[b]Everyone:[/b] [b]Channel: Main[/b] [b]NeonCzolgoz: @everyone [/b]All hands. [list][*][b]Anthropozine has been Locked. Only Admins may post.[/b][/list] [b]NeonCzolgoz: [/b]We’re about to cover something dangerous, and I mean dangerous. I’m not fucking about here. This is going to make what Persephone just went through look like baby’s first steps. [b]NeonCzolgoz:[/b] This is war and I need Captains. I don’t want obedient soldiers. I need an officer corps. [b]NeonCzolgoz:[/b] I need people who I can trust to follow me to the gates of Hell, but not because I told you to. I need people who’ll keep going without me. [b]NeonCzolgoz:[/b] No conscripts. [b]NeonCzolgoz: [/b]That’s not what any of you signed up for. [b]NeonCzolgoz: [/b]No public sign ons. DMs only, and I’ll invite you to the sub-group. Peer pressure is bullshit. The site needs to keep running like normal through this, so if you don’t want to get dragged into this, there’s still plenty of work for you here. I know some of you literally can’t afford this, especially if you’ve got family. We’ll keep you out of it. [b]NeonCzolgoz: [/b]I mean it. [list][*][b]Anthropozine is Open[/b][/list] [b]NumbToNothing: [/b]holy shit [b]Channel: Murine Corps.[/b] [list][*][b]Persephone has been added to group[/b] [*][b]November has been added to group[/b][/list] [b]NeonCzolgoz: [/b]The few, the proud, the brave. [b]NeonCzolgoz:[/b] Hopefully not too few. [b]Pink:[/b] “Top of my head, Junta’s a guarantee. Numb’s a crapshoot. Trust them to want to do the right thing, don’t think they can afford it. Errant would be too much to ask for. ProvFick’s anyone’s guess. She’ll want to, but she’s already spinning a lot of plates. Even if 3V tries to sign on, I’m keeping her out of this. She’s too high-profile. At least I’ve already got two of my top picks involved.” He checks his DMs but keeps the screen from your line of sight. “Shit. Eli wants in and I can’t afford to say no.” [b]Channel: Murine Corps.[/b] [list][*][b]NumbToNothing has been added to group[/b] [*][b]JuntaSThompson has been added to group[/b][/list] [b]JuntaSThompson: [/b]Heading to Ares. I know you said Gaia, but Ares is more believable. If the charge goes through, I’ll make my way to Gaia from there and keep making small purchases. [b]JuntaSThompson: [/b]If. [b]NumbToNothing: [/b]What’s this about? [b]NeonCzolgoz:[/b] Numb, just the person I need. [b]NeonCzolgoz: [/b]everything for a between-two-ferns job, next two hours. [b]NumbToNothing:[/b] Got it. Where? [b]NeonCzolgoz: [/b]Persephones. [b]NumbToNothing: [/b]Are there still newsvans out there? [b]NeonCzolgoz:[/b] Not as many, why? [b]NumbToNothing: [/b]There all night? [b]NeonCzolgoz: [/b]oh lol yeah got it they’re all half asleep go mad York looks back up from his phone. “I still don’t know all of what’s going on, so I need to prep with Marco. I need you to find a shooting space for me. Empty apartments, a spot in the basement we can block off, just somewhere less incriminating. Staying here’s safer than moving, and I don’t want to make any stops before Selene when we go. ” [Pink! I’m giving you rolls here, to act as [i]prompts [/i]rather than [i]challenges[/i]. As such, use whatever bonuses you can justify, and failures are free to be fun. All challenges are difficulty 8: [list=1][*]Checking for empty apartments. On Success, she correctly finds one. On Failure, she’s wrong about it. [*]Checking other areas. On Success, she finds an appropriate, hidden part of the building that can be secured. On Failure, something or someone prevents it, be it the space not existing, maintenance workers, or a suspicious building manager. [*]Pink runs into some of Elodie’s neighbors. On Success, they’ll remember her positively. On Failure, they’ll just remember her.[/list] The consequences of any failure may come now, or the consequences are deferred for later in the scene. You’re also free to reintroduce any relevant sisters to the scene who are free to join it.] [b]Persephone:[/b] We are going to skip over a bit of time, here. A few things happened that are interesting enough to hear Elodie’s perspective on. I would like to hear about who recognized you on the train, and what gave it away? Who were they, and did they talk to you? Did you talk to them? Your kid messaged you, too. You regret something about how it went. What is it? Finally, you ended up at the door of Apartment 14, 272 Bostrom street. The building's worse than yours, but the places are bigger. For people with more money and lower standards, or at least, reasons to want a lot more space even if it comes with black mould. Tell me how you made your approach that led you here, now, staring at a door loosely replaced after being forced open. It looks like a shimmy and a rush job, not like a boot, a shoulder or a ram. Someone cared about not being obvious about this, but they cared more about being fast. Impossible to tell how long ago. They might even still be in there. There is an indescribable smell in the air here. Not obviously pleasant or unpleasant yet, it's like hearing music from the house across a parking lot and working out if you like the song or not. That might mean it's truly unfamiliar, or it might only mean that you're not close enough. [b]Blue and Orange:[/b] Things have been going well. The work friends are interesting, and more importantly, comfortable enough to forget themselves when they let details of work start to slip. Starlight’s just moving the conversation on from the big fight over whose jurisdiction the CasanovAI problem was to prosecute. A medical ethicist designing a machine learning algorithm that could predict which therapists were most likely to be taken in front of the ethics committee before harm could happen. This wasn’t a problem until it was discovered that the ethicist had also added a protocol that would send the details of the most likely candidates to his personal phone, flagged as ‘dating pool’. For spurious reasons related to proprietary code, the hot potato had briefly landed on her desk. “I’m shocked I’m not working on Yggrasil right now.” Starlight pokes at the food in front of her without paying attention to it. “They poached Orochi Group’s head geneticist this time, but [i]before[/i] he could get results. They’ve been trying for weeks to find out if they can claim ‘knowing what fails’ as trade secrets. I thought they’d have something by now.” “Mm. Unsurprised. Research methodology can’t be protected. Legal for a man to know what not to try. NDA ironclad, since he doesn’t suggest product paths he knows are failures, not stating successes. The races are keeping me busy.” The tall thin man, Daniel Perez, is nicknamed ‘Robocop’. All of the guests use it when referring to him, not all of the guests use it affectionately. “Yes.” “At least they’re a bit interesting.” Sighs junior prosecutor Wendy Cummins, a medium-sized woman in a small-size dinner jacket, blonde hair in a tight bun with a plastic sheen. Even now, prepared for being ambushed by cameras looking for a bad angle and giving none. “Today I’m dealing with a contractor hosting the industry design standards for disability ramps, violating their license. Just an internally hosted document that someone else found and shared. Now we’ve got pirated ramps.” She snorts. “Ramps. Imagine looking at a wheelchair access and caring if its breeding papers are in order.” “Do they even breed horses now?” The chubby man at the end of the table asks. He looks like bleached dough, white pants, white silk shirt, bright white hair and eyes pressed by his cheekbones into a smiling squint. Charlie Euler, apparently. “Decanting papers sounds a bit more lively. Always said it, back when were still fighting over whether the date of birth counts from the first synthesis of the genome or the first heartbeat or what have you.” That would be about forty years ago. Starlight sighs. “Hmm.” ‘Robcoop’ hums, and there’s quiet. He looks up from his plate. “What happened to the inquiry into Florey’s Floozie?” There’s an uncomfortable silence. “I was waiting for the forensic accountants to finish their work, but then it disappeared from my active cases. Did somebody else get it?” And this, Blue and Orange, is when the other guests give you glances to remind themselves that they are not entirely among their inner circle tonight. What have you been doing until now, and how do you play this? Where are you at this table? Also; What did you cook? [b]White: [/b] Fiona looks up from her book again and puts it down for real. You officially appear to be more interesting - or at least, what you’ve asked is. She starts typing on her phone, instead, eyes darting up every few taps, to make sure she doesn’t miss anything. Crystal, though. Crystal purrs at the touch. There is no resistance to the turns, to the touch - only encouraging twists to go further and see more. “Those aren’t the questions I expected,” she moves her head as she smiles, so your fingertips trace the curve of her lips as they move, “because I never expect anyone to ask the right questions.” “We all start with realizing we are not who we want to be, and that always comes before we learn what we want.” She asks, as she makes the same observations of White. Her dress, her construction, her mannerisms. Crystal doesn’t need to direct like she’s being directed - in those actions, White is speaking as much as she is listening. “It was like being an artist, if you’ve ever had the chance? You take what you admire from others, and learn what you want from what you find worth taking. Then you find an absence that no-one else can fill. You experiment. You learn why nobody else has been able to fill it, and you do better.” She takes a step back, creating distance, creating void. The tilt of her head, the mischief of her grin, the twinkle in her eyes. She expects you to fill that absence. She hopes for patience, first. She’s showing off. “Everything is intent. That is the hardest part. You can’t benefit from experimentation until you know what it is you want. Do you know?” Fiona interrupts, looking up from her phone. “Excuse me if this is a rude question, but did you used to be a dragon?” [b]3V:[/b] I apologize, you’re clearly in the middle of something, but I thought this might be a good time to ask about your store; Who’s your favourite employee, and who have you put in charge of the shop while you’re away? And if the answer isn’t the same person, why not?