Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!

[Jasonft]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Or maybe, being the cabal and all, their real purpose is more about saving the monster as a favor to its grief stricken much more terrifying parent.
Banish-rescue, same effect. :)

Speed of the demon's travel and how long it has been rampaging is entirely up to the GM. Personally I think the flat out run speed of a humanoid that big could easily match the travel speed of a tornado. A car *might* be able to outrun it.

I favor the tornado as a reference image because everyone can relate to it. Not that this actually is a tornado, it's more of a fire vortex with a footprint at the base roughly equivalent to a fairly powerful tornado (2-3 miles sounds about right).

Video footage shot from airplanes is going to be spectacular to watch - just don't get too close. It probably has pretty good aim and might be a spellcaster.

If I was GMing an IW campaign I'd make the players wonder about the suspicious speed CABAL forces had reacting to the threat. It's almost like they were there at Los Alamos when the bomb mis-fired...

Strange thought just occurred to me about why they need orbital assets to look at the thing. The firestorm surrounding it is masking it's aura, so CABAL can't get a good enough read to banish (or maybe bind? hmmm...) the demon. They need a look down the center of the vortex even for a brief moment - timing this is going to be tricky and would require combat mages on the surface to hold it in one spot long enough. Can you say suicide mission?

All kinds of possibilities for IW play depending on what CABAL is actually up to.

Keeping The Secret is going to be difficult.

[Flyndaran]

The vortex of devastation messes up magic, so it requires technology to get to the eye for normal magical devices/spells/etc. to work.

The secret may be easier in that no one seeing impossible events will think human created technology as much as uncontrolled magic.
But harder in that many natives will at least consider interdimensional entities as a cause of such events.

[SimonAce]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Intelligence, hyper or otherwise, does not negate unknowables and uncontrollable variables.
While many criminals are caught due to mistakes, many were simply unlucky. Conversely many get away, because of luck and/or police screw ups.

20 average kills would buy super luck.

As for the concept at hand, it makes for an interesting setting if it requires face to face kills only. Call it XP or something.

Otherwise you would get get something like the 9-11 pilot suddenly gaining 10,000 points and the world would end almost immediately

As far as inspiration there is that Jet Li movie The One where the kills his other selves for power and David Farlands Runelords where people an give attribute points to nobles via magic to create supermen. I found it a bit of a dystopia myself but the series isn't bad

[Flyndaran]

I don't think suicide bombers would gain powers that could posthumously resurrect them.
Perhaps it has to be melee and one gains power based on the difference in combat prowess. Slitting throats of the invalid gains virtually nothing, while defeating special forces or someone else with loads of "quickening" gains much.

Humility and lack of bragging leads to longer lives especially for the skilled and powerful. Feels like the western cliche of the young guns looking for the quiet local that's really the super skilled quick draw with a past.

[PTTG]

After a while, I started to think that the power boost alone accumulates.

So A, B, C, and D are [100] points. E is [200] points.

B kills A, and goes to [105] points, but the player tracks the total point value gained from bonuses.

C kills B, and gain [5] points that B stole from A, and [5] points from the dividend of B. C is now [110].

C kills E, and gains a [10] dividend. Now C is [120].

D kills C, and gets the [5] dividend (calculated from C's base value, not accumulated value), and D also gets the accumulated [20] points, for a total of [125].

Note that this accelerates rapidly, with the most powerful characters also dramatically more attractive targets.

As I recall, for the purposes of the curse, the killing needs to be personal. I'd say that three elements are needed: the action, eye contact or other close presence, and knowledge: the victim must know who slew them.

So, sniping an unsuspecting victim from a two kilometers away would not work. Greeting one's foe, shaking hands with them, pouring a glass of poisoned wine, and then, over desert, just as the first pangs start to kick in, announcing that 'twas I who stuck you down, and vengeance is sweet... sweet as summer wine...." would work perfectly well.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by TGLS

It's simple. Fly a spacecraft with a few mass drivers out to an asteroid or two (perhaps 69230 Hermes), then run them until the asteroids will smash the Earth. When the right orbit is achieved, dismantle the mass drivers and return to Homeline. Unless a zonemind is looking closely at the asteroid, they won't see it coming, and after it becomes obvious, unless a zonemind solved the N-body problem, they'll assume it was something they don't have the physics for. All you need to do is have them fail to stop it, and the zoneminds are finished.

That's not too simple.

First you'd have to build spacecraft that can make it out to an earth-grazing asteroid and back, with parachronic capabilities.

Add to that carry mass drivers.

The parachronic spacecraft would have to go out to near where the asteroid is on Steel, and then jump (and not be discovered). The asteroid wouldn't be in the same place on Homeline (different time period) and not even Infinity could build parachronic transporters capable of carrying an asteroid.

Then there's the matter of actually getting the asteroid to crash into the Earth. It would take a lot of work in space, a completely new arrangement to Infinity (and with no back-up).

The Zoneminds would notice pretty quickly. More than a few are obsessed with space. They also would worry about their rival AIs (and/or aliens) using an asteroid as a weapon against them.

There might even be plans to divert an asteroid headed towards Earth. If Infinity could divert an asteroid with only a few mass drivers, all of the Zoneminds working together, including their massive space & industrial capacities, could divert it away from Earth before it struck.

And even if they couldn't, Zoneminds are unusually well-equipped to deal with an apocalyptic asteroid strike. They don't need food, or even oxygen, to survive. They have facilities that are extremely well-defended.

And two of them are in space. Orbital and Luna would certainly survive any asteroid strike. Plus whatever's being built in Antarctica.

Oh, and the asteroid strike would kill all the humans, all the life, on Earth.

[TGLS]

Here's the strategy:
1) Use the superscience reactionless drives to get into the correct position and velocity with the rock. Bring several mass drivers, a big enough conveyor and chemical thrusters to get closer to the rock.
2) Hop to the universe with the earth you want to destroy.
3) Use the mass drivers to redirect the rock into the Earth.
4) Dismantle (or simply destroy) the mass drivers on the rock.
5) Hop back to the universe where the reactionless drives work and head to Earth to return to Earth.

Originally Posted by fchase8

And even if they couldn't, Zoneminds are unusually well-equipped to deal with an apocalyptic asteroid strike. They don't need food, or even oxygen, to survive. They have facilities that are extremely well-defended.

And two of them are in space. Orbital and Luna would certainly survive any asteroid strike. Plus whatever's being built in Antarctica.

Oh, and the asteroid strike would kill all the humans, all the life, on Earth.

That's not a flaw. The preservationist AIs (Berlin, Caracas) would probably blame Mexico City or Zaire for trying to destroy all life on Earth. Saner AIs would probably blame the space based AIs trying to eliminate the competition. Besides, I doubt that any of the AIs would seriously consider that a parallel Earth is responsible.

[adm]

Originally Posted by fchase8

...Oh, and the asteroid strike would kill all the humans, all the life, on Earth.

Given the way things are going on Steel, it would just be a faster, less painful death. I would also note that IF you managed to destroy all of the AIs on Steel, the lose of the remaining humans there could be justified.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Here's the strategy:
1) Use the superscience reactionless drives to get into the correct position and velocity with the rock. Bring several mass drivers, a big enough conveyor and chemical thrusters to get closer to the rock.

Why bother with the rock? If you have access to a world line on which superscience thrusters can accelerate things to real velocities you can just use a missile that builds up velocity there and then pops over to just above the target on a collision course. But really there's no particular need for that. Delivering a lethal strike with a subquantum conveyer is simple enough - you can pop in, kick a suitcase nuke out the back door, and pop back out again well before anybody can reasonably react. If you install your equipment on a bomber you may be able to pop back out in less than the flight time of anti-aircraft fire.

As long as you are totally confident the opposition doesn't know about you, or have parachronic detectors somewhere data might survive your attack, this is safe enough. If the opposition does know about you or might be able to detect you, it still works if you're confident this strike will be lethal (or, as in the case of Steel, know it doesn't matter because they were never going peacefully co-exist anyway).

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Here's the strategy:
1) Use the superscience reactionless drives to get into the correct position and velocity with the rock. Bring several mass drivers, a big enough conveyor and chemical thrusters to get closer to the rock.
2) Hop to the universe with the earth you want to destroy.
3) Use the mass drivers to redirect the rock into the Earth.
4) Dismantle (or simply destroy) the mass drivers on the rock.
5) Hop back to the universe where the reactionless drives work and head to Earth to return to Earth.

It would take many years, and lots of resources, for Infinity to learn how to operate superscience reactionless drives. And if those drives only work on one timeline, then all of that work would have to be done on that timeline (and the original timeline that was being talked about was a post-apocalyptic one with space Nazis and the like).

It would also take many years & resources to learn how to correctly direct an asteroid. All the theorizing and modelling is no replacement for actual on-the-ground (or rather, in-the-space) experience.

And it would take years & resources to actually build all of the equipment needed, from superscience reactionless drives to mass drivers.


Infinity is already stretched thin, dealing with Centrum, Reich-5, Cabal, and a million-and-one other threats. And while there might be infinite worlds, Infinity does not have infinite resources. Indeed, one of the issues is that it doesn't have enough Homeline personnel, as it's a lot easier to just live the cushy life on Homeline.

Originally Posted by TGLS

That's not a flaw. The preservationist AIs (Berlin, Caracas) would probably blame Mexico City or Zaire for trying to destroy all life on Earth. Saner AIs would probably blame the space based AIs trying to eliminate the competition. Besides, I doubt that any of the AIs would seriously consider that a parallel Earth is responsible.

The AIs wouldn't suspect a parallel Earth - but you can't be sure. Given their high and diverse level of scientific development, some AI could have some program that is going along the lines of parachronics (like Brisbane).

At least they could have something that could detect weirdness around the asteroid. Once the asteroid strike is discovered to be a possibility, they would be analyzing all of their data around it, and such a big mission would leave some trace - and it could have been discovered beforehand.


And while the AIs would be loudly blaming each other for the impending asteroid, they would also be working feverishly to stop it. Overmind could lead the effort among all the AIs to stop it (first AI, led the war against humans, has cred with all AIs).

Beijing, New Delhi, and/or Paris would suspect aliens, which would be a useful enemy to rally around, even if not believed by all. Or maybe a rogue AI leftover from a space program (since there actually is one, on the moon).

Originally Posted by adm

Given the way things are going on Steel, it would just be a faster, less painful death. I would also note that IF you managed to destroy all of the AIs on Steel, the lose of the remaining humans there could be justified.

That millions & millions of people (remember all the human life in Washington & London). And it's pretty much impossible to be sure that you'd destroyed all of the AIs.

It would be hard for Infinity to pull together such a monumental task without it leaking on Homeline. If both the plan, and Steel's existence, got out on Homeline, there would be huge efforts by many to stop it. The idea that Infinity, a corporation, is now in the business of causing apocalypses, could also seriously endanger its independence. There would be huge pressure on the U.N. & others to not only stop this plan, but take full control of Infinity.