All: Joseph Takes you out of the comms room and down the elevator again, you're going to need a map or a lot more experience to be comfortable navigating this place. After a couple of silent minutes you reach the Orientation room. The room is huge, and obviously takes up the the top quarter of the dome you saw from the outside. In the center of the room is a large Sphere, and nestled around it is a double circle of pods. Men and woman with scanners and datapads are looking over everything, at the sight of you a wiry flame haired man detaches from the group of techs and jogs over to your group. He shakes all of your hands energetically in turn.
"You must be the new arrivals, my name is Tuck. It is a great pleasure to have you through, we haven't been able to get a lot of readings on the relativity sphere since we took control." He gives you a lopsided grin.
"Nobody who's already been in it wants to go through again, and it isn't the same when it's doing a dry run. Thank the stars you're here or we might never have gotten another good read." As soon as he stops speaking you take a moment to inquire about what the hell the 'Relativity Sphere' is.
Tuck runs a hand back through his hair before speaking, he looks like he's trying not to explode before he can tell you about it. Joseph groans, apparently he's been through this before.
"Come on, I'll tell you about it." Tuck says as he half jogs towards the sphere.
"This thing is Technocrat tech at the highest level, we don't have a clue what makes it go. All we really know is what it does, which is in and of itself mind-blowing. The Technocrats used it as a speed training and aptitude test for people who were new to facility, if you had enough willpower to keep it from killing you then you had enough for them to work with. The programs they used also put several layers of subconscious control suggestion onto the people who went in. Cassandra herself took three years to break through it. Our programs lack the control patterns and have a broader focus." He clears his throat before continuing
"The Technocrat vanilla programs were designed to train Empathetics, they really didn't know the full potential of kinetics until the revolt. We began corrupting the program little by little so that it taught kinetics to new members as well, the program in the sphere now is our best training program." He's a little out of breath from explaining everything, you feel your eyeballs begin to glaze over.
"Now as to how the sphere works -and this is the A-fucking-mazing part- it actually accelerates everything in the universe but it to the speed of light. Or at least, that is the most plausible theory." He laughs.
"The upshot of this is that anything inside the sphere experiences extreme time dilation. So you plop yourself into one of the chairs, the chair uploads your experiences and your memory to the synthetic brain inside the sphere, and it teaches the skill to you. Then when the program is done it downloads your mind back into your brain, how Amazing is that?" He throws his hands up, apparently in nerdvana over the entire concept. Your find yourself leaning away from the machine that Tuck said is going to upload your brain.
Tuck pats you on the back with what you think is meant to be reassuring grin on his face. It comes of as manic.
"Don't worry, I went through myself. Once your brain sorts out all of the memory it's pretty damn cool, you'll be able to do things you couldn't even think of before. Most people make it through unharmed." You aren't very reassured but each of you settles into one of the chairs around the sphere. A full headset descends over your face, and you feel an electrical tickling. You here Tuck's voice bellowing from above.
"Alright, we're about to start it up. Make those scans count, this may be the last run for a while!" You can't see it but you can here the sphere thrumming. A slow deep pulse that vibrates the pit of your stomach. For a couple minutes nothing happens, and then suddenly you're empty. Everything that made you who you are vanishes.
For 17 Minutes, 36 seconds the only reason you breathe or your heart beats was because a machine was telling it to do so. And then you come screaming back into your body. Literally. Your brain and body try to reconcile, but the brain keeps screaming that it was just trapped in a computer for twenty years, while the body insists that it was only just gone. The memories you have are foggy an unclear, but you know more now.
Dominique Wakeman: [End roll 4] You clamber out of the pod, okay... That was... Wow. Not as bad as the jump, but you still feel like you might hurl.
Tarran Smith: [End roll 3] Fuck, you have had it with being put through gates spanning light years and outrunning explosions. This is just too much for any Goddamn person to take. You kneel down outside your pod, you manage to avoid vomiting.
Tari Sizier: [End roll 5] You seem to have an affinity for reality shifting experiences. As you get out of your pod you feel slightly sick as your mind and body sort out where everything is, but you don't feel all that bad. Tired, but surprisingly good.
Trol Grane: [End roll 3+1] Holy shit... Just. Yeah... Holy shit. You don't want to do that again. Ever.
All of you get 5 Points to distribute to the Psionics tree, and only to the Psionics tree.
Kinetics: You can move things with your mind, from tearing someone in half to fetching a cup of coffee Kinetics is more overt branch of psionics associated wth movement. The Kinetics skill splits its bonuses between Active and Passive kinetics.
Empathetics: You can sense electron flow in an object or person, whether in the brain, the trigger finger, or the CPU. You can see and manipulate those currents to your liking. Empathetics is usually associated with control. The Skill splits its bonuses between Passive and active empathetics.
Passive Kinetics: Fine tunes your ability to intuitively use psionics to give yourself a physical edge. Hyper-Kinesthesia, weapon resistance, added strength... that sort of thing. Passive kinetics gives a 1/6th bonus to Str and End for every two points and applies bonuses as normal to Kinesthesia.
Active Kinetics: Depending on your mood you could drive a spike of raw anger through his head, or you could accelerate his molecular structure and set him on fire... Decisions, decisions...
Passive Empathetics: You can just sense things and people around you, you're good with electronics, and you just seem to know what someone is doing almost before they do it. Every two points gives a 1/6th bonus to detect lie and mechanics. Applies bonuses as normal to precognition.
Active Empathetics: You can control someones mind and overload a computer. Or vice versa, either way you're going to have a lot of fun.
Joseph decides to forego the Signifer for now, you're all drained from your encounters and from the machine. He shows you a section of beds where you can all sleep, when you wake up you can meet with the signifier. For now though, you rest.
When you all awake you will find a clean black jumpsuit with a broken chain emblazoned on the left breast set out for you. After that, moves are up to you.
Available Areas (For now):
Mess HallSignifiers quarters(I realize this ending is unsatisfactory at this juncture, but I can't find a better way to get through ALL THE DAMN EXPOSITION. Serves me right for trying to put in a plot.
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COMING SOON: A map of the structure! A list of Psionic abilities! Food! New clothes! Real weapons! Combat!
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Topic: Deviation-22. The End of All Things. (Read 536744 times)