The Practice War [Complete]
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
...yet.
*quietly strokes the stats for Shiplord War Fleet craft*
Oh please, try me
- Location
- Anchorage, Alaska
And, once again, I am in need of a "fear" rating.*quietly strokes the stats for Shiplord War Fleet craft*
Oh please, try me
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
The 'War Fleet' seems to be basically the End Game boss... provided we haven't met any secret conditions that unlock the true End Game bosses... Which in this case are the things the Shiplords' built the War Fleet for dealing with, and hope they don't have to fight multiple at once...
And even then have only decent odds probably... Then there's most likely the secret secret bosses... Which... err... walk in, start a monologue, and then at the end go 'Hey, where'd they go?' because just us seeing them inflicts lethal damage, and hearing them inflicts existential damage...
And even then have only decent odds probably... Then there's most likely the secret secret bosses... Which... err... walk in, start a monologue, and then at the end go 'Hey, where'd they go?' because just us seeing them inflicts lethal damage, and hearing them inflicts existential damage...
Robinton
Probably petting Schrödinger's cat
- Location
- Scientifically proving a miracle
Are we going to have a choice to figure that out, or is it going to show up automatically as we research Practice more, or...? (I don't want to just assume that obviously someone will research this...)
Interesting... yeah, that's been indicated before...
...wonder what it means...Huh. Marcus should have a knife that's really a lockpick, Amanda should be able to use a scalpel for surgery, and Vega... could... use it as an overly-sharp conductor's baton!
According to Mary, Amanda, Vega, and the online fandoms, what's the craziest thing a Miracle's ever done?
What's the maximum power output of a Miracle (including mass creation? Ignoring mass creation?)?
Has Veda managed to trigger any other Miracles? (Or Practice Trances? Really, what's she been up to?)
That was not what I expected, and very important. Thanks!!!
Hmm... a few specifics:
Has anyone acted as if they genuinely knew the future? (IE: actions perfectly prepared to deal with some normally unforeseeable event?)
Any evidence of mind-control? (Beyond the fact that large numbers of important government officials were unwittingly working for the subnet...)
Also, did the Dragons have time for a last transmission as they were dying, or anything like that?
Thanks, Snowfire!!!
I suspect that, since Practice is essentially soul magic, knowing what is supposed to happen actually makes it harder to let go of those expectations and have them be replaced by Practiced effects. It's sort of analogous to the whole theme of science and technology leading to the twilight of the gods and their influence on the world: as knowledge of how the natural world grows, someone looking to create a Practiced object will lock herself into thinking that the object should work a certain, accepted, way, cutting off options and pathways that Practice would normally be able to take.Interesting... yeah, that's been indicated before...
In this case, though, I suspect that we're not as locked in as some of the old stories about magic versus technology, and that increasing scientific understanding doesn't necessarily limit the ability to Practice. Under this idea, for a trained Potential, Practice might be better thought of as embracing the functional goals of a given Practiced object / action pair, while distancing from the actual procedural steps involved in the action, inviting Practice to instead accomplish the action rather than what would normally happen via mundane natural processes. This does mean that in some ways a Potential with less scientific knowledge may have an advantage over Potentials with more scientific knowledge, as the less knowledgeable Potential would have fewer preconceptions of what is supposed to happen to discard.
Assuming the above is true, it suddenly becomes clear why Trances/Miracles don't allow the Practitioners involved to remember what is happening or how they created their Tranced/Miracle objects/workings. If the rational, procedural mind is an active hindrance to the skill of Practice, then it's fairly clear that the most powerful effects would result from "turning off" that part of the mind, which is what seems to happen in a Trance/Miracle. And, if that is the case, then the ability to call up a lucid, direct-able Trance/Miracle is likely to be extremely difficult, and at best will be a sort of post-hoc action, with the Lucid Trancer partitioning her mind between the procedural, rational side and the functional, intuitive side and trying to use the former to feed commands like a black box to the later.
Or I could be completely wrong about all of this and Practice works completely differently.
*quietly strokes the stats for Shiplord War Fleet craft*
Oh please, try me
Well, when someone wants to kill you, does it matter if they shoot at you 10 times or 100 times? Either you have a way to protect yourself from it or you don't.
(That said, please let's not taunt the Angry Fun Ball until we're ready....)
Interlude: Nightfalls
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
You dived into the endless black, the void between spaces that held nothing and yet all. You dived as one with your brothers and sisters, shrouded in protective light to hide and hold back the chill darkness of the void. Your name was Phoebe Lowell, some called you the Iron Eye. You led the thought at the heart of the light, focusing the line of power cast to land a catch of knowledge. All of you were confident, the success of your first focus already secure and safely filed with the War Office. But in pursuit of this goal, there was caution too.
After many years of ranging across the endless void, you and the others who'd begun Project Insight had attained some small understanding of it. You could read the subtle currents present in every part of it, on instinct more than analysis. It was a learned skill, one that took a long time to earn. But you and your own had been the first to try and reach into the spaces, not in search of secrets, but in pursuit of relatively mundane knowledge.
Many had thought it wasteful, but there were uses to mundane knowledge. There was none to the nonsense that those who sought Secrets returned with. That was why Project Insight had eventually grown to absorb those groups, a tribute to the support it had received from many places. Secrets could, it seemed, only be found through the ways of the old world. Ways that Mary and those like her seemed well on their way to perfecting now, but had been poorly understood at best then.
That instinct was why you were cautious now, why the entire thoughtcast was cautious. The last time you had dived out to pierce the veil like this, you had found nothing. Or more correctly, you had found what had felt like nothing. The paradox of the Void made it hard to hide things, and a deliberate absence stood out like a candle in the night if you knew what look for. Something had been in the way, a subtle presence, one you'd felt before. It had never been malicious, however, and so you simply accepted it as another part of the Void's workings. If it was not, then it would be good that you built a great many protections into the complex equipment that Project Insight used to find things.
Time was a complicated process in the void, and you never really knew how much time had passed until you found what you were looking for. Sometimes it could be hours, others entire days might pass before the thoughtcast could find its target. It wasn't exactly a trance, you were dimly aware of your body and the world around you back in the heavily guarded building that housed the Project, but it was close enough in a lot of ways. Vega would probably call it a half-state, and whilst that wasn't exactly wrong, it didn't really feel right.
Finding your way back to the false absence was simple enough once you got your bearings, however. The Void moved, everyone who'd ever touched it had to know that, but it was a lot more static than most thought. The hard part was working out where you appeared in it, but after so many years of practice it had become a lot easier. Once you had the location of the thoughtcast pinned down, your memories and honed instinct did the rest.
There.
The thoughtcast speared out across the empty spaces, cutting between the strange currents of the place, echoes of what some of you thought were the footsteps of other presences in the Void. The outer veils rippled as you grazed current's edge, but the Potentials set there quickly smoothed away the ripples, and you pushed one.
You were taking a different course this time, partially due to the necessity of breaking into the Void in a different place, but also as a way to try and sneak around what had hidden the knowledge within the space from you before. You could see it at the edge of your shared vision, an artificial blank in the Void's absent form, far in the distance. You spun the Cast below another eddy, more careful this time to preserve the edge of your veils; you had no desire for more ripples. If others were watching, those would give you away.
The space was closer now, and you pushed your sight forward, trying to understand how it had been hidden so well and yet so poorly. As a blank, it was perfect, whatever was behind or within was impossible to identify. But it was obvious, too, and you had to wonder why. If you wished to keep something hidden, then you kept it hidden, locked away behind the strongest bars and then sealed into the very fabric of the world so that none could ever find it. That was possible in this place, you knew, but the way in which this had been done…
It was possible that the Shiplords didn't understand that Void the same way you did, but arrogance like that had been what had almost gotten Amanda killed. 'Never assume you know the why, until you've heard it from the ones taking the actions'. That was what Project Insight was built on, the principle of finding what you needed to know from those you were investigating. Until now, you'd never had much trouble, but this was different. It made you cautious, but Insight focused like yourself were a curious bunch by nature, and this was also a potential information source that you already knew existed.
Given the choice between searching for another piece of information and trying to follow this one through to its conclusion, the choice had been rather obvious. And there'd never been any malice within the Void, simply the absence of any affection, that could kill without any realisation. That was what the place was, and there was no emotion or desire to it. What you were investigating was something different, however. Something new. And that-
A nameless instinct shrieked warning.
You realised after the fact that it had actually been the presence of one of the Potentials at the edge of the thoughtcast, peering at the space much closer to you than your target. The space between you and it, in fact. As you tried to react to the warning, it exploded into agonising brilliance, stabbing light through the veils that hid you from the Void and any others who might seek to chart paths across it.
Power slammed through the cloaks and shields, tearing ragged holes in the former, and beating hard against the latter. Many shattered entirely, and in your body you saw parts of the system around you go suddenly dark. The immediacy of the reaction frightened you, and you pulled the thoughtcast away from the sudden light, seeking to run and then find a way back to yourselves. You tried to, at least.
Something caught in the shields, hooks of a power that were neither bright nor dark, and their grasp tore at your mind like frozen iron. It hurt, you'd never felt pain from this before, but even then it was muted. Something was in the way still, sliding between the hooks and your minds. It was the systems, you realised. Designed to filter, but also to protect against intrusion like this, a firewall against what you had somehow guided the thoughtcast straight into. How you'd not seen it was beyond you, but you buried that chain of self-flagellation before it could even bloom. The systems built up over the years to protect a thoughtcast were doing their job, but only at the expense of their existence. In the real, you saw readouts begin to flash and go dark, and that meant you didn't have much time. If those fell, you'd be caught, and you had no idea what was behind these hooks. It could be the Shiplords, or it could be an unknown, and that might be even worse.
The course of action was simple, then.
A directive flashed from your mind to the rest of the thoughtcast, and those around the hooks rushed back from them as your intent reached them. Only a handful faltered, more out of concern than surprise, but you were saved having to speak again by their companions. Hands reached out, words streaming between them, and the cautious few didn't fight as they were pulled along. That was good, you didn't want to think about what being too close would to their minds. Being honest, you didn't want to think about what you were about to do could do to your own.
But you were the leader of the cast, its guide, and so the responsibility was yours. For all that, you did share, but it wasn't as if you had much choice where it came to the ones who shared the centre of the Thoughtcast with you. Hands of will reached out towards the veils, gripping the closer side of the hooks.
Breathe in, breathe out.
The fingers locked, and you tore the entire construct away, distantly hearing the scream of alarms as hardware that had taken decades to construct in some cases were ripped apart from the inside. The blazing light pushed forward as the hooks came free, a luminous eye seeking the holes your actions had opened in the veils. You twisted below it, your mind screaming this time as the desperate manoeuvre opened parts of the cast to the Void. You rushed forward to stop it short, splitting attention between holding the construct together and escaping the blazing gaze splitting the absence apart as it searched for you.
Hooks and other, more lethal things scattered the space around you, and your mind shuddered as one cut a dark furrow across your course. You'd thought you'd known this place, the powers that it held, but this was entirely beyond you. The sheer power of these defences, there was no other word for them, and how effortlessly they'd ravaged your shields and veils. You dived away further, seeking the edge of the trap, a place where you could break contact and flee back into yourself.
This time you screamed in reality.
The bolt of power went through one side of the Thoughtcast with contemptuous ease, and an arrowhead bloomed around it before it slammed back, and you were caught again. More bolts brightened in the dark, and you swore. More systems were failing, the shields around the many minds in the cast reforming to protect them, but nothing would be able to survive the storm looming above you. Thoughts flickered between you and the others at the centre, and none of you liked the consensus. Unfortunately, it was the only way.
Mental hands darted out, catching the minds caught on the edge and pulling them into the centre, where you hoped they'd be safe.
The bolts above you fired.
And twelve very physical hands slammed down on the emergency disconnect.
The systems screamed again, sparks and smoke filling the long server rooms that made up so much of the project's building as they fought to bring every one of you back to reality. Eyes flashed open across the Insight chamber, and you took them in, watching as biosigns stabilised in a field of green.
"Out!" You yelled, gesturing to the delicate apparatus on your brow, and the others suited action to your words. You'd managed to break free, but some of the bolts had been caught in the disconnect, and there was only so much your systems could do with such energy caught inside of them. Across the room, the physical membership of Project Insight moved frantically to disconnect themselves from a system that was coming apart at the seams. Some moved slowly, as if half in a dream, clearly affected by the sudden clash and how close you had all come to being caught.
Fire tingled at the edge of your mind as you reached up to disconnect yourself, and you tried desperately not to weep as you felt the wild power that had followed you reducing decades of painstaking work to shards and ash. Yet you felt also the thanks of your fellows, even if you did not want to see it. The eyes raised in gratitude and faith, that you would one day lead them again into the Void. Your mind quailed before those eyes, unwilling to look back after the sheer depth of your failure, but also incapable of ignoring their gaze.
Your Second within the Thoughtcast helped you to your feet, and you could feel the tears coming now.
"It's alright, Phoebe." Alex said, helping you down the steps towards the exit. "It wasn't your fault."
"Amanda," you began, then fell silent when Alex shook her head.
"We'll deal with it," she said firmly. "You need to rest."
If Insight was to see again, you'd need many more than just her to help them heal.
(Project Insight: OFFLINE. Repair and recovery actions held until post-Invasion. Tribute Fleet data recovered, tactical assessment forthcoming.
Warning: Project Insight cannot guarantee that its relative direction was not tracked. Although exact coordinates would be impossible to find due to the nature of the emergency disconnect, it is possible that if the defences they encountered were Shiplord in nature it may lead to a stepped increase in deployment figures in the outer spiral.)
After many years of ranging across the endless void, you and the others who'd begun Project Insight had attained some small understanding of it. You could read the subtle currents present in every part of it, on instinct more than analysis. It was a learned skill, one that took a long time to earn. But you and your own had been the first to try and reach into the spaces, not in search of secrets, but in pursuit of relatively mundane knowledge.
Many had thought it wasteful, but there were uses to mundane knowledge. There was none to the nonsense that those who sought Secrets returned with. That was why Project Insight had eventually grown to absorb those groups, a tribute to the support it had received from many places. Secrets could, it seemed, only be found through the ways of the old world. Ways that Mary and those like her seemed well on their way to perfecting now, but had been poorly understood at best then.
That instinct was why you were cautious now, why the entire thoughtcast was cautious. The last time you had dived out to pierce the veil like this, you had found nothing. Or more correctly, you had found what had felt like nothing. The paradox of the Void made it hard to hide things, and a deliberate absence stood out like a candle in the night if you knew what look for. Something had been in the way, a subtle presence, one you'd felt before. It had never been malicious, however, and so you simply accepted it as another part of the Void's workings. If it was not, then it would be good that you built a great many protections into the complex equipment that Project Insight used to find things.
Time was a complicated process in the void, and you never really knew how much time had passed until you found what you were looking for. Sometimes it could be hours, others entire days might pass before the thoughtcast could find its target. It wasn't exactly a trance, you were dimly aware of your body and the world around you back in the heavily guarded building that housed the Project, but it was close enough in a lot of ways. Vega would probably call it a half-state, and whilst that wasn't exactly wrong, it didn't really feel right.
Finding your way back to the false absence was simple enough once you got your bearings, however. The Void moved, everyone who'd ever touched it had to know that, but it was a lot more static than most thought. The hard part was working out where you appeared in it, but after so many years of practice it had become a lot easier. Once you had the location of the thoughtcast pinned down, your memories and honed instinct did the rest.
There.
The thoughtcast speared out across the empty spaces, cutting between the strange currents of the place, echoes of what some of you thought were the footsteps of other presences in the Void. The outer veils rippled as you grazed current's edge, but the Potentials set there quickly smoothed away the ripples, and you pushed one.
You were taking a different course this time, partially due to the necessity of breaking into the Void in a different place, but also as a way to try and sneak around what had hidden the knowledge within the space from you before. You could see it at the edge of your shared vision, an artificial blank in the Void's absent form, far in the distance. You spun the Cast below another eddy, more careful this time to preserve the edge of your veils; you had no desire for more ripples. If others were watching, those would give you away.
The space was closer now, and you pushed your sight forward, trying to understand how it had been hidden so well and yet so poorly. As a blank, it was perfect, whatever was behind or within was impossible to identify. But it was obvious, too, and you had to wonder why. If you wished to keep something hidden, then you kept it hidden, locked away behind the strongest bars and then sealed into the very fabric of the world so that none could ever find it. That was possible in this place, you knew, but the way in which this had been done…
It was possible that the Shiplords didn't understand that Void the same way you did, but arrogance like that had been what had almost gotten Amanda killed. 'Never assume you know the why, until you've heard it from the ones taking the actions'. That was what Project Insight was built on, the principle of finding what you needed to know from those you were investigating. Until now, you'd never had much trouble, but this was different. It made you cautious, but Insight focused like yourself were a curious bunch by nature, and this was also a potential information source that you already knew existed.
Given the choice between searching for another piece of information and trying to follow this one through to its conclusion, the choice had been rather obvious. And there'd never been any malice within the Void, simply the absence of any affection, that could kill without any realisation. That was what the place was, and there was no emotion or desire to it. What you were investigating was something different, however. Something new. And that-
A nameless instinct shrieked warning.
You realised after the fact that it had actually been the presence of one of the Potentials at the edge of the thoughtcast, peering at the space much closer to you than your target. The space between you and it, in fact. As you tried to react to the warning, it exploded into agonising brilliance, stabbing light through the veils that hid you from the Void and any others who might seek to chart paths across it.
Power slammed through the cloaks and shields, tearing ragged holes in the former, and beating hard against the latter. Many shattered entirely, and in your body you saw parts of the system around you go suddenly dark. The immediacy of the reaction frightened you, and you pulled the thoughtcast away from the sudden light, seeking to run and then find a way back to yourselves. You tried to, at least.
Something caught in the shields, hooks of a power that were neither bright nor dark, and their grasp tore at your mind like frozen iron. It hurt, you'd never felt pain from this before, but even then it was muted. Something was in the way still, sliding between the hooks and your minds. It was the systems, you realised. Designed to filter, but also to protect against intrusion like this, a firewall against what you had somehow guided the thoughtcast straight into. How you'd not seen it was beyond you, but you buried that chain of self-flagellation before it could even bloom. The systems built up over the years to protect a thoughtcast were doing their job, but only at the expense of their existence. In the real, you saw readouts begin to flash and go dark, and that meant you didn't have much time. If those fell, you'd be caught, and you had no idea what was behind these hooks. It could be the Shiplords, or it could be an unknown, and that might be even worse.
The course of action was simple, then.
A directive flashed from your mind to the rest of the thoughtcast, and those around the hooks rushed back from them as your intent reached them. Only a handful faltered, more out of concern than surprise, but you were saved having to speak again by their companions. Hands reached out, words streaming between them, and the cautious few didn't fight as they were pulled along. That was good, you didn't want to think about what being too close would to their minds. Being honest, you didn't want to think about what you were about to do could do to your own.
But you were the leader of the cast, its guide, and so the responsibility was yours. For all that, you did share, but it wasn't as if you had much choice where it came to the ones who shared the centre of the Thoughtcast with you. Hands of will reached out towards the veils, gripping the closer side of the hooks.
Breathe in, breathe out.
The fingers locked, and you tore the entire construct away, distantly hearing the scream of alarms as hardware that had taken decades to construct in some cases were ripped apart from the inside. The blazing light pushed forward as the hooks came free, a luminous eye seeking the holes your actions had opened in the veils. You twisted below it, your mind screaming this time as the desperate manoeuvre opened parts of the cast to the Void. You rushed forward to stop it short, splitting attention between holding the construct together and escaping the blazing gaze splitting the absence apart as it searched for you.
Hooks and other, more lethal things scattered the space around you, and your mind shuddered as one cut a dark furrow across your course. You'd thought you'd known this place, the powers that it held, but this was entirely beyond you. The sheer power of these defences, there was no other word for them, and how effortlessly they'd ravaged your shields and veils. You dived away further, seeking the edge of the trap, a place where you could break contact and flee back into yourself.
This time you screamed in reality.
The bolt of power went through one side of the Thoughtcast with contemptuous ease, and an arrowhead bloomed around it before it slammed back, and you were caught again. More bolts brightened in the dark, and you swore. More systems were failing, the shields around the many minds in the cast reforming to protect them, but nothing would be able to survive the storm looming above you. Thoughts flickered between you and the others at the centre, and none of you liked the consensus. Unfortunately, it was the only way.
Mental hands darted out, catching the minds caught on the edge and pulling them into the centre, where you hoped they'd be safe.
The bolts above you fired.
And twelve very physical hands slammed down on the emergency disconnect.
The systems screamed again, sparks and smoke filling the long server rooms that made up so much of the project's building as they fought to bring every one of you back to reality. Eyes flashed open across the Insight chamber, and you took them in, watching as biosigns stabilised in a field of green.
"Out!" You yelled, gesturing to the delicate apparatus on your brow, and the others suited action to your words. You'd managed to break free, but some of the bolts had been caught in the disconnect, and there was only so much your systems could do with such energy caught inside of them. Across the room, the physical membership of Project Insight moved frantically to disconnect themselves from a system that was coming apart at the seams. Some moved slowly, as if half in a dream, clearly affected by the sudden clash and how close you had all come to being caught.
Fire tingled at the edge of your mind as you reached up to disconnect yourself, and you tried desperately not to weep as you felt the wild power that had followed you reducing decades of painstaking work to shards and ash. Yet you felt also the thanks of your fellows, even if you did not want to see it. The eyes raised in gratitude and faith, that you would one day lead them again into the Void. Your mind quailed before those eyes, unwilling to look back after the sheer depth of your failure, but also incapable of ignoring their gaze.
Your Second within the Thoughtcast helped you to your feet, and you could feel the tears coming now.
"It's alright, Phoebe." Alex said, helping you down the steps towards the exit. "It wasn't your fault."
"Amanda," you began, then fell silent when Alex shook her head.
"We'll deal with it," she said firmly. "You need to rest."
***
You were Amanda Hawk, staring at the report in front of you, and thanking entities you weren't even sure existed for all the protective functions that had been built into Project Insight over the years. Some had called it paranoid, but the work had been vindicated today. Even with them, Vega had no idea how long it would take for the Project to be capable of searching for knowledge again. Rebuilding the facility itself would take years, regardless of your better understanding of what was needed, and that didn't take into account the damage done to the Insight Focused. The mental damage would take time to restore, but Restorer Focused knew how to do that. Unfortunately, Vega was the only one you knew of who'd ever shown an understanding of how to treat wounds of the soul.
If Insight was to see again, you'd need many more than just her to help them heal.
(Project Insight: OFFLINE. Repair and recovery actions held until post-Invasion. Tribute Fleet data recovered, tactical assessment forthcoming.
Warning: Project Insight cannot guarantee that its relative direction was not tracked. Although exact coordinates would be impossible to find due to the nature of the emergency disconnect, it is possible that if the defences they encountered were Shiplord in nature it may lead to a stepped increase in deployment figures in the outer spiral.)
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Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
So this outcome was one I'd hoped you weren't going to ever trigger with Project Insight, but due to what you ran into being related to weaknesses combined with the Nat 1, Project Insight got hit with one of the nastier things that could have happened to it. You were incredibly lucky that no one ended up dead as a result of this, but it isn't as if you came away unscathed. To make the extent of damage clear: it is going to take four to five years, minimum, to get Project Insight back on track. Although it's not a terrible loss in the short term, as their ability to directly affect the battles to come was limited, it's a major medium term loss in terms of information gathering and how much work is going to have to go into rebuilding it.
If this feels a bit much, you have to consider that Project Insight was the culmination of decades of Practice work and government funding. It's not a matter of replacing everything so much as replacing everything, making sure it's put together right, fusing it all together with Practice, and then checking again to make sure it's all put together right. Whilst at the same time you have the mental trauma and outright wounds inflicted on many of the souls of those who were part of the Thoughtcast.
Perhaps thankfully, both of your other Interludes are nicer than this, and I have most of this weekend off so we'll see if I can get a good way through them.
Hope you liked this, even if the consequences were severe.
If this feels a bit much, you have to consider that Project Insight was the culmination of decades of Practice work and government funding. It's not a matter of replacing everything so much as replacing everything, making sure it's put together right, fusing it all together with Practice, and then checking again to make sure it's all put together right. Whilst at the same time you have the mental trauma and outright wounds inflicted on many of the souls of those who were part of the Thoughtcast.
Perhaps thankfully, both of your other Interludes are nicer than this, and I have most of this weekend off so we'll see if I can get a good way through them.
Hope you liked this, even if the consequences were severe.
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Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Were there rolls for if people died? Just.. curious.
While this is an incredibly harsh thing to have happen for something with an amazingly high 1% chance per use, it's not exactly out of the realm of possibility, given that Insight was literally working with things that they do not understand, to travel through a medium that they barely comprehend, if that, to ferret out secrets of an enemy that they know little about.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
It was a combination of what you rolled as your target information (I've rolled for that every time you took this action) and the critfail. The first roll landed in the same bracket as last year, which was a rather risky option anyway. And then the dice gave you a nat 1.
Given what's hidden around that area...well I've already said you were damn lucky no one died. And yes, I did do some rolls for that.
Given what's hidden around that area...well I've already said you were damn lucky no one died. And yes, I did do some rolls for that.
Hm.
Ok then. We need to rebuild and make sure that our firewalls are even stronger next time.
Was expecting worse when we found out what the 1 was on.
Ok then. We need to rebuild and make sure that our firewalls are even stronger next time.
Was expecting worse when we found out what the 1 was on.
Oh, gee. The interlude we get from rolling four successes, including two rolls of 90+ was better than what we got from a critfail? As was the other interlude we also got from four successes, each at 120+ level? What a surprise.
More seriously, yeah, this was pretty painful. I'm especially concerned about possibly being traced. I'm also worried about the mental trauma of our practiced, though apparently that is directly healable. Though honestly, I feared worst. I thought we would actually be rebuked by one of the Elder races that are the actual powerhouses in the galaxy - which could have put our entire civilization at risk, not just one project.
And at least it doesn't cost us anything in the short term. I hesitate to say that a failure elsewere would have been costlier, but there were a lot of points where a critfail would have been a major pain. Judging what happened in our norma-failure, a critfail at Breaking Chains would likely have ravaged our security apparatus, and left us completely open to cyberattack once the Shiplords arrive. A critfail on any of the eight actions making up our two interludes would probably have soured them dramatically, and I don't even want to think about what a crit-fail in nano-repair installation would have done.
I'm pretty sure this falls under the "don't swallow an energy field larger than your head" adage. Or whatever the equivalent is for not agro-ing powerful entities without knowing how powerful they are.
...yep, have to agree with this statement here. Let's not poke things with a stick just yet. Make sure we're not gonna get anything ELSE mad until we can handle it.
That said, I think we might have discovered our next 'Big Bad' so let's not bury this and never come back to it.
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Yeah. I've noticed that people have a tendency to play quests like their protag is the biggest thing on the block. I get it - power fantasies are fun, and I've certainly enjoyed a fair share of this myself. But - just because it is fun doesn't mean it is smart. We've been clearly told we aren't the biggest thing on the block. For that matter, we been told that the Shiplords aren't the biggest thing on the block - and at present, our entire civilization is struggling to fight off a single detachment of the Shiplord fleet.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
Once the Tribute Fleet is over, I'd say we desperately need to take some of the 'Circle' actions. The only reason we haven't is that they take so damn long, and we aren't entirely sure of the benefits...
But if they can help protect against the mental, and maybe spiritual, damage that can happen to Potentials? Definitely worth it.
Not to mention, we will probably need to strengthen our psychological help due to what happens from the battle, which the Circles are all about.
But if they can help protect against the mental, and maybe spiritual, damage that can happen to Potentials? Definitely worth it.
Not to mention, we will probably need to strengthen our psychological help due to what happens from the battle, which the Circles are all about.
Watch as after the war we discover that the circle options would have turned our entire population into potentials.
I cry because I can see it being true....
(edit)
Wait. Actually, the thought occurs.
Next turn, we KNOW the invasion's about to happen. Do we want to spend a social to try and rally people? Working with the Circles to prepare for the fallout I mean? There's going to be a mess regardless of what happens, if we prepare our support teams before hand it might help us from dealing with a reduction of dice/actions the next turn.
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Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
I...am probably not going to be able to answer this properly.
Figure unknown. Please try again later.
She's done a bit, but in general she's been focused on learning more about Trances. She's gone at it in a very different way to Vega, however. Some interesting options could come from her after the Tribute Fleet is fought off.
Nope.
Nope.
Also nope.
- Location
- Somewhere
Remember, the Shiplords are the dominant power in the galaxy, and the primary focus of their tyrannical control over newcomers to the galactic table is preventing them from fucking with the Void. All of the slave and resource-taking is punishment-with-benefits.
Maybe their understanding of it is more limited, maybe they're stuck using purely material methods to probe it, maybe sufficiently spiritually advanced humans can do so better and more safely. Or maybe they've already been down the incautious road and know better than to pierce the firmament and let the all-consuming entities from the negaverse into our reality. They've dedicated functionally incalculable resources to preventing people who don't know what they're doing from fucking around with the Void, aren't vicious enough to just go full xenocide on every new race (despite that being a more limited resource investment per species), but also aren't willing to trust everyone they encounter to listen to explanations as to why they shouldn't give the eyes of the abyss a Three Stooges double poke.
Basically, Shiplord behavior smacks of people who've been around long enough to see younger species almost fuck the galaxy, go into hard men making hard choices while hard mode to deal with it, and then spent centuries or millennia becoming accustomed to unpleasant and ethically questionable behavior, to the point where killing billions of sophonts is a perfectly acceptable first contact as long as it gets the point across. Maybe humanity could pull an Old Man Henderson. But remember, that story doesn't have a happy ending, just a Pyrrhic victory (and an incredibly unlikely one at that). This is the sort of thing that you develop intergalactic travel for, solely so that you can fuck around with it in Andromeda or deep space instead of places that you like.