Magisteria Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
magisteriamods) wrote2024-04-21 07:09 pm
magisteriamods) wrote2024-04-21 07:09 pm
Player Plots
Reply to the entry below. List characters (who is participating) and whether OTA or closed.
Many of you have discussed player plots which take the forms of investigations. Please discuss what resources your character(s) will utilize. Will they physically scour the land and/or discourse with person(s) in the area? Will they consume media? Will they peruse their devices?
If speaking with person(s) in the district, what questions will they be asking of them? Players are also free to make up NPCs or mods can use or re-use current NPCs for this. Mods will reply below to inquiries and thread out investigations or provide resources for PCs to thread out investigations amongst themselves, depending on how the replies go.
Many of you have discussed player plots which take the forms of investigations. Please discuss what resources your character(s) will utilize. Will they physically scour the land and/or discourse with person(s) in the area? Will they consume media? Will they peruse their devices?
If speaking with person(s) in the district, what questions will they be asking of them? Players are also free to make up NPCs or mods can use or re-use current NPCs for this. Mods will reply below to inquiries and thread out investigations or provide resources for PCs to thread out investigations amongst themselves, depending on how the replies go.
no subject
OTA or closed: Closed
Musashi and Lucy overheard a conversation by a couple of demons in the entertainment district about balance, and someone potentially upsetting that balance, and now they're interested. The demons also mentioned that Otherworlders should be afraid to tread where angels go, and that will be another line of inquiry for Lucy and Musashi. They want to do a deep dive into the corruption of the city, and whether or not anything more sinister is under the shiny veneer they've been presented with.
To do this, they want to get security jobs (Musashi as physical security, Lucy as digital security) at the biggest brothel in the entertainment district. First, they'll want to find out which of the brothels caters to the most VIP crowd -- they're specifically looking for politicians, movers and shakers, famous people, etc. Their theory is that inhibitions are low at these places, and secrets are more likely to be spilled. They'll be scouring online reviews and discussion of the entertainment district, but far more importantly, they'll be finding sex workers and discussing that topic with them.
So! Their initial questions, posed to the various sex workers of the city, will be:
a) What brothel do the VIPs of the city most frequently visit? and
b) Where do the angels go?
CONTENT NOTES: ADULT+ but this is a red light district plot, SO!
can be as hot as you want. As mentioned, heterosexuality in Magisteria is rare. Adult content with named NPCs is mentioned as disallowed, but interaction with sex workers is fair game. feel free to create your own NPCs should either feel so inclined. Both Musashi and Lucy seem pretty open to the sapphic exploration from all sides here. Go wild.
So let's start with Lucy's first question: what brothel is the most VIP within the city?
To answer this question, we need to establish: who is VIP within this city? The biggest movers and shakers indicated so far: the Gods, the Government, and the leaders of the districts. The Gods don't seem too connected to matters of the flesh. The Government is off doing its own thing. That leaves the district movers. The one mentioned most is the proprietor of their apartments. Does such a person frequent the red light district? If so, their companions or haunts would be quite VIP.
It turns out the secret answer is that there's something of a penthouse floating above the apartments. The Red Roses Den of the Sky. All the eclectic beings of the cyberpunk and fantasy races mingle there, and the high class ones. Very VIP. Lucy, however, may collect her pass to this den on her aXess Link, as may Musashi.
Where do the angels tread?: This question is going to result in genuine bafflement among the denizens of the red light district. Angels? Like NGE? Uhhh, well, could exist in Magisteria, maybe. Angels like uh, "Biblically accurate?" Well, Magisteria has that law about if it exists SOMEWHERE... but uh... well, if such a thing were wandering around, seems it'd be kinda obvious. Kleenex babies? Okay, that's just silly. Oh, uh, what other sort? -- oh! -- the female presentation. Yes ...
... girls be looking at you like, okay Lucy, we get it. Oh yeah...
It's kind of maybe a legend, but apparently A While Ago, there was a female celebrity who was supposedly an angel of a monotheistic religion. This seems kind of hard to believe, even for Magisteria, because the world is just doggedly polytheistic. But apparently she did something just absolutely heinous and was banished forever. Or so the urban legend goes. Is that your woman who could change the city? But be careful, you might have noticed this world has more than one strong lady. Yourself included, eh?
MURDERBOT INVESTIGATION ON BOT RIGHTS IN MAGISTERIA
So as mentioned, Murderbot is looking intensely into how bots are treated in the city! Important questions for it include the following:
A. What legal rights do bots have here? (For reference: in canon, in most places bots are property. Even on the nicest planet we've seen so far, Murderbot must have a “guardian” that is responsible for it. It refers to this as “an owner, but they have to be nice to you about it”.)
B. How are bots treated in a cultural sense? That is, are they technically legally allowed to do things, but in reality there's no way they're gonna be able to do said things because of societal pressure? What are humans' opinions on them?
C. How many humans/organics are augmented with technology? Are they considered 'bots' too at some point, or are they always thought of as human/organic?
D. Are there scanners or other methods of detection in the city? Are you made to identify yourself as bot, human, augmented, etc.? (Again for reference: there are definitely scanners in canon, but it usually hacks these. It wears clothing to hide its nonorganic parts, so it can typically pass as [mostly] human.)
E. What's the bot culture like, if it exists? Do bots use human names, or IP addresses?
F. How are bots created here? (while it is interested in this, anything that gets too technical will be glossed over. It's not even totally sure how it was made lol)
Murderbot is going to go about this in three ways, roughly in this order:
1. Traditional research through the network, public government records including actual laws, history books, etc. Prominent search words include “robot”, “cyborg”, “augmented”, “spliced”.
2. Observational research. Hanging out in public spaces watching people, taking notes on where the bots go vs where the humans go, etc. I would love to do an open log for this!
3. Interacting with natives directly, asking leading questions (how successfully subtle it is while doing this is debatable), etc. Again, would love to put up a log for this.
no subject
"artificial humans," to kind of put robots/AI [human-like but ultimately mechanical/machine/inorganic] have robust rights in Magisteria, but arguments have been made that there are the AI equivalent of "raceblind" laws which, while written with neutral language, might penalize AI perspectives.
this might come up in law research with, for example... say, a driverless car killed a pedestrian. a human lawyer might argue the company should be fined due to the harm endured to the family or what not.
but, to other AI, this might be seen as blaming the AI for simply doing its duty. sentient AI introduces such complexities, and the law, written to be beneficial to humans in the face of tragedy, may be seen as subtly penalizing the driverless car... who, in Magisteria, is an AI and thus sentient, perhaps. this is just one of those examples treated as hypothetical precedents for areas where humans/AI might differ in perspectives on right/wrong.
--some AI have become very very humanized. the half-AI guide Otherworlders met was quite human in appearance. others prefer to go full frontal bot, like Atlas or Rosalind (cyborg, but falls under "artificial human"). The artificial humans are generally understood to do pretty well in the urban areas, but there is some class stratification. some career paths associated with AI or tech are, as in the present world... perhaps, fraught, ethically or otherwise.
--there's also the fact that Magisteria has a big magic/tech division and the magic side tends to obviously not have many AI, bots, etc., so there's sort of an inherent tension with roughly half the city, but they manage to mostly co-exist. and sometimes cross-relationships do happen and there are tech'd out fantasy race offspring or people who pursued unusual vocations relative to their backgrounds, in either direction.
--humans/organics vs. bots and where the line is drawn: ah, Murderbot, that's one of the great philosophical questions. in Magisteria, there are differing opinions as to where humanity ends and cyborg/AI/etc begins. the general consensus is that there is a spectrum, and augmented people are sort of an umbrella with the artificial people, but there are "augmented" and "artificial." some dispute the line.
--one thing Murderbot will learn is that augmentation is much more common within the Aetherium District. it's not exactly unheard of in the Business or Entertainment Districts. depending on whereabouts one goes, they'll encounter augmented people. but in the tech-specific district, it's practically a rite of passage. the two districts representing the Institutions are said to have some next level stuff, as that goes.
--not scanners of that sort, no. people do have a lot of specific paperwork and digital paperwork and record trails which probably go into the specifics of their background. given how diverse the city is, it's fair to say the Government likes to be meticulous in kind of cataloguing where someone falls under the spectrum, but it's more like database registration than scanners.
--the more human-presenting ones tend to use human names, but not always. there IS sort of a thing where the more physically human-looking bots are also sometimes seen as more glamorous and more in vogue in beauty and fashion and this is also sometimes perceived as kind of discriminatory or at least like the bot equivalent of colorism.
... and the last one is a very good question. where exactly did the bots of the Magisteria originate from? did they come through the Infinity Corridors? are they native creations? are all from the same core program, or different ones through different eras? the answer seems to be: a lot of most of those. because Magisteria exists in what is a distant future, the AI of various timelines/worlds/etc have come to be here, but also, there are AI progenitor programs within the Aetherium District. some AI are created by large organizations, whereas others are created by the Government or public works programs or conglomerates, and still many others are by now just essentially a wild species created by older programs mingling with other programs and humans and various means of self-reproduction or, uh, even actual reproduction, as wild as that might seem.
--for the investigation, feel free to make up NPCs Murderbot speaks with or create names of investigation material and contents reflecting the above and log it out.
no subject
OTA or closed: OTA
Back in the event where the Otherworlders fought against the Fractured, Lucy accessed their coding -- as much as she could, which wasn't a lot considering her tech isn't up to full power yet -- and copied a piece of it.
So! Would she have discovered anything useful? Would it answer a question about whether the coding was corrupted by bad Bios? Would it contain any clues about how to restore the Fractured to their former uncorrupted selves?
The Fractured & discoveries --
"...Umbra, we call it. “Anti-Bios.” But, like the dark matter between the stars, it is difficult to define. It is not merely darkness, but the opposite of life itself. Crawling chaos and unfathomable abysses which poison the mind and body and can twist humans and other beings into monstrosities.
To Ratio's inquiries: Lucy might consider the darkened creatures in the Enclave, in parallel to the Fractured. Lucy and Gilgamesh speculated some form of corruption at the time. This was prior to the High Risk Quest. In a world that thrives on Bios as light and life energy, it would make sense that corruption would be identified with its opposite.
The corruption anti-dote?
So far, none is known. That's the thing. The magic of the school of Lumina and the Grove magic are the purest magic known in Magisteria. The Luminous Bloom blessing can let a person access the darkest places without losing their mind. However, its effect on the Fractured is peaceful demise, not anti-corruption.
That said, there may be unexplored avenues. Keep in mind that a lot of the magic of the Undercity and its code cross-over potential could as yet be unexplored. Magisterian technology continues to evolve. Cracking the corruption of the Fractured may lie in cracking the mystery of "Umbra," and how it affects code and artificial beings. But that would also mean understanding what these entities were and how/why they became corrupted, so Lucy and Ratio would do well to turn their research to that.