Lovely to have another monster capture guy in the field!

While OMP is the only exclusive monster zoo presently operating, it's looking into establishing other sites as the population grows beyond what it's easy for a visitor to see in a single weekend trip. We're considering Tampa Bay and a couple of spots near Long Beach and San Francisco; OMP is on an artificial island with ferry service to limit the risk of a dungeon opening within the zoo itself so we do want it on the water. However, before OMP opened, I was often able to convince normal zoos to take captures. It depended on the specialty of the zoo (for example, an insect zoo only wants bug monsters) and on the specifics of the institutional mission (many zoos are reluctant to take monsters because they see it as gimmicky and un- or incorrectly-scientific) but some monsters I've caught are still in their non-OMP homes. You may be able to find some zoos willing to do this if you call around in your hemisphere.

But OMP will also happily take them! You want ferdinand@omp.org for bid information based on whatever you can tell him about the monsters, establishment that you have the right to offer them if you get one, and payment once you've sold it to the zoo, and candace@omp.org for transportation logistics (if you happen to have the privilege of discounted point to point teleportation due to being Quasar, feel free to pocket the difference, but do tell her what kind you're using so she can get you the right kind of coordinates). If you want to be credited on the OMP website and exhibit plaque, tell rex@omp.org and he'll send you the form to fill out with your profile information, but you can also remain anonymous. Note that for safety and insurance reasons we can only accept monsters with dungeons confirmed as their own that are marked as verified dead, by DDSI or another recordkeeping organization they've marked green (Quasar itself is green) - doesn't mean we can't put in a prospective bid before that, but keep it in mind when deciding whether to spend time/risk/backlash on a capture when you haven't got the core secured or if you're deployed somewhere with sketchy data practices like Russia. If you have information pertinent to discovering the monster's needs, and/or any conditions that must be observed in its habitat for any other reason like if you only want to sell it if you get to name it or something, those go to john@omp.org though he will usually assign each monster to a ground-level zookeeper after intake.

As for best practices, your power works differently from mine! I just sneak up on stuff. There's the obvious things that won't vary between us like making sure you have an enclosure that'll hold your beastie without suffocating it, and betting harder on monsters that act biological, and making sure you have an appropriate staging area lined up to hold it and at least try to feed it while the dungeon is mined if applicable, etc. Did you have any specific questions about catching them?

- Traceless

Huh. You get paid for capturing monsters? He supposes that makes sense...he should reread his contract to see if he does have the right to sell monsters that he captures. He was just kind of assuming espers captured monsters for the pure love of science but paying them would incentivize them to do more of it. Also he needs to look into how much it would cost to teleport said monsters to a zoo. And email a bunch of zoos in Asia in advance to figure out their interest in hosting monsters...he really needs to hire an administrative assistant.

He wonders whether he could convince Quasar to set up its own monster zoo. Probably they'll only be amenable to it once he actually shows his capability in monster capture.

For now he'll send the emails himself. He's put himself on a very lax schedule despite there being a confluence, because he is Very New and does not want to end up making a stupid mistake that kills him because he was tired, backlashed, and inexperienced.

Dear Traceless,

Thank you for your advice and providing the email addresses.

I am surprised that that was the reason why zoos would be reluctant to accept dungeon monsters — I would have thought they would refuse due to inability to safely or conveniently host them.

If you have data on what characteristics correlate with a monster being able to survive its dungeon being killed, I would really appreciate learning about them.

Is it worth it to try to capture monsters which are very big or very small? I was not deployed to Arrakis, but my power is agnostic regarding target size. I have a mind detection sensor power as well which would allow me to spot and capture very small monsters too.

Yours sincerely,
Lawrence Lacson

Some monsters are hard to safely host, but most (not all!) orphan monsters are pretty docile, and also don't seem to need large or elaborate enclosures to minimize stress from confinement or exposure to humans - it's long been adaptive for most animals to avoid humans, but monsters are more like naive island wildlife, quokkas or kakapos or whatever, that have no such instinct. You're less likely to get hurt handling an orphan monster, even if it's completely new to you, than an experienced zookeeper is to get hurt interacting with something like a hippo or a zebra. (Zebras are surprisingly vicious.) Don't let your guard down unnecessarily, but they're a totally different kind of thing than an animal. 99% of the time, all hostility lives in the dungeon. The fact that they're a totally different thing is a lot of why the animal zoos don't like them. Animal zoos attract animal lovers.

In general a monster is likelier to live on - possibly in a shrunken or otherwise reduced form - if it has the sorts of things that let normal evolved creatures live. Like... organs. I'd expect a dungeon dinosaur or fish or hamster to live, even if they do something weird like glow/sing/hover; I'd expect a ghost or an elemental or a styrofoam golem to die. But there are exceptions - a fair few things that looked almost exactly like possible animals have died on me (I can send you autopsy records for some of these if you're interested), and sometimes a long shot makes it. Some of the long shots are just things where it might turn out they could have been similar to animals, but the animals they could have been similar to happen to not exist: if jellyfish weren't real, a dungeon jellyfish wouldn't look viable to me, but it'd be able to survive for the same reasons jellyfish can, and I think some critters are like that but for animals that never existed. And some of them are totally out of left field, like Mori, OMP's resident robot bird, who not only survived but is one of the talkers. From a research perspective, I think the surprises are more valuable; from a "make the zoo self-sustaining financially" perspective, the ones that look or act interesting to a layperson are the big wins, and that's correlated with being surprising but not by much.

Big monsters are harder to house. Right now the island itself is not rated for anything weighing more than... a number, which I'm impaired at while backlashed but either Candace or John could tell you, and it would definitely have ruled out an Arrakis worm if you got one. (Separately there are PR issues with exhibiting monsters that have body counts or belong to highly recognizable dungeons with body counts. Not insurmountable, but a worm's also not pretty and it's hard on the ears!) They also need sturdier enclosures and more food if they're big, so we'll knock some off the purchase price to compensate. Still worth it for anything really neat, if you can get a good enough cage for it on your end and give us enough warning to build something! Note re: cages that if they shrink they might be able to wiggle out of something that held them full sized.

Small stuff (mouse-sized or littler) I often want several of the same thing together, especially if they do any interesting flocking or swarming behavior. Makes it easier to have them form an interesting tableau in a terrarium. This makes it slightly harder for me to fill an exhibit with tiny things and might make it a lot harder for you. I would still very much go for it if you found something like beetles with jewel wing casings or coin-sized muskoxen but if you find itty-bitty sand dollars that look a lot like normal ones it may not be the right tradeoff. Well, a sand dollar isn't very threatening. An acid-spitting sand dollar that might put your eye out, you probably want to leave that where you found it.

- Traceless

He's kind of surprised how much consideration there is into capturing monsters that are photogenic or appealing. He thought that like, you'd do it for the purpose of Science!™. But maybe that's just him being naive. Money is what makes the world go round. Even espers don't have infinite money. Hm...probably best to have a strategy of trying to pick out interesting-looking monsters and going for uninteresting ones if it's convenient.

Dear Traceless,

I would appreciate the autopsy records, thank you! I am most interested right now in contributing to research and not very much on making money, so thank you for telling me about which monsters are more valuable for what goal.

If you have recommendations for suppliers/builders of cages, please link me to them. When Volcanic Range appears, I will most likely be deployed to help manage the dungeon break, so a cage that could contain one of its monsters would be useful if I can manage to capture one.

Yes, my power affects creatures individually so it would be much harder for me to capture multiple small creatures rather than one large creature.

Do you know of any ways that a psychic or immaterial dungeon monster might be contained for the long term? Are there any dungeon materials that could do that? My power also works on psychic or immaterial creatures.

Yours sincerely,
Lawrence Lacson

He talks to his trainer and other Quasar consultants about dungeon data and how he might train to use his power to enable dungeon monter capture. And email Candace for the maximum weight of monster that OMP is able to hold. And ask Quasar to help him look for places which could construct and supply cages in Korea or Asia in general. Hm...maybe he should get a biology or ecology tutor so he'd have more ability to intuit whether or not a monster would be viable post-dungeon-death...for the future, though.

Note that the attached autopsies include some monsters that died a while after orphaning because we couldn't figure out how to keep them (e.g. they wouldn't eat anything).

Research grants are a whole different ballgame! I'm happy to catch stuff for labs that want the stuff, but I usually write that off on my taxes as a charitable donation instead of charging for it (I don't charge OMP either but on paper that makes me an investor rather than a donor, because OMP is for-profit) and I have no idea how the tax structure in Asia works.

If you're not in it for the money, you still have to be limited by demand in some way. Nobody feels more keenly than I do that every dead dungeon is a permanently bottlenecked opportunity and only what we record and grab before axing the core will ever be able to tell us anything about what we missed. But the labs and zoos and private collectors and museums and so on only have so much capacity, and there are so many dungeons, every day. If the monster-hunting arm of dungeon response pays well, more people will go into it, we'll know more about what can produce valuable findings and bankable public interest, and the lab/zoo/etc. capacity can increase in response, and we'll be able to pick up more marginal-case monsters in five years than we can afford to now. Both the hypothetical acid-spitting sand dollar and the photogenic medium-sized mammal that looks good on a postcard could revolutionize something scientifically or commercially, but if we can't have both - and on the margin we really can't - the postcard mammal improves our odds of being able to pick up more weird boring shrimp in the 2040s. Or in other words: even if you aren't in it for the money, you might want to be in it for the money, because you, too, can produce research grants and invest in zoos! If you want to be in my position relative to a new Asian monster zoo in five or ten years, telling some new esper with a capture power what will draw more cash into the field if they ship it to you in a box, you have all the tools you need for it.

Some of the cages/fencing/terraria we use are manufactured in China; we've had good luck with Tuzuo and Piao'anlü. (I don't know the tones or the characters, and have them stored as phone numbers not URLs, but Ferdinand will be able to dig them up if that doesn't narrow it down.) But those are for things we display critters in long-term at the zoo. When we need a normal cage on short notice we send someone to a pet store, and when we need a weird one on short notice, we go with a supplier on the same continent as us. Might have to do your own legwork there, or see if you can get one of the Chinese companies to spec into rush-order enclosure alterations given the demand you can tell them to expect.

As for VR, I am pessimistic about that. Your guild can of course give you the final go/no-go (get it in writing! one hears good things about Quasar but for your own safety do not make it look possible to anyone involved that they could say you decided to keep a VR monster as a pet on your own recognizance!), but I'd expect no-go:

- Lava's a bad material both because it's amorphous (the monsters seem to have preferred shapes but they squidge around a bit and might do it more if trapped) and because it's really hot. These are sizeable beasts. The materials costs of something that won't melt, closely spaced enough that lava won't just pour through, will be hefty, conventional or dungeon. For that very reason, if you got a live capture it was safe to keep, you might want to already be storing it in its permanent home - that way you don't have to build two - but that means it has to be bigger and have access in mind for display, research, or both. If you did build two, I guess you could catch additional lava/fire monsters in the temporary one once the VR critter was ensconced in the permanent one, but that's a long-term investment that only makes sense if Quasar or somebody is really excited about future firebirds/salamanders/dragons more than easily contained Pokémon/frogs/butterflies.
- Speaking of, sometimes they explode. That's a lot of trouble to go to when it might just decide to flip you off. Even if the cage can contain the explosion, you don't have a monster after that.
- They might not kill the dungeon. We had an auspicious start this confluence with bumping off Arrakis but that doesn't mean VR is necessarily next on the list. Then you’d have to kill your monster. Why, you might ask, do you have to kill it if VR gets away? If you have a cage that can manage an active VR monster, and it lives in there all the time and doesn't come out, surely another VR appearance within Vadodara Incident range won't let it do anything it wasn't doing before? That might have been sufficient in the actual Incident as it actually played out where the problem was mostly that the critters were household pets, but since dungeons can level up between visits there is a nonzero chance that a reappearance might level up a previously captured monster too. My go-to example is "if we open a Menagerie petting zoo, before Menagerie bites it, then Menagerie will open in Buffalo and figure out how to make its critters radioactive". Something like that. Hard line on only holding orphaned monsters. Often I don't even catch a monster before the core is found and secured.
- A lava monster does not have organs and its survivability is probably nil anyway.
- If everything went perfectly, then you have on your hands a symbol of the second most notorious torture dungeon of all time. Press is hard to control, and not all publicity is good publicity. I would expect you to need to have serious infosec on its location, maybe even its existence, lest some idiot try to bomb the lab. OMP knocks off a percentage for a monster from a dungeon with a body count and often won't even bid on an individual monster that knowably has one. (We'd make an exception for Menagerie, though.)

It's still worth sending you to VR. Just not for a capture (in my opinion).

You might want to see if you can secure a monster or even a normal animal which you can use as a proxy to catch small numerous things. My monster cat Cricket runs dungeons and he's pretty good at catching things that are small enough for his scale and that won't hurt his paws, and if you have good fine control a normal cat could do this for you in a relatively calm dungeon. But that depends on how your backlash scales.

I'm not a dunmat specialist but would have expected to hear about it if there were a sufficiently abundant dunmat that could hold an immaterial monster, let alone a psychic construct. Some might be able to but it wouldn't be obvious without testing, and testing thousands of things on such monsters as they came to hand would be a pretty costly use of time. Plus, as a class: very low on the having organs.

- Traceless

Thank you for the autopsy reports and the manufacturer recommendations.

He will read the autopsies.

His initial response to the buying and selling of dungeon monsters for the purposes of making zoos was that it was rather vulgar, but what Traceless says makes sense. Making it financially viable would enable more research. And permitting prices and markets are a good way of resolving supply with demand.

Hm...he thinks you can't get tax write-offs for charity in Korea. He's pretty sure that's an American thing. But he can check with the Quasar accountants. Actually can he get like, a person, or some people, to help him with the Lawrence Catches Monsters project? Guilds are supposed to support their espers, right? Okay, yes, it turns out that he can get a person or some people to help him! And talk to zoos, cage manufacturers, etc., on his behalf.

The standard Quasar contract is such that Quasar retains rights to any monsters captured. However, an esper can take a pay cut in order to retain rights to monsters they capture (or equity in the monster if it's a team effort). Since Lawrence is on the pay-as-you-clear schedule, he can instead choose to take a pay cut on the reward for contributing to the clear of that dungeon in order to retain rights on monsters captured in that dungeon.

He'll ask Quasar to interface with the Chinese cage manufacturers. He asks for a quote for Volcanic Range-rated monster containment...that's a lot of money. Which makes sense. Quasar and other banks are willing to extend him credit if he wants to buy one — his few weeks of combat espering are not enough to pay for it. He decides not to purchase one.

He'll hold off on testing his power on practicing capturing smaller animals because this costs backlash.

He'll ask Quasar to make inquiries as to whether there's any guild or agency that has any dungeon materials which could contain psychic or immaterial monsters anyway. It will take a while.

I have decided not to commission containment for VR monsters, because it is expensive and because it would not pay well, though I am now in the process of purchasing other dungeon monster containment and interfacing with zoos which could accept monsters. 

I am also inquiring in other places about potential dungeon materials for containing psychic or immaterial monsters though Quasar says that I should not be hopeful.

Why is Menagerie and its monsters special?

Let me know if any of the zoo people you're talking to (speak English/French/Tagalog and) want to talk to me about this! My backlash makes me lonely so I spend much of it on the phone and this is one of my pet topics. I can also refer them to OMP people, or regular-zoo people who have monsters in their inventory like Ripley's.

Menagerie makes unique monsters, instead of lots all the same, and it is aiming for "cute and friendly", and it uses animal-inspired designs so I'm pretty confident they'd live, and we have data on their behavior and care-and-feeding needs without the dungeon in range (from Vadodara pre-Incident). That means every single one of its critters is one of a kind petting zoo bait. The floor estimate for how much extra revenue OMP could make if it had some Menagerie monsters starts at about 22 million a year not counting merch, it might easily be ten times that, and if we got more Menagerie monsters than we strictly needed to satiate the appetite for a petting zoo in our existing site, we could split them up and start off the satellite franchises with a really good minimum viable product. Menagerie has killed some people, but the Vadodara Incident is named for the city rather than the dungeon, the monsters are adorable and sturdy and thrive on readily available foods and like to be petted, and also the dungeon's never opened anywhere near Toronto so we don't need to anticipate a lot of blowback from locals. I want that dungeon dead so very badly, so we can drop a big chunk of change on its critters and convert it into ten times that much in grant money.

I will ask the people at Quasar talking to the zoos to give you their contact information.

He does this.

Wow...that's a lot of money.

Do you already have plans for or existing containment for Menagerie monsters? I may order some in anticipation of being able to capture them and it seems that it is possible for them to be reused in the case Menagerie is not killed and we have to kill the monsters.

Menagerie monsters are not very big (biggest ones weigh about 15 lbs) and while they are stronger than they look, it's not by a lot, and they're not escape artists even to the level of a rat or a parrot. A well-made sturdy cage suitable for a normal animal of the same size will hold them just fine! Usually the problem is getting them away from whoever they're with, while not alarming that person enough to make the monster attack. That's not a problem for you! (It almost certainly also isn't a problem after the dungeon's death; previous examples were in friendly mode all the time when without their dungeon. But one does want to get ahold of these ahead of time instead of counting on that, because they're dangerous to skittish bystanders.) A normal pet supplier could handle it, you'd just want to call their manufacturer instead of a single retail outlet for any large numbers.

Lovely. He will then order a bunch. More than he thinks he could fill, given the possibility for upside, and because he could use the spares for other dungeon monsters so it's not a total loss. These cages are way cheaper than containment for a lava monster so he'll be able to pay for these himself.

Volcanic Range has been killed! Regrettably, it turns out that my power was useless on its monsters. I stayed on-site anyway because my partner (Suburb) helped contain the dungeon break by cooling lava and removing ash. My current theory for why it didn't work is that the lava monsters had minds that were too rudimentary and the actual cognition was being handled by the dungeon. My sensor power did register the presence of the lava monsters but much less, as though they were a sleeping person or otherwise had impaired consciousness, which is why I say that.

I have purchased Menagerie monster cages in accordance with your suggestions and assorted other ones in case a dungeon with potentially capturable monsters comes along.

Congratulations on your contribution to killing the bastard! And it's always good to know more about how your power works even if it's disappointing. I hope you guys are making time in the confluence to have at least a little party about VR. Is Suburb an instance of the rare Asian codename, or one of those peculiar Thai nicknames, or actually a false cognate in some language, or what?

The mood isn't really very good in Quasar right now despite that, but he doesn't need to talk about it.

Thank you!

Rare Asian codename. He is from Singapore and I think that codenames are somewhat less weird there, because of Western influence.

Do you plan on going to Menagerie when it appears? I do. I do not know how much potential for synergy we have but I am interested in discussing it if you are planning to go.

I'm good at captures but, as espers who are good at captures go, I'm awkward for Menagerie in particular: either I don't let people around the monster see me, in which case they may flinch when their monster is acted on by an invisible force, or I do let them, and then they might try to turn the encounter into an argument about whether I can take the monster and maybe they make a wrong move and get hurt. (People are often pretty attached to their critter if it hasn't attacked anyone yet. I'm not sure if Menagerie can direct the monsters selectively to people who will act like that or if it's just surprisingly common to feel that it's perfectly safe to pick up a weird animal as long as it seems nice, and there's the obvious problems with widely announcing that it is not safe to do that after all!) There's another Toronto stealth esper, Kuroko, who is similar to me but can cover other people with her stealth power, which I can't - she'd be able to cover anyone who was close to a monster before making a move to capture it. I can CC her if you want to be introduced!

I can get Menagerie monsters to approach the cage before or after they've been triggered (I think, provided they have regular minds and not puppeted minds like VR monsters) and can have them leap out of or escape the grasp of the person currently holding them. So capture wouldn't be an issue for me — though I would want to figure out backlash-efficient ways of doing it.

The cost of my power rises superlinearly the longer I hold it on the same creature, so the cage ought to be very close already. I could hold the cage himself, but I could also have helpers. I will look into whether I can train with DRT operatives for it. It might not be the best for me to be the one to hold and close the cage because my backlash is difficulty moving.

Please CC Kuroko; I would be interested to coordinate capture of Menagerie monsters with anyone with a relevant power. Speaking of which, if multiple espers or organizations work to contain a single monster, how would the monsters be distributed? How is equity assigned?

Kuroko, meet Lawrence! See embedded email history chain.

It'd really surprise me if they're puppets because of what we know about how they acted while they were pets in Vadodara.

If you're letting the relevant jurisdiction auction off all the loot monsters included you can just split the money according to the normal credit assignment mechanism but if you are hoping to keep the monster itself you probably want to work that out with anyone who's helping you in advance. (Even if what you want to do is arrange the sale yourself, and not keep it in a terrarium.)

If you have really good reaction time, you could maybe use your power as a safety net only. A Menagerie monster will not actually react violently to being picked up and put in a cage! It only reacts to people moving away from it, and then not every time (being calm and/or moving slowly seem to be important). So you could just walk up to one, grab it, stuff it in a box, and engage your power only if it manages to startle you or if this entire proceeding alarms whoever you found it with. But you'd really want to trust your reflexes (so you'd have to take a guiding break after the first time you had to do that).

Hi Lawrence, nice to meet you.

Thanks for CCing me Traceless.

I can only cover one or two additional people and have to stand close to them while I'm doing it for backlash efficiency reasons but I would expect that to still be useful in many situations that would arise re: Menagerie. I can't simultaneously cover people and be invisible to them so that's a concern re, avoiding arguments. Though if they're covered then somebody can just grab the critter over their objections if they aren't holding onto it and walk away once it's boxed.

(If they're holding onto it we're maybe going to be stuck having an argument since I don't want to risk injuries and/or legal problems.)

He should not be telling these people that he could also control the people holding onto the monsters. Not that that isn't obviously inferrable from what he's already said, but, it's different stating it so plainly.

Hello Kuroko, nice to meet you too.

I think I want to have one other person be with me who can hold the box. I don't feel confident enough in my speed to only use my power in the event that the monster is triggered.  It does not have to be an esper, though. I will see if Suburb could come along but in a Menagerie dungeon break, his power would be useless and he's likely to be deployed to another dungeon at the same time. His power is rendering diffuse environmental hazards safe (poison, lack of breathable air, extreme temperature, radiation, dust, etc.).

My thought was that I could have the monster wrench themselves away from the person and jump into the box, thus forestalling any possible arguments, though this would only work if the person wasn't holding onto them tightly. Given that Menagerie monsters are stronger than they appear, though, it doesn't seem like it would be a big concern. I can control and time the movement to minimize the chance of injury to the holder.

I think that, for safety, it's best to have an esper with a stealth or self-protection power be the one holding the box, but it's not strictly necessary. Someone in body armor would work too, but it might cause the person to become alarmed.

Do you think it would be more efficient for us to work together or to split up and just cover different areas?

I think that re: efficiency we both benefit from working with another person, though depending on who else is there it may not make sense for me to accompany you specifically, at least not the whole time. In particular somebody with a backlash that makes them easily startled who was otherwise well suited to capture might be high-value for me to accompany. Having a DRT-or equivalent person assist you is of course an option, but I've had mixed experience with getting random DRT to cooperate with captures. Bringing in animal control is also an option and they are more likely to have experience with live capture but it's only arguably their job, even in the case of Menagerie. 

I will ask Quasar whether they have people that could help with this that I could bring along wherever Menagerie might appear. If so, I could train with them.

I have also ordered cages suitable for Menagerie monsters to be put into one of the Quasar warehouses so that they can be teleported onto the scene.

Yan Xiu would also be great for it, if it opens anywhere with an adequate relationship with China.

I suppose one advantage of the guild system is that the support people are in-house, so you can count on having the same people around. Especially if you're in Quasar and can get teleports on the cheap. I know most of the local people around the Toronto area by now, and know who I can ask to help catch things and have that actually happen successfully, but it doesn't help me if I'm working elsewhere.

I could look into whether we could train together and have the same personnel and cages from Quasar, but that would most likely require you paying or giving up some equity into the monsters captured.

I am prepared to pay or take a pay cut on the bounties. I'm already swimming in more money than ideas for productive uses for it (though Traceless has some good ideas there) and in any case if we end up working well together it may add up to more total money in the end.