Ask for subplot resolution? Subplot resolution you will get!
Stats list check:
- +1 military
- +2 scientific
- +1 informational
- -1 political
- BONUS: Scientific designs get one die automatically 4
- BONUS: D7s are rolled on anything relating to Wenton Celling
- Fingerprint scanners on military base doors
- Uplifted dogs
- Lobotomized child soldiers called “Cherubs”
- Plans for a shield against Andantesite wormhole disruption, although power-intensive and requiring a lot of Andantesite
- Large, cracked Andantesite shard, ready to link
- Radio-frequency Andantesite disruptor - 14.03 hour working time
- Loading of wormhole onto SFN Pylos planned, to follow Magellan back home
- Hammerspace parrot
- Venomous implants for dogs
- Hammerspace disruption masers, although in control of Padelheb Fansworth
Plot points to be resolved:
- Interrogating captured rebels
- Armen DeMarco
- Order of the Stick
- Padelheb’s remaining supporters
- PETA
- T. Levin’s exile
Let’s just pick one of these at random to resolve. A while ago, we captured Ensign Armen DeMarco, who was temporarily aligned with the rebels due to anger at her brother being converted into a Cherub. We agreed to let her speak with her brother after she rejected the rebels.
(Note that this series of events may have taken place at any point before the present confrontation)
After a brief consultation with some other military men, Celling steps back into the interrogation room where former Lieutenant Armen DeMarco is being held. She sits quietly on a plain chair, hands folded and resting on the desk in front of her, back straight and tilted forward slightly.
Celling steps around the chair across the table from her and leans idly with one hand planted on its side. “Look, Armen, we can’t let you go off completely free. You did turn against the Republic-”
“Which I’m not disputing, and which I take full responsibility for-” Armen interjects, sounding somber and somewhat annoyed.
“-but we see no need to make you face the full consequences of such a thing. You were deceived by Jacob Eldin and dragged along under false premises. You’ll probably serve time for some smaller charge, a few weeks at most.”
“And my request to see my brother?” Armen asks firmly.
“You will be allowed to. We will remove all mental blocks from him, he’ll speak to you freely, but you must understand, we will have this entire thing under surveillance.”
Armen sits quietly, seeming to consider this for a moment. “Show him in,” she says at last.
Two-way mirrors make it far too clear that the subject in question is being watched,
cause distortions due to imperfect manufacturing, and when used on a large scale are a waste of glass, so Strategist Roboson had installed simple camera obscura equipment into the walls of all interrogation rooms. He flicks off the lights in the adjacent room, and a crystal-clear image of the room Armen is sitting in pops into view in front of Celling and Roboson, projected from an inconspicuous hole in the wall. A wire linked to a microphone in the table provides audio.
Armen’s brother walks into the room. Only a tad over twelve years old, he nevertheless stands almost as tall as a grown man because of the exoskeleton pieces wrapped around his legs and feet. His torso is covered in segmented white armor, making him look like a cross between a balloon man and a millipede, and his arms are sheathed in gauntlets designed to accommodate a wide range of weapons integrated in. A smooth metal covering like an eggshell covers his head, removing any trace of hair, and his ears are plugged with radio communicators. His face looks completely out of place in the mass of armor, peering out of a square-cut hole in the helmet, eyes, nose, and mouth completely normal and surrounded by things that are distinctly, awfully, not. He walks in with large strides, swaggering yet unsure, looking like he’s walking on stilts.
Armen stands up cautiously, regarding the half-man half-machine in front of her, then runs up to hug her brother. Her arms barely reach around the ballooning mass of armor, and it takes a few seconds before Tommy DeMarco wraps his metallic arms around him in turn. Armen looks up, tears in her eyes, and asks, in a strained voice, “Tommy… what have they done to you?”
“They… they told me what to do,” Tommy DeMarco answers. His voice is exactly that of a small child, and suddenly the towering, armored soldier seems very small, as if he were a shriveled thing within a massive shell. “There was a voice telling me what to do, I did what it said… I ran, I shot…”
Armen and Tommy tearfully reunite for a few more minutes, before Armen steps away and turns in place. “I know you’re listening,
Celling,” she mutters. “And I’m willing to cooperate under one condition. I’ll tell you everything you know about the rebels, and help you fight them, if you release my brother and let him go home.”
Celling stands up to open the door and enter the interrogation room. Strategist
Roboson stops him. “Wouldn’t recommend it, Celling. Her intel is likely absurdly old by now if it was even correct in the first place.”
“We’re planning on rolling back the Cherub program anyway,” Celling says, standing in front of the door. “We gotta reverse what we did to these kids. Let’s start with this one.
“Yes, then you do that, but letting this Cherub walk free means that there’s someone out there with full knowledge of the Cherubization procedure and what they were made to do. In the hands of someone that’s already betrayed us once over the Cherub program. You really want to give that much ammunition to the people protesting against it? We really don’t need that information out there.”
“If it’s the information that’s the matter, why can’t we just remove it?” says Celling. “Quill has a quite impressive bank of memory-altering chemicals stored away somewhere.”
“That could work,” Roboson agrees. “But I’m not entirely sure that they wouldn’t find a way to break past it eventually, or that it won’t cause problems for him to wake up with all these modifications and no idea what happened to him. You could also just leave the mental programming in so we can control whatever he says and does.”
What do you decide?A: “No. We’re going to do the right thing. Release Tommy DeMarco without altering his mind further.” (No roll, but chance of future complications)
B: “We can release him, but the info in his brain is a state secret. We’re going to block out those memories with Quill’s memory serum, and tell Armen that she’s going to have to live with that.” (Scientific roll to block out, d6 roll on Armen’s reaction)
C: “Block out the memories, but don’t notify Armen. She’ll likely think that it’s PTSD or something. It’ll make her more cooperative and less likely to pry.” (Scientific roll to block out, future complications on bad roll)
D: “Leave the mental monitoring equipment on. We’ll just make sure he doesn’t say anything.” (Chance of future complications)
Poll
13 (46.4%)
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Topic: (SG) SPAMOVERLORD: Epilogue: Guest Week (Read 290751 times)