And you never admitted to it until now? Really. It's been fifteen fucking timestamps. Did you just decide to wait until everyone who could tell the story died, and only now claim the credit?
This is OJ. I’m not going to have Elizabeth answer this question, since I’m pretty sure she would try to punch whoever asked it.
(OOCly,I connected the dots between “Elizabeth is empathetic tomurderers”, “Elizabeth hates Seers”, and “Elizabethsees no contradiction here” some time ago, but it wasn’t untilnow that it seemed an appropriate moment to spring the whole story.)
The ~ATH wills went off, so the Replayer networks knew Kaya died. But they didn’t know how or why, Kaya had never bothered getting Elizabeth signed up to a network, and the Azurite conveniently got killed somehow, so Elizabeth was a random third-sessioner in an empty session.
And, Loose, you don’t want to claim responsibility for these sorts of things, because nobody will ever, ever believe them. Oh, sure, they’ll laugh and play along, but they’ll also call you delusional and grandiose behind your back. And Elizabeth at that point was more desperate to fit in than she was to stand out.
Let’s back up a bit. Elizabeth feels like she needs to believe that the Seer Network is inherently bad; she fears that if she didn’t, she’d start thinking of herself as a murderer and not merely “someone who did what was necessary”. But, to quote epinephrineElectrified, “you can’t just make yourself believe something because you want to.“ This is not the kind of bargain you strike with yourself if you feel that you did what was necessary. This is the kind of bargain that you strike with yourself if you feel that you are a murderer.
As to why she kept it to herself for that long… what, are you saying that you’d tell your new group of friends that oh by the way you murdered someone when you were a kid?
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EB, what do you think about Stag, Skully and Vitt, the founders of Seer Network? (remember to Rise Above Hate)
She told me lies. She wove this wondrous narrative, about a group of unfathomable power, about a glorious institution. And I believed it - I believed it all. The things that other people said about the Seer Network - vile lies! Incredible confabulations! Wasted brilliance!
It was your death cultists that broke me out of it. Everyone else at least made lip service to the notion of treating the Seers humanely, and Kaya used that as evidence and justification. Pure hatred countered pure hatred, though, when the death bulletins went up. She had no way to flatter those.
Even then - it wasn’t until she and the Azurite had boxed me into a corner that I had to decide who I hated more.
I know you celebrate the death of Kaya, but she was my first blood, and I am not proud of it.
Character: eternityBraid, Elizabeth Bunker (miraculous level)
Name: Elizabeth Bunker
Handle: eternityBraid
Native Classpect: Guide of Blood
Age: 27
Session Count: 11
Sylladex: Puzzle
Specibus: sword-and-shieldkind
Academics Skill: Decent
Sports Skill: Very good
Favorite Foods: challah bread, gazpacho soup, salted caramels, proper macchiatos
Lifeplant: alfalfa
Current Arc: Mystic (Primordial) 2
Basic quest: Melodramatic/Red (“They’re not that bad”): Elizabeth has a tendency to be fascinated with people that her social group has cast as “evil”. This can result in such things as her declaring that “they’re not that bad”, whenever this gets brought up.
Bonus XP emotion: Putting My Faith In You or Speechlessness
Skills:
Shine 3
Sburban Survival 2
Somewhat Overwrought Writing 2
Singing 1
Cooking 0
Inherent:
Bond (2): If I am your friend, I will stay by your side forever.
Affliction (1): If there exists a way to see someone in a sympathetic light, I will find it.
Affliction (1): Well, except for Seers. Fuck Seers.
Perks:
Affliction (2): I am totally unaffected by the general public's opinion on my view of the universe.
Bond (1): I keep trying to bait the trolls. I think they're funny!
Arcs:
Allegory 2
Role: Pitsblogger
Failing: Empathy
Truth: I introduced Chuubo's - yes, this very game - to the Replayer networks.
Somebody Else's Problem (Special): There is a level 2 obstacle to spot, recognize, and describe you if you're actively avoiding those things.
A Legendary Weapon (Major Miraculous Action, 0MP/once/book, 4MP/2+/book): You have a legendary weapon. Specifically, you have a sword that, with sufficient application of will, will cut through anything.
Wonder-Worker (Major Miraculous Action, 0MP/once/book, 1MP/2+/book, 2MP/2+/chapter): You can escalate your blogging to the miraculous level. In a contest with miracles the Intention rating is converted to a miracle level, up to a maximum of Wonder-Worker's miracle level. Also, it is possible to directly manipulate miracles with these kinds of actions... like writing an article that will miraculously convince those who believe it that they are worth something.
A Tangled History (Imperial Miracle, 0MP/once/book, 1MP/2+/book, 2MP/2+/chapter): Mechanically this is a wish that you have been around for, or for something that is almost exactly like, essentially anything. In flavor... you have been a Pitsblogger for a long, long time. You have read the annals of Seergate, and you've seen the same thing happen in microcosm - after you've stuck around enough, all the upheavals on Pits start to seem the same, and you can speak knowledgeably about things that happened even on previous Replayer networks.
Theoretically, at this Arc level, you can declare that you participated in a thing this way - but you usually don't. You prefer to stay a little bit detached from things. You like your position on the fringes of Pitsblogger society, and you are not about to change that.
Mechanisms of Transport (Superior Skill Perk, 0MP/claim a new one/once/book, 4MP/2+/book): You can design a mode of transportation that could go to, from, and through some strange/occult realm, one that functions like a Superior Skill Perk. This might include, but is not limited to -
wheedling an entire goddamn Prospitian shuttle off the White Queen;
the ability to use portals unusually easily when a Space player;
a Roomba-like device that maps out the Magicant whenever it changes and beams the updated maps to everyone's Internet-connected devices;
finding Pits documentation on how to make a Ringship;
if you have the right Classpect, running navigation for that Ringship yourself;
using theoretical knowledge of Skaia travel to shove yourself and/or coplayers through Skaia, in extremis.
Note that there is a level 3 Obstacle against using Classpect-themed abilities when you are not that Classpect currently. If it is at all possible to retheme this Skill to your current Classpect, you can do so without further cost.
Awaken (Imperial Miracle, 0MP/once/book, 1MP/2+/book, 2MP/2+/chapter, 4MP/instant): If you invest the Pulse - the capacity to care, on some level - into an inanimate object (or I suppose an animal), it will be awakened: and become sapient and capable of speech. (You have a mutual level 1 connection for the rest of the book but no other special power over the object, and can withdraw the gift by using this power on the object again.)
Bring to Fruition (Imperial Miracle, 0MP/once/book, 1MP/2+/book, 2MP/2+/chapter, 4MP/2+/minutes): This power allows you to transform/curse someone to intensify their sense of empathy; and it lasts on the target until they resolve an appropriate Issue, complete an appropriate Quest, or take a Wound to mitigate and heal that Wound. Because this is Sburb, this is a subtle power - as fun as turning someone into a giant empathybeast would be, it's just not (thematic, y'know? This power is invoked and controlled with a mundane action much like Wonder-Worker - you are generally using writing at someone to transform or curse them.
Primordial 1
Principle: Empathy ("Empathizing with other people is important.")
Transformation: You are becoming a mouthpiece of the truth of your Principle - someone who does not merely just write for the sake of writing, but writes of the nobility of empathy.
Element: Blood
Unnatural Action (Special): You can emote with your element... which is more useful than it sounds. You can make someone's heart race when they meet you, if you're excited about them. You can blush at just the right moments and, more importantly, not blush whenever you don't want to blush. If you work enough at it this can eventually even extend to control over autonomic functions in general, which has some serious applicability!
Scry (Imperial Miracle, 0MP/on the HG's timeline, 1-4 MP/speed it up): You can scry quite a lot of things! The limitation is that since you're sensing through how people interact with them - how blood and emotions intersect what you're looking for - untrafficked areas are much harder for you to find. (The presence of animals helps a lot but it isn't perfect - animals can't understand concepts like "laboratory", so you might have to specify that you're looking for lab equipment like flasks and computers and such, and that'll take a while.)
Note: Underlings contain no blood. They are entirely outside the scope of your power.
Digest (Imperial Miracle): You can eat anything! You... usually don't! But you can.
Bindings (Imperial Miracle, 0MP/after a conversation, 4MP/instant): You can pick up powers by talking about people's experience of empathy - what they consider important in a friend, who they think is worth moral value, and so on. Details are on the corebook's page 550, but this can result in cool powers through attitude changes: effectively, you take on someone else's mannerisms and can thus use powers based on their experiences. (Elizabeth isn't really into the whole 'extra limbs' thing. It's more likely to be things like her dressing in a certain way, or carrying herself differently, or using a particular catchphrase a lot.)
Shared Witness (Imperial Miracle, 0MP/they can emote to you, 1MP/you can know where they are and whether they're feeling empathy with a few minutes' work, 4MP/you can know that stuff instantly): If you're holding someone's Experience through Bindings:
for free, they can emote to you, although it's really hard to get detailed information;
for 1 MP and a few minutes of concentration (or 4MP if you don't have that much time), you can roughly locate someone whose Experience you're holding, and figure out how much empathy or... I guess emotional detachment is the inverse?... they happen to be feeling at the time. (This action can be sustained to keep checking in.)
You are an apologist, though. Weird, ass-backwards apologist that drags decent people through the dirt while saying that psychopathic murderer and shiny-twister probably was just misunderstood. --- thoughtContagion, Seer of Mind
You know, there’s plenty of room in the load gaper for your head too.-- eternityBraid
I have a hard time believing you of all people could harbor sympathies for such a uniformly vulgar group of individuals. Is there a species more obsessed with sex? If they aren't murdering one another they're fondling all their holes and looking for things to stuff their bulges into. Poor form, Elizabeth
I’d admire the rapidity and variety of the hatemail accumulating in this blog’s inbox if not for the fact that it’s because Elizabeth did something stupid.
Elizabeth always did have a thing for loving people everyone else hated. (Which unfortunately includes her being unduly fascinated with genuinely terrible people.) She’s certainly following her heart. What she doesn’t understand is the notion that public opinion is a great and fickle beast and that attracting its attention can be deadly. Meanwhile, as someone privy to the moderation tools of PrototypeTowers, I know the sheer weight of public opinion - and what it can do - all too well.
She is my friend and I will not reject her for this, but she is certainly due for a good whack on the head and a “what the fuck were you thinking?”
– cogitativeMistake
There’s actually an interesting cultural detail in this that bears unpacking:
Trolls are considered savage and hypersexual by Pits opinion. Why are trolls considered savage and hypersexual? Is it, say, like a certain other “race” of humans that was once considered savage and hypersexual, and have we merely displaced the subject of these fantasies without changing their form…?
If so, think about it. People with darker skin lack nothing that people with lighter skin have, society notwithstanding. Even so, people with chitinous exoskeletons lack nothing that people with pink-tinged skin have… society notwithstanding.
Which is to say: You’re being fucking racist as shit. I would suggest that you stick your head into a load gaper.
– eternityBraid
That was uncalled for. cruciformCacogen isn’t gonna listen to anything you say, so there’s no point pontificating.
– cogitativeMistake
Oh, I wasn’t thinking about him. When you argue with someone on the Internet, you’re not trying to convince the other person. You’re trying to convince the audience.
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You don't need a sense of morality to play Sburb, the fact that Trolls made it in proves that.
…Shut up, Eric.
Like, I know Pits likes hating trolls, but trolls totally have a morality. You know that and I know you know that.
…It occurs to me that I’ve never posted about this, even though I’ve believed it for years now. You know what, screw social censure. I’m posting this publically.
– eternityBraid
P.S. Before the hatemail rolls in, I’m not an apologist. I’m apeopleist. I believe they’re people and deserve respect, like basicallyevery other species we have around here. You think that we wouldn’t turn out vicious and hateful if the vast majority of us came from postscratch universes?
P.P.S. Sorry, Samantha. If people try to diss you by saying you’re friends with me, I would personally like to tell them to eat a bag of dicks. Thanks.
There's a lot of transient Aspect stuff you can do. I don't know if you're old enough to remember the days when all the Dream players thought making their skin transparent was the hottest shit
And I thought that transparent-skin mice for dissection in science class were creepy enough.-- eternityBraid
Servers placed in the Furthest Ring are the backbone of the Age of Replayer Networks, tied together by timetravs and by the hard work of people whose only outlet is the Internet.
I know I covered the generalities previously in the Corruption writeup, but here's a sequence of what you need to do to establish a Ring server.
1: Why haven't you used someone else's?
Replayer networks are difficult to establish and difficult to keep. You must make a Deal for the safety of your network; there's no two ways about it. I would dissuade you if at all possible.
Note that launching a redundant server for Pits, or for other such distributed-federation networks, is already covered under someone else's Deal and thus does not carry the same level of risk. If you'd like to, go ahead!
If you think none of the current Replayer networks work for you - if you object to all their policies, perhaps - then we proceed to the next step.
How will yours be different?
Let's be honest, nobody will use an untested server whose only virtue is that it isn't any of the current ones, especially if they're coming from an existing Replayer network. What do you offer? (It's okay if "more stability" or "better moderation" is the answer. But you have to figure out how you'll be doing that, too.)
How you'll attract new users is a question, too. While there are plenty of loose Replayers still sweeping the skies looking for signals, recruiting from an existing Replayer network has the advantage that it'll jumpstart your growth by providing an initial seed community. The problem is that you're passing a high bar: are a large number of people dissatisfied enough to move? Is it something that fulfills a need that noen of the current networks do?
Usually... the answer is no. But if you think it's yes, do keep going.
How will you run your Ring server?
Remeber: your Ring server will be in the Ring. You will not be able to physically visit it and turn it off and back on again if it acts up. (The Horrorterrors can... for a fee. But best to minimize that possibility.) What hardware will you use? Software?
The Skaianet OSes are pretty stable, if you strip them down to command-line-only. Which requires that you know how a command line works. It's on the graphical level, I'm told, where problems tend to emerge.
You may want to try using a hypervisor - an outer operating system that is extremely simple, that lets you manipulate the inner OS in ways that would otherwise require physical access. For example, the hypervisor can let you monitor the boot sequence without being there, or restart the inner OS. Obviously, this requires that the hypervisor be even more stable than the server software you're running.
Do you have a plan for growth?
Many communities fall foul of this: that their governance structures work fine for an informal server of about eight friends, but it falls apart when a flood of people suddenly bloats the userlist to a hundred.
Write clear rules now. How will you enforce them? How will you select moderators? What gets your post deleted? What's a ban-worthy offense?
And what can you to do to try to preserve the character and intention of your Replayer network as it grows? True preservation is impossible, but you can try to foster the principles upon which you built your Network in those who join. Clickwrap is useless, moderators are mostly useless - what'll really acculturate people is other people. It is important to have consistent rules for what kind of content you like from the beginning.
Who will you Deal with?
This, unfortunately, is a personal decision I cannot help you with.
Keep in mind that researching Horrorterrors is inherently Corruptive. Doing too much reseach is dangerous. Unfortunately, doing too little research is also dangerous.
