Act 2 Climax-Mir Attacks!

[former_endboss]

So, Mir's winding up the middle part of her canon here and is about to seize control of both Lady Shurelia's body and the Tower of Ar Tonelico both. And then, as you might have heard, she's going to launch a first strike across dimensions using a combination of her research on the Network and the TSAB's own dimension-jumping techonology to kludge together a patch for Ar Tonelico to let the tower fire it's primary weapons into other worlds.

So when this all goes down and Mir starts killing people, who's going to stand up to her and go on an adventure to stop her?

Comments

[masked_god]

This is a little late, but Karakael is having too much fun baiting her.

He is also used to thinking on a scale completely different to most of the other community members.

How many worlds can Mir destroy? Would Karakael be able to bait her into going after his billion-planet galaxy?

[former_endboss]

She would totally destroy billions of them if she could-but she's short on targeting data and rather strapped for resources. So maybe one or two more with direct fire. Max. She's much better at wiping out cities. Ar Tonelico is only at about 10% of maximum power, and Shurelia stripped it's strategic weapons for critical parts to repair other parts of the Tower.

That said, she can create self-replicating weapons and turn those loose. Which will probably cause a lot more havoc than her ability to actually destroy with her available weapons, especially if her Viruses get out of the computers and into the Thinkhives.

[masked_god]

Hmm. How about 2 planets straight up destroyed, and 25 infected with the Thinkhive viruses? Which might actually be just as bad, given that the thinkhives can move mountains if they wish.

What are the self-replicating weapons like?

[former_endboss]

I imagine that a Thinkhive Virus could possibly be just as nasty as the TITANS from Eclipse Phase if you've ever read up on that setting. Maybe a little Exsurgent Virus for flavor. Though even 'destroyed' will be more like a total nuclear exchange and less like a Death Star unless she can find something on those planets she can use to blow them up remotely.

They're called Viruses in canon. Techno-magical constructs that infest the Tower, pigggybacking it's systems. They can subvert existing defenses, and some of the advanced models can do 'phase' tricks where they go insubstantial for a split second to dodge attacks. Really more an annoyance to anyone who's prepared, but if they get somewhere where they aren't expected...

And even Mir can't call them off easily.

[masked_god]

How would she think of forcing everyone on a planet to go into cryogenic suspension? Kaaree probably wouldn't let her get her hands on any of the actually dangerous planets (like the ones with child-brain-driven asteroids and the like) though the equivalent of a nuclear apocalipse might be completely possible on some of the worlds, depending on the tech. level.

What would she do with a planet with no system of government and little to no technology? About half of the worlds are like that...

oooh, she could infest the dispersal plates. they're basically transporters. and if the Viruses get into those, just think of all the havoc they could wreck...

[former_endboss]

How easy is it to cause massive cryogenics failures and kill people in those tubes? Because we all know that Mir doesn't actually care about destroying planets, she just wants to kill.

And you know, worlds like that really aren't very good for conquering or making war on-just too distributed and resistant to attack. The benefits of being hill people-Civilization doesn't pay you much mind.

Yes, that's pretty much what I was thinking of. Teleportation networks are their bread and butter. They use them pretty aggressively in Ar Tonelico, and they're pretty much the only things that do. Everyone else is a bit leery of being torn apart and reassembled.

[masked_god]

Well, it is relatively easy to freeze people in eternal suspension, but not so easy to kill them outright. The entire purpose of the dispersal ships is to prevent the loss of life while still creating as much physical destruction as possible.

True. Though the people from the Inquest are quick to hail anyone who can wrestle control of their planets from the guiding computers as "gods". Would that tempt mir, or is she more interested in destruction?

So systems like that are what would be the worst hit by Mir's attacks. Good.

[former_endboss]

Well. That will NEVER do. Those ships have got to go. Maybe altering their guidance systems to steer them into suns? Crafting battleships of her own to hunt down and destroy them? Mir disdains and tramples upon the rules of Men and the Inquest.

I don't think Mir's ego runs in that way really-she wants to kill humans, or lobotomize them to use as mindless slaves if she can't kill them. Being a god to them brings up bad memories. She would much rather freeze a planet than conquer it, rather release a bio-weapon than subjugate the inhabitants with secret police and total surveillance.

And yeah, technologically advanced and interconnected systems are PRIMED for Mir to rip into. Especially any with automated factories, since she can use those to make robots-low end stuff might just be stuff like Drones with Guns, but the high end...they call them Children of Light, and they look like mikos or angels. And they fight like monsters. And if you knock one down, they'll just drop into sleep mode, recover their energy, and optimize combat protocols to come back even stronger.