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The Warcrafter

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Ashkari said:
Bayleaf here is partly responsible so it should probably go to him
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remember his shard is fake, ditto the other warcrafted. i assume either the connection attempt is refused and the shard looks for a new target, or the shard attempts to connect and gets exploded for its trouble.

they were on the roof of the station, so the closest parahuman would be JACK, if taylor hasn't killed him by that point. and she's a bit beat up going into that encounter. oh, and the butcher shard now has Lee's replication trick. this next chapter is going to be interesting.

if it has gone to Jack, i say get a portal under him and dump him in Cauldron's base. let them deal with the problem they allowed to fester.
 
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Honestly, that "Butcher-Shard tries to attach to Warcrafted, explodes/fries/discombubulates" is what I think is the most likely outcome. Other than "Butcher-Shard is currently Personality-Less and attaches to new host without the mental voices driving them insane".
 
Silvris said:
Butcher-Shard tries to attach to Warcrafted, explodes/fries/discombubulates
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Hmmm... nah, I don't think so. That kinda happened before, if you remember, with Taylor's trigger, when QA attempted to connect to Bayleaf's 'shard' to pull power-formative data from it.

But that particular issue was, well, patched out, so to speak. Whether they improved the connection to make proper emulation possible, or just closed off all the ports, I don't know. But it probably wouldn't result in a major shard malfunction like with Taylor.
 
Kalaong said:
The majority of people who live in real life danger zones have no choice but to live there, but the majority in WORM deliberately choose to make their world even more hazardous.
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Not true. The majority of people both RL danger zones and in Worm could choose to make their lives safer if they were willing to undergo significant financial hardship to do so. However they choose not to, weather that's due to stupidity, ignorance, a realistic assessment of the risk/reward, or some other reason will vary and be highly debatable, but the basic situation won't change.
 
TheUnicorn said:
if they were willing to undergo significant financial hardship to do so.
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There is several parsecs of difference between "cannot move out of flood zone because buying a new house would mean not eating for a year" and "cannot stop triggering new parahumans because they are vicious apathetic jerks who deserve to die."
 
Kalaong said:
Ehhh... the flood plain thing isn't quite fair. A lot of current flood plains weren't flood plains until nearby cities expanded and put parking lots all over the place, keeping the ground from absorbing water. And few people live in trailer homes by choice so that one is really unfair.

Pretty much every baseline in WORM chooses to look the other way while other baselines suffer on a daily basis, then just as deliberately chooses to pass laws like NEPEA-5 and then complains about parahuman organized crime.
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There's also the fact that flood plains are incredibly fertile, and ideal for farming (part of the reason the Ozarks are so poor is because hills and mountains have very little fertile soil; the rain washes it all away.) This is why the Nile was so vital to ancient Egypt: every year it flooded everything, revitalizing the soil with fresh silt.

As to the Butcher-Shard, it's just gone through "dying" over and over again in the space of a few seconds, had its last host-- which was effectively identical to the last dozen or so--- explode into dust in a sort of Shard-based suicide, so Butcher-Shard basically said "screw it, this qualifies as a 'return to base' " and flew off to rejoin the Scion conglomerate like it was supposed to.
 
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Ashkari said:
Hmmm... nah, I don't think so. That kinda happened before, if you remember, with Taylor's trigger, when QA attempted to connect to Bayleaf's 'shard' to pull power-formative data from it.

But that particular issue was, well, patched out, so to speak. Whether they improved the connection to make proper emulation possible, or just closed off all the ports, I don't know. But it probably wouldn't result in a major shard malfunction like with Taylor.
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Completely different things. The patch is there to make it so shards don't ping them for data during a trigger event. This is a shard deliberately trying to attach itself and suborn another shard. I highly doubt that the Agents haven't left a defensive measure for that case in place.
 
Kalaong said:
There is several parsecs of difference between "cannot move out of flood zone because buying a new house would mean not eating for a year" and "cannot stop triggering new parahumans because they are vicious apathetic jerks who deserve to die."
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True, but "cannot move out of flood zone because they believe they won't compromise on the quality/size of their new house" is very similar to "remains at risk of parahumans triggering and deciding to kill them because they don't try to do anything about the issue".
 
TheUnicorn said:
"cannot move out of flood zone because they believe they won't compromise on the quality/size of their new house"
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Considering most of those houses are already *this* close to shantytowns you're criticizing them for not learning to breathe water.
Whereas sociopathic society in WORM refuses to give up on recreational torture because they believe the "fun" is worth the risk.
 
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Kalaong said:
Considering most of those houses are already *this* close to shantytowns you're criticizing them for not learning to breathe water.
Whereas sociopathic society in WORM refuses to give up on recreational torture because they believe the risk is worth the "fun".
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More that the author wanted his dystopian future AND his high-school tragic drama too, and kind of actively ignored all the implications of a world where "Carrie" could be a documentary.
 
RHJunior said:
a world where "Carrie" could be a documentary.
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I think it's interesting that King wrote "Rage" not long after "Carrie". "Rage" for all intents and purposes is a documentary.
We live in the world of "Rage" and are still pretty stupid about refusing to make the lives of kids less traumatic.
So would kids getting superpowers as the result of snapping really make the world change?
 
Kalaong said:
I think it's interesting that King wrote "Rage" not long after "Carrie". "Rage" for all intents and purposes is a documentary.
We live in the world of "Rage" and are still pretty stupid about refusing to make the lives of kids less traumatic.
So would kids getting superpowers as the result of snapping really make the world change?
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Like I said before-- an issue of scale. Even the most rabid suicidal school shooter or bomber has limited impact. Someone who could level buildings with their bare hands? Or their mind? The threat threshold just jumped exponentially.

Of course, there's no bottom to the barrel of bureaucratic, executive stupidity. So things would change, but probably largely in ways that made things worse. Much like they did after the Columbine shooting, with schools cracking down on-- bullying? No, of course not. On kids wearing trenchcoats, or black lipstick.
 
Kalaong said:
Considering most of those houses are already *this* close to shantytowns you're criticizing them for not learning to breathe water.
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Actually no, most of the houses the people I'm criticizing live in some very nice houses. There are people who live in pretty shitty houses, but most of them don't own their homes in the first place so the issue is different, but they could move, it would impose some financial hardship but they could do it. Of course they have no reason to do so since the risk is really very low, but that's my point.
 
RHJunior said:
Much like they did after the Columbine shooting, with schools cracking down on-- bullying? No, of course not. On kids wearing trenchcoats, or black lipstick.
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Note that despite this, or maybe because of it, school shootings STILL occurs with frightening frequency just in the US alone.
There may be a scheme to stop Parahuman bombs. There may be SEVERAL plans in place. There may even be some urgency to put proper plans in place given the comparison to nuclear meltdown.

Still, the existence of Bakuda and Skitter means these schemes/plans/directives/whatever are worth less than the paper they're written on.


On another point, about Oni Lee in the latest installment: ... assuming Oni's flawed teleportation holds up (alt-Worm instance and all), wouldn't the mass rooftop teleportation also deaden/erase all the other voices to some extent due to flawed teleportation, causing all the voices trying to take control to teleport themselves into nothingness even as it (and circumstances) also stops them from realizing they're teleporting themselves into nothingness?

Hell, if RHJ says the last two clones stuck around NOT because they caught each other but rather because the 'will' behind the Butcher has been nibbled away to the point they didn't think to teleport... I'd believe him.

This... has interesting ramifications, if what I've said is true. The Butcher powers will do what it usually does and changes owners... but the personalities has been 'helpfully' erased beforehand. The new owner is going to win the lottery, so as to speak...

... let's hope it tries to attach to a Warforged instead, and gets a '404 not found' error, and finally shuts down...

Edit: found the WoG. Ah well, good riddance Butcher shard.
 
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wkz said:
Note that despite this, or maybe because of it, school shootings STILL occurs with frightening frequency just in the US alone.
There may be a scheme to stop Parahuman bombs. There may be SEVERAL plans in place. There may even be some urgency to put proper plans in place given the comparison to nuclear meltdown.
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problem is when you add cauldron into the mix.
they want more parahumans and so they put roadblocks in the way of these plans
after all the high schools are potential parahuman factories and if some people die in the process well that's just unfortunate collateral damage.


TempestK said:
WoG is that the Shard took it's ball and went home after what Oni Lee just put it through. Which means that it's now in Scion's pocket.
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Screw you guys I'm going home

God Butchers shard being the eric cartman of shards would explain a few things.
but IIRC didn't the first butcher get their powers from cauldron?
 
Impartial Panic said:
problem is when you add cauldron into the mix.
they want more parahumans and so they put roadblocks in the way of these plans
after all the high schools are potential parahuman factories and if some people die in the process well that's just unfortunate collateral damage.



Screw you guys I'm going home

God Butchers shard being the eric cartman of shards would explain a few things.
but IIRC didn't the first butcher get their powers from cauldron?
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wherever it came from, after being speed-shuffled and then tricked into killing itself, any possible variation of "end" conditions was fulfilled, so it went back. Anyway, with Eden dead and Abaddon lightyears away it'd go back to the nearest living Entity... which is both ironic and apropos.
 
Draxsis said:
I especially love Shatterbird's take down because it's one I've put forth before myself. Though I used Miss Militia with an iron sights equipped anti-material rifle in an omake for Methuselah. Flashy sniper bait gets sniped.
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"Methusaleh?" Story desc and link plz?
 
Kalaong said:
Freedom itself is a luxury product. It can only exist in a prosperous society.
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Was archive-trawling when I saw this statement. Snappy, but I have to dissent: you're getting the cart before the horse. You do not need a prosperous society for freedom; you need freedom for a prosperous society. Our nation's forefathers largely lived lives that were far more parsimonious than ours... but living in a free society enabled them and the nation as a whole to prosper rapidly. See, Free societies come with free speech and press, freedom of religion or belief, and a host of other rights-- life, liberty, security in one's property-- necessary for the engines of prosperity such as a free market and an environment of free and open inquiry, research and development to exist. Look at what totalitarianism did to Russia, to Germany, to China, to Cuba, to North Korea...

This is why Cauldron is such a shit show. This is why Accord is arguably as big a danger to humanity as any S-Class threat. They do not consider human life and liberty to be sacred and consider such notions an impediment to their ever-so-important designs. That's the formula for a fascist state, and such states always strangle themselves to death.
 
RHJunior said:
This is why Cauldron is such a shit show. This is why Accord is arguably as big a danger to humanity as any S-Class threat. They do not consider human life and liberty to be sacred and consider such notions an impediment to their ever-so-important designs. That's the formula for a fascist state, and such states always strangle themselves to death.
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Lex Marks the Spot has a good bit at the start of chapter 9 where Xander / Lex Luthor explains to the Justice Lords (or a proto version of them) they've doomed humanity to death and instead encourages something more like Firefly or The Expanse with a wild frontier and a stable Core region rather than an Orwellian nightmare.
 
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RHJunior said:
Was archive-trawling when I saw this statement. Snappy, but I have to dissent: you're getting the cart before the horse. You do not need a prosperous society for freedom; you need freedom for a prosperous society. Our nation's forefathers largely lived lives that were far more parsimonious than ours... but living in a free society enabled them and the nation as a whole to prosper rapidly. See, Free societies come with free speech and press, freedom of religion or belief, and a host of other rights-- life, liberty, security in one's property-- necessary for the engines of prosperity such as a free market and an environment of free and open inquiry, research and development to exist. Look at what totalitarianism did to Russia, to Germany, to China, to Cuba, to North Korea...

This is why Cauldron is such a shit show. This is why Accord is arguably as big a danger to humanity as any S-Class threat. They do not consider human life and liberty to be sacred and consider such notions an impediment to their ever-so-important designs. That's the formula for a fascist state, and such states always strangle themselves to death.
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Sorry, but absolutely not. Prosperity has happened in lots of unfree societies through history, and failed to happen in free nations. China again and again. Japan(regionally depending on ruler at the time). Roman empire. Mongol empire. Saudi Arabia is one of the most authoritarian and unfree nations today, and also one of the richest, although that's because of oil and US support.
And so on...

While Russia under Jeltsin is a perfect example of freedom leading to absolute economic disaster(and almost societal collapse).
 
I think that the best option is a balance of the two. Absolute freedom is a TERRIBLE idea since the result is pure anarchy and people tend to be more worried about getting shanked for their land/water/food/women/whatever other resources, while an Orwellian dictatorship is so rigidly bound that innovation is basically impossible because it goes against the wishes of the government and runs the risk of people deciding that they dont want to be treated like sheep anymore and rise up against their overlords due to not having anything to lose. The only question is, how far in either direction do you go?
 
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