*looks at size in k, wanders back out*"I was an Otaku before those kids came along and changed the meaning of the word."
-- HM "Howling Mad" Wilson to more than one team-mate.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

Well, uh, hi.
I'm of Dutch heritage (obviously) and am something of a geek and my current and strongest (also quite possibly lasting) fan obsession is Terry Pratchett, he of the great Discworld novels.
Also an associate of Mr. Fnord, long may he reign, Hail Eris, and am starting to dip into the Principia while we're on the subject.
Cheers!

Blackaeronaut - there is an issue with your biomod. It's not actually a balance issue. The best in-world approximation I can come up with is as follows.
Cool Stuff:
- The arm is Really Quite Tough, possibly to the point of being effectively armored, and possibly somewhat sronger than normal.
- The arm has a sort of limited short-range, three-use-then-rest-awhile speed drive that sends it flying at the enemy and drags the rest of your body along for the ride. Requires that you Call Out Your Attacks.
Significant disadvantages:
- Your arm is Really Quite Ugly
- (probable) there are low levels of ongoing damage that don't ever quite heal. Using the speed drive will make them worse over time.
Random Side Effect:
- The speed drive is quirky, and constantly bleeds off a bit of motive power in a way that causes a constant strong breeze to be blowing by your head and neck. (I really couldn't figure any good way to include random scarves in the effect without an actual breeze.)
This would be fine, given some good writing to back it up, except... it's pretty clearly a weapon. I can't think of any way to run what you're suggesting without it being a weapon - and last I'd seen, we weren't allowing biomods that were explicitly weaponized. If you can think of a way to have this thing without it being either primarily a weapon or ridiculously overpowered, I'd love to hear it.
For the transformation abilities - I'm not at all sure what you mean here, unless you're talking about the upgrades he gets over the course of the series, in which case you're running pretty heavily into the "you only get one" part of the rule.
It might also be worth putting in a few mundane quirks to give your character a few more interesting attributes to hang storybits off of.

I'm looking for a fic I read a while back. One of the first scenes, if not the first scene, was Harry getting into a shootout with some Order members who were stunning and obliviating Petunia and a social worker who had just shown up. I think I remember the social worker driving a grey Rolls Royce. Later on in the fic, she tells Harry that next time he encounters Voldie, to get help, and then "don't worry about putting him on the Isle of Wight, you put him in the morgue". I can't remember where I read this fic, but it might have been either Portkey or Schnoogle. Thanks for the help!
-WFalling out of aeroplanes and hiding out in holes
Waiting for the sunset to come, people going home
Jump out from behind them and shoot them in the head
Now everybody dancing the dance of the deadFalling out of aeroplanes and hiding out in holes

Waiting for the sunset to come, people going home

Jump out from behind them and shoot them in the head

Now everybody dancing the dance of the dead

Quote:

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* Has been seeking a nickle-iron asteroid to turn into an asteroid habitat for the purposes of setting up a living area and boarding school/college, because there will be another generation of Fen and they'll need to be educated.

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I recently discovered the Buffy-Inuyasha crossover A Slayer of Nightmares. The early-to-middle chapters of this offer a look at a post-Chosen world with multiple slayers headed by the Scoobies. Many fics are set in such a world, but few look at this from the point of view of non-human or partly-human people just trying to make their way in the world without making trouble.
The slayers are police for the supernatural world, and they are greatly needed. However, they are secret police. There are no trials, no due process, and the sentence they hand out is almost always death. They are not acountable to anyone but themselves. Under such circumstances, would not all those demons, half-demons, and magic practitioners come to fear the Scoobies? Not as criminals fear the police, but as any population fears an untouchable death-squad given authority over them?
This is a difficult subject to deal with in a story, as the Buffy-verse doesn't offer any obvious and practial ways to make the situation better, but I would be interested in seeing more fics take a shot at it.
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No, I don't believe the world has gone mad.  In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.

In an attempt to avoid derailing the rules thread any more than is absolutely necessary:
Mid-thread, I said:

Quote:

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Everybody's forgotten this - hell, I've forgotten it most of the time - but the central precept isn't that the Mundanes aren't using handwavium at all because it's dangerous and scary, they're not using handwavium for the purposes the fen are using it for because, frankly, they can think of better shit to do with handwavium than colonize space while pretending to be Klingons and space heroes and all that. They're building Utopia on their terms: nice, peaceful, prosperous and maybe a bit dull, while the fen are building Utopia on their terms: free, wooly, full of excitement, adventure and really wild things.

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Quote:

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This seems to be hard to reconcile with all the stuff that makes it sound like it's considered actively dangerous in most nations. I suppose it might just be being used for certain applications, but the question is which and how much?

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Is there a Space Station Three?
And, if so, does its crew find fresh fruit appearing spontaneously when they're not looking?

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

I have noticed a fair number of folks breaking the local laws of physics recently, and I figured there ought to be a reference page to lay out clearly what people Can and Cannot Do, for what is reasonable and not reasonable. Primarily this is intended as a reference for character generation. The following Are True, and have been accepted as such for Quite Some Time. Grrr....
- Rule #1: You may not show the Handwavium a picture of your desired genre vehicle and have it build one for you. Not at all, not even a little, not under any circumstances. It don't work like that.
- Rule #2: expansion to Rule #1: the handwavium does not, in fact, build *anything*. It does not reshape *anything*. The way handwavium works is that you take an existing hardtech device, slap some handwavium on it, and the function of the device changes. If the item is broken, cracked, or flawed, those breaks *may* be fixed (though this tends to have a somewhat higher quirk cost.) There are some rare strains of the stuff that have interesting psuedochemical effects. Those can change chemical structure, but pretty much leave shape alone. Otherwise, what you get out is a goopier version of what you put in, with perhaps some interesting coloration. Short form - if you want a handwaved device - *any* handwaved device, then you have to *start with a device*.
- Rule #3: You cannot blow up handwavium for Great Justice. Handwavium cannot be caused to explode, and adding handwavium to an explosive thing won't do anything except reduce intensity. Handwavium is not fond of things going boom.
- Rule #4: Copilot of Rule #3: The handwavium does not like to be weaponized. It is not easy to weaponize. If you handwave something with the intent of making it a weapon, you will fail. Nothing that you build will turn out to be a weapon randomly. The only way to get a handwaved weapon is to take an existing handwavium device designed for peaceful purposes and use it in ways nature never intended.
- Rule #5: Force on force, handwavium against hardtech, the handwavium will win almost every time. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between, and will cause a great many people to suddenly become concerned. This includes things like piercing handwavium-reinforced hulls.
- Rule #6: Biomods: You get one, you get only one, and after you get it, you can't get rid of it, barring major reconstructive surgery - and sometimes not even then.
- Rule #7: Biomods always have at least some advantages. They also always have at least some disadvantages. From an objective standpoint, these things should be reasonably balanced. The character reaction, obviously, will vary dramatically depending on how cool the benefits are and how annoying the drawbacks from the character's perspective.
- Rule #8: Handwavium is like Cat. It does not go where you tell it to go. It goes where it wants to go. If you are trying to get A Cool Thing, then you will get A Cool Thing. If you are trying to get A Specific Cool Thing? You will get A Cool Thing. There are caveats to this. It is possible to influence the handwavium, to give it a direction, by dint of lots and lots of care and effort. Symbolic power also helps, in large quantities. Read "Surfing with the Alien" for a good example of "Lots of care and effort." Also, the more "normal" your need, the easier it is to get the handwavium to give you something that will serve. Just about anyone can get a functional speed drive. Each of them will have their own quirks and strangenesses, but with a bit of time and effort, some sort of an appropriate egine structure, and handwavium in appropriate types and quantities, anyone can get one. If you need an AI, then slapping some handwavium into a computer will often get you one, given time. It won't give you any control over what the personality of the AI *is*, mind. If it's some Cool Thing that no one else has, though, like a tractor beam - well, if you've got one, its because you lucked into it by mistake. This applies to biomods as well, except that there is no such thing as a generic biomod. Biomods are *always* a crapshoot.
Rule #9: Biomods are physical alterations. If you can't explain it with ordinary physics, you can't do it with a biomod. These are strange physical alterations, not superpowers (not that there aren't folks *trying*, mind.)
Rule #10: Handwavium conserves mass. It also conserves energy. There's some strange sort of energy (perhaps associated with the gravitic control?) out there that some handwavium can tap as power generation, but we aren't technically breaking the laws of thermodynamics.
Rule #11: If you have some handwavium, you can turn it into more handwavium, but you have to feed it something. The something will vary depending on the handwavium in question. It does not grow catastrophically either - the fastest it grows should be about doubling in size every day (for a benchmark) and that's if you feed it a whole lot and it's one of the fast versions.
Rule #12: The handwavium will have quirks, and the quirks will not be yours to declare. Everything handwvium has quirks. If you handwave your toaster, it will develop quirks. If you handwave you sister, she will develop quirks. If you handwave your car, you *know* it will develop quirks. The more Cool Stuff you have, and the Cooler the Stuff is, the more Quirk it will have. Quirks are by their nature bizarre and often annoying. If an effect is a net positive, then it's not a quirk, it's a feature. If an effect is just a little oddity, then it's technically a quirk, but it's really not worth much at all in terms of balancing out Cool Stuff.
Rule #13: Handwaved things get handwaved seperately. Painting your vehicle is great - it'll give it structural integrity and a functional atmospheric seal. It will turn it into a spaceframe, and generally the only quirks will be visual. That is *all* it will do. If you want handwaved items inside, apply the goop yourself. If you want a handwaved engine, then handwave it. Particularly Strong handwavium fumes over a period of time *may* be enough to biomod someone, but that's about it, and that only because the lungs are so efficient at absorbing the stuff.
Rule #14: The Bigger they Are, the Slower they Crawl. Small ships are speedy. Large ships are not. Being faster than other ships of your weight class is a Cool Thing, and should be treated as such (including quirks).
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This is not a thread for discussing particulars of who is and is not within the laws. That goes on elsewhere. This is a thread for discussing what the laws *are*, and is intended as a reference. If you disagree with any of the things I have posted above, then feel free to argue the point, but this is my best interpretation. Also, I know that this is not nearly all of the rules. Please do chime in with the ones I'm missing that we have agreed on, and feel free to propose additional rules for discussion. Do distinguish between them, though.

I was one of the lucky ones, I guess. I missed The Guacamole Incident. I missed what the Professor did to Paris. I was already planning at the time when I heard about the 'wavium.
See, most of the fen would go off one of their favorite stories, SF stuff, anime series. I knew that. I had to go somewhere else for mine, somewhere that would work. Thankfully, I had it already. I thought some hard SF would work best.
The crew compartment was easiest. I had a friend who had an old farm, and someone had already redone the silo twenty years ago into living quarters. He was trying to get rid of the land, but the silo was a sticking point, and I told him I could get rid of it.
All I had to do was clean it up to make it mine. Bookshelves, sleeping areas, kitchen, and two bowl-shaped chairs at a screen on the top, right under the roof of the silo. The other half of the top floor was a bunch of old obsolete computers, stacked, with an old Cisco router connecting them all. All treated with the 'wavium. Then I painted the inside with it, laid the complete printouts of the webcomic around, and went to sleep.
I woke up the next day with the oddest feeling. I could feel something, some kind of thought, just outside my reach. An immense intellect, outside mine, just touchable. I didn't know what it was, but it knew me and was pleased to know me. (My current theory is that it's the collective unconcious of every fen who's used or been changed by Handwavium, bent towards the general make-a-better-world urges. But I can't tell, and It has It's own motives.) And then a man's voice spoke, gentle but with a sense of tremendous power. I recognized it. Of course it would pattern the voice after Jet Li.
"Qin Shihuangdi online, Captain. Nanotechnological probes have completely construction; vector systems are online; cadence lance is online. Shall we prepare to depart?"
"Hold on, Qin," I said, and headed towards the... where was the ladder? Just a hole.... oh, wait. I stepped into it, and the vector system lifted me to control, where I settled into the control couch.
I knew this was a big risk. New Jersey, between 9/11 and the idiots who decided to cause that crap in Grover's Mill, had been one of the first states to ban Handwavium technology completely. And here I was, upstate, using it ANYWAY. And sure enough, the troopers had noticed.
"They are demanding shutdown of all systems, and your surrender. I am assuming that you wish to refuse and depart."
"Indeed. Prepare for liftoff. We can do this with minimal damage, correct?"
"Of course. Vector systems online. Raising ship."
And there we went, into the wild black yonder, without even rattling the ground.
Qin linked into the FenNets once we got above the radiosphere, and immediately we got started catching up. With the vector technology, and what the 'wave had done to me, we were in a pretty good position. Qin and I agreed, with Its advice, to go into the business of protection - escorting smaller ships, mining ships, people like that.
And thus came the call to Port Phobos (our homeport - really, after all, it had to be), and to the SOS-dan con.
And yes, I did park in orbit, activate the link, and walk across to the airlock rather than wait for a parking space. Qin's body wouldn't have fit in there anyway, and it's always fun striding through vacuum and waving at people as you go.
It wants them to look, and think, and ponder, and remember that even in Fenspace, there's still room for Miracles of Science.Brazil has decided you're cute.Brazil has decided you're cute.