WickedCadrach

Not Guilty. I love snow, but I've also been on the highway during a whiteout and in multiple cars that decided to channel their inner ballerina over snow-covered pavement. I don't drive much in general but still do not like the idea of having to drive in snow. (Also, making a note to make time to make molasses cookies ) The next person uses material from their old clothes to make new clothes.

Alright, Step 8! Draw an arrow back to a Lead Square. -Drew a line from Clayton Cash to Alicia (Mistake or not, he can't forget that night) @Chiyako I thought a zesty little indiscretion between Alicia and a man too wide-eyed and innocent for this life would be a fun entanglement. Missy's Motivation is: The Innocent "You can’t stand to see the helpless caught in the crossfire. Orphans, settlers, dreamers, and anyone who doesn’t have the grit or the gun to stand for themselves are your cause, sometimes despite yourself. Maybe you were one of them once. When trouble comes calling, you put yourself in harm’s way without a second thought. Who do you protect, and why do they matter? Have you ever saved someone who didn’t deserve it? What happens when your compassion and your survival clash?" Step up Passion or Justice. -Stepped up Passion (d8 -> d10) Step up a Relationship, Asset, or Resource. -Stepped up Relationship with Alicia (d8->d10)

Not Guilty. There are a few Christmas movies I enjoy, but nothing stands out as a favorite. My own little tradition is to put on an audiobook of A Christmas Carol and listen to it while I do some baking. The next person has a favorite holiday food (It doesn't have to be Christmas).

Ok, I have Step 7 wrapped! First, some housekeeping. I put Automaton Heiress, Adelaide Montgomery on the board (she should have been there a while, I just got confused early on), and Jane Montgomery has been reverted from a Relationship to a Resource at the same level (2d8) Step 7 Draw an arrow from any circle or diamond to another circle, diamond, or square. -Connected Adelaide Montgomery to the Railroad (Replacing Union Workers with Automatons) Draw an arrow from your square to an existing circle (NEW Relationship) or diamond (NEW Location). -Connected Missy to Joshua Thane (I'm running out of ways to bribe him) @AsBloodTurnsEverCold we both upgrade Joshua Thane to a Relationship instead of a Resource. It's the cost of doing business to bribe the local law. No con is air-tight and it pays to be proactive. However, if Missy had known the sort of man Joshua Thane was... the sort of appetites he had... she may have thought twice about getting his attention. --Modus Operandi: Smoke and Mirrors-- Step up Glory or Passion. -Stepped up Passion (d6->d8) Add or step up a Distinction. -Stepped up Velvet Voice (d8->d10) Step up a Relationship or Extra. -Stepped up relationship with 'Judge' Holland Buck (2d4->2d6)

This is more or less how I've been playing with Scylla's setup. The more sensitive parts of the body with the most densely bundled nerves allow easier connection, and this is heightened by the slick neurofluid Scylla's cockpit tentacles secrete. I also have it in my head that as inhibition falls and the pilot's body gives in to sensation, it removes some of the 'lag' in the connection. So sex and stimulation in general just creates the perfect, fluid connection for thought and feeling to exchange. Anything anyone wants to add, or like Icarian said, if other frames have different setups for doing something a little different, I'm ok with that.

Scylla slipped over the ground on fingertips and toes, the coils of her tentacles moving like spider legs to support her frame as she skirted the rocky forest floor. The frame was moving. As Scylla approached, pulses of sensor pings and camera arrays with laser-calculated distance displayed in Emily's mind, spilling over in blurred glimpses to Magda through the close contact. "It's cutting us off," Emily said through grit teeth. The frame might have been heading back to the outpost for reasons unrelated to them, but the way it moved down the mountain so quickly after arriving sent a cold caution through Emily that made her wonder if they'd been made. Did the other have a recon suite of it's own? It hadn't been trying to be 'subtle' with that jump it made. Was it trying to lure her into a trap? Emily's own cautious paranoia mingled with Scylla's own 'small-dog' ferocity, and without any word of command several more sweeps were made through the oblong sensor array in the BioFrame's head. Even through the static of tree leaves, startled birds, and the few hardy animals that made the mountain their home, the results were unsettlingly quiet. Now that she was closer, there was no missing what the Frame was ahead of her. Clad in standard armor plating and moving with the stiff, robotic gait she'd grown so familiar with, the Hive frame may as well have been waving the flag of its corporate sponsors. Scylla wasn't built for a straight fight. But if it hadn't seen her, it would be a fair fight. And there was only the one... Only a day ago, Emily and Scylla had jacked a Lion-class frame right off the battlefield. Granted, Patune and the carrier had been there to support, but the odds had be a lot more complicated than this. If she could get one good hit in, she might be able to disable it. Maybe she could jack this one too. If she did, it would certainly be noticed. The commotion would put the whole outpost on alert, even if it was mostly civilians by now. Sneaking in and sabotaging the eblocker dosing would be out of the question. But somehow that didn't seem as important. No, even thinking about it hit Emily with a feeling of frustration that she wasn't sure was hers or the BioFrame's. Scylla writhed closer, her pace quickening as excitement and a predatory hunger began to animate the coils in the cockpit. The limbs between Magda and Emily moved, curling to grip the captain's bare hip as another circled under Emily's tank-top to tickle the edge of her navel encouragingly. Black tentacles around Emily's elbows pulled her forward, stretching her out into a kneeling bow that put weapons systems at her fingertips and Magda's cheek closer to the base of her shoulder blade. Emily's artificial heart began to pump with adrenaline as the anticipatory excitement bloomed, spreading like fire from Scylla into her and Magda alike, and from behind Magda, a tendril two-fingers thick rode the crease between her thigh and ass, hugging tight enough to coil over her exposed lower lips on it's way to Emily's loose cartoon-print boxers. And in the connection of the sensitive nerves between her legs and the newest tentacle's slick coating of neurofluid, she saw a glimpse of Scylla's mind: bracing between the trees. A shock of blue laser at close range followed by a barrage of sensor noise to confuse the enemy. A dramatic swipe of clawed hands as the smaller frame leaped onto the Lion-class, too close to effectively turn its weapons on them. All of this flashed in an instant, reined in by Emily's mind asserting through the feral instinct. Magda could feel the pilot tensing bodily under her as she fought to hold in her own enthusiasm for the BioFrame's instinctive plan.

Emily obliged, and as Scylla slipped down the slopes with panther-like grace, the pilot took a few steadying breaths herself, letting the calm flow into the BioFrame's primitive brain and ease them into a flowing jog. The supporting tentacles gave the movement a fluidity that felt like swimming over the rocky ground, and compared to the stomping reverberations of Patune or some of the other pilots' Lion-classes, the sensation hitting Magda and Emily was more like being suspended in zero-gravity while the world turned swiftly under them. Emily closed her eyes, smirking as her CO lay her cheek over her bare shoulder. The warmth and pressure of her in the closeness of the cockpit was unusual, but not at all unpleasant. Scylla seemed to pick up on Emily's thoughts though, as two smaller tendrils slipped up the pilot's hips to support the thicker main line lying across her spine between her and Magda, creating a more purposeful division between them with the slick warmth of the interposing limbs. "Behave," Emily said softly. The feral mind send an impulse back that was somewhere between sarcasm and innocent ignorance. What do you mean? It may as well have said despite the lack of words. Emily was about to send back a pointed 'you know exactly what I mean' when suddenly Scylla bristled. Black tendrils flitted, and the the coils around Emily's legs lifted her up as others in the ceiling slipped down to lie on her temples. The sensor array in the BioFrame's cephalopod head was firing. Blue light washed in Emily's vision as radar fired, her brain and cyber finding a way to interpret a sense her body was never meant to possess. She simultaneous blooms of heat like the starbursts of pressing her palms too hard into her eyes. Thermal vision. The smell of burning fuel on the wind. Against her back, the slick neurofluid sent echoes of the images to Magda as well. The chill of the mountain air against Scylla's slick black muscle and chilled white-steel skin. The afterburn of jump jets ignited a little more than a kilometer away on the face of the adjacent mountain in the range. The sudden stillness as the playful whorls of Scylla's tentacles went as rigid as the threads of a spider's web. "Bogey just burned about a klick North-North-West," Emily said, interpreting what was likely a chaotic kaleidoscope of radar, infrared, and signal probes for her captain. "I thought the intervention team pulled out..." she added, her eyes narrowing as she stared across the darkness toward the shadow of the unidentified Frame. "If they have patrols circling, we could be in trouble getting back out... Then again... Solo patrol is unusual for Hive outfits. Could be a merc or a conclave out here we don't know about." Tilting her head toward Magda, Emily couldn't keep some of Scylla's more predatory interest out of her eyes as she asked, "Permission to approach, Captain? Take a closer look?"

Hey... I'm sorry for disappearing there. I'm back and playing catch-up on stuff. I ran myself out of time today, but should have a reply up in the RP thread tomorrow morning. I am excited to get into this next chapter with you both. Again, sorry for vanishing for a little there.

Fingertips read you, Unbinding the seams, blurring us Where our lipstick smears.

@DreamsnThings That's totally understandable. I hope we still see you around, but I definitely get it when it's just too much for what's going on in real-life. I've moved that relationship step-up from Ramona to Jack Beckett (d4 -> d6). I want to make sure I get this right, so I'm going to try talking it out a little here. 1) When I add a Circle or Diamond to the board, it's added as a Resource to my character sheet. I draw a line from my square to that Resource (not a Relationship). 2) When another PC draws a line from their Square to one of my Circles, that Circle upgrades from a Resource to a Relationship for both PCs. 3) If a third PC draws a line from their Square to that same Circle, they also get that connection as a Relationship. 4) If a PC's Square is not connected to a Circle, they should not have that NPC as a Resource or Relationship on their character sheet. If I got that right, then the only NPC Relationship Missy should have is Jack Beckett (because Missy and Alicia both have lines drawn from their Squares to his Circle). Jane Montgomery, Red Jenny, and Holland Buck should all be Resources. And I think this also means Adelaide Montgomery needs to be put on the board as a Circle? @IsabellaRose did I get that right?

PbtA too. That is definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Step 6 - Missy Fisher --Draw an arrow from your square to a new or existing circle (NEW Extra) or diamond (NEW Location).-- New line from Missy to Jack Beckett (We keep each other's secrets). @Chiyako I'm imagining Missy meets with Jack to get dirt on the town from his unique perspective, info she can use in her spook shows. Missy might be one of the few people other than Alicia who knows how he acquires his oddities (presumably in some unsavory ways at times?). --Draw an arrow from any circle or diamond to another circle, diamond, or square.-- New line from Joshua Thane to the Silver Mines (Solves his 'problems' by burying them here) Performance pathway Training, practicing, rehearsing… you’re pushing hard toward some sort of mythical perfection. You can see your goal clearly in your mind and you push yourself harder and harder each day to reach it. Let’s hope you don’t push too far. What is your goal and how are you preparing yourself to achieve it? Have you isolated yourself from friends and family in order to obtain your goal? Is there anything that can stand in your way? Step up Honor or Glory: Stepped up Glory (d6 -> d8) Add or step up a new Distinction (Recommended: Athletic, On A Mission, or Willful): Stepped up Corset Tease (d6 -> d8) Step up an Extra: Stepped up Automaton Heiress Adelaide Montgomery (Wealth, Connections) (2d6 -> 2d8)

Ok, I'm more or less happy with how this Red Jenny turned out. I'm already looking forward to when we get a face reveal and have to swap her portrait (warning: blood and spooky vibes)

I'm going to play around a bit to see if I can find a Red Jenny that I like. But I think I like these for my other 3 NPCs. (SFW. Spoiler tag to save space) 'Judge' Holland Buck Adelaide Montgomery Jane Montgomery

I don't think we said 'new kid' was exceptionally tall or anything, so I feel like a (9 + 1d6) m tall Lion Class is fair. Granite... I honestly don't have a strong impression because they were just in and out. Maybe another Lion Class? Patune hits me as either riding the line on the top end of Lion or being big enough to be Taurus class. He a big boy But if you wanted to make him bigger, I could roll with it.

I think this is a case where the original number drifted because it was more dramatic for Scylla to be dwarfed by the opposition. If we want to nail something down, how does this look (I am completely open to tweaking any details here. Just wanted to get something down to start that would put Scylla at half-as-tall as the average Frame.) Hauberk Class / "skins" : <5 m - Essentially, a living suit of power armor made from a small kaiju with some specific ability or biology that makes it worth the effort. Limited advantages over conventional mech-frames. Extremely rare. Difficult to manufacture without killing the original creature. Sprite Class / "fleas" : <10 m - Uncommon. Usually tuned for speed and stealth. Recon units may include two or three fleas. Tactical units may include them as spotters or flanking support. Lion Class : <15 m - The 'standard' size most frames fall into. BioFrame units are often composed exclusively of Lion Class frames. Taurus Class : <20 m - Much more common than Sprite Class frames, Taurus frames are usually dispersed into units to provide a strong backbone or specialized options that usually can't be handled by smaller frames, like artillery platforms. Heracles Class : <30 m - With perhaps one Heracles Class to a company, these rare frames draw immediate attention when they enter the battlefield. With their impressive stature, they are often specced as dedicated 'kaiju-killers' and called out when a monster outside the ordinary range of what can be reasonably captured and converted appears. Titan Class: >30 m - The ground shakes. Primal instinct and fear bleed through Hive e-blockers. The fact that these monstrosities were captured and successfully converted to BioFrames is merely testament that heaven and hell both fear to claim them.

Broadly, it's a forced standardization off of captured/bred kaiju that are inherently unique. Standard armor, pilot controls, weapons, on top of castrated and mutilated monsters. We haven't really broken it out, but I imagine differences for Hive Frames comes down to size. Is it big enough to strap on missiles? Is it small enough to equip recon sensors? Is it intended for an officer who needs special equipment? But even pay all that, I'm sure there's some standard doctrine of Hive squads/teams to include a variety of options. We just haven't explored what those are yet... Makes sense if you're meeting in the field. If you want to just spy until we exit Scylla and make a run for the e-blocker supply, you could meet us on foot too.

Anything you can think of @WritesNaughtyStories? I guess just the stuff we've touched on. The outpost is on a flat stretch beside the coast. There is a the ruin of a kaiju fight still showing in the churned dirt. And the intervention force that stepped in to drive off the LU has swiftly departed after getting one of their Frames jacked. No walls or serious defenses of any kind noted. A lot of civilians recently shipped in too.

There is a Femme Fatale distinction in the list. Rules Reference -> Distinctions/Traits -> The Big List of Distinctions/Traits for 1880s Steampunk Western RPG Though, from that list: Agile, Sneaky, or even Soldier might hit the mark better for what you're looking for.

The dim heartbeat-red of Scylla's cockpit lighting painted Magda's bare skin like primitive war-paint, making every crease in her tightly muscled body stand out in stark black lines, her eyes somehow softer and more intense from the glint that soft red gave them. The ease with which the natural-born BioFrame pilot navigated the soft roil of Scylla's black tendrils had drawn Emily's eye already, and there was just a flicker of a pause at the captain's question before Emily threw on a crooked smirk and replied, "I can think of a few places." Looking back over her shoulder, the LT locked eyes with Magda then shifted a gloved hand to indicate a dimple in the black coils—a space like the groove down the center of an enormous tongue behind Emily's back. In that silent exchange was both the cavalier and playful acknowledgement of what had already happened between them and the subtle promise that Emily would be packing those thoughts away for the mission as well. Unlike Magda, Emily was at least partially clothed, though her jacket and a fresh change were similarly secured in a cramped, water-tight cubby build into Scylla's thigh. A faded pair of boxers emblazoned with cartoon turtles hung crooked on Emily's hip, and as she helped Magda into position, she adjusted the strap of the black tank top draped unconvincingly over her chest. The cracked leather of the fingerless gloves on her hands creaked as she coaxed some of the thicker tendrils from the wall behind Magda and around the other woman's hips and shoulders. They idly coiled and swayed with the BioFrame's anxious and curious thoughts but mostly cooperated with Emily's efforts to set them in a good position to reach her around her passenger . With a small grunt of acknowledgement at Magda's comment about the new Frame, Emily tried to put it from her mind. It was a problem for later. The problem right now was the way Scylla's tentacles had started shivering in fits around Magda's extended arms and legs. "You're bracing yourself. Try to relax," Emily suggested, watching as some of the black tentacled limbs began to steady, coiling up around Magda's ankles and under her armpits. "There's no 'throne' in here, no rigid seats, so let Scylla support you." Emily indicated the encompassing black coils and sea-anemone structures of tinier connections in the same glistening, wet flesh. "She'll move you around—for balance and to make sure I can reach the sync points I need if I end up going full-dive. Because of her sensor-array, there are a lot of ception-points, so don't get queasy if you catch some bleed." When all was settled, Emily was kneeling, her palms gripping two tendrils that had snaked up her forearms to the elbow. Magda's was held in a sort of half-crouch over Emily's back, a thick tentacle between them as Scylla's main sync-line grazed Magda's shin and rode Emily's spine, leaving a glistening trail of neurofluid between the captain's breasts and in Emily's tank top from the contact. Hundreds of small, squirming cilia along the limb's trunk lit up the empathic link between pilot and BioFrame, and Emily felt the momentary vertigo of her senses broadening to take in the hangar and the now-tiny-looking LU mechanics at their final checks. <Showing green across the board, Patches. You and Scylla are clear for launch.> The message chirped in Emily's mind through Scylla's internal comms, echoed a millisecond later by the backup radio's dull speaker. "Roger that. Ya is onboard—and loving every second of it. Taking her out now." With a final breath and slow release, Emily shifted her hands where they nestled in the squelching roil of flesh, sending an almost ticklish coaxing through Scylla's nervous system. The next several minutes were a series of impressions between Emily's sweeps for patrols and errant kaiju along the mountainside. Icy air on steel skin. The roughness of tree bark and stone as Scylla's hands and feet worked with the tentacles to propel her with a cycling smoothness that kept the cockpit smoothly cradled in her torso, minimizing shock and giving an impression like gliding. // Pilot Roll 1 = (5, 4, 4, 2) + 1 // Stealth Roll 2 = (6, 5, 2, 2) + 2

@Icarian Dreams I'm just going to drop the GoogleDrive link for Emily's character sheet in case you want to make a copy for sorting out your fallen scion (or just to get a more mechanical grip on what Emily's already bringing to the table). Depending on how aggressively we want to push the Hive trying to discreetly 'execute' the scion, we could tease a villain NPC and have a Trouble like Director Tanaka Wants My Head or Lt. Faraday's Promotion Will Be Signed in My Blood. Something more general might be The Hive Has a Grave Picked Out for Me. These are a touch wordy, but you get the idea. The Stuck Between Worlds trouble is definitely something that could be tapped often, though.

I think from a meta perspective, we might want to adapt this to more neatly fit bringing in Icarian's scion character. There are a few ways we could play this... - Magda and Emily being discovered tampering with the e-blocker dosing and possibly captured by a surprisingly competent Hive scion (who is on the fence over what side they're actually on) would give them a moment to have an out-of-combat encounter with Icarian's character. Maybe leading to an accelerated capture of the base as Icarian arranges to 'open the gates'? - Icarian's character might leave the outpost on his own to try and proactively find and negotiate with the LU (since cooperation might be the only way to save the outpost and his own life), leading to an encounter in the field where we tensely negotiate through comms as our BioFrames stare each other down. I think we can handwave why Icarian's frame didn't join the initial kaiju fight by explaining command overrode him. Maybe he was specifically ordered by the initial intervention team to stand down and stay in the outpost? Maybe he intentionally delayed sallying out to join the fight because he was hoping the LU would push to take the outpost right then and there, and he wanted to be ready to accommodate? Personally, I think it works either way if Icarian's scion has a BioFrame from the start or if they find one to bond with in the initial encounters, but it seems like they would prefer to start with one, and I think we can make that work. I'm not sure I follow on this. I imagine Hive BioFrames would be penned the way LU frames are when they aren't in use? Maybe even more secured with chemical comas or other combinations of sedation and restrains. If Icarian's scion isn't actively in his BioFrame at the time, then we'd all be encountering each other on foot anyway. Emily and Magda wouldn't be able to take Scylla all the way into the outpost's facilities. Even as a small BioFrame, Scylla's huge and noticeable. So the final leg of the infiltration would be on foot regardless. I might be missing something here, but I think we'd be ok with a single Hive BioFrame being present in the outpost.

This is good to keep in mind too. I'm still excited to see this game take off. I would vote to push on, understanding we may need to tweak some connections as we go (or before finalizing everything) if anyone is lagging behind. If we do wait a bit longer though, I'm not about to lose interest. I'll still be here.

& Oooo, if we ever want to do some cinematic cutaway scenes (or infiltration), these could be a lot of fun. This is interesting too. What if the experimentation wasn't just on the pilot but on the BioFrame as well? The Hive now has a a failed experiment that cost them a trained pilot and and extremely expensive BioFrame that is now unfit to be reprocessed or synced to a different pilot. In that case, they may send them to garrison the outpost as a way of 'destroying the evidence'. It looks bad on a spreadsheet if they admit the failure, but it's acceptable 'breakage' if the test-subjects are taken out by kaiju or an LU strike. The failure may be that it made them 'too much' like the LU pilots. I was imagining it as an experiment in 'how much emotion' is an asset vs a liability for a BioFrame pilot. I don't think it makes sense to roll something like that out for general use over dosing the food and water supply (the current model for general control). But for a few pilots, it could let them more naturally tap into aggression, limited fear, attachment to their comrades, or other useful emotions. In my head, I imagined crossing that threshold of emotion as triggering severe tinnitus that just wipes out the current line of thinking and feeling to allow a reset. But honestly whatever is most appealing to you if you want to chase this idea. If you decide the scion idea is more fun, we could also take the approach that they 'aren't supposed to be here'. Maybe they are acting outside the regular chain of command as part of their exploration into what's really happening in this war. Maybe they took their BioFrame and faked some orders so they could investigate this 'hush-hush' outpost that doesn't makes sense, only to discover too later what's intended for it. Maybe the disadvantage of an emotionless bureaucracy is that forged documentation goes over extremely well.