-trajectory. agreement.-

[from_scratch]

"Hasn't everyone heard of Kithabel? I live in Africa, not under a rock," Cam tells Tattletale. "You, on the other hand, are new to me."

Comments

[whole_new_can]

"Perfect. We don't really need the minds, it'd be risky to do this to a person anyway. You make a copy of the capes we need, leave off the safety precautions, we open a gate that way."

[from_scratch]

"I can do capes with passive powers like that but active ones they're not going to be able to do anything. This also relies on 'safety precautions' being a really discrete thing I can just leave out."

[whole_new_can]

"It is. They could do powers without the limits but tack them on anyway. 'Course, a lot of it is the safety of the host not just the parasite, so it could go really wrong if there were a person in the middle of it.

Passive powers only is trickier, means we can't just have a Labyrinth get us where we need to go, but there's a cape for that. Cauldron got around with a line of sight portal maker and a cape they called two six five. You copy two six and he touches our Labyrinth, she can find the world we need to get to that way, and there we go."


"No," Faultline objects. "I'm not risking one of my people like that. That power's already got side effects that would interact badly with Labyrinth, and you want to use a less safe version on her?"

[from_scratch]

While they argue, Cam plugs the complete internal documentation of Cauldron and puts it in his computer and rummages.

[wormcan]

The first and most obvious thing is that Cauldron was evil. Or at least amoral to the point where it makes little difference.

They were trying to build an army that could fight Scion, which they did by harvesting the corpse of the other entity and figuring out what gives powers by trial and error. And then giving formulas to usually-technically-consenting test subjects. A lot of people died at first, a lot ended up with unwanted physical changes, and a lot successfully got superpowers. They had rather large dungeons for the second group, planning to deploy them against Scion eventually. Once they had reliable products they'd sell them.

The second thing is that they ran everything. The entire Protectorate was a Cauldron plan, as was the Birdcage, and they have fingers in every heroic or villainous pie. Had, if the newcomers are right about Cauldron being eradicated yesterday.

They did not know where the Endbringers came from or how they fit into the alien life cycle story. The original source for most of what they knew about the entities was a member called Contessa. Her power showed her, back when it could show her literally anything. Before Cauldron killed it, the second entity had neutralized Contessa's power to stop her asking anything about them; she likewise couldn't ask her power things about Endbringers or Eidolon.

Some parts of the collected written works of Cauldron were regularly updated, but there have indeed been no new notes since shortly after Behemoth.

[from_scratch]

And are Tattletale and her friend done arguing yet?

[wormcan]

Faultline is very consistent about not wanting to risk her teammate on this, since it might not even work and the side effects are definitely harmful. Tattletale has agreed to compromise on looking through Cauldron's notes for some passive power that might help, but it's a long shot.

[from_scratch]

Right, Cauldron's notes, what've you got?

[wormcan]

There are very few powers that do interdimensional travel. (Otherwise Cauldron wouldn't have been so reliant on Doormaker.) All they need is a power that will select the right destination world, which is where Labyrinth comes in, and Tattletale has a gadget to do the rest. Those powers are also rare, and are universally active-use.

[from_scratch]

"We've only got active powers for that. Lemme see if I can find a trump who can use other capes' powers or something." Search search.

[wormcan]

Trumps exist. One that copies powers and uses them like the original owner but weaker, one that splits powers and shares them among groups of capes, one that copies the general shape of the output and delivers pulverizing gravity blasts in that form, one that can kill a cape and collect their power. None of the trump powers are automatic, with the exception of the Butcher. And nobody wants to use that trump power if at all possible.

[from_scratch]

"I may have just come up with a hack to add arbitrarily chosen attenuated powers to anybody, some risk of weird side effects..."

[whole_new_can]

Tattletale peers at Cam's screen. "Attenuated. You want to try to use the Butcher's power. On purpose."

[from_scratch]

"With mindless bodies. Make a whoever and a Butcher, put the whoever so they, say, suffocate the Butcher, kill the Butcher. There'd be no mind to transfer. But I'm not sure how it'd shake out."

[whole_new_can]

"There are so many things wrong with that. We don't know if that would count as the whoever killing the Butcher, we need the whoever's power for what is probably the hardest use of it and we'd end up with a weaker one, and Cauldron described the Butcher as taking over the other cape's mind. I for one don't want to risk getting overwritten by a blank mind."

[from_scratch]

"Well, yes, I did say risk of weird side effects, you'll notice I'm not piling up blanks of all the cool powers I've ever heard of with matching Butchers to suffocate right here and now."

[whole_new_can]

"How confident are you that you're safe? I wouldn't try it either, but if you're immune there is a way to become a parahuman."

[from_scratch]

"I started out deeply uncertain my indestructibility would apply to parahuman powers at all, but so far have found no exceptions up to and including the Simurgh song and Moord Nag. But if you mean I should take a vial there might not be a way to have it affect me at all while not having the full breadth of effect, sort of like I could do a line of coke and barely notice or take the entire suite of symptoms, but not pick and choose."

[whole_new_can]

"I'm not saying you could get the power without being hooked up to the interdimensional symbiote. But if you do take the whole thing, you think that'd give the Butcher an in? Even if that comes later and you don't want it to?"

[from_scratch]

"Hooked up to the what?"

[whole_new_can]

"Interdimensional parasite. The passengers. Every parahuman has one, there's an extra organ in our brains making the connection. When I come up with some brilliant deduction, the computation's happening somewhere and it isn't in here. And when some cape sneezes plasma, that's not created out of nothing. The passenger moves things or energy or information in from parallel earths.

That's what Cauldron vials are, is a distilled connection to pieces of passengers."

[from_scratch]

"Okay! Apparently I can just attach things to other universes and not even know I'm doing it!"

[whole_new_can]

"Or it could be them connecting to the copy because it looks like the original. Passengers aren't exactly smart."

[from_scratch]

"How not smart."

[whole_new_can]

"Very. They've got what might be describable as instincts, and they've got a lot of computing power, but they don't think. Or they barely do. Hard to tell those apart."