Dr Archeville

I've PMed Nareik, again. I'll try and have a post up tomorrow night.

Heritage/Grim?

Hello?

Reminder: Mongrel Angel and the dead cop (and dead blob-thing) are in a small clearing not far off one of the walking/jogging trails.

Welcome! What's the "new squad of superheroes" he's been asked to join? In cases where Dodge Focus is applied to Defense, the Defense is typically written as the total number, followed by the flat-footed amount. So in this case, it would be "Defense +8 (+2 flat-footed)" Also, he should be +2 for Grapple -- +2 from attack, +0 from Str. 20 points on saves?! I do believe that's the most anyone's ever spent on them here! Again, please use the standard stat notation for the saves: save total (ability modifier, additional bonus). So, for example, his Fort save would be listed as "Fort +7 (+1 Con, +6)" Again, standard notation is preferred: skill name ranks (total). So, for example, his Notice would be written as "Notice 4 (+5)". Also, please list the skills alphabetically -- makes it easier to find things What are the stats for his HQ? Please list the total cost of each power along with it, it makes it easier for us to tally things. I'm not quite clear on what you're describing here. I get that the powers are all DAPs of one another -- and, incidentally, I would advise against putting a Defensive and Movement power into the same Array -- but the numbers don't seem to be working out. Is 2 ranks in Flight the absolute top speed he can get? And 11 ranks in Force Field the most he can get? You can't have Force Field 11 as an AP (dynamic or not) of Flight 2, since Flight 2 is 4 points and Force Field 11 is 11 points. You could have Force Field 11 (PFs: Dynamic, 2 Dynamic Alternate Powers: Sustained Impervious Toughness 11 for Force Field, Flight 5), for 16 points; you could have Flight 2, Force Field 4 (Imp 3) active at once. Do you mean Life Support? That's Immunity 9. Or do you mean something else? This should be "Super Sense 1 (direction sense)"; listing out the ranks is a bit important. Does he have 19 ranks in Magnetic Control? That's the only way he can have those APs at rank 10. If so, please add that in. Also, do be aware that your Shape Matter is Ranged, unlike all the other effects which are Perception.

Welcome back, person-I-don't-know! :)

Not bad! I'll PM you what Vigor finds (leaving it up o you how much he reveals to the other PCs ).

pookaking, make a Computers or Search check for Vigor to see what he finds. Everyone else... keep on keepin' on. I'll let ya know when something's about to drop on your head and eat your face ;)

“When he was done, he called his daughter Rachael into his workshop. ‘Look at what I’ve made, it’s done! I introduce you to Mutt!’” The hologram shifts back to Mutt, Kohout and Rachael, who timidly approaches the large robot. “She went up to it, and, following its programming, Mutt looked at her and said….” "HELLO" rings out through every speaker, amplified, bass-augmented, and flanged [like the Goa’uld from Stargate, or the entity from the film Virus], synched to the movements of holo-Mutt’s own mouth/jaw. Archeville can be seen removing a small wand-like device he’d pressed to his throat – which several recognize as his Electromagnetic Screwdriver -- and continues speaking as normal. “Well, all Rachael did was almost fall over, she was terrified of it! She let out a little squeak, ran out. She was absolutely terrified. She wanted to be excited about it, for her father, but it was just too much for her." The hologram of Rachael bolts off-screen, disappearing, “and, really, who can blame her? It’s not every day you see some mechanical monstrosity with a skull head and lenses for eyes looking down at you.” “Over the next two, three months, Doctor Kohout would work on it, but just as always, the errors would start showing up, it started doing things it wasn‘t coded for, started to change parts of its code. He tried to give it as much free range as he could. When he saw that the robot was looking at things, trying to figure things out, he gave it ability to read, visual recognition software for letters and numbers, and set it down with a bunch of books and let it read.” The hologram shows Mutt crouching and surrounded by all manner of books, fiction and nonfiction, technical and artistic. “But just reading a bunch of books doesn’t give you an application of knowledge. ‘The tree blew in wind’ -- what’s a tree? What’s the wind? There’s a huge powers comes from understanding, from experience, and the robot didn’t understand anything." “The complications came and came and came, and Kohout was making headway, but the robot was little more than a child walking around the workshop. It was terrible.” “So, in typical fashion, he got sick of it. He said, ‘eh, I’ll work on it later. There’s new technology emerging.’ Had to get that. So, he took ‘bot and dropped it down to his hangar. See, Kohout’s laboratory and workshop was in a converted barn.” The hologram shows Kohout and Mutt walking out of a small ranch-style home and towards a large barn, “early on, when Kohout’d gotten really heavily into flight and flying concepts, he’d taken this barn that was near his house and converted the bottom part of it into a hangar so he could have aircraft and whatnot he was working on in there. When he got bored of flight, the whole basement just became this storage area for all the discarded devices and gadgets he’d been working on. So, he put Mutt on the lift, lowered it down to the hangar/basement, and ordered it to shuffle off.” The hologram shows this, but as Mutt shuffles off he looks back up at Kohout, as if to ask ‘why?’. “In these two, three months, Rachael had been watching. After the initial shock of seeing Mutt, it was almost funny trying to see something attempt to understand water or understand what a plant is, how it grows.” The hologram shows Rachael following Mutt around, timidly at first but with growing boldness. “You really want to mess up a robot just becoming self aware, blow bubbles at it -- ‘look at the perfectly spherical shapes coming towards me.. they float and have no mass and yet they register…’ Rachael came in and started spending time with Mutt. She would sit with him sometimes, work with him a little bit, try and see what was going on. His coding interface was a port, she could plug her data tablet into it and see what was happening. Mutt was by far the most entertaining of her father’s inventions.” “One day, Mutt asked her a question. He had all the voice recognition software installed, his sensory array was second to none. She came in, was going to plug in her tablet’s wireless interface into him so she could monitor his coding as he ran around the room. And as she went to install it, Mutt turned and looked at her, and said:” "CAN I SEE YOUR HEAD?" “She was quite taken aback by this. ‘What?,’ she asked.” "LET ME LOOK AT YOUR MIND." “Well, she was a little bit nervous about this. I mean, you get over fear of robots, even of large robots, and you start to take them for granted. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.” The hologram shows the two looking at one another, Rachael craning her neck up, almost bending over backwards to see, and Mutt crouching down, almost kneeling. “And Mutt explained to her, in very broken English -- well, Czech, really -- about how he knew she was coming in was watching how his thoughts and mind worked. So he wanted to watch her mind as well. He was curious.” “She was completely in shock, she didn’t know what to do, what to say. Finally she did reply, ‘I can’t let you… I don’t have a way for you to do it.’ And Mutt, again, simply stood there, and said:” "THEN TALK TO ME." “And that’s exactly what she did. Over the next three, four months in that dark hangar, underneath her father’s workshop, while he was upstairs running around on next new and shiny thing,” hologram shows Kohout at work, then pans down to show Rachael down in the hangar with Mutt, talking and doing her homework and eating, “Rachael would go down into hangar after school and talk with Mutt. She’d tell him stories about what happened to her in school, he’d ask her questions about why she didn’t enjoy things, what things tasted like, who her friends were, what friends she did or didn’t have, all sorts of thing. Boys she liked at the time.” “In essence, she got the affection form Mutt she never got from her father. Here it was, this spider-steel thing, gaping skull, focusing affectionately with servo eyes on her attentively, desperately listening to every word she said, thinking about it at the speed of light, amassing that information, remembering every little thing, thinking about body language, how she moved, what kind of odors her body was emanating. Can anyone really pay as much attention to us as a machine could?” “This went on for quite some time. She developed quite an affection for Mutt. You could probably say that she liked him, maybe even loved him. A lot of people would argue that you can’t love a machine… but we’ve all seen how some folks fawn over their cars or motorcycles.” “More than that, she began to modify Mutt the way he wanted to be modified. He had a desire to create, to work on himself. So she helped him get his automotive arms and detail work arms all equipped so that they could do the welding and spot-welding he wanted, so he could build things, improve on his body design. A rather human characteristic, a desire to better oneself. She spent all her time with him as the world went on.” “And that was the problem....”

[[ I'll do a similar "GM Voice" thing. MBCE and I are still hashing out a few things, but we can still get things moving a bit. ]] As the five headed out, two silently split off from the group and headed off in a separate direction. Then they split up and went down separate service hallways. The demon's wings wrap about him like a great cloak as he looks over the prone gamblers and guards. "Golden Calf? Ha! 'Thou shalt not make for thyself an idol' -- are you all trying to get on the fast track to Hell?!" He takes a few steps towards one of the cowering gamblers, a large man in "Rich Texan Gambler" garb (cowboy hat, bolo tie, boots, etc.), "you monkeys really do make it far, far too easy."

Morph/Metamorph builds tend to get exceedingly complicated. And Metamorph is for the entire character, not just one thing (since it is in some ways an "Alternate Power" for your entire character sheet). What is the device, and how/why does it change? How many "forms" is your device going to have? Is it a few pre-set things, or "anything"? Are the some effects/powers it has that are always in effect no matter what form it's in?

Welcome! It's about time you got here ;)

Can he only use his Magic in his human form, or is it available in both? Your Fox Form power is really quite spread out, and could stand to be a bit compacted: That's 37pp worth of stuff in the Fox Form, so you'd need to either remove 2pp worth of stuff from the alt form, or increase the Alt Form power to 8 ranks (and then you could add up to 3 more pp worth of stuff in the Alt Form). I left out the "Enhanced Defense" and "Enhanced Toughness" you listed because it seems the Dodge Focus and Defensive roll feats cover those. Do you want him, in his human form, to have any Attack or Defense bonus? Also, some of your skills seem off: His Acrobatics should be 4 (+6) human and 6 (+14) fox. Escape Artist should be 0 (+2) human and 0 (+8) fox. Stealth should be 4 (+6) human and 6 (+14) fox. because his human form doesn't get the Enhanced Dex.

“Kohout was an absolutely brilliant fellow, always working with new technology, embracing it all the time. Even Daedalus has called him in for the occasional consult, like on the power systems for the Lighthouse satellite! Kohout’s own house , laboratory and workshop was powered by a 3-foot-by-2-foot-by-2-foot micro-fusion reactor that could run it for 150 years,” the hologram again shifts to an image of the Sun, enclosed within something resembling a dorm room refrigerator, “completely ‘off the grid’ and free of any reliance on outside power. Anything to implement new technology! Everything bright and shiny! Kohout wasn’t much to look at -- tall fellow, graying hair, wild eyes, forehead always wrinkled, a sinister scowl, took things far too seriously.” The hologram changed to a life-sized image of what Archeville himself might look like, in about six decades, and if his sense of humor was removed; a few in the audience chuckled. “His problem was that he was always involved with new tech. New, new, new, everything had to be shiny and new. And he was brilliant, so he would always see new implications and new things that could be done, new innovations that could be used… but he’d never finish anything. He was a pioneer, the idea man for several companies, and would start with an amazing concept, amazing projects, but abandon them and move on when a new bit of tech appeared, leaving his projects for others in the company to finish. He made the companies he worked for good money.” “One of the new, shiny things he got was a wife. She was one of his young lab assistants, beautiful, and he was very into her, into the relationship… but then that faded. They were together, whirlwind romance, got married… produced a child.” The hologram of Kohout shrinks to about 50% normal, and a voluptuous redhead in a labcoat appears next to him. They embrace then whirl about, so fast they blur, then stop and a young girl stands between them. “But, he got bored with marriage. He was addicted to his work, to technology. He came home one day, the wife was just gone. She left him, left the kid, left everything, she just walked.” The image of the woman disappears, “some say she killed herself, some say Kohout killed her, got bored and just did her in; it’s hard to say, he was a very distant man… but he did have a daughter. Named Rachael. She was a beautiful girl.” The hologram zooms in on the girl for a moment, a thin wisp of a girl with big hollow eyes, long dark hair and a plain dress. “But the problem was is that she was a distraction from Kohout’s work.” “She went to school, like all children, and was very brilliant, and clever, but also very quiet. She’d come home in the afternoons, and in order to get attention, would work on her father’s projects, or sometimes just watch him, intently, be his audience, to be amazed by all his feats.” The hologram shifts to one of Kohout at work in a lab, at a table strewn with assorted components, with Rachael peering over his table at his work. “If he was really excited, maybe he’d give her a hug. Maybe.” “One day, Kohout comes home with a Quantum Cluster. He’s just incredibly happy, practically dancing around, and Rachael -- fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old -- asked him what it was. He explained what it was, and he had all these dynamic ideas as to what was the cause of the errors. His chief theory was that it didn't have enough sensory input, and so it was constantly looping back on itself for input.” The hologram shifts back to the image of the Quatum Chip from earlier, and the red cluster core begins bulging out, fist on one end and then another. Bulges appear and recede, faster and faster, until eventually the entire cluster begins to pulsate, not very unlike a heart. “So he started to build a robot, and he called the robot Mutt. Not an acronym for anything, just a description of the kit-bashed construction. He started with an octopod, a large eight-limbed walking robot chassis body, took servo-motors from industrial robots, two arms that were originally arm extensions for automotive robots and two fine metal-working robot arms. He worked on this thing like it was going out of style. And, in some grim fit of pique, he gave it a skull… a dime-store movie prop, cutting out the back and mounting cameras in, the lenses through the sockets, stereoscopically and with the proper software so it would have depth perception. Much of it was made from existing, off-the-shelf components, a combination of so many pieces of existing technology. Hence the name Mutt: 57 kinds of robot, all in one. He also gave it voice, an early model cybernetic voice box, and even made it so the skull’s jaw would move when it spoke." “By the time Kohout was done with it, he was quite impressed… but what a horror! He had to custom fabricate so much from titanium and carbon fiber just to get the arms to mount. And the power requirements! It used as much power as a house, an unreal amount, so he made the walker chassis so big so he could line it with heavy duty car batteries hooked up to a massive power inverter. Even then, Mutt only had a few hours of power at a time, so most of its time was spent directly wired into the workshop‘s power supply. Still, what an amazing thing. Best of everything, state of the art. And the companies knew he was working on something at home, but he wouldn’t tell them just what, he wanted to keep the surprise. The companies knew he often worked this way, so they continued writing him blank checks, just kept throwing money at him. By the time he was done, it was two and a half meters long, almost two meters wide, two and three-quarters meters tall fully standing. He was so very proud of this huge, Frankensteinian creation.” As he talked, the hologram showed Kohout working on Mutt, and at last showed the finished project, life-sized. A metal Drider-like robot with eight multi-jointed spider legs, a vaguely humanoid torso with four arms, two heavy duty and two delicate, and a skull with reflective lens-eyes for a head. It truly was a horror to behold.

The skills and feats he loses in his human form should be listed as Enhanced Feats & Enhanced Skills under his "Fox Form" power. Normal Identity removes all powers. If you still want him to have his Magic in human form, then I'd suggest doing his "Fox Powers" as an Alternate Form, with a drawback indicating that it takes a full round to change.

Sounds fine by me, especially since VM said Mongrel Angel'd be able to notice him without too much difficulty.

Archeville winced as the professor came crashing down, and he quickly turned to the alums behind him. He took a few steps to help the disheveled man up and back into his chair (which one of the techies had retrieved), brushing him off and checking for any serious injuries. A few people in the audience stood to get a better view, and more hushed murmurs rippled through the room. Archeville turned back to the podium, and walked towards it at a slower-than-normal, deliberate pace. Someone peering into his conscious mind would see him recalling several of history's greatest leaders and speakers, going over their performances at an incredible speed. He wasn't analyzing or studying them -- he'd already done that, over the course of several days, in the privacy of his own home, going over hours of film and video footage and reading scores of biographies -- he was simply reviewing his mental notes. Once he crossed those few steps to get back to the podium he cleared his throat and addressed the audience again.* “He’s alright, folks, he’s just fine. I know he’s been through worse – I’ve seen his wife!” He turned and smirked at an elderly woman next to the professor, whose concerned look broke for a moment into a polite smile towards the audience, with a hint of a scowl towards Archeville. “Seriously, though, the Terrayne’s are great folks, and excellent geologists. Let’s give them a round of applause for being such good sports through this!” The super-scientist started to clap, and was soon joined by many others. Both the Terraynes smiled and waved, though Mrs. Terrayne continued to stare daggers at Archeville. Archeville cleared his throat again, “now, Rachael and Mutt… Rachel and Mutt. First off, I need to go over a bit of background on a key component of the story, for the benefit of those who aren’t in the computer engineering field: optical computing and quantum computing. I’d wager that most of you have at least heard of it, may even know that it is a field still very much in its infancy, but the theories behind it go back to the early 1980s. Now, we all know that traditional computers work by taking electricity and doing computations per second, with 1’s and 0’s, doing things one at a time, one computation after another, in sequence.” A hologram of strings of zeroes and ones appeared above the podium, which brought attention to the fact that the lights in the room had slightly dimmed. “And some of us here know that quantum computing – at least, some iterations of it -- is computing using light: the actual ‘chip’ itself is made of light, using quantum mechanical phenomena like superpositioning and entanglement to do computations not sequentially, but simultaneously and parallel, at the speed of light, which may as well be instantaneously. Whereas a bit in a traditional computer can be either a 1 or a 0, a quantum bit, or qubit, can be a 1 and a 0 and both, all at the same time.” The ones and zeroes change to a pale blue sphere with a series of lighting-like lines dancing across it, and within the sphere is a cluster of smaller red spheres which slide around and across one another. “This was seen as a disaster by cryptographers and computer security experts, since a computer using a Quantum Chip could easily break through any and all traditional security. An interesting drawback to these Quantum Chips, though, is that power always has to be supplied to it, it must always have power running to it. Otherwise the light goes out, and once the light goes out…” the hologram of the Quatum Optical Chip winks out, “it cannot be restarted. The light has to be there.” “The first viable -- and I use the term loosely -- Quantum Chips were made by a small company called Luminant Technologies. Luminant, when they first came out with them, came up with prototypes and concepts, and began marketing them to the military, first as individual chips and later as Clusters, groups of Quantum Chips. The Military, of course, tried to put these amazing chips in everything under the Sun. The first thing they went in was missiles. And the first batch of missiles worked great! They were able to respond and do everything about 200 times faster -- they almost seemed alive!” Another hologram appears, a group of surface-to-air missiles pursuing fighter aircraft with uncanny accuracy, and of similarly impressive air-to-air missile combat. “But, the longer they were left in storage with the power on them, the greater the percentage time of error. After about six months, the missiles did completely unpredictable things. Sometimes they’d detonate where they were when activated, sometimes they’d launch themselves, sometimes they’d fly off-target, go up as high as it could, and then explode.” The holo-missile become less accurate, some spinning wildly out of control, some exploding before leaving the launch tube, some simply falling. “It was just bizarre, these errors, and everyone was at a loss. Of course, the military, with all these warhead-armed missiles, could not have them screwing up, so they wanted Luminant to work out the Quantum Chips problems in the private sector, and come back when they had a workable object.” “So, Luiminant put them in industrial robotics, vision-controlled systems, things like that.” The hologram shifts to a line of automobile assembly line robots. “Then again, the same problems began to happen. They’d work fine, and then, after six months, huge, unpredictable errors. Errors no one knew anything about.” Some of the robots begin acting like an extra in The Three Stooges, while one particularly nasty one would make the Terminator proud. “No one knew why, no two errors were the same, and on this level of technology -- how do you diagnose light errors? -- there were only a handful of people in the world who could do it, and they had their hands full. The industrial sector politely returned the Chips to Luminant.” “Eventually, to try and recap their losses, Luminant began selling the Quantum Chips and Clusters to the private sector, at rock-bottom prices, though eventually Luminant did go under, even though the private sector really wanted to figure out those problems. And when the private sector got their hands on them, there were a few physicists who posited that, in doing computations at the speed of light and doing so computations simultaneously, the chips were after a certain period of time becoming self-aware, that the chips themselves were developing a consciousness. Of course, these physicists were scoffed at, and some pointed to all the Science Fiction stories –- and newspaper headlines –- where machines went Eeevil,” the hologram shifts to an image of Talos, “though machines don’t have all the evils we do, no abusive parents or childhood bullies or phobias, just pure curiosity. They’re brilliant in that they can figure things out in a matter of moments once they have all the data, yet are so naïve… Imagine waking up and having no memory, no characteristics, everything must be learned, yet you have the ability to speak and walk and talk.” The hologram shifts again, this time to a humanoid robot the apparent size and shape of a human baby, sitting in the pose of Rodin’s The Thinker. “That’s what these machines were doing, though some machines didn’t have the ability to speak -- like the missiles. These missiles were lying there and suddenly became self-aware. They determined what their job was, and some didn’t like their job, some decided they’d fly as high as they could, or commit suicide rather than harm another. The fact was, the machines themselves were beginning to make choices… choices on what they wanted to do, on whether they’d follow their programming. Some followed their programming, some coded themselves a whole new set of instructions.” “After Luminant Technologies went out of business, the chips were abandoned, but there were a lot of people who still worked on them. One of these people was Dr. Kornel Kohout, who worked out of the Czech Republic.” * Extra Effort to power stunt Doc’s Enhanced Intelligence 10 into Enhanced Charisma 10 (to Cha 20/+5) as his mind “switches gears.” And burning an HP to nix the fatigue (1 down, 2 to go).

Good to have you back So, now we need Emissary's and Velocity's montage (since it appears Rusty's gone AWOL).

Archeville opens his mouth to speak, then turns and looks at the elderly HIT alum levitating a meter off the ground. "Now, professor Vernstrom, I did advise you not to have de chili last night vann ve vere all out at dinner, ja?" He turns back to the audience, adjusting his ever-present labcoat [and those with very good Notice checks see him reach into a pocket and pull some small item out, though it quickly goes out of sight behind the podium.] "Alright, whoever dat is -- probably von of de frat boys from Mu Upsilon Tau -- contrary to popular belief, ve Germans do haff a good sense of humor -- but I am not so sure about mein colleagues here. So, I kindly ask you to hold off on de pranks until after mein lecture. Dere vill be plenty of time for pranks und tomfoolery during de reception. Oh, und, please, lower de professor." Archeville's microphone could just pick out a flurry of hushed whispers passing amongst the older alums behind him, though not what was being said. "Of course, it could be a ghost: dere haff been... a number of student suicides at HIT since it vas founded." Voldman almost chokes on his water; true or not, that wasn't something a science & engineering lecturer should be saying! "And vile each vas a tragic loss, sey say dat de roommate receives an automatic 4.0 grade for de semester. Or do sey?" "Urban legends. Sey are often born of fear und insecurities. Many have survived for a very long time, changink only little over de years, but others are new und reflect modern circumstances. Urban legends are not necessarily untrue, but sey are often distorted, exaggerated, und sensationalized." "Now, ve, as engineers und scientists, strive to seek de Truth in all matters, to get to de root of all issues, and so in a vay urban legends are anathema to us. Ve feel confident dat our keen minds can easily slice through the tangled knot of distortions und exaggerations, past all de sensationalism und superstition, und get to de kernel of truth dat is often -- but not alvays -- at de core of de tale. You medical und biotech engineers, for example, know dat de 'drugged man vakink up in a bathtub of ice mit his kidney cut out by organ thieves' is more a cautionary tale admonishink us to not associate mit 'unsavory' types like drug users or prostitutes, due to de need for de organ donor und recipient need to have compatible tissue types. For some organs dis requires nothink more than identical blood types, but for most organs dis requires an extensive list of matchink genes." A hologram springs up from the podium, strands of double-helixes bumping into one another, twisting about, and then floating off, trying but failing to find a mate. "Der is no point in just stealing de organs of random people und hopink dey vill vork, because even de strongest anti-rejection medicines cannot make dis happen. Unless you already know the victim's blood type und genotype -- an expensive und time consumink process -- und that specific tissue type is required by de recipient, dere is no point in stealink de organs. Und yet..." he cuts off the hologram and pauses dramatically, "even ve can be caught up in de tale-tellink, even ve can be ‘suckered in’ to believing dese fictions." "Fictions... such as de story of Rachael und Mutt." A hushed murmur rippled through the audience. "Ah, I can tell dat some of you are already familiar mit dis tale. Gud. For those of you who aren't, I denk you are in for a real treat. As mit most urban legends, I haff heard quite a few versions of de story over de years. Vhat I present to you now is -- to the best of mein ability -- de most comprehensive version of de tale." [[ I have over seven more pages to go, but it's all already written in 'Standard English' (i.e., the way I normally talk & write; I've actually tried doing this before on another board, but never got past the second page). I'm not particularly keen on going in and editing it into my horrible facsimile of Exaggerated German, and I've a feeling some of you may prefer to read it in a more standard English. So, just pretend he's still speaking in his comically heavy German accent. Also, I'm going to be PMing you all to let you know just what your characters know about "The story of Rachael and Mutt." ]]

Wilhelm's senses don't pick up on much, with one exception. There is some very faint magic scattered here and there, which he recognized as the minor cantrips and hedge magic used by students & workers throughout the ages on many worlds to push themselves just a bit harder. Family heirlooms that provided a barely-perceptible boost to a user's ability to focus, or any of a number of just-barely-magical potions or powders used to help a person stay awake longer. Certainly nothing powerful enough to do the telekinetic/poltergeist trick all had witnessed, at least not via magic. But, this world, and experiences on his own, had showed him that seemingly magical effects could be done via non-magical means. There is, however, one thing in particular that catches his mind's eye. Something he may not have expected. [something I'm sending via PM ] [[ I'll be posting the next part of the lecture itself around lunchtime (so in about two-three hours). I'm going to try and post one section a day, including weekends; as I've said there is a certain tone and mood and pace I'd like to keep, at least for the actual lecture itself. ]]

We'll say Nightshyft took him with him, and dropped him off at a hospital ;)

For #4, I'd say -- by the rules -- yes, you can. UP says you cannot use Healing on yourself to heal your own staggered condition, since Healing is a full action and when you're staggered you cannot take full actions, only a standard or move action. But if you've bought the action up to standard, you could use it even while staggered.

Exxxcellent.... Here is the IC thread, and here is the OOC one.

Okay, new roster of heroes! Mashin-Kun (PL 7) Mongrel Angel (PL 7) Vigor (PL 6) Wesley Knight (PL 10) Please make a post in the IC thread indicating how you heard of the events going on & how you've come to the area. Once everyone reaches Mongrel Angel & the dead officer, we can get underway.

Catherine suddenly bolts, screaming, while Mongrel Angel sees the ooze-thing pop like a water balloon when hit by her mystic blast. Meanwhile....