Jump to content

Aberrant RPG - Tainting Out


Hugin

Recommended Posts

So....hitting Taint 10 is supposed to basically make a character unplayable. Doesn't kill them or turn them into monsters necessarily, just makes them unplayable.

In my TT, the one I ST'ed, I basically told my players that Taint 10 was their ultimate "NOVA FORM" the one that would take them outside of the experience of a limited being. My plans were based on their earlier Taint; Superluminal (a warper/teleporter, spatially based telepath) was moving to the point where he would explode in existence so that he became only consciousness experiencing everything simulatneously everywhere but unable to (at least currently) interact with anything.

Soooooo, if you took the same tack, what would your characters Taint 10 form be?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Templar would probably have a sudden burst of strength and understanding, he would probably become a titan in all ways physical but at the same time completely aware of what it is to be a nova. He would become somthing of a hermit, taking time out from interecting with others to contemplate the meaning of things. This would probably drive him to explorer the universe to find the kind of solitude he would need to think undisturbed...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nah, it has to be something that MAKES him unplayable as a PC. Just saying "hmmmm, I think I'll go be a hermit" doesn't cut it. I mean, what's to stop him from being a hermit? It can't be something that's a decision otherwise couldn't you really have a Taint 10 character?

As for Prodigy, he basically will be come a black hole of intellect. His mind, as defined by his aberrations, is always reaching out and trying to acquire more and more. So at Taint 10 his physical body drops away and something like a 20-30ft area of pure psychic drag occures and pulls in the mind and thoughts of anyone within range, adding them to his collection already.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote:
Originally posted by James 'Prodigy' Meehan:
Nah, it has to be something that MAKES him unplayable as a PC. Just saying "hmmmm, I think I'll go be a hermit" doesn't cut it. I mean, what's to stop him from being a hermit? It can't be something that's a decision otherwise couldn't you really have a Taint 10 character?


As for Prodigy, he basically will be come a black hole of intellect. His mind, as defined by his aberrations, is always reaching out and trying to acquire more and more. So at Taint 10 his physical body drops away and something like a 20-30ft area of pure psychic drag occures and pulls in the mind and thoughts of anyone within range, adding them to his collection already.
So a completely irresistible urge to go to the furthest reaches of the galaxy just to think for a few million years wouldn't make him unplayable?...


...riiiiiiiiiight

*backs away slowly*
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Endeavor would become unplayible for the simple fact of the impossibility of playing without emotion. You see, Endeavor would become the machine. I'm not saying she would dissapear into the OpNet, no.

Endeavor would become A MACHINE. Operating on Logic alone, without feelings, dreams, hopes, fears, only computations and equations running through her now mechanical and technological mind.

A biological android, if you will. Unable to deal with humanity because she lost her humanity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Codex would probably develop Obsessive-Compulsive: Seeking/Collecting Knowledge as her first medium aberration, then Vulnerability: Fire. Her next one would be Hardened Skin as her skin literally turns into parchment, and last might be Megalomania as she started believing she was the sum of all knowledge. At that point, she'd probably start ransacking libraries or something.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am going to have to disagree a bit here.

IMHO Taint 10 shouldn't be something that gives your characters powers. It renders your mind and/or body so inhuman, that it is incompatible with our experience to roleplay it.

To me, something more like what Codex described would be appropriate. After all, gaining taint 10 is more like losing, than winning.

I could see Taint 10 killing someone, of least the physical body and causing anything that remained that be incapable of interacting with the real world.

I could see one's sanity eroding to the point that they can't relate to reality at all, necessitating their destruction.

I could see someone turning into a statue, or melding into some element and being unable to exit, or to be communicated with.

Okay, all that being said:

I have never seen Jager being at taint 10. It just doesn't fit with the character.

Preston would become unhinged from reality, being in the future, past, and present simultaniously, but unable to interact with any of them.

Neil ... maybe a part of each and every living thing. The heartbeat of the world, so to speak.

Bastian would merge with the universal conciousness.

The Paragon ... well that would be giving stuff away.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I kind of disagree with you on that Jager, I doubt gaining new.... "powers" would really matter.

Losing the ability to interact with the world (and the universe for that matter), in my opinion, would be losing BIG! No amount of new "powers" would balance that out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that taint 10 is not becoming your super state... its becoming incapacitated by your un-managed quantum handicaps...

Taint 10 does not mean becoming some kind of mythological force, even if it makes you unplayable... it means being beaten by your taint, effectively

I see someone who could no longer support their own body weight and eventually their organs collapsed under their own stress as taint 10

I see someone whos mind grew so powerful that they could do nothing but move in small autistic automatic movements because of it as taint 10

someone who was covered in cancerous blobs, dripped acid, had only animal instincts including mating and killing and still obsessed with his one time ex-wife as taint 10

Someone who is utterly insane, unable to see the world in any percieved notion of reality while emitting radiation and periodically loosing all their powers and becoming a helpless baseline for random amounts of time with no memory... thats prob up there too

None of these involve transcendence... taint is not the doorway to evolution, its the resulting side effects

I think what you guys are thinking about is quantum 10... remember you can have taint 10 and quantum 1... I hardly think a quantum 1 nova can become anything cosmic

Just for fun, however, since we are talking about realized potential on a cosmic scale... (Im not talking taint 10 here, Im talking Q 10))

Zero would simply become a ripple in space... he would likely become a vaguely conscious force that would bend and warp space into various shapes... and be the source for adventures across the known and unknown universe in a fashion somewhere between hitchhikers guide and HP Lovecrafts Dreams of the Witchhouse and other similar stories.

Zero with Taint 10 would likely be unable to interact very effectively with simple 3 dimensional space and would not be able to concieve human thoughts, instead percieving things so alienly that they would be beyond his notice. He would also likely be unable to remain in the same spot for long, shifting around almost helplessly, distracted by the movements of space itself in the universe. Both euphoric and uncomfortable, able to take form only briefly IF ever and most likely unable to interact meaningfully to anyone not able to directly contact his mind.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I figure Alex is too reckless to actually live that long, personally. If he did he'd most likely lose himself in flows of probability and quantum energy in some way. I figure he might cease to act of his own volition, uninterested in diverting from the most likely line of causality. Or alternately, he'd become totally chaotic - eternally behaving in a perfectly random fashion.

I've always figured that Zima's progression would result in the gradual loss of identity. Eventually he will develop Clone, lose the ability to take on physical form, and begin to change from a single entity into a multiplicity. As taint catches up to him, he will become a kind of psychic contagion - infecting more and more people, but gradually losing his capacity for higher thought.

As for April - I have no clue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote:
Originally posted by Dr. Zero:
Also, endeavor, if you are accepting Brainwaves as Canon then emotionless is only a single medium taint. A nova can act on percieved emotions and make decisions better his or her situation without being emotional.
Since it hasn't ben published, I really don't consider it canon, but I think she'd have more than emotionless as her aberrations.

She would probably have aberrations that make her look more like a machine, or perhaps more artificial should be a better term. Like a Mannequin given life.

Thing is, the way I'm playing Sakurako, and the way she'll be by the time the Trinity universe comes around, she wouldn't be "Tainted Out".

I don't know how, but that's the way I see it.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Again I disagree with that Dr. Zero...

Pg. 151 of the Core Rule Book

"When a nova's permanent Taint reaches 10, he has become too inhuman to act as a player character."

The turn "inhuman" is anything that is obviously not human. This does not mean that you must be completely destroyed or become some oozing blob dripping hissing acid... it just means... far from human.

So both my example and Sakurako's and everyone else for that matter do indeed work. A living machine is what I would call far from human, An uber-physical nova (wacked out by other taint by this time as well obviously) that sits in the corner of the galaxy for some quiet time... is indeed far from human ect. ect. ect.

(EDIT: I'd like to add also that is says "to act as a player character" which even means that things that look completetly nova-like or human could still be tainted out, the only requirment is that they be unplayable

and Quantum 10 doesn't "evolve" you it just makes your current abilities more powerful and gives you a bigger quantum pool :P )

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...