A Theory Conspiracy...

[actuallyselfish]

[Open to all]

[1]

You get a message on your comms from Dido, inviting you to one of the lounges in the Saikhama hanger bays.

Upon arrival, you discover that furniture and tables have been shifted to the side, making room for a chalkboard. A huge old-school chalkboard on wheels, pea-green and with a wood-framed ledge for colored chalk-sticks.

Dido nods to you as you walk in, sternly tapping some chalk to the board.

"So," she says. "Loni and the terrible trio have all the Seals. Soon, they'll make their move to summon the Lady upon this world. Brye and Rani are standing by the wings, ready to hijack the Lady's power and somehow use it to wish away suffering. The Lady herself managed to influence the Lady's Good Men, the UG's foundation and Loni's whole upbringing, despite being in a different dimension. Worse, we still don't know what her true power or form is."

Dido starts writing on the chalk board. "If we're gonna win, we have to figure out what's coming. That means assembling clues, testing theories and answering key questions..."



[2]

"What is the Lady, and what are her capabilities?"

[3]

"What does she want to do to our world?"

[4]

"Why did she arrange for the founding of the Unity Group, the Lady's Good Men, and the Terrible Trio?"

[5]

"What's the most direct way to ruin their plans?"


Dido underlines each question on the board, and turns to face you all. "Class is in session, guys," she pronounces.

Comments

5

[herodrawing]

Most direct? You mean... beat up Loni, I suppose?

Re: 5

[actuallyselfish]

"That is one option," Dido says, writing it down.

KILL LONI

"But...and no offense intended," Dido says. "We've had bad luck trying to do that. Plus, who's to say that Bryne and Rani wouldn't try to crack the seals on their own?"

She frowns in thought. "There has to be something we can do to just stop any Lady summoning in their tracks." She snaps her fingers. "What if we blew up the Discovery? They can't assemble the seals without the Discovery, right?"

[herodrawing]

That's true, but.

[Izuru looks serious. He's not happy to talk about this.]

For the Lady and Loni, it's Loni who's the hero, right? Even when the special place where the hero's supposed to go is destroyed, the hero will still manage somehow. But if the hero's out of the picture, then what? His story's over.

You can have another one, but I don't think they'd do it about people who double crossed him.

[actuallyselfish]

Dido snorts. "Yeah, the Lady's milking Loni's delusions for all he's worth..."

Her voice trails off as she takes a look at Izuru's intent gaze. "...wait, wait, wait," she says, snapping her fingers. "You've got a point. You've got a really good point, Izuru!"

Dido starts pacing back and forth. "The Lady's been investing a lot of effort to make Loni feel like a hero! A whole lot of effort! More than makes sense if she's just using Loni as a dupe."

Dido halts suddenly. "Whatever she is, she wants Loni to be a hero? But why, Izuru?"

[herodrawing]

Maybe she likes him? I don't know how people like her... aliens? Gods? Well, how she may think like.

[Or what she finds in Loni for that matter.]

[actuallyselfish]

"Even if she's some tentacle monster that thinks in five spatial dimensions," Dido snorts. "She'd need an Gold Medal in mental gymnastics to like Loni. For God's sake, he's a spoiled brat–"

Dido's rant stutters to a stop. "He's a spoiled brat," she repeats. "He's a spoiled brat. We thought he was spoiled by his uncle, but it was the Lady who–who spoiled him rotten..."

She stares at Izuru, wide-eyed. "Do you think–?"

[herodrawing]

You mean the Lady made Loni who he is now?! From the very start?

[2]

[in_over_his_head]

The What of what she is... that might take a bit more research. Whatever she is though...

[Calvin's counting off his fingers.]

She can teleport in those robotic minions of hers almost anywhere, and she's got a good number of them.

So we can count near unlimited transport capabilities and manufacturing capability. Both the teleportation and the capabilities of the more powerful machines are pretty advanced so we can count a high degree of technology on the table as well.

She can manipulate information well enough that people believed that there was a funding council and that nobody questioned that Gavin's Uncle was never seen, only heard. That and nobody questioned a lack of name.

We're still trying to figure out where our funding's coming from too...

But from what we've seen she can't directly interact with those seals. Meaning its likely she needed someone to deal with them for her. Hence Gavin... and possibly Eriksen and Arian.

Re: [2]

[actuallyselfish]

Dido nods. "Good, good," she says, writing down a few notes under question #2:

Minions, Mass-Production, Information War, Hot Potato Seals

"Mostly, likely, she'll have more capabilities if she breaks into our reality," Dido muses. "But what can we infer about her personality, from what we've seen? Her minions have a religious motif, and she seems to like convoluted schemes..."

[in_over_his_head]

So there's also the possibility of it having a god complex as well if we go by the motif. The convoluted schemes may stem from some kind of complexity addiction... or some kind of plan we didn't catch onto yet...

Or maybe we're meant to keep other people's plans from screwing over hers...

[actuallyselfish]

Dido freezes. "I hadn't thought of that, Calvin," she admits. "Come to think of it, how many dimensional invaders has our organization send packing? The Indalph, the Kaiju, the Kijin, that one living universe....all potential competition to her own invasion."

Dido sits down on a chair with a loud thump. "Not that I regret what we did," she mutters. "But did the Lady use us as...pest control?"

[in_over_his_head]

The odds are there. We still don't have any hint as to what she wanted with us and that's honestly the most likely theory in my eyes... well... that an us exacerbating Gavin's mental state by not letting him have his way.

And it might not be the Dimensional Invaders as well. The Unity Group led the attack that blunted the Zentradi invasion and chased it off, took down the Cybertronian equivalent of Satan which was from the looks of things devouring whole planets on the way here, shut down a horseman of the apocalypse, took out a god...

Basically anything with the power to destroy the world that might be a threat to her, we've managed to take it out.

[actuallyselfish]

"Huh," Dido says. "That's simultaneously encouraging and discouraging. We may have been doing her dirty work for her...but if the enemies we beat could have threatened her reshaping of Earth, then that means we pose a threat too..."

The Solaris Mechanic leans against the chalkboard. "Did the Lady think we'd wreck ourselves taking down these enemies? Or does she have some way to make the Unity Group self-destruct?"

[in_over_his_head]

Well we haven't had a damn easy time for it that's for sure. How many fights dod we get into that took out people we had working with us and cut down on our manpower?

We may be holding out for now but every time the Unity Group loses someone....

[dolorous_sensei]

Oh, this is what I'm born for. Which is rather sad actually.

I have opinion on each of them, but I think it'll be better if we discuss this one by one.

First, how to ruin their plan? It'll be easier to find an answer if we actually know what is their plan. If the Unity Group, Lady's Good Men, and Terrible Trio, are all arranged by "The Lady," there's big, no, almost certain chance that if for example we kill Loni or explode the Discovery or do a Sealing Ritual using the purest virgin maiden, it all turned out to be The Lady's Plan All Along.

Tell me if it doesn't sound like a certainty with these kind of villains.

[actuallyselfish]

"..."

Dido rubs her chin. "You raise some very good points," she says at last, reaching behind the chalkboard. "That's why I want you, Walt, to make a list of all the ways we might unleash the Lady by accident."

She pulls out and hands you a tiny whiteboard studded with kitten stickers. It looks like she got it from a preschool's rec room. "It's a heavy responsibility," she says, handing you a marker, "but I know you can do it, Walt! Unleash your inner pessimist!"

[dolorous_sensei]

...

*If you take a look at the list Walt is writing it roughly goes like this:*

How We Might Unleash The Lady:

- Killing Loni
- Not Killing Loni
- Destroying Discovery
- Not Destroying Discovery
- Researching TSEN beyond what mankind should know
- Not Researching TSEN beyond what mankind should know
- Doing Mysterious Blood Ritual We Find In An Ancient Library
- Not Doing Mysterious Blood Ritual We Find In An Ancient Library
- Sacrificing Virgins
- Not Sacrificing Virgins

The list goes on for a while.

[actuallyselfish]

Dido, silent, scrolls through the list and pauses at a certain entry.

"Walt...why would shooting an on-sight documentary accidentally unleash the Lady?"

[dolorous_sensei]

Have you never seen any horror movie at all? Shooting an on-site documentary in a supposedly haunted place is the surefire way to unleash sealed ancient evil.

Especially if the hot female presenter decide to take a skinny dip or something.

Also, I realized something.

After making all these list... what if... The Lady's plan is actually preventing something worse? Like, what if The Lady is actually trying to prevent the sun from going into a premature supernova, or preventing earth from being eaten by a giant intergalactic teleporting demonmouth?

[actuallyselfish]

"Well..." Dido says. "Remember what that prophet of the Lady, Aaron, said? He said that the Lady detests the earth, and wants to see it change. That's she'd substitute our reality for her own."

Dido scratches her nose. "Given how wing-nut her followers are, and how freaky the minions she summons are...would you really want to live in her world, Walt?"

4

[abugslife]

This question might be, as far as I am aware, premature.

We know for a fact that if not for the Lady, her Good Men would not be created and Gavin would not be influenced by her whispers. But do we know for certain that Unity Group was founded thanks to her?

Re: 4

[actuallyselfish]

"We have, apparently, been getting the Lion's share of our funding through the Lady's influence," Dido points out. "At the very least, she saw some way our existence could be turned to her advantage."

Dido frowns. "More to the point...the Lady's goal is to enter our reality with the three seals, right? And she can influence people here to do her bidding. So why not just trick a group of master ninjas into stealing and assembling the seals? Wouldn't that be easier and safer than fiddling with cults and stupid teenagers?"

[abugslife]

Not the funds that we thought came from the Council, at the very least. Which raises the question: where did those resources come from, exactly?

As for your question, I can only guess. The Lady might have a mindset unlike any of the races we know. Perhaps what matters to her is not just getting the tablets, but also the way she obtains them. Perhaps she has further plans for Gavin.

[actuallyselfish]

"I don't agree with that 'her thoughts are too alien to predict' notion," Dido says firmly.

"If we believe that, then we won't get anywhere. If we want to prepare for what's coming, we have to assume the Lady has some motives in common with us. Power, security, freedom, reproduction..."

Dido chews on those thoughts for a moment. "Here's something I'm curious about," she muses. "Remember when the Unity Group went into famine mode while Loni commissioned BrightSaber? We never did find out where and who manufactured that mecha. Think we should search?"

[abugslife]

Time will tell. Only when we have more information we can start speculating on what exactly she wants with more accuracy.

The BrightSaber and its super mode light up your curiosity as an engineer, do they not? This might be worth investigating, but I get the feeling that the trail will end with the nonexistant Uncle. Regardless, it might be worth a try.