RB 2-3: The White City & The Axis

Mission Report

Tuesday, November 14, 2017 ((Oct 28, 2018))
Team: Jane Irwin (Cael), Edward Chase (Aunne), Ryu (ShadowRyuu), Quill Draper (quorgi), Cyrus Riggs (Sielic)
On leave: Chuck Nielson (Ari)
On a case: Lyndi Fletcher (Aslene)

Training Exercise Debrief

• Break, snack
• In meeting room
• Max has simulation on playback on monitor, at 3x speed
• Bron present picture in picture (as Chuck Norris)
• Max: Outcomes
  • + Object obtained
  • + 5 subjects incapacitated with less lethal force
  • - 2 subjects killed
  • ? Max and Draco reported that they could disrupt the gang's cell communication but weren't ordered to do so
• Team ideas
  • Get rubber bullets
  • Get smoke grenades
  • Consider shock batons and Tasers
  • Taking down sentries with less lethal is hard
  • Jamming enemy comms is good
  • Draco can be more proactive

Downtime: Tue-Sat

• Start basic airborne training
  • Wearing a combat harness
  • Clipping on to a safety line
  • Deploying from a hot landing (Lyndi will set a few possible queuing for deployment, i.e., first, second, etc.)
  • Packing and wearing a parachute
  • Opening a parachute (emergency use)
• Further differentiated for different members (based on past training in military and/or SWAT)
• Mix of sim and time in the real (Bronislav)
• Optional: Start proper paratrooper training
• Jane and Quill visit a tattoo shop

Briefing on the Breakwater

• Saturday, Nov 18, 7 pm
• Meeting room
• Brother Iron
• Basics
  • Nails is meeting with each of you to discuss transition to a long-term team
  • Nails has asked me to teach you more about the Breakwater
  • R3M is a signatory to the Council of the Rational Ascendancy
  • Nails believes that you should better understand what you'll be part of
  • Remember: belief is power; everything I say is through my lens of belief
  • Someone else would explain this differently, and you should use many different perspectives to find truth
  • Also, feel free to interrupt me with questions
• Big Picture
  • Universe is a multiverse
  • Many planes of existence
  • Earth is on the Prime Material Plane
  • Area called the Closeness, include Earth, Tessera, Cryos, and a handful of other worlds
  • In the past, many visitors and immigrants from other worlds and planes
  • Inner Planes of the elements, Outer Planes of the mind and soul, the echo planes of Feywild and Shadowfell--all separated from us now, due to the Breakwater
• Rational Ascendancy
  • Existed at least since ancient Greece
  • Like many factions, RA's power waxed and waned
  • Greatest seat of power was Europe, home of the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment
  • But Europe is also home to many other factions and forces, those places and peoples we know from myths and faerie tales, including peoples that RA would call "barbarians," "primitives," or "savages"
  • When the European powers began colonizing the "New World", RA saw an opportunity for a fresh start, so to speak
  • Many of the colonial leaders, including some of the founders and framers of the United States and its Constitution, were Unbound and members of the Rational Ascendancy
  • Many were deists, believing that an omnipotent God created existence, but does not interfere directly in its workings
  • In the early years of the United States, some RA leaders took those beliefs to the extreme; they wanted to take steps to ensure that the new nation, or even the world, would be secure from any extraterrestrial and extraplanar beings, factions, and forces
  • During much of the 1800's, as the nation grew, RA researched a great many possible means to provide that security
  • They came to the conclusion that something like the Breakwater was possible, but would require a techno-magical ritual of unprecedented scale
  • It would take the belief of millions of people to empower the ritual
  • So they watched and they waited for such an opportunity
  • In the meantime, they marginalized or eradicated as many threats to rationality as they could
  • That included the indigenous people of this continent and their histories and religions
  • The American Holocaust, some call it
  • Then, the opportunity came, here in Chicago
• For this next part, we're taking a field trip

Aboard Bron

Brother Iron explains slippage

Aerial Tour

• Nails believes that something is happening here in Chicago, something big, that events so far are just the calm before the storm
• Don't yet know which details matter
• Early Chicago
  • What we think of as Chicago didn't exist before the 1830's
  • In 1833, the population was about 200
  • By 1870, it was about 300,000
  • It was an extraordinary sight, watching a city grow that fast
• But then came the Great Fire
  • Sunday, October 8, to Tuesday, October 10, 1871
  • There is something very special and terrible about Oct 8, 1871
  • On that same Sunday: the Great Chicago Fire, the Great Peshtigo Fire, the Holland Fire, the Port Huron Fire, and the Manistee Fire
  • The stockyards and railyards survived, mostly
  • So the city core would be rebuilt
• Here was the chance RA had been watching for
  • The wooden buildings that had burned would be replaced by steel and stone
  • Little or no precedent for so much urban construction in such a short time
  • Chicago's reconstruction would represent the power of rationality: technology, capitalism, industry, and law and order
• First skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction
  • Home Insurance Building
  • Only five stories
  • Discovered something extraordinary
  • Discovered the Axis of Elusive Truths
• Axis runs through many worlds
  • Magic is a Weave permeating existence
  • Has its own ebbs and flows, wefts and weaves
  • Ley lines are major conduits of power, or principle rivers, often flowing from one significant place to another
  • For example, ley lines often exist between two cities
  • Where ley lines intersect, you find a nexus
  • Where many powerful ley lines intersect, you find a major nexus
  • The Axis intersects Earth where an extraordinary number intersection of ley lines
  • Of course, the Unbound among the native peoples of this land already knew of the Axis; they'd just had the good sense not to build a settlement in the middle of it
• In contrast, RA believed they could tap into the power of the Axis
• Helped plan the greatest world's fair in history: the Chicago Columbian Exposition
• Build a full-scale replica of the city of the future
  • The White City
  • More than a dozen beautiful, shining buildings in pure white
  • Or at least until they were stained by air pollution
  • These buildings housed all the marvels of modernity
  • Electric lights!
  • A moving walkway, or travelator!
  • Edison's people: a telegraph! a seismograph!
  • Tesla's people: a generator! an induction motor!
  • A third rail to power electric trains!
  • And so on
• What did RA get?
  • During six months in 1893, over 27 million people visited the Fair
  • Millions of the visitors came from all over the world; they went home with their experiences, souvenirs, stories, and feelings
  • Chicago illustrated the future: what humanity can accomplish when it embraces perfect rationality
  • Just consider that level of power that much synchronized belief represents
• RA used the Fair to achieve two things
  • First, they moved the intersection of the Axis just a little to the south, to the Palace of Fine Arts in the fairgrounds
  • Second, they tapped into the Axis to begin creating the Breakwater
• It took decades for the Breakwater to reach full strength
  • There were setbacks, but RA adapted
  • There were further opportunities, and RA took full advantage of them
  • 1890, University of Chicago founded, just west of where the Fair was being built; UC would house the scientists and garrison that oversaw the Breakwater
  • July 1894, most of the fairgrounds were destroyed in a fire
  • 1933, Palace of Fine Arts became the Museum of Science and Industry
  • Dec 2, 1942, nuclear fission achieved at the University of Chicago; like other technologies, this invention and its effects on the collective consciousness would help strengthen the Breakwater
• Today, the Breakwater is the pinnacle achievement of RA
  • The Breakwater protects all the worlds of the Closeness, and each world plays a role in sustaining it
  • For example, the Axis intersects other worlds in the Closeness, and RA allies have tapped into there, too
  • Usually the Axis is invisible, but now that Palisade is active, it's much easier to perceive it
  • The Breakwater is powered by the Axis, and the Axis is a nexus of belief
  • RA has been quite intentional in influencing our collective beliefs, to sustain the Breakwater
  • One incidental, perhaps accidental consequence: the very nature of the Axis has been skewed by all our beliefs, including our imagination
  • Thus, if you're able to see it, the Axis of Elusive Truths, is, of course, a sky beam
  • Lightning bolts from all over the city, the region, the world
    • The thoughts of sentient beings, embracing or at least agreeing with the paramount good of rationality
    • There's a computer programmer donating his collection of Narnia books to Goodwill, because his older brother told him that it's time to grow up
    • There's a high school student carefully doing her geometry homework
    • There's a farmer knowingly buying genetically-modified seeds that yield sterile crops
    • There's a US Senator, agreeing that AI could do the work of a soldier better, because it has no emotions
    • There's a twentysomething artist, who grew up wanting to illustrate comic books, but instead she's drafting technical schematics for dishwashers
  • This is the power of the Rational Ascendancy: behold it: the Axis of Elusive Truths, harnessed to create the glorious Breakwater

Archangel

• One more thing to show you, before we return to your Fort
• USS Archangel
  • Rushed into service, as part of the response that included activating Palisade
  • Information systems and systems integration: Primex and its subsidiaries
  • We know they're also building something even larger
• Capabilities
  • Extensive sensor array, including Palisade tech to monitor paranormal activity
  • Extensive onboard weapons systems
  • Several squadrons of autonomous attack aircraft, i.e., drones
  • At least two platoons of Farwatch Troopers, uptrained from Marines and SEALs, ready to be deployed within minutes to any location in the city

Back to the Fort

• Thank you for listening to this old man
• You may be left with questions
• I really only have two answers for you
• First, Nails could have chosen from many different experts, to tell this story to you, and he chose me
• Second, I give you this
• Small card made of brown paper, with machine-printed text
• Tablet 4
  • As an Unbound, the unlimited power of Belief is your birthright. Treat this power carefully. Your beliefs have a greater impact on the world, as well as yourself. Your thoughts and feelings, your hopes, dreams, grudges, and hatreds can change the world. They can also reshape you, in ways a sleeper can never experience. Heraclitus of Earth said it well:
  • The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think, and what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny… it is the light that guides your way.

Thanksgiving

• Thursday, Nov 23, 2017
• Max away to visit family; R3M substitute controller is Krisella Tolbert (human female)
• From early morning, Lyndi cooking in the kitchen
• Cyrus goes jogging, with Bron as his buddy
• Quill sleeps in
• Ed is everywhere and excited
• Jane is mostly engaged, but has flashes of pensive and moody
• Joslin & Draco ask questions about what Thanksgiving is about; some answers from Quill, some from Jane
• Draco asks people what they're grateful for
• Joslin is grateful for second chances and for AA
• Bronislav-Bot; Bron asks about football as bloodsport
• Ed is grateful that I finally get to do this stuff with people that I like
• Brother Iron, brings really old, really good wine, greets Jane
• Starcraft games: Ed, Ryu, Bron, Draco
  • Draco flails some with strategy and adaptation
  • Ed and Ryu very closely matched
  • Bron experiments a lot and loses, then plays like a master
• Jane is grateful for not being dead, new job is nice
• Brother Iron asks Cyrus for his opinion on the lecture and tour
• Cyrus is grateful for the alcohol in my hand and to be here another day, just like every day
• Brother Iron is grateful for hope, and the selflessness of some Unbound who don't accept the world as it is and try to change it
• Cyrus contributes deviled eggs; hijinks ensue
• Ryu doesn't attend the dinner; instead, orders Draco to attend in person
• Draco is nervous, copies others, gets some coaching from Jane
• Much discussion with deviled eggs (including Google-quoting by Quill)
• Ed eats too much dinner, not knowing and preparing for dessert, still eats lots of dessert
• Nails leads grace, mentions being Catholic and his boyfriend
• Quill is grateful for being alive, explains hasn't been home and can't go back, grateful for being here now, for Ed, for people, for the good in people
• Draco asks Quill about his source of power
• Draco talks about volunteering in the soup kitchen; Quill offers to go with him
• Nails thanks Raptors individually for their work; "you make me look good"; heads to his other Team
• Joslin aids Lyndi, is polite but somewhat withdrawn
• Bron gets big into football, cheering on whichever team is on offense, and being especially fascinated with tackles and interceptions