Aberrant: Trans-Dimensional Explorations - SuperGeek Enterprises: Exploration

[Nullifier]

RE:Daedalus League:

Preface to the logs of Pat 'Sundiver' Farrow, orginally aired on the OpNet 12/10/15:

Scene: An exquistely ugly dwarf dressed in what look like green surgical scrubs sits in a wooden folding chair against a black background, with coffee table to his right.

Pat: First of all, I want to get something straight for all you a**hole armchair phsychologists and psychiatrists out there. When these log entries were recorded, I was fighting for my f**king life. I did what any sane person would do when stuck in an insane situation. If you f**king think you could have handled that shit any better than I did, you're either deluded or luckily naive. Yes, you're lucky never to have faced anything like what I went through out there, mister dumb f**king 'I wouldn't crack under the pressure.' The long and the short of it, pun intended, is that I'm here, I'm alive, and I'm sane. I dare any one of you who think you understand even an itoa of what happened to me, try it, see if you come out as intact, if at all.

Scene: The black background has been replaced by fire and light. Behind the dwarf, placing his small figure in stark relief, boils the surface of a sun. Without even glancing at it, the dwarf begins to speak again.

Pat: What you're all gawking at slack-jawed right now is the surface of Alpha-Centauri. I won't bore you with details you wouldn't understand, but to understand why my logs don't begin until three days after I arrived in the system, I refer you to that monstrosity behind me. Sure, all the recording equipment was attuned, and protected, but you have to understand that even military-grade electronics can't function in that kind of electromagnetic environment, and I woke up inside the star. That's why, for all you shmucks who think I really want to show my ulgy f**king puss all over the 'net, I'm doing this stupid damned preface. To provide an objective account of what happened, something unfortunately lacking in the logs, as due mostly to my situation and condition during the trip, my usually perfect recall was, as I learned later, far below par. So here we go.

Scene: The background shifts behind the dwarf in the chair, to a fluid, shining image almost painful to look at. A loud, thruming, crackling noise comes with the shift, boiling over into the sub- and ultra-sonic and changing in almost-but-not quite rythmic intervals. The dwarf's voice carries over the sounds.

Pat: So this is an approximate combination of what I could percieve with my human and nova senses when I woke up. A shitty, toned-down, lackluster, timid

approximation. Still, as anything even near the real thing would be spectacularly fatal, this will have to do. Basically, sensory overload hell. It was almost an hour before I was able to filter enough of it out to think coherently again. Then, when I finally realized, an hour later, where I was, the shock made it all come crashing back. I may have even blacked out, and to hell with the vaunted nova stamina. It took the better part of the day to map the gravitational and electromagnetic spectrums, and get some idea of where I might be, where I was going, and how long it would take. Now, you smartasses are thinking, why didn't you just pick a direction and start warping? Well, smartass, suns are big f**king buggers. Besides, I had another, bigger problem. When we opened the warp to Alpha Centauri, it was for a quick sneak and peek. I was to go, record as much data as I could, and get back. Now, for those of you morons without any understanding of space travel, orbital mechanics, galactic rotation, etc., you should know that our sun and other suns do not move at the same relative velocitices through the universe. As it turns out, we had decided that for such a short jump, matching relative orbital velocities by tailoring the warp wouldn't matter. We were dead f**king wrong, which is how I ended up inside a sun. Unfortunately, I was unconscious until I was well inside the sun, and by that time, though my relative velocity was hardly diminished, its vector had changed enough that there was no way to tell what the orginal vector was. My only choice was to use the star's gravity to match its relative velocity. Once I did that, it was merely a matter of tailoring the final warp to compensate for the difference between that and our sun's, which is a known quantity. I figured all this out in a couple hours. Spent the next two days of sleepless concentrated hell punching holes in space so torn up by gravity and EM flux that they barely made a ripple in the maelstrom. I thought I'd made it, figured I was home free. So you'll all just have to forgive me if I was more than a little bit upset when the equipment finally came back online and mind my was clear of all that noise, and I realized that I was nowhere near where I thought I'd be, that I couldn't plot my relative velocity without equipment that I didn't have, that I couldn't think, navigate, or do math inside the star, and that the only chance I had at seeing earth again in a baseline's lifetime was to go back inside the star. Not just once, but again, and again, and again. For three years I lived in and around that star. My logs tell the story of that time, and of the two years in the long, cold darkness between the stars as I strived for that one elusive long jump that would get me home. The moral of this preface, for those of you who need such things is this: you've been watching and listening to me talk all this time, haven't you? I bet you have a headache, even if you're a nova. You might be cursing at me right now for it. Well f**k you very much too. But before you shut this off in disgust, realize this: it's only a taste. A faded, washed-out, pale imitation of something most of you will never even begin to imagine with your tiny, useless brains. If ever exposed to the real thing, you'd be lucky if your mind didn't collapse into random noise right then and there. So keep that shit in mind when you listen to these goddamned f**king logs that I now wish I'd never agreed to f**king release. Now, without any further kibitzing from me, here's the shit you've all been waiting for, the so-called 'evidence' that I'm legally insane, that my so-called friends tried to f**k me with and take all that money my little trip to hell and back made me, the infamous 'Sundiver' logs.

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The logs themselves are mostly nothing but crazy, out-of-step, yet rythmic noises, interspersed with long periods of cursing, and short bursts of lucid speech about subjects so esoterically technical as to be essentially meaningless to the uninitiated. The most disturbing thing about them though is the suddenness of the switches, picking up mid-word/curse/noise like it never left off before, and was going on the whole time, just not being recorded. Like three seperate tracks with only parts of them randomly spliced together.

[Nullifier]

Erm. Oops. I meant Paul, not Ash. Bah. Now what to do? ::unsure ::rolleyes ::sad

[phoenix]

::blink Nulli, nice stuff.

Hey Blue, should I be waiting for my cue now or should I just enter? ::cool

"Ha! Joke's on me this time. All you tall folks look so much alike to me, I thought you were him for a moment.

::laugh Good save.

[Nullifier]

Thanks, on both counts. ::biggrin

[Bahamut810]

I can delet emy post if you like.

[Nullifier]

Nah. It's fine this way. ::cool Thanks for the offer, though. ::biggrin

[phoenix]

Yeah, if we ran with the "stabbity" affair in War Journal we can run with this. ::cool

[BlueNinja]

Jump in whenever you please, Phoenix. After all, you probably left Mojave for a three hour drive before they were getting off the plane. Or maybe you're just a maniac with a car, in which case Michal will be pissed when he hears back from his insurance company.

So, Heritage has bowed out. Other than Archer, does anyone else wish to join? I will allow up to seven people total - so there's two more slots.

Also, I posted a few simple questions about game mechanics earlier in the thread, and I don't think anyone has responded to a single one of them. ::confused

[BlueNinja]

Oh yeah, Pat's name is on a wall. Right next to "Spacewreck" Montez! ::laugh ::biggrin

[BlueNinja]

And furthermore ... Bahamut and Phoenix [edit] and Alex [/edit], do you have messenger handles that you use regularly? That way rules questions or IC clarifications can be handled more quickly when I'm at home and we're both online. Bahamut, I added your ICQ to my list, but I've never seen you online, which doesn't tell me if you're normally invisible or just not on.

[Nullifier]

Yeah. Um. Pat's name isn't on a wall, it's on a list. Used to be on the 'deceased' list, but they moved him up to 'insane' since he wouldn't, as they say, just stay dead. ::biggrin ::brick

As for your mechanics question. I dunno. I'm pretty flexible when it comes to dice roll reporting from STs on forums, and since you're going to be doing all the rolling and all the reporting, not me, I'm pretty much indifferent. ::biggrin

[Alex Green]

And furthermore ... Alex do you have messenger handles that you use regularly?

Nope. Sorry. For me it's basically PM, Post, or EMail. Long story.

[Alex Green]

Yeah. Um. Pat's name isn't on a wall, it's on a list. Used to be on the 'deceased' list, but they moved him up to 'insane' since he wouldn't, as they say, just stay dead.  ::biggrin  ::brick

Sounds like you are on both lists. ::biggrin

[BlueNinja]

Oh no, they have a Wall of Shame. The only reason Michal isn't on there too (for telling them to go shove it) is because the Daedulus League would find their stuff being ejected from all of Michal's facilities. Which includes space stations.

And, um, why is Pat getting upset at Athena insulting the Daedulus League?

[Alex Green]

It's late, I'm off to bed.

Before we leave Paul is going to offer to set up passive Psi-Links to both of you for whatever this mysterious mission is.

"Passive" as in, he can find your mind later because he at one time set up the link.

[BlueNinja]

Unless Paul asks them, then you have to beat a willpower roll.

[Alex Green]

Posted. If yes then take his hand. If no then I won't try to force it (meaningless with a Psi-Link).

[Nullifier]

And, um, why is Pat getting upset at Athena insulting the Daedulus League?

Erm. Because their efforts cost him five long years of his life, almost killed him (many times over), and tried to have him put in a nova mental instiution, like Bahrain for example. She called those efforts paltry. Wouldn't you be a little pissed? Oh, he's just as amused as angry, but he likes to be difficult. His Charisma is 1, you know. In this case that denotes his tendency to yell at, insult, and threaten people at any available opportunity, among other things. It's hard to have a Charisma score like that without being something of a misanthrope. ::tongue ::wink ::ultracool

I really can play this character, trust me. ::biggrin

[Bahamut810]

My god...You are the Damien of the Supergeek universe!

[Nullifier]

Please don't compare my misanthropic characters to your sociopathic ones. I'm not sure who, but I'm sure at least one of us ought to find that insulting. ::wink ::tongue ::biggrin

[Bahamut810]

Yeah...Damien was pretty ::sly ::tongue ::laugh

[Alex Green]

Erm. Because their efforts cost him five long years of his life, almost killed him (many times over), and tried to have him put in a nova mental instiution, like Bahrain for example. She called those efforts paltry. Wouldn't you be a little pissed? Oh, he's just as amused as angry, but he likes to be difficult. His Charisma is 1, you know. In this case that denotes his tendency to yell at, insult, and threaten people at any available opportunity, among other things. It's hard to have a Charisma score like that without being something of a misanthrope.  ::tongue  ::wink  ::ultracool

I really can play this character, trust me.  ::biggrin

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Hmm. Makes me think it's a good thing for party stability my backing is only "Zero".

[Nullifier]

On the other hand, a little intra-party friction can make for spicy, dramatic roleplaying. ::sly ::biggrin

[phoenix]

On the other hand, a little intra-party friction can make for spicy, dramatic roleplaying.

Yeah, didn't Verse have that on his business cards or something? ::sly

[Nullifier]

Yeah, didn't Verse have that on his business cards or something?

Not really. He just had very strong feelings about certain things. Besides, at least he didn't go berserk and kill a bunch of people, like some characters I could mention. ::tongue

[Alex Green]

On the other hand, a little intra-party friction can make for spicy, dramatic roleplaying.  ::sly  ::biggrin

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Yes, but...

If I'd signed up for Project Pro, I (the player) would know my PC might be blamed for a number of foul deads.

Signing up for the D-League doesn't really imply that. It's basically a bunch of guys who go hang out on other planets. It could be (and probably is) run out of someone's house. They aren't a true organization, they are more of a social club.

[Nullifier]

Oh, I don't know about that quite. At least by 2020, they've done all sorts of things. Besides, without revealing too much of the character's history, let me just say that the League itself had little to do with what happened to Pat besides acting as a cover for people with very different agendas. It's not exactly a secret, but it's not like it's widely known either. The world of Aberrant is full of conspiracies, and any orginization as loosely put together as the League yet made up solely of novas is just asking to be used that way.

[BlueNinja]

The Daedulus League started out as a group of novas and rich baselines who wanted to make space travel. By 2020, they are the same core group, but now really bitter and pissed off because 1) the biggest name in space travel told them to go shove it, and 2) the most famous members of their group are known for being complete utter nutcases (folks like Sundiver and Spacewreck). They're slowly turning into a bitter shell of their former selves, and while they do have some legitimate accomplishments (exploring Jupiter and Saturn and the related moons) they're on the way out and they know it.

Nothing more dangerous than someone with nothing to lose.

[phoenix]

Blue, was this last IC post meant to be OOC? I can move it if you want.. it seems a bit odd where it is.. ::confused

[BlueNinja]

Yeah, I suppose it should be. I started typing it out and hit "send" before I really realized that there wasn't anything IC to be had there. Except my retort. ::glare

The text in question:

Normally, when a psychic link occurs, it's a bit more of a walky-talky.  To give you examples:

Nathan and his brother Daniel have a psychic link.  When they use it, they both seem as though they are standing on one side of a window, looking through at the other brother, and seeing the area around him.  When the window is shut (by either person) no communication takes place.

Michal and Clio used to have a psychic link.  It operated like a visor/HUD (with Michal's being like System Shock 2, and Clio's being like a knight's helmet).  When they used it, they could see the other person's face transparently over what they were seeing, and hear what was happening with the other person, as well as getting a rough idea of the other person's physical health.

Clio used to have a psychic link with her brother Orpheus.  It operated similar to Nathan's, but they were sitting in a room in chairs, looking at each other, with the other person's background playing out as a mural on the wall behind them.

In all cases, the format of the psychic link is decided by the person linked to, not the person with the power.  So, Bahamut needs to spell out what it seems like when the link starts.  Despite the time that seems to pass when using psychic link, it is instantaneous.

[Nullifier]

The Daedulus League started out as a group of novas and rich baselines who wanted to make space travel. By 2020, they are the same core group, but now really bitter and pissed off because 1) the biggest name in space travel told them to go shove it, and 2) the most famous members of their group are known for being complete utter nutcases (folks like Sundiver and Spacewreck). They're slowly turning into a bitter shell of their former selves, and while they do have some legitimate accomplishments (exploring Jupiter and Saturn and the related moons) they're on the way out and they know it.

Nothing more dangerous than someone with nothing to lose.

It's good to know that my character fits well with the overall trend. ::rolleyes ::sly ::ultracool

[phoenix]

After the link activates and Paul opens it the audio is crystal clear, much like if they were standing next to eachother (which they are...but thats beside the point laugh.gif sly.gif ).

::laugh

[BlueNinja]

Alright then - Ash and Paul, when the link is active, can hear everything that happened around the other person in the few seconds before the link opened with perfect clarity. (Since the link is effectively instantaneous, they can't, for example, overhear an existing conversation, unless Paul is blinking the link on-off-on-off.)

[Jeremiah]

hot damn! ::ohmy

i stop checking in after quantum zero starts getting cold and now there's another game up and running.

no one to blame but myself.

so, um, any more room or has this ship sailed (or plane taken off, as the case seems to be)?

::unsure

[BlueNinja]

Read the character creation guidelines and submit to me a character sheet.

Counting you, Archer, and my brother, that will make seven characters. Once I have confirmed character sheets from everyone, I will close the game to more newcomers.

[BlueNinja]

I have confirmed character sheets from Archer, and from my brother (who'd better register for the forum pretty darn quick, or he'll have trouble playing ::biggrin ).

Sablesma, or anyone else who's interested, I currently have one open spot left. First confirmed character sheet received is it.

[Alex Green]

(A dead frog in a tube? )

Crows *really* love that kind of thing. Ditto other carron eaters.

Basic Animal Handleing: Reward with food.

[BlueNinja]

(A dead frog in a tube?  )

Crows *really* love that kind of thing.  Ditto other carron eaters.

Basic Animal Handleing: Reward with food.

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There's no ::puking icon. ::ohmy

[Alex Green]

Hey, I'm not suggesting *I* eat it. The sealed tube is so I don't smell it either. Haven't you ever wondered why Crows hang around road kill. ::laugh

More seriously, crows are useful to an Animal Telepath in lots of ways. They're common and as such basically invisible to normal security. They're intelligent, perceptive, fly, and are big & mean enough that they aren't scared of much. Hawks are more scary but are rare enough they attract attention, Chickadees and the smaller birds constantly eat, are pretty dumb, and are very timid as well. A crow is close to ideal for lots of things.

[AnonCastillo]

Just letting everybody know that I exist.

Or do I?

Probably not. But anyway, BN has approved my character, Jonathan Dearborn.