1. For his spine, he'd need to determine who can either erase a serial number or get the spine before a serial number is added. Basically: would this spine have been changed in some way so that it wouldn't be traced back, or did someone get one that had never entered the system? Given what he now knows about the Displaced being at Project Meadowlark, he could make assumptions that whoever runs or backs this project may be able to bypass many of the typical procedures. And if they are able to do that, what else can they do? What kind of person has this capability? And if they have the capability, who do they have connections to that helps build cybernetics of this scale?
2. For the dreams, you can have him reach out to the cultists here! We know you were on hiatus for the month, so feel free to hit this now if you'd like. That said! They won't be able to help with the Project Meadowlark-related parts of the dreams, but may be able to tell him a bit more about god touched people sharing dreams and experiences, which will link back to our first dream event and its dreams. It's unlikely to link back to Cassian's particular dream for his investigation, but he'll have some deets about the greater mythology of the group.
As for the hole it fills: his spinal surgery had to take place because he was in a medi-unit when they attempted to extract the blue stuff from one of the Displaced in the facility, which led to everything—including his powers—going haywire and shutting down. When this happened, the facility rumbled due to his powers. That said, the collective powers, mindlinked freaking out, violence on the workers there in the facility (as implied by one of our very first shared dreams) led to the power being shut off. When this depowering took place, Cassian required traditional surgery where a medi-unit normally could have fixed him up.
So, basically, it was the attempted extraction of the blue stuff that made it necessary for the surgery to take place, not Cassian himself. We did make the dream purposefully vague so that we preserved whacky dream tones and also to make way for some discussion of What it All Means. We do apologize for the whacky dream prose making things a little vague in places!
3. He'll find disturbingly little about it. Since the New Omsk facility was largely funded by the UN, someone had the ability to help shut it down and cut away any information that came out of there. Now, who seems to have connections to facilities around the world and can cause problems with them? We'll say that Cassian is free to assume that Johann may had a role in this cover up, which then would beg the question: how powerful is Johann? What is he capable of doing?
We'll add that this dovetails neatly with the findings in Antarctica, namely what William Clayton-Queen was able to dig up (covered here under hacking interlude). Unlike with New Omsk, which was a UN-funded and run facility, the facility in Antarctica wouldn't be able to be controlled the same way so they had to go through other means to stop information from getting out. Of course, William released all of that information at the end of the monster event, showing the cover up. Cassian can, again, feel free to make the connection between Johann's nearby lab and this one and whatever information Johann was trying to find. It's one part "what is Johann doing" and one part "how is he able to do it."
Let us know if you'd like us to answer any other questions or point you to more content you might have missed! We assume you like doing some of the digging yourself, but there's … a lot … so we're happy to help where needed!
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1. For his spine, he'd need to determine who can either erase a serial number or get the spine before a serial number is added. Basically: would this spine have been changed in some way so that it wouldn't be traced back, or did someone get one that had never entered the system? Given what he now knows about the Displaced being at Project Meadowlark, he could make assumptions that whoever runs or backs this project may be able to bypass many of the typical procedures. And if they are able to do that, what else can they do? What kind of person has this capability? And if they have the capability, who do they have connections to that helps build cybernetics of this scale?
2. For the dreams, you can have him reach out to the cultists here! We know you were on hiatus for the month, so feel free to hit this now if you'd like. That said! They won't be able to help with the Project Meadowlark-related parts of the dreams, but may be able to tell him a bit more about god touched people sharing dreams and experiences, which will link back to our first dream event and its dreams. It's unlikely to link back to Cassian's particular dream for his investigation, but he'll have some deets about the greater mythology of the group.
As for the hole it fills: his spinal surgery had to take place because he was in a medi-unit when they attempted to extract the blue stuff from one of the Displaced in the facility, which led to everything—including his powers—going haywire and shutting down. When this happened, the facility rumbled due to his powers. That said, the collective powers, mindlinked freaking out, violence on the workers there in the facility (as implied by one of our very first shared dreams) led to the power being shut off. When this depowering took place, Cassian required traditional surgery where a medi-unit normally could have fixed him up.
So, basically, it was the attempted extraction of the blue stuff that made it necessary for the surgery to take place, not Cassian himself. We did make the dream purposefully vague so that we preserved whacky dream tones and also to make way for some discussion of What it All Means. We do apologize for the whacky dream prose making things a little vague in places!
3. He'll find disturbingly little about it. Since the New Omsk facility was largely funded by the UN, someone had the ability to help shut it down and cut away any information that came out of there. Now, who seems to have connections to facilities around the world and can cause problems with them? We'll say that Cassian is free to assume that Johann may had a role in this cover up, which then would beg the question: how powerful is Johann? What is he capable of doing?
We'll add that this dovetails neatly with the findings in Antarctica, namely what William Clayton-Queen was able to dig up (covered here under hacking interlude). Unlike with New Omsk, which was a UN-funded and run facility, the facility in Antarctica wouldn't be able to be controlled the same way so they had to go through other means to stop information from getting out. Of course, William released all of that information at the end of the monster event, showing the cover up. Cassian can, again, feel free to make the connection between Johann's nearby lab and this one and whatever information Johann was trying to find. It's one part "what is Johann doing" and one part "how is he able to do it."
Let us know if you'd like us to answer any other questions or point you to more content you might have missed! We assume you like doing some of the digging yourself, but there's … a lot … so we're happy to help where needed!