or 40ish, by the not official count.
Things are going well. Have enough players; the game's survived several players getting stuck with Real Life without too much plot juggling and a week has passed us by in game.
Since I'll be doing a novel for the next two months, sessions other than the Official One that fairly unlikely, unless I need a break from writing. Normally I figure I'd be able to get some in, but I've never tried writing a novel while holding down a 9 to 5 job before, so shall see how it goes -- and those all nighters just don't work like they used to. Just figured I'd let everyone know how things'll be stand. It'll be fairly different - I don't how *what* will happen with regards to Cecil stuff, since Chaos is late on Mondays; something'll be worked out at least. I hope.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Winter
This is just winters sheet from Aftermath being posted for someone.
Winter
Time travel is so dangerous it makes H-bombs seem perfectly safe gifts for children and imebeciles. I mean, what's the worse that could happen with a nuclear weapon? A few million people die; trivial. With time travel we can destroy the whole Universe, or so the theory goes.
- John Varley
Name: Winter Windchaser (aka Barry Mugan) (aka Arth'Ba'Toch)
Sumnmary: Possible god despite a very thorough abdication. It's complicated.
Background: The history of Winter begins somewhere over a thousand years in the future, where the god whose mastery is time sends a hand-picked woman (Tanya Ingold) back in time to give birth to him. Tanya is given advanced technology and the blessings of the god, both of which allow her to survive the trip, and something uniquely Tanya that makes her able to withstand the effects of travelling through time and, perhaps, learn something about the nature of her god during the journey. (This could well have been her unconceived son ,making sure she made it back fine.)
Tanya arrived in 2008 and set about learning about earth and searching for Adam Windchaser, the man destined to be the father of his son Winter whether he liked it or not. Her first attempt later that year was an out and out failure, with Adam (how had been busy avoiding Mr. Armstrong earlier) calling up illusions and evading her. He also ended up castrated and missing his tongue for a time due to the price of his powers and Tanya spent the next few months researching him and ended up deciding on seduction instead, hitting him when he was feeling very depressed and drugging him. Adam woke 3 days later early in 2009 wondering just what the hell had happened.
Tanya found somewhere remote in Asia to give birth to Winter, and given his pre-birth ability to alter time it was a very harrowing experience. However, once he was born something changed. Not at a conscious level, but somehow Tanya couldn't see this child growing up to become a god. (Not that Arth'Ba'Toch, The God Who Must Not Be Named, Lord of Time was a bad god, necessarily, it's just that the business of gods is to BE gods, to remain what they are - and all gods believe in expediency and necessary evils - and have biases against change. For 500 of the years Arth has ruled (began 300ish years in into the future from 2020) society has been stagnant.) She raised him, telling him of his powers when he was two or so, and really didn't understand all the big words she was using. She used a lot of Star Trek lingo since she doesn't really understand his powers herself and to hide the fact that the devices she'd brought had detected Barry Mugan, who *also* seemed to be Winter, which she knew was not possible. There were few facts known about her god, but one was that there was only one of him, ever. Other beings split when they're present at a timeline-altering event, one going down one path, one another (or more, if multiple timelines are made); but Winter was always and ever himself. Barry's presence seemed to put a lie to this and left her even more confused.
She taught Winter how to defend himself unconsciously, helped him through periods when even moving synchronicity by accident left him exhausted for days and taught him, very firmly, that it is wrong to live another's life for them and that killing was wrong (the second lesson has stuck more). She had just been getting into not altering the past to erase his own mistakes (would have been a good lesson) when Adam Windchaser finally managed to find them, having found out his son - the creature that would one day become Barry Mugan, ammoral puppet master - existed thanks to a superhuman known as midwife who specialised in helping people give birth to super human children.
Adam tracked them to Russia, using magic and power and pure rage to escape detection and entered there home, obliterating Tanya with the pure core of his power, illusion made real. But his power had developed over the years, allowing him to siphon other super humans energy directly in order to not inflict his curse - as he struck out at Winter, it attempted to siphon energy and things went nuts. Winter fled, his mind blasted by the pure hatred of his father, and Adamn Windchaser was left crumpled, the curse ripping through him for years and years, trapped in that one moment by Winter's unthinking defence and first use of his Edicaran self.
Winter fled into Canada and somehow to Haven, only knowing that he had to find the "star lady" - his only coherent memory of Starchild left in his fragmenting psyche. He found Kate, then Maelstrom and was eventually healed by Jesa.
And then his power took matters into its own hands, manipulating the future and present so that Timmy met Winter and Winter was hit by the futuristic time compass that let him see his future self. Desperate to not become that begin, he took the Rebirth Timmy hit him with and threw it at his future self, resulting in that self going back in time, becoming insane and eventually Barry Mugan. He'd been manipulated. Something in Winter just ...snapped ... at knowing how many deaths he had caused and he reached out and killed Barry, which destroyed his predetermined future, and which his god self must havbe known would happen because Winter makes his own future and can't be constrained by a set one - which means Arth'Ba'Toch knowns something Winter doesn't, something he was willing to hedge all bets and his very existence on ....
Update: as the edicaran told Carl to tell winter - kings can't sacrifice themselvres in chess (which sort of sums up his problems :p)
Personality: Winter is a very quiet, shy and generally scared kid with a core will of pure determination and depths he's never had to plummet. He's never really been really tested and is generally unconsciously fighting his own power in an effort to actually be human as long as he can. And to him, a large part of that is loyalty to friends. He'd do anything to help them - possible even beoming Art'ba'toch.
Description: Winter is a young albino with long white hair tied up in a pony tail with pale blue eyes, about 10 years old.
Obsession: Being Human (power)
Wound Points: 45
Body: 45 (young)
Athletics 35%, Struggle 40%
Speed: 55 (quick)
Dodge 40%, Initiative 40%, Run away 40%
Mind: 60 (home schooling)
Conceal 15%, General Education: 20%, Notice: 30%., Future Knowledge: 60%; Speak Any Language 30%
Soul: 75 (still waters run deep)
Charm 35%, Lie 20%, Synchronicity 75%
Special: Edicardan: 12%, Human: 88%
Future Knowledge: This represents Winter's ability to know what is going to happen and what is most likely to happen. He doesn't like to use it but if something WILL happen - i.e. no matter what timeline, this event will occur - he'll know that intuitively.
Speak Any Language: This is a talent Tanya either gave to him or taught to him. He's unaware of it at present. It includes reading and writing them. This is generally easier with language he's heard (so far, Frechn, English, Russian and the tongue from his mother's time).
Synchronicity: Coincidence does whatever he wants unconsciously. The world arranges itself in ways that are good for him most of the time, and necessary some of the time. As his power isn't under concious control, it can (and will) arrange things to happen that it feels needs to happen to a certain extent. It is what "creates" things at need and the energy it takes to do that is only noticed by Winter if he's drained (the regular use isn't; he could do that while seconds from death).
Special: When the Eidcaran part outstrips the human, Winter may well cease to exist in a lot of ways. Each time he used his full power (or as much of it as he can - he's young and untrained) the human % goes down by one, the edicaran up by one. And he learns a little bit more about that non-human part of him and how to see time.
Powers:
Manipulate Time (Major X5): Winter alters the timestream just by existing. He can change the present, future and past pretty much at will .. time is his toy to do whatever he wants with. In theory. In practise, this does apply to the god self with centuries of experience in time but not to Winter himself. And there are limits. He cann't undo something he has done or will do - it's not within his power. He could alter time so what he did never happened, if really pushed, but it would get Noticed. And require a signifigant expenditure of energy.
* Altering the present can be done prettty much at will, for local things.
* Altering the future requires touching time and his deep self, as per Not All There and he loses 1% of humanity.
* Altering the past is as per the future, but Winter can't do it yet, even though he's tried.
Note: Winter can't be in more than one place at once or duplicate himself. There is just one of him.
Note2: Raising the dead is possible for his power, but he doesn't know enough about the timelines and can't see deeply or far enough to effectivly raise someone and not alter the past drastically as a result. (If the death occured during a time split, it's much easier and could be done ... otherwise it's really mucking around with things and Winter's power alters time, not necessarily memory - yet. What it would do is arrange for a timeline they hadn't died in - but everyone else would remember seeing them die.)
Flaws:
Pre-ordained future: There are some things Winter can't avoid doing. Creating Barry was one of them. He might be able to avoid others, but the resulting damage to time could well be catastrophic in nature. At some level, he knows this. It is quite likely he could cause Arth by trying to avoid causing him.
Power drain: Seeing time as it really looks like is only possible because his non-human nature buffers him. Even so, using his powers at the deeper levels is increnibly exhausting. Any other being would die from it, possibly even Master J or Jesa. but Winter is not human, nor edicaran, but some hyrbid of both. It allows him to recover from exhaustion naturally at an insane rate and, if he is conscious, can heal him of most damage simply by altering his rate of healing. (The obvious danger is his syncronicity creation effect working when he is drained, which feels much like getting the crap beaten out of you.)
Automatic defence: His power will defend itself against any threats or perceived threats unless Winter deliberately stops it.
Not All There: The non human part of him is the real source for doing impressive things with his power and each time he uses it
he loses some of his humanity. In game terms, this currently means anything aside from future knowledge or syncronicity and minor temporal changes caused by his defence ability.
Pillar of Time: Winter *is* time, in a lot of ways. A big cog in the wheel, at the very least. Harm to it is harm to him. This includes harm HE does to it and arguably be hurts it just by existing since he acts as a mountain in a stream of a vortex of sorts in an ocean at all times. (Being continually harmed by your own presence harming time could explain some of Arth's disposition.) Currently, he's not edicaran enough to realise this flaw, but it's coming....
Notes On Time:
In the Hubris/Aftermath universe, there are alternate timelines. But there are far less of them than many suppose. Just deciding to walk left doesn't mean another you walks right - people "split" into other timelines only at the junction of important events - and what is imporant to time and the universe can be very large or very small. As well, some things seem to have to happen - either through one timeline or all of them - and woe to anyone who decides to mess with that, or can.
Importantly, the past is as malleable as the future and present in this setting. (While rping your entire history changing may be hard for some players, it *can* happen.) In more extreme situations, like altering the past so humanity didn’t happen, just boot the alterer to said universe, where they get to try and live in a universe of flying dolphins, and likely not for long. The big problem is tenses, since your original timeline alters when the past changes in the less extreme senses and being stuck remembering things that never happened is seldom fun.
Winter is unique because a) he's an edicaran in human form, as Bloodhound was a Watcher in human form. The difference is that Winter went all the way and they are one being - each use of it's power to increase his own makes him more it and less human personality wise. And b) There is only one him. He doesn't split along timelines as others do, ever. (It also makes it impossible for him to be in two places at once, or duplicate himself for any reason.)
(The latter doesn't apply to barry. There are more than one of him because the trip through time stripped him of the edicaran for the most part and the time travel entirely.)
Winter
Time travel is so dangerous it makes H-bombs seem perfectly safe gifts for children and imebeciles. I mean, what's the worse that could happen with a nuclear weapon? A few million people die; trivial. With time travel we can destroy the whole Universe, or so the theory goes.
- John Varley
Name: Winter Windchaser (aka Barry Mugan) (aka Arth'Ba'Toch)
Sumnmary: Possible god despite a very thorough abdication. It's complicated.
Background: The history of Winter begins somewhere over a thousand years in the future, where the god whose mastery is time sends a hand-picked woman (Tanya Ingold) back in time to give birth to him. Tanya is given advanced technology and the blessings of the god, both of which allow her to survive the trip, and something uniquely Tanya that makes her able to withstand the effects of travelling through time and, perhaps, learn something about the nature of her god during the journey. (This could well have been her unconceived son ,making sure she made it back fine.)
Tanya arrived in 2008 and set about learning about earth and searching for Adam Windchaser, the man destined to be the father of his son Winter whether he liked it or not. Her first attempt later that year was an out and out failure, with Adam (how had been busy avoiding Mr. Armstrong earlier) calling up illusions and evading her. He also ended up castrated and missing his tongue for a time due to the price of his powers and Tanya spent the next few months researching him and ended up deciding on seduction instead, hitting him when he was feeling very depressed and drugging him. Adam woke 3 days later early in 2009 wondering just what the hell had happened.
Tanya found somewhere remote in Asia to give birth to Winter, and given his pre-birth ability to alter time it was a very harrowing experience. However, once he was born something changed. Not at a conscious level, but somehow Tanya couldn't see this child growing up to become a god. (Not that Arth'Ba'Toch, The God Who Must Not Be Named, Lord of Time was a bad god, necessarily, it's just that the business of gods is to BE gods, to remain what they are - and all gods believe in expediency and necessary evils - and have biases against change. For 500 of the years Arth has ruled (began 300ish years in into the future from 2020) society has been stagnant.) She raised him, telling him of his powers when he was two or so, and really didn't understand all the big words she was using. She used a lot of Star Trek lingo since she doesn't really understand his powers herself and to hide the fact that the devices she'd brought had detected Barry Mugan, who *also* seemed to be Winter, which she knew was not possible. There were few facts known about her god, but one was that there was only one of him, ever. Other beings split when they're present at a timeline-altering event, one going down one path, one another (or more, if multiple timelines are made); but Winter was always and ever himself. Barry's presence seemed to put a lie to this and left her even more confused.
She taught Winter how to defend himself unconsciously, helped him through periods when even moving synchronicity by accident left him exhausted for days and taught him, very firmly, that it is wrong to live another's life for them and that killing was wrong (the second lesson has stuck more). She had just been getting into not altering the past to erase his own mistakes (would have been a good lesson) when Adam Windchaser finally managed to find them, having found out his son - the creature that would one day become Barry Mugan, ammoral puppet master - existed thanks to a superhuman known as midwife who specialised in helping people give birth to super human children.
Adam tracked them to Russia, using magic and power and pure rage to escape detection and entered there home, obliterating Tanya with the pure core of his power, illusion made real. But his power had developed over the years, allowing him to siphon other super humans energy directly in order to not inflict his curse - as he struck out at Winter, it attempted to siphon energy and things went nuts. Winter fled, his mind blasted by the pure hatred of his father, and Adamn Windchaser was left crumpled, the curse ripping through him for years and years, trapped in that one moment by Winter's unthinking defence and first use of his Edicaran self.
Winter fled into Canada and somehow to Haven, only knowing that he had to find the "star lady" - his only coherent memory of Starchild left in his fragmenting psyche. He found Kate, then Maelstrom and was eventually healed by Jesa.
And then his power took matters into its own hands, manipulating the future and present so that Timmy met Winter and Winter was hit by the futuristic time compass that let him see his future self. Desperate to not become that begin, he took the Rebirth Timmy hit him with and threw it at his future self, resulting in that self going back in time, becoming insane and eventually Barry Mugan. He'd been manipulated. Something in Winter just ...snapped ... at knowing how many deaths he had caused and he reached out and killed Barry, which destroyed his predetermined future, and which his god self must havbe known would happen because Winter makes his own future and can't be constrained by a set one - which means Arth'Ba'Toch knowns something Winter doesn't, something he was willing to hedge all bets and his very existence on ....
Update: as the edicaran told Carl to tell winter - kings can't sacrifice themselvres in chess (which sort of sums up his problems :p)
Personality: Winter is a very quiet, shy and generally scared kid with a core will of pure determination and depths he's never had to plummet. He's never really been really tested and is generally unconsciously fighting his own power in an effort to actually be human as long as he can. And to him, a large part of that is loyalty to friends. He'd do anything to help them - possible even beoming Art'ba'toch.
Description: Winter is a young albino with long white hair tied up in a pony tail with pale blue eyes, about 10 years old.
Obsession: Being Human (power)
Wound Points: 45
Body: 45 (young)
Athletics 35%, Struggle 40%
Speed: 55 (quick)
Dodge 40%, Initiative 40%, Run away 40%
Mind: 60 (home schooling)
Conceal 15%, General Education: 20%, Notice: 30%., Future Knowledge: 60%; Speak Any Language 30%
Soul: 75 (still waters run deep)
Charm 35%, Lie 20%, Synchronicity 75%
Special: Edicardan: 12%, Human: 88%
Future Knowledge: This represents Winter's ability to know what is going to happen and what is most likely to happen. He doesn't like to use it but if something WILL happen - i.e. no matter what timeline, this event will occur - he'll know that intuitively.
Speak Any Language: This is a talent Tanya either gave to him or taught to him. He's unaware of it at present. It includes reading and writing them. This is generally easier with language he's heard (so far, Frechn, English, Russian and the tongue from his mother's time).
Synchronicity: Coincidence does whatever he wants unconsciously. The world arranges itself in ways that are good for him most of the time, and necessary some of the time. As his power isn't under concious control, it can (and will) arrange things to happen that it feels needs to happen to a certain extent. It is what "creates" things at need and the energy it takes to do that is only noticed by Winter if he's drained (the regular use isn't; he could do that while seconds from death).
Special: When the Eidcaran part outstrips the human, Winter may well cease to exist in a lot of ways. Each time he used his full power (or as much of it as he can - he's young and untrained) the human % goes down by one, the edicaran up by one. And he learns a little bit more about that non-human part of him and how to see time.
Powers:
Manipulate Time (Major X5): Winter alters the timestream just by existing. He can change the present, future and past pretty much at will .. time is his toy to do whatever he wants with. In theory. In practise, this does apply to the god self with centuries of experience in time but not to Winter himself. And there are limits. He cann't undo something he has done or will do - it's not within his power. He could alter time so what he did never happened, if really pushed, but it would get Noticed. And require a signifigant expenditure of energy.
* Altering the present can be done prettty much at will, for local things.
* Altering the future requires touching time and his deep self, as per Not All There and he loses 1% of humanity.
* Altering the past is as per the future, but Winter can't do it yet, even though he's tried.
Note: Winter can't be in more than one place at once or duplicate himself. There is just one of him.
Note2: Raising the dead is possible for his power, but he doesn't know enough about the timelines and can't see deeply or far enough to effectivly raise someone and not alter the past drastically as a result. (If the death occured during a time split, it's much easier and could be done ... otherwise it's really mucking around with things and Winter's power alters time, not necessarily memory - yet. What it would do is arrange for a timeline they hadn't died in - but everyone else would remember seeing them die.)
Flaws:
Pre-ordained future: There are some things Winter can't avoid doing. Creating Barry was one of them. He might be able to avoid others, but the resulting damage to time could well be catastrophic in nature. At some level, he knows this. It is quite likely he could cause Arth by trying to avoid causing him.
Power drain: Seeing time as it really looks like is only possible because his non-human nature buffers him. Even so, using his powers at the deeper levels is increnibly exhausting. Any other being would die from it, possibly even Master J or Jesa. but Winter is not human, nor edicaran, but some hyrbid of both. It allows him to recover from exhaustion naturally at an insane rate and, if he is conscious, can heal him of most damage simply by altering his rate of healing. (The obvious danger is his syncronicity creation effect working when he is drained, which feels much like getting the crap beaten out of you.)
Automatic defence: His power will defend itself against any threats or perceived threats unless Winter deliberately stops it.
Not All There: The non human part of him is the real source for doing impressive things with his power and each time he uses it
he loses some of his humanity. In game terms, this currently means anything aside from future knowledge or syncronicity and minor temporal changes caused by his defence ability.
Pillar of Time: Winter *is* time, in a lot of ways. A big cog in the wheel, at the very least. Harm to it is harm to him. This includes harm HE does to it and arguably be hurts it just by existing since he acts as a mountain in a stream of a vortex of sorts in an ocean at all times. (Being continually harmed by your own presence harming time could explain some of Arth's disposition.) Currently, he's not edicaran enough to realise this flaw, but it's coming....
Notes On Time:
In the Hubris/Aftermath universe, there are alternate timelines. But there are far less of them than many suppose. Just deciding to walk left doesn't mean another you walks right - people "split" into other timelines only at the junction of important events - and what is imporant to time and the universe can be very large or very small. As well, some things seem to have to happen - either through one timeline or all of them - and woe to anyone who decides to mess with that, or can.
Importantly, the past is as malleable as the future and present in this setting. (While rping your entire history changing may be hard for some players, it *can* happen.) In more extreme situations, like altering the past so humanity didn’t happen, just boot the alterer to said universe, where they get to try and live in a universe of flying dolphins, and likely not for long. The big problem is tenses, since your original timeline alters when the past changes in the less extreme senses and being stuck remembering things that never happened is seldom fun.
Winter is unique because a) he's an edicaran in human form, as Bloodhound was a Watcher in human form. The difference is that Winter went all the way and they are one being - each use of it's power to increase his own makes him more it and less human personality wise. And b) There is only one him. He doesn't split along timelines as others do, ever. (It also makes it impossible for him to be in two places at once, or duplicate himself for any reason.)
(The latter doesn't apply to barry. There are more than one of him because the trip through time stripped him of the edicaran for the most part and the time travel entirely.)
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