Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest

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meianmaru said:
Why should we, the players, know this? Why should Neablis tells us anything about what is on the table as OOC information? They've kept the loot tables hidden before, at least before they are actually rolled.
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Alright then I, as someone who knows obscure 40k lore, will tell you that Corpse-Starch has connections to Khorne in the form of Corpse Grinder Cults. Those cults or something similar to them is one of the possible enemy groups we will face here.

Also Corn has connections to Khorne. The connection is apparently from the Brothers of the Snake Novel. It's been more than a decade so someone fact check me on this one.
 
LightLan said:
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They don't have any station-scale defenses that they're using on each other, but that's all we know, and I wouldn't be super surprised if they had them but were incapable of turning them against the automated collection ship because it registers as friendly on all the local IFF and they can't change that. We may not be so protected. Probably unlikely, but worth being aware of the possibility.

The ship seems to be largely automated, so there's a chance we could hack it. If that doesn't work, we could shoot off any weapons it might have and land forces externally to try hacking with the aid of physical access. As a last resort, we could choose between actually boarding (Probably using bots with the least deadly loadout possible, aimed at seizing and holding the controls) or just shooting to disable the engines and using shuttles to divert it into an orbit of our choice. None of which necessarily needs Cia to be involved.
 
KyleDaScourge said:
The ship seems to be largely automated, so there's a chance we could hack it. If that doesn't work, we could shoot off any weapons it might have and land forces externally to try hacking with the aid of physical access. As a last resort, we could choose between actually boarding (Probably using bots with the least deadly loadout possible, aimed at seizing and holding the controls) or just shooting to disable the engines and using shuttles to divert it into an orbit of our choice. None of which necessarily needs Cia to be involved.
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Cia will be displeased with us if we send bots without also sending her.
 
Man, I know in the minority, Chaos bad and all that. But I don't like the idea of massacring a whole population, including civilians. Particularly if they're pretty much powerless to do anything but try to not die too quickly. Obviously, we don't have what it takes to really find a way to redeem them, perhaps detox them from the taint they got... but we might have it later. Part of me is thinking we just hand out some humanitarian aid to take the edge of the suffering for everyone, including the Chaosy boys, and perhaps get a reputation of the mysterious, if non-discriminating benefactor that might benefit us in the far future when we can do something better.
 
LightLan said:
I am not keen on sitting in the system for 1 turn/5 years doing nothing?

What could we do under those constraints? Probably get some of those inactive stations going and explore, but that'd be it.
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Karnax626 said:
If we did it those are two of the researches I'd want, though I don't think we' need to wait a turn to implement them.
Our current capabilities should be enough to take them out, even if we rolled a poor success on these that calculus won't change.
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On a second thought, you are both probably righ. These are not exactly the elites of the slaves of Chaos.
Picio said:
We could build black box factory that creates food and spare parts.
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We don't have the tech and/or design for that, I believe? I'm guessing that it would probably require RP spent on a blueprint design-action to make a cheaper/crippled version of our manned manufactories, so something closer to what the Imperials have. And then teach the locals to actually use it, or just throw them basic primers.
 
Shogeton said:
Man, I know in the minority, Chaos bad and all that. But I don't like the idea of massacring a whole population, including civilians. Particularly if they're pretty much powerless to do anything but try to not die too quickly. Obviously, we don't have what it takes to really find a way to redeem them, perhaps detox them from the taint they got... but we might have it later. Part of me is thinking we just hand out some humanitarian aid to take the edge of the suffering for everyone, including the Chaosy boys, and perhaps get a reputation of the mysterious, if non-discriminating benefactor that might benefit us in the far future when we can do something better.
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I tend to agree. I'd settle for making sure they have as little ability to effect the rest of the system (and thus spread Chaos) as possible for the moment. Which probably just means making sure the ship doesn't dock with them again.
 
KyleDaScourge said:
There's an argument to be made that it's possible, or even likely, that this system has fallen far enough that the stations openly flouting Chaos livery are only doing it because all they know about Chaos is "It's the enemy of the Imperium" and all they remember about the Imperium is "They're those guys who repaid our millenia of service by fucking off and leaving us to our current fate of a slow agonizing death as our stations waste away around us, also those assholes in the ship who come around and raid us every once in awhile."
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Doesn't matter, any chaos symbolism is akin to a beacon in the warp for more chaos. It's part of why Nurgle is so prevalent in hives: once you hit a critical mass of desperation, apathy, and illness, people will start to dream of the trefoil en masse.
If we see chaos symbols touted openly then the majority will be cultists whether they know it consciously or not.
 
I feel this is one of the best places for a humanitarian mission. Vast physical distances, and near zero physical movements between easily isolatable habitats.

Building a sustainable habitat is very much doable, and this is a rich resource base for Denva to link up to.

We don't need to give general purpose DoTA manufactories, but dedicated factory setups to ensure the requirements of life and the supply chain for them is quite doable and something the Tech Priest contingent would happily do
 
Asheram said:
Doesn't matter, any chaos symbolism is akin to a beacon in the warp for more chaos. It's part of why Nurgle is so prevalent in hives: once you hit a critical mass of desperation, apathy, and illness, people will start to dream of the trefoil en masse.
If we see chaos symbols touted openly then the majority will be cultists whether they know it consciously or not.
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I don't like the precedent of us accepting that the proper resolution for 'Chaos infestation' is 'kill them all'. Obviously, right now, it's just a few wretched people. A drop in the bucket of death that happens in the 40K universe. But up till now, we have very much avoided massacres. If we're breaking that rule for a bunch of people sitting helplessly on a space station, then obviously, when it comes to actual planets with Chaos in control that might be a threat to us , why would we do anything else but nuclear bombing everyone to ashes?

We should do better. We CAN do better, in time.
 
How is this for a start?

This still needs more details on both the attack on the chaos cultist station and on what to build, but it should be a nice start.

[] Plan: Kick Chaos in the Shins
-[] [Free] Fix damage to psychic shields. Vita Core (75/135->135/135 @ 300 BP), Bongo Oubliette (303/540->443/540 @ 700 BP) [1000/1000BP repair bay expended, 485BP of damage left]
-[] [Free][DATA] how do the inquisitors deal with chaos infiltration?
-[] Orders: Attack, conquer and fortify/repair one or more of the chaos cultist stations with bots and Cia
-[] Construction: build personal psychic shields for Crew. Build stuff for repairing and fortifying.
-[] Research x2 (400 RP + 70 Anexa RP + 42 Tech-Priest RP)
--[] Personal-sized Psychic shielding (100 RP)
--[] Help Cia's Training (50 RP)
--[] Empathy at Range (200 RP)
---[] Anexa assist
--[] Machine Spirit Chaos resistance (100 RP)
--[] Machine Spirit-controlled Psychic Shields (50 RP)
--[] Basic Active Stealth (22->34/75 RP)
-[] Anexa active Action: Research
-[] Victan active action: Study the reactions to us kicking over the anthill, find out who could be propped up against chaos with the information gained from the station. Cause you won't stay here forever. Plan is to only prop them up enough against chaos, not nearly as much as the Denvans, especially if besides chaos there are only hardcore imperialists left.
-[] Cia Active Psyker improvement
 
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Heavygenium said:
Honestly, it could've been worse.

When the phrase "your tech is (almost) immune to scrapcode now" was repeated a bunch, I got very worried that Vita was unknowingly corrupted and we'd have to speedrun the personality checkup researches.
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Thankfully Vita has the super-power of being able to accept she is wrong, and the willingness to rollback to previous iterations and try again.

Shogeton said:
I don't like the precedent of us accepting that the proper resolution for 'Chaos infestation' is 'kill them all'. Obviously, right now, it's just a few wretched people. A drop in the bucket of death that happens in the 40K universe. But up till now, we have very much avoided massacres. If we're breaking that rule for a bunch of people sitting helplessly on a space station, then obviously, when it comes to actual planets with Chaos in control that might be a threat to us , why would we do anything else but nuclear bombing everyone to ashes?

We should do better. We CAN do better, in time.
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This is one of the reasons I said this is the ideal place for a humanitarian mission. Chaos infested stations can largely be ignored or trivially dealt with while incrementally working to improve other stations and carefully checking for chaos corruption
 
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Shogeton said:
I don't like the precedent of us accepting that the proper resolution for 'Chaos infestation' is 'kill them all'. Obviously, right now, it's just a few wretched people. A drop in the bucket of death that happens in the 40K universe. But up till now, we have very much avoided massacres. If we're breaking that rule for a bunch of people sitting helplessly on a space station, then obviously, when it comes to actual planets with Chaos in control that might be a threat to us , why would we do anything else but nuclear bombing everyone to ashes?
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The issue is that as I alluded to, Chaos is contagious, and currently we've got no means of detecting it other than through obvious symbols and traits. If it's Nurglite (which it likely is) then we likely have warp-contaminated diseases going about as well, and that stuff needs to be purged by plasma fire.

Edit: I do get you though, and I would have wanted to help, but once the eight-pointed star is up on the wall then we'd have to look very carefully to find anyone not into it.
 
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Honestly to me, it feels like the minimum level we should do is probably develop a 'life sustainment colony kit' and share that in one form or another. Along with doing our own scavenging of some of the dead stations and 'newly-dead-previously-Chaos-aligned' stations. The 'Colony Kit' is more or less just the stuff needed to maintain their life support and agricultural systems, along with some of the mining systems to feed those.

It's not meant to make these stations flourish, it's not meant to fix all their problems. But it is meant to allow them the potential to reclaim the dead habitants and stay alive until we can muster an actually effective response to this system's problems. It's also not meant to give them much of our ridiculous technological or scientific bounty.
 
Xon said:
Thankfully Vita has the super-power of being able to accept she is wrong, and the willingness to rollback to previous iterations and try again.
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Oh, I wasn't simply worried that Vita was horribly wrong.

I was worried that she'd already been corrupted, and her mind was being influenced not to notice this.

The phrase repeating reminded me a lot of the "everyone knows that stone isn't a good conductor of magic" scene from Divided Loyalties, if anyone here has read that quest.
 
Xon said:
Thankfully Vita has the super-power of being able to accept she is wrong, and the willingness to rollback to previous iterations and try again.


This is one of the reasons I said this is the ideal place for a humanitarian mission. Chaos infested stations can largely be ignored or trivially dealt with while incrementally working to improve other stations and carefully checking for chaos corruption
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Oh god you're serious. And correct that accepting one is wrong is a super-power. :cry:😭
 
LightLan said:
The empathy scanners might help?
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This would result in a lot of false positives, since a lot of low-level chaos corruption is just exaggerating natural traits. Still better than nothing, but the real risk is when chaos gets subtle or lures you into a false sense of safety

Dmol8 said:
Oh god you're serious. And correct that accepting one is wrong is a super-power. :cry:😭
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Yeah. It is depressing :cry:
 
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Xon said:
This would result in a lot of false positives, since a lot of low-level chaos corruption is just exaggerating natural traits. Still better than nothing, but the real risk is when chaos gets subtle or relies on luring you into a false sense of safety
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They aren't a cure-all, but they ought to be a nice alarm klaxon if any daemon-summoning is currently going on.
 
Asheram said:
The issue is that as I alluded to, Chaos is contagious, and currently we've got no means of detecting it other than through obvious symbols and traits. If it's Nurglite (which it likely is) then we likely have warp-contaminated diseases going about as well, and that stuff needs to be purged by plasma fire.

Edit: I do get you though, and I would have wanted to help, but once the eight-pointed star is up on the wall then we'd have to look very carefully to find anyone not into it.
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Then let us treat it as an epidemic. Like a civilized, humane person treats a contagion. Quarantine, triage, humanitarian aid, research, possible treatment or cure or failing that, palliative care. And it seems like these Chaos cultists are mostly quarantined already. To kill thousands of men, women and children because 'Chaos bad' even if they are no threat at all to us, don't even know we exist would suggest Vita is far more indifferent to human lives than I'd like her to be.

If we were an Imperial character, obviously, even the most iconoclast of Inquisitors would probably blow them up. But we're not of the Imperium. We can and will do better than them.
 
[] Plan: Stress testing v1
-[] [Free] Fix all damage to Vita-core (60*5=300BP), Fix some oubliette damage (140*5=700BP, leaving it at 443/540BP). All 1000BP of repair bay spent
-[] Research x2 (400 RP + 70 Anexa RP + 42 Tech-Priest RP) (512 RP)
--[] Combat Neural Implants (50 RP) (8 RP + 42 Tech-Priest RP)
--[] Improved Armor Articulation (50 RP)
--[] Psychic tripwires (50 RP)
--[] Personal-sized Psychic shielding (100 RP)
--[] Drugs? Drugs. (75 RP)
--[] Machine Spirit Chaos resistance (100 RP) (30 RP + 70 Anexa RP)
---[] Anexa assist
--[] Machine Spirit-controlled Psychic Shields (50 RP)
--[] Basic Active Stealth (22/75 RP) (22+37= 59/75 RP)
-[] Construction action (350 BP)
--[] Spend XX BP to upgrade Cia's armour with Psychic shields and Void shield, hopefully with integrated machine spirits?
--[] Spend 220 BP to give everyone else in the crew/Crew personal void shields, in case we get boarded again
--[] Spend the remaining BP on Trade Goods
-[] Send Cia and any bots we think she needs to clear out the chaos-aligned stations.
-[] Anexa active Action: Research
-[] Victan passive action: Counterespionage & Alliance-building
-[] Cia Passive Psyker improvement

The goal here is to give Cia experience fighting in her new armour, and to test the new psychic shielding developed against Chaos (assuming there are any daemons or psykers here that they'd be needed against).
The main issue is I'm not sure how to handle the Chaos stations. I figure Drugs? Drugs. will give us the ability to take people down non-lethally if needs be, but then I remembered we took out the Captive holding cells to make space for the oubliette, so we can't take anyone prisoner.

Maybe we can focus on banishing any daemons we find? Or at least try and use this to convince them not to worship Chaos, if we can fix up their stations for them a bit.

EDIT: This could help a lot, if we go the uplift route.
-[] Mechanized agriculture (150 RP) You can synthesize small amounts of food with the modules attached to your crew quarters, but that doesn't scale to larger populations. You don't have the understanding to automatically grow and harvest food, but surely you can figure it out? (Unlocks blueprints for orbital & ground-based food production. Unlocks more technology for improving yield, optimizing for small-scale cultivation in zero-gravity, and generally making human populations self-sufficient in low-resource environments).
 
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Shogeton said:
Then let us treat it as an epidemic. Like a civilized, humane person treats a contagion. Quarantine, triage, humanitarian aid, research, possible treatment or cure or failing that, palliative care. And it seems like these Chaos cultists are mostly quarantined already. To kill thousands of men, women and children because 'Chaos bad' even if they are no threat at all to us, don't even know we exist would suggest Vita is far more indifferent to human lives than I'd like her to be.
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I get you, I really do, but Triage in this point is fire, and lots of it.
Look, I'm all for helping people. I was one of those who advocated for communication in the last system. But there's a difference between "Might have some minor chaos corruption" and "Have it painted onto the walls."

I wager that the only reason as to why the Space Marines haven't nuked the entire place is because it's contained and they can't leave.
 
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