(no subject)

[former-endboss.livejournal.com]

[Audio]
I'm putting together a work group for the Astral Silver issue-I still don't have all the details myself, but that's the purpose of this meeting. We need to find out what we know, what we need to know, and how to go about finding that out. So, everyone in R&D can shelve your other projects for now-this is what we are going to be working on. Anyone outside that group who feels they have information to contribute is welcome to submit it on paper or in person.

[Action]
*Experience-and observing the meetings of her own project development group-had taught Jacqli well what was needed at this kind of meeting. There are no less than nine whiteboards on three walls of the room to scribble theories on, and everyone has their own color of marker. There is a coffee machine, well stocked with the strong stuff, lots of sugar cubes and non-dairy creamer. On the table itself, besides the thick binders full of general and technical information on Astral Silver is a big old plate of sweet and savory pastries. Everything from doughnuts and atapan to cornish pasties, ready to refill the flagging energy of a hard working scientist.

And right beside it is a sample of the material itself. This one however is a bit unorthodox-instead of getting a plain ingot of Astral Silver, Jacqli has somehow gotten her hands on one of the traditional weapons forged from the stuff-a Githyanki Silver Sword. She's probably starring at it while everyone files in and settles down. It'll take time to build up a critical mass of SCIENCE.*

[OOC: Let's keep the meeting in one thread-track it as you join it, and we'll all get through this with our sanity relatively intact.]

Comments

Action

[demon-hacker.livejournal.com]

Atsuro begins his contribution to the group planning effort by filling his plate up with doughnuts. Sugar was a necessity for this.

"So I know I got high marks in chemistry last year, but I don't know how much help I'm actually going to be."

[former-endboss.livejournal.com]

jacqli shrugged at that one. It was a fair complaint, but...

"knowledge is like putting together a puzzle with a million pieces. One person can't do it very fast, and neither can a vast team of people each with two pieces. You need to have lots of people who can see all the pieces they're each holding."

[demon-hacker.livejournal.com]

His scores in literature, on the other hand, had been near the 'abysmal' end of the spectrum, due largely to his excellent grasp of symbolism.. "I, uh, think the piece I'm holding is the obvious corner one that everyone starts off with and knows already. Astral Silver makes everything work better, right? I'm inclined to suggest we steal a lot of their weaponry and use it against them."

[former-endboss.livejournal.com]

"That's actually something that hasn't occurred to some people yet obviously." Jacqli pointed at the sword on the table. "If it had, then all of the stuff would already be accounted for because one way or another the powers that be would have all the supplies so regulated as to make it impossible to move it as contraband."

[micro-icarus.livejournal.com]

Ed's got his own chunk of Astral Silver. A couple of ounces of fractured mecha armor from the battle to hold the gate that he is currently transmuting it into various shapes. A plain cube, a toy donkey, a statue of Alphonse...

"I've never seen something so easy to transmute."

[former-endboss.livejournal.com]

"It seems to be very accepting of whatever form you give it. We might want to look into that, see if we can turn all of it in a given area into one thing that's useless to our enemies." Jacqli scribbled notes on psychic waves, radiation, the square-cube law and other things, wondering what would be needed to override the normal functioning of the material.

[hot-engineer.livejournal.com]

"...Has anyone tried hitting it with magic?" Lucca muses, near one of the whiteboards. "That's nothing but will manifest in latent dimensional energies. And this stuff seems to change to someone's will pretty fast."

[demon-hacker.livejournal.com]

And the conversation inspires a brain-wave. "...Hey. I just realized I know a few people who are a lot more qualified for this kind of thing than I am."

Atsuro types away at his computer for a few minutes before pulling out his Comp, after which Brigid (http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Brigid) appears in a burst of light. "Brigid! You're the goddess of blacksmithing, aren't you? We need to find a way to counter the properties of this metal."

The woman nods demurely before reaching to examine the sword.

"Don't... drop it in the flaming pot. Uh. Anyway, I was thinking, too, that if Astral Silver binds to someone's soul... Any countermeasures we come up with might be... potentially unhealthy."

[micro-icarus.livejournal.com]

In response to Jacqli's earlier thought, Ed commented "I have to be able to touch it to be able to do that. If I just had time to spend a few weeks back home, I might be able to do something, but..."

[former-endboss.livejournal.com]

Jacqli was running some math, but by the frown she sported, she wasn't liking the odds of a broadcast spell doing much to the material. "Yes, it looks like we loose too much strength at range. No mind that a human could comprehend could do this. Not beyond the reach of their own arms anyways." It went without saying that most of the minds they had to work with were comprehensible. "There might be another way... but just throwing willpower at it won't work."

[hot-engineer.livejournal.com]

"Maybe we can use the Astral Silver we have to build an amplifier? One that alters the transmission axis to subspace frequencies? Y'know, fight fire with fire!"

[demon-hacker.livejournal.com]

"If you're going to non-specifically transmutate all Astral Silver nearby into something useless, wouldn't the Astral Silver in the amplifier itself be affected?"

[micro-icarus.livejournal.com]

"Could we make the amplifier transmute astral silver into more amplifiers? That'd be pretty complicated, but..."