[Disc]The Fall of Crystal Osaka Discussion Thread

[Kokuten]

Thread for discussion of open story thread 'The Fall of Crystal Osaka'
can I has sketch of event/outline for Osaka Falling?
failing that, can I has cheeseburger?Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[M Fnord]

Pulling up "With Liberty" for reference...
Basic sequence for Crystal Osaka goes as follows:
Event 1 - Bad guys start something.
Event 2 - Good guys get involved.
Event 3 - Firefight!
Event 4 - Bad guys use firefight as cover to sabotage Crystal Osaka's lift motors. CO begins to drop.
Event 5 - Good & bad guys scramble to get the hell off of CO before it hits the heat/pressure boundary.
Event 6 - CO evacuated, slams into the lower atmosphere, goes boom. Bad guys get away ("Next time, Gadget!") while good guys feel guilty for causing the disaster. Fade to black, TBC in "With Liberty and Great Justice"---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[robkelk]

Sounds good to me.
"Event 1 - Bad guys start something" is de Leon's boys hitting the yakuza using Crystal Osaka as a covert base. "Event 2 - Good guys get involved" is where we are at the end of the first story post...

-Rob Kelk
"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Kokuten]

not gonna be involved for the first bit, I think - starting to feel like a glory hogWire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[KJ]

Y'all have fun with this, I'm going to be off doing blackops stuffle at the time.
... which makes me feel less bad about doing big cool stuff later on.

[Foxboy]

Crystal Osaka may be the first time that de Leon lays eyes on the Pinafore.

---

"That's my Boat," Gervasio seethed. "That motherless goatherd has. MY. BOAT!"

---

''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[LilFluff]

I think I'll throw Caitlin in. She hasn't shown up in the bits I've posted about Andrew; but here's a bit of trivia, she's the first Senshi he sees upon arriving at Venus, and plays a role in getting his teaching spot.
-----

Will the transhumanist future have catgirls? Does Japan still exist? Well, there is your answer.

[Cobalt Greywalker]

Between Events 4 and 5 is where the Grey Knights, upon find the lift motor controls smashed and having compatible systems in their suits, tie their armour into the wrecked controls. Unfortunately their suit computers can't cope automatically with the demands of the Crystal Osaka lift system and the three of them have to stay in their suits to manually adjust the settings to keep things stable enough for everyone else to get off.

[Valles]

Point of background: I won't say it can't be changed, but the Castles, as I pictured them to start with, are buoyant rather actively lifted, and as such, crashing one would involve breaching or otherwise venting its gas cells rather than cutting the power. Probably the cell structure has two layers; a lower one filled with breathable air (which is a lifting gas in Venus's atmosphere!) and an upper one containing helium. Both layers are also divided vertically into a series of cells that spiral outwards, like the chambers of a nautilus. Living spaces are built inside the breathable cells, while the 'ground' beneath them is made up of the Castle's industrial areas - power storage batteries, gene labs, etc. Below that are the docking and landing facilities, which are in turn just above the generators and cable anchor. The cable, in turn, goes all the way down to a heat sink on the actual surface, which soaks up heat, warms the cable itself, and can so be used to boil water for steam turbines.
Or maybe there's a wave strain that's been found that'll do it directly, doesn't matter. The ground-heated cable is where all the power's coming from.
The reason for the doubled lifting cells is that, while 'normal air' is a lifting gas on Venus - about as powerful as Hydrogen and Helium are on Earth, IIRC - those two elements are still lifting gases on Venus, powerful ones, which allow the use of smaller gas cells, which means less structural material, which is lighter and hence desirable no matter how much wave you use. Balloons, of course, have lower energy costs relative to active lift the longer they stay up, and the entire point is to build up energy stores, right?

===============================================
"I'm terribly sorry, but I have to kill you quite horribly now."

[Bob Schroeck]

I'd love to get the folks from the Corners involved in this -- by Jan '13 they'd have their whole fleet waved, I'm sure, so at the very minimum they're available for rescue runs.

-- Bob
---------
The Internet Is For Norns.

[Cobalt Greywalker]

Easy way of getting around the problem is to say the lift motors were the ones used to move the castle from the Moon where they were grown (IIRC) and now perform station keeping/stabalisation. The rest of the controls deal with pumping the lift gasses around to balance loads (or evacuate ruptured cells so they don't loose all the gas to Venus) and emergency hatch overides.
I'd expect them to completely destroy the emergency cable jetason controls. That way as Crystal Osaka looses lift, the weight of the cable helps drag it down.
Edit: How long do we think it'll take to sink, once started? Given the distance some people will have to travel, maybe a day?

[robkelk]

---

I'd love to get the folks from the Corners involved in this -- by Jan '13 they'd have their whole fleet waved, I'm sure, so at the very minimum they're available for rescue runs.

---

There's plenty of room for rescue runs; that'll likely be the majority of Event 5. And anybody on-station who doesn't get to one of the few ships in port will require rescue to avoid going down with Crystal Osaka...
de Leon's boys - at least, the ones that survive - will have their own way out, but they won't share. The scum.

-Rob Kelk
"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[robkelk]

---

Crystal Osaka may be the first time that de Leon lays eyes on the Pinafore.

---

I knew there was a reason to use de Leon, besides the fact that nobody else yet had.
Good to have worked someone else's subplot into the main plot - I was half-afraid it was going to be just my subplot that was featured here...

-Rob Kelk
"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[robkelk]

---

Point of background: I won't say it can't be changed, but the Castles, as I pictured them to start with, are buoyant rather actively lifted, and as such, crashing one would involve breaching or otherwise venting its gas cells rather than cutting the power.

---

I believe that's how they were originally described, yes.
So, shall we replace "lift motors" with "station-keeping thrusters"? The sabotage could then be a computer virus that programs them to fire in exactly the wrong pattern (which the Grey Knights can't completely override), combined with a few accediantelly-on-purpose shots from de Leon's cartel right through the helium chambers (in order to keep the OGJ ships busy rescuing civilians instead of chasing him).

-Rob Kelk
"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[classicdrogn]

The lift cells are where the repro Epyon mentioned in my bits comes in... to smash them, when just killing the station-keeping thrusters or lift motors or whatever the final arrangement is doesn't do the job.
Quick unit summary: 30ft replica Gundam Epyon, originally constructed aboard Gnarlycurl using 'cybertronian' methods and materials. It has a 18ft cybertronium greatsword with a slightly jagged leaf shape as per the original's beam sword, which is metallic lime green, easily strong emough to lift and throw five tons - close to half its own weight. Really throw, not a judo style off-ballance-and-apply-leverage throw. Whover the Boskone got to pilot it it after stealing it is not interested in sticking around to fight, just get there, bust things up per plan, and bug out again - it's a pro, apparently.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[M Fnord]

If I may, the quibble over "lift motors" is mostly irrelevant. The point is that the bad guys break whatever's keeping Crystal Osaka afloat, beginning the "ship is sinking" portion of the program. Everything else there is gravy.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[robkelk]

Before anybody quibbles...

---

Three minutes later, Noah was using the ship's interwave set to report in to Operation Great Justice.

---

This equipment is taking up the entirety of the Epsilon Blade's cargo compartment, but I couldn't figure out a reasonable way to say so in-story. Yet.

-Rob Kelk
"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Foxboy]

Little bit, feel free to edit to taste:
Corcoran's face paled as he read the message from the strategy net for Operation Great Justice.
Tabitha placed her hand on his shoulder. "Captain?" she asked. "Are you all right?" She drew closer, her crinolines and petticoats whispering as she embraced the object of her conditioned obsession.
Tom Dobbs, her hair freshly cut in her latest futile attempt at a buzz cut looked at the message herself and let out a stream of profanities that would have made her drill sergeant proud.
Corcoran shakily got to his feet and strode to address Buttercup. He thought for a moment and haltingly began to sing:
Never mind the why and wherefore
They have called distress and therefore
We must make our way to Venus with all necessary haste!
And let us pray we make it before any more lives are waste!
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Valles]

I'd planned to cover the ground of just how the hell the Boskone got an in with the Senshi, of all the unlikely groups, in my own story in the original thread. Since that seems thoroughly stalled, I should probably mention it here.
Senshi want to be heroes. They want to stand in front of the world and do good works for the sheer love of it.
...it's hard to be a standout hero when you're a member of a faction thousands strong. For some personality types, that's all right. For others, it's irritating but not intolerable.
And there are some who are certain that they deserve the power and recognition offered to their leaders... and are being unjustly denied them. Mix in thionite, blackmail, and outright planted agents and you have the recipe for capital-T Trouble.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"I'm terribly sorry, but I have to kill you quite horribly now."