The Practice War [Complete]
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] [Plan] Curiosity
- Location
- Staring into the void
Inserted tally
- Location
- Grandview
[X][Plan]Break Glass
- Location
- Kansas City area
We're partners.
Closest its been in a while actually.
EDIT
And Baughn ties it again.
Current Tally:
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Going to close it here and flip a coin in the morning. If @Faraway-R or @uju32 want to call a side for the flip, I'm cool with that.
Vote Closed
Vote Closed
- Location
- Somewhere.
Snowfire said actual coin flip on Discord.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
I was going to say this, but I was beaten to it :lol
Curses!!!!!!Coinflip done
Plan Curiosity wins
Hmm, you have good veins.
When last did anyone stick an IV line in your arm? Or draw blood?
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
0.o
Uh...quite a few years. They actually had a lot of trouble with it. My body appears to not approve of losing blood.
A little surprised at that, given the vessels I can see.
Maybe your body's changed? Hopefully you don't have to find out
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
A little surprised at that, given the vessels I can see.
Maybe your body's changed? Hopefully you don't have to find out
I mean, they were taking from the arm, not the hand, so maybe it's different there.
And yes, I would hope that I don't have to find that out too
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Quick update. The Arcadia Progress Report is done, has been sent it to one of my betas, and will be posted after I get some damn sleep. The rolls this turn were actually reasonable (still above fricking 65 on the average) but even so I think you'll find some of the results here...interesting.
Turn 23 - Arcadia Progress Report
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Arcadia Progress Report
A new year greets new projects, with further development of more advanced Unison Platforms falling now to the Ministries instead of Arcadia. You aren't entirely sure how you feel about that, given the amount of work you'd dedicated to getting them to this point, but you can't deny the weight of other priorities as humanity's next encounter with the Shiplords grows ever closer. Phoebe remains entombed within the Insight complex, generally beyond communication, but details are starting to make their way out of cabinet level interactions now. With a command position within the Two Twenty Three, you're effectively a member of the War Office's senior command bloc, and Adriana and Lina are moving into aggressive briefing cycles.
Insight still remains unable to narrow the arrival date down to a specific year, but they can give some certainty; no sooner than 2130, no later than 2133. The best conclusion the analysts have is that the fleet either hasn't fully assembled or that the Shiplords possess some sort of jamming system for Insight's data gathering. The latter is unlikely when taken against Insight's steady operational accuracy in other matters, but it cannot be ignored. Even so, the current listing makes for grim reading. Simulations remain positive, and you trust Lina's confidence in the new weapons she's forged for humanity, but it's difficult sometimes when you know that this is only a single formation, dispatched to observe and, if necessary, quell, a tributary who has advanced along paths deemed forbidden. If not for your knowledge of the deeper truths of Shiplord power, and the revelations of Second Contact, you would have thought it utterly without reason.
And yet, knowing there is a reason does not stop an action being insane, nor weaken the resolve of you and the most brilliant minds of humanity in seeking out the tools to deny your enemy. And the creation of computing systems into something which defied even the limitations of light itself had implications beyond the Orrery, though none were quite so grand. Even so, just one of the machines could save countless lives when set to ground the electronic warfare capacity of Sol. By their own admission, Vision and Marcus had gotten immensely lucky against the Tribute Fleet, and they'd had immense surprise on their side when they'd done it. Against the systems of Regulars, more would be needed.
Lightless Circuits: 67 + 26 (Learning) + 25 (Vision) + 31 (Iris) + 20 (Archive of Terra) + 5 (Momentum) + 273 (Rollover) = 447/400
War Office Development: 22 + 42 + 10 = 74 + 47 = 121/???
Arcadia intends to deliver.
The work this year isn't exactly frenetic, not in the way it's sometimes been for other projects. But there's an inevitability to the progress that is legitimately inhuman. You worry a little for Iris, actually, as she hurls herself into the project with an unceasing determination that you've never seen from her before. You know that she's still talking to her friends, Aya tells you that much, but her focus can often seem elsewhere in some conversations, the vast bulk of her processing capacity dedicated to work that does not end with the working day. She is, at least, still sleeping, but you give your apprentice a few bits of advice on how you sometimes had to…manage Mary's workload for her own health.
As an AI, of course, it's a little bit harder to get Iris to stop, but Aya happily reports limited success as the year continues. Even with that concern, though, you can't argue with the results. Although the War Office is heavily distracted this year, with many of its R&D specialists moved to finalise the FSN's selection of armaments, the steady implacability of the two AIs pulls the project teams forward around them. And by the end of it, you have a prototype not just designed, but mostly built. It's required a minor miracle to get it all together in time, but there you still have the War Office's resourcing priority. All that remains now is the testing, and that shouldn't take more than a year at your current rate.
First stage development complete. Rollover banked (+121). Research action unsatisfied.
Of course, with that good news on one side, there's the steady grind of the continuing work into the Third Secret. That steady belief is one you can understand, and even share, but it's difficult to be on the very bleeding edge of human scientific advancement and having 'well this seems right' as one of the most often spoken phrases in the entire lab. You're pretty sure Mary would have banned it had she not been caught repeating the words more than once herself. Scientific process, as she's put it before, is meant to make scientific sense. Unlocking Secrets…is another sort of process. She's come to terms with that, yes, but that doesn't mean she likes it.
Tasting Lightning: 81 + 26 (Learning) + 35 (Mary) + 15 (Daughter of Secrets) + 15 (Olympus Archives) + 30 (Momentum) + 333 (Rollover) = 535
Ministry of Science Research Assistance: 43 + 21 + 26 = 90 + 535 = 625/???
The mainline of the report on progress in this sphere is a highly unscientific 'I'm sure we're getting somewhere' that you know Mary found almost personally offensive to have to write down. You make sure to tease her about it a bit to stop her from dwelling on the matter too much. Below those lines, there's definite signs of actual advancement, underlying mathematics and a few experiments that are starting to move towards the results you're looking for, but you're still well short of the precipice that they're all seeking under Mary's leadership.
Your friend guesstimates a year or two more at most but admits that prediction of this type has rarely been accurate. And even after reaching the precipice, humanity will need time to develop the practical equipment of the Secret. Unless you get very, very lucky, it isn't going to be available for Third Sol. But then, no one had really been banking on that possibility. Practice can bridge the gap for now.
Rollover banked (+625). Research action unsatisfied.
And that brings you neatly to the final focus of Arcadia this year; the Elder's Vault. You'd not been back there since that very memorable visit with Vega when you helped her and the beginnings of the first Harmonic Circle tear the ruins of the facility back into pristine reality. And even before then, the place had been…significant. You have found things there that changed the very foundation of your understanding of Practice, and in the years since, the Ministries of Science and Practice have made steady progress in unravelling the mysteries contained within the renewed Vault.
With access to the Reliquaries made possible through a fully restored access system, you'd have thought the place surely mined out by now. As it happens, though, that's not quite the case. Although most of the Reliquaries have been opened during Adriana's terms, there are a few points where transferred control was insufficient. Most of those were opened by other Inheritors, yielding their own boons to the human race, but built by those who are now believed to have argued for the apprenticing of those particular Inheritors. You, however, have been absent, leaving a single Reliquary currently unopened.
Inheritor's Legacy: 75 + 26 (Learning) + 21 (Vega) + 25 (Harmonic Record) = 147/100
Most of Arcadia's work is spent on analysing the details of the other Vaults, taking everything that has been gleaned from the system and merging it into a singular whole that can be used to pursue all the works of the Elder First. An armoury not of weapons, but of knowledge, recorded by those who by their own admission came perilously close to reaching too deep in their search for answers. Exactly what that means, you still don't know, and Vision believes only Insight could truly answer. And after the first time that Phoebe tangled with deeper questions, she's entirely unwilling to do so again unless it can be shown to be absolutely necessary.
With that in mind, you don't expect any great gamechanger from the Vault's final Reliquary, especially with the largest Reliquaries opened early on. Those granted you Vision, the first nonhuman life created by humanity after the Sorrows, and the secrets of Inviolate Matter which has been applied extensively in the designs of the FSN's new fleet. The latter vault had also contained a small starship hull entirely constructed from Inviolate Matter. Why exactly that vault had been keyed to you, you honestly weren't sure. Your Focus had always been about fixing things and making them better, durability was a secondary matter.
You're not precisely wrong in your expectation, the last Reliquary is functionally quite small, and with little in the way of easy to parse data. Yet as you dig into what you find there, mostly hardcopy journals and folder sets with a truly surprising lack of any computer storage, you begin to understand what some of the other Inheritors had told you. One man's trash is another man's treasure, so the saying goes. It's not exactly the right one here…but it comes close.
First stage research complete. Research action satisfied. See Interlude: Of Words, Webs and Wisdom
A new year greets new projects, with further development of more advanced Unison Platforms falling now to the Ministries instead of Arcadia. You aren't entirely sure how you feel about that, given the amount of work you'd dedicated to getting them to this point, but you can't deny the weight of other priorities as humanity's next encounter with the Shiplords grows ever closer. Phoebe remains entombed within the Insight complex, generally beyond communication, but details are starting to make their way out of cabinet level interactions now. With a command position within the Two Twenty Three, you're effectively a member of the War Office's senior command bloc, and Adriana and Lina are moving into aggressive briefing cycles.
Insight still remains unable to narrow the arrival date down to a specific year, but they can give some certainty; no sooner than 2130, no later than 2133. The best conclusion the analysts have is that the fleet either hasn't fully assembled or that the Shiplords possess some sort of jamming system for Insight's data gathering. The latter is unlikely when taken against Insight's steady operational accuracy in other matters, but it cannot be ignored. Even so, the current listing makes for grim reading. Simulations remain positive, and you trust Lina's confidence in the new weapons she's forged for humanity, but it's difficult sometimes when you know that this is only a single formation, dispatched to observe and, if necessary, quell, a tributary who has advanced along paths deemed forbidden. If not for your knowledge of the deeper truths of Shiplord power, and the revelations of Second Contact, you would have thought it utterly without reason.
And yet, knowing there is a reason does not stop an action being insane, nor weaken the resolve of you and the most brilliant minds of humanity in seeking out the tools to deny your enemy. And the creation of computing systems into something which defied even the limitations of light itself had implications beyond the Orrery, though none were quite so grand. Even so, just one of the machines could save countless lives when set to ground the electronic warfare capacity of Sol. By their own admission, Vision and Marcus had gotten immensely lucky against the Tribute Fleet, and they'd had immense surprise on their side when they'd done it. Against the systems of Regulars, more would be needed.
Lightless Circuits: 67 + 26 (Learning) + 25 (Vision) + 31 (Iris) + 20 (Archive of Terra) + 5 (Momentum) + 273 (Rollover) = 447/400
War Office Development: 22 + 42 + 10 = 74 + 47 = 121/???
Arcadia intends to deliver.
The work this year isn't exactly frenetic, not in the way it's sometimes been for other projects. But there's an inevitability to the progress that is legitimately inhuman. You worry a little for Iris, actually, as she hurls herself into the project with an unceasing determination that you've never seen from her before. You know that she's still talking to her friends, Aya tells you that much, but her focus can often seem elsewhere in some conversations, the vast bulk of her processing capacity dedicated to work that does not end with the working day. She is, at least, still sleeping, but you give your apprentice a few bits of advice on how you sometimes had to…manage Mary's workload for her own health.
As an AI, of course, it's a little bit harder to get Iris to stop, but Aya happily reports limited success as the year continues. Even with that concern, though, you can't argue with the results. Although the War Office is heavily distracted this year, with many of its R&D specialists moved to finalise the FSN's selection of armaments, the steady implacability of the two AIs pulls the project teams forward around them. And by the end of it, you have a prototype not just designed, but mostly built. It's required a minor miracle to get it all together in time, but there you still have the War Office's resourcing priority. All that remains now is the testing, and that shouldn't take more than a year at your current rate.
First stage development complete. Rollover banked (+121). Research action unsatisfied.
Of course, with that good news on one side, there's the steady grind of the continuing work into the Third Secret. That steady belief is one you can understand, and even share, but it's difficult to be on the very bleeding edge of human scientific advancement and having 'well this seems right' as one of the most often spoken phrases in the entire lab. You're pretty sure Mary would have banned it had she not been caught repeating the words more than once herself. Scientific process, as she's put it before, is meant to make scientific sense. Unlocking Secrets…is another sort of process. She's come to terms with that, yes, but that doesn't mean she likes it.
Tasting Lightning: 81 + 26 (Learning) + 35 (Mary) + 15 (Daughter of Secrets) + 15 (Olympus Archives) + 30 (Momentum) + 333 (Rollover) = 535
Ministry of Science Research Assistance: 43 + 21 + 26 = 90 + 535 = 625/???
The mainline of the report on progress in this sphere is a highly unscientific 'I'm sure we're getting somewhere' that you know Mary found almost personally offensive to have to write down. You make sure to tease her about it a bit to stop her from dwelling on the matter too much. Below those lines, there's definite signs of actual advancement, underlying mathematics and a few experiments that are starting to move towards the results you're looking for, but you're still well short of the precipice that they're all seeking under Mary's leadership.
Your friend guesstimates a year or two more at most but admits that prediction of this type has rarely been accurate. And even after reaching the precipice, humanity will need time to develop the practical equipment of the Secret. Unless you get very, very lucky, it isn't going to be available for Third Sol. But then, no one had really been banking on that possibility. Practice can bridge the gap for now.
Rollover banked (+625). Research action unsatisfied.
And that brings you neatly to the final focus of Arcadia this year; the Elder's Vault. You'd not been back there since that very memorable visit with Vega when you helped her and the beginnings of the first Harmonic Circle tear the ruins of the facility back into pristine reality. And even before then, the place had been…significant. You have found things there that changed the very foundation of your understanding of Practice, and in the years since, the Ministries of Science and Practice have made steady progress in unravelling the mysteries contained within the renewed Vault.
With access to the Reliquaries made possible through a fully restored access system, you'd have thought the place surely mined out by now. As it happens, though, that's not quite the case. Although most of the Reliquaries have been opened during Adriana's terms, there are a few points where transferred control was insufficient. Most of those were opened by other Inheritors, yielding their own boons to the human race, but built by those who are now believed to have argued for the apprenticing of those particular Inheritors. You, however, have been absent, leaving a single Reliquary currently unopened.
Inheritor's Legacy: 75 + 26 (Learning) + 21 (Vega) + 25 (Harmonic Record) = 147/100
Most of Arcadia's work is spent on analysing the details of the other Vaults, taking everything that has been gleaned from the system and merging it into a singular whole that can be used to pursue all the works of the Elder First. An armoury not of weapons, but of knowledge, recorded by those who by their own admission came perilously close to reaching too deep in their search for answers. Exactly what that means, you still don't know, and Vision believes only Insight could truly answer. And after the first time that Phoebe tangled with deeper questions, she's entirely unwilling to do so again unless it can be shown to be absolutely necessary.
With that in mind, you don't expect any great gamechanger from the Vault's final Reliquary, especially with the largest Reliquaries opened early on. Those granted you Vision, the first nonhuman life created by humanity after the Sorrows, and the secrets of Inviolate Matter which has been applied extensively in the designs of the FSN's new fleet. The latter vault had also contained a small starship hull entirely constructed from Inviolate Matter. Why exactly that vault had been keyed to you, you honestly weren't sure. Your Focus had always been about fixing things and making them better, durability was a secondary matter.
You're not precisely wrong in your expectation, the last Reliquary is functionally quite small, and with little in the way of easy to parse data. Yet as you dig into what you find there, mostly hardcopy journals and folder sets with a truly surprising lack of any computer storage, you begin to understand what some of the other Inheritors had told you. One man's trash is another man's treasure, so the saying goes. It's not exactly the right one here…but it comes close.
First stage research complete. Research action satisfied. See Interlude: Of Words, Webs and Wisdom
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Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Well, I'll bet you didn't see the last line coming. Good progress all around, though with some...amusing irritations present with the Third Secret research. That sort of thing is hard, and it's showing. Still, you're getting there. They think. Many thanks to @Coda for checking this over for me. Any remaining errors are his mine. There will be four interludes this turn, with the extra as a result of the Vault action. I hope you'll enjoy it!
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makes for grim