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Transposition, or: Ship Happens [Worm/Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio | Arpeggio of Blue Steel]

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It does mean, though, that if she's willing to limit the use of her abilities she can create several differently powered personas. A Tinker identity, her existing Brute/Shaker identity, a Stranger/Breaker identity...conceivably a Blaster identity if she can internalize some of her weapons to body. Even a Master identity if sampan pass off creation of "autonomous" drones or ship hulls as a Projection or Summoning power.

So long as she is able to disguise her origins, or avoid showing her full capabilities, anyways.
 
Akritedes said:
It does mean, though, that if she's willing to limit the use of her abilities she can create several differently powered personas. A Tinker identity, her existing Brute/Shaker identity, a Stranger/Breaker identity...conceivably a Blaster identity if she can internalize some of her weapons to body. Even a Master identity if sampan pass off creation of "autonomous" drones or ship hulls as a Projection or Summoning power.

So long as she is able to disguise her origins, or avoid showing her full capabilities, anyways.
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I'm finding the simulacra idea to have the most promise actually. Infiltrate a gang, have the body brush up against a cape and you can get a colony of nanomaterials on their person you can use to subsume their cell phone, letting Taylor listen in on any call they make and read any texts they receive/send. The big thing though would be to remember that while villains would replace their phones on regular intervals, they'd probably keep the chargers in the same place, meaning you'd need to plant a nano colony on the surface all new phones will eventually rest, letting you bug EVERY phone they'll ever use along with letting you listen in on any conversations that happen in that room, AND you can cross reference positioning data to determine both address and who owns the home.

Illegal as all hell, but strategically invaluable.
 
UltimateGrr said:
I'm finding the simulacra idea to have the most promise actually. Infiltrate a gang, have the body brush up against a cape and you can get a colony of nanomaterials on their person you can use to subsume their cell phone, letting Taylor listen in on any call they make and read any texts they receive/send. The big thing though would be to remember that while villains would replace their phones on regular intervals, they'd probably keep the chargers in the same place, meaning you'd need to plant a nano colony on the surface all new phones will eventually rest, letting you bug EVERY phone they'll ever use along with letting you listen in on any conversations that happen in that room, AND you can cross reference positioning data to determine both address and who owns the home.

Illegal as all hell, but strategically invaluable.
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Would she even need to do that? I mean, couldn't she subsume the cell towers and basically data mine every cellphone in the city? And why stop there and not just subsume the entire information architecture of the city?
 
Ryune said:
Would she even need to do that? I mean, couldn't she subsume the cell towers and basically data mine every cellphone in the city? And why stop there and not just subsume the entire information architecture of the city?
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Presumably, there is a non-zero chance that interacting with the major infrastructure nodes will draw attention from the people who are supposed to be watching those for exactly this. Whether or not she can actually do it and whether she can do it unnoticed are two different things.

At the very least, Dragon spends a lot of time combing through the information networks.
 
Akritedes said:
Presumably, there is a non-zero chance that interacting with the major infrastructure nodes will draw attention from the people who are supposed to be watching those for exactly this. Whether or not she can actually do it and whether she can do it unnoticed are two different things.

At the very least, Dragon spends a lot of time combing through the information networks.
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She doesn't actually need to go to the info hubs to data mine them. With her ability to convert things into nanomaterial... She would only need to find a single data cable to start converting and she could spread across everywhere eventually. It only gets faster the more cables she compromises. Hell, she can even get information that travels through them while she is going.
 
Ryune said:
Would she even need to do that? I mean, couldn't she subsume the cell towers and basically data mine every cellphone in the city? And why stop there and not just subsume the entire information architecture of the city?
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Needle in a haystack situation. The raw volume of traffic moving over the cell towers is staggering, and every carrier operates their own towers, so you'd need to identify all the towers of every major cell phone carrier in BB (there will be several to make sure the number of possible dead zones is minimal), subsume ALL of them, and dedicate enough cycles from her Union Core to properly take over all the system routing (as to not arouse suspicion) along with even more cycles to comb through the tens of thousands of data points to strike gold. Conversely, turning a section of Hookwolf's counter top into nanomaterial is significantly less resource intensive as you'd be guaranteed to only get communiqués sent to and from Hookwolf.

Akritedes said:
At the very least, Dragon spends a lot of time combing through the information networks.
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Yes and no. While Dragon does keep an eye on the internet, the actual work is done by one of Richter's earlier AIs that Dragon shoe horned into doing it, similar to how she manages the Birdcage by using the old home security AI after she swapped some of its internal definitions around (instead of trying to keep people out, it's trying to keep them in. Redefine the prison as the house it needs to protect, the outside world as the house's interior, and thus the place the prisoners aren't supposed to be, and define the interior of the prison as the outside world, and the AI's own internal logic will do all the heavy lifting as it strives to keep the prisoners "outside" of the "house").

These AI aren't exactly the brightest of bulbs, and again there's so much legitimate traffic you'd be hard pressed to find the illegal stuff.
 
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While the 'subsume cell towers' path has it's issues, the 'brush to contaminate' path does as well, namely, the brush part, you'd need to get into that situation to even begin tracking the cape in question. It's inefficient as fuck.

Easier to make a few dozen invisible drones like she did with Sophia and dedicate some core cycles to listening to the police band. Whenever you hear about a cape battle, send the drones so they can follow the capes home, hell, make them follow them 24/7, subsume their home computers and phones while they sleep.

With some capes you don't even need to wait for a cape battle, it should be easy to, say, have a camera find Max Anders when he's at his day job and through him a good chunk of E88, Bitch is a little harder to find but still doable, Bakuda is someone we can find before she even goes Carrie, and Coil should be trackable through Fortress Construction.

tl;dr: why waste time with simulacra when invisible spy cams are better.
 
aabbcc said:
With some capes you don't even need to wait for a cape battle, it should be easy to, say, have a camera find Max Anders when he's at his day job and through him a good chunk of E88, Bitch is a little harder to find but still doable, Bakuda is someone we can find before she even goes Carrie, and Coil should be trackable through Fortress Construction.
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Only one of the capes you have listed here has a publicly known civilian identity. For this to work, you would first need to do the necessary digging to link Max Anders to Kaiser, the Cornell Bombing and responsible party to Bakuda, and Thomas Calvert to Coil.

None of these are simple deductions or easy connections, bar Bakuda, and much of her information is likely deliberately suppressed by the government in an effort to avoid putting too much pressure on the literal mad bomber.
 
Akritedes said:
Only one of the capes you have listed here has a publicly known civilian identity. For this to work, you would first need to do the necessary digging to link Max Anders to Kaiser, the Cornell Bombing and responsible party to Bakuda, and Thomas Calvert to Coil.

None of these are simple deductions or easy connections, bar Bakuda, and much of her information is likely deliberately suppressed by the government in an effort to avoid putting too much pressure on the literal mad bomber.
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Sorry, had this thread mixed up with the other Blue Steel one where the character is a SI.
 
aabbcc said:
make a few dozen invisible drones like she did with Sophia
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I think you mixing it with Cloudy Path.
Invisibility and stealth is not a thing for Fog in general.


Took opportunity to read story more attentively:

ensou said:
today my clothes were made of nanomachines
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Does that mean that you are technically naked? I always wondered if such concepts applicable to non-human\non-organic bodies.

ensou said:
No using the internet unless I was either alone or in-costume.
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Or you could make really dark wraparound mirrorshades and use them outside of school and your father.

ensou said:
the gravity engine. It was about the size of a jet turbine
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This is jet turbine. This is also jet turbine. This is not really descriptive.

ensou said:
had an open rear for gravity pulse emissions, so cars were out
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Are you sure?
Meanwhile at Squealer's: [1] [2]
Or, you know, do a hoverbike, it's not like levitation takes much space.
Hell, you can rip-off Kid Win and some Aleph movies.


aabbcc said:
While the 'subsume cell towers' path has it's issues, the 'brush to contaminate' path does as well, namely, the brush part, you'd need to get into that situation to even begin tracking the cape in question. It's inefficient as fuck.
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Taylor does not need to subsume ANY infrastructure. As Haruna\Kirishima showed, she can connect to pretty much anything on a planet.
But it is needle in haystack to do so aimlessly.



If Taylor wants to collect evidence and follow chains of command and social networks, instead of immediate capture, she can get to fight in progress, sparkle some dust in the air.
It will contaminate target. After that, convert his boot's soles, use that nanomaterial as observation device, wait until he at his base of operations, contaminate that. .... PROFIT.


Also, if she wants to kill people, she can create silver dust storm that converts targeted people into more silver dust. Fun for everyone! There some people in BB who can resist to that, however.
 
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I agree with the cell tower idea, replace a couple of components/ cable lengths and passively record every byte that passes through. She might not be aware of all of it all the time ( or now with QA she might) but she could later collate and classify all that data to search for what she wants.

Hell, cellphone antenna are not directional, and those glowy eyes mean she obviously has a RF receiving antenna inside of her so she could just mimic a tower and connect calls herself.

Finally a fine aerial inert nanomaterial dusting of the city would provide full proprioception of all buildings ( or at least the outside of them)
 
Stahor said:
Does that mean that you are technically naked? I always wondered if such concepts applicable to non-human\non-organic bodies.
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I actually had a whole questioning/introspective segment on that, but it felt out-of-place at the beginning of the scene, so it's getting put off until later.

Stahor said:
This is not really descriptive.
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You have a fifteen-year-old girl as a narrator. When a fifteen-year-old girl says "jet engine" and has absolutely no experience with jet engines (or even airplanes) prior to this, you should use your common sense. (That means no pulsejets. Or mini-jets. In case you were still wondering.)

Stahor said:
Are you sure?
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Taylor is not a Tinker. She does not have magical space whale bullshit telling her how to put this together. She's on her own, with inbuilt subconscious drives to achieve naval and aerial supremacy.

Stahor said:
Also, if she wants to kill people, she can create silver dust storm that converts targeted people into more silver dust.
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Taylor isn't going to premeditatedly plan to consume people. Good god. This isn't Centipede.
 
ensou said:
Taylor is not a Tinker. She does not have magical space whale bullshit telling her how to put this together. She's on her own, with inbuilt subconscious drives to achieve naval and aerial supremacy.
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Or get help.

-Accessing Joint Tactical Network-
*Re1en71ess is logged in*
*SCIENCE!10rd is logged in*
Re1en71ess: And I've been trying to build a ship form but I really need to understand how the parts interact to do it right. Iona said you'd be the best person to talk to.
SCIENCE!10rd: Yes, my lady Iona is truly as wise as she is mighty. But since you don't have a proper construction yard we're going to have to keep it basic. Here you are. :drevil:
-File uploaded-
Re1en71ess: Gah! You just dumped a 9.3 Zettabyte file into my brain!:anger:
SCIENCE!10rd: Oh hush. You need to stop thinking in terms of those silly limited human computers. Your Unison Core could easily hold a trillion copies of this. Beside, you're a command battleship class. Just partition your attention and crank up the processing speed, you'll have gone through everything in less than a minute.
Re1en71ess: Sure but I.....woah this is....these designs...:eek:
SCIENCE!10rd: I know right?:coolbeans:

Elsewhere Armsmaster suddenly got a chill down his spine and a horrible feeling. As if in the near future he was going to be upstaged in the realms of technology in every possible way. Also Clockblocker got the urge to start yelling "Bullshit" at the top of his lungs.
 
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ensou said:
Taylor is not a Tinker. She does not have magical space whale bullshit telling her how to put this together. She's on her own, with inbuilt subconscious drives to achieve naval and aerial supremacy.
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Given that, when not in camouflage mode, Fog ships are better described as collection of parts flying in loose formation, she probably can kitbash something from naval parts :)

ensou said:
Taylor isn't going to premeditatedly plan to consume people. Good god. This isn't Centipede.
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Still counts as self-defence against S9. :)
 
jwolfe_beta said:
Please. Dragon's servers would probably crash trying to comprehend the sheer BS that is Fog tech.
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Is it more or less bullshit than tinkertech, though?

And on an unrelated note, I find myself pleasantly surprised that someone randomly responded to my omaketerlude thing a couple of pages ago. So that's neat. :V
 
ensou said:
She's on her own, with inbuilt subconscious drives to achieve naval and aerial supremacy.
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So, she has inbuilt drives that will push her to beat up Leviathan and the Simurgh... and then surprise everyone expecting her to help out when Behemoth pops up next and she just goes "eh, live and let live, right?"
 
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Taylor's Fleet Sigil
  • Informational
    • Somebody asked what Taylor's fleet sigil (not her personal one) described in Diatonic 1.1 actually looks like. ...And I've finally gotten off my ass and done it.

    So, here you go:

    Other news: Next chapter is coming along. Not all that far along in it, been working more on AFHB surgical edits and the crazy intense interlude for that. But! there is progress. I got something like 1800 words done yesterday for this (which I unfortunately scrapped because I didn't like what happened, nor Taylor's narration), and have done another 400 1400 words so far today, besides working on the sigil.

    So uh... probably in a week or two? Everything permitting.

    EDIT: Fixed stupid asymmetry problems caused by using Inkscape.
     
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