Results 571 to 600 of 1504
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2012-12-24, 09:41 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2008
- Location
- Xin-Shalast
- Gender
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2012-12-24, 10:52 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2006
- Location
- Dancin' away
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
While Tagii's fate was somewhat anticlimactic, I think that this is the best thing that could happen.
For both Kaff and Karl.i am going to make it through this year
if it kills me
i am going to make it though this year
if it kills me
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2012-12-26, 03:40 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2008
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
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2012-12-26, 08:19 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2011
- Location
- Wisconsin, USA
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Well, I have to salute Mr. Taylor for wrapping up the arc so skillfully. The death of Tagii was quick but it didn't feel forced, it followed naturally from what went before.
Of course, we've only got a couple of strips left in this book, so the storyline is clearly going to continue from a fresh perspective in the next book, as far as I can see, anyway. The immediate situation has been resolved, but none of the deeper questions.Spoiler
So the song runs on, with shift and change,
Through the years that have no name,
And the late notes soar to a higher range,
But the theme is still the same.
Man's battle-cry and the guns' reply
Blend in with the old, old rhyme
That was traced in the score of the strata marks
While millenniums winked like campfire sparks
Down the winds of unguessed time. -- 4th Stanza, The Bad Lands, Badger Clark
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2012-12-27, 06:48 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2010
- Location
- Toledo, Ohio
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Considering that Tagon doesn't exactly trust AIs to begin with, and has had three go catastrophically wrong (well, Petey and LOTA turned out to not be that bad, but both seemed disasterous at the time), and even NSB has mutinied and cost him a ship (albeit to save the galaxy), equipping the AI with a brain-bomb is the sort of thing that Tagon would normally praise, if not order as standard once the idea occurred to him. The only issue with Para is her divided loyalties.
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2012-12-27, 10:11 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2011
- Location
- Therinos
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
You could get the kind of effectiveness that Tagii displayed by jacking Ennesby up to his intelligence level circa-Blackness Between. The only flaw in this plan is whether Tagon will remember that Ennesby stole the ship during the Core Wars.
Does anyone else think it's ironic (or at least funny) that the only AI that remained completely loyal to the Toughs only left because he became the Fleetmind?
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2012-12-27, 11:18 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2007
- Location
- On Paper
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
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2012-12-28, 01:57 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Realistically, Tagon isn't going to trust Para to build him a new AI, which is a shame, because she's the only one who's really good at it. I doubt the old Tag (as built by Kevyn) would have been able to deal with that battleplate. Mind you, I have my doubts that pre-insanity Tagii would have been able to, either...her innate "protect the crew" locks might well have prevented her doing anything as dangerous as *ramming a battleplate*, no matter what the provocation.
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2012-12-28, 07:28 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2011
- Location
- Wisconsin, USA
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Yes, Tagii was helped immensely by her ability to take risks no sane AI would. The fact that the plan worked indicates how unexpected it was.
Spoiler
So the song runs on, with shift and change,
Through the years that have no name,
And the late notes soar to a higher range,
But the theme is still the same.
Man's battle-cry and the guns' reply
Blend in with the old, old rhyme
That was traced in the score of the strata marks
While millenniums winked like campfire sparks
Down the winds of unguessed time. -- 4th Stanza, The Bad Lands, Badger Clark
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2012-12-28, 08:43 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2006
- Location
- Dancin' away
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Yes, I don't think it will be able to be done again- the UNS will rejigger their system for Pa'anuri and other threats.
i am going to make it through this year
if it kills me
i am going to make it though this year
if it kills me
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2012-12-28, 09:47 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
New update (as if that ever changed. Yay, Howard!):
SpoilerOkay, Usar is Para. There's a monkey-spy on the ex-Morokweng (who just declined Emm's offer yesterday), and there's even more Gav trouble on the horizon. Who might that other guy be? And why did the whole place look underwater? Celeschuul below-sea-level? Would anyone more diligent in the archives note when "Usar" was mentioned?
Signed,
TaRix the too-lazy-to-keyword-search
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2012-12-28, 10:05 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2005
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Spoiler
It says 'Europa' in the upper left corner, so I presume it's on Europa...
NOW COMPLETE: Let's Play Starcraft II Trilogy:
Hell, It's About Time: Wings of Liberty
Does This Mutation Make Me Look Fat: Heart of the Swarm
My Life For Aiur? I Barely Know 'Er: Legacy of the Void
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2012-12-28, 10:08 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2008
- Location
- Xin-Shalast
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Spoiler
I believe Europa is a waterworldmoon in Sol. Int-Aff-Int means something and has come up before from what I recall, but I couldn't say.
The oddly garbed Gav seems dressed like the last MIB UNS Intelligence character we saw every so often associating with Xinchub. So I imagine he's a Gav MIB type. Now the real question is whether gavmogre tech has reached the point of trans-species alteration or if Manis is merely an agent of this apparent gav-faction.
Para as a gavmogre is an interesting potential angle, but someone will probably come on about how she couldn't be one.
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2012-12-29, 12:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2008
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Int-Aff-Int is Internal Affairs- Intelligence, apparently a UNS internal affairs division devoted to black bag operations and covert observation...
Avatar by kpenguin
Spoiler
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2012-12-29, 02:41 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2007
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Play your character, not your alignment.
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2012-12-29, 03:13 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
I would say it seems very UNlikely that she's *that* Ventura, simply because she's not old enough--she'd have been a teenager at most back when the HV scale was first mentioned. That's not to say she isn't related to whoever the Ventura in the scale name is, though!
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2012-12-29, 08:00 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2011
- Location
- Wisconsin, USA
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
I always assumed that she was the daughter of that Ventura (emerging from a Wombulator, of course ).
Spoiler
So the song runs on, with shift and change,
Through the years that have no name,
And the late notes soar to a higher range,
But the theme is still the same.
Man's battle-cry and the guns' reply
Blend in with the old, old rhyme
That was traced in the score of the strata marks
While millenniums winked like campfire sparks
Down the winds of unguessed time. -- 4th Stanza, The Bad Lands, Badger Clark
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2012-12-29, 08:58 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2009
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2012-12-29, 09:13 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2006
- Location
- Dancin' away
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
i am going to make it through this year
if it kills me
i am going to make it though this year
if it kills me
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2012-12-29, 12:45 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2007
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Given the degree of skill she exhibits, and the amount of experience she seems to have when she's not putting on her wide-eyed innocent act, I think it's also very likely that Para's older than she looks, or usually acts. I mean, seriously, we're talking about her actually being a photocopy of a male webcartoonist from the 21st century as a reasonable thing that might happen in this universe. A woman lying about her age is impossible?
And I'm not sure how long it's actually been, in-universe, since we met Haban and the Henke-Ventura scale, but I don't think it's the ten-plus years that it's been in real life.Play your character, not your alignment.
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2012-12-29, 01:18 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2007
- Location
- On Paper
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Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Of course, they don't make it sound like the H-V scale is a new thing, and Starship AI's have been around for centuries, just look at Bristlecone.
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2012-12-29, 02:19 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2005
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
We just had an entire story arc based on Gavs using a nanite tank and retroencephaloderm nanites to alter their identities, and REDhack nanites which were used to overwrite existing personalities. I would say that, from a narrative standpoint, it's unlikely that Para is the little girl she claims to be. The end of this story arc would be the perfect time to reveal it.
Furthermore, nanites could be used to make changes to a person's body and/or memories, and then they could deactivate themselves and be flushed out of the person's system. The result would be a spy with a 100% undetectable disguise (I'm sure that counter-measures are being worked on for detecting nanite modifications to a person). The idea has also been thrown around that a member of the Toughs had his or her memories altered in such a way, but I think this is highly unlikely because Petey would have caught it when he restored the Toughs' memories.
...And that just made me think of a theory.
SpoilerPerhaps Nick was a UNS plant after their memories were rewritten. He's the most likely candidate for a spy because he can more or less act dumb, and he quit when he was asked to have his memories restored because it would have blown his cover.
EDIT: Also, reading back through the archives for this book, I found the following:
"The cosmic debt we're accruing [at this wedding] could destroy a planet!" Osiri was more or less destroyed, along with a battleplate.
"The world 'killed' loses some of it's punch when you build sentences like that... and that just makes me think of zombie movies." Later, REDhack produced an entire base full of gavmorges, inverting the normal zombie tropes by making peopled killed by head wounds turn into nanite-boosted zombies. In fact, the entire first ten pages of the book are meant to set up the fact (for a new reader) that nanite technology allows for scary things like REDhack.Last edited by Thomar_of_Uointer; 2012-12-29 at 02:45 PM.
I make games.
"...I worry that modern gaming is gradually shrinking the wide spectrum of gameplay mechanics into a single narrow red bar with "KILL" written on it sideways. Exploration, navigation, puzzles, platforming, all gradually shrinking away until only one thing remains, being taken by the hand from room to room, moving on only when nothing remains alive in each one." - Yhatzee Crosshaw
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2012-12-29, 02:25 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2007
- Location
- On Paper
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Of course, unless Ventura is a really common name, if she disguised herself as a young woman, why would she keep her name? If she was picking an alias, why pick one of the most famous names in robotics?
Of course, the fact that nobody has brought it up makes me think that "Ventura" must be decently common, as names go.
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2012-12-29, 06:56 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2008
- Location
- Xin-Shalast
- Gender
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Humanity is pretty darn populous in my reading of the Schlockiverse, and people do legally change their names in honor of their rolemodel/goal in the present day on occasion, so my gut was that it was either her given name and either no or so distant it might as well be no relation or she had just legally changed her name to be such for reasons of hero worship.
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2012-12-29, 10:11 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2008
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
I love that petey straight up points out the crappiest scenario possible in the most even tones possible, even though he is capable of both emotion and neuroses...
Avatar by kpenguin
Spoiler
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2012-12-29, 10:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2008
- Location
- Xin-Shalast
- Gender
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2012-12-29, 11:00 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2006
- Location
- Maryland
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Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Didn't see that one coming...
Avatar by Glasswhistle
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2012-12-29, 11:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
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Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Steam ID: The Great Squark
3ds Friend Code: 4571-1588-1000
Currently Playing: Warhammer 40000, Hades, Stellaris, Warframe
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2012-12-30, 02:15 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2007
Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
ChowGuy - The LaChoy Dragon - Servant of the Tiger and disciple of the Wanderer
The Hall of Wonders - HeavenGames Fantasy Role Playing and Creative Writing Forum.
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2012-12-30, 04:33 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
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Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos
Is it bad? The real question is, who wanted to create a Pa'anuri in the first place? It seems unlikely it would be the Pa'anuri themselves, because Oisri is ancient and we know the Pa'anuri were present in the Milky Way until relatively recently--see the battleplate Tunguska's destruction for more on that. So, whether this is good or bad really depends on who built Oisri and what their purpose was. It might be that they were creating a dark matter entity in order to better figure out how to destroy one, and if so, this could actually be the turning point in the intergalactic war which is currently happening.