>Linda and Jean
Uh, since we kind of cut away from that, were we going to bring him back with us after talking to barrier-makers, or part ways?

On the one hand, having a tear to study close at hand might be very valuable. And we'd be able to keep an eye on him. On the other hand, it's almost certainly a crazy risk (putting someone potentially unreliable and very dangerous in among everyone and everything we're trying to protect, and tempting a tear with a smorgasbord of big fat breaker threads), and one hell of a diplomatic nightmare if and when other breaker factions we're trying to deal with realize what we're harboring (not keeping Jean at arms length might push us into open war with Raul, even). To say nothing for the sentiment it may raise within our own ranks (Elizabeth would hardly be the only one upset or afraid to have him around I suspect).

Kind of why I called it parole- if we're the parole officer, we get the advantage of keeping an eye on and in contact with him, without all the drawbacks of getting too close. And it leaves him some freedom to do... whatever it is he needs to do.

By the way, I am loving the fact that we're getting to play all the different missions from all these character perspectives instead of only following one, this time. It's loads of fun getting inside some of these characters' heads. And it really helps counter sort top-heavy, "we don't have the time or room to do all the stuff we'd like to now that we're in charge" feeling.

>Linda XP: 6
We're only one XP away from being able to upgrade our spirit again. Do we want to save for that rather than spending on other things?

I'm thinking go for spirit 8, and then use the leftovers or the next batch of xp to stack another point or 2 of finesse and/or BP, and set aside an upgrade for the tank gun (the manifestation cost for our signature holdout heavyweapon can afford to be a little higher- honestly, it's pretty cheap compared to some of our allies already).

>>79018
Hmm. I dunno. Being more in tune with logic and duty can be an advantage or disadvantage depending on the situation. Being out of sync with emotion seems like a pretty big disadvantage, though. Any edge we gain by numbing ourself is more than outweighed by penalties dealing with or understanding others. And it's hard to quantify how much of an advantage the boost to mapping is.

I certainly wouldn't want to make the gap any bigger, at least. Keeping it where it is or trying to balance again though is the tricky decision.

>>79020
Oh, I like the minotaur. Str based offense/support isn't something we've seen yet. I sort of wonder if there's anyway to work the mythological maze-affinity into that, but I suppose it could just be something he gets a bonus to sensing or breaking, due to theme.

I know the other guy's unfinished, but I'm not really sure where you're going with him yet. Weapon sharing is a little odd (it would best benefit someone who had both a lot of weapons, and close allies used to sharing them? Or someone who collected the very strongest or most esoteric weapons to share them to devastating effect? Kind of weird to decide how one would play that).

>>79021
Um... I think that came across wrong. What I meant was that if you want to do the rewording based on what Grey, as a character, would know, then you can. As for the actual logic/emotion thing, that won't be as pronounced as it could be with a larger gap. At this stage, it's more of just a slight disinterest than anything, and a slight lean towards more interest in his duty and goals. Of course, Grey being controlled by you all(mostly), I'm sure his motivations and goals will change, and therefore his "duty" will therefore follow. If the gap gets larger though, than yes, you'll get to the point where you just won't care outright. I'm not intending to make Grey the equivalent of a sociopath just based off of a 2 point difference... maybe I worded the explanation wrong? Or maybe I'm just not understanding what you're getting at... Eh... I hate feeling like I'm missing something...

>>79024
Well, I think most of us were expecting that the size of the gap shouldn't be the operative 'stat' because otherwise there's no difference in the social abilities of a default steelworks or genetech manufactured.
I was figuring that a personality of 2 would be mildly unobservant/disinterested in other people's emotions, 3 would be about normal, and 4+ would be someone with above average social awareness. I suppose it would help if you contextualized these numbers with what the normal human range would be.

>>79023
My intention was a 'twin breaker' type theme with them, one they created and empowered to override what would be their breaker themes normally. To emphasis this, their traumas would be more related to being seperated in so drastic a manner moreso then the actual injuries.
What I WANT to do, is give them a spirit 5 ability that lets each twin call on the powers of the other, but I wasn't sure exactly how that would work, and they'd be screwed up if something happened to the other, so I decided to settle for making the powers seperate, but together they could give off the effect of two breakers acting and being one entity.
...
And to be honest, I had no real clue what to do with him. I was originally thinking sword and shield, but I stupidly decided to handicap the poor man, which...HIGHLY complicated the use of any foci that'd require two hands to use.

>>79025
Yes, that was my initial assumption as well. But, as he already explained, the gap ends up being the more significant decider in actual behavior.

Maybe think of the mental stats not only as the ability or potential for that kind of action, but interest? Then it sort of makes more sense that with a noticeable gap the character would focus them in on one to the detriment of the other, even if they have the potential to do the other well. It's a mental stat- it changes the way they think.

Although, what it boils down to is an interesting choice. Specialization nets more power in a certain mental field- at the expense of working with or even understanding the other. Balance gives us a better perspective, at the cost of power. It almost forces us to put character and build at odds.

Because it's got to start somewhere, and because I've been thinking about it recently. Anyway, from here on for this post, information on the creation and first year of life for Psy Industries Manufactured. This is hardly an in depth look, more an overview really, and I'd be glad to answer any questions regarding specifics that anyone has. Always fun to build worlds in my head.

To start, all Manufactured are "born" in tube like machines, simulating a woman's womb. The period of pregnancy, however, is accelerated to that of only a few days, and before a week is out the manufactured child is already physically the age of 1. It's at this point that they are removed from the safety of their steel womb and moved onto the first stages of training and development. The first step in this stage, as it is with all manufactured, is the branding, a machine effectively punching the tattoo denoting who they are into each child's arm. Then they are carted off for initial psychic testing before separated based on potential. The next few months will be filled with drug tests, mental conditioning and indoctrination into the manufactured lifestyle. Most psychics begin to display their gift at around a month "old", usually only the vaguest of whispers, and the first "Culling" occurs, generally dropping the 100 members of the batch to 30-40. Then, the remaining are put once again into metal tubes, to have their bodies accelerated once again, the manufactured going through puberty while under complete stasis, and the mind receiving information through a form of psychic link, provided by other psychic manufactured. This leaves the mind somewhat dull to interest in sexual reproduction, further reinforced by both indoctrination and that genetic imperative subdued through gene manipulation.

The second stage, the true testing phase, begins shortly after awakening again, which involves another round of psychic tests along with further drug tests. This second phase lasts another month, bringing the "children" up to two months old with the physical makeup of 16 year old. The mind is generally slower than an average human, not having access to the memories and experiences of a trueborn. Still, they function, and over the next year, a third and fourth culling occur, reducing the numbers of viable psychic manufactured to at most 7. During those twelve months, the manufactured still alive receive psychic training, further mental conditioning and finally a basic understanding of military knowledge. At 1 year of age, with the body roughly developed to that of a 17 year old, the manufactured are once again placed into tubes, these for transport, and shipped out to their final destinations.

One final thing to mention. The numbers assigned to a manufactured are to them as dear as a name. The moniker they eventually gain for themselves, such as "Grey" or "Wolf" are little more than easily discarded titles. The number, however, is who they are. Taking Grey's as an example: U-173-49628.

The U is the place of "birth", denoting one of the many manufactured facilities owned by Psy Industries. 173 is the genetic code used to clone and birth the manufactured, stating which gene sequence is the "parent", for Psy Industries, usually a trueborn psychic who agreed to donate genetic data. The Last number, 49628, is the batch and personal number, 496 the batch, 28 Grey's personal number. Essentially, he was the 28th member of the 496th batch cloned from Sequence 173, manufactured at a Lunar Facility floating above a human agricultural world called Aphaea.

Hmm. On the one hand, I'm not such a fan of the hyper-accelerated development phase. It kind of takes away from the visceral impact of lifetime of being broken down and abused to be shaped into what they are.

On the other hand, if they can get them from cradle to grave in less than a year, the vastly diminished worth human commanders place on manufactured lives is somewhat more justifiable. The costs of production are a lot lower than if they take years to raise.

Psy industry's main problem would seem to be their processes has a higher loss rate- I'm assuming a lot more than 7% of a batch of genetech or steeltech clones make it to deployment. It's probably a lot easier to train someone to reliably train soldiers and pilots than psychics (that meet their standards).

Minor criticism- the ID numbers seem too short when broken down that way. One digit for facility, and 3 for genetic sequence? They're going to exceed 26 facilities sooner or later, and if we assume they start with lots of genetic donors and tweak the genetics to try and zero in on the best manufactured they can they're going to end up with more than 999 variations pretty fast (I suppose you could conserve slots somewhat if you only assigned numbers to sequences that actually went into production? Theoretical, experimental, and development strains could have a separate identification protocol).

>breaker stuff
I find myself actually half hoping something's going to go wrong back home, just so there will be something for Nic to have to resolve, and to give us an excuse to play as her.

<<79044
How badly did the aliens kick humanity's ass, what (apparently?) stopped them from finishing the job, what started it, and was there ever any meaningful communication between the two?

The lifetime part isn't there so much in the Psy Industries manufactured, no. The Genetech have it the hardest in that regard, as you have to train muscle memory, not just thoughts. Generally, a Genetech will have the accelerated growth stopped just before puberty, and as they grow from there, they are trained in the military drills, tasks and weapons they'll be using through out their lives. For Psy Industries, the "tragedy", if you want to call it that, is the results of the drug testing performed on them. Because of how trueborn view manufactured, it allows for a lot more leeway in terms of what can and can't be done on them. Drugs that have been classified as "safe" for manufactured testing have the tendency to cause things like hallucinations, dementia, brain hemorrhaging. Things that are generally not good. Even those with actual psychic potential tend to die off from inability to handle what they're going through. Still, the same tests have lead, eventually, to psychic enhancing drugs that are safe, and widely used by trueborn gifted to help nurture their own abilities.

As for the other two industries, yes, they tend to have much higher output rates. Genetech successfully provides anywhere from 70-80 per batch, the remaining lost due to accident or simple inability to perform to standard. Steelworks have settled at around 40-50 per batch, the chances for accident significantly higher than Genetech and the nerve implants still having a chance of rejection.

>ID numbers
You'd be correct on a few points. Each company maintains it's own database for both facilities and gene sequences. Furthermore, there are more facilities then there are letters, but most of those facilities don't actually produce manufactured for commercial use. Psy Industries, for example, has a number of facilities that focus on the production of booster drugs and the study of trueborn psychics in hopes of finding why or how the brain manages to develop psychic ability, so that they can hopefully produce more gifted manufactured. On top of all that, it has been only 2 decades since the end of the First War, and production of usable facilities takes time.

Similarly, while this is hardly a valid argument for Genetech or Steelworks, the number of Gifted trueborn is, I think, being overestimated. While Gifted did exist before the First War, it was generally weak and of very little practical use. When the aliens hit, however, the abilities of those who were already identified as gifted expanded exponentially, and more gifted began to pop up throughout human controlled space. Still, the total number of active gifted trueborn, with enough potential to be considered a military asset, is estimated to be somewhere just below 1000, and about a third of those refuse to have anything to do with military. Of the remaining 2/3, there's maybe half that have given genetic material for use by Psy Industries. The number of viable gene sequences, for both psychic potential and relatively good health, cut that number to a quarter.

>The Ass-Kicking
Humanity, at the start of the war, controlled most of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way, and had proceeded unhindered across the stars. Most of the controlled star systems at least had a small orbital satellite, designed to do nothing more than collect data and keep watch for activity, generally from illegal pirates and the like. Habitable planets within star systems were generally occupied by massive numbers of people, frequently in the billions per world, and systems rich in minerals would have similarly massive space stations within them, acting as mining facilities and factories. Over the centuries, humanity managed to make its way slowly towards the Sagittarius Arm, and upon barely entering the closest star systems within made first contact. From there, things went down hill rather quickly. Human forces were immediately pushed back into the Orion Arm, and eventually only a third of what humanity originally held was still within human control. This, of course, can tell you roughly how much damage was done. Assume, since I'm no expert on the number of star systems there are in the Orion Arm alone, that there were roughly 4 billion(probably wrong, but whatever). Maybe a billion contained the bulk of human activity, each of these places containing a couple billion people. Now cut that by a 2/3. That 's how much damage humanity took. Roughly. And probably not to scale, but again, I'm no expert on astronomy.

>Alien Attack/Halt
After first contact, and the first attempts at communication(which were met with no response of any kind, or at least none that humanity could pick up on), neither side really did anything. The alien ship that had been discovered jumped out, and the human ship did what it had come to do, which is colonize. A few years after human arrival, a few more encounters with alien ships met with similar results, and a few more systems colonized, and suddenly, contact with the colonies were lost. Ships sent to investigate were lost similarly, and a few months after that the first alien assaults into human controlled space occurred, and the First War was in full swing. Humanity tried a number of times to make contact, and all were met with nothing.

Trueborn propaganda would state that humaniy halted the advance thanks to the introduction of new technologies and simple human stubbornness. Human scientists believe the aliens halted their advance because they either saw no threat or were spread too thin and needed time to regroup and reassess. To be completely truthful, however, humanity as a species has no idea why the aliens even attacked in the first place, much less why they decided to stop.

And on a totally unrelated note, I now officially hate your dice rolls. God damn dice.

>And on a totally unrelated note, I now officially hate your dice rolls. God damn dice.

I can't decide if that means we lucked out and got a near-max rank Stealth Suit or something else went really really well for Grey...

Silly idea I thought up was Grey's Squad as power rangers versus an evil version of Linda McCallahan and her pals. Seems like something that might make for a fun thing to visualize eh?

>billions and billions
The one thing to watch out for there is scale. If you're not careful, you end up with a military that's absurdly small for the number of troops who have to be fighting considering the sheer volume of space or number of planets / systems involved.

>we lucked out and got a near-max rank Stealth Suit
I think we got a full on ghost stealth suit, the kind that would usually be reserved for an elite trueborn commando crazy enough to be taking front line infiltration missions. Top of the line shit.

(Which raises the obvious thought that if we'd decided to play human, we'd have access to shit like this all the time!).

>I now officially hate your dice rolls. God damn dice.
We do have a pretty good track record, actually. Aside from a few streaks where the dice have really hated us (Jake's club was cursed, seriously), they do have this tendency to come out pretty strong when we need it.

>And on a totally unrelated note, I now officially hate your dice rolls. God damn dice.
What, did we just get a lemon, or a mint here? If it's a mint I think that might just be enough awesome to let us do a mission for a dozen people with only six.

Vehicles: What is there, what do manufactured get to touch, and what carries us between planets (operations)?

>What is there
I'm not sure what exactly you're asking for. Broad categories? Specific kinds of vehicles? Specific examples? I mean, technically, even a TacArm is a vehicle, and that was deliberately made to me modular in and of itself, to fit the differing preferences of their pilots.


>What do manufactured get to touch
I assume you mean what do manufactured actually get to operate. Most any small military vehicle, like trucks, mobile artillery, attack boats, helicopters. Things of that nature. TacArms as well, for those with the nerve implant. Rarely anything larger than that. Of course, manufactured are put to work to keep larger things in working order, why waste the manpower? That's reserved for mainly Steelworks, however, as they tend to have the most knowledge regarding machinery.

>What carries us between planets
In Grey's case, he arrived on the planet via a interstellar recon frigate. The ship is the smallest class of interstellar capable ships, carrying anywhere from 50 to 100 comfortably. Up to 150 if you just want to pack in bodies. Most of those aboard would be manufactured, as the recon frigates serve as the main delivery system for the initial assaults on planets. The interstellar class ships range from frigates, the smallest, to the massive Dreadnoughts. There is only one class larger than Dreadnought, dubbed Titans, of which there are only six, four in military service, one currently under constructions, and the last under direct service to the Imperial family of the Orion Empire, a holdout of the years before the First War and the formation of the Terran Confederacy.

Which brings up something else I'd thought to touch on. The current government of humanity, as a whole, is a loose Confederacy of a number of other governments. While during the first years of expansion into the stars many still followed the Sol Republic, eventually, as humans are apt to do, divided opinions and political maneuverings split the colonies from their mother planet, and eventually other governments sprang into being. As the years continued, many systems came together to form united fronts for safety, or were simply swallowed up by the more militaristic systems. After the disaster of the First War, only four political powers remained that held any real clout, and it was, with the urging of three out of the four and the reluctant agreement of the fourth, that the remnants of humanity formed the Terran Confederacy, a relatively loose agreement to put aside human differences in the face of a new threat. Those four governments, however, still retain a large degree of self autonomy, and nothing ever ceases the political maneuverings, not even the threat of extinction from alien lifeforms. Regardless, those four major powers are the Sol Federation, the Orion Empire, the Free Colonies, and the Flotilla.

As always, questions, comment and concerns are much appreciated. I would call this... semi-complete, as all this is generally just thoughts I have whirling around in my head, and I it never hurts to world build with other people telling you where you're wrong.

Now to actually write a pair of updates I should get to.

>I'm not sure what exactly you're asking for. Broad categories? Specific kinds of vehicles? Specific examples?
I would like to know if there's hoverboards, flying cars, wingless vectored-thrust vehicles, jetpacks and such we could salvage: These things could cause a lot of damage if we could pick up some and use them.
I'd also like to know whether or not civilians are allowed to drive vehicles or if instead self-driving vehicles are mandatory.
It's also notable we haven't seen many aerial vehicles in use by the military. We haven't seen any besides Hive's drones and the can we were chucked at the ground in, so apparently the enemy capabilities with anti-aircraft fire are prohibitive?

>>79073
Diaspora fragmentation followed by a a forced alliance due to an overwhelming threat and unending political maneuvering and squabbling sure sounds like humanity, all right.

> hoverboards, flying cars, wingless vectored-thrust vehicles, jetpacks
So, in essence, vehicles that can lift off directly from the ground in some way. Yes to all of the above, by the way, although for anti-grav, the system is generally very expensive and not used much. Hovercars(very expensive hovercars) will use anti-grav excusively, while Thrust Vectoring aircraft will generally use more conventional engines and fuels. Jetpacks come in two flavors, conventional engine jetpacks, which are bulky and cumbersome, but can sustain long periods of use, or anti-grav, which more streamlined, provide short leaps of increased height and distance.

>civilians are allowed to drive
Ground based vehicles only. At least in terms of cars and the like. Hovercars are reserved to automated functioning only, to reduce the amount of accidental crashes and the potential use for crimes. Of course, that hardly stops those who really want to, as it is possible to manual override the automated functions and do whatever you want with them.

>Aircraft
They do exist, just not generally on Recon Ships. You can't simply launch most aircraft out in, as you put it, tin cans. At least, not if you expect them to be immediately deployable for use. Most are kept in more dedicated carriers, and most of aircraft in use by the military is capable of atmospheric and orbital flight. For the most part, I just haven't had you encounter any of them yet. That'll be corrected as time moves on.

I'll have work things to do for about the next week or so, and since I know very well that I'm infamous(to some) for disappearing for stretches of time, I'm simply letting it be known that I'm only gone for a week this time. For sure. Mostly.

>>79175
No worries, I'll put the hot poker in the fire to start warming up.

At least it gives us some time to work on the demon-puzzle.

>Name the demons
Okay, first up, here are the names we've seen in the text.

Leviathan (Levi), Behemoth (Moth), Amadeus (As), (Bel), (Mon), (Beel)

I those last three nicknames can be completed as Belphegor, Mammon or Aamon, and Beelzebub.

The real problem is, so far as I can tell, the seventh has never been mentioned. (Although maybe there's something hidden in earlier updates? We didn't realize Michelle had more than Levi for a long while, maybe there's a tiny fragment name we missed).

>cheating
If we can trust information from A Song of Demons as being accurate to this setting: Belphegor is Sloth, Leviathan is Envy, Beelzebub is Gluttony, Behemoth is Wrath.

>Sins
The ones we know:

Leviathan has been stated to be either Envy or Gluttony. His consumption based attacks and constant hunger would more support Gluttony, although I have a hard time using either to explain his character fully. For instance, he shows a respect for debts owed, and a recognition of worthy opponents (now turned ally) that doesn't really fir with either sin. And he seems fiercely protective of Michelle, even compared to the others (possibly that's why he was chosen to become real first? Or is it a consequence of having to protect her?). Maybe it's just because he's had the most screen time to develop, but he's clearly more than an avatar of sin. He has motivations beyond his hunger.

Behemoth is named as the Prince of Wrath (although, from what little we've seen he's more interested in killing than anger per se).

Amadeus is rather obviously the Prince of Perversion Lust (and has been named as such).

The ones we have to guess at:

Belphegor:
"Leave me out of your tiresome bickering."
"Let's just get back to sleep and be done with this whole affair." "Bel, we're going to be working rather hard, tomorrow." Please, don't remind me. The pointlessness of all that work is simply-"
He finds bickering tiresome, votes for sleep, and finds work pointless. A solid pick for sloth. (He's not getting an avatar anytime soon, is he).

Mon:
"The woman is interesting to us. So many chances to corrupt her pure intentions."
Doesn't really tell us much, unfortunately. Corruption hardly narrows it down between Mammon / Aamon or the remaining sins. I suppose it's more like greed than envy or pride? (He sees something to be taken, not envied or shown up).

Beelzebub:
Hardly the most pure of goals, Mon. She is irrelevant to our Mother. Leave her be and get some rest. You will need it tomorrow, Mother. (The next response is addressed to "the ever silent Beel", but I'm not sure we we attribute all three of these sentences to him, or just the last one or two).
"Ah, a lovesick heart. How... cliche."
Not definitive, but could be Pride (too good to talk to the others, he's above these stupid cliches).

Unknown:
So far as I can tell, the Seventh is never addressed by any of the other demons, nor mentioned by Michelle. Can't seem to attribute any of the dialog to him, either.

...I don't suppose it's possible Michelle is the Seventh? (Lilith after all). Or her brother, maybe?


So just going off of quest sources, we're still left with three demons (Mon, Beel, and unnamed) and three sins (Envy, Pride, Greed).

>I don't suppose it's possible Michelle is the Seventh? (Lilith after all). Or her brother, maybe?
Nope, never-mind that idea, she definitely mentions there being seven voices inside her head. Which means we're still left with identifying someone silent and unnamed.

>Amadeus
Whups, that should be Asmodeus (geeze, without the s he can't be As, duh). And that mistake got carried over into Z's post, too.

Thinking about the Sarah defection thing- more upsides occurred to me.

The obvious one is she might be a more useful source of intel than any prisoner, since she's now willingly cooperating.

The other thing is that our group, by it's very nature, has always been open to infiltration. (If you're taking in everyone who comes to you for protection, than leaves an easy way in for an agent of a rival or hostile faction). If she's around, that means a fixer trying that could be recognized, at least. (Although that doesn't help with other factions. Granted, between mind reading and precognition we have some protections in place already).

I guess the thing to determine about As' 'acquisition' is whether it was cohesion / control, plain in simple, or if it took the form of a pact or bargain (arguably, either is in character for a demon).

And then we have to wonder if any of her other children will start thinking this is a good idea... we've potentially opened a big can of worms. That cult Aria joked about so glibly may end up realized.

An interesting thought to that is that Michelle's Cult is part of what being a powerful breaker is all about- people literally start flocking to you and steadfastly following in your tracks, it seems like.
Chris's Gaurdians, Cass's Shock Troops, Mike's Sneaks....Effectively, any powerful breaker will start to sway and 'control' lesser breakers around them, unless they have identity of self enough to resist it?

>>79480
Well, powerful people do attract followers. And if you make people lieutenants, it makes sense they need people to lieutenant to.

In this particular case I'm wondering if anyone will try to follow Sarah's example (will anyone, seeing it's possible, approach Michelle wanting to make a deal with a demon?), or if, now that they know this is possible, are any of the other demons are going to try and reach out? Depending on if/how this spreads, and how much it's a bargain versus mind control... there's a lot of room for things to get complicated.

(Dangerously- it may give As a degree of freedom to act without Michelle. He has a pawn now that's not directly under her control).

We've also yet to see how she really becomes an important piece of the puzzle, I think.

>cohesion
Coercion. Dangit, spellcheck.

I'll put the requested information here, for both easier access and because I'll be noting a few of the different enemies here. Makes it slightly easier to refer back to as well. Regardless, here we go:

The most common enemy is simply the Warrior or the Soldier. A humanoid species, they are remarkably similar to humans in size and physical strength. They do come, however, with a natural, bony armor plating across their bodies, which is resistant to small caliber weapons and slashing weapons. This durability is further enhanced by a form of combat armor that all their troops seem to wear, which functions similarly to human body armor, albeit much more effective. They can generally be found carrying the alien equivalent to standard firearms, along with all manner of other weapons, up to and including their rocket launcher counterparts. Otherwise, they are unremarkable, and have not been noted to display the Gift themselves.

The next most common, at least in urban environments, is the Spider. A long limbed and clawed life-form, they exist as ambush troops, using walls, ceilings and whatever other objects they can to traverse the environment and drop in on unsuspecting prey. What follows is generally immediate and merciful death, or being dragged screaming to some unknown fate. On the plus side, Spiders are not incredibly durable, as even the simplest of weapons can kill one, and they are unarmored, needing the lack of protection in order to utilize their preferred attack methods.

Less common are the Bulls. Massive brutes, the things measure nearly twice the size of a man, and have been known to bust down bunker walls. They are the main reason the TacArm was designed, the idea to match brute strength with brute strength, and the results have yet to be seen, as Bulls have yet to be encountered on the battlefield. Still, time will tell.

The last was seen rarely, and documentation is spotty at best. Described by the few that survived encounters with them as tall and thin, with the atmosphere about them somehow seeming... fluid... they were dubbed Wraiths, and it was an encounter with one that awoke the Gift in the truly powerful human Gifted. They are the only ones to be recorded displaying the Gift among those aliens encountered during the first war, but little else is known beyond their pure psychic might.

>just reports from lawyers who still don't have any definitive answers for you
Okay, I'd like to bring this up out of character, since it seems hard to do in-quest.

I'd really like to write a part of Linda's speech directly responding to how the government is treating us, and justifying our response. Unfortunately, I'm missing information I'd need to do so.

The first, big one, is the underpinning legal structure. This is an alternate America, with a different legal and government structure. Presumably the natives in-quest are familiar with say, what rights citizens are supposed to have (and what the limits on that are), and what powers the government (and branches / divisions) are supposed to have, but we don't. Without knowing the basics of how things are supposed to be, it's hard to criticize any deviations.

Then, next, it would be nice to know what the government says it's doing now. We saw the president's public speech. But there's always more than that- there's a legal argument for their actions, a public statement as to what they're doing and why. The speech is to sell to the public- the paper is to bring along it's own government (this is why our absurdly illegal drone program domestic spying program hunting and killing our own citizens program is totally legal, guys). Knowing the legal justification gives us the lynchpin to attach in our argument.

Finally, it would be nice to compare what they say they're doing to what we know they're doing. Between Rise's records and Jacob, we have a lot of D7's own internal records. Potentially, there's conflicts there- proof we can hold up to show the government isn't doing what it's saying it's doing, or for different reasons, or that it's actually breaking the laws and rules it claims to be protecting (ie, they're not protecting the public- they're killing and capturing and torturing and experimenting on people for their own gain. They've made breakers. Etc).

...I mean, I don't expect the entire constitution and pages of documents for us to mine as sources. But without say, knowing how the bill of rights differs, or getting a summary of the hostile breakers act, it's hard to be very specific at all.

Okay, so expanding on Jean's pointing out the problem with Linda's realness. There are several ways I could see towards explaining that:

Simplest explanation is that Jean's wrong. Despite 'not existing', reality still has a hold on Linda, and can influence her to a certain extent. The name for her condition is a misnomer, or inexact, or doesn't go into the full complexity. While reality in many ways refused to acknowledge she exists, she still, in a limited manner, maintains a connection.

Another explanation would be that Linda has her own sort of internal reality. She was cut out of reality, a thread cut out of the tapestry. So, within the context of the tapestry, she doesn't exist. But her thread, the stuff that was cut out, still is. It's like her own bubble universe, a reality of a single thread. While reality-reality can't affect Linda, her own internal reality still follows rules. Rules that could be possibly altered, given the vastly reduced complexity and scale of her 'universe. That would come with risks, though.

Explanation number 3 would be that Linda has a kind of inertia. Reality can't act on us anymore, but we're still under the effect of forces that once acted on us. The concern would be if there's any kind of dissipative force at work (reality-friction. What if we slowly get less and less real, less and less human, as the last influences of reality on us slowly die out?), or if we do anything to interfere with our lingering inertia (once we break a rule, or change it, what if we can't get it back?).

Number 4 would be what I posited back in thread- instead of carrying the old rules of reality along with her, Linda is unconsciously enforcing them on herself. She's making her own reality. The tears pretend to sleep, and eat and act- she's going one step past that. She's making something that doesn't have to be real, real for her. Upside of this interpretation, (if valid) is that means we might be able to learn to control it (changing what rules apply to her when she needs to) with less risk of never getting back what we set aside (since we were doing it all along). Biggest risk though is in discovery or some kind of turmoil. Unconscious / automatic processes have this nasty habit of shutting down when you grow aware of them (start thinking about your breathing!), and realizing everything that's still real about her is a lie might be enough to pop the bubble. An emotional or existential crisis could get very real. Or, unreal, technically.

The possible upside to most of these is they present possible models (of varying feasibility) for making tears more real. It Linda can do these things (or they've been done to her), we might be able to duplicate the effect in someone who currently has nothing.

Crazy theory: Tears are propagated backwards in time.

This would mean that a future event is their true creation event, something that rips up reality so badly that the tears don't just propagate across reality (equal time) but backwards in time too, splitting into smaller and weaker tears that follow paths of least resistance in the weave until they are eventually are stopped by having nothing weak enough to tear back through. This means that a tear being 'created' is not the creating event, but just where the rip in reality stops. McCarthy isn't creating Tears, he's picking out paths of weakness and waiting for a tear to propagate back top them (or creating those paths of weakness in the first place). He may even be gathering (and merging) Tears, as a result of trying to ensure that the rip event occurs at their eventual convergence in some sort of crazy-ass self-fulfilling ontological paradox.
Unfortunately, if this is correct then reality will need some massive and widescale manipulation in order to allow for the creating of tears without the rip event, for all Tears to be retroactively 'sewn up' (harder as things progress and Tears merge), or - in the worst case - a pocket of reality floated through the rip event and reattached at the other side, as the tears propagate 'forward' in time, splitting and dissipating. Assuming that the weave of time and space was at least roughly in existence 'before' the rip event came to be, that would essentially dump that bubble of reality into the future.

>>79601
This damn post sent me into a week long brainstorming session, not to mention a 3 hour conversation with a family member that loves history, politics and anything even vaguely associated with either. So, on top of coming up with an answer(a rather simple one to), we've also fleshed out a lot of the world. Somewhat. That'll come in another post later, I have some other issues I need to hash out first(rebuilding a world is a lot of work), but for now, I'll answer requests posed in the post itself.

>Legal Rights/Powers
To put it simply, there really hasn't been any real changes in the constitution. The US was founded on the same ideals as our version, it just ended up going in a different direction. The current government of the UNA still uses the US constitution, with some very minor differences in wording for the change to the name of United North America. The main difference is the government itself, and how it chooses to interpret the constitution. Still, consider all current constitutional amendments to be in place. There are, however, some additional amendments put into place. Since the inception of the UNA, changes made have included the abolishment of a Judicial branch and a change of the Congressional. Instead of each "state" electing representatives to both the Senate and the House, each of the 6(now 7) Divisions represent the governments interests in one piece of the Congressional branch known as the Divisional Council, and the citizenship is represented by the continuation of the House of Representatives. Laws are passed through both groups before being presented before the President, who is selected through a majority vote of the population from one of the Divisions, usually the Division Head.

It is the Divisions themselves that are the most major change. It is seen, by the current government, as a citizens duty to abide by decisions set forth by the government. The main issue with this problem is that, with the abolishment of a judicial branch it is left largely to the Congressional to decide what is or isn't against the constitution, and what does or does not pose a threat to the rights of the citizenry. Even more problematic, the Divisional Council wields far more power than the House, due in part to they being the only ones capable of becoming the President. This has led to massive limitations in power over the House, such as the highly detested law that forbids the House from voting on military concerns, such as the formation of new Divisions, or the actual act of going to war.

For reference, the 7 Divisions, and their known Heads, are as follows:

1) The National Division- General Jacob Hammond
2) The International Division- Admiral Charles Marley
3) The Military Division- General Carmen Adams
4) The Economics Division- The Honorable David Torson(Current President)
5) The Justice Division - General Emily Fisher
6) ???
7) The Division of Reality- Special Agent McCarthy(Acting Division Head)

It is crucial to keep in mind that the general population knows of only 6 of the 7, although with the technical Seventh Division being revealed, many are starting to notice that they seem to have skipped the sixth.

>Legal Bases
A simple placement of Breakers as both domestic and world terrorists. They are attempting to classify Breakers as somehow undermining reality as a whole, in an effort to raise support among the world powers. This has had limited success. While this is forcing the world powers to acknowledge the existence of breakers, only the Soviet Union is taking up the same hardline stance as the UNA. The other 4 major powers are taking largely different roles, not to mention the numerous subcultures in the world. Mostly it seems the world is uncertain of how to deal with the issue.

Still, the UNA is stating that, because of the threat to reality, there is a threat to the UNA citizens, and that it will deal with the threat as necessary. It's also rescinding citizenship to all Breakers within it's borders. This has had two effects. In the east, most of the citizens have rallied to the government, likely because of the major presence Division 7 has. The west, on the other hand, is skeptical at best, and is aided by the fact that Breakers, under your organizations watchful eye, have continued to perform and coexist peacefully with the normal population. House representatives of the western states are just as skeptical as those they represent, but seem disinclined to openly question anything, lest they be labeled terrorists themselves.

Hope that helps. Any other questions I'll try to answer, but making governments takes time, so bear with me if I don't answer them immediately.

>Damn post, lots of brainstorming
Haha, yeah, sorry about that. I kind of realized I was opening a big can of worms there.

Although it's sort of your own fault, dragging us onto a political stage. Naturally we're going to start asking questions about politics!

But thanks, that's a big help, actually. Between snow storms and president's day I've got a long weekend, and I'm going to try and see about actually trying to get a speech draft written in advance of our media presentation.

One major note. Some of this conflicts with things previously stated about the world. It's isn't anything major to the story as a whole, if I recall the changes correctly, so if anything contradicts what's already been stated, assume this post to override everything before it.

First off, while there were numerous signs of change before WW1/2, the world wars were the major changing point. Before that, the United States(as it was still called at the time) was getting steadily more militaristic in nature already, and had developed a relatively bad relationship with Britain. When the wars in Europe did erupt, the US took the opportunity to attack Britain, and conquered what was once Canada. This led to the formation of two new nations, the United North America, made from the US and Canada, and the Latin Republic, a nation formed by the nations of Central America in response to the creation of the UNA, fearing something similar happening to them. The Latin Republic would later become an economic powerhouse, making them one of the most powerful super powers to exist in the modern world of Breaking Reality. They steadfastly refuse, however, to take sides in international matters, preferring instead to limit themselves to trade and economic agreements. The UNA, on the other hand, has a highly militaristic government, and while this is generally not felt by the population, the nation is kept out of war simply by the threat of other super powers in the world.

Of course, during this time, Europe was embroiled in war, and the Japanese were staging their own attacks on what was Korea and China. With the US busy attacking Canada, the Japanese saw no threat to their own forces and dominance in the Pacific, and chose not to raid Pearl Harbor. This, combined with the fact that the US had no interest in foreign affairs at the time, left the Japanese to remain unchecked through out Asia, and by the time the fighting stopped, what was once the Far East became the Empire of Japan. This would later become simply the Empire of the East, although Japan would remain the "ruling" nation within it's own borders, with all other nations being treated much like the self-governing commonwealths of the British Empire. The main difference is that a provincial governor oversees each region, making sure that dissent against the main governing body is stamped out quickly and efficiently.

In Europe, without the support of the US, and the troops they would have supplied, the Allies are forced into a stalemate with the Axis. The last major acts performed by the Allies resulted in Britain pushing the Axis powers out of Africa and the Russians managing to force German forces back across Poland, to the German border. However, with the lack of additional forces, and supplies running thin on all sides, the push into Germany itself was repelled, and the attack on the beaches of Normandy never happened. This resulted in three major powers existing within what is modern day Europe.

The first is Britannia. Far from losing their colonies through out the world, the conclusion of WW2 has resulted in the British Empire solidifying its control on the colonies they possessed, and therefore solidifying its place as a world power. As of modern times, Britannia controls Africa, India, the Middle East and Australia, although it maintains only enough control of each region to extract the natural resources of each to their own advantage, leaving the local warlords and leaders to squabble amongst themselves. They come into conflict mainly with the UNA, whom they view as backstabbers, and the Imperial East, who clashes with them as a major naval power.

The last two world powers are unnecessary, as they won't be playing a part in the story at all(or at least, there aren't any plans for it). As such, I'll leave it at that for now. As always, comments, complaints, questions and concerns are loved and appreciated.

As the local obsessee, I'm actually not seeing any obvious conflicts with previously stated fact (well, except we went from 'no congress' to a 'weak and fundamentally different congress').

Points of commentary, interest:

It's kind of odd that when ascending to the role of president, a division-head doesn't leave his previous job.

If this universe started to diverge significantly from ours around the 1940s (or a little earlier) that would mean the civil war still happened, and so did the Lincoln memorial. Which means my silly idea for a form type breaker who's focus is a penny and whose manifestation is a giant stone Abe Lincoln works! :V

I forget that the UNA included Canada. Suddenly it makes more sense why the Havers trip was so long. We were headed further north than I thought. Cue lumberjack jokes for Cass.

The USSR grinding to a halt at the German border is an interesting bit, mostly because I'm not completely sure that would have happened, even without the USA joining the war. Still, I'm hardly an expert, and that's the kind of thing WWII nerds could argue for days and not reach a meaningful conclusion. (And could be affected in all kinds of little ways by details from a divergent history, anyway).

That does mean that the US never helped rebuild Europe though, which would probably penalize the modern-day economy. Or at least, how long it took to rev back up (Unless the LR found reason or profit in propping them back up in their place?). What actually happened to Germany could go several different ways, though. Did the nazi regime collapse under the terrible strain of all the war-damage and the terrible things it did, and its leader going insane? Did it endure? How does the modern-day country feel about the systematic genocide and its history? Depending on how you play that, you could end up with several really different Europes pinned between the USSR and Brittan.

The space race would have played differently, since the US wouldn't have scooped up all those Nazi rocket scientists. (Unless there was an internal collapse of the regime after the war, turning the masses or the leadership against certain individuals, that lead to them fleeing to the UNA. The UNA taking Nazi refugees- that would be an interesting inversion). Especially if the tensions between the UNA and USSR never escalated to the full cold war it did for us.

Japan's situation is complicated because the way the war went means two major cultural influences never happened in this timeline. They never became the world's first post-apocalyptic society, and they weren't subject to the massive culture influence from the US's occupation and rebuilding. Why is this important, and more than a simple curiosity of an an alternate culture / society? Because we made Linda a rapid mecha-anime fan and a several important forces that shaped that artform aren't present in this timeline! (Unless after their ascension to a world empire they still somehow got a similar cultural exposure to the west, and/or a nuclear disaster happened for different reasons, or in different circumstances)?

Brittan never giving up a colonial rule on the Mideast / Africa / India is kind of a fascinating idea, especially in light of the modern history. What happens to all the rebellions and conflicts and cultural upheavals of the last 10, 20, 30 years if they were never parceled out into semi-arbitrary countries drawn by arrogant and ignorant white men a world away? What happens when they're left under lose supervision, or under the heel of a common enemy?

One thing that almost strikes me as odd (and that I'm almost reluctant to bring up) is that in the UNA, this seems a setup for, well, a more hard-line and conservative country. But while that might be the case with the political leadership, we don't seem to be seeing much of that on the ground, culturally, so much. I mean, we haven't seen much in the way of racism, or sexism (kinda might have been an issue with Linda's career path), or issues with sexual preference. Things seem about what I'd expect (or better?) compared to the real world. Not sure if that's just a coincidence of the people we've encountered (breaker kind of have a lot weirder and bigger things dividing them), or if the culture is actually different. Maybe the militaristic world power stance shifted the fears and hates that fuel / fueled one side of internal civil rights issues towards external threats? (Real or imagined).

>>79732
>
Japan's situation is complicated because the way the war went means two major cultural influences never happened in this timeline. They never became the world's first post-apocalyptic society, and they weren't subject to the massive culture influence from the US's occupation and rebuilding. Why is this important, and more than a simple curiosity of an an alternate culture / society? Because we made Linda a rapid mecha-anime fan and a several important forces that shaped that artform aren't present in this timeline! (Unless after their ascension to a world empire they still somehow got a similar cultural exposure to the west, and/or a nuclear disaster happened for different reasons, or in different circumstances)?
Or influences were inverted: the Tezuka-analogue was not Japanese, but come from one of the occupied territories. It was the bleed of Japanese culture into a conquered nation (rather than the bleed of foreign culture into Japan) that created the mix of fatalism and hope that gave rise to the 'forward with technology' mindset.

Anonymous 2014/02/27(Thu)22:08 No. 79939 ID: 4a75fa
File 139356773234.jpg - (149.88KB , 600x397 , nonexistant birthday.jpg )

Happy "you don't get a birthday this year"-day, Linda.

>>79939
That is the most awesome cake I've ever seen, and I wish I would do it justice. Unfortunately, we are unaware of this Linda you speak of, and think you should probably get your head checked for delusions and possible insanity.

But more seriously, that is awesome. Can't think of a better unbirthday present for our resident nonexistent.

Think I'll repay that by actually posting for once.

So... that was a nice summer hiatus, I suppose. The quest's been dead for a while now, though. Can we shoot it in the back of the head and get it going again? Or crack it over the head with the red hot fireplace iron I suppose, since that's my thing.

>>85087
get on IRC and ask a mod to pull it out of the graveyard.

>Breaking Reality running again
Ohboyohboyohboy!

Um. There appears to be some confusion.

That was a shot in the dark to see if dreamer was around and might be interested in giving this a go again. Not an announcement of return. Unfortunately.

Still, it's nice to know I'm not the only one missing this quest.

Oh... well... I should probably get on that, shouldn't I?

Thank you for the poker to the face, by the way. I tend to think people aren't waiting for me, although I think I've said that before, haven't I?

YAY! DREAMER'S BACK!

I'll be posting a new breaker idea in case we need one but...It's been a good amount of time, and I've got to figure out some decent breaker concepts to work with, I think this time around I'll start with the Traumas and work from there.
Current concepts: The dishonored Vampire& Existence through fans.

>>85351
my statement still stands, mods can pull things out of the graveyard if you ask.

also, i read Beyond the Stars. kinda a hard place to cliff hang, right on the spot of "do you make it out alive or die horribly"

Holy crap, my shot in the dark hit something. Only took 9 days. I was about ready to resign it as a lost effort! Welcome back!

This is still one of my favorite stories on the site, and I'm glad I don't have to give up on it. Didn't stop thinking about it, even while you were gone. Some assorted ideas:

Chris' prisoner taking we left off at? One potential problem occurred to me. It's impossible to actually secure any enemy agent that's aware of McCarthy's nature. All he has to do is think and he's compromised the location we're keeping him at. (Circumvent by keeping him someplace disposable, at a known location, or just getting what we need and mind wiping him and releasing him asap?).

We may actually have a means to fix breakers who've lost their focus, like Mac. Normally the problem is, they have the potential, but no means to focus it, right? Not even to tune a focus. But what if Linda cheats. Using someone else, she takes the breaker's thread, and then she tunes a focus to that thread. As far as reality is concerned? That thread tuned a focus to itself. Dunno how many normalized breakers there are hanging around Sun City, but we are sitting on a vault of stockpiled foci.

That apparent bias in the cast towards female characters? It occurred to me that's not necessarily just tgchan being tgchan, for once. This is a world where abuse and trauma result in superpowers. It's kind of fridge horror, but when you think about it, an overall bias makes a disturbing amount of sense.

On building breakers: we've focused on themes, powers that are consistent, that tie to personality or injury, that are balanced. Then we've got Linda. Between the way nonexistence has developed, and the foci we've collected / modified, she's completely unbalanced in comparison.

So how long until we meet someone similarly unbalanced? Someone who spent as much effort pushing at the edges of what manifestation typing allowed, or who went through something as fundamentally self-altering as our breaking time to reverse Elizabeth's death? There are going to be other breakers who break the rules among the upper echelon. It's just a matter of time.

>>/quest/594283
Oh, we're following Elizabeth's investigation into Rise's disappearance. Cool. That was on my short-list of things I wanted to follow up on. (That, and we need to find a chance for Nicole to do something cool on her own. She needs a chance to level, and do something besides babysit the base). I assume this is planned to be a short thing, like Guy's arc, before we go back to Linda?

And yeah, if and when you want any of the other threads out of the graveyard, just ask, and one of us can bug a mod in irc.

One cool thing about using an outside narrator? Things can get really fucked up around Linda. The character can have meetings with and be influenced by an employer he never remembers having interacted with. She actually makes a really fucked up and interesting boss from a player perspective, since we could be being used by or manipulated by her and not even know it. Things the character feel, or that they know, might actually originate from forgotten discussions. (Don't know if that will really come into play here, or not. Possibly it's the kind of thing that might be interesting to mess with, if there's ever in a sequel in the same world, and Linda's retired to a background character).

>note with a passing interest that one of her eyes is definitely not natural at all, one being green and the other brown
Oh right, I forgot that detail. I'd been imaging eyes as green and greener, in my head. Lazy brain not willing to compile artificial heterochromia iridum.

A question I wished to pose to the lot of you, which should get some creative juices flowing for me as well:

This next breaker is a form type, and while I have my own idea about where I want to take him, I'd also like to see your take on it. Trauma and all that is completely up to you, just thought I'd see if anyone else had a good idea I'd prefer over my own.

>>85369
HAHAHA! I wanted to make more form types! Here we go!
Brittany Ballade (Form type)
Strength-3 Finesse-1 Will-2
Foci: chess pawn piece (Manifestation: Form of Marble)
Trauma: All I've been, is a pawn to others. first, my controlling mother, who wants to see me claim the glory she never could due to her weak body. Then, when she died, I was brought under my father's care, and he wanted me to be the son I could not be. Then I was kidnapped, and made to be a servant...But one day, one of my captors asked me: What were your dreams? He was mocking me, I think but...I...I didn't know!
I never thought of such things, ever!

STR-5(-2)
FIN-7(-6)
WIL-10 (-8)
BP -26 (-3)
SPR-4 (-6)
Break Sight
Spirit Sight
Unbroken Will (She has no mind of her own?)
Foci: Chess pawn piece
(Manifestation: Form of Marble, 2BP)
Enhanced durability (-1)
Foci gain:Ant figurine (-1)
(Manifestation: Giant Ant Soldier,2BP)
Functional Wings (-1)
Foci gain: machine gear (-1)
Manifestation: Robot, 2BP)
Lazer Eyes. (-1)

Basically, a multiple-foci type Form Breaker.
I kiiinda wanted to do a 'playboy bunny' form but how to justify it, was easier said than done.

>>85369
Well, judging from the 'undying' label, and some of the comments he made, this guy's injury seems to be some kind of chronic illness or disease? (That should be killing him, but is not, because breaker). In that case, the form could be something along those lines, maybe a pestilence kind of thing? A form that let someone became a lot of things, like a swarm of insects, could be pretty messed up and interesting.

>I kiiinda wanted to do a 'playboy bunny' form but how to justify it, was easier said than done.
Two different ways I can think to justify that.

The first, would be a manifestation that invokes a rabbit monster of some kind. Over time the breaker has modified it so they don't just have to go were-rabbit horror. Made it into a slide bar, instead of a switch. So she can go little bunny, human, full on monster or... A kind of playboy bunny thing in between. (So you're getting some fin or str bonuses without the monster endurance, or added natural weapons). Of course, you need the kind of personality that would actually think playboying herself was a good idea. Trauma would probably be some fucked up childhood thing involving a stuffed animal (hence the default monster form).

Bunnygirl form, down. (Could also use similar logic to make a catgirl or whatever your monstergirl of choice is).

Second option? Go full on fucked up. A will build. The playboy bunny is the form. Kind of like an evil charisma thing- fight with psychological and psychosexual stuff. Looks like a cute fantasy, but the theme is really deep dark primal ID stuff. Trauma would obviously be mental in nature (probably a history of systemic abuse and exploration by fucked up people as a child). The breaker would not be stable on their own (heavy mental fuck up, worse that Liz when she was still having fits) and would need a group looking after them. Gets a lot more lucid (and scary) when manifested, but this isn't a good thing.

There you go. Take your bubbly silly 'I made my form a bunny girl' or your fucked up psychological horror sadist in a cute Freudian wrapper.

>exploration
Exploitation. Damn you, auto-correct. This is what I get for trying to post from work.

>>85370
I forgot to comment on this before but could her theme sort of be... being small? (Or being made small). Sort of fits literally with the kind of helplessness you describe in the trauma, and more literally, with the ant and marble forms (even if the ant is giant). Rolling around as a tiny marble might allow for sort of a spy build (especially paired with sight powers), that could maybe adopt a ballistic attack pattern? Might work better with a partner, so she could be used as a weapon.

Oh wait, you meant marble like the stone, didn't you. White like a chess piece, an emotionless facade for the person lost under the other personalities who have tried to use her.

Although the idea of a form meant to be used as a weapon by someone else (a Megatron kind of transformation) might be interesting. There's room to break some regular limitations, balanced by how absurdly constraining it is.

>Bunny ideas.
I think I perfer more vague backstories as opposed to something more direct, especially given the weird relationship between initial manifestation and trauma some breakers have.

>Wielded forms
That could be a great idea for someone with servitude as their thing... Maybe next time.

One thing is I'd like to make the trauma as light as possible-easier to succeed when you're more functionally insane then the next guy, plus I just don't like grim dark stuff.

And I realized not long after posting that recent breaker idea that I would have named a man Brittany... Aye-yah, that'll leave a mark. Maybe I could do something with that.

>vague backstories
And here I thought I was plenty vague! (Bunny 1 is really just an idea for how any form type might be able to make halfway forms, and Bunny 2 was just a vague, creepy idea without the actual mechanics sketched out at all).

But thought-experiment, anyways. Not what I would want to apply to our unnamed PC, here.

>make the trauma as light as possible-easier to succeed
Interesting how that works out really. That's basically what we pulled with Linda, and it's had all kinds of unexpected consequences. Her initial injury was almost inconsequential, or at least, very manageable compared to people around here. However, since we put Elizabeth in the picture, the mental aspect has almost become more important, and now we've got a big emotional weak spot slash berserk button. And holding onto her is how we ended up Nonexistent in the first place. And in retrospect? Maybe one can attribute Linda's not-closeness to her parents to be partially due to the fact that no one else really remembered what happened to her, so they weren't really there for her when she needed them. Suddenly little injury has a big effect on trajectory. (And if we assume her assailant was a breaker who normalized the incident, congratulations. Breaking fucking up the course of your life comes full circle).

But granted, yes, less fucked-up breakers are more functional.

>And here I thought I was plenty vague! (Bunny 1 is really just an idea for how any form type might be able to make halfway forms, and Bunny 2 was just a vague, creepy idea without the actual mechanics sketched out at all).

Different sort of vague then what I meant...What I mean is degrees of seperation.
Cass's ACTUAL theme, to me, is Gemini, the twins as one person. There's the normal Cass, and then there's the, shall we say, 'Breaker' Cass, which is probably what happens when she stresses out, be it from combat or otherwise.

Or for that matter, how Chris's current theme, remains 'experiment 23' despite Linda's attempts to rebuild the person she once was.

I like the idea of the Breaker's actual powers being related to what you see them do, but not necessarily the story you expected them to have in the first place (Granted, I probably could have done a better job with this on some of the earlier ideas, but still!)

On that note, I should toss out the Playboy Bunny idea soon, as well as two other breaker ideas (The mob returns, alongside a 'theiving' breaker)
But for now, let's focus on our protagonist.
He's got a STR based Form and a WIL based Form.
Now, I presume whichever one is picked will become his main form, and I like the thought of him being STR based to round out the trio.
Guy as the WIL Avatar, Linda the FIN Weapon, and unnamed as the STR Form. All three types focused on all three stats, with no overlap.

So let's see...
I like the idea of this fellow somehow balancing out the other two, but how to do that personality-wise...I'm thinking this guy will probably be the guy that balances Linda's optimism, and Jean's cynicalism. Be the face that Linda can't be due to nonexistance, and Jean won't be because he's a Tear.

>Chris's current theme, remains 'experiment 23'
Chris' theme is hard to place, considering how little we know of her personal backstory, or even her injury. (Aside from the vague theory I have about how breakers from different cultures 'earn' their powers, and why that might have made the Muramasa siblings easier to induce breaking in).

I'd really argue against the idea she hasn't grown, though. She's not very expressive about it, but she's more than she once was. There are hints of it her dialog, and in the few scenes we've played as her. There are little things she exults in and enjoys, a willingness to be creative, even to look for ways to follow the spirit if not the letter of the order, if she thinks it right. She didn't do that, before. Subject 23 was someone who followed the loyalty switch in her head without question. Now Chris, if she found herself switched back? She's someone who I think would struggle with that.

Granted, she hides or protects herself with an ideal. She's hyper-focused on the present, cutting ties with the past. But the fact we haven't turned her back into the person she started out as isn't a failure, either. She still has growing to do, but I'm not sure getting Makoto back is even the end goal, here.

>Now, I presume whichever one is picked will become his main form
...I was wondering that, but kind of hoping not? Especially since I seem to be the only one who's voted so far and I answered solely out of boring in the moment practicality, not long term build stuff.

>Now, I presume whichever one is picked will become his main form
No. Not really. His original form, yes, but not main. He's more of a "use what works best" kinda person. Or rather, his set up is. I'll give you stat info as it becomes pertinent(aka: I'm still working out the exact details)

For now, you can have this little tidbit:
??? Form: STR=15, all others stat's remain unchanged.
-Undeath: This form can only be killed using specific methods. The most common are as follows: Fire, Complete dismemberment, removal of the vital "heart" that allows the form to continue. Others methods exist, but are more difficult to accomplish.

...This is gonna end with me doing frantic re-works of my form-type breakers, isn't it.
And now that I think on it, she DID say that we were the 'undying' so probably could have seen this coming.
Also-Break Sight does NOT appear to be a common pick at all. I wonder why that is?

...This guy's the flaming man, isn't he.
It's not about fire. It's about watching those she cares about die and being unable to help them.

Also, I bet we just missed out on having a Vampire Breaker. Oy.

>Also-Break Sight does NOT appear to be a common pick at all. I wonder why that is?
Because it doesn't have the direct applications some of the other powers do, I suppose.

It allows you to identify breakers (sometimes), allows you to not kill people if you're careful (and not many people seem to care about this), and maybe allows you to make guesses about people's abilities when they spend BP. Useful to someone who wants to be careful or think about things, less useful if you're going be indiscriminate or direct.

...oh boy, I just realized this arc means there's a good chance we finally see Liz get to do something terrifying and awesome to behold with fear itself.

Revenant
Stats: Str-5/Finesse-5/Will-5
Spirit: 6
BP: 50
Manifestation: Form Type
Draugr: An undead of Norse origin. Numerous stories grant them all manner of strange powers, but in this case, it simply makes Revenant incredibly strong and highly resistant to death. Grants: Str-15, Undeath trait, Regeneration Trait
Wraith: Ghostly undead known to terrorize humans, draining them of life and bringing various other calamities. While in this form, Revenant's attacks are all based on Will. Grants: Will-15, Incorporeal Trait, Undead Trait
Spirit Abilities:
Death Avoidance
Manifest
Warped Minds
Warped Reality
Unbroken Will
Spreading Undeath: Revenant's unique power. It allows him to produce lesser forms of whatever undead he is capable of turning into, whether by directly "infecting" those he kills, or by "calling" them into existence through BP. Either way, these lesser undead follow his directions to the best of their mindless ability. Current Options: Zombies, Ghosts
Active Break

Ooh, warped reality. Haven't really gotten a chance to see that power in action. (Michelle didn't get a chance for the bit we got to play as her, and I'm not sure I ever caught it working for Raphael on screen).

A wraith, huh? I wonder how that's different from ghost-girl's form, or if there would be weird ways their abilities could interact. (What happens if you try to spread undeath to someone who already is?). We never really explored either of the school-kid's stuff. (And unless Marc swung something in advance, they're both hyper-delinquent runaways by now).

Hrrrm... Looks like Form types provide a flat bonus to the stat of their association, as well as a few traits. Looking forward to finally getting to find out how form types tick, stat-wise!

>Looks like Form types provide a flat bonus to the stat of their association
I'm not sure that, mechanically, all the forms act like Rev's, here. Raphael's forms, for example, looked like they were fueled by his base stats (or else his upgrading those stats regularly doesn't make much sense).

It would make a lot of sense for many forms to include some kind of stat bonus (stronger, faster... will-i-er?) but what's notable here is that Rev's forms don't add on to a stat, they replace them with a fixed preset. (Kind of unyielding and inflexible, unchanging. Fitting for the undead). Meaning it actually distinctiveness boosting bases stats.

>if there would be weird ways their abilities could interact
Also wondering now if his power would interact weirdly with Linda when using Revenge of the Fallen. Or Jean, with the whole Guy thing. ...or heck, even Elizabeth, since reality says she's supposed to be dead (and Michelle, and probably half the grunts at the base who got murdered in Marc's aborted timeline team-kill rampage).

With all this death cheating around, there's all kinds of ways someone with death-powers could complicate matters.

>Elizabeth, since reality says she's supposed to be dead
Technically not true. It said she was supposed to be dead. Now only a certain group of observers say she's supposed to be dead. Reality was convinced she'd never died.

Also, I railroaded a bit just to get the story going, but I think from here on out it should be easier for me to present you with more open ended problems and way to travel. I apologize if that seems a bit overbearing, but I can only do what I can do.

Another also, about the other thread. If you want, it can be archived instead of brought back, I was going to have it go into this(although not by introducing a new character), with maybe a little Linda talk in between, but I've already figured out what I'd prefer to do with the story right now. Unless anyone would prefer to do all that. Then bring it back I guess.

Another another also, I forgot to mention how much each of his forms cost for BP. It's 5 a pop, just to inform you, and he's currently at full capacity, since he stayed all zombied up.

Think that's it for now. Also, shout out to Z-Man. One of your form types takes center-stage this time.

>Technically not true.
...reality disagreeing with observers is kind of an interesting thing to consider. To me, that raises the question of how much they're really an intrinsic part of the system, versus how much they're self-styled protectors making up their own rules as they go. Less angels, more ascended vigilante gang.

>railroaded a bit just to get the story going
No! The precog manipulated our stalwart hero?! Indignation and horror.

>the old thread
I don't really think we need to cram another Linda-talk in there. Any talk that needs to happen can always take place after Rev's mission, here. And I'd kind of prefer not to make the threads hard to read in order again (I think a new reader would want to read up to the end of the Havers mission, then read Guy's thread, then switch back to the main story? Otherwise they run into Jean before Guy, and that's the neatest way I can think of to break up the overlapping threads).

Although it might be nice to pull the thread out of the graveyard just long enough to slap a last update on and close the scene and thread more neatly before archiving? All Chris really had left to do was take possession of the prisoners. (Unless you had a twist planned).

>One of [Z-Man's] form types takes center-stage this time.
It's totally the spider-gal, isn't it. Elizabeth did mention nightmares, after all.

Since we're back, I'm going to see what I can do to clean up the wiki page. It's kind of become a wall of stats that's hard to read, and my wiki-fu is way better now than it was way back when we started.

Started with trying to organize spirit abilities so they're more of a useful resource for Zaealix or anyone else who wanted to suggest characters. (Though I might still clean it up more, move the personal powers to their own table, maybe. Or make it so you can sort by spirit level, or power trees?).


Question that came up as I was trying to organize spirit powers: Are the spirit 9 powers the same as the spirit 4 powers, or is there another set?

I ask mostly because I noticed there's not really a good choice from the current pool for Linda, when she gets there. She's undoubtedly finesse, but we already have Evasion, and Finesse Focus wouldn't be very useful to her (guns don't benefit much from being able to roll fin for str checks). I guess if we branched out type-wise Unbroken Will would have utility, and or maybe Fear Itself could swing something creepy from Nonexistent. Kind of underwhelming for a penultimate power, though.

>No! The precog manipulated our stalwart hero?! Indignation and horror.
Your sarcasm. It wounds me.

>Spirit 9 Powers
Planned to be different. I'm still working on specifics, and if anyone has anything they think would would, I'd much appreciate the input. You are right when you say the the Spirit 4 powers are a little... underwhelming... if you try to hand them out at Spirit 9.

Hrrrm... Part of me likes the idea of some sort of base breaker theme understanding?
Like... If say, Marc used this thing, he could see what/who he was when he first started out, how his breaker powers would turn out without getting another avatar/major interference and change, and finally what happened to him to make him the way he was now. Getting to read his own thread, sorta thing I think?

Hmm. I remember brainstorming possible variants on spirit 4 powers in the old thread but that was mostly switching around bonus or stats. Not really any cooler for level 9 powers.

Maybe... powered up or enhanced versions of powers that weren't worth it before? (Okay, I'm just reaching now. I'd still like Linda to pick up spirit sight for thematic reasons, but some new common power or whatever's next in the nonexistent tree is probably going to be too attractive to pass up).

Okay. By spirit 9, most breakers are going to have a pattern. Ways to avoid damage, or dish it out. So they need options that mix that up a little.

Some medium-power actives might be interesting. Something stronger or more reliable than an active break, but weaker / cheaper than a 5BP personal power. Offensive options: maybe forcing success (or allowing more rolls, a la forceful or limit break) on a certain kind of combat roll. (If you absolutely need a shot to connect? Make it. Sort of like an active, to-hit version of evasion?). Or a 'rush' or stim kind of thing where you spend a few BP to have an effective stat increased for a few seconds (really need a burst of strength to get through?).

Passive debuffs? Say, you knock your enemy off balance, and it's harder than normal for them to recover (different versions for different stats? Fin off balance, str staggered, wil confidence broken?). Maybe kicks in if you beat an opponent in a check bad enough (crit hit versus bad dodge fail) Permanence in breaks? Your changes to reality are harder for others to change or undo. Stealthier breaks? Some kind of spirit and/or will check that makes it harder for other breakers to sense you breaking, or to pick up on things you previously changed.

Personal rule change? When active, you change the way you interact with reality slightly, varies by character. Say, you're allowed to walk on walls like they were floors. Or you're unaffected by heat and cold. Or you don't need to breath. Light or friction doesn't interact with you normally. Some in-theme cheat to abuse. (Might be tricky to balance right? Between interesting and too-useful).

In the will realm, it might be interesting to see more powers that had some kind of affect on diplomacy. Bonuses to or means of persuasion and/or domination? A way to apply will stats in a physical battle? (Temporary force field or wall? Infringes on Sidhe's theme though).

Utility powers? Not sure if they fit the theme here, but a means of (willing) merging two BP pools, or allowing BP transfer. Some way of increasing an ally's chance of passing a check?

Hmm. Not really sure those are fleshed out enough to be interesting. Feel free to change, mix up, expand on anything.

>>85700
The introspection spirit journey is kind of a neat idea, but what does it do after that? It sounds more like an experience than a power. Unless it's ongoing. Or unless you meant it as a will ability where you force people to experience it?

Initally it was meant as basically a way to inform the Breaker what they might have dominion over if they haven't figured it out yet/powers they don't have yet that they can discover.
Like...Linda'd pick this and and definitely learn about any and all Non-Existant Perks she can use currently, as well as any bonuses still within reach (Some things might get closed off for whatever reason or new paths opened.)
A better example might be Michelle or Aria since we had that Avi choice between them.
Michelle NOT getting it would maybe lead to her seeing how she originally might progress, perhaps into discovery of how to 'swap' Levi out with another demon or temporaily break all of them into existance. Or Aria, if she got...Let's call it Princess, from that avi-egg, she might lose access to say, getting a matching set of armor for when she fights with Golem, in favor of perhaps a chess-set esque army break or something...
...I think effectively, what I'm going for here, is a choice of 'ultimate' that's thematic for the Original Break (breaker without influence), versus Actual Breaker (breaker with any/all influences they've had.)...

As far as your ideas go...Let's see.

mid-power abilities-I've a thought. While MUCH of a breaker's powerset varies, one idea was something that you get dependant on your type.
Weapon- freeswap arsenal-pretty much? You get to change/re-manifest your weapon for free now. Great no-matter which path you take between variable weaponry or empowered reality-bending equipment.
Form-Army Formation- Outnumbered in a fight by hordes of mooks? NO MORE! With this power, Form types can divide themselves into multiple lesser variations of their Forms with this power.
Disclaimer: This power can and will stack with previous powers to create additional fighters, do not expect to beat them at their own game if you lack such abilities.
Avatar-Avatar of Self- An Avatar Breaker with this ability can use it to temporarily turn themselves into an Avatar Foci. Note that this ability is one that can bypass the standard limitation on Breakers requiring a Foci to use.

...Was kind of hoping someone else'd post so I didn't have to do so again.
Anyhow, more feeding off >>85702 !
The passive debuffs I figure could go as follows-
Fumbling Foes/Strength Sapping/Will weakening-mechanically, every dice victory you get over your foe in the appropriate category grants them a temporary (until next roll) penalty to their corresponding stats.

Possibly some sort of opposing buff power as well could be a thing?

Rule changes...Hrrm.

Vengful Tally- Every time the Breaker uses Death Avoidance, gain +1 stat point to each of their stats (STR,FIN,WIL)

Weapon Repair- a countermeasure for Weapon Breakers with uber-powered manifestations, this ability is to drop 1BP in restoring any weapon to pristine condition.

Hrrrm...That's something I hadn't considered up till now.
Form types have no real reason to not have a single, uber-powered form, beyond worst-case scenarios of getting foci-looted-once transformed they STAY transformed, and unlike weapon types that might have to remanifest/reload weapons throughout a battle, they can potentially stay in their forms for long periods of time, as we saw with that snake-guy, Mike I think his name was? Or our current protagonist Rev.

As for Will&Utility...IDK. Frankly I don't think I know well enough the effects of the Break Sight ability or Normalcy- esque stuff to really say what else a Breaker might actually need.

>Was kind of hoping someone else'd post so I didn't have to do so again.
I was considering responding yesterday, but didn't get around to it before work rolled round. :p

Powers themed by type instead of stat is an interesting idea, although those particular suggestions might be too strong for semi-unique powers. Freeswap: No manifest cost / weapon swapping seems is a big game changer (removes a big consequence and tactical decision from combat, and pretty much lets any weapon type fight like Isaac, without his drawback). And as for multi-forms: it's been established multi-body stuff is complicated and has mental costs. For instance, we still have huge limitations on doing multi-body stuff with Twinda. (Although our spirit must be high enough now that Linda could perspective swap, right? Right?). Rev's zombie / ghost summons are Not Smart (and take a personal power slot), and Raphael's potential spirit 10 power would have been a multi-form thing.

Doesn't Avatar of Self functional just change an avatar type into a form type?

Weapon repair is sort of in the same vein of freeswap, but seems much more balanced. It doesn't do away with manifestation costs, or make changing trivial, but it means you can't bleed someone dry by breaking or damaging an expensive manifestation anymore. Seems good. (Might be useful for Cass? Her saw's not that expensive, but a few times she's had problems with enemies who could break it. Chris' sword is pretty expensive, but then again it's never broke, either. Linda... had guns busted a few times, but I'm not sure this would be worth it, for her).

Vengeful tally is marvelously simple and effective. The more you die, the stronger you get. (For a time limit, or single battle, or day). Reminds me of the Black Caldron. I like it. Though it might be strong enough to be a passive spirit 5 power.

And we need more things that interact with death avoidance in interesting ways.

Possible ideas there: maybe a passive that makes it when you get killed, you spawn further away (sniper / ranged fighter's friend. Spawn at range and retaliate). Or the inverse for melee fighters (respawn point blank on top of your killer). Or you could have a delayed respawn (to fake enemies out). Or maybe just slightly randomize your respawn location relative to point of death, sightly weighted towards beneficial (so reality is less likely to put you back in that garotte, or on top of Levi's head. Providing you don't fail the roll).

I think I should try to stat up somebody who's power is based on tapping into how many times his opponents have been killed. So he's ridiculously unfair against experienced / good breakers (since they've died a lot) but he's actually at a big disadvantage to newbies (and normals). So for him, it would be all about covering up that glaring weakness and picking his battles (and/or using allies to cover where he can't). Fighting him would mean figuring out how he worked, and actually having a team / organization with weaker members to employ right.

>form types that stay in a form
There are disadvantages to that, though. Quality of life issues, mostly.

Lots of good ideas. Always fun to see both what you can think up and what you think would be useable. I can easily say some of my own ideas are certainly more useful than others.

Regardless, I've found our resident Samurai's personal song, if anyone cares to take a gander.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2unb1Cf04EI

Surprisingly mellow for Chris. Reassuring, I guess. She's more at ease with her situation than anyone around her is.

>Will&Utility...IDK
I was mostly thinking will could use more options than "immune to mind control" and "cause fear". (Although I suppose modified versions of fear itself that inspire different emotions are pretty trivial). And uh, come to think of it, fear itself can provide a passive debuff, or at least it did the way Marc and Amelia used it.

Might also be worth looking at higher level powers that allow the knocking off of more than one BP at a time, a la battlefield instinct. Linda can't be the only person to have found a way to get around that. (Well... so did Marc / Levi).

Also, yeah, the challenging part is always to somehow balance powers that are both interesting and reality breaking but somehow reasonable for their power level (and deciding what makes sense as a power, personal power, a focus driven thing...) and/or with sufficient drawbacks. I admit I'm not sure everything I brainstormed is right in that respect.

And I also look forward to the idea of people who are Linda-level fucked up. Nonexistent and someone else / remember the fallen completely broke the normal power progression and type restrictions for her (and bypassed normal spirit slot limitations), and it almost remade or fundamentally alters her theme. (Or adds another one?). I have no idea where to start brainstorming or balancing breakers who might have found analogous ways to completely break the usual rules, but it's a cool idea.

Another less ambitious idea might be to consider doctor-analogues. Other people who could modify or edit foci. Or possibly, edit people / powers / abilities / themes. We've got cheating stuff like the ice gun and anti-breaking shotgun- there's no reason other people out there couldn't have found ways to unlock similarly unfair advantages.

The problem as far as Will is concerned is that...Mental influence is cool in theory, but in practice like this? It's very much a background-stat that we don't get to see. The most DIRECT use of it seems to have been Guy issuing orders and passing himself off as someone he isn't...
In effect, it's fast talking almost, something that TGchan tends to be good at to begin with and thus becomes rather difficult to make Will really stand out properly...
I feel like something that would help is seeing proper Will Builds in action more often-there's possibly Marc&Amelia as a Will build, as well as Guy, but...I feel like we're not familiar with Will for some reason or another. Maybe if Magic becomes a thing Will can be what it's based on, since Spirit is so handy for Breakers anyhow...Hrrrm...

>Mental influence is cool in theory, but in practice like this? It's very much a background-stat that we don't get to see
Well, yes! That's kind of why I wanted to see if I could come up for more applications for it. Although, as a counterexample- roll to dodge is still a background effect, but we can see the results, and we still found Evasion useful as an ability. And can sort of tell when the mitigation effect kicks in.

>The most DIRECT use of [will] seems to have been Guy issuing orders and passing himself off as someone he isn't
That, and pretty much every time Elizabeth uses her sight or control wire. And Marc pretty blatantly forced a conversation to go the way he wanted a few times (and dominated the Angel-avy, and threw around fear itself in that last fight). We pretty obviously failed a will roll with Raphael a few times (say, almost persuading him to back down from that dream fight when he was half dead, and then whups, no). Linda herself used force of will (Power word: STOP!) to trip up an opponent (notably, Chris) a few times. And then, Sidhe's shields are will based (will as magic directly, there).

But yeah, it's hard to 'see' it working in regular conversation unless we get an amazing success or failure. Circumstance and personality often seem like bigger factors. (Especially when allies trust us enough that we don't need to forcibly persuade them into things).

Guy's frequent normality-enhanced bluffs were pretty fun, I'll admit.

...Well thank you, I've FINALLY noticed a gripping spot for an idea.
Leader's Will- something something passive stat bonus to allies under your command equal to your will.
Figure of Terror- something something passive stat debuff to opponents equal to your will.

The primary thing that I spotted was that there wasn't a use of Will to enhance your teammates-if you can use it to demoralize and cower your foes you should be able to use it to raise morale right?

Been fiddling with the formatting on the wiki page, trying to break up the walls of stats so things are a little more legible. Better?

Does it make sense to the descriptions for stick personal powers in the abilities table, instead of in the stat blocks? I mean, I think it looks neater, but I'm not sure if it's as logically sound. (I could just have spirit abilities link to the table. Would that help?).

Still gotta decide what formatting actually makes sense for avatars, add a table for avy powers, and add Rev (and maybe reorganize the allies / others thing now that we have overlap between different character arcs).

>>85906
Everything makes sense. To me at least. Certainly easier to find spirit abilities, and everything looks quite a bit neater already.

>Sidhe
Some changes to Sidhe, as she is now technically her own person. For starters, stat changes!

Will- 10
Spirit - 4
BP - 38
Spirit Abilities:
Death Avoidance
Circle of Protection
Shield Burst
Prank
Whispering Wind- Allows Sidhe to project sounds across vast distances. She mainly uses it to attract people into her traps.
Bond of the Soul- ?

>Sidhe is now technically her own person
Oh. Wow. I totally missed the implications of that. I've been thinking of her as an autonomous avatar (powered by whatever Guy did, instead of a breaker). Which left potential weirdness for interaction with Michelle (would Beloved by Avatars affect an unaffiliated avy in some way?) and Linda (what happens if Remember the Fallen is applied to her? Do we tap into her original breaker, Guy, Jean, or something else?).

But personhood makes her an edge case in all kinds of weird ways. We've got a breaker who didn't start out as human (and/or a fragment of a person grew into a whole?). Who doesn't have a focus (or is their own focus? Kind of an avatar / form hybrid), and with a completely atypical power-progression. Quite possibly no ability to attune foci, no tramau (or a dual one? The one that created her, and what she went through when we confronted 'Emily'? ...only she probably can't remember that). I was wondering when we'd find another crazy edge case breaker- but we already have!

Really makes her interesting in light of the whole tear thing. Figuring out how she works might be another part to solving the puzzle of how one of them could become real.

Does she gain XP?

Yes. She hasn't yet simply because she hasn't participated in anything and then gotten to a "safe" place, which is usually when I dish out XP. Something like allowing your mind and existence to properly take in what just happened and the like. Or something... eh, it's just easier on me.

Regardless, you are right in saying that Sidhe will not be following normal skill progressions in any way. She will only ever have the one stat out of the three, will not gain any of the normal progression of spirit abilities, and will generally continue to be a support role only. Of course, as she gets stronger, I'm planning on having her pull some fairly crazy things, but that is, of course, assuming she actually gets any stronger.

Erin Charlie Dales (Form-type)
Strength-3,Finesse-2, Will-1
Foci:horsehair bracelet (Centaur)

Trauma: It really hurts, losing your best friend, yanno? Like charles was the best. He had my back always, and it sucked when he tripped and broke his leg. Horse can't live on a broken leg...And nobody seemed to get it! They just would say things like "You know he was just a horse right?". Sheesh...

STR-8(-5)
FIN-4(-2)
WIL-6(-5)
BP-26 (-2)
SPR-5 (-15)
Active Break
Break Sight
Weight Null
Mount&Rider: So like, If someone rides me while I'm in my forms, I can give them one of three, umm, powerup things? Like they can get a horn, and blowing it makes our friends faster for a while, or they can get a banner, which makes those friends stronger, but sorta not as much stronger as they'd get faster? Oh, and both of those are based off my, uhh, willpower or something?
Foci: Horsehair Bracelet. (Centaur form)
(-1) additional form (Horse form)

Something something support form-type attempt.

Since Rev mentioned her recently, I got to thinking about Nicole and her powerset.

We know her gloves are literal force multipliers. They let her hit harder than she could otherwise. Sufficiently powerful strikes require charge time (mostly seen when she has to stop before punching through a wall). There's also an implied ability to pull her punches, lessening the force applied, so she can KO normals without death or serious injury (mechanically, maybe the effective weakening is accomplished by diverting force to charging, or the other hand?).

Now, her boots are supposed to function as the opposite of her gloves. How this affected her personal power was laid out explicitly (she can blatantly become an unstoppable force or immovable object) but what are the implications in a more normal use? If the gloves allow her to control the force she exerts on objects, the boots should be for modulating the forces applied to her (or at least, to the boots). Which would mean they're less about letting her kick harder, and more about how they let her stand.

The simplest application is a weaker version of her personal power. She can dissipate blows, absorb incoming force so she's not knocked down, knocked back, or knocked around (assuming she has footing). She can effectively tank hits she wouldn't otherwise be able to (to an extent. She doesn't have any additional durability without activating her personal power. Hits that can splatter her are probably still going to).

The more interestingly, I would think they would let her regulate friction. If the boots can control forces acting on them, Nicole should be able to control how much grip she has. If we held a Nicole v Linda rematch, using the ice gun to try and mess up her footing would be a waste of time. Properly exploited, this would provide a ridiculous degree of control over the space she fights in, and her own movements. Forget wall running, Nicole should be able to stand on walls, and damn near anything else.

Even more abusive than friction, if we can apply force mitigation to the force of gravity of the earth on Nicole she would gain a huge movement and attack advantage (crank down for fast movement and acceleration, crank up for harder hits). Could also allow standing or movement off of things that would never otherwise support her weight. (Standing on twigs, water-walking?).

Then there's the possibility of interplay between the items. Can force absorbed with the boots be used to charge the gloves? Can the glove charge be used to power the boots?

Of course, the vague part is just how much you can get away with before you cross the line from normal use to having to spend BP on an active break, or need to activate her personal power.

Finally done playing wiki formatting, I think, and finally added Sidhe and Rev. Not sure if I'm happy with the avatar abilities table but whatever.

So I thought I'd finally contribute some breaker ideas. Probably not going to stat them as out detailed as Z does it, more of a brainstorming thing. And uh, mostly more of the fucked up variety.

>bug guy
A form type, who turns into a swarm of bugs.

He should be primarily will based. We've discussed before powers with serious mental consequences- I would think splitting your mind into hundreds to thousands or bodies and trying to coordinate them while dealing with an alien set of senses would qualify, big time. The biggest hurdle for this guy is keeping it together during a fight. Also, communication (both ways) and perception is kind of difficult while transformed. (Potentially making it hard to work with a group, but he would probably be better off if he could).

Mechanically, speed and str would be proportional to size of the current form, which scales with power (upgrades / spirit) as he grows. He'd need a power to 'reload' the swarm, I think. Since you can't count on death avoidance to kick in if, say, only half the bugs are dead. Also opens up options of adapting mid fight and loading different kinds of bugs as 'ammunition'.

While in swarm mode, he's functionally a hive intelligence. Numbers of bugs become an issue- too few, and he's not got enough to work with, and it gets hard to think, too many and he starts to lose himself, and control. I'm thinking the distributed intelligence thing also makes him weirdly immune to and vulnerable to different mental attacks. For instance, a normal control wire in a bug? Congrats, you suborned a single bug. But something that could hit his mind directly? It's kind of hanging out there, right in the open, and already taxed controlling the form.

Injury should probably be psychological. Rather than literally doing something with bugs, I'd think some kind of past mental breakdown. A complete loss of self, fragmentation, that he spent years recovering from after. Which is now the exact thing he has to face and fight again every time he goes swarm, but the only thing that lets him contribute.

Spirit powers-wise, I'd say fear itself is a must. (Swarm of bugs for crying out loud). Warped reality might interact interesting with his powers, and/or active break could make him more versatile, to do the things bugs can't. (And it's a lot harder to stop him breaking. If the swarm spreads out, you effectively can't target / kill him as he makes hostile breaks).

>Power up
I'm thinking a breaker who's power is something like halfway between the Doctor's foci manipulation and Division 7's artificial breaker inducing.

Basically, someone who's power is enhancing normals, temporarily making them into pseudo-breakers. People he's worked with or dosed longer get better results over time. Potentially possible his subjects could actually end up breaking (due to the situations they're put in) or maybe the process actually blocks or drains what they'd need to break.

There should definitely be a cost to the target of this. Not sure how dark we'd want to go, but it shouldn't be good to do this to people. Maybe there's a recover time. Or it's addictive. Or it slowly chips away at something inside of you it shouldn't. (If we want to go really dark- it slowly consumes the normal's thread. Until it kills them and the poof out of existence. So he doesn't even know he's killing them).

The easy choice would be to make him a weird tool variant weapon type. Although, he could also worked as kind of a really fucked up ethereal avatar type. (Ie, manifests some kind of freaky parasitic spirit thing inside people to power them up. Would have to allow multiple manifestations at once too, which is really unusual for an avy).

Injury would be psychological. I think a profound betrayal of trust. Someone he had absolute faith in turned on him. Which is why his whole thing ends up with him being forced to put trust in others, and/or recruit a group into putting trust in him.

Several different ways to play it, personality wise. We could go with a complete bastard manipulator, remorselessly using people utterly dependent on him for power. He could be more well meaning, but ignorant of the real costs. Or trying to balance / mitigate the dangerous costs of using his power while working towards a goal he thinks is worth it. Obviously could work as a leader, or he could be picked up early on by someone else, used for their ends, since he can't really fend for himself.

Interestingly, could work as say, part of a normal resistance group. (People, frustrated and afraid, finding a way to stand up to the big bad breakers). Not sure if the fixers would see him as an abomination (he's making breakers!), or a step towards something better than themselves (breakers who can switch off). D7 and basically every evil warlord group would be glad to use him, I'm sure.

...may fall into the "there's no way to balance this" and "this don't fit with the story" categories, but eh.

Stats: will all the way.

Abilities: normality and active break probably fit. And a variant of spirit sight, so he can see the potential in non-breakers before enhancing them.

>failed precog / space cadet antitheses
I'm thinking start with some kind of weapon-type precog. Another gimmick, in a different vein from Elizabeth (sight, thread) or Jacob ('post'-cog, memory). Only she refuses the call. Instead of focusing on her core power, she turns her back on her potential and picks up a weapon or two, and ends up using her abilities to support a more normal fighting style.

Think a watered down version of Lindabeth versus Casey. Someone using perception or precognition to guide short-term tactical decisions. (Less 'this is the exact action to take to win, execute' and more 'this is what I should do' and 'man, this makes dodging and hitting easier').

The kind of person Sonia would disprove of. The epitome of using breaking to get around needing actual skill. Worse than the usual breaker, since she has an additional crutch to lean on (and that crutch kind of keeps her from learning). Her abilities gave her a huge edge early on, but further up the power curve, she's annoyed to discover her fighting style doesn't net anywhere near as big an advantage as it once did.

A weakness is she doesn't appreciate how much she's being lead. She lacks the scope to see the big picture, or dead ends coming.

Injury should be physiological. I'm thinking the fruit of knowledge, here. She learned something she wished she never did. Information she never wanted that destroyed some part of her life. Pandora's box once opened, and know held tight shut, hope trapped inside.

Theme is a kind of... missed potential. Not that she necessarily made the conscious choice to reject what she could have been. It was just... easier to turn away and hit something. It's been a common theme with several of our characters that they faced what broke them and came out stronger for it. The idea here is someone who looked away.

Philosophically, she's probably be vulnerable to recruit by the fixers, or the less willing to unite groups, since her whole thing is kind of about running away from herself, or what is. Not suicidal though- early discovery of the fixer endgame would probably send her into a panic. Definitely a follower though, not a leader.

Basically fucked against Linda, a tear, or anything her precog wouldn't work on.

Really fucked if she ever crosses paths with Elizabeth, since Liz is basically everything she's afraid of in herself (whether she admits or knows it), and in a unique position to utterly destroy her with fear itself. And Liz probably won't be happy with what she sees.

stats: finesse / will build. Either even, or finesse passing will.

abilities: probably unbroken will (fear itself would be too 'active', evasion redundant). Probably sight powers to aid tactical decisions.

weapons: ???, handgun of some kind, baton (melee and ranged options, and a precog-guided blunt weapon cheats more against breakers than an edged one)

>tl;dr
I waste way too many words making up cannon fodder for us to maybe shoot at one day.

>tl;dr tl;dr
I break that resolution I had about trying to keep my post size manageable.

>Wallo ideas

>bug guy
...I wanna call this guy Hive. Egotistical, perhaps, but Hive just feels too fitting.
..Anyhow, this has some interesting ideas too it. The idea of him being say, a fly on the wall for spying IS There, but I can see issues with remembering which bug is the one in the room as opposed to with the rest of the swarm/issues with mentally commanding them at a distance/staying together if the swarm splits up.
Most interesting feature is the powers this guy could have, to me.

>Breaker Maker
XDDDD, but yeah, this could go any number of ways. One idea I like, backstory-wise, is some sort of Russian Farmer-ish dude who came to America and well...Things did not go well. Maybe the 'betrayal' can be a friend who convinced him to move to America in a way that burnt the bridge back home, only for that friend to ditch him. Or better yet (Especially if I'm right about my theory) McCarthy orchestrates this, and successfully predicts that this guy becomes a breaker and now is forced to empower D7 agents...
Ooooh, that might be bad not just from a backstory viewpoint but a 'how are we gonna fight this' viewpoint. But yeah, story/personality was my thoughts here.

>Failed precog.
...This might sound weird but I think I can modify this.
Pandora's Box opened is what did it, what about making her a Cat-girl form-type?
The idea being that to add onto the 'secret that ruined everything' there's an additional element of 'be careful what you wish for/curiousity killed the cat' which leads into the next thing.
Some sort of 'nine tries' precog, where she gets to basically try out what works and what doesn't eight times and on the ninth she actually has to live with the choices she's made. Or maybe it activates when she would die, leaving her a somewhat sloppy fighter until something that would kill her happens.
Also serves as making her less obviously someone to throw Liz, Linda or Jean at, since there'd be a less obvious connection between her 'injury' and the overall theme of her powers.

I actually was toying with the concept of some sort of Cat-girl Breaker, but the nine-lives concept for a breaker power was a pain.
It either basically made her nigh-unkillable unless Linda was fighting her (nine lives per BP respawn, holy cripes!) Or was some sort of weird splitting thing (nine lives, but 1/9th the power/suddenly, 9 of her fighting as a team/as one mind) But none of it really felt like good ideas.
Might still try and make a 'Copycat' Cat-girl idea though it's iffy given that we've seen others with possibly simmilar powers.

We already have a Hive in Psychic Space Clones versus Space Bugs Quest. No duplicate names! (I do not actually care what name his group or enemies end up calling him by. Too on the nose and unusual for a birth name, though).

The espionage option you bring up is interesting. I suppose it would involve using as small a swarm as he could without impact intelligence, and spreading out or concealing most of them while using one or few as a scout? But yeah, as I imagined him, going fly on the wall wouldn't be easy. Bugs don't hear or see the same as we do (making spying hard without practice, or the right bug), the mental effects would make staying in form for long term surveillance hard, and yeah, focusing on one bug isn't supposed to be his thing. Could be doable though, in theory.

More generally, the idea of form types who can become something innocuous and spy is a good one. In theory, it even gives normality cloak a purpose, as it would allow you to infiltrate breaker groups without a floating number giving you away.

I'm kicking myself for missing the obvious "breaker maker" rhyme. But yeah, the idea here is I was trying to come up with breakers / powers who would be on a similar utility level to the Doc. Kind of a tricky prospect to come up with something similar, but not overpowered.

I don't like making the precog a form type because of the whole missed potential theme. It's a lot easier for a weapon type to make their own path than a form type. Lots of weapons to choose from, and you can use more than one at a time. You just have to tune them and increase the 'wrong' stats. Forms are rarer and you have to use one at a time. If she's still turning into a cat and using luck or 9-life based powers to fight with, she's still doing what her powers 'wants', which isn't what I was going for. She's supposed to be a would-be seer who looked away and ended up a fighter. (Albeit a cheating magic fighter).

That said, I wholeheartedly support a catgirl form of some kind showing up at some point. I think I've even suggested it myself, before! (...as if Linda isn't bothered by enough people hitting on her).

If you want to balance your suggested nine lives catgirl mechanic, I'd go for a modified death avoidance (or an ability that enhances it). Say, nine times per (day, week, fight, whatever), when you die, you don't just re-spawn. You can (choose to?) get sent back in time a few minutes so you can try to avoid your death and/or screw over what killed you. But it still costs BP as dying would. A cap makes it less abusable, and at best, you're still trading kill for kill, BP for BP. But as an advantage- your opponent wouldn't be able to tell he was getting kills in, or even costing you BP (especially if you had normality cloak). That's a big moral hit, and goes to psychological warfare. Also, it makes it very hard to chain kill you (and possibly lets you chain or disable an opponent). Could also open up suicide to go back and save a friend emergency moves.

Biggest problem, narrative-wise, is it's only interesting if the PC has this power. If any enemy were to use it, the reader wouldn't even be able to tell it was being used! (Well, unless we were playing as Elizabeth or Jacob, or supported by one of them, or had View the Weave active).

>Hard to defy potential with form
Hrrm... Hey!
I've got an idea, what if her original foci manifestation was a a scrying mirror, that she then turned into a shield, with the mirror facing outwards for Will-attacks while she bashes them with another weapon or something (sword&shield?)
Sound like what you were going for?

Pfff. Haha, using a scrying item into a shield-bash would be a pretty literal way of wasting potential.

Although I was really thinking of just doing it the way Cass did it. Just tune and use a different weapon as your 'main' weapon (chainsaw instead of knives). Opponents wouldn't even know she had a will based tool-focus helping her in a fight unless they were particularly sensitive to that kind of thing.

Changing what her powers do (repurposing her original manifestation / skillset to suit her new path) would take something like what Cass went through in Havers, I think. An epiphany, where the breaker faces their inner demons, and chooses their own path. Hypothetically, if precog-girl faced her demons, she could wake up to what she's been missing and embrace her potential. Or she could say fuck it, and find the strength to make her own path, and change herself- stop being held back. (So a magic shield or equivalent would be an late or endgame development for her).

...not something I expect a mook to go through before being dropped into the narrative as cannon fodder, though.

Right now she's supposed to be like... Superman using eye-beams to engrave nameplates. Yes, that's something you can technically do to earn a living with that power, but man is it not living up to what the potential is.

>scrying mirror
Reminds me that we never actually got to see what mirror-girl's powers did last arc, when we were hunting Holiday. Maybe she'll show up again, get drawn into our growing group somewhere now that she and her boyfriend lost their last one.

Hrrrm...
So here's something that's a thought.
IDK if I've said this before, but I think McCarthy is based upon Fear and Paranoia.
There's a bunch of reasons why I think this, one being his name, as a referance to McCarthism I think it was called? Basically, it was a time you had to prove you weren't a communist should someone accuse you of it, like a witch hunt.
And then from there, look at his moves.
He had 23, an implacable killer.
He got into and heads D7, which grants him the ability to cause widespread chaos:
And look at how he outed the Breakers-as monsters in human form, effectively saying 'trust D7, and no one else.'
It also plays into his power to detect use of his name I think, only by working off his own paranoia rather than other people's fear.
The big problem, is he's not going to keep going for bigger and bigger parties like holiday, he's going for the whole hog right now, so it's going to be extremely important we find an answer to tears sooner or later.

Yeah. He's got kind of a... pregnant name, especially considering in the role he's in. It's a pretty good guess that his game is to stir the pot, and built something with a witch-hunt the same way Holiday built his party. Just on a much bigger scale and focused on different emotions slash a different facet of human experience.

Part of me wonders if he named himself on purpose, in universe (although that would depend on having a Senator McCarthy and a red scare to name himself after in this alternate history). There's also the fact that Agent McCarthy implied he's been active since at least the forties, so I've been wondered if he might have orchestrated McCarthyism himself, back in the day.

Although I'm not entirely convinced he's not up to something bigger than building up something big to feed on. He's had a lot of time to plan, and he has to have seen lesser tears try that approach and fail, over and over.

... the life out of me.

Much fun as it is to see family and friends again, doesn't leave much time for me to do any writing of any kind. Or really much of anything, now that I think about it.

Regardless, as has become customary, I'm alive again. No hot pokers necessary this time.

Hopefully nothing else pops up to steal my time again.

le sigh...

Oh, and fun ideas are fun.

I really do like the idea of someone who is anti-thesis to Elizabeth. In a more literal sense than Jacob or whatever I named him... I think that's right.

Also, been toying around with some other fun ideas, like how I'm going to work in some other "friend" quests and such... companion quests? Whatever, I'll figure it out.

Also, I've started to put together the "legal" stuff that was asked for ages ago, we'll see how well that goes though, since I'm no lawyer by any stretch of the imagination.

Welcome back!

>Elizabeth antithesis(es)
She'd make a good antithesis / opposite, but a poor foil (since she's really not in any position to compete). Jacob's more of a foil, since he's a similar power with a completely different outlook / goal / motive. Liz seems to try to shepherd or guide events, whereas he's more passive, with what seems be a scary focus on knowledge for knowledge's sake (well, from what little we know of his personality). There's room for some kind of interesting conflict, there.

>or whatever I named him...
Maybe I need to add a list of minor characters just so we can keep name strait.

>friend / companion quests
Side stories? (Sidequests?)

>no lawyer
I'm not either. Feel free to give us the cable news condensed version, or the lawyer summarizing to laypeople version.

>Truly died before, came back.
Didn't think that Burning man Burnt all the way...Makes it REALLY interesting what would happen if he ran into pyro-teacher, or Nicole, or better yet, some sort of sitcommy both at once...
If you're looking for a Breaker idea from me...I don't have one ready yet, but thinking of doing something fun with the cat-girl, well, cat-boy idea, and remixing him into Nickel's backstory perhaps...

Random ideas for non-existent hacks:

Tell George we've met before, and he doesn't remember. Let him check, update himself with our memories of our past interactions. (Really only useful if he can skim or read memories quickly, or at least faster than 1-1).

Jacob's whole thing is memory. It's possible he might be able to retrieve the memories of others who've forgotten us. (Although maybe he's not strong enough for that yet? Or it might involve crossing another power. Or... he might well ask a price for that kind of service).

Dreams? Dreams aren't always linear or consistent the way reality is. If the dreamtime really is some other plane of reality (or another plane connected to 'reality') and/or consciousness, we might find a foothold there with people we wouldn't otherwise.

>>88744
He didn't. Then again, you'd have to talk to him as Linda and pry the information out of him if you wanted to know what really happened. He did burn though. Just not to death.

>Lawyer stuff
I'm sure anyone who is more versed in law is going to find so much wrong with this, but whatever.

To sum up the general disposition of the UNA, what they've effectively claimed is that Breakers are not "people" but something more akin to animals. Therefore, what they do with them is entirely up to them, and no laws that apply to "people" are therefore capable of being applied to a Breaker.

That's the essence of it anyway. There are miles of legal jargon, verbosity and other various forms of confusing bull that essentially make the matter as a whole confusing.

This has led to a basic options for defending oneself. The first, at least advocated by a good number of breakers, is to simply say fuck off to the UNA and secede as a nation. The Normals of the West are largely uncertain about this course of action, although the movement of troops towards Night City in what many are claiming is a clear military action has set off a number of activists. While not necessarily supported, becoming its own nation is not being discredited either.

Another "fuck off" viewpoint is simply seeking asylum elsewhere. Popular regions considered for this include the LR and the Imperial East. Many of the Normals in the West don't support this option, as not only does it leave them somewhat vulnerable to retaliation from the UNA government, but large parts of the West have taken to relying on Breakers to provide various services, such as Sun City's entertainment district.

The last calls for Breakers to demand citizenship in the UNA, therefore being recognized as people. Portions of the Normal population think this is the best option, especially those hailing from the east, although Breakers are more skeptical given as citizens of the UNA can be forcibly drafted to serve in the military. There are a few politicians who wonder why the UNA didn't just go this route to begin with, but any questions have only been met with silence, or with Division 7 propaganda about inhuman monsters.

Okay. So... declaring them non-human instead of non-citizens. Interesting move. More the x-men / mutant response, I think.

For parallels, I was reading up on the justifications for the Japanese American Internment in WWII (which... never would have happened in this universe, but whatever). Apparently the way they did it was sort of martial law- they designated most of the west coast a military area, and gave commanders had the right to move / exclude any and all persons from military areas as necessary. Which almost seems reasonable in the abstract (we should be able to move civilians out of designated conflict zones or army sites if they're going to be hurt or in the way, right?), except it was being used to forcibly relocate a single group of people from their homes based more on fear and xenophobia than military practicality.

Declaring us non-human gives them a few edges, legally. Even if the international community disputes this claim, it gives them a justification to ignore any internationally recognized or agreed to human rights (alternate universe Geneva Convention need not apply). It also allows them to ignore a lot of domestic laws too, I'm sure. It also means, if we try and declare ourselves a separate nation, they have (more) grounds not to recognize it. Functionally, it makes it even more difficult than it would already have been for any other nation to object to or oppose what the UNA is doing internally.

>our response
The obvious first message of our response is that as long as the UNA refuses to recognize us as citizens, or even as people, that they have no jurisdiction over us. That instead of giving themselves unlimited powers over us, they're forfeited the right to govern us. (Simple, strait, and to the point. Something lawyers and philosophers can argue over forever).

The second move is publish our stolen data from D7 as widely as possible (send it to every company, media organization, mirror it all over the web, etc). If we can hold up proof that Division 7 has purposelessly induced breaks in people that really hurts their legal argument. (It's either proof that we are people, and they know it, or proof they're complicit in effectively killing or lobotomizing people, making them into non-people). The horrors they've committed against breakers don't give us any legal standing, put making them public does offer a counter to their propaganda, horror for horror.

Third appeal, we have to explain who breakers are, and how people become them. If people believe anyone could potentially break, they'll start to doubt. (It could happen to someone they care about. It could happen to me).

Fourth appeal is to other breakers, of course. We want to work with those we can.

Fifth idea to plant is the disruption this causes. Appeal to corporate America, the issuance firms, the greedy capitalistic business world. What happens to your business when employees become non-people? Where do their assets go, who gets them? How do you insure this kind of thing, where would the payout even go? What happens to their companies if an owner, or investor, or someone on the board breaks? What opportunities does this cost them. How much does all this change things, and how much does this make a mess of their world and their making money. How much is the government causing problems for them. (Not so strong a talking point for a speech, more something we spread through private channels along our own business connections). We want the machine frustrated with spokes in it's gears, and fuming about missed potential resources, not enjoying a wartime production boom.

As for our actual long term strategy: I don't think fucking off is an option. We don't have a way to relocate everyone, new breakers will still appear in UNA territory, we'd have to fight for a home wherever we went. Plus, the UNA is a military power, and would probably be plenty happy to strike at us without their own civilians in the way.

Formally seceding, grabbing territory, and declaring a nation has a whole host of problems. It immediately causes problems with all the normals in our local territory. We go from a vague force in the background of their lives trying to keep them safe from breaker related problems to their self-declared rulers. Local leaders and (state, city) governments will have to either bend to our will, or resist us. There will be massive and ugly splits in public opinion. And worst of all, if we become outright "enemy territory" rather than the homegrown terrorist / gang / animal infestation problem we're considered now, that gives the UNA a blank check for force. They can send in the military, bombs, planes, tanks (nukes?) and all, against their own "treacherous" civilians. And it potentially could draw other countries into the mess, causing a much bigger problem.

So we don't want to declare independence because as soon as we do, we're putting every normal near us in massive danger, and we lose our limited ability to hide behind them (assuming that for now the UNA is willing to restrain itself from massacring it's own civilian populace to get to us).

So... we settle on kind of a compromise. Declare ourselves a sovereign people, responsible for ourselves, but claim no territory. Don't interfere with the authority of local governments, police, etc. Make it explicitly clear we're at war with Division 7, not the UNA, or it's people. We're breakers, protecting and policing ourselves, because there's no one else to do it.

Long term strategy? (Not something we declare on air). We want legitimacy. Find a way to do away with McCarthy, beat back the attacks against ourselves, and put pressure on the president and the heads of the remaining divisions. Back them into a corner and force them to declare Linda director of Division 7. Our group becomes legally responsible for governing, protecting, and policing breaker activity for the country, instead of having to do it as a gang.

Plan "break the system to our own ends".

>>88763
When you say sovereign people, what do you mean exactly by that?

Just trying to clarify so that we're both on the same page as to what you're proposing the plan of action be.

I mean something along the lines of since our government has abdicated it's right and/or responsibility to govern us, that we're assuming the responsibility to govern ourselves. We're not claiming any formal sovereign territory, because the UNA didn't cede or abdicate any, and because we have no interest in going to war for territory.

Closest modern day analogue might be something like Palestine. A state that doesn't formally hold it's own territory. (Although with a very different political position on that arrangement, obviously). Or maybe something like the governments in exile for a lot of European countries in WWII. Although, if we're claiming D7 has illegitimate authority to govern breakers, we'd be more of a Division in-exile.

The advantage to this approach is it makes it a lot easier for normal people to put up with us, it doesn't give the UNA an easy means to all out attack our 'territory' (unless they're willing to hurt a lot of their own civilians and wreck public sentiment), and it gives us a strong legal framework / precedent / authority to treat breakers differently if and when we usurp D7 (preemptively circumventing the 'draft em all' solution, for example).

In retrospect, it occurs to me our recent choices are kind of funny. Not sending someone running to the rescue, and using the kid as bait, are hardly the usual choices we'd have made.

What a difference a perspective swap makes, huh?

Personally? I probably didn't really say it that obviously, but I was thinking maybe we should go and try to free some of the prisoners in that web...
Calling Linda was SO VERY TEMPTING though, I gotta say.

I was poking fun, really!

Although as tempting as it would be to bring down the hammer, and get to pit dreamtime powers against each other (and force Linda to deal with arachnophobia), we would have had to stall till she got there, and it would have kind of been awkward narratively (since Liz would have had to go back on what she said, and there's unresolved plot from last thread in the way).

Pretty sure the current team can handle things, though. Between the four of them we've got ethereal, physical and abstract offensive options, and a defense. And I am enjoying the chance to give other characters a chance to shine (Linda's winning the xp curve by a mile).

I'm hoping maybe something with Nic will be next. Left in charge and having to deal with some crisis at home while everyone else is out.

Happy birthday, nonexistent protagonist of a dead quest.