methods and tools

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

The gate opens in an small space. Through a doorway ahead is a mid-sized room, scattered with chairs. One wall, directly across from the doorway to the incoming gates area, is made of some clear material. On the other side of it is another room, with a metallic floor raised slightly above the first one's, with a half-dozen complex diagrams and space for many more.

The way into there appears to be through a decontamination room to the left. There is a door on the right into the rest of the base. Embedded in the wall to the left is the door to the outgoing gate area.

Both rooms are windowless and otherwise minimally decorated.

(Observant guests may note that the gravity is about a third of what they are used to.)

Comments

Re: P L O T

[scatteredstars]

Shortly thereafter, sleeved in zir more comfortable eidolon and ensconced in 60x simulspace, and having spun off some forks to deal with other matters, Tyche returns zir attention to Aisilian's beta fork.

If they can get Thorn and her friend out of this, they will.

"Did the portal have a range limit? Have you checked what is warded against scrying? Is it certain it was the TITANs? Thoughts on why them, specifically? There have been both Firewall and forum members in that area before, even today."

As ze speaks, ze is assembling data: maps of known TITAN-infected areas, including exoplanets; profiles for Thorn and Dotted Lines. (Thorn's is accompanied by a request to their proxies for clearance to access more of her file). Surveys of suspected TITAN activity. Contingency plans. Anything else that ze can find that might be relevant.

Re: P L O T

[chibisilian]

"No range limit, I'm afraid, and infowards tend not to work that way. The existence of the ward is itself information that cannot be allowed to leave, see! There are ways to bypass an infoward, but they generally revolve on faking authorization to know whatever's warded.

"I'm pretty sure it was the TITANs! Nobody else in this Truth has both means - alethics - and motive - a focus on Firewall and Sol System in particular. Also, while technically the fact that "DL and Thorn were kidnapped" was warded, the identity of "the person who opened a portal into this base" wasn't, so we have alethic confirmation.

"As far as why them in particular - they're probably trying to avoid catching something too big for them to handle, while still going for useful powers. Thorn has been trained in runes that the TITANs still don't have, and Dotted Lines has a useful scrying ability that they can't reproduce with any subtlety."

Chibisilian pauses, as news filters through his feed with his alpha. "Uh, oh dear, we have more bad news. Apparently the TITANs have warded the existence of the exsurgent virus, sending containment protocols and governments in disarray and incidentally giving the virus involuntary phasing powers and undetectibility!" He blinks cheerily. "We should probably do something about that!"

Re: P L O T

[scatteredstars]

Tyche swears. "Is there anything we can do about that?" Ze spins off another fork (merging all of these back in will be... interesting, but ze needs the multitasking ability at the moment), to check base security and then look at major cities.

"About infowards, I think I may have been unclear; unless what they are using can give you false results if you try to scry an area covered by one, process of elimination should theoretically possible."

Ze thinks for a moment longer. "Could that portal have crossed worlds or Truths?"

Re: P L O T

[chibisilian]

"Aside from warning people? Breaking the ward is probably beyond us for the moment, as all our mana stores are earmarked for use against the TITANic incursion. But it might be possible to do something subtle to work around it..." Chibisilian blurs for a minute, splitting off a fork of his own to think about the problem.

Shaking his head: "A properly designed infoward will ward its own existence, which means that sensors will be fooled into thinking that, rather that 'nothing is there', that 'everything is normal and uninteresting'." Stopping for a moment, he frowns. "But... the TITANs don't have all the runes yet. With only Light of Eclipse's unique runes, they probably can't make a properly designed infoward yet. So it might be worth a shot."

"That portal could have crossed worlds if and only if there was an agent on this end, and it could not have crossed Truths at all."

Re: P L O T

[scatteredstars]

"Warnings are going out," Tyche says. Pause, as the relevant fork updates zir. "...there's a Case Asturias Black Flag Scenario alert, now. I can forward that to the forum, too -- in private messages, in case the TITANs can see the public forum, or become able to."

Ze is silent for a moment. "Are we certain they only have Light? Do you have thoughts about the most efficient way to do that check?"

"...and we need to check for infiltrators," ze adds, after a moment, with a sigh. "Thorn would be--" Ze breaks off, and busies zirself with the maps.