Questions about Doug's World

[Murmur the Fallen]

Skitz is a little different from Crazy Jane. As John, his player, describes it, he's some kind of embodiment of the spirit of mankind, who has been reincarnating since some time around the Stone Age. Every time one of his (sometimes her) incarnations reaches age 21 -- until recent times this was very rare -- that incarnation gains a unique power and access to the memories, personalities, and powers of all the other incarnations. Like an ordinary MPD sufferer, under stress he may switch from one personality to another, but they're not broken fractions of a single mind -- they are actually entire people in their own right, the last few in the chain being historically documentable. (Like the Victorian incarnation who built the moon base I mentioned above.)
-- Bob
[Ah, so there WERE metas before the twentieth century! So can we assume that Skitz would KNOW whether there were other metas as well as himself?
And, because there is a serious dearth of RPG sourcebooks in my local bookstores and whatnot, I wonder if you could give me the history you worked out.
And, of course, does Skitz also have an archenemy in the form of an immortal who was the greatest generals and tyrants in history?]
-murmur

[Bob Schroeck]

You're right, I quite honestly forgot about Skitz when answering that question for you. No, to the best of my knowledge, he doesn't have an equally-eternal nemesis, no Vandal Savage or whatnot to dog his steps. As to other pre-modern metas, I'd have to check with John and see what's in his character background. I never denied that there were pre-20th Century metahumans in WW, btw, just that no one was certain which historical figures were and weren't.
As for reposting the IST timeline, well, there are two reasons why I won't be doing that. One, it's a lot to type up -- my last electronic copy of the timeline is on a low-density 5 1/4" diskette that's living out its last years in my disk cabinet. And two, SJG holds copyright on it, and I don't have the permission to reproduce it here.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Skitz Warriors Alpha]

On Water sabers:
Now imagine the gates not pinhole sized, but 5 foot square, and about 20 yards apart. You get a water saber that allows you to lop the top off Cheyenne Mountain to say "howdy" to the boys at SAC if one were so inclined.

Skitz

[Skitz Warriors Alpha]

No, actually he does have a nemisis, but said fellow was only just recently discovered as such (this lifetime). The villan was actually responsible for killing Skitz back in the mid 19th century, but Skitz didn't discover that it was someone like him untill a few lifetimes had passed.
Needless to say, Warriors Beta (whom Skitz was with at the time) managed to kill the fellow (not that will really stop him) and they've got a good idea who he is: Currently he's a 10 year old in Tibet, or at least we think so, the process of how these things work is imperfectly understood. But in about 10 more years, I'm going to start keeping a close eye on this fellow, I want to be able to ask him many questions once he manefests, assuming he doesn't immediately go to ground that is.

Skitz

[Skitz Warriors Alpha]

On Hexe's Rank:
Hexe is a goddess. She has no need for your petty ranks: whatever rank you are, she outranks you.


Skitz

[Skitz Warriors Alpha]

> Oh my god... Is Gear Krieg anywhere in WW's past?
It would have been. One of My past lives, I was unfortunately serving for the Third Reich, Commanding a Panther Tank on the Eastern front. If the day to day fighting on the Russian steppes wasn't so thouroughly occupying of my time, and if I hadn't been killed shortly after my 20th birthday, I had thought of doing such thing, but more than a feww of my peronalities had serious problems with the Reich. And to be fair, Ceasar, the fellow who was a german soldier, never was a Nazi, and after resurecting and seeing all the things the Third Reich has come to stand for, he's Kind of glad that he never got around to it.
Skitz

[Skitz Warriors Alpha]

> I just want to state for the record that firing an Omega
> class weapon on the ground, let alone in an atmosphere, is
> a bad idea (tm). Based on some _very_ rough calculations
> (and I know there's more than what I did, but it should be
> in the ballpark), the water will come out at a rate of over
> 100k/sec/sec -
One too many /sec in there, but that's about right. Of course, one doesn't need to aim for the bottom on the marianas trench: 400 miles stright down is also a possibility, assuming I didn't like someone enough to put a volcano on them...

> assuming a gate 4 square meters in area you could flood
> the island of Manhattan to a depth of 1 foot in just under
> 45 seconds, and the entire state of Rhode Island to a depth
> of about 1 foot in 20 minutes!
Manhattan is too cool and they've been through enough recently, but I've been to RI and flooding wouldn't be a bad idea (JOKE!). The gate you describe is far beyond my capabilities, I've only got about a third that; a 5 foot sqaure, so I even have to duck my head going through.
But yeah, the wall of high pressure water is pretty devestating without creating a long term clean-up problem, except for the unusual sea creature sushi.

Skitz

[Skitz Warriors Alpha]

Bob Writes:
> Quote:
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------
> Oh, and were there any "metahumans" before the twentieth
> century?
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------
>
> No one's really sure, although every historian has his pet
> candidates. Pretty much everyone agrees Rasputin had to
> have been at least a proto-metahuman
Hey, I thought swindling the Czars was a great gig. I had access to money and wealth and all I had to do was some strategic whispering. Unfortunately, I was cursed with a new danger sense that had totally warped me as a young man, then it failed me one cold cold night.
Skitz - Yes, I was Rasputin, my most famous (or infamous) incarnation.

[Skitz Warriors Alpha]

Bob Writes:
> Quote:
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------
> Um, oh, right; are there any actual vigilantes in Doug's
> world or are they all incorporated into officially recognized
> teams like Warriors?
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------
>
> Oh, yeah, there are vigilantes. They're almost
> institutionalized in some places like the USA (where they
> have a 50+ year history of operations).
Think of them as Shriners or Rotarians with an attitude. They do some small local projects OK, but When things get heavy, you want the Warriors there.

Skitz

[Skitz Warriors Alpha]

Murmur:
> Why, and how, is the U.N. able to have, basically, its own
> standing army? How did the U.N. get so powerful? Does the
> United States actually pay its dues in Doug's world?
Well, it's kind of like this: the warriors were going to be a standing army anyway. The UN saw a good oportunity and provisionally funded us in response to a local emergency at the time. Well, we've been provisionally funded ever since, and since we're scrupulous about keeping our noses clean, and being impartial and rather politic when necessary (which is the hardest part), the whole thing has become institutionalized.
Isn't that how everything works at the UN? Some silly stopgap that eventually becomes a huge entity replete with it's own bureacracy. But the warriors are still nominally independant. If they tried to make us wear those dorky baby blue helmets, for example, we'd be so out of there.

Skitz

[Skitz Warriors Alpha]

Bob Writes:
> Quote:
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------
> Nearly every super-team has an iconic transport: the FF
> has the Fantasticar, the Avengers have the Quinjets, the
> Titans had their T-Jets, etc. How about the warriors?
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------
>
> While we do have a jet -- loosely based on (ie ripped off
> from) the X-Men's old Blackbird, we rarely use it anymore.
> Instead, we have Skitz, his teleport gates, and access to a > spy satellite network. Skits can open a gate to anywhere
> he can see, even if he only sees it via a TV screen. (He can
> also open a gate to any location he's got memorized -- and
> for a devastating attack in combat, he's got the bottom of
> the Marianas Trench memorized.)
And let me tell you, it's a royal pain in the arse, there I am, sleeping of a fine night on the town, and suddenly I get a call over the warriors net: "Skitz, we're sending our co-ordinates over right now, We've got to check something out in Hawaii, could you send us over a gate? Oh, and we need Looney, He said he'd be partying in SoHo somewhere..." Anytime of the day or night, it's just 'Skitz we need a gate here' Or 'Skitz we need to send through some fightened normals'. Never a moments rest.
At least Hexe's more likely to fly.

Skitz

[Bob Schroeck]

Ah, yes, in case anyone's wondering, that really is Skitz (so to speak) posting. Welcome to the boards, JLF! (I won't use your name if you don't...)

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Logan Darklighter]

Shriners with an attitude? Ahahahahahaha!
Ooh boy. That's a good one.

[M Fnord]

>Currently he's a 10 year old in Tibet, or at least we think so,
>the process of how these things work is imperfectly
>understood. But in about 10 more years, I'm going to start
>keeping a close eye on this fellow, I want to be able to ask
>him many questions once he manefests, assuming he doesn't
>immediately go to ground that is.
You know, this calls to mind an image of the Warriors trying to off the latest incarnation of the Dalai Lama. Not the most PR-wise maneuvers possible...
--Mr. F, who always wanted to be Vandal Savage...
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[cpt kangarooski]

---

The gate you describe is far beyond my capabilities, I've only got about a third that; a 5 foot sqaure, so I even have to duck my head going through.

---

Why not rotate the gate 45 degrees so that you can step through the diagonal which is a somewhat more comfortable seven feet or so?

[Logan Darklighter]

I recently stumbled across something on the net (I do that a lot, you know. ^_^) that was really just jaw dropping. And I was reminded of it by the idea of a pinpoint water gate.
Now imagine you have this gate at the bottom of an ocean trench somewhere.
You know, it's not entirely water down there. Occasionally you do run into little critters down there...
Now watch that again and realize that some days it really sucks to be a crab... ^_^
-Logan
------------------
"This is getting ridiculous. If I hear one more..."
"So gone, gone o form of man... arise the Sailor Etrigan!" called out another voice.
*poof* A yellow-skinned horned demon stood there.
In a very short Sailor fuku.
He had really ugly yellow knobby knees, too.
The cigarette finally dropped from John
Constantine's mouth. "Okay, that's it, I'm
gone. See you lads later."
----------------

[Skitz Warriors Alpha]

Cpt Kagarooski:
> Why not rotate the gate 45 degrees so that you can step
> through the diagonal which is a somewhat more comfortable
> seven feet or so?
a) Because Ducking has never been big deal before
b) Because while some may say my head comes to point, my feet certanly do not, so if I'm standing in a "heroic" pose, with my feet 24 inches apart, then I have to make sure that the bottom corner of the gate is 12" burried, which, while it does leave me about 6 feet, means the no one can come through with me.
c) I've been an idiot and in 17 years, I've never though of it.

Skitz

[zojojojo]

---

b) Because while some may say my head comes to point, my feet certanly do not, so if I'm standing in a "heroic" pose, with my feet 24 inches apart, then I have to make sure that the bottom corner of the gate is 12" burried, which, while it does leave me about 6 feet, means the no one can come through with me.

---

But they can come through either before or after you... and really, as long as they don't drag their feet (or anything else) it doesn't have to be that buried....
OTOH, can you make the gate 3' wide and 8' tall? it keeps the same area, but makes it less annoying for the height-enabled?
-Z, Post-reader at Medium
----
If architects built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

[Skitz Warriors Alpha]

Zojojojo:
> OTOH, can you make the gate 3' wide and 8' tall? it keeps
> the same area, but makes it less annoying for the height-
> enabled?
Sheesh, you'd think being able to open a gate from any point closer than about 120% of the distance to far side of the moon to any other point at will would be enough for some folks.
No, I cannot change the shape. There has been some research done with other gate based tepeorts that indicates that messing with the gate size incurs a one way increase in the effort required, just as the distance also incures an increase in effort: It's just as hard for me to open a gat on the far side of a door that's right in front of me as it is to open one on the far side of the moon.
Instead, I've been working on translation: making gates that are not fixed to any object, but instead can sweep along; ideally snatching things up, or bad guys directly into holding cells (the old open a gate under thier feet gimick is good enough for the run of the mill villian, but we seem to always meet these bad guys who are unnaturally hyper relfexive even in the world of the Super Powered.

Skitz

[Bob Schroeck]

---

Think of them as Shriners or Rotarians with an attitude. They do some small local projects OK, but When things get heavy, you want the Warriors there.

---

You know, that's the best description I've seen for the private teams in WW. They are kind of like that, aren't they? The only ones worse are the political metahuman groups.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

---

and being impartial and rather politic when necessary (which is the hardest part),

---

God yes. I know this isn't the kind of politic you're thinking of, but I remember the time when we had that incredibly obnoxious liaison officer with the Security Council. I can't remember his last name; his first name was Robert, which is why it stuck with me, that and the fact that Dwimanor kept calling him "Bob". We all hated his guts but had to play nice with him. Except everyone but me was doing the "poisoned dagger in the velvet glove" thing, and I was honestly trying to deal fairly with him
More along the lines of what you were talking about, just as an example to our listening audience out there in radio land, is the time we had to deal with the resurrected French national superteam. The problem here wasn't just that they were defying the UN, but they had packed the team with PR booby-traps. The nominal leader was the last survivor of the WWII French Resistance supers, and half the team was made up of her grandchildren. The wrong action taken against them, and we would have ended up looking like Nazis ourselves -- which no doubt was someone's plan. We ended up opting, as I noted somewhere else, for a stern warning and withholding any other response until they actually do something official -- which so far they haven't.

---

the whole thing has become institutionalized.

---

As opposed to some of the team members.

---

If they tried to make us wear those dorky baby blue helmets, for example, we'd be so out of there.

---

Speak for yourself. I go through so many different colors of uniforms, adding a blue helmet wouldn't faze me a bit. You, on the other hand, would need twenty, and I can see how that might annoy you.


-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

---

Anytime of the day or night, it's just 'Skitz we need a gate here' Or 'Skitz we need to send through some fightened normals'. Never a moments rest.

---

Hey, at least part of you knew you were going to be on 24-hour call when you took the job, you know.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

---

You know, this calls to mind an image of the Warriors trying to off the latest incarnation of the Dalai Lama. Not the most PR-wise maneuvers possible...

---

That's why we've got Kat around. As PR officer, she keeps us from indiscriminately slaughtering the Dalai Lama.

-- Bob
(who yes indeedy is feeling punchy this morning)
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[offsides]

---

Hey, at least part of you knew you were going to be on 24-hour call when you took the job, you know.

---

"You knew the job was dangerous when you took it Fred!"
Offsides
Drunkard's Walk Forum Moderator and Prereader At Large

[Murmur the Fallen]

Okay, let's get to the specifics:
How far has weapons development come along in this world? That is, have they got railguns, plasma cannons, lasers etc, etc? How far along are they in bomb tech?
As for computers, have they got quantum mainframes, able to compute in non-linear ways?
and any other things you might want to put down in terms of actual tech.
-mur