel chain and finally three dozen rods of rebar were all readily available,

Every foot (0.3 meters) or so, he scored a mark on the chain. Once he had 25 marks on the chain, he got to work on the rebar.

Checking if the meter vs feet difference here is intentional or if he intentionally only used ~1/3 of what he purchased.
 
Yep exactly. Alec murdered two people with a pie and then killed one in a fight. People that, while twisted, were trying to help him. One being a 20 year old girl trapped in a forced marriage. Vigilante justice is really fucking bad, actually. To be clear, the first iteration of this character would never have done this.

I think Othala is only like 18 it's pretty creepy really and one of those worldbuilding issues Wildbow did that don't really make sense for a story that starts in 2011 with a timeline identical to ours until 1982 and then minor butterflies till the end of the decade but Othala is part of a full blown isolated Nazi clan that it probably wouldn't be inaccurate to call a cult. Part of their general shadiness was Victor was going to marry into the clan as being a cape makes him a valuable addition but Othala's sister who he was supposed to marry died so the deal got changed so he married her younger not at all age appropriate for him sister.

Dauntless is one of the strongest capes, becoming slowly a literal juggernaut so overpowered that because the author is an grimdark fetishis had to put out of the game because Dauntless would give hope in Worm. His limitation was the number of charges, a very limited number per day that our MC managed to work around thanks to INT/WIS build.


Now that genuinely feels like something out of Dauntless powers, a genuine power given and growing up minor powers that become something that becomes part of a big league cape.

Being fair Dauntless is a really slow grower needing something like a month charging an item before it sees any benefit. His death wasn't because he was too strong tho wildbow didn't have any long term idea of where the plot was headed so he supposedly rolled d6s for every participant of endbringer fights and the lower they rolled the more injured they came out with 1s being straight out killed even in cases it wouldn't make sense such as Dragon. Ironically his back up if Taylor died was Aegis who did die in it.

The reason I said supposedly is that some people doubt it because it feels too clean in that without levi Taylor probably would have failed at taking over the city and the results are heavily biased to help them out. The merchants didn't fight so can be excluded but the Empire lost Kaiser and Alabaster with the former splitting them, New Wave lost Shielder and Manpower, the wards lost Aegis, Gallant and Browbeat (via retcon wildbow just forgot about him for ages) and the protectorate lost Velocity, Dauntless and effectively Armsy. On the other hand though the Travelers and the Undersiders who were both working for Coil only lost some of Racheal's dogs and got Taylor turned off from the heroes and willing to rejoin them.
 
I love this description so much. I'm really, really hoping he somehow gets to use this line on Lung himself. Maybe to piss him off and lure him into a trap? Something.
The description of a dragon as a koi that swam up a waterfall comes from multiple stories in the far East. Calling Lung a failed koi throwing a temper tantrum is even more insulting given that context. I assume Al knows that context too.

koistory.com

Koi Fish Meaning and Myth — Koi Story

Koi are a legendary fish. Graceful, vibrant, and one of the most recognizable fish in the world, koi are well-loved and respected. Often associated with Japan, koi actually originated from Central Asia in China. They were introduced to Japan by Chinese invaders. The koi got their name around 500 B.C
 
The description of a dragon as a koi that swam up a waterfall comes from multiple stories in the far East. Calling Lung a failed koi throwing a temper tantrum is even more insulting given that context. I assume Al knows that context too.

koistory.com

Koi Fish Meaning and Myth — Koi Story

Koi are a legendary fish. Graceful, vibrant, and one of the most recognizable fish in the world, koi are well-loved and respected. Often associated with Japan, koi actually originated from Central Asia in China. They were introduced to Japan by Chinese invaders. The koi got their name around 500 B.C

Pretty sure it's also a Kyushu reference since at least some fics call him the Dragon of Kyushu when the reality is Lung peaked there and stopped growing unable to beat levi who then left so Lung started shrinking and with his regeneration slowing he succumbed to his wounds and started drowning until Alexandria fished him out so he really lost that fight
 
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