Aberrant RPG - Alternate Setting Idea: The Arrival of the Ark

[metaphysician]

Okay, basic premise: instead of running across the human colonies and such a century or two later, the course of the Coalition Ark just happens to be such that it heads toward Earth.

Assume that its set to arrive, physically, in the inner system in 2008, about the same date Slider would otherwise be killed. Through various means ( astronomical surveys, precogs, etc ), warning that something is approaching starts filtering in about a year earlier.

What happens?

[Rorx]

Well hopefully PU stops there killing of Novas through 'accidents' etc while terraforming, or crossing the street for that matter. Since the nature of the Ark and it's inhabitants is going to be unknown I would wnat to get/keep as many Novas as possible around to help if things go pear shaped.

Given that in Trinity they were spotted at sublight speeds and travelled/deccelerated for about 2 years before they arrived at Eridani, I'm quessing from your premise that a similar thing has happend here, but they are already deccelerating to reach Earth in 2008, and were spotted in 2007? If that is the case then a group of Novas and/or baseline could be Warped out to act as a first contact team before they arrive at Earth.

You would have to assume that the Coaltion would act in the same way and try the rape trick on the contact team, which if it included Novas is not going to end in the same result for the Coalition. I'd guess that the Breeder(s) and Spinals involved would be killed, along with most if not all of the baselines and perhaps one or two Novas. This is likley to put everyone at home on a war footing, with all those Mega-Int guys being asked to come up with tactics and weapons/vehicles to hit the Ark with ASAP.

Probably a lot more "requests" for novas to join the military, either of individual countries, or perhaps the UN getting it's own military for this purpose.

[Sprocket]

Aside from the expected global panic, you mean? ::sly I'd assume that factional hostilities would be damped by such an obvious threat to humanity's (Inspired & otherwise) collective survival. It'd provide a temporary vent for the pressures that are/were leading up to the Aberrant War, which might in turn buy enough time for something constructive to be done about the Taint problem.

I'd imagine that this kind of surprise would be just the thing to knock Max Mercer out of his laissez-faire approach to both Aeon & the Nova Age Earth as well. I can see him - aided by the "salvageable" members of the Aeon Council - cleaning house at the Aeon Society, with special (lethal, hopefully) attention given to the madwoman Director Thetis & her merry little group of scumbags (read: Project Proteus).

Likewise, this might prove sufficient for Divis Mal to finally start whipping the Teragen into shape as his divine/infernal army, only with the Coalition as their declared foe instead of baseline humanity.

[Rorx]

Thanks for reminding me about Max Mercer - wouldn't his time travelling already seen the effects of the Ark's coming and what it means for the future of humanity and Novakind. Thus PU/Aeon would have been setup/influenced with the coming of the Ark already calculated in. This would suggest that the background of thegame would be different as well, as the directors of Aeon and/or PU may know something about the coming of the Ark before it is spotted.

Given that scenario I would have expected that Proteus was never set up in the first place and that Novas would be encouraged to work for the UN as a World resource for peace and development from the beginning. So when the Ark is spotted there would be less divisiveness around and a higher level of technology than in the standard game. Perhaps Aeon could have been working in the background for years before the Novas arrive to help prepare people for the rapid change in technology to help reduce the effects of 'future shock' in the general population.

So when the Ark arrives there are more Novas, and the military is more likely to have suitable spacecraft and troops familiar with powered armour and energy weapons. All in all a much harder proposition than the standard 2008.

[Alex Green]

There wouldn't be more novas because the whole nova fertility issue, even if eliminated, wouldn't create more in just 10 years.

On the other hand if PU goes public with the Ark in 2003 or so that really cuts the legs off the Teragen. Everyone rallies to the flag, even the Harvesters might have something to unload on.

[metaphysician]

Hmm, another possible side effect, if the coming of the Ark is known earlier with some certainty: it might have Divis Mal putting off his fourth Chrysalis, thus leading to a ( likely ) more lucid Mal. After all, with alien death heading to Earth, he might decide that spending potentially years in Chrysalis would totally fuck his ability to keep nova kind from being annihilated.

[Rorx]

There wouldn't be more novas because the whole nova fertility issue, even if eliminated, wouldn't create more in just 10 years.

I agree the fertility issue is not relevant, I was thinking of the hundreds of Novas that Proteus killed or locked up.

[Alex Green]

RE: Divis

I suspect his Mal's fourth Chrysalis was forced. The *only* thing Chrysalis does for him that Q-Supreme doesn't is let him get rid of Taint.

So him staying out might not be a *good* thing. The difference between your 5th dot of Chrysalis and your 7th is extreme.

I agree the fertility issue is not relevant, I was thinking of the hundreds of Novas that Proteus killed or locked up.

Ah, good point. ... Some would be let out, others wouldn’t.

Some of them were locked up because of taint issues that won't go away (Gabriel).

Some were locked up because of public reaction (Sloppy Joe).

Others were criminals or radicals determined to introduce violence to their issue. That Palestine guy who was murdered for example.

IMHO you’re right, we have some more novas because fewer would be killed as elites (this is the biggy right here, one or two thousand needed to die to fill out the ranking system we see), the public might be more tolerate towards taint, and the radicals might drop their political stances. Also without all the teraforming fewer novas would burn out, etc.

Good catch.

[Sprocket]

Re: Q-Supremacy & Taint-

I suspect his Mal's fourth Chrysalis was forced. The *only* thing Chrysalis does for him that Q-Supreme doesn't is let him get rid of Taint.

Agreed that the Quantum Transformation likely cannot do anything about Taint. I suspect manipulating Taint would require a whole new technique for Quantum Supremacy.

Re: Max Mercer's foreknowledge-

I suppose Mercer could know about the Ark's premature arrival in the Solar system, but I'd hope that the threat would provide even more of a kick in the pants than I originally thought. Instead of shutting down Proteus after Thetis has done her dirty work, he could have the reformed the Aeon Council so that the Thetis proposal in turn would have been rejected instead of endorsed.

[metaphysician]

Well, permanently lowering taint probably should be possible with Q8, though it might require a different power. I think the obstacle standing before Divis Mal is less ability, and more desire. Where he is now, he sees little reason for why he *should* try removing his own taint directly.

[Alex Green]

He *can* remove taint directly, albeit with Chrysalis.

The issue is aberrations. And he's so crazy and out of touch with reality that he doesn't view them as a problem. He's the original mad man who doesn't think he's mad... its the rest of the world that has problems.

[metaphysician]

Matter of semantics. My point is, he has the power level to remove the aberrations and the taint penalties and such, he just doesn't think he needs to.

( huh, now that adds another option to the "temporarily shut off his taint and insanity" scenario- "you have the power to make yourself sane and humanly comprehensible, permanently, why not do so?" )

[Sprocket]

Re: Q-Supremacy & Taint-

I wasn't suggesting that Mal would ever *use* such a technique on himself - he's invested way too much in both the Chrysalis & his self-image as "the dark god Divis Mal" to ever want to go back to being Dr. Primoris, much less Michael Daemon Donighal. He's got too many buried painful memories of his unrequited love for Max to ever want to regress to what he was at the time. (Cue bad Italian violin music.) ::rolleyes

It just seemed to me that a new Q-Supremacy technique would be all that's required to manipulate one's own Taint (including aberrations) & that of others in any way desired.

( huh, now that adds another option to the "temporarily shut off his taint and insanity" scenario- "you have the power to make yourself sane and humanly comprehensible, permanently, why not do so?" )

That'd probably require an intervention (like is done with suicidal people) from one or more of his analogs from alternate universes who didn't try to abandon their humanity due to unrequited love.

[Alex Green]

It just seemed to me that a new Q-Supremacy technique would be all that's required to manipulate one's own Taint (including aberrations) & that of others in any way desired.

I'm not sure. Nothing in any of the existing Q-Supreme techs do anything with manipulating taint. It might be a different Supreme all together.

Wycroft maybe.

[metaphysician]

Oh, wow, cross-dimensional Divis Mal intervention sessions. . . that sounds like the kind of stupidly insane plan that we would come up with in our campaign.

[Sprocket]

Considering we're talking about a suite power that lets one "un-erupt" novas, manipulating taint is by no means out of bounds AFAICT.

AFA Wycroft, wasn't there some talk about how his explosion was due to being dosed with Eclipsidol by some overzealous FBI agents?

Dragging the thread back on topic, I can see 3 further changes resulting from an early Ark arrival.

1- Project Utopia becomes more of a positive support force for novas in general instead of the "drugs & exploitation 'r' us" guys. Nova intervention teams wouldn't be dosing new novas w/ adrenocilin and/or moxinoquantamine, but would use less dependency-forming methods to aid eruptees.

2- The Daedelus League becomes much more popular (they might've been the first to physically locate the Ark in the first place) & gets into an even closer relationship with the various space agencies.

3- Possible banding together of the various space agencies into a global organization under the UN's banner. In a worst-case scenario, they'll be creating & organizing the escape/colonization fleet.

[Alex Green]

By Trinity, or for that matter the war, Baselines can have aberrations. For that matter the Aberration powers that affect other people are built to let you force aberrations on Baselines. A Q8 Aberration Manip power should do the same thing... and maybe even in a very wide area, but Q-Supreme appears to only let you make baselines erupt.

I'm bringing up Wycroft because his range on bringing Taint to North America was a Q8 effect (requiring another technique). He was also living at the Harvester enclave, which was heavy into taint research. But at the same time, anyone with Q-Supreme is pretty much invincible since they can give themselves powers, so presumably Wycroft didn't have that ability.

And on this subject, *someone* shifted the Abby-verse from low taint to high taint. This just screams "Q8 power"... but I have to question whether we really want to add Three new techniques for manipulating taint to Q-Supreme when we could make a "Taint-Supreme" power instead.

RE: PU

Maybe. I'm not sure knocking them out with a man hole cover is an improvement.

RE: Daedelus

Agree totally.

RE: UN

In the Nova would I'd think so... although in the real one the US would pretty much take over. The UN isn't really known for their army. Another option is DeVries takes over since they're the one with the big nova army.

[metaphysician]

Hmm, a Taint Supremacy power. . .

Off hand, I think the slots it would have:

-Increase/Decrease global taint level, sort of like the various environmental supremacy powers

-Increase/decrease the personal taint level of an individual, including reconfiguring, adding, or eliminating aberrations

Hmm, nothing else immediately comes to mind. I suppose you could split the basic effects into separate techniques, but this almost seems more like an Authority-level power, that can potentially have Mastery stuck on it.

[Rorx]

RE: UN

In the Nova would I'd think so... although in the real one the US would pretty much take over. The UN isn't really known for their army. Another option is DeVries takes over since they're the one with the big nova army.

No the UN isn't known for their army, but with Max seeing this coming perhaps Aeon would have been influencing things so that the UN did have it's own army (like it does by the time of Trinity in the Core setting). Since we have already said about the reduction in the need/use of Elites it is more likely that more of these will be working for the UN or national governments, and so Devries would no longer have the biggest Nova army.

[Alex Green]

Hmm, a Taint Supremacy power. . .

Off hand, I think the slots it would have:

-Increase/Decrease global taint level, sort of like the various environmental supremacy powers

-Increase/decrease the personal taint level of an individual, including reconfiguring, adding, or eliminating aberrations

Hmm, nothing else immediately comes to mind. I suppose you could split the basic effects into separate techniques, but this almost seems more like an Authority-level power, that can potentially have Mastery stuck on it.

Increase/Decrease Global Taint level is IMHO by definition a Supreme technique. But if some of the techniques are "Authority" level, then we let him buy/Master 2 techs at a time just like we do for the Authority powers.

And add to that list: Increase Local Taint (aka from Elemental Mastery, this would be what he did to the farm belt)

[metaphysician]

Hmm, actually, maybe the case here is, there's Taint Authority and Taint Supremacy, and he had both.

Taint Supremacy lets him screw with the global taint level, increasing or decreasing it, as well as altering it qualitatively ( more or less likely to produce various types of aberrations, more or less susceptible to chrysalis ). Taint Authority, is what he can use blast an area with taint ( or cleanse it ), or taint up an individual nova ( or detaint them ), or add, remove, or change their aberrations. He just has Mastery 1 on Taint Authority.

[Alex Green]

That would do it. Presumably with Authority he could add aberrations to *baselines*... thus making him well worth taking out.

Ironically this also means he was well positioned to deal with Divis and make Earth a Paradise after he left. Presumably Divis left because the Earth was high taint and it was out of theme for him to buy Taint-Supreme. Then after he left you could seriously lower the taint level of the Earth and all individual novas.

[metaphysician]

Pity the guy had something approaching Taint 10 himself, and probably was psychologically incapable of using his powers to reduce taint.

[Rorx]

So how easy or difficult do you think it would be for Novadom to take on the Ark, assuming it slows in normal space for upto a year before hitting orbit?

[BlueNinja]

If the Ark arrived/was noticed in 2008, I'd bet heavily on the novas.

If the Ark arrived/was noticed around 2050, I'd bet on the Ark, and the extermination of humanity.

[Sprocket]

RE: PU

Maybe. I'm not sure knocking them out with a man hole cover is an improvement.

I was assuming that PU's whole approach would be more "paramedics" than "press gang". The use of adrenocilin & mox is just one of the more egregious examples of how low the canon PU has stooped. And yeah, use of manhole covers as subdual weapons would be considered just as bad.

Re: Global Taint level shift-

I always assumed that it was Mal's intermittent creation of Hammersmith/N-Day quantum fluctuations was the cause of it. By inducing mass eruptions, he was obviously hoping to create enough novas so that he'd finally have some real peers to interact with. With the majority of novas either "not getting it" (AFA Mal's viewpoint) or getting themselves killed, Mal keeps trying to create more novas. Apparently the Global Taint level shift happened when Mal had done this one time too many, & a tipping point was reached.

[metaphysician]

Its possible, except there is AFAIK, no evidence for Mal having repeated the Galatea Event.

I tend to blame the overall insanity of the Aberrant War on the already known factors producing insane, monstrous novas. . . and the long term poisoning on Wycoff.

[astronomer]

Wasn't there a mention in a previous thread that Mal did a quantum bounce every so often to keep the Q-level high and promote more eruptions? Using his Q-supremacy maybe?

[Alex Green]

Wasn't there a mention in a previous thread that Mal did a quantum bounce every so often to keep the Q-level high and promote more eruptions? Using his Q-supremacy maybe?

Yes but I think this is a developer chat thing. Also Mal pretty much *had* to do this because even Q-Supreme doesn't last for ever.

RE: Source of High Taint

Several Possibilities

1) Mal; He botched his roll or maybe it was just a side effect.

2) Wycroft; I suspect our developers didn't actually assign this role to him, but he actually fits better than Mal does IMHO.

3) Random other nova (Mal being perfect and all that).

4) Side effect of Mal's Universe Creation. One of the developers mentioned that Mal didn't so much create his own universe as he *split* this one. So he took the good stuff with him and left us with the crap.

5) It's not high, it's just our fault. I.e. everyone who was going to erupt with low taint already did so, and/or the people left on Earth *think* and *believe* that they're *supposed* to erupt into monsters, so they do.

[Rorx]

I was assuming that PU's whole approach would be more "paramedics" than "press gang". The use of adrenocilin & mox is just one of the more egregious examples of how low the canon PU has stooped.

Ok, this is another example of my lack of familiarity with the details of the Aberrant rules/backgroud, but can't adrenocilin and mox be used appropriately in the training of new nova, or are they always going to cause more problems for the nova who use them than trying to do the training without them?

[Sprocket]

Check out p. 64 of Aberrant Worldwide: Phase 1 & p. 281 of the core book. Adrenocilin is addictive, & PU doles it out to Utopian novas in order to stave off fatigue & ensure that they can pull off feats at the upper range of their capabilities. Since Proteus is keeping the dangers of developing Taint a secret, not only are Utopian novas becoming dependent on & addicted to adrenocilin but they're getting increasingly Tainted.

OTOH, moxinoquantamine is OK, provided that it hasn't been adulterated with the sterility agent and isn't used to forcefully subdue undeserving novas.

AFA most of the Aeon Society is concerned, novas are disposable commodities to be used up & discarded, not people with inherent rights.

[metaphysician]

I think adrenocilin could probably be used safely; it would just require the same care that, say, amphetamines do.

[Rorx]

Given the change we envisage in PU re-Proteus I think it fair to assume a better attitude to the use of these drugs as well.