Slivers & Shards Plot Role Info

[powersthatbe]

If you are not a plot infiltrator or someone with IC reasons to share knowledge available to plot infiltrators, please do not read the comments of this post.

If you ARE a plot infiltrator, please comment under your toplevel to let us know you've read it; please also pop over here to announce your plotroleishness to the game at large. We prefer that you do any confidential plotting with other plot-important folks in the comments here, rather than on plurk, and please comment no later than December 9th, January 3rd, and January 13th with a brief (as brief as 1 sentence; as long as you like) summary of your activity during the week & plans for next week. These comments will help the mods shape mingles and plot events to keep the story dynamic and player actions important to the outcome. Likewise, comment at any time with any questions you may have, and a mod will get back to you within 36 hours at the outside.

Comments

GRAFTED GENITOR - POD

[powersthatbe]

Grafted Genitor - a refugee and reluctant witness to trauma whose homegrown bioweapons include a potentially world-changing secret. The player taking this role must be comfortable with moderate body horror.
Background: Until the fall of Scatter-Spore, you were just another Genitor. But unlike every other refugee you’ve met, you were not out in the terraces when the Spire was hit.

You were in the Spire. You saw what happened. And it wasn’t Nation-Eaters… or at least, you think it wasn’t. The creatures had the arrowhead-shaped skulls, six legs, crystal fins, and keeled scales… but they weren’t hundreds of feet long. Ten to twenty feet, at most. And there weren’t just one or two of them. There were dozens. Maybe a hundred.

And they can do something else no Nation Eater has ever done.

They can die.

You and your kythemates killed one, semi-accidentally. That is, you all started to wake up the war colonies of fungi that live in your lungs and on your skin, and after eating the rest of your kythemates, the twenty-foot creature died at your feet, blood foaming from its mouth. You cut it open to see what had happened, and it was simple. Just blight quorn - which, in large enough quantities, causes every cell it touches to fall apart.

You don’t think you’re likely to volunteer to be one of the four dissolving genitors who gets eaten for each Nation Eater that dies, however. And they might make you - you’re afraid to tell anyone. And even more afraid to tell them what you did next.

The cranial fins of the Nation Eater were made of primed crystal - like Moonfall crystal. Nation Eaters must be naturally psychic, like humans and burncats.

So you did what a Genitor does with a strange biological sample - you clipped off four spines of the crystal growing from the Nation Eater’s brain, and you implanted them subcutaneously, one behind each ear and two in the back of your neck. Then you ran.
Goals: Stay alive at any cost. Understand what is happening to you. Another Genitor might understand - certainly they’d understand why you did what you did. But if they think you’re a danger, they might still act to destroy you.
Allies: None. All your allies were eaten. And anyone might kill you for what you know, or what you might be becoming. You know the Cabalist Conspirator is using a psychic power you’ve never seen before, and is using it constantly - you’re afraid of what that might mean, but also afraid to ask.
Mod Expectations: Three threads of four+ comments a week.
Weekly Reporting: Does anyone know your secret? How are you using your new powers? What are you doing to explore the limits of your capabilities?
Skill: Esthepathy. Since implanting the cranial spines and encouraging them to bond with your nervous system, you’ve discovered you can Pin all the time, without conscious effort, to a distance of about eleven miles. And it’s stranger than that - you can see and hear psychic powers used, as auras and ringing noises. Once you’ve identified a particular power’s sound and aura, you can tell infallibly when anyone within sight or hearing uses it or has it used upon them.

Re: GRAFTED GENITOR - POD

[wolvering]

Yup, This Is Pod's Role :D

But I have one question: best species for Kiga to be? Because Pod should have her brother with her, and Genitor at least offers options.

[breakaleginhalf]

I feel like Ghalib would be very interested in her taking down a Nation Eater. The only problem would be finding a way to bring it up, hahah!

[wolvering]

She is very wary of bringing it up to anyone, at least as of week one. However, she'll be just as interested in figuring out her new powers too, so that might be an opening.

[breakaleginhalf]

If they end up kything (or Ghalib reaves her for some reason) then he'd be able to identify her motives and ambitions bc of plot skill. So possibly that could be a way to address it? Especially since he wants to find out how to suppress the Nation Eaters again.

[wolvering]

Well, her motives and ambitions are pretty simple. If she can accomplish the main ones, she definitely wants to find ways to stop what happened in Scatterspore from happening again.

She might be a little reluctant to kythe until she knows more about the new power, but she doesn't have any defenses to reaving.

Re: GRAFTED GENITOR - POD

[powersthatare]

A Genitor could plausibly have any species as a pet! Burncat, scorpion, asp, penguin, giant isopod - follow your joy!

Re: GRAFTED GENITOR - POD

[powersthatare]

Anything to report from week 1/plans for week 2?

[wolvering]

Truffle mostly dealt with the after-effects of the attack (physical and mental) and tried to find a place for herself. She also spent time trying to figure out her new powers.

Of note:
-knows the aura/sound of Liminal Thermostat (and roughly what it does), and revealed the pinning aspect of her power to Shinji
-spoke with Hypatia/Claudia about how she could help FallenHeart
-knows the aura/sound of Psychic Deduction (but not what it does), and spoke with Alcuin about helping the soil

related question, what fertilizer/techniques does Scatter-spore use to replenish the soil as much as they can? I'm imagining extensive composting (and drawing the water out of urine etc through evaporation) and possibly even recycling bodies but could use details.

-knows something is really, really weird about DeeDee (but she's nice and helpful!)
-she's waffling about telling Phillip/Pharis about her questions concerning the tiny Nation Eaters
-not quite intentionally Told Altair an image of the attack, featuring the tiny Nation Eater eating her friend
-talked with Ghalib (and he knows she has a new ability she wants to experiment with, but not what it is) and will probably agree to live with him

Her plans for next week are mostly centered around experimenting with her new power in more detail, and working with FallenHeart's crops to make improvements if she can.

[powersthatare]

Scatter-Spore cultivates bacteria-rich soil through a combination of recycling dead animal and plant matter including ALL dead bodies; importing soil from the Silt Sea and other regions to maintain salination and pH balance (they don't have the scientific understanding of WHY these things matter but can detect them and know they do); and they breed plants and fungi to do more with less! There's a lot of leveraging the ways some plants and fungi and bacteria live in symbiosis - if one corner of the tripod is failing, prop up the other two!

[wolvering]

Excellent. Another question: can other people sense Truffle's pinning? The description of pinning implies yes, but her power means she's pinning all the time so, it might be a way for people to find out something's up if so.

[powersthatare]

Pinning in general yes. Her pinning, no!

Re: GRAFTED GENITOR - POD

[wolvering]

Question about the skill: is it only psychic skills she can sense, or liminal too?

Also: would it be reasonable to assume that the refugees from Scatterspore grabbed everything they could carry, and also ate as much food as they could in the limited time? (my thought is it would make sense to intake that energy if they could, in order to share it by kything)

Re: GRAFTED GENITOR - POD

[powersthatare]

Liminal too!

Yes, that is reasonable, your thought is exactly on point with best practices.

Re: GRAFTED GENITOR - POD

[wolvering]

Another question!

Since it sounds like the others were eaten while kything... what is it like to have someone in your active kythe die?

Re: GRAFTED GENITOR - POD

[powersthatare]

It is flat-out horrific. It's like having an open radio station to the dying person's last thoughts and nervous system.

questions concerning wk 2 mingle

[wolvering]

So, would Truffle have been able to pin anything that happened with the raiding party, the disappearances and/or the Nation Eater presence?

Re: questions concerning wk 2 mingle

[powersthatare]

She would have felt several Pins to the south of town before the raiders were massacred, but no more. She will feel a number of Pins in the ruins every night. But those will not necessarily be clear as coming from nonhuman sources when she now senses so MANY powers. They don't feel different than humans dropping Pins.

That said, she will feel a flavor of psipower during the Gil & Eren attacks that she felt just after implantation, while fleeing Scatterspore.