• The site has now migrated to Xenforo 2. If you see any issues with the forum operation, please post them in the feedback thread.
  • Due to issues with external spam filters, QQ is currently unable to send any mail to Microsoft E-mail addresses. This includes any account at live.com, hotmail.com or msn.com. Signing up to the forum with one of these addresses will result in your verification E-mail never arriving. For best results, please use a different E-mail provider for your QQ address.
  • For prospective new members, a word of warning: don't use common names like Dennis, Simon, or Kenny if you decide to create an account. Spammers have used them all before you and gotten those names flagged in the anti-spam databases. Your account registration will be rejected because of it.
  • Since it has happened MULTIPLE times now, I want to be very clear about this. You do not get to abandon an account and create a new one. You do not get to pass an account to someone else and create a new one. If you do so anyway, you will be banned for creating sockpuppets.
  • Due to the actions of particularly persistent spammers and trolls, we will be banning disposable email addresses from today onward.
  • The rules regarding NSFW links have been updated. See here for details.

With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

A while back Paul showed he could greedy-port out of the underworld. While he has a physical pathway in and out of there on paradise island, he demo'ed he couldn't properly transition when he first went down there because the local physics were wonky.

So if that place is realm apart from reality, and he can pop in and out, I guess he might have a shot doing it from the heartlands or heartless-lands here. I just don't know if you'd want to poke a hole into the plane of greed in the middle of the american subconscious.

Now that we're poking the....hmm... I guess olympus was described as a 'region of earths thamosphere formatted by the greek gods' so I guess the heartlands are formatted by american minds. So what's defining the interactions between them and reality....not just in the 'you smack a conceptual link here and somewhere in 'merica a flag falls over' but the interactions with each other.

So....earth has it's little magical bubble....picture that as a huge ocean....now you have on that ocean islands of stability around big concepts. Related concepts are closer to each other and easier to get from one to the other, (freedom eagle here was afraid that the japanese gods were infecting america with cat girls and other things enough to bridge the gab between their 'island' of faith and his own).

Honestly it's like magic is the Bleed, but in miniature. Instead of whole universes in a multiverse, you get pocket realities in one universe.
Yes! Not true, but a very very good lie!
 
I just don't know if you'd want to poke a hole into the plane of greed in the middle of the american subconscious.
Considering the Heartless Lands are representative of the bad parts of the American collective subconscious, I don't know if that would actually change anything. Greed is already a core part of what we're seeing, to the point that I'm a little surprised the vulture hasn't had orange text.

However, Boss Smiley apparently runs things here. So creating a direct connection between his realm and the plane of greed could allow Boss Smiley access or influence on the orange light through that connection, which sounds like a tremendously bad idea.
 
"Do you think it's coming from John Constanteen?"

"Ah, no, but-. Ah, it's pronounced 'Constantine."
Wait, really? Do they pronounce it like that in the movie or something? If so, I've been doing it wrong all these years.

Also, I could have sworn that Paul specifically didn't remove the rust but only the muck like guano from the Statue of Liberty, but looking back I guess I misremembered. Classic Paul being a dick.
 
Wait, really? Do they pronounce it like that in the movie or something? If so, I've been doing it wrong all these years.

It's a bit of a running gag that it was supposed to be -tine when it started out, but everyone went with -teen as things went on. They even had a crack at it on TV a while back.



------

Yes! Not true, but a very very good lie!

Thank you, I'm now slightly more confused then when I started.
 
Wait, really? Do they pronounce it like that in the movie or something? If so, I've been doing it wrong all these years.
In the Swamp Thing comics, John sounds it out for one of Alec's friends as 'Con-stan-tyne'. The other pronounciation is only accurate in reference to the Constantine film parallel.
Also, I could have sworn that Paul specifically didn't remove the rust but only the muck like guano from the Statue of Liberty, but looking back I guess I misremembered. Classic Paul being a dick.
I didn't know about the statue's original colour when I wrote that and think this is funnier.
Thank you, I'm now slightly more confused then when I started.
It's a quote from The Nightwatch by Terry Pratchett, where Vimes tries to understand time travel.
 
"Think about it. For them, those plans revolve around how to directly disable or counter their abilities, along with any potential plots they may have in motion. Whereas short of a situation similar to when I was fused with the Ophidian, any plan to deal with me is likely going to be a lot less 'punch-to-face' in the end. So it's either going to be a good exercise in lateral thinking, or attempting to direct me to situations that would be a more effective use of my efforts."
The ideal 'counter' to Paul will always be to make him want what you want him to want.
 
Ah, it's pronounced 'Constantine."
Missing closing single quote before the double quote.

"I cleaned it! The green colour was from the rust!"
Copper patina isn't rust (it isn't even an oxide; it's a sulfate), and unlike with iron it's stronger than the unreacted metal. It protects the metal from corrosion. The Statue of Liberty was probably green within a decade of its installation.
 
I doubt it. There are other powers at work that oppose Smiley, one of which is the embodiment of greed her self.
Not here there aren't, otherwise LePaul could just Greedport out.


I would think a bigger issue is that it would be off theme for Smiley.

Smiley is Political Corruption, or at least as close it doesn't make no never mind.

Smiting is antithetical, he doesn't get his hands dirty, he has other people do his dirty work.

With conceptual powers, that ought to be important.
The general concept of Political Corruption includes the concept of enemies of the political elite just randomly dying.

Realistically speaking this is not a battle LePaul should be able to win so long as he's in the Anti-Heartland.
 
You know, here's an interesting question...

How different is Smileyworld from Fallout America pre-nuking?
 
Copper patina isn't rust (it isn't even an oxide; it's a sulfate), and unlike with iron it's stronger than the unreacted metal. It protects the metal from corrosion. The Statue of Liberty was probably green within a decade of its installation.
Yup, and here's an obligatory history lesson to go along with your information that someone might want to forward to Mr Zoat.

https://www.copper.org/education/liberty/liberty_reclothed1.html

Basically put, LePaul fucked up badly and basically destroyed an irreplaceable cultural artifact in a way that would realistically turn a good portion of the American population against him.
 
Yup, and here's an obligatory history lesson to go along with your information that someone might want to forward to Mr Zoat.

https://www.copper.org/education/liberty/liberty_reclothed1.html

Basically put, LePaul fucked up badly and basically destroyed an irreplaceable cultural artifact in a way that would realistically turn a good portion of the American population against him.

Sure, people would miss the green color, but wouldn't the Orange Ring make it in perfect repair if that's what Paul wanted to do?
 
Copper patina isn't rust (it isn't even an oxide; it's a sulfate), and unlike with iron it's stronger than the unreacted metal. It protects the metal from corrosion. The Statue of Liberty was probably green within a decade of its installation.

How+copper+patina_778f7c_7765402.jpg
 
Fallout: Iowa (part 6)
4th November 2282
06:12 CDT


"Hey, Mutie Chief!"

I raise my right hand and wave at the group of Enclave soldiers heading for morning exercises. That's apparently my name now, and I think their use of it marks my promotion to 'house mutant'.

Progress, of a sort.

Central Iowa is… Nice, actually. The main settlement is surrounded by walls of rammed earth, wide enough for a walkway to have been included for the sentries to walk along at the top. The buildings… Mostly barracks and sheds at the moment, are built with walls of reclaimed bricks and stones, held together with newly created mortar. The roofs are corrugated iron, and noisy as heck when it rains. But good quality building wood isn't something that grows quickly, and there aren't enough quality animal hides in Iowa for the locals to use instead.

The ground is covered in some of Diana's quick-growing grass, the shade of green looking somewhat.. odd to my eyes. It's quite a bit brighter than what I remember of the pre-War plant, something that's carried over into the improved plants growing in the carefully marked off fields outside of the stockade. Even the G.E.C.K.-supercharged land around here can't grow much in winter, but land for wheat and potatoes to be grown is closest to the walls, fields marked out with metal poles and wire fences. Actual trees have been planted at sites marked out for future settlements, in the hope that the wood will be ready for construction work when they get that far. No birds singing; their migratory instincts would get them killed by the radiation clouds. But there are chirping sounds coming from the insect enclosures and a quiet hum from the bee hives under the grunts and exercise songs coming from the 'National Guard' soldiers.

All in all, not a terrible place to live.

I nod at the guards outside the settlement's 'research centre', and they let me through without issue. I think this was some sort of meat processing plant before the war, but it has since been repurposed into somewhere for the scientists of the 'Iowa Environmental Protection Agency' to work in. Mostly they do soil and crop analysis, making sure that the G.E.C.K. is still doing its thing and we're not all getting unknowingly irradiated. They've also got a back room filled with partially assembled suits of power armour that they haven't actively tried to hide from me but didn't include in my tour.

Hey, if they want to spend their time doing that it won't be me who goes hungry.

Now, where is-?

**Doctor Rubens?**

**W-huh-? Oh. The-. Krono. I'm in the electronics workshop.**

I nod and walk down the corridor in that direction. Until recently, vehicles were a rarity in the wasteland, and even today the trucks in my convoy represent an appreciable portion of the total functioning vehicles in North America. But doing farm work without either tractors or draft animals is extremely hard work, so the IEPA's engineers and scientists have been hard at work turning recovered vehicle wrecks into farm vehicles. Of course, right now the remains of the robots that attacked us are taking priority.

I open the door at the end of the corridor, entering the workshop from the side. The closest vehicle will eventually be a combine harvester, the high-torque engine system from a Great War tank powering a newly built wheelbase and the rotating harvester. Once it's finished, anyway. At the moment it's a mechanical skeleton that probably won't be finished until July, with the partially-welded harvester sitting off to the side so that it doesn't get in the way.

The electronics workshop is at the end furthest from the garage doors. There's an actual clean room for delicate work, but since we're not exactly doing a lot of precision work here it's mostly just used for creating the micro vacuum tubes virtually all local advanced technology relies on. Next to that there's a couple of workbenches with power packs, volt and amp meters, soldering irons and such other tools of electronic engineering that the scientists and technicians here might need.

Doctor Rubens glances up from the robot leg she's disassembling. She's wearing overalls that were once pristine white, but have now been reduced to a pale grey. Most enclave clothing is that colour, a little lighter or a little darker. They like wearing pre-War uniforms but there are only so many of those around and while they are hard-wearing the dyes do fade eventually. Cotton production has started returning to the NCR, Texas and the RRG but… Ah… At the moment it's mostly used for underwear more than anything else as other clothing can be made from the more readily available leather or fur. Twin Mothers is basically the only place that has wool.

"It's not RobCo."

I nod. "I suspected."

"This leg is more like a human cybernetic. I've seen similar things in Washington on a few occasions. Though the design is obviously different."

"Have you been up all night?"

She jerks, tearing her eyes away from her work to look at me.

"It's morning?"

"Yes, it-."

"Then I guess it's time for my morning stimulant!"

She walks over to a thermos flash and unscrews the lip, peering at the contents. Then she pours out a cup's worth of Costa Cafeinada's 'enhanced' product into a ceramic mug and puts the mug into a microwave. That's probably a terrible way to drink good coffee, but that would only be an issue if Costa Cafeinada made good coffee rather than relying on the highly addictive chemicals they've bred into their coffee plants.

"I'm not sure that's a good-."

"Oh please." The microwave pings and she extracts the now-steaming mug from it. "I filtered out their weird chemical additives. It's just coffee." She slurps down a mouthful before returning to her station.

"It's still highly addictive."

"The day I take lessons on narcotics from a mutant tribal is the day I move to China."

I mean… Technically…

"You didn't know that… China is currently a capitalist monarchy? In as much as it… Still exists, I mean."

"China is communist."

"China was communist in much the same way that the Enclave was the government of America. When the bombs fell, it stopped being the case to any significant degree. Since they didn't really have Vaults it was the groups furthest away from the big cities that survived to rebuild, and… One of those places was Taiwan. The… Taiwanese ended up occupying most of the region around Beijing, killing off what was left of the central communist party."

She's not moving, just staring at me.

I smile awkwardly. "So about the robot..?"

"So, it-? We.. won..? The War..?"

"You could see it like that? I don't think the current Emperor likes America very much, and China is a going concern while America has only reassembled itself at the state level, but you definitely beat the communists with a little help from your allies."

I'm not entirely sure how Taiwan managed to remain independent after America pulled out, though I suspect the short range nuclear missile batteries and the truly ridiculous number of sea mines still in the region might have had something to do with it. Then when America went on the attack after the invasion of Alaska they were only too happy to host the Americans in return for 'development aid'.

"But the robot?"

"Yes-. Yes. I was about to crack open the CPU and see what I'll need to add to the wish list in order to access it." She puts the mug down and picks up a head from the parts bench. "It's not a pre-War design so I doubt that I'll have what I need here."

I nod as she puts it down in front of a hydraulic metal cutter. She clamps the head in place and picks up the cutter.

"Okay. Power on…"

With a little difficulty she gets the end of the cutter to grip the head, making a small incision. Then she moves the cutter and makes another close by before turning the cutter and snipping out the metal between the two incisions. That lets her get one prong of the cutter inside so that she can cut around the edge, peeling back the armour to reveal-.

Dr. Rubens pokes the substance in the skull's interior.

"Why is there a brain in this robot?"
 
Last edited:
4th November 2282
06:12 CDT


"Hey, Mutie Chief!"

I raise my right hand and wave at the group of Enclave soldiers heading for morning exercises and wave back at them. That's apparently my name now, and I think their use of it marks my promotion to 'house mutant'.
Greeeaaat. Still, it's better than them aiming kicks, or worse, guns, at you, I suppose. It probably helps that you (and I'm guessing here) don't look all that different to a 'normal' American. No green skin, scaly patches or random gribbly bits they can see. :rolleyes: So of course they're polite.

Progress, of a sort.

Central Iowa is… Nice, actually. The main settlement is surrounded by walls of rammed earth, wide enough for a walkway to have been included for the sentries to walk along at the top. The buildings… Mostly barracks and sheds at the moment, are build with walls of reclaimed bricks and stones, held together with newly created mortar. The roofs are corrugated iron, and noisy as heck when it rains. But good quality building wood isn't something that grows quickly, and there aren't enough quality animal hides it Iowa for the locals to use instead.
And said animals are probably better used in the fields than for food or other materials.

The ground is covered in some of Diana's quick-growing grass, the shade of green looking somewhat.. odd to my eyes. It's quite a bit brighter than what I remember of the pre-War plant, something that's carried over into the improved plants growing in the carefully marked off fields outside of the stockade. Even the G.E.C.K.-supercharged land around here can't grow much in winter, but land for wheat and potatoes to be grown is closest to the walls, fields marked out with metal poles and wire fences. Actual trees have been planted at sites marked out for future settlements, in the hope that the wood will be ready for construction work when they get that far. No birds singing; their migratory instincts would get them killed by the radiation clouds. But there are chirping sounds coming from the insect enclosures and a quiet hum from the bee hives under the grunts and exercise songs coming from the 'National Guard' soldiers.
All very pastoral, in a 'military community' kind of way.

All in all, not a terrible place to live.

I nod at the guards outside the settlement's 'research centre', and they let me through without issue. I think this was some sort of meat processing plant before the war, but it has since been repurposed into somewhere for the scientists of the 'Iowa Environmental Protection Agency' to work in. Mostly they do soil and crop analysis, making sure that the G.E.C.K. is still doing its thing and we're not all getting unknowingly irradiated. They've also got a back room filled with partially assembled suits of power armour that they haven't actively tried to hide from me but didn't include in my tour.
For 'defense purposes only', no doubt... Still, their resources to waste.

Hey, if they want to spend their time doing that it won't be me who goes hungry.

Now, where is-?
Though I suspect the troops would probably insist on having full bellies rather than good armour, if they knew. An army marches on its' stomach, after all.

**Doctor Rubens?**

**W-huh-? Oh. The-. Krono. I'm in the electronics workshop.**
Heh. Putting all those unnamed NPCs to good use, eh?

I nod and walk down the corridor in that direction. Until recently, vehicles were a rarity in the wasteland, and even today the trucks in my convoy represent an appreciable portion of the total functioning vehicles in North America. But doing farm work without either tractors or draft animals is extremely hard work, so the IEPA's engineers and scientists have been hard at work turning recovered vehicle wrecks into farm vehicles. Of course, right now the remains of the robots that attacked us are taking priority.
To be fair, most people never needed to travel, so working cars or trucks weren't that useful.

I open the door at the end of the corridor, entering the workshop from the side. The closest vehicle will eventually be a combine harvester, the high-torque engine system from a Great War tank powering a newly built wheelbase and the rotating harvester. Once it's finished, anyway. At the moment it's a mechanical skeleton that probably won't be finished until July, with the partially-welded harvester sitting off to the side so that it doesn't get in the way.
No need for it when they don't have crops it can be used to harvest yet, after all.

The electronics workshop is at the end furthest from the garage doors. There's an actual clean room for delicate work, but since we're not exactly doing a lot of precision work here it's mostly just used for creating the mirco vacuum tubes virtually all local advanced technology relies on. Next to that there's a couple of workbenches with power packs, volt and amp meters, soldering irons and such other tools of electronic engineering that the scientists and technicians here might need.
Because the Fallout universe never really embraced the transistor, did it?

Doctor Rubens glances up from the robot leg she's disassembling. She's wearing overalls that were once pristine white, but have now been reduced to a pale grey. Most enclave clothing is that colour, a little lighter or a little darker. They like wearing pre-War uniforms but there are only so many of those around and while they are hard-wearing the dyes do fade eventually. Cotton production has started returning to the NCR, Texas and the RRG but… Ah… At the moment it's mostly used for underwear more than anything else as other clothing can be made from the more readily available leather or fur. Twin Mothers is basically the only place that has wool.
Ah, nothing like having the delicates in a comfortable embrace, rather than a leathery one, eh?

"It's not RobCo."

I nod. "I suspected."
They do have a certain design sensibility, don't they? Very mid-century sci-fi...

"This leg is more like a human cybernetic. I've seen similar things in Washington on a few occasions. Though the design is obviously different."

"Have you been up all night?"
Amusing that he's more interested in her health than information on the robot. Understandable, since losing any decent scientific mind would be a blow out here.

She jerks, tearing her eyes away from her work to look at me.

"It's morning?"
...The building does have windows, right? Someone's focused.

"Yes, it-."

"Then I guess it's time for my morning stimulant!"
Ah, a liquid breakfast. :rolleyes: A true scientist...

She walks over to a thermos flash and unscrews the lip, peering at the moments. Then she pours out a cup's worth of Costa Cafeinada's 'enhanced' product into a ceramic mug and puts the mug into a microwave. That's probably a terrible way to drink good coffee, but that would only be an issue if Costa Cafeinada made good coffee rather than relying on the highly addictive chemicals they've bred into their coffee plants.

"I'm not sure that's a good-."
Well, good to see evidence of some decent trade, at least?

"Oh please." The microwave pings and she extracts the now-steaming mug from it. "I filtered out their weird chemical additives. It's just coffee." She slurps down a mouthful before returning to her station.

"It's still highly addictive."
Eh, let her be. Some people just can't function without the brown sludge.

"The day I take lessons on narcotics from a mutant tribal is the day I move to China."

I mean… Technically…
Gee, thanks for that darling stereotype. Not all mutants are frenzied drug users, you know...

"You didn't know that… China is currently a capitalist monarchy? In as much as it… Still exists, I mean."

"China is communist."
Ah, the middle Kingdom rolls from one extreme to the other once again, eh?

"China was communist in much the same way that the Enclave was the government of America. When the bombs fell, it stopped being the case to any significant degree. Since they didn't really have Vaults it was the groups furthest away from the big cities that survived to rebuild, and… One of those places was Taiwan. The… Taiwanese ended up occupying most of the region around Beijing, killing off what was left of the central communist party."

She's not moving, just staring at me.
Krono, did you break her brain? People need those smarts!

I smile awkwardly. "So about the robot..?"

"So, it-? We.. won..? The War..?"
Total nuclear war has no winners, kid. The only way to win is not to play.

"You could see it like that? I don't think the current Emperor likes America very much, and China is a going concern while America has only reassembled itself at the state level, but you definitely beat the communists with a little help from your allies."

I'm not entirely sure how Taiwan managed to remain independent after America pulled out, though I suspect the short range nuclear missile batteries and the truly ridiculous number of sea mines still in the region might have had something to do with it. Then when America went on the attack after the invasion of Alaska they were only too happy to host the Americans in return for 'development aid'.
Independence through superior firepower, eh? How... American.

"But the robot?"

"Yes-. Yes. I was about to crack open the CPU and see what I'll need to add to the wish list in order to access it." She puts the mug down and picks up a head from the parts bench. "It's not a pre-War design so I doubt that I'll have what I need here."
I'm sure Krono's people could find something in their treasure trove of science fiction tech to do the job.

I nod as she puts it down in front of a hydraulic metal cutter. She clamps the head in place and picks up the cutter.

"Okay. Power on…"
After all, damaged as it is, there's not much chance of breaking it worse, really.

With a little difficulty she gets the end of the cutter to grip the head, making a small incision. Then she moves the cutter and makes another close by before turning the cutter and snipping out the metal between the two incisions. That lets her get one prong of the cutter inside so that she can cut around the edge, peeling back the armour to reveal-.
...Yesss?

Dr. Rubens pokes the substance in the skull's interior.

"Why is there a brain in this robot?"
Oh, boy. Cyborgs. The big question is, was it willingly donated or not?

Well, there's a turn. Presumably that's why they were so fast and responsive. There's some things meat brains do better than metal. Still, that doesn't bode well. From the sound of it, they weren't attacked because they were intruding on someone's turf, they were being raided for parts. Which raises another question: How will whoever's behind this view this little colony? Invaders... Or a stockpile of components?
 
"So, it-? We.. won..? The War..?"

Has the Enclave ever stated that they intended to continue the war against the People's Republic of China?

The Enclave does claim to be the continuation of the United States government, they seem obsessed with the past, and Anti-Communist propaganda was ubiquitous before the Great War.

It wouldn't be too much of a stretch for the Enclave to want to finish what the old government couldn't in regards to the PRC.
 
Has the Enclave ever stated that they intended to continue the war against the People's Republic of China?

The Enclave does claim to be the continuation of the United States government, they seem obsessed with the past, and Anti-Communist propaganda was ubiquitous before the Great War.

It wouldn't be too much of a stretch for the Enclave to want to finish what the old government couldn't in regards to the PRC.

Probably down the priority list after 'reclaim America'.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top