[MM3]Sunstormers - OOC

[Shadowmask]

Perception roll. No circumstance penalty.: 1D20+5 = [12]+5 = 17

[Tony Jones]

Sunny may be right. But on the other hand, if we don't even try, then we will certainly fail to stop this.

Don't know about the 'inadmissible in a court of law' thing, or if it's even relevant. There have been plenty of big newspaper stories (Panama Papers, Edward Snowden etc.) using leaked/stolen information. Journalism isn't a trial. We don't have to prove things to a legal standard, just have solid enough evidence to be credible and make enough of a noise to embarrass/expose those behind it. So we definitely need some solid evidence, but not to the standard you mention.

Worrying that what we do might cause chaos and confusion and play into Nemesis' hands could easily become an excuse for not acting at all out of fear of doing the right thing. Which wouldn't seem entirely out of character for Sunny given what we've seen of him. But isn't something Khemis is going to let her stop doing what she thinks is right.

Khemis has no desire to start beating up military personnel, or making contact with Helen. Either way is a can of worms she has no desire to open. Shining the light of truth on things is the best to go in her view.

Also, my comment was not just about this. Sunny was talking about breaking into their apartment when Deborah has learned that their CO is replacing the current stalker in a couple of hours. Khemis has suggested we just wait and learn what we can from him (who being higher ranked hopefully knows more) before going any further. Sunny seems to have ignored this.

[Tony Jones]

And on an unrelated question, on her travels through the mind of the other Deborah, did our Deborah come across any passwords for anything, or anything of that ilk?

[kenmadragon]

Sunny may be right. But on the other hand, if we don't even try, then we will certainly fail to stop this.

My worry is that if we handle this incorrectly, we'll only be making things worse for Albert. Gut instinct tells me we're not likely to find hard-evidence in that apartment, even if we do break in, and that the most valuable intelligence we can rely upon to keep Albert safe is going to be the stuff Deborah can pull from their minds...

Personally, as a player, the "help Albert leave town" is starting to feel like a better idea the more I hear about these super-soldiers and the military's desire to spy on him. That or figuring out a way to sic Helen on them -- I figured they would have a harder time explaining themselves to her than they would covering up any stolen files and physical evidences we could pilfer from their place.

Don't know about the 'inadmissible in a court of law' thing, or if it's even relevant. There have been plenty of big newspaper stories (Panama Papers, Edward Snowden etc.) using leaked/stolen information. Journalism isn't a trial. We don't have to prove things to a legal standard, just have solid enough evidence to be credible and make enough of a noise to embarrass/expose those behind it. So we definitely need some solid evidence, but not to the standard you mention.

Eh. "Big newspaper stories" like that only make headlines and waves in the public mind because they're about people in power that the common public are actually aware of. The Panama Papers detailed the dealings of former heads of state from around the world. Snowden leaked classified intelligence from the NSA that he had stolen from when he worked there. All of those are very big-names and detailed scandalous things that provoked public outrage... and also caused a lot of flak for the people who released that information.

I worry that A) any info we can grab is not going to provoke enough public interest and outrage to motivate folks to keep Albert (and others hunted by the military) safe; and B) that if the public is sufficiently roused to action, the crack-down on who released that intelligence will only grow greater in retribution for the leak, causing problems for all our secret identities...

Worrying that what we do might cause chaos and confusion and play into Nemesis' hands could easily become an excuse for not acting at all out of fear of doing the right thing. Which wouldn't seem entirely out of character for Sunny given what we've seen of him. But isn't something Khemis is going to let her stop doing what she thinks is right.

Yeah, that bit was me OOC wondering if the Military stalking Albert might actually be a month-long con Nemesis had started up by whispering into the ears of someone in the military with the power to greenlight operations on monitoring Sunstormers... whether to eliminate them as potential threats, or for future capture and conscription into the US Military.

Sunny's not really convinced that Nemesis is real... given he's seen no evidence she exists. And seeing as the only one who has interacted with her is Khemis, he's half-suspecting that she's hallucinating as an after-effect of her regenerating brain-matter from some head-trauma caused by the Sunstorm... Though Nemesis being real isn't totally out of the question for him (he's a comic-book fan enough to think that if Nemesis is real, she might just be another Sunstormer who's gone mad with cosmic power, or perhaps is an alien divorced of conventional morality), he just has trouble believing Khemis when he literally cannot see her as well, despite his ability to perceive the energy of the Sunstorm.

Also, my comment was not just about this. Sunny was talking about breaking into their apartment when Deborah has learned that their CO is replacing the current stalker in a couple of hours. Khemis has suggested we just wait and learn what we can from him (who being higher ranked hopefully knows more) before going any further. Sunny seems to have ignored this.

Err... yeah. Seems like I did miss that post about mind-reading the CO when he showed up to replace Sinclair. I only saw the "let's release the evidence to the public!" post from after he'd wondered about breaking into the apartment, and then had Sunny think "wait, but just releasing the evidence willy-nilly could go badly for us!" which was phrased phrased poorly in the IC...

That's my bad.

Yeah, Sunny would be *totally* on board with the "wait for the CO to show up" suggestion! Just not so much the "steal physical evidence and leak it to the press/publish it online" idea because he doesn't believe it'll have the effect Khemis hoped for.




Anyways, now I'm uncertain about how to frame my next IC post to deal with that disagreement... Something along the lines of "I doubt any amount of physical evidence would convince people that 'Super-Soldiers are Stalking Sunstormers' is anything but a conspiracy-theory"? Or "even if we break in, I doubt special-forces types would leave that kinda stuff around"? Or just play up Sunny's social inexperience and have him be annoyed at the insinuation of 'mansplaining', and just put his phone away petulantly instead because he doesn't know how to respond to that and doesn't want to get into a full-blown argument with Khemis while Deborah's still reading Sinclair's mind since getting pissed at someone via text probably isn't a good look?

[Tony Jones]

My worry is that if we handle this incorrectly, we'll only be making things worse for Albert. Gut instinct tells me we're not likely to find hard-evidence in that apartment, even if we do break in, and that the most valuable intelligence we can rely upon to keep Albert safe is going to be the stuff Deborah can pull from their minds...

Khemis has exactly the same worry, which is why she wants to see what evidence we can find before deciding how/if/when to go public.

That's partly why I asked whether Deborah has found any passwords. If she can get passwords from the CO, then assuming we can get access to their laptops etc. that might unlock some genuine evidence we can use.

Personally, as a player, the "help Albert leave town" is starting to feel like a better idea the more I hear about these super-soldiers and the military's desire to spy on him. That or figuring out a way to sic Helen on them -- I figured they would have a harder time explaining themselves to her than they would covering up any stolen files and physical evidences we could pilfer from their place.

Not sure about this. I don't think we know enough yet to decide...

Eh. "Big newspaper stories" like that only make headlines and waves in the public mind because they're about people in power that the common public are actually aware of. The Panama Papers detailed the dealings of former heads of state from around the world. Snowden leaked classified intelligence from the NSA that he had stolen from when he worked there. All of those are very big-names and detailed scandalous things that provoked public outrage... and also caused a lot of flak for the people who released that information.

I worry that A) any info we can grab is not going to provoke enough public interest and outrage to motivate folks to keep Albert (and others hunted by the military) safe; and B) that if the public is sufficiently roused to action, the crack-down on who released that intelligence will only grow greater in retribution for the leak, causing problems for all our secret identities...

Fair points. But again, if we don't try, certainly nothing will change!

Yeah, that bit was me OOC wondering if the Military stalking Albert might actually be a month-long con Nemesis had started up by whispering into the ears of someone in the military with the power to greenlight operations on monitoring Sunstormers... whether to eliminate them as potential threats, or for future capture and conscription into the US Military.

You can see the (perhaps true) realisation of what she thinks Nemesis is up to in the IC thread!

Sunny's not really convinced that Nemesis is real... given he's seen no evidence she exists. And seeing as the only one who has interacted with her is Khemis, he's half-suspecting that she's hallucinating as an after-effect of her regenerating brain-matter from some head-trauma caused by the Sunstorm... Though Nemesis being real isn't totally out of the question for him (he's a comic-book fan enough to think that if Nemesis is real, she might just be another Sunstormer who's gone mad with cosmic power, or perhaps is an alien divorced of conventional morality), he just has trouble believing Khemis when he literally cannot see her as well, despite his ability to perceive the energy of the Sunstorm.

That is fair. Khemis is confident she's real, but you're right, she has absolutely no evidence of that. She could ask Nemesis for information she couldn't possibly know, but that's potentially a whole can of worms she's not too keen on opening right now...

Yeah, Sunny would be *totally* on board with the "wait for the CO to show up" suggestion! Just not so much the "steal physical evidence and leak it to the press/publish it online" idea because he doesn't believe it'll have the effect Khemis hoped for.

Well, I guess the first thing to do is actually get some evidence, then decide what to do with it!

[kenmadragon]

Err, it's been a while since I last wrote down how many Sunny had, so... how many Hero Points does Sunny have right now? I can't recall how many we've got at the moment.

[Tony Jones]

Well Khemis has 3 and hasn't spent any since we started. I'd imagine Sunny has received the same but I can't remember whether he's spent any...

[Neo-Paladin]

He should have 3 as well...

[kenmadragon]

Alright, now I'm down to 2 then. Not sure why he's doing so, but it should be interesting?

[Tony Jones]

So is Sunny seeing through Khemis' (and I guess Nemesis') invisibility here? Power Stunting for Counters Concealment or something like that?

[Neo-Paladin]

Nemesis is not really invisible.

[Tony Jones]

Huh?! Psychic invisibility or something?

But as I said Khemis is invisible right now so if Sunny is seeing her he's getting through that somehow...

[Neo-Paladin]

He is seeing the Sunstormer energy. Kind of like a cloud of radiation. He does not know Khemis' exact position, merely the general area her radiation comes from.

[Tony Jones]

His Sunstormer sense is defined as sight and her power is Concealment to all sight, that's why I'm asking...

[kenmadragon]

Yeah, Sunny can probably tell that Khemis is somewhere in this cloud of energy/stellar-radiation... which isn't much considering "cloud of energy" could mean literal Cloud-Area and he's only got an estimate that she's somewhere in a cloud of Sunstormer energy formed by 15-foot radius around every grid-position you were standing in on a map (supposing we had one) for, like, the last minute or so. Or it could be less-mechanical and just be "all Sunstormers give off this energy that lingers in the area around them -- Sunny can see that, even if he can't see her, so he knows she's somewhere nearby even if he has no idea where exactly she is unless she makes noises he can hear".

Normally, people aren't invisible to his sight so he can at least identify who in that area has the most energy that matches the energy-signature of the radiation he can perceive. That's how he can identify Sunstormers by looking at them -- matching the radiation he can sense to the people who give it off.

Khemis somehow blends into that, making her energy so hard to perceive as distinct from the background radiation that her presence gives off to Sunny's senses. As far as Sunny is concerned, he can only tell "she's somewhere in that area because I can see the radiation left over by her presence and it hasn't faded away yet"... but he has no idea where you are exactly.



Anyways, I think the really crucial thing here is that Sunny (after using that HP to re-roll) can actually perceive Sunstorm-energy that isn't Khemis' energy in the area where Khemis claims to be talking to Nemesis. So, good news! Sunny no longer suspects that Khemis is schizophrenic or anything with this supposed imaginary-friend. Bad news! She's still probably hallucinating if I'm guessing right -- the "Nemesis figure" Khemis is "seeing" is probably an illusion of some kind broadcast by whatever power allows Nemesis to telepresence herself like this.


Man, Sunny is not gonna like the implications of this.