THICK AS THIEVULS

[indigo_league]

Who: ANYONE AND EVERYONE
Where: ANYWHERE AND EVERYWHERE
When: JUNE 26TH TO 28TH
Summary: GET IN HERE AND MINGLE
Rating: BUT PLEASE MARK YOUR THREAD CONTENT ACCORDINGLY
Log:






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[mothergoose]

As safe as you could get in a city being torn apart by war and people hunting us.

[She shakes her head, and looks away from the drawing.]

It was not truly safe. The Little Ones would never be safe until I brought them to the surface.

[fearinahandfulof]

Little Ones?

[mothergoose]

Children, all girls. They were known by the rest of the city as the Little Sisters.

It is....a long and complicated story. Tied in with the history of the city, myself and a substance I discovered.

[Just going to smoke now. This place brings back way too many horrible memories. And worse, fond ones.]

This place should have been forgotten.

[fearinahandfulof]

All girls...

[That, and the 'substance' this woman says she discovered, are enough to give Cassandra pause; it sounds uneasily familiar.]

Why were they called Little Sisters?

[mothergoose]

Fontaine needed a friendly name for the orphanage created to collect the girls. After they became a part of the public, the name became almost a branding to make them seem...less terrible.

[fearinahandfulof]

Branding?

[mothergoose]

Marketing. Dressing up an ugly truth so people will pay attention to only what you want them to see.

Put up pictures of smiling children. Call them the Little Sisters. Play advertising of cheerful people talking about how necessary they are.

Hide the reality of what is happening so the public will not ask questions and continue to buy into the myth of the city. And continue to buy what you are selling. No matter what sort of cost there is.

[fearinahandfulof]

What was really happening?

[mothergoose]

Many things over the time. They tried to hide everything at first but then just the fact that it was cruel.

[That doesn't answer much/anything Tenenbaum.]

But the basics. The children were host bodies used to create a substance that could alter peoples DNA in almost any possible way. They still ran around and acted...mostly like children. But they were changed. We...I changed them.

[fearinahandfulof]

[That sounds very familiar. Too familiar.]

What was the purpose of this?

[mothergoose]

It depended on who you asked.

For me, it was all about the genetics, studying the substance and how it worked. Everything else was a means to an end. I didn't think of anything else but my work until far too long.

For most of the others it was to make money selling the products they made from it. It could be used for almost anything but the most popular use was plasmids, injectables that gave people powers like creating fire, teleporting and other such impossible things. ...it was also addictive which was seen by some as a good thing. It meant you were sure people would keep buying.

[fearinahandfulof]

Genetics? DNA?

[Those are unfamiliar terms to her. But much of the rest of this sounds familiar. Hadn't the Organization charged large sums of money for their 'services' too?]

[mothergoose]

[Well this complicates things. She's not great at basics but she'll try?]

DNA is inside a persons cells and tells their cells, what their history is.

...I'm sorry I'm very bad at explaining things like this.

But for a simple example, eye colour. A person has a certain eye colour because of what genes they have. And they get those genes from their parents. If I altered the cells with the substance, I could then change the colour of a persons eyes. And that is a basic change.

Think of it as the building blocks of what makes a person. Why they are what they are.

[fearinahandfulof]

[Cassandra thinks about this, applying it as best she can to her own situation. She'd had a normal eye color once, although she can't remember now what it was. She'd lost that when she'd been implanted with yoma flesh; does that mean that the yoma flesh changed her DNA? Does she actually have DNA, or is that something specific to this woman's world?]

And DNA is... something all humans have?

[mothergoose]

All living things contain DNA. Humans, animals, even plants.

[fearinahandfulof]

All living things in all worlds?

[mothergoose]

That I do not know. I have only experienced my world and this one. I would highly suspect that such simple things remain the same but I could not say for certain.

[fearinahandfulof]

[Cassandra is quiet for a long moment.]

Why is it always little girls?

[mothergoose]

.....I do not know that either.

I know why it had to be children. But why only girls? I never could figure this out.

The only good thing I ever figured out was how to reverse it.

[fearinahandfulof]

[So she'd at least tried to fix what she'd done. That's more than the Organization had ever done for them.]

Maybe they were considered more expendable. Or more controllable.

[That's why the Organization had used girls, she thinks. Both of those reasons, probably.]

[mothergoose]

No, it was simply that it could not be done with boys. It was impossible.

If it had been possible, I would not have cared about the gender and the people I worked for would have seen them as nothing more then more sources of ADAM.

Even in the days when I was in hiding, stealing away the sisters to free them. When ADAM was at the lowest, they had not figured out a way to make it work with any other group. If they had, they would have happily turned half the city to make more of it.

[It got, really.really. bad.]

[fearinahandfulof]

...I am not sure if that is better or worse.

[Though honestly, Cassandra's not sure the Organization wouldn't still be using boys, if they thought they could get some use out of them. Certainly, there had been plenty of rumors about human settlements that crossed them in some way suffering from yoma attacks at some point...]

So all that mattered to them was this... ADAM?

[mothergoose]

The fact that it was done at all means all of it is terrible.

[She turned a corner on the whole caring about her actions and turned it hard.]

...yes. You see the city was founded by a man who wanted to be held accountable to no rules, no laws. So he built an underwater city and let loose people who had no morals about right and wrong. All that mattered was money.

So when I created ADAM, no one cared that when it was found to be addictive and actively destructive unless more and more was taken. All that mattered was this meant, people would keep buying.

[fearinahandfulof]

Yes.

[That, at least, is clear.]

All that mattered was what he, and the other people who lived there, wanted?

[mothergoose]

Yes and no....

The city was hidden, it was isolated. To the rest of the world it did not exist and no one could leave. I say this because it means even if you did not wish to be there or agree with Andrew Ryan anymore, you could not leave.

To Andrew Ryan, nothing else mattered but what he wanted. If he cared about the people who lived there it was only as much as they agreed with him and his vision. And the other people who had power bases were the same. Though some of them would have claimed otherwise.

[Looking at you Lamb and your totally not a cult Family.]

In the end the only thing that mattered was the power and control. They had this with ADAM...and the splicers. Which is what the people who took the ADAM eventually became called as the ADAM destroyed their minds and bodies. Those in power would use them as armies.

[She sighs.]

I was trying to work on a cure for that sickness before I was taken here. It is...a great deal more difficult then curing a Little One.

[Also it's like 10 years after the first game thing ended so that probably doesn't help.]