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Vespa

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I'm just waiting for Vespa to go innocently (Ha!) flying past the Medhall top floor, causing Max to spill his expensive booze, break an expensive glass, and ruin a pair of expensive shoes. And possible hop up and down on his good foot and swear a lot before falling over and injuring himself. Not fatally so, but in an amusing, slapstick, Simurgh worthy Rube Goldberg slapstick fashion.
 
I'm waiting for Alabaster to stumble across Vespa while out and about doing non-search related gang activities. Only for him to discover that yes he does reset every four and change seconds, but it's not helping due to him still being covered in the excessively hilariously dangerous HOUS venom after each reset. Maybe even it fails to help due to said venom being so lethal it takes less then 4 seconds to kill him. Even better if he was hit by the splash effect from a warning shot.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
so lethal it takes less then 4 seconds to kill him
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This is a lot harder to do than most people assume. I blame Hollywood for things like "does this smell like chloroform" and instant KO's, and tranq darts that work so fast the target can't even shout.

To have a toxin kill you that fast, it has to get somewhere important that fast. Rattlesnake venom is lethal, most of us have seen the wonderful examples of a cup of blood turning into jello. But that stuff can take *days*, to finally off you. Even the famously venomous animals like the blue ringed octopus take several minutes.

The trick is, any toxin has to go from where you were exposed to something vital enough to end you. This just can't happen all that fast most of the time. Hollywood has lied to you, even hilariously venomous ultra dangerous animals are still in the half an hour range for time to death. Without getting into technicalities like 'this venom took 15 minutes to paralyze the victim, so now they slowly suffocate, and that's what causes death.'

You can absolutely get exposed to stuff that's 'its too late for you now' quite quickly, but actually finishing you off always takes a bit of time.
 
TypoNinja said:
This is a lot harder to do than most people assume. I blame Hollywood for things like "does this smell like chloroform" and instant KO's, and tranq darts that work so fast the target can't even shout.

To have a toxin kill you that fast, it has to get somewhere important that fast. Rattlesnake venom is lethal, most of us have seen the wonderful examples of a cup of blood turning into jello. But that stuff can take *days*, to finally off you. Even the famously venomous animals like the blue ringed octopus take several minutes.

The trick is, any toxin has to go from where you were exposed to something vital enough to end you. This just can't happen all that fast most of the time. Hollywood has lied to you, even hilariously venomous ultra dangerous animals are still in the half an hour range for time to death. Without getting into technicalities like 'this venom took 15 minutes to paralyze the victim, so now they slowly suffocate, and that's what causes death.'

You can absolutely get exposed to stuff that's 'its too late for you now' quite quickly, but actually finishing you off always takes a bit of time.
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The trick with HOUS venom is it'll melt you, explode you, and shut down your entire nervous system all at once. Stabby Puppy survived as long as he did only because of his constant regeneration. And that failed to keep him alive through the night. Other then his "body resets in 4 and a half seconds" trick, Alabaster is a baseline human. Can he survive 4 seconds of burning, melting, and the actual hyper enhanced neurotoxin? Remember, the venom from a normal Asian Giant Hornet doesn't contain any fluorine compounds. Nor does it both melt and set fire to things. A normal sized AGH also can't inject enough venom into someone to basically replace their entire blood supply (and possibly internal organs) with the venom.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
The trick with HOUS venom is it'll melt you, explode you, and shut down your entire nervous system all at once. Stabby Puppy survived as long as he did only because of his constant regeneration. And that failed to keep him alive through the night. Other then his "body resets in 4 and a half seconds" trick, Alabaster is a baseline human. Can he survive 4 seconds of burning, melting, and the actual hyper enhanced neurotoxin? Remember, the venom from a normal Asian Giant Hornet doesn't contain any fluorine compounds. Nor does it both melt and set fire to things. A normal sized AGH also can't inject enough venom into someone to basically replace their entire blood supply (and possibly internal organs) with the venom.
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4 seconds? Easily.

An otherwise fatal exposure will still take time to do its work.

A nice tasty neurotoxin that kills you by paralyzing the muscles you breath with still takes minutes, Piranha Solution is a freakishly aggressive acid, you can dissolve a hotdog in, in about a minute. Fluorine chemistry is all terrifying, but again all interactions take time. Those invisible painless chemical burns that will set your bones on fire we talked about previously, still can take long enough to set in that people initially think they're ok.

He'd be very glad of the associated immunity to pain, but he would live through it. 4 seconds just isn't long enough.
 
TypoNinja said:
You can absolutely get exposed to stuff that's 'its too late for you now' quite quickly, but actually finishing you off always takes a bit of time.
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OK, if we assume that Alabaster can be totally splattered, brain and all (*), and will then reset, 4secs on. But, he keeps exploding/burning/neurotoxining, again, and again. How many times can he take this before his sanity cracks?

Canon Alexandria was killed by suffocation, and her body was later driven-around by Pretender - arguably she thought she was dead, but wasn't, because he can't drive corpses. Logical, because she was using the Thinker's personal avatar shard, and you can be pretty sure lack-of-air wouldn't kill her.

How bad does it have to get for Alabaster before he's convinced that he's dead???


* this assumes that his shard doesn't believe he has any vulnerable bits, like a Corona-anything, or a 'core'. He's an immortal otherwise base-line human - some All-Or-Nothing stuff might kill him (fair play in inter-shard interaction), or you confine him, somehow, but HOUS venom isn't a 'All-Or-Nothing'...
 
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TypoNinja said:
still can take long enough to set in that people initially think they're ok
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FaerieKnight79 said:
Only for him to discover that yes he does reset every four and change seconds, but it's not helping
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So, er... does Alabaster reset to a state where he thinks he's OK, or some state determined solely by the shard?

(And what does the shard do with the damaged version of his body, anyway? Where will any foreign substances or objects that may have been inside, go?)
 
mn-- said:
So, er... does Alabaster reset to a state where he thinks he's OK, or some state determined solely by the shard?

(And what does the shard do with the damaged version of his body, anyway? Where will any foreign substances or objects that may have been inside, go?)
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I'm working on the assumption any injuries or damaging stuff inside his body is replaced by dimensional manipulation - possibly his shard has a big pile of wrecked previous body states, and ~4secs is how long before a snapshot scan is turned into a 'good', replacement, body?

Problem? If the outside of his body is still in contact with HOUS venom...
 
Ace Dreamer said:
There's no reason, so far, to believe Taylor is a biotinker. Changer/Master yes, producer of really dangerous living creatures that are capable of run-away reproduction, no. Talking through things you Master, even many of them at once, doesn't involve biotinkering, just Powers being weird.
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Creating new life forms by using one's powers, in this case by merging existing ones, is the definition of bio-tinkering. It may only be a bio-tinker 1, but it is bio-tinkering.
 
Jacen1 said:
Creating new life forms by using one's powers, in this case by merging existing ones, is the definition of bio-tinkering. It may only be a bio-tinker 1, but it is bio-tinkering.
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Does anyone but Taylor and Danny know about that, though? What would require her to reveal that, to the PRT or the general public?

So far, only Lisa knows she's a Master? Not sure what probably-Kenta thinks... Apart from, "Hawaii - that's a nice long way from here, isn't it?".
 
Well, now that Taylor's reached the limits QA originally intended to supply her, let's see how long it takes for her to find another way to cause her Partner to experience yet another limit breaking event. She's already managed to achieve the true Insect Clone with Vespa (and promptly horrify Lung unintentionally while setting up a trolling encounter; likely to create more buzz for HOUS on PHO.)

Ace Dreamer said:
How bad does it have to get for Alabaster before he's convinced that he's dead???
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Eh, it just means that Alabaster might actually get to meet Mr. Stinger if the spray doesn't seem to be working.
 
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Ace Dreamer said:
Does anyone but Taylor and Danny know about that, though? What would require her to reveal that, to the PRT or the general public?

So far, only Lisa knows she's a Master? Not sure what probably-Kenta thinks... Apart from, "Hawaii - that's a nice long way from here, isn't it?".
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You'd think he would know better; Hawaii is almost exactly halfway between the USA and the Home of Hornets, which is what made it an ideal stopping point for invasions in both directions in the not-so-distant past...
 
Ace Dreamer said:
How many times can he take this before his sanity cracks?
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That'd be a personal question, I don't know the man.

But the thing is, hilariously reactive chemicals as a rule are also done being incredibly dangerous pretty quickly, its the reaction that's the dangerous part and as soon as its reacted, its a different compound. So, if you throw acid on Alabaster, it won't just keep eating a hole in him forever, eventually there's no more acid, cause it stops being acid as it goes to work.

This'll be true of anything he gets it with, and lingering toxins would presumably vanish as well.

Ace Dreamer said:
and her body was later driven-around by Pretender
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At a guess? That gets into what counts as 'dead'. It's a surprisingly fuzzy definition.

Or Wibbles being a shit writer.
 
Ace Dreamer said:
Canon Alexandria was killed by suffocation
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Alexandria was rendered brain-dead by hypoxia. Her body, because of [Stasis] ,was still 'alive' for Pretender to possess/puppet but the mental engrams that identified as Rebecca Costa-Brown were no longer present. And yes, normal poisons and toxins can't kill you in 4 seconds.

Falling into a vat of piranha solution, VX neruotoxin, liquid hot magna or even chlorine trifluoride won't KILL you in under 4 seconds.

I think there are substances that cause sodium channel delamination that can propagate like an explosive charge in shock tube. THAT can kill you in under four seconds because that destroys the myelin sheath on your nervous system like French kissing a substation transformer.

Parahuman abilities though, can be just like eating cake.
 
mp3.1415player said:
"We can take that thing out," Stormtiger persisted. "How hard can it be? It's a bug. We've got armor-piercing rocket launchers for fuck's sake! Those things will kill a tank! No giant bug is going to stand up to that. We find the thing, and blow it out of the sky from two hundred yards away. Simple."
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Why is nobody considering insecticide? They make these big sprayers to take out an entire nest of hornets from 30 feet away. When they have a location they could spray down the HOUS with it.

On the other hand they even acknowledged that being Nazis rotted the brains.
Draxsis said:
I never thought I would feel sorry for dear old Kenta (if this is Lung, could be wrong but this feels like a very Lung line). Yet I have to say this is an exceedingly good reason. Because even for Lung apparently there is a point when something is too Asian. Supersized intelligent murder hornets apparently exceed this limit. Likely by a factor of ten.
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Do they qualify as as daikaiju?
Resprom said:
These abbreviations reminded me of the call signs US radio stations use. So now I can just imagine Taylor doing something like this:

"You're listening to W-O-U-S, Wasp FM!"

*all the creepy crawlies buzzing in surround stereo*

*Max screaming internally*

"I'm your host this evening, Vespa, and to start us off I have a lovely live performance from the Anthropod Philharmonic. Enjoy!"

*buzzing intensifies*

*Max screaming externally*
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I thought the E88 liked WASPs and actively recruited them.
It's the HOUS they have a beef with.
 
SlickRCBD said:
Why is nobody considering insecticide? They make these big sprayers to take out an entire nest of hornets from 30 feet away. When they have a location they could spray down the HOUS with it.

On the other hand they even acknowledged that being Nazis rotted the brains.

Do they qualify as as daikaiju?

I thought the E88 liked WASPs and actively recruited them.
It's the HOUS they have a beef with.
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Remember, WASPs worked against Nazi ideals.
 
YuffieK said:
Alexandria was rendered brain-dead by hypoxia.
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Seeing as her thinking is done in her shard, there is no oxygen-needing brain in her body to die of suffocation. That brain is in stasis, just like the rest of her body - it must be be a lot of her strength tricks would puree her brain.

Or, am I missing something important here? Did Wildbow just mess-up how her powers work, so Taylor could kill the invulnerable?
 
Ace Dreamer said:
Seeing as her thinking is done in her shard, there is no oxygen-needing brain in her body to die of suffocation. That brain is in stasis, just like the rest of her body - it must be be a lot of her strength tricks would puree her brain.

Or, am I missing something important here? Did Wildbow just mess-up how her powers work, so Taylor could kill the invulnerable?
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You are missing that Shards do not conform to human classification and all Shard power distinction is descriptive, not prescriptive.

If a Shard wants to cease her brain simulation to simulate her brain death instead following an event the Shard considers suitable for triggering such a response then the Shards is free to top so so.
 
PossiblyEnos said:
You are missing that Shards do not conform to human classification and all Shard power distinction is descriptive, not prescriptive.

If a Shard wants to cease her brain simulation to simulate her brain death instead following an event the Shard considers suitable for triggering such a response then the Shards is free to top so so.
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Basically, you are saying her shard(s) defines her Power as 'Invulnerable, except needs to breathe'? Oh, and we'll throw-in a few Thinker powers and Flight, on the side?

She isn't a natural trigger, she's a Cauldron-vial cape, using the Thinker's personal shard which was never intended to be distributed, as it would provide her avatar, this Cycle. One of the reasons Scion/Zion really hates her appearance. Hero had the Thinker's Tinker shard, Eidolon her QA-equivalent, Legend her movement and energy-attack capabilities. (Odds are Manton got the Siberian-vial from a similar source.)

These weren't shards configured for human use, they were for direct use by the Thinker. Any constraints on them were defined by the drinker of the vial. Not the requirements of the Cycle.

I'm still unclear what bit of logic I'm missing?
(Did RCB die/become brain-dead because she thought she ought to?)
 
Ace Dreamer said:
(Did RCB die/become brain-dead because she thought she ought to?)
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As far as I understand it, more or less this.
I think that the main problem is misidentification about the status of EDEN's Shards/Agents, calling them "dead" is a misnomer at best.

What I think the correct definition to use when one talks about the Cauldron-provided power is that the supplying Shards are "Unconnected to the Network and in power-saving mode".
 
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