texted during the meeting, displaying as being from Nova Barnett

[petridish]

[Those who check the contact list may notice there is now only one Jane Shepard listed, but this user looks almost identical to her, just mad.]

Suggestions for ways to change your appearance? Long term but not as permanent as that asteroid's genetic modification, both things that can be done on the trip and recommendations for service providers for when we get back.

[All Nova's replies will also be in text unless otherwise specified.]

Comments

[toservelife]

['Less like someone else'. Aloy's probably noticeable the next moment craning her neck to look around the big group - after her customary distraction by aliens and giant machines wears off, she...gives the attempt up as a bad job. There's too many people, and a good few are in helmets.]

a lot of people only shave part of their heads. that could work.

or just wear headdresses when it's cold
there's piercings or face paint too

[Dress up like a Carja, Nova, that's what she's saying.]

[petridish]

What kind of headdresses?

[Nova's mainly seen hats and helmets on humans, and has excluded alien fashion from consideration.]

[toservelife]

theres lots of kinds

some nobles have fancy ones
big shapes of metal they wrap their hair around and everything

some banuk shamans wear giant machine heads with the cables still attached
that kind of thing

the nora have pretty simple ones - i have one, it might be easier to show you

[Officially the most she's ever typed, and it's about fashion.]

[petridish]

Sounds too impractical, but I'll have a look at yours.

[toservelife]

wearing it right now
can you see me where you are? i have red hair, an energy shield on my armour...and a headdress

[As a girl wearing scrapyard tribal armour that happens to glow blue, she probably doesn't blend in too well.]

[petridish]

[The words "energy shield" have her searching for something quite different, her gaze leaving the Savrii speakers as she tries to subtly look around the meeting. Though she finds the red hair and odd thing on top of it, she initially dismisses this girl as not being the Aloy commenting on her post before realizing no one else fits the description.]

What kind of energy shield is that?

[The nerd is distracted.]

[toservelife]

[She definitely appreciates the nerdery...but she's not really able to indulge it very well.]

it's from some ancient armor i found
that armor was too heavy, but i managed to sew the shield generators onto mine
don't know anything else about it

[Slight pause, then another message.]

could you work it out if you took a look

[petridish]

Probably not [she can acknowledge her areas of little knowledge], but I'm curious.

[Rereading 'ancient'...]

What year/planet are you from?

[toservelife]

[Oh well. Worth a try.

She wouldn't have been able to answer a question about planets mere days ago, but now:] earth

does the year 3040 mean anything to you

[It's not how the Nora count years. Nobody here is Nora, though - they all look a lot more like the Old Ones.]

[petridish]

Huh. Further on from me. [Possibly the furthest she's seen!] 2186.

[toservelife]

we're definitely from different worlds
there were no humans in my world in 2186
not for 200 more years

[What would humanity have been like if the Old Ones had existed for another century? She's wondered before, but she never thought she could actually find out.]

[petridish]

Where were they?

[Off colonizing somewhere else?]

[toservelife]

[... She should have known this question was coming, but it's a sad thing to have to type it all the same.]

they died in about 2065
they made machines for war, but they glitched and nobody could control them

[petridish]

Ah. Yeah, that's always a mistake, especially if the machines have artificial intelligence.

[toservelife]

they were just war machines that malfunctioned, and the corporation that made them closed all the back doors so no one could fix it for years.
not much help when you have ten months before they grind you up for fuel.

[OK, that's a full stop. She can use those. And commas. Typing is hard, ok.]

[petridish]

Why did the corporation do that?

[She vaguely understands the concept of profit, but self preservation, she believes, tends to rank higher than that, and if everyone's dead you can't profit off of them.]

[toservelife]

their rivals could have used a back door, or the machines themselves if they were fighting each other on different sides. They didn't want to leave one.

But if something happened, neither could they. They didnt think of that

[Sometimes the smartest people can also be really stupid.]

[petridish]

Stupid of them.

So how are there humans in your time again?