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  1. - Top - End - #61
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Personally, I think that there is only one likely candidate for the mole. TAG. It would have been pretty easy to insert a personality segment into the system when the Toughs were under UNS control or when the ship was being repaired. With the unstable personality matrix that Kevyn built, it would easily looked loke just another abnormality in a very abnormal system. Having it subsumed into the more solid TAGII personality likewise makes sense.

    Why is this more likely than Para? For one thing, she's too obvious once a leak becomes apparent, so she wouldn't be much use as a long-term intelligence agent. Second, she's either the world's greatest actress, or far too emotionally involved to be suitable for long-term deception.

  2. - Top - End - #62
    Eldritch Horror in the Playground Moderator
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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Dammit Kevyn, you should know better than to taunt Murphy like that...

  3. - Top - End - #63
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    BlackDragon

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
    Dammit Kevyn, you should know better than to taunt Murphy like that...
    Looking at the "echo" lines around the ship, it appears to be hovering in place (albeit wobbling slightly), so it's entirely possible that they're not actually going to crash--they just got very, very close to it!

  4. - Top - End - #64
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    BarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
    Dammit Kevyn, you should know better than to taunt Murphy like that...
    Kevyn's the resident mad scientist. So yes, he shouldn't even be bothering, because Mad Science doesn't care. See my sig for details on that...
    Last edited by Thalnawr; 2012-08-16 at 09:05 AM.
    "Mad Science" means never stopping to ask "What's the worst thing that could happen?"
    - Maxim 14 of the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries. From Schlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler.

  5. - Top - End - #65
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    Bulldog Psion's Avatar

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Quote Originally Posted by Gnoman View Post

    Why is this more likely than Para? For one thing, she's too obvious once a leak becomes apparent, so she wouldn't be much use as a long-term intelligence agent. Second, she's either the world's greatest actress, or far too emotionally involved to be suitable for long-term deception.
    True -- but Para had a UNS tooth, and used the "Bob's your uncle" code, which was fairly damning even before this latest stuff.
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    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

  6. - Top - End - #66
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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Help remind me: this seems to be a major arc, so what dangling threads from the three-way-split arc are still unresolved that might come into play here?
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  7. - Top - End - #67
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    BarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Quote Originally Posted by PhantomFox View Post
    Help remind me: this seems to be a major arc, so what dangling threads from the three-way-split arc are still unresolved that might come into play here?
    As far as I know, Lunesby's faction could be involved in this, as one of Para's secret backers. Also, we might get to see some more behind the Mall-One dynamic when Kath, General Tagon, and Nick get there. We've already resolved most of what we're going to get out of the Credomar arc of that story, as far as I know. I suppose this bit with Para could also be resolving the minor shipyard arc of Massively Parallel as well.
    "Mad Science" means never stopping to ask "What's the worst thing that could happen?"
    - Maxim 14 of the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries. From Schlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler.

  8. - Top - End - #68
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    PaladinGuy

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Hey guys,

    New episode...anyone suddenly nervous about how the TV works now that TAG II is offline? Didn't Para run an infowar drill to shut off all hypernoded items, including TV's? Didn't it come up somewhere that the nannies can be influenced by subliminal messages over any medium?

    I find it very ominous that in the same episode/update where Tagon says, "We've lost our overwatch," the Gav's we suspect are infected say, "The crazy guy has no explosives, now the TV works."

    What I see happening:

    3 Gavmogres try to bust out of confinement
    No overwatch, no bombs, no nothing
    The ship crashes
    Osiiri's power source becomes unstable
    The captain can't go back to the ship after or during fighting for fear of contamination
    The power source forces them all to Teraport out.

    They just caught Para but everything indicates that Kevyn's not going to get answers and that things are about to get dramatic fast, IMO.

  9. - Top - End - #69
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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Fan: Incoming excrement!

  10. - Top - End - #70
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    BarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    The after-action review on this one is going to be ugly... Maybe even as ugly as the end of the first Credomar arc.
    "Mad Science" means never stopping to ask "What's the worst thing that could happen?"
    - Maxim 14 of the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries. From Schlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler.

  11. - Top - End - #71
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    PaladinGuy

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    This is why even well-intentioned mutiny is bad, people! Figure out what's going on before you try to throw a wrench in the works, or you may end up with those works falling on you.

  12. - Top - End - #72
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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    is it just me or are the mercs going lose yet another AI?
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  13. - Top - End - #73
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    BlackDragon

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Quote Originally Posted by Fjolnir View Post
    is it just me or are the mercs going lose yet another AI?
    They already *have* lost Tagii, if that's what you're saying...they're not going to plug her back in unless they have a darned good reason for doing so!

    I'm interested to see if the UNS send this "kill command", and if so, is it something that can't be avoided by the recipient? Will Para (or whoever it is...Howard might surprise us yet ) just flat-out die on the spot?

  14. - Top - End - #74
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    Bulldog Psion's Avatar

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    They already *have* lost Tagii, if that's what you're saying...they're not going to plug her back in unless they have a darned good reason for doing so!

    I'm interested to see if the UNS send this "kill command", and if so, is it something that can't be avoided by the recipient? Will Para (or whoever it is...Howard might surprise us yet ) just flat-out die on the spot?
    I'm waiting to see who keels over, myself.
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    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

  15. - Top - End - #75
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    NEO|Phyte's Avatar

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Well that's vaguely unsettling.
    Man this thing was full of outdated stuff.
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  16. - Top - End - #76
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    BlackDragon

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Minds in Iain M. Banks' novels spend most of their time in fantasy worlds of their own devising because the amount of their processing time they actually have to spend doing their job is so tiny...I guess Schlockverse computers aren't like that (apart from possibly Petey, but he was insane for a long time anyway ).

  17. - Top - End - #77
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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Sartre, not Sarte. As the French would say, "il ne manquait pas d'R".
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    The letter R is pronounced like "air" in French, and as for what "not lacking air" means, see there.
    Quote Originally Posted by Midnight Roamer View Post
    I think he did the only morally acceptable thing by killing everyone.
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  18. - Top - End - #78
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    Zombie

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Quote Originally Posted by NEO|Phyte View Post
    Well that's vaguely unsettling.
    Only VAGUELY? Would hate to see Tagii loose it.

    On a small side note, it seems that Tagii sees herself as a human being.

  19. - Top - End - #79
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    PirateGuy

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    That is not a human. That's closer to the legend of rusalka than it is human.

  20. - Top - End - #80
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    Bulldog Psion's Avatar

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    That was unexpectedly creepy. Don't know why it struck me that way, but it seems more sinister than any AI stuff that's been in the comic before. Perhaps because I'm wondering, is this the real Tagii? As her personality actually is under the benign, frumpy front?
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    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

  21. - Top - End - #81
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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Quote Originally Posted by Bulldog Psion View Post
    That was unexpectedly creepy. Don't know why it struck me that way, but it seems more sinister than any AI stuff that's been in the comic before. Perhaps because I'm wondering, is this the real Tagii? As her personality actually is under the benign, frumpy front?
    I doubt it, anymore than a standard human's 'real' personality is the one they display when under extreme stress. Keep in mind Tagii isn't actually turned off.. she's just disconnected. She's conscious, but without means of sensing or communicating to the outside world. And she seems to be capable of experiencing time on a much faster scale than humans- while she's interacting with the human-speed world, she can behave like the time they keep is right. But when she's disconnected, the only thing she has to do is think to herself, and that happens on computer clock-tick speeds.. if you tossed a person in a sensory-deprivation tank for three months, you wouldn't expect them to be very well balanced when they came out.

  22. - Top - End - #82
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Quote Originally Posted by tyckspoon View Post
    if you tossed a person in a sensory-deprivation tank for three months, you wouldn't expect them to be very well balanced when they came out.
    At the speed AI's of Tagii's level think, "three months" probably doesn't come close. The "ten thousand years" is probably more like it.

    But one thing I'm concerned about, the "lake" metaphor (with or without the Ophilia/Rusalka/water nymph connotation) plus the fact that the Int-Aff-Int base (who inhabitants we have yet to see) is underwater makes me wonder if there's a connection with another "underwater" faction, known to use false flag "human" agents, from a still dangling thread in the Mall-cop arc. Particularly since that location is also on the schedule to be revisited.
    Last edited by ChowGuy; 2012-08-19 at 09:18 PM.
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  23. - Top - End - #83
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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    So Tagii was compromised by the UNS and at the same time needs to obey Para, Para who is working for some other side. I wonder if the «old» Schlock and Enesby were also compromised by the UNS in some way.
    Avatar: ruthless Parson (Erfworld).

  24. - Top - End - #84
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Wow. A new Olympic Conclusion Jumping record.
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  25. - Top - End - #85
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    BlackDragon

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Maybe I'm wrong here--but if Thurl is correct about the signal Tagii was sending through the TV, does that not mean she has to be working for a different faction than the one which planted the nannies in the Gavs in the first place? ISTR that Colonel Whatserface etc. were surprised and not a little annoyed that Binnie got prematurely activated.

  26. - Top - End - #86
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    Zombie

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Maybe I'm wrong here--but if Thurl is correct about the signal Tagii was sending through the TV, does that not mean she has to be working for a different faction than the one which planted the nannies in the Gavs in the first place? ISTR that Colonel Whatserface etc. were surprised and not a little annoyed that Binnie got prematurely activated.
    Correct. We already knew there was a signal being transmited throught the TV before the info war "test". That seems to have been rewriting the Gavs. Tagii was putting out a different signal that Thurl picked up. What the signal Tagii was putting was doing we don;t know yet. But considering that the majority of the Gav's have not all turned into super soldiers yet it seems to have been benign. And Thurl just turned it off.

  27. - Top - End - #87
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    Bulldog Psion's Avatar

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    In frame 2 of Monday, August 20th's strip, doesn't it look like two skinny objects are reaching up to the ship from the ground?
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    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

  28. - Top - End - #88
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    NEO|Phyte's Avatar

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Quote Originally Posted by Bulldog Psion View Post
    In frame 2 of Monday, August 20th's strip, doesn't it look like two skinny objects are reaching up to the ship from the ground?
    Nope. It looks like two skinny objects are getting snapped off the ship due to the ground. The front of the ship has a second pair of whatever they are.
    :edit: Looking back a ways, they appear to be guns.
    Last edited by NEO|Phyte; 2012-08-20 at 08:35 AM.
    Man this thing was full of outdated stuff.
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  29. - Top - End - #89
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    Bulldog Psion's Avatar

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Quote Originally Posted by NEO|Phyte View Post
    Nope. It looks like two skinny objects are getting snapped off the ship due to the ground. The front of the ship has a second pair of whatever they are.
    :edit: Looking back a ways, they appear to be guns.
    Thanks.

    That's what I get for posting before I've had my morning cocoa.
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    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

  30. - Top - End - #90
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    teratorn's Avatar

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    Default Re: Schlock Mercenary III: One million years of crowdsourced kitten videos

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    ISTR that Colonel Whatserface etc. were surprised and not a little annoyed that Binnie got prematurely activated.
    Binnie wasn't activated by the signal, he was activated by head removal.
    Avatar: ruthless Parson (Erfworld).

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