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Wait for the next release. I want usable mugs damn it!

55 (71.4%)

We can use the current one. I like the big trees and slightly smarter dorfs.

17 (22.1%)

I'll take .34.11 thanks. I want to know I'll get to kill things for sure.

5 (6.5%)

Total Members Voted: 77

[soulslicerjames]

Then came Splint's story about how Ballpoint was trying to capture a specimen reinforced it.

Or Ballpoint wants to find out just what went wrong in re-introducing the spawn, for which they need to capture a HS-X specimen.  In this train of thought, I figure they wouldn't have released all their HS-2 specimens, so they probably also want to compare them and keep the most beneficial (for them) adaptions.

edit: Splintja'd

[Talvieno]

@Splint: They can't possibly be "cheap knockoffs" - why would you have had Ballpoint attempting to capture a specimen if they were? I'd say Mr Frog's task was to figure out how the HS-2a were different from the HS-2b. This would've occurred after the Spawn were re-released into the world. If we assume the Spawn had been around 200 years by the beginning of Spearbreakers which they HAD been, if you count worldgen time, then Mr Frog couldn't have possibly been alive that long, thus, he couldn't have released them himself, or engineered them.

Edit: (soulslicer'd)
All right, so gathering enough for an army is out of the question. In that case, you have to assume that Ballpoint would WANT an army at all (which they would, it's in their nature), and then you have to assume that the specimens they have aren't suitable to those ends. Thus, they want a different variety of Spawn - the Spawn of Parasol. Parasol's may be better in some ways, and different in others. Perhaps we faced Parasol's Spawn near the beginning of Spearbreakers, and we're only just now facing that of Ballpoint. No matter what you believe, the Spawn of Ballpoint and Parasol have to be different. Parasol wasn't intending to weaponize theirs anyway - they're kind of like Aperture Science, in a way - they're in it for the !!Research!!.

[Splint]

No-one said where he's from was following the same timestream, what with the alternate dimensions and all. It's likely that the company chose an arbitrary point to release them. And by cheap knockoffs I mean they lacked alot of what Mr Frog put into the "Final product" as it were, notably infectious bites and the intelligence to send scouts ahead of raiding parties.

The specimen in question is one of the Smart-spawn. The fact that the spawn laid out an ambush implies intelligence beyond what they were engineered with. upped smarts =  them learning stealth and trying to pick off the dominant member of groups: Squad leaders, generals, that sort of thing, which is something anything would do to disrupt group cohesion. Kill the alpha and you can fragment the the pack potentially.

Dramtically sudden increase in intelligence = tactical withdrawls, ambushes, and even taking over civilizations from within. This could mean they've gone horribly right and Ballpoint wants to see why but all attempts to do so have met with disaster, either due to direct intervention or the spawn jumping the contractors (and promptly legging it out of the area to avoid being attack in revenge.)

EDIT: Anyone else find it funny we're now debating on the presence of different spawn, company motivations, and how fucked the timestream for this iteration of a world is?

[Mr Frog]

I personally oversaw the reintroduction of HS-2 to this iteration

seems pretty unambiguous to me. It, along with the following statement, means that Mr Frog, a Ballpoint employee, acting under his superior's orders, put HS-2 into a world that had previously hosted a Spawn population but no longer did at the time being referred to. I'm 95% certain that he also said that he engineered the HS-2.

I sort of feel like I'm being steamrollered here. I don't want to argue with two three people at once and especially don't want to make the next 2 pages be about reconciling a new backstory that I wasn't aware of or consulted about with some stupid little canon detail that nobody but myself even cares about, so I'll just accept it and put out a blanket statement that any contradictions with the above that appear in my earlier journals are retroactively non-canon. I'm fairly angry about this, though.

[soulslicerjames]

@Splint: They can't possibly be "cheap knockoffs" - why would you have had Ballpoint attempting to capture a specimen if they were? I'd say Mr Frog's task was to figure out how the HS-2a were different from the HS-2b. This would've occurred after the Spawn were re-released into the world. If we assume the Spawn had been around 200 years by the beginning of Spearbreakers which they HAD been, if you count worldgen time, then Mr Frog couldn't have possibly been alive that long, thus, he couldn't have released them himself, or engineered them.

Edit: (soulslicer'd)
All right, so gathering enough for an army is out of the question. In that case, you have to assume that Ballpoint would WANT an army at all (which they would, it's in their nature), and then you have to assume that the specimens they have aren't suitable to those ends. Thus, they want a different variety of Spawn - the Spawn of Parasol. Parasol's may be better in some ways, and different in others. Perhaps we faced Parasol's Spawn near the beginning of Spearbreakers, and we're only just now facing that of Ballpoint. No matter what you believe, the Spawn of Ballpoint and Parasol have to be different. Parasol wasn't intending to weaponize theirs anyway - they're kind of like Aperture Science, in a way - they're in it for the !!Research!!.

I went back to your post on portals at the bottom of page 254, and it says nothing about time-travel (as in having 2 portals to the same place, but linking to different time periods).  On your edit reply, I was thinking under the assumption that the spawn THEMSELVES mutated in some way.

edit: Splintja'd again  Edit2: And now Frogja'd  Though I feel like I'm with you here on this Mr Frog, working on assumptions that ONLY ballpoint introduced the spawn

[Splint]

the spawn THEMSELVES mutated in some way.

That's what I've been going on and based the "Capture specimen" thing on. They've adapted on thier own and thier creators want to know why.

I stand by the Parasol brand of Spawn existing and being a physically stronger but stupider and easier to kill creature based off of stolen Mr Frog research data and introduced after he had deployed the ones he had made. This is to handwave, if it must be called such, why some spawn can be killed by having metal bits rammed into thier heads like living things should be killable by.

[Talvieno]

I thought I'd untangled all the continuity snarls already. this is nuts.

Whether Mr Frog was in the same timeline or not, he did tell Silena that he'd done research on the things.

And by cheap knockoffs I mean they lacked alot of what Mr Frog put into the "Final product" as it were, notably infectious bites and the intelligence to send scouts ahead of raiding parties.

That's OOC!Frog, not IC!Frog. In the Spearbreakers universe, ALL Spawn have the above abilities. But it's a good point: The Spawn could only have been initially re-released by a single company. Therefore, it was either Parasol, or Ballpoint. If it was Ballpoint, they have no reason to recapture their own specimens, unless something went wrong. And what would've gone wrong? Also if it was Ballpoint, Parasol simply wouldn't care, and would leave instead of trying to protect Ballpoint's experiment. That makes no sense at all.

And by cheap knockoffs I mean they lacked alot of what Mr Frog put into the "Final product" as it were, notably infectious bites and the intelligence to send scouts ahead of raiding parties.

If it went horribly right, then Ballpoint has no reason to want to know why. A success is a success. There's no way they would've released every single specimen into the wild, and all they'd have to do is feed them more new victims, to have them bitten. That would be all it would take. At that point, Ballpoint has no reason to want to continue with the Spearbreakers universe. In fact, they'd be free to leave.


TRIPLE NINJA'D.

EDIT:

it·er·a·tion
noun /ˌitəˈrāSHən/ 
iterations, plural

1. The repetition of a process or utterance

2. Repetition of a mathematical or computational procedure applied to the result of a previous application, typically as a means of obtaining successively closer approximations to the solution of a problem

3. A new version of a piece of computer hardware or software

Iteration has a meaning a LOT different from "world".
REEDIT:

I'm fairly angry about this, though.

Lol. You're not the only one.
TRIPLE EDIT:

I went back to your post on portals at the bottom of page 254, and it says nothing about time-travel (as in having 2 portals to the same place, but linking to different time periods).  On your edit reply, I was thinking under the assumption that the spawn THEMSELVES mutated in some way.

edit: Splintja'd again  Edit2: And now Frogja'd  Though I feel like I'm with you here on this Mr Frog, working on assumptions that ONLY ballpoint introduced the spawn

It would be assumed that there wasn't a tiny little portal. The whole of Parasol would've had to go back in time and place the whole of Syrupleaf in a stasis bubble. This implies that they WEREN'T going to run away into the sunset, not caring what happened to the Spawn. In fact, they ONLY reason they would POSSIBLY do this would be so that they COULD experiment with the Spawn. That makes a lot more sense than Ballpoint showing up out of nowhere and saying, "Oh, look, little toothed goodies, let's rush away with them before the people who saved them can even get a good look."

[soulslicerjames]

I have an idea that resolves all this.

Between subterfuge, espionage, counter-espionage, attempts to sabotage each-other's records, and whatnot, NOONE has any idea what exactly happened, and while they could work it out by getting together and working it all out from what scraps of information each one has, they will never trust each-other enough to do so.  Does that sound like a good way to leave this tangle behind?

[Splint]

Well there's the fact the most of Ballpoint AND parasol's higher ups are dwarves, and if those things get smart and last long enough, they may figure out the gates, bust out of containment, things like that. I dunno my brains a bit fuzzy. right now.

Alternativly, Parasol wants to see where thier own variation went wrong and was exterminated, with Ballpoint wanting one to figure out how they're adapting so rapidly so they can counter them if needed (firepower only gets you so much return.) Will they eventually need to make IR gear standard? Will thier railguns stop killing them efficently? Have they changed phsycially ina way they weren't expecting? Parasol may even be acting in a benevolent manner to this, by trying to destory specimens or simply trying to mess up as much of Ballpoint's shit as possible. Bear in mind, we've basically established Parasol mostly relies on noncompany personel to do thier fighting.

As far as the spawn all having those abilities that's been mostly the ingame stuff. There's clearly some other variotion that has either been wiped out or still present and just not observed by the dwarves at the Spearbreakers fortress. I base this off your own writings involving a spawn being killed by a dagger to the head.

I have an idea that resolves all this.

Between subterfuge, espionage, counter-espionage, attempts to sabotage each-other's records, and whatnot, NOONE has any idea what exactly happened, and while they could work it out by getting together and working it all out from what scraps of information each one has, they will never trust each-other enough to do so.  Does that sound like a good way to leave this tangle behind?

This is entirely plausible. A bit shallow, but given the clearly vicious (to the point of bloodshed) competition between the two companies things blowing up, going wrong, and generally backfiring and being mismanaged or lost does make sense, and can easily become a reason for things to occure, much like the pope declaring a kingdom to be full of heretics to get other countries to fuck them up because they insulted his cathedral's looks.

I'm personally trying to rationalize things in a way that is more than just a handwave, and so that a compriomise can be met and no-one has to change thier stories.

[Xahnel]

@Mr Frog: this argument right he-aw, this is why i wanted to colaborate. So i could be damned sure that I wasn't breaking any story stuffs.

[Talvieno]

I have an idea that resolves all this.

Between subterfuge, espionage, counter-espionage, attempts to sabotage each-other's records, and whatnot, NOONE has any idea what exactly happened, and while they could work it out by getting together and working it all out from what scraps of information each one has, they will never trust each-other enough to do so.  Does that sound like a good way to leave this tangle behind?

Hrm... Actually, yeah. Lol     That works.   We definitely don't have any idea what happened, and we're basically the "gods" of our little universe, so... it's reasonable to assume that the characters would be confused about it, too.

Parasol may even be acting in a benevolent manner to this, or simply trying to mess up as much of Ballpoint's shit as possible.

That makes sense. +1 for your good logic bits.

I thought we'd established that Parasol relied on their incredible repurposed inventions to do most of their fighting? Enh, same thing I suppose, if Parasol doesn't want to get directly involved... Heat rays and antigrav beams would make good Parasol weapons, though.

@Mr Frog: this argument right he-aw, this is why i wanted to colaborate. So i could be damned sure that I wasn't breaking any story stuffs.

Everything's been broken and repaired a hundred times now.
Edit: Also, Mr Frog doesn't keep up with all the canon. I do, but I still can't keep all of it in my head at once. Thus, things like this argument right he-aw happens.

Reedit: Lol - I can't imagine what newcomers to this thread would think if they saw the previous argument.

[Mr Frog]

Ugh... I took a 15-minute nap and ate a burrito, hoping that I was just cranky due to exhaustion and I'd feel better about this afterwards. Guess not.

@Talvi:

Don't you dare pull a dictionary definition on me. That's a cop-out and we both know it. Perhaps I should have used a better word instead of a clunky sci-fi-ism, especially if it really was that incomprehensible, but I personally feel that the context was more than clear enough and that you're intentionally being obtuse. And if it really didn't make sense to you, you should have asked me to clarify.


In any case, there has been a severe breakdown of communication here. At no point was a PM sent or any of this run past me in any form even though it directly pertained to a core point of my character's backstory that has been readily-apparent for a while. I understand that it's *incredibly*-hypocritical for me to call you out on this, but I'm doing it anyway.

I've been making more of an effort to be open with what I'm working on, and though said efforts are still pretty lacking, I can only do so much on my end. The only solution for this sort of problem short of everyone posting a gigantic list of every single little idea they've built up about the canon is for us to run things past each other to make sure everything gels, which didn't happen here.

As I've recently voiced to Talvieno, I've been worried lately about being able to bring my side plot to a satisfactory conclusion, and knowing that I can get the rug pulled out from under me with no notice like this only deepens that worry. Maybe I'm being selfish and it's unrealistic for me to expect people to personally ask me every single time they have something they think might contradict what I have, but I don't want to work in an environment where my input is ignored.


@X:

Since we now have a means of contacting each other, why don't you just message me a summary after you've written it (or, better, while you're writing it) and I'll tell you if it violates anything canon-y that I'm currently aware of?

[Xahnel]

I'm not much good at summaries... I'll just pm it to you when i write it...

[Mr Frog]

@X:

Okay, but in little chunks as you write it. It'd suck for you to write an entire story only to have me point to a little part at the beginning and go 'that doesn't work, now rewrite everything past that point' :p

[Xahnel]

Then i might as well just write a paragraph at a time, and send it to you.