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Aberrant Concept Character: Von Neumann


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Disclaimer: This isn't a serious character I expect anyone to play as, or that I expect any ST to allow in their game. It's not a piece of theoretical optimization or powergaming, but it is still something that, left unchecked, can absolutely break the game over its knee. This is exclusively something I did as a thought experiment.

 

Rules and standards being used for this build:
Nova Point Budget: 30, as is standard.
Purchase of one dot of mega-attribute gives a free enhancement. This is a variant rule, but it's in the book, so don't yell at me for it.
If it's in a publicly available book that I didn't write, it's fair game.

BUILD:

-3 Mega-Stamina 1(Adaptability)
-3 Mega-Intelligence 1(Engineering Prodigy)
-12 Accelerated Maturation 4/Fertility 2, Accelerated Gestation 2*
-2 Augmented Fecundity 2
-10 Quantum 5(Tainted)

*The entry for Accelerated Maturation states that it can only be taken by child Novas, and that it gets swapped out with other Mega-Stamina enhancements when the Nova reaches adulthood. As such, 4 levels of Accelerated Maturation becomes 2 levels of Fertility and Accelerated Gestation upon reaching maturity.

 

WHAT THE HELL EVEN IS THIS:

John Von Neumann was a computer scientist in the first half of the 20th century, and he spent some of that time thinking a whole lot about self-replicating machines. As such, a lot of self-replicating machines have his name attached to them, including the Von Neumann Probe. This character is basically that.

This Nova is a very peculiar woman who's named herself Joan Von Neumann, and she's set out on a mission to plant her progeny on every last rock in the universe. In order to reach said rocks, she uses her Mega-Intelligence and her high Quantum score to develop a spacecraft, represented in game terms as a Quantum Gadget(see Aberrant Player's Guide, Page 143) of Starflight 4(see Aberrant Nexus, Page 104). This spacecraft has a top speed of roughly 500,000 parsecs per hour. To put that in perspective, she could start somewhere between Mercury and Venus, and reach the Andromeda Galaxy in the span of an hour and a half.

Once Von Neumann finds a new rock(meaning planet, moon, or dwarf planet) she wants to colonize, she lands on it, and uses a feature of Fertility 2 to self-impregnate, reproducing via parthenogenesis over the course of nine days, and giving birth to, on average, eight young who have no real need for food, water, or air- thanks, Adaptability! She leaves one infant on a single rock, and takes the others with her to distribute amongst nearby rocks, before speeding off to the next cluster.

 

Interesting. How can I use it in my game?:

Fucked if I know. Maybe instead of making her a weirdo human, use her stats for the Continuum of Makers, a fictional alien empire from sci-fi webcomic Drive. They reproduce very quickly via parthenogenesis, but that's a mere facet of their character; since they're all clones, and also all smart as hell, invention and intellectual achievement is how they differentiate themselves, taking on a spiritual tone that quickly turns into zealous crusading if someone copies their technology. But as I've presented Joan Von Neumann, she's not really usable in a game, except maybe as an explanation for why so many aliens in your sci-fi game look like weird humans.

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