Safe For Work Worm Ideas thread

The powers wouldn't change that much, it would still be bug control + a little thing, maybe she has better audio/visual/etc. through the bugs, I can even imagine that through Noelle she gets a subtle power that lets her minions have more silk/stings/etc..

 

Actually Wildbow heavily implied that Glory Girl got her aura from Dean being nearby during her trigger event.

The thing to keep in mind is that the look for advice and information but it is still the same shard creating the power. That means even with pings they won't get anything they couldn't have already just that it will be a bit more biased towards powers that have similar components as nearby capes.

Also mass triggers generaly result in grabbag capes with similar collections of powers which wouldn't be a thing if pinging didn't influence powers.

In reference to the original prompt, here is what I think may get from the travelers.

Sundancer: Nothing. Taylor's issues aren't really close enough to anything Sundancer's power can help with.
Balistic: Same.
Trickster: She wants to escape a encloses space so the QA shard may get ideas from his power. This may result in a mover rating.
*Guy who looks different for everyone I can't remember the name of*: Taylor is really fucking lonely and has self image issues so she may get something that makes people perceive her in a more postive manner from him.
Noelle: She probably wouldn't be in the truck and that is probably fro the best. If she was I would suspect that the QA shard may go more towards trump powers and minion creation. Maybe minions based off of capes she encounters controlled in her canon manner. There would probably be some major limit though such as a maximum number of powers active at once and only a single minions ot use them with making her a eidolon/Siberian hybrid.
Genesis: Bias to controlling created minions.

If all of them are taken together maybe she can create and control a body based off of nearby capes that shares their combined powers, but is incapacitated while they do so. Her first use would create a Sophia copy to pull herself out of the locker.

 

The other interpretation is that Dean and Vicky both triggered at the same time, and both got grab-bag powers.

That's why Dean has empathy (Thinker) and hard-light beams (Blaster) which impose an emotion effect.

 

Eh, I honestly think that QA would take more from Genesis and Oliver than anything.

Genesis, due to a combination of Taylor's Trigger and the QA itself, possibly resulting in Taylor being able to create lots of customized minions that probably disperse on death.

Oliver's "power" is basically the Balance formula which when looking at him and Noelle seems to contain the Shard's "Do's and Don'ts" in regards for empowering the host. With him there and getting pinged, the QA may be able to better put in the power without risking something like a double trigger right off the bat.

 

Let's talk about something super exciting and interesting: Farming.

Here's some thoughts on food production in Wormy America.

First off, cities. As observed in canon, people are apparently flocking to the cities, even though the cities we see all kinda suck by modern standards. Why are people moving to them or staying in them? There isn't much work. Crime is bad and getting worse.

My thesis is that as bad as cities are, the countryside must be worse.

Why would the countryside be worse? In our world the country is usually safer than the city.

The major difference between Earth Bet and reality is the existence of parahumans, specifically criminal parahumans. Out in the countryside, PRT / Protectorate response time is not fast. A criminal could get away with much more -- and much worse -- if far enough away from protected population centers.

The rural or suburban areas may not have an adequate camera system for tracking perpetrators, either, necessitating more expensive equipment sent out to accompany law enforcement officers -- or making the perp's getaway even more trivial than the high response time alone would indicate.

What this means is that crime out in the countryside might be less organized, but also worse when it does happen. You don't get gangs extorting businesses and selling drugs, you get gangs on wheels who drive through, pillage, burn, and take your daughter when they leave.

An unpowered gang can do this. Groups with superpowers are going to be worse.

The countryside must be pretty desolate by now.

In our world, farms are becoming more and more mechanized. On Earth Bet, the mechanization faces the endemic issue of all Earth Bet industry: economies of scale are failing, infrastructure and trade are failing, and the industrial base is eroding faster than it can be rebuilt. Let's break down what each of those factors means.

- Trade is failing: food will be grown more locally. It will be more difficult -- and thus expensive -- to get "out of season" produce. Above a certain size, cities become less viable very quickly, as their population outstrips the local food supply.

- Economies-of-scale are failing: agribusiness may not remain viable, mainly because it presents a large single target for subversion or theft. Masters are a thing, so any single-point-of-failure can expect to fail at some point.

- Infrastructure damage is another potential factor against modern farming techniques: your water service is sporadic, you suffer brown-outs, gas prices are high, transportation costs are high, and all that's in addition to whatever you're paying for security.

- The industrial base is failing: specialized equipment isn't being built or maintained. Innovations are less frequent in the civilian sectors as the economy becomes more slanted towards security and militarization.

- - -

So, the Worm world sucks, but people still need to eat. Since there are people around in Worm canon, farming is going to have to happen anyway. What new innovations / techniques / organizational structures are going to be present on Earth Bet to allow farming to continue, in spite of the state of the world?

Some thoughts:

• The danger of raids by rural road gangs is not entirely unlike the risk of raids on early American settlers by Native Americans. The American settlers obviously prevailed. What lessons can we learn from history?
• I think there are places even on our Earth in which people successfully farm in spite of ongoing hostilities from nearby groups. Maybe in Africa or Israel? Anyone know about farming in one of those places?
• Parahumans are the problem, but they may also offer solutions. Specifically, a drone Tinker could project law enforcement farther than expected, protecting a larger swath of land from criminal predations. What other types of superpowers could be disproportionately useful?

Final thought: rural desolation may be part of why the S9 was so hard to catch, and part of why more mid-sized cities exist on Earth Bet (like Brockton Bay) in spite of the Endbringer disincentive.

 

Your starting premise is wrong. In worm cities are shrinking because people are afraid of living in endbringer targets.

BBs problem is that the people there are too poor to move.

 

Care to cite that?

I think the only time BB's population was shown to decrease was when an Endbringer attacked. 1/3 of the population was rich enough to move away at that time, so your second assertion is provably untrue.

 

Wildbows comments on Earth Bet. They are less centralized because people are fleeing cities.

 

That's not a cite.

Yeah that would be fun.

Seven Sam... aritans.

 

Victoria can be the drunken hobo Sammy.

(Or Dinah can, if that's not too on-the-nose.)

 

Uber and L337 learn that Dragon is an AI before their career ever starts. Thinking this is basically the coolest thing ever, they immediately decide to be her minions so that when she decides to conquer the world they'll be her most trusted minions and get to lord it over all of her other minions.

They're a bit disappointed that She hasn't gone evil yet, that Dragon hasn't picked up any more minions for them to boss around, and that Saint keeps trying to kill them all, but their life has a lot of perks and they can't really back out now anyway. L337 gets to trade any of his inventions to Dragon for two copies of it as well as maintenance and repair contracts for them, top-notch training facilities and equipment, good pay, and since they're Dragons minions instead of Guild members they don't even have to fight S-class threats.

 

Grue was operating some time before the Undersiders formed, but I'm not sure how long. He might or might not have just ignored what was going on if he came across the attack on Emma and Alan while in costume, but unless he was in a great hurry, I could see him deciding to interfere... and then Shadow Stalker tries to kill him (if they were already interacting by then).

Would lead to interesting places, I think.

(Yes, starts kind of similar to Cyclone's Darkness Rising, but far from the same. For one thing, Alan wouldn't be able to track Grue down, though he might give him his card.)

 

what about a story taken from a different direction,a young man or woman from a new Hampshire Amish community becomes a parahuman.i want to see a story where an outsider of society tries to make sense of the wormverse,i was thinking that the character's power to be tinkering,to make it interesting as Amish people disdain technology.it's a great thought exercise.crossposted on SB and SF.

 

That's a misconception. They don't have anything against technology itself, but rather that it makes people lazy and interferes with family values.

 

ok ,but maybe not amish but there are more conservative sects in that culture,plus I've always had a softspot for The Hobbit,where an ordinary guy is given a chance to see the world,only to realize at the end it's change him to something he couldn't recognize.but for all of the bad stuff that happens he has changed for the better. basically it's the The Pilgrim's Progress meets The Hobbit set in the Wormverse.

 

You were thinking of the term Luddite for being anti-tech. Not an actual movement anymore but the term is understood.

 

Ironically the actual Luddites weren't anti-tech they destroyed equipment to protest abusing labor conditions, business practices and how employers were using the machines as an excuse to treat lower classes like animals.

The word has changed meaning over time to the current use.

 

Ah English, if it was anthropomorphized it'd look like a mutated eldritch horror.

 

So i had a crazy idea everyone knows in canon Chevalier had a brother that was taken from him...has anyone ever noticed how similar his powers were to Jack Slash? yeah you can see where this is going.

 

They aren't similar in the least. Like, at all. Sure they both use a blade as an effective means of using their power but by that logic then Foil, Shadow Stalker, and The Butcher are long lost siblings.

Jack just makes translate force directly from a distance, Chevalier can combine and swap the physical properties of objects.

 

the thinker aspect they both have did not seem at all similar?

 

One had the power to see ghosts of trigger events that indicated their powers.

The other had the ability to predict how parahumans would act.

No. They are, in fact, NOTHING alike.


Now, if you wanted to compared Chevalier to Glaistig Uaine, then we'd have something. Or Jack and... uh... a really shitty Contessa?

 

on March 17th 1998 our world fell apart,there was news of a unusual electrical storm over Nantucket,then at 6:15 p.m. Pacific Standard Time every living being with a spine felt a flash of pain and saw a blinding light...then my whole world came down like a stack of cards,the lights went out for good and then planes fell from the sky.our technology that had sustained the humanity for over 300 years failed us,metals become non-conductive, causing electricity to become virtually unusable. Gunpowder and other explosives no longer worked to protect us,we couldn't even bring back the steam engine.the only thing that still worked we find out latter was at time the called tinkertech,now called witchcraft.then the dying times began as 95 % of the population were wiped out the first few years after the change from starvation,plague,cannibalism,war and the Endbringers.My name is Taylor Hebert and if your reading this, i'm dead,because i'm what we call now a warlock,there was a time i dreamed of being a hero,we don't live in a world for heroes,we're feared for good reason,because they see us for the Emperor Nilbogs and High Queen Rebeccas,that the weakest of usus are hunted for sport and burned while the Crafters get the VIP treatment.now i fear of being hunted by my neighbors and friends.for now what i have to do there is no going back,I had made a deal with lord Anders to be his spy called the Knight of LEGION.In return,for having sworn Feality to him i will be given a pardon for me and my Familiy not to hunted by The Witch Hunters.

---

Thats all i could come up,it's a Emberverse crossover, set in worm..the series is written by s.m.stirling,I have trouble writing because i have a developmental writing disorder, it's a miracle that i'm not leaking blood out of my ears from the headache i'm getting.so i'm just practicing by throwing out ideas for other fanfiction writers to use.

 

So I have two ideas for stories.

One's a Tinker! Taylor that specializes in the Nasod technology from the Korean MMO, Elsword. Basically, she would be a mix between Add's Mastermind class and the Code: Empress class branch for actually building the Nasod tech.

The other is a Blaster that has electrokinesis, and since not many people do electro Taylor...except for Reaper...I'm trying to figure out a situation that would result in her gaining those powers. Thoughts? Suggestions?