Recreation Commons – Thirteenth Floor: The Self Aware CryoBar

[smacksim]

Kass, you know it feels kinda like a Chironator on the rocks. Here, have one!

(Smack passes Kassiopeia a prolemic non-pasteurized pasta-colored pederastry known as the personal bedtime tonic of Lady Deirdre herself, a Chironator)

How's that for full flavor?

[GeoModder]

And does Lady Deirdre serves it herself?

[Micha]

Happy Birthday, Ogie Oglethorpe!
A toast to a SMAC-magician (as I have heard)

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
A question. Has anyone, in AC Fiction for instance, ever described in detail what a psi attack would feel or appear like to the person targeted?

Excerpted from the Spartan Chronicles:

She and Lindly conferred.

"They're being controlled from offshore somewhere. I'm fighting their controller as well as them. There's only so long I can hold them, so let's hope that it's long enough for the friendlies to get here."

"What can Ehm and I do?" Lindly asked.

"Ehm can stay linked with Alphonse, and get what help he can from him to maybe blunt the psi attack somewhat for the guardsmen. You, Lindly, need to assume control of the friendlies when they arrive on the scene, so you need to be making contact with the leaders now and developing some sort of battle plan. Have Ehm link you through to Alphonse for ideas."

"I'm not very good at fighting," Shannon said. "I'm more of a diplomat now."

"Well, get good quickly. This is going to be the longest two minutes of your life. You can sense them now. We'll be seeing them any second."


The pain grew in Jeneba's head, and she took as much as she could stand before activating her neural blockers. At the same time, she reached out with her will and focussed on the leader.

"Bambi, stop. You are wrong. Stop now."

The lead mindworm approaching the perimeter fence of the Aerospace Center hesitated a fraction, then resumed its charge up the small hill as the pain threshold in Jeneba's mind was breached by the combined force of four of the seven storming mindworms.

She released her entire stock of analgesics through her system and focused her entire psi energy into a sharp neural lance aimed at Bambi.

The mindworm flinched, and Jeneba pressed home the attack:
"Bambi. This is wrong. Ask Planet. You are nor hearing Planet, but an imposter."

The huge mindworm paused as if to consider, but her smaller companions had by now breached the fence and were pouring through.

The guards at the hanger were firing indiscriminately into the throng, flaying tendrils and wormflesh in the process, but soon they were succumbing to the pain in their minds.

Lindly tried her best to bolster them, but her skills were indeed rusty and she was herself more of a compellor than a supporter. She focussed on the guardsman at the doors of the hanger and went into his mind forcing peace and calm in place of the panic and despair that the mindworms were driving through him.

Jeneba was holding Bambi with her augmented will, and the mindworm was motionless, irresolute, as if pondering various alternatives.

Suddenly all felt it.

Jeneba keened in agony as Oki, from her lair beneath the Isle of the Deep, took on the task of neutralizing the Morgan brood trainer. At her controls she boosted the amplification through her neural implants to bolster her psi energy, and focused on Jeneba, letting Bambi alone for a few seconds.

The pressure rose in Jeneba's mind until she could take it no more unsupported, so abruptly she released her hold on Bambi and sank to the ground, crying aloud in her agony
"EHM…EHM… Help me."

Oki sensed instantaneously that the hold had been released and shifted focus automatically back to the demon boil.

Bambi tensed and then with amazing speed lurched through the fence and into the door of the hanger, the Guard that was being mentally supported by Lindly being shunted aside like matchwood by the sheer bulk of the mindworm. Two medium sized worms were hard on Bambi's trailer tendrils and into the hanger almost as quickly.

The sleek PlanetBuster, in its launch cradle, lay exposed.

Oki commanded the two supporting worms to effect its destruction and they set about it with relish.

Ehm was squirming in Shannon's arms.

He sensed Jeneba's anguish, and recognized her call for help.

Expanding his awareness, he sought Alphonse:

"Alphonse. We need help. What to do?"

"Arriving soon. You need to protect EarthJeneba's mind till I get to you. Hang in little one. Be brave. I'll ask EarthShannon for help"

"EarthLindly. Ehm will protect Jeneba from mind destruction. You protect Ehm"


Ehm entered Jeneba's mind, and his first instinct was to recoil completely.

Oki was there, working vigorously to untangle some of the command strings and render her inoperable.

Ehm went to the attack, striking with all his psi force back up the neural link that Oki had created. Pushing Ehm was Shannon, lending all of the projection that she could muster.
A surprised Oki leapt back from her controls in pain, quickly tuning down to reduce the feedback amplification. But the link was forged. Now that Ehm knew the path, he persevered.

Then Oki struck, a focused beam of psi force right at Ehm. Shannon felt him flinch and she sent out her own psychic call for help to Alphonse.

She sensed his presence and felt Ehm stiffen mentally, striking back at Oki. Each experience was making him stronger, helping him to learn from previous actions and interactions. This time he sent a weak looking interrogative wisp of a probe down the link that was still active from Jeneba to Oki. Her guard was down, as the probe seemed innocent. Shannon sensed that, and marshaled all her remembered instincts. She rode the massive surge of psi energy that Ehm sent, bolstering it and boosting it and catching Oki completely unawares. The pain lanced through her head, burning and fusing the synapses that kept the Jeneba link active and as she screamed with agony the link was broken.

Ehm retreated back into Jeneba's mind, and was relieved to see that she was free of psychic pain.

Two minutes had elapsed since Bambi had appeared at the fence.

[Googlie]

Or maybe this, from Vel's City of Hope:

Someone shoved him hard from behind and he stumbled forward, caught himself, and then choked off his instinctive Psi-Defense. He punched the offender instead and continued on his way. “Gayle!” He called out to her above the noise, but there was no answer.

Finally he made the door, and blinked in confusion. Everything was in chaos. People were running through the streets smashing things and each other. Fighting. Looting. It was insanity in physical form. He scanned the crowd for Gayle, hoping to find her quickly and get her away from all the craziness, but then his Cybernetic enhancements kicked in.

Firearm detected....twenty meters. Category - hand gun, Classification - Shredder Pistol, Model MK-9, Defense option Zulu-Prime, Psi-Blast, Maximum Intensity

He felt his Psi-Defenses powering up, and he tried to fight them back down, but found his control slipping. The Cybernetic portion of him had detected a threat, and would not be so easily thwarted. “No!” He shouted to himself in frustration. But his control slipped further.

Then he saw her. Gayle. His beautiful Gayle.

Their eyes met.

His control began to reassert itself. He could control it. He could control it for her, if nothing else.

He waved. “Stay there, I’m coming!”

She smiled nervously and waved back. There were tears in her eyes, and she had a cut on her cheek, but she was okay. It was all going to be okay.

Firearm detected, ten meters and closing

“Not now,” he muttered, and continued shoving his way through the crowd.

They surged forward again, and Gayle was shoved further away from him. For a moment he lost sight of her and thought she might have been shoved down as Kevin had been before, but then he caught a glimpse of her, pressed in among a number of heaving, sweating bodies all trying to occupy the same space at the same time. He growled and animalistic growl, deep in his throat and two people near him stepped away.

They were hurting her.

Scaring her.

His Psi-Defenses began ratcheting up again.

He shoved his way closer.

Twenty feet.

Then ten.

Now just over five.

And then the crowd began to part, and he could see her clearly. She was frightened, but she never looked so lovely to him as she did right then.

Firearm detected, proximity warning, proximity warning, alert, alert, alert....

There was a shout behind him. Two people fighting. Arguing.

He spun about to look.

The one facing him, less than five feet away had a pistol. He raised it.

Took aim at his adversary.

Someone jostled him from behind.

He fired.

The popping noise was small, and almost comical sounding considering how deadly the weapon really was. Velociryx flinched and glanced down at his chest just to make sure. He was not hit.

Neither was the man the gunman had been arguing with.

The gunman took aim again.

“Ve....” The voice behind him sounded strange. It was Gayle’s voice, but thicker. Almost liquid.

His heart dropped a foot in his chest and his stomach turned a flip. He did not want to turn around, but he felt himself moving.

Turning.

He saw her, and the grimly beautiful patch of red blossoming out from her chest and throat where the shredder bullets had found their mark.

“Gayle?” He said softly, not quite comprehending.

She stumbled forward, toward him, and he reflexively reached out to her. Caught her.

Felt her essence soaking into his shirt, hot and sticky. Her life blood.

It began to sink in then.

“Oh Gayle, no....no....”

She looked up at him. Touched his cheek.

Tried to speak but wound up coughing. Choking on her words and the trickle of blood which ran from the corner of her mouth.

She tried again. “You are....Beauty.” She whispered.

He felt her slip away a moment later. Eyes still open, staring at him as he held her, but there was a moment when she felt different. Less alive. And then there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

For a long moment, he stared into those lovely, now lifeless eyes. “No.....” He whispered.

“No!” Louder now, and several people around him looked over at him in a mixture of surprise and fear.

“Noooooo!” And this time, when his Psi-Defenses began building, he did not even try to stop them.

He gathered Gayle’s lifeless body up in his arms and turned around to face the gunman.

Their eyes met and Velociryx locked the other man’s gaze down. Forced him not to look away.

Target Acquired....Psi-Levels at 315.....355.....400....435....490....525....

The Psi-Energy began taking on a tangible force, and the people around him were shoved back a step by its strength and intensity.

Psi-Levels at 565....580....605....

The crowd around him stepped back again, and now several people near him began experiencing the effects of exposure to that much Psi-Energy. Several noses began to bleed, and more than one person had Fairy Tears running down their cheeks.

Psi-Levels at 660....700...725....775.....Peak Level reached

He held it there, eyes narrowly slitted, glaring at the gunman with pure hatred. It would have been so easy just to let it go. Crush the terrified man in front of him. Boil his brain right out of his head and leave him as he had left Gayle.

Beautiful Gayle.

Gone.

He looked down at her, lying in his arms, eyes still open. Growing cooler by the second.

Another wave of hatred washed over him, this one even blacker and more vile than the last.

He locked eyes with the gunman again and took a step closer, growling that deep, feral growl in his throat again.

“Drop it or die where you stand.” His voice was barely intelligible over the growl in his throat, but the man understood.

He dropped the pistol.

Velociryx’s stare intensified and the man grabbed his temples, then sank to his knees, groaning softly.

He was shaking from head to toe with the effort to control himself, but he did not attack. He stared at the man for a long moment, and then let out a long, anguished wail, which he punctuated by kicking the gunman in the sternum, hard enough to crack several ribs.

Then he ran, the crowd parting for him as he carried Gayle’s body away....

[Kassiopeia]

Fascinating. Not quite what I had had in mind, but interesting still. Thanks Googlie. My mental image (heh) has been more to the sort of repeating, insane images that fill your mind and a tumult of emotions that confuse and disable the individual (the mindworms did do that in the first snippet). Probably heavily influenced by the Dream Twister SP movie. I've never thought of it as so pain-oriented. Those snippets, though, had more on the viewpoint of the attacker rather than the one being attacked.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by GeoModder
Skanky, shorten that post to a simple , will you?

I doubt I could have typed that at the time.

And a belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Oggie!

[Snowflake]

Vel's piece is really good. I love it.

Kody's also done a piece to describe psych attack from worms in the HoF pbem thread.

As the soldiers got out of the rovers to make a firing line in front of the boil a strange insect like chittering sound suddenly came from all directions. The soldiers looked around in bewilderment expecting to see an enemy surrounding them, but there was nothing except for the boil.

They couldn’t stand this much longer. “Fire”, Xavier yelled.

The chittering was suddenly drowned by the rattle of semi-automatic rifle fire and a large chunk of the worms exploded into a slushy slurry that splattered the grass a weird orange pink. Bits of chipped husks flew further raining down on the exposed rover team.

”It’s working!” one of the other Lieutenants shouted as they started to advance while shooting a path deeper into the boil.

There was splashing as water suddenly engulfed the rover team, and quickly climbed up past everyone’s heads. Xavier held his breath as he desperately tried to swim to the surface and air, but he felt as heavy as a rock and couldn’t swim upwards. His lungs started to spasm and he could feel himself blacking out as spots appeared in his vision. It’s not wet, he suddenly realised.

He forced back the spasm and took a breath even though every instinct told him that he would drown. Cold air flooded his lungs and the spots in his vision started to recede. He took a look around and froze in shock at all the soldiers failing in their rovers.

“It’s an illusion!” he shouted. “The water is an illusion!”
Xavier started to run between the soldiers shaking them until they started breathing. As he rushed to another rover he noticed the mindworms were moving towards them.

“Grab your guns and fire at will!”

[Drogue]

/me orders a Pecheresse, something he discovered on his travels, and sits down to enjoy it

[GeoModder]

* SaCoB, being not introduced to most old-Earth languages, makes a guess and drops a Baguette Bruxelles before Drogue... *

Bon appetit!!

[Micha]

I believe a pécheresse is a fruit-flavoured beer

[Drogue]

It is. However the only one I can find online is a 2.5% peach flavoured one. The one I had was clearly raspberry flavoured (stronger than the framboise beer I had) and far more than 2.5%

[GeoModder]

/me orders a good old Calvados... also made from fruit...

[Micha]

Originally posted by GeoModder
* GeoModder orders a good old Calvados... also made from fruit...

Yeah, and I´d like some candy... like Rum! Isn´t it made from sugar...?

Or better have some hearty meal first:
- vodka (made from potatoes)
- egg-liqueur (eggs)
- Jägermeister (vegetables/spices...)

[Skanky Burns]

bourbon - corn
beer - wheat
vodka - old shoes
wine - grapes