#you've been foiled. aki.

[meownotgood]

desperately need something like teruvash but for aki

i wanna set up one of those box traps and kidnap him

that's the silly little trigun dude isn't it... I think chibigurumi aki resembles its cuteness........

I'm putting a little gun devil piece in a trap like that and waiting for aki to step inside before pulling the string and capturing him

[warsofasoiaf]

For Alien Crossfire, can you wrap it up by talking about the Manifold Usurpers and Caretakers?

The Progenitors are the biggest and most radical factions in Alien Crossfire, which is certainly saying something if you've read my essays on the other factions. These two aliens are incredibly advanced, to the point of being extremely unbalanced. That's actually a bit of a problem - they're too unbalanced to play in multiplayer and they make the game very easy when playing in single-player due to the limited AI. But if you scratch away the gameplay and focus on the lore, you have two factions wrapped around a single event - the Tau Ceti Flowering.

“The fungus has been Planet’s dominant lifeform since about the time of the Lower Paleozoic on Earth. But when, once every hundred million years or so, the neural net at last achieves the critical mass necessary to become sentient, the final metamorphosis kills off most of the other life on the planet. It is possible that we humans can help to break this tragic cycle.” -Lady Deidre Skye, Planet Dreams

The transcendence victory in Alpha Centauri is one of the longer ones to complete, requiring extensive science to reach near to the end of the tech tree and enough industry to beat out other players in response. However, the payoff is one of the most powerful - uploading humanity into the neural net of Planet, merging humanity with this consciousness to become a new being, which can conceivably be thought of as a god given its intelligence, power, and capabilities. This happened on Tau Ceti, an event that the Progenitors call the Flowering. The Caretakers saw this and were horrified, and sought to stop it from happening again, while the Usurpers saw it as a means to grow into godhood, and so sought to exploit it for their own gain. In the skies above Planet (which the Progenitors call Manifold Six), the two engaged in a fierce battle, and their fleets were destroyed. The aliens land on this world hoping to destroy the other faction and summon reinforcements using subspace beacons to acquire reinforcements, enough to scour the paltry survivors and the scattered humans from the surface of Manifold Six and accomplish their faction's goals (or in the Usurper's case, they can simply initiate the Ascent to Transcendence themselves).

The Progenitor race appears to sense, and possibly even manipulate, local fields an untrained human cannot perceive without mechanical aid, including at the very least electricity and magnetism. This sensitivity creates entirely new worlds of artistic endeavors for the race-or it may be developed into a powerful combat awareness that can foil any attempt at surprise. -Prime Function Aki Zeta-Five, Alien Analysis

However, these Progenitors are not simply technologically advanced humans - the Progenitors are alien in many ways. Not simply in biology, they actually appear to be bipedal with multiple eyes for binocular vision. The Progenitors can manipulate electricity and magnetism to great effect, sensing perturbations to avoid ambushes (giving the Caretakers their 25% defense buff) or creating shadow regiments to supplement their attacks (the Usurpers get a 25% attack buff). Later technologies are even more impressive, using multiversal manipulation for space compression, but this is arguably less radical (as late-game human technology in Alpha Centauri are likewise extend to quantum and temporal fluctuation). Their speech is also strange, they use this resonance to alter sounds around them to transmit messages. This gives a strange speech pattern of a subject : object grammar when speaking with humans, a pattern that is not shared when Progenitors speak to each other. This can actually cause misunderstandings when using the communication function, since if you cannot parse the grammar correctly (and are unfamiliar with the UI), you can accidentally say something you didn't mean to say. This is reflected in game as well, as Cha Dawn references Kri'lan the Betrayer, who taught him the resonance.

The large crests, wide eye placement, mostly superfluous tusks (they don't protrude far enough to be used as weapons) and bright coloration of the Progenitors leads me to think that they are a herbivorous species. The crests appear to be dominance displays, with ornamentation meant to reflect the authority of the individual. While the Progenitors are certainly not eusocial, they do appear to be far more of a hierarchal species given their physical characterization and AI preference for planned economics. This would explain why taking over the other faction's bases do not see a wholesale extermination of the population, most Progenitors are probably drones who follow the leader, though this might just be a function of limited game programming.

The Progenitors are advanced beings, and even the relatively cuddly Caretakers treat humans as barely more intelligent than monkeys. Their AI (particularly the Usurpers) makes frequent demands of tech and credits, often as tribute instead of trades, and attacks aggressively when refused. The Progenitors also don't mind atrocities and commit them on humans with abandon, and the humans reciprocate in turn (unless you the player decide not to). They cannot accept human leadership and so a diplomatic victory cannot be achieved if any Progenitor faction is still alive.

Unlike the other factions (except the pirates), the Progenitors have no restrictions in social choices and so can act with great flexibility. The human factions are based around a particular idea or ethos, from Morgan's hypercapitalism to Santiago's spartan militarism. The Progenitors' guiding philosophy relates to what to do with Planet itself, which makes them far more similar to the Free Drones or Cybernetic Consciousness, who look to the future society rather than the present. With a Progenitor empire already established, the Progenitors don't see being on Manifold Six as a new beginning for the last remnants of humanity but rather as an unfortunate period of extended isolation from the main body of Progenitors due to war and resource limitation. So a Progenitor base is run much like a forward command base, with resources strictly rationed and limited and schedules strictly controlled, even well after the first bases are established.

While the other factions have rich lore, the Progenitors largely are just a small piece of an expansion pack, and I don't have as much to say about them as a result.

Thanks for the question, Ikac.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[starlight-phantom]

Top 10 OCs of yours? :3 (I apologize in advance for making you for making you play favorites with your own characters hehe)

I'm glad you realise what you're doing 'cause holy shit dude, you're really making me pick favourites from my babies????

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh okay, I think it would go like this:

1 - Tobei Arakawa, I had made ocs before him but he was my first fully fleshed out oc so he's very special to me. When thinking of his design, I wanted to make him different from the actual Persona protagonists so I made him tiny, a little bit effeminate and quite weak and sickly. I know some people are gonna say "What about Minato?" But no, Minato is average sized, he only looks tiny compared to the other protagonists, Tobei is tiny. Also it's fun suggesting the stuff I have planned for him and people wanting to strangle me for it.

2 - Sora Saionji, if there's a specific type of character I love, it's the mischievous little shit so of course I had to make my own. The twist with Sora is that they're also the eldest of their group so they have to juggle mischief with being y'know... The responsible one.

3 - Hoshi Yashiro, I dunno I just think he's neat. I've got some ideas for him that I haven't really been able to share yet but I think people would like them. Plus, I wanted to create my own take on a Detective Prince type of character. And I just kinda like the design of the small eyebrows, it's cute.

4 - Takuya Nakanishi, honestly I really can't say much about him without spoiling his story but goddamn do I have lots of idea and not enough skill to actually write them. All I can really say is: You've seen a similar situation in Persona, but his version is a little more complicated.

5 - Nozomi Shiraishi, my main thought when creating her was "What if Rise was forced into fame?" Because Nozomi never really planned on becoming an idol, her mother just took advantage of her love for music and theatre to make some money. But I wanted to balance her cynicism from growing up in the entertainment industry with genuine kindness that she was taught to have by her dad.

6 - Shoyo Inugami, he's been through a lot and it's affected him deeply but he's using that to become his best self and hopes to help others in the future. He's just a sweet guy and I like him very much.

7 - Kenji Mawatari, he's basically like a foil to Sora. Sora is giant, Kenji is tiny. Sora is the eldest, Kenji is one of the youngest. Sora's best talent is technology, Kenji is technology inept. Sora has no fashion sense, Kenji keeps up to date on all fashion trends. These two basically form a comedy duo which usually results in Kenji plotting Sora's demise. But Kenji's still good by himself and I have ideas for his dynamics with the others too.

8 - Shohei Fukuyama, the reason why he's the lowest of the protag characters is because he's the newest and I'm still figuring stuff out for him. I guess out of all them, he's the one I relate to the most because yeah, I need to grow a backbone and figure out what the hell I wanna do with my life. And ngl, it's really fun watching people trying to figure out what's happening to him. :3c

9 - Aki Umemoto, he's a skater boy, what else do you want? In all seriousness, his personality was made to be a mix of Yosuke and Ryuji so he's basically like Mega Best Friend which works well considering Tobei's situation. I just really enjoy best friend characters in everything.

10 - Ryosei Kurihara, the thing of I thought of when making him was "What if there was a best friend character who was just blantantly in love with the protagonist?" (I can already hear the comments about Yosuke so yes, I know) but he's really like one of the only people at their school who doesn't make a big deal about Nozomi being an idol. His stance is "Is she performing right now? No? Then she's just a teenage girl." And combined with his parents constantly comparing him to all of his brother's achievements, Ryosei and Nozomi's friendship, and eventual romance, is kind of like a chance to breathe and relax for both of them because they're away from everyone else's expectations and just chill out and have fun.