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AAA agendas and sliding scale of evil?

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Black

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« Reply #30 on: <10-20-13/1755:48> »
Pretty sure Yamatetsu(sp?) owned Crashed Cart and a bug-possed executive was involved.  Even then Evo was changing the nature of metahuman kind... Integrated Services Division...
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SnackerBob

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« Reply #31 on: <10-20-13/1814:53> »
Incidentally, when did Damien Knight go from the smartest man in the room to the stupidest egomaniac on the planet?

GiraffeShaman

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« Reply #32 on: <10-20-13/1916:16> »
Quote
Pretty sure Yamatetsu(sp?) owned Crashed Cart and a bug-possed executive was involved.  Even then Evo was changing the nature of metahuman kind... Integrated Services Division...
It did, but it wasn't a Mega yet. I guess it never lost Crashcart, even despite the FBI investigation. They were implanting 2XS chips in important people using Crashcart.

Reaver

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« Reply #33 on: <10-20-13/1916:57> »
Incidentally, when did Damien Knight go from the smartest man in the room to the stupidest egomaniac on the planet?

the line between madness and genius is often razor thin...

throw in Ego, power, and position......

Damien Knight is ruthless, brilliant, driven..... and probably insane.....
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Black

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« Reply #34 on: <10-20-13/1947:57> »
Maybe Damien's getting old and is starting to be concerned with his own mortality.  Maybe his just getting tired of being the most powerful mundane in the world and yet still feeling inattiquate when compared to Dragons etc?  His long been looking for the edge he needs against the awakened...
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martinchaen

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« Reply #35 on: <10-20-13/2005:55> »
To be fair, we don't have a lot of insight into Mr. Knight's thought processes; could it be that he's not the one and/or only SOB in Ares that wants to mess around with bugs?

The same goes for all the mega's; are any of them, except SK by way of Lofwyr, under the control of a single individual? And just like with SK, I doubt that Lofwyr and other controlling entities exercise 100% control of every single project undertaken by the parent and child corps.

Seems to me they're all into various "Bad Shit" (TM), so to me the viewpoint of the observer determines how "evil" the corps are, one way or another...

SnackerBob

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« Reply #36 on: <10-20-13/2006:28> »
On a side note, I'm less afraid of bugs attempting revenge on Ares than I was of bugs with no human viewpoint. The bugs used to be ultimately defined by their instinct to propagate their species. They used metahuman resources as tools to efficiently achieve that end, but that was the extent of it.
Even attempting more good merges was a necessary compromise for survival. Attempting to attack a megacorp doesn't aid in the instinct for survival much. There are hives all over the world that Ares can't find, and ultimately doesn't much care to find. Move on, multiply, and stop with the petty vengeance.

Reaver

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« Reply #37 on: <10-20-13/2119:50> »
Vengeance is a survival trait. In insects like bees, when they sting something, the stinger detaches, killing the bee, but also releasing a hormone which drives other bees into a frenzy, swarming the original stung target. dozens, even hundreds will die in an effort to drive off or kill the originally stung target. All to "Protect" the hive and the queen...

Here we have Ares, hunting and killing insect spirits (and experimenting on them!)... so it actually makes sense that intelligent insect spirits, would seek out Ares people they believe to be a threat and seek to kill or drive them off to protect the queen.... or themselves....

and that, should scare the drek right out of the runners.... for now you have insect spirits, not only trying to reproduce... but ACTIVLY seeking out threats to their existence.....
Where am I going? And why am I in a hand basket ???

Remember: You can't fix Stupid. But you can beat on it with a 2x4 until it smartens up! Or dies.

Black

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« Reply #38 on: <10-20-13/2137:57> »
Really is an invasion of the body snatchers type thing.

Damien Knight may not be in full control of Ares, but he has been portrayed as being well aware of the project.  Not sure if his aware that Ares is no longer in full control though...

Damien Knight has appeared in the setting fiction numerious times (for example, the Dragon Soul trilogy), so his portrayel as an arrogant, driven achiver is well documented.  His relationship with Big D, his focus on tech which neutralises magical threats, his focus of enhancing the body through tech (which he makes great use of personally), its all there.

I personally think he was looking for an edge against the next magical threat (a marketable, profitable edge idealy), and he thought he had the bugs beaten.  They were a resource, not a threat, something to be used in his endless struggle to give the mundane man (himself mostly) the edge against the large number of awakened threats out there...

Given his personal experiences with Crash 1.0, I'm actually surprised that Ares has let the ball slip on dealing with technomancers and A.I....
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SnackerBob

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« Reply #39 on: <10-20-13/2150:10> »
Rationally, I get your point. And I don't actually know what sticks in my craw with this change of tactic.

Looking back at all of the various plots over the years, an inhuman  morality system has been the norm. Dragons, AIs,bugs, Horrors, probably Sybil... None of them work on a level that we can really 'get'. To me, that made them more terrifying. I can understand mammals mostly. I work off of a similar instinctual drive. Insects... They work off of different rules. Intelligent insects... Man, I don't even know. I want them to work off of a completely alien philosophy of vengeance. Not sabotaging a type of gun for a PR attack. What insect would do that? I don't want my insects doing something that MCT would do.
Looking at Insects, I want them to act like the totem. Wasp attacks through numbers and force, Beetle  is aggressive but adaptive, Firefly is passive, Ant buries and survives, Roach hides and looks for optimal growth. I wish Roach was as prevalent in canon as Ant has been. But that's my thing.

I dunno. I'm talking myself through a lot of the changes from 2ND to 5th nowadays. I'm sure that I'll eventually come around to the changes, but until then, I discuss them.

For the record, I prefer 4th metaplot to nearly all of 3Rd.

Reaver

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« Reply #40 on: <10-20-13/2209:38> »
Rationally, I get your point. And I don't actually know what sticks in my craw with this change of tactic.

Looking back at all of the various plots over the years, an inhuman  morality system has been the norm. Dragons, AIs,bugs, Horrors, probably Sybil... None of them work on a level that we can really 'get'. To me, that made them more terrifying. I can understand mammals mostly. I work off of a similar instinctual drive. Insects... They work off of different rules. Intelligent insects... Man, I don't even know. I want them to work off of a completely alien philosophy of vengeance. Not sabotaging a type of gun for a PR attack. What insect would do that? I don't want my insects doing something that MCT would do.
Looking at Insects, I want them to act like the totem. Wasp attacks through numbers and force, Beetle  is aggressive but adaptive, Firefly is passive, Ant buries and survives, Roach hides and looks for optimal growth. I wish Roach was as prevalent in canon as Ant has been. But that's my thing.

I dunno. I'm talking myself through a lot of the changes from 2ND to 5th nowadays. I'm sure that I'll eventually come around to the changes, but until then, I discuss them.

For the record, I prefer 4th metaplot to nearly all of 3Rd.

Not sure if the insects had much to do with the failure of the Excalibur rifle or not.... We know that it was designed to fire a magical payload to combat astral threats.... so maybe this was just Ares trying to break the rules of magic..... and after spending billions working on the project with no luck, the Bugs decided to use their influence to have it released for sale as a way to hurt Ares....

(Which would go a long way to the proposition that alchemy can not be used to create magical bullets... after all if the brightest minds at Ares can work for years and not get it to work.... how could one mage in his basement???)
Where am I going? And why am I in a hand basket ???

Remember: You can't fix Stupid. But you can beat on it with a 2x4 until it smartens up! Or dies.

Mirikon

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« Reply #41 on: <10-21-13/1420:28> »
Actually, not quite true, Reaver. CrashCart was started by Yamatetsu back when they were in Japan as an answer/competitor to DocWagon. The one of the guys in charge of the Seattle branch was a Wasp shaman, using 2XS, CrashCart, and of course the UB to find strong hosts. Yamatetsu became EVO when they moved to Vladivostok later. So CrashCart has always been EVO.
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Reaver

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« Reply #42 on: <10-21-13/1447:59> »
Actually, not quite true, Reaver. CrashCart was started by Yamatetsu back when they were in Japan as an answer/competitor to DocWagon. The one of the guys in charge of the Seattle branch was a Wasp shaman, using 2XS, CrashCart, and of course the UB to find strong hosts. Yamatetsu became EVO when they moved to Vladivostok later. So CrashCart has always been EVO.

:D

Never said anything on Crashcart cause, I don't know anything about them :D

But I an sure Black  is thankful for the info :D
Where am I going? And why am I in a hand basket ???

Remember: You can't fix Stupid. But you can beat on it with a 2x4 until it smartens up! Or dies.

Nath

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« Reply #43 on: <10-21-13/1520:22> »
It did, but it wasn't a Mega yet. I guess it never lost Crashcart, even despite the FBI investigation. They were implanting 2XS chips in important people using Crashcart.
Yamatetsu has been a "prime megacorporation" with AAA rating and a justice on the Corporate Court since 2042, ten years before the events depicted in 2XS, and qualified as a mere megacorporation for even longer.