Empiricist

Sasha Ring. Ring. Ri- "Sasha." That, wasn't question, more just a statement, a confirmation. "I will be free on the weekend. What do you need?" Y'know, she could at least pretend to be a bit happier. Or at least make it sound like she wasn't annoyed with your very existence, you're pretty sure at this point that you're cordial, but apparently Sabia likes her kool-aid to taste like cardboard.

Immanuel

Sasha Well, aside from the arcane nitro injector units, you'll probably want a few things to cut down the weight, things you don't have in stock right now. See, you've got plenty of light materials, but there's a difference between materials that are just light and strong, and materials that go into a kinetic missile, and right now you find your project leaning far far towards the latter. Most of the internals, you're probably gonna need to keep, durability isn't a concern but they still need to function, frame, you probably probably get away with an aluminium alloy that's a lot thinner than normal, slap on some burn out enchants to keep it for just long enough, hmm, could enclose it in a disposable shell that keeps it together. The bike will literally fall apart within the hour after the enchants fail but... though if you do go with that, there's not much point even having a frame, you could just have some enchants to lock the pieces in place, then you're just need the parts that keep the functional components like the engine and wheels connected and moving. Hmm shell won't matter, you can do away with most of the frame, the enchants will have to be custom though, and that means you'll need Sabia for this. Fuel-lines and the like you could probably replace with high surface-tension alchemical fluid; Paracelsus makes those, so that will be much faster to acquire. Seats and handlebars and the like you don't really want to mess with since it affects handling and ergonomics. Might want to get some charms from Aiko? Try and seal some of the pieces in place with paper talismans just in case? Immanuel

Immanuel

Immanuel

Immanue

Immanuel The typing indicator goes off, but it's a few more minutes before the response pops up.

Immanuel

Sasha Well, there's Indra's master, but, honestly the guy's sketchier than the Baron, so he's probably a nope. Tony's probably an option, you think? He's usually the one making the bodies, but he's got to at least know a good cleaner or two, right? Right? An image flashes before your eyes, a raging inferno, a makeshift funeral pyre burning in the middle of the street, twisted remnants of a bike in its center. Okay, maybe not as sure a bet as you thought it'd be, but, still maybe one that will work? Flicking through your contacts, you come across a loose card from a while back, can't remember the exact circumstances but it was sometime shortly after you Awakened. It, doesn't have much written on it, just number and a name: Overseer AI, Designation "Wintermute".

Sasha Some of the armaments you can't really make heads or tails of - part of them are reliant on enchantments that have since burned out, though judging by how the constructs fought, it's probably just related to their passive augmentation and spell bolts. But, there are a few things built into the arms you definitely can identify, with some effort of course. First up, you've got this energy compression array going all the way up the forearms, nestled beneath all the plating, this array just, gathers and shoves spirit energy forwards, nothing too special, but not poorly made by any means. This then connects to the gauntlets, which, honestly are pretty well made. They've got concussive force emitters in the palms and knuckles, some sort of spell rectifier in hands, which are probably how they created those larger beams, and that energy blade. The energy itself seems to be almost... hmm... After a bit of experimentation, trying to match it with other pieces of gear you've seen and directing a bit of energy into it using a vehicle enchantment module, you find that it's almost like some kinda hippie plant magic just, twisted and weaponized. That does fit how the exoskeletons themselves resemble hedges or ghillie suits, and it's not uncommon for various entities, people included, to use their innate abilities in weird ways rather than learning new kinds of magic. Like say, a diplomacy android using the ability to connect with others and help create agreement to connect with stained glass windows and get their physical properties to agree that they really should be good at brutal murder.

Sasha Thinking back over the fight, you recall something, a noise faint beneath the chaos and gunfire, now oh so loud in the silence, reverberating in your mind. It was the screech of pistons, so close they melded into a single noise, and muffled beneath the armor. You remember now, their wearers were talking. They were talking up until that point. And past that, they seemed to change, the pylons went up, they went silent, and they started throwing out those heavier spells. Prying open the armor, you find a mangled corpse and no real mechanisms to have done some of that mangling. The stabbity stabby part of that mangling. Spikes must've been magically projected then. Hmm. There's something weird in the chest. Looks like some of the spikes have projected additional branches? Curving around in strange geometric patterns in the chest cavity. Guessing that's ritual magic, makers might've skimped out on the size of the Shard needed (and it'll already be a pretty small Shard) by having them power themselves by sacrificing their own wearers. Yeah, sounds about right. What a cheapskate. You'd look for traces of an energy storage mechanism, but chances are it's probably fried already or built into the ritual and you, really aren't the best person to ask about rituals. You pull something over. A machine, an imaging tool, your standard boxy looking medical device cast in inoffensive beige looking almost mundane save for what it's connected to, this hand held device that traces an otherworldly locus of twisted light. SFSIT. Scanning False-Soul Imaging Tool. Curses, geasa, assorted other bewitchments, rather than using Shards use countless false souls bound to an object to alter its physical properties, and if they're not hidden, this tool can find them. It basically just applies a trivial geis that emits radio-frequency light when it breaks, and it breaks immediately. If a curse or whatever is exposed for some reason, such as say, because the construct that was wrapping it has fizzled, this impairs the geis, causing a signal drop. Now, normally when someone thinks about constructs, curses don't really come to mind. When everything runs like a damn anime sometimes people forget that there's more to this world than just that, and behind the technology there still must be reason, not a writer smoking, whatever they smoke, or a market research paper. You've, heard of curses in constructs before, they're usually not present in your patients since their Shards can handle everything and they work best on mindless automatons, but you have heard of them, and have installed some experimental modules with them before, they're pretty good for their lower cost, so they do pop up in those more frequently, though not strictly in this same context. And for combat construct that, you can't imagine to have much of a lifespan, in between apparently constructing itself out of cabin materials and killing its own wearers, it's this matter of cost that comes to mind. Whoever made this would want to keep costs as low as possible as evidence by the ritual, minimize Shard draw and all that. You slowly sweep your tool across the construct. Something appears in the monitor. Bingo. This construct, it's got curses, a lot of curses. What those curses do the FSIT can't tell you, but you can make an educated guess. From what it does tell you, chances are, basically all of the logic is encoded with those. So there will be curses describing broad situations and what the construct will do in general, then other ones describing aspects of those situations and aspects of those responses, going all the way down to the ones hooked up to the internals that let it move. Curses rather than quasi-life or algorithmic logic. Basically hard-coded too, with a set up like this there's no learning, there's no adapting, only what the curses tell it to do. Every situation, every response hard-coded, purpose-built for this single mission. Even killing their own wearers. Even trying to crash the plane. That was all part of their purpose, perhaps not something they had to do, you can't call it either way, but it still was something their makers were willing to have them do, and wanted to have them do should it have proved necessary.

Sasha The main thing that stands out is that well, the exoskeleton seems to be comprised of cabin materials - plastic, cushioning, carpet, wiring, and aluminium, a lot of aluminium. Not exactly the typical material for armor, indeed, it probably only took your attacks as well as it did thanks to the spirit energy that was no doubt being pumped into it. A bit of a closer inspection and you notice the the positioning of the inner metal. Remember when you blew apart that exoskeleton's armor and found metal piercing basically all the important stuff ever? That, doesn't seem to have been chance. All throughout the body, every piece of missing armor exposes more spikes, all going through arteries and organs. You've the feeling it's the same story everywhere else inside. It couldn't have been by chance. It couldn't have been from combat damage. This was on purpose. The exoskeletons were designed to kill their own wearers.

Sasha Let's see... Okay nitro, you have plenty of. Coolant as well. Burn-out shields, burn-out grip, you have plenty of those in stock too. Drift enhancers typically don't come in burn-out form, if you're gonna drift, you generally intend to keep on drifting and have to reinstall them constantly, while non-recharging shielding is useful for certain situations and grip is good for bad weather, still you probably could rig one up yourself using a combination of those two, that's basically what the are anyway. Main problem's the arcane nitro injectors, you don't actually stock them, and why would you? They're supposed to jam into whatever car you come across, they're for in-field use, turbocharging hot-wired golfcarts and whathaveyous, not things that already come with nitro inbuilt. You'll probably have to order those online and figure out how the hell to integrate them into the damn thing. Normally you could just get Satoshi to fetch you some, but she's undercover right now, something about infiltrating the Appleton Estate. You've got a couple hours free now.

Sasha "Just need the bike, I can handle the rest. Call me if something comes up, gotta run now." And run he does.

Tor ((Reposting this from the old IC for your convenience. Had to change the text color since it doesn't work well on Reborn's background.)) Sasha "Not yet..." Oh. "But... I think this job will need me to pull the old switcheroo and y'know?" You in fact do not know, but your gut tells you it involves wrecking twice the number of bikes. "Ah! That reminds me! I'm gonna need security on it. Gonna be leaving it out on the street. Got it all figured out, we pass by that, probably fifteen minutes into the chase? Bike's probably gonna be chugging along, on fire, that kinda thing. But them bam! Jump off the bike, jump on the new one and run them done! It'll be great. Trust me. Trust me. You yeah, need to make no-one hot-wires it." Well, you can't say he's bad for business at least. "Oh and uh, next Tuesday would be great. But I can reschedule the hit if it don't work out."

Immanuel "Hands up! On the ground! Now!" "AARGH! MY FUCKING LEG!" BANG PLINK "AARGH! MY OTHER LEG!" "Shit! Sorry!" "Hold you fire goddamnit!" Wow, not even going to let you stand up dramatically? How rude. And apparently not too hot on the pattern recognition either. You put bolt of plasma in each and every one of their weapons. Okay this part, you can't really hold against them, but if they were smarter and used handguns like a normal, this would've been way harder. Well y'know, without burning their hands and cooking off their magazines at least. You know how in movies when the hero disables the crooks, everyone just kinda stare for a moment and start suddenly cheering like they rehearsed it? That, doesn't happen here. Instead, before any of the would-be robbers even gets to react to what the hell just happened, one of their hostages, looks like an employee of the bank, is already swinging. After that, the blood's in the water, and all over the floor, and this hostage situation has just about turned into somewhere between a localized riot, and a WWE cage match with the civilians just grabbing whatever's on hand to try and give them a piece of their mind. Which, in the confusion and chaos, seems to be doing a far better job of hurting people than those idiots ever could, at least, judging by the amount of people getting caught in someone else's swing. Sasha Soon enough, he arrives, "he" being this eye-patched hexagenerian, hair shot full of silver, suit shot through of bullets, looking less like a hitman and more like Bruce Lee, if y'know, Bruce Lee was in the mafia. The man isn't even halfway through the door when he starts talking. "Oh Sashaaa... I need a new bike! Nitro! Both kinds! And lots of it too! Lots. Trust me. Trust me here, I need a LOT. Shielding too. Or armor. Whatever's the lighter. Just at the front. Need this to go fast, real fast. Oh! Grip enhancement too. Gonna need all that traction. Drift enhancers too. Burn out enchants are fine, not gonna be riding this for too long." Loud as always. And judging by the order, soon to be in the market for a new bike. Possibly two new bikes.

Immanuel A great thunderclap breaks the still air. Amidst broken glass and burning plasma you make your descent, hostage-takers scrambling away from your terrible wake. For a moment, time seemed to stop. For a moment, the scene was frozen in time, silent, serene. BANG "Arggh! FUCK!" Okay, so... one of these geniuses shot you. They shot you right in the gut. At close range. They are now very rapidly learning why ricochets are dangerous. And also what a gunshot wound and bloodloss feels like. It, doesn't sound like they're enjoying it very much, but that's okay because not everyone likes to learn. The remaining five(?) you think it's five, might be more in the back, immediately start pointing their guns. Some at you, some at the hostages.

Sign-up thread linked. Prefer keeping it seperate to the docs, because the docs are what I use to resolve combat, so having character descriptions kinda bloats things.

Immanuel Well, no luck with kittens, but you do find the next best thing: a massive police siege around a major bank, masked malevolent men peering out from behind walls of carved stone guns in hand, no doubt trained on hostages. From you angle in the air you can't quite make out their choice in weapons, but it's definitely a fair bit bigger than a pistol. Big bank, big guns, big prizes. Hah. Amateurs. There's a certain science to this all, a science the people inside have failed to grasp. You want big glass windows with southern exposure. Time it right and they become mirrors. No one will even see what happens inside. You want costumes, not whatever godawful balaclava these chumps are wearing, no, big bight, colorful. Something to remember, something to focus on. You cannot stop people from remembering. You cannot force them to forget. But humans are simple creatures, and when you put an elephant in the room, they stare at that elephant, not the evidence, the incriminating, identifying details. You go in, you go out. Two minutes tops. Your getaway driver's waiting outside. They've got a scanner. They drive, they drive smart, not fast. Fast gets attention, fast gets you prison. You go on a high speed chase, you better savor that fresh air while you still can, you're not gonna lose them. No, you slip away. Get the hell outta there, by the time the fuzz show up, you're gone, and they don't know where. Subtlety. It's all about subtlety. And it's wasted on these chumps.

Chapter 1.2 - Chaos Immanuel ((I can roll for random civil sidequests as soon as you make a post wherein you look for trouble.)) Marina ((I got nothing to say here actually, just posting this to confirm that you're doing stuff with Remi and that I didn't miss you or anything.)) Sasha Corpse delivered. You had a few civilians give you a glance look on the way over, but none for very long, not that you stayed in anyone's sight for too long. Your schedule is mostly clear for the day, foiling assassination attempts being matters that, while generally quick, could be expected to cause quite a lot of questioning and paperwork. Still, you do have a few appointments you couldn't reschedule, the next one coming up is with Tony at just before lunch. Faznie and Tor ((Aaron is approaching your location, but we can say that he's not quite there yet so that Tor can answer Faznie's questions.))

Exile Oh hey! Finally something to do! A puzzle, and one of those dynamically shifting ones at that! So... let's gather up all the details first, there's rubble falling from the roof, that's bad. It's the result from an explosion, a pretty big one at that, which is to say that it won't be predictable and the debris that does come down will probably be pretty big. Oh and the alarm's definitely been raised, but that's not too pressing (fufu~ pressing, get it?) right now. As 9 out of 10 experts will agree, roofs are big, heavy, and crushy, so... blasting it probably isn't the best idea, going to need a lot of firepower and since she was the lucky person brought in here to help do the damaging... that wasn't something they had much of. Telekinesis could stall, but once it all piles up, they're surely be crushed! Same goes for making another roof, except that new roof will also help crush them, and if her maths was right, being crushed by two roofs is like twice as bad as being crushed by one! And as for mass teleportation, that piece had already been taken last game. A shame. Still, there are some really interesting things about roofs! They fall downwards, and they don't home in on people! Meaning, they don't need to stop or destroy the debris, merely shift it to the side, create a small hole for the group to fit through. "Gather up, closer is better! Aim up and blast the debris to the side! Don't aim to destroy it we just need to make sure it doesn't turn us into pancakes! Break up the bigger pieces if they're hard to move!" Exile aims upwards, phantasmal bolts of shimmering force flickering into existence and becoming phantasmal no more. The idea was simple - hit the pieces right on the side so they don't land on the party. And if need-be, phase shift in some explosive shots to break up pieces too big to move quickly enough.

天国の終わり Chapter 0 - Turbulence Chapter 1 - Chaos Admin - Game Migration Chapter 2 - Winners Use Drugs Data Doc Sign-Up Thread The Other Game

OOC and IC. Need a central place to hold the sheets and table of contents and all that after all. As for Immanuel, it's thanks to Arrowsmith having a character by the name of Gottlieb with two t's.

Player Characters have been selected as follows Faznie Kotvar Immanuel Gotlieb (whose name I will forever misspell thanks to Arrowsmith) Sasha Estevez Tor Svensen Also I'll be grabbing Marina von Siemens as a Player-Controlled Support Character. Basically the selection was really damn close and your character is linked to a PC so they'll be in the game under your control, but they may not appear in every encounter of chapter depending on what is appropriate and how busy I am at any given time. OOC will be up when we figure out how the fuck everything fit together.

The Fuck is This? Here, have a link. (Warning, the link is to a very large image, I would not suggest trying to access it if you're on mobile data right now.) I'm looking for 4 players. I'll probably choose them in, let's say a week or so. Acknowledgements Credit where credit is due. FAQ Just a few questions that have cropped up in the past. Example Builds Please read at least a few of them before writing up a sheet, just the builds I mean, not the commentary on them unless you wanna know more about what makes them tick. Character Sheet Y'know, the thing you need to fill-in to sign up for this trainwreck? Finally Warning: The following links are to pages external to the forums and therefore may language that is not permissible under this forum's guidelines.