A Splinter in Your Mind - Matrix Quest

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◉ CODA ◉​

Alice Lovelace
​
Resolve
3/3​
Detachment
2​
Skill
6​
Gear
6/10​

Paths​
Path of Resistance
Level 1
When you Fight.exe.
When you gratuitously blow something up as an act of resistance.
The first time in a session you tell an authority to go fuck itself.
XP: ◉◉◉◉◎
You may spend Resistance XP to add or subtract Harm you give or take, 1-1.​
Path of Truth
Level 1
When you Prompt.exe.
When you follow your curiosity in a way that doesn't advance the mission.
The first time in a session you discover something new about the Matrix.
XP: ◉◉◉◎◎
You may spend Truth XP to reroll dice when you Charge or Refresh, 1-1d6.​
Path of Enlightenment
Level 1
When you Disconnect.exe.
When you refuse to back down or run away from impossible odds.
The first time you run out of Resolve in a session.
XP: ◉◉◎◎◎
You may spend Enlightenment XP as if they were Detachment, 1-1.​
Moves
Beginning to Believe: You gain +1 Detachment the first time you Charge.
Stop Trying to Hit Me: You take -1 Harm when on the Defensive in Fights.
Mine Now: Spend a Full Hit in Fight to disarm an enemy of their weapon. If you then shoot them with it, take +1.
Try Again: When you attempt a Disconnect you failed before and have not yet succeeded at, you may input one 6 as a True Hit.
Bit of Help: When you spend Detachment on any move other than Disconnect, you get two +1s. They can be applied to the same die or different ones.

Stunts
Jump Impossible Distances Lvl 2*
Hit with Implausible Force Lvl 1
Dodge Implausible Ways Lvl 1
Act with Implausible Slight of Hand Lvl 1

​


CW: Very 90s.

Also, this is going to be a seriously fucked up quest. I'm going to be doing my damndest to channel an appropriately edgy, teen-rage vibe. Expect violence, drugs, sex, etc.

There's also going to be some Pretty Uncomfortable Dysphoria-ing, trans readers be warned.​
 
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[X] Take 1 Harm, but then land on your feet.
 
1.1 - Mistaken Identity
  • Threadmarks
    • You reacted, but not quite fast enough. You ducked your head out of the way, but then his second hit struck you in the chest and threw you back, sailing a dozen feet through the air and slamming face-first into the floor.

    You picked yourself up just in time to see the bottom of the boot on the lead punk descending toward you. You pushed yourself up, straight up onto your feet, and his foot slammed through the wooden boards in a huge eruption of dust. You dropped back into a defensive stance, palms open, starting walking your circle.

    He looked utterly confused.

    "What the fuck kind of cop are you?" he asked. He threw two punches, faster than anything you'd ever seen, and you wove around them, stepping off-axis, looking for an opening he wasn't giving you. Finally you saw a chance, looping your foot around his ankle and shoulder-checking him, and while he tripped he landed on his hands and rolled back into a perfect cartwheel, back to his feet.

    He held out a hand, and you stopped.

    "What are you?" he asked. "You're not a cop, what are you? A program?"

    "No…" you said, glancing around. The others were starting to fan out to surround you, but you might have a chance to overwhelm this guy and get to the door if you moved fast. "I'm not. What are you? Are you… disconnected?"

    He didn't drop his guard, but he looked you askew.

    "Fuck, are you a redpill?" he asked. "Why the fuck are you a cop!"

    "I'm-" Oh, redpill. Clever. "I'm not a cop, I'm just- No. Are you redpills?

    They shared a glance, and the woman started laughing to herself.

    "Yeah. Jesus Fucking Christ," the man intoned.

    "What crew are you with, what ship?" the third one, who thought might be a woman, but you weren't entirely sure.

    "The, uh, the Ashur. Frag's crew," you replied. All three of them groaned.

    "Fuuucking subvees, man," the third punk drawled, spitting.

    "Of course you would be. Dude, we almost shot you, don't fucking do that shit," the man said, indicating to your whole person in a vague sort of way. "Seriously!"

    "Sorry. I'm new, I'm just on exit duty. What crew are you with?" you replied, feeling uncomfortable. "And, uh, can you cool it with, uh, I'm not a dude."

    "Shit, sorry," he said. "Look, I don't know what shit they're filling your head with on that ship, but we do not do this," he said, slapping your vest aggressively. "We are not fucking cops, or soldiers, or any of that bullshit. If I see you or your crew dressed like this again, I'll shoot you on the spot, truce or no. Come on, we're out."

    The three of them pushed past you, the woman making a point to flip you the bird and the other slapping you on the back of the helmet as you stood, dumbstruck. They were halfway up the stairs when you remembered what your job was.

    "Hey! Hey! I'm… I still don't have any idea who you people are, and I'm supposed to guard the exit…" you said. The man turned back and, in doing so, pulled back his jacket to expose a pistol on his hip.

    "Oh, what are you going to do about it? Give us a ticket?" he said mockingly. The others laughed.

    "I-I'm just trying to guard the exit," you complained. "Come on, give me something, I have no idea what's going on."

    "Yeah, no shit," the woman muttered.

    "Spark, Ice, Pierce," he said, indicating to himself, the woman, and the third person in turn. "We're from the Mortis, and we do the real work while you motherfuckers make nice. We're coming back from running a few errands, so we're going to go to that phone, go back to our ship, and get the fuck out of here, and you're going to chill the fuck out. Got all that, pig?"

    "Don't. Call me that," you said. "I'm not a fucking cop."

    "Not yet you aren't," the woman said. "Which must just tear you up. You couldn't even wait to put on the jackboots, could you?"

    "Oink," the third person added.

    You felt your fists clench. You might not be able to take them all, but you know if you drew right now you could probably get one of them. Maybe more than one, they didn't look that well armed and they'd let their guard down.

    There were more footsteps from behind you. Voices approaching the door. All of them looked behind you, their expressions changing.

    "Oh fuck," the woman said. "Were we followed?"

    The third person pulled their phone and flipped it to their ear while the man grabbed you by the collar, pulling close.

    "Are those your crew?" he asked, sounding terrified. You finally remembered your radio, clicking the activation switch at your chest.

    "Chrysalis-"

    "Operator," she said. "Sorry Alice, a bit delicate, let me just bring up- holy fuck! Coda, get out of there!" she called.

    You were about to ask why when the doors burst open, and the first cops came through.

    ---

    Your Charge:​
    ⚅⚃⚃⚃◻​
    ​
    You are still at 1-Harm and have no Refreshed: this exchange has not, in any way, been a calming or focusing moment for Coda. (If you had picked the other option, you would still be fighting with the Mortis crew).​
    ​
    Remember, this is a Powered by the Apocalypse game. Tell me what you want to do in the story, and it will activate mechanics where they are relevant.​
    ​
    What do you do?​
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Coda's got quite a bit of rage against the machine (heh) to work out after that beating and a lot to prove. She ain't a pig, motherfuckers. She's just not trying to be stupid, but these motherfuckers decided to blow everything because they couldn't resist picking a dumb fight and being smug about it.

    She lights the cops the fuck up.
     
    [X] Spend each 4 (with a +1) to start flow-style beating up cops!

    Fuck the police!
     
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    [X] Spend each 4 (with a +1) to start flow-style beating up cops!

    The temptation to burn a 6 and just butcher the first wave is there, but given Chrysalis' 'holy fuck' we probably wanna save that.
     
    The Laurent said:
    Okay, we have a lot of Gear, so maybe we should actually use it?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Wait a minute, yeah! Uh... how do we use gear, anyways? Can it be tutorial time?

    [X]Yell something like "Hold your fire!" or "We need them unharmed!" and run off in faux-pursuit of the other redpills in hopes of hitting the same exit they're after
    Might as well try to make use of our confusingly authoritarian get-up to get the cops to not shoot allies, but also if Chrysalis says to run I'm pretty sure we should run, she's been at this longer than us and our pool seems iffy for a mob fight
     
    10ebbor10 said:
    [X] Demonstrate you had good reason to bring all this stuff. Which is to say, lob 2 grenades into the door opening.

    I'm not sure if this is
    A : Possible
    B : Something we need dice for
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    It's very possible! That's what quantum gear is for!

    And if you ask for gear I don't have rules for yet, well, you just added that gear to second edition!
    Tetra said:
    Wait a minute, yeah! Uh... how do we use gear, anyways? Can it be tutorial time?

    [X]Yell something like "Hold your fire!" or "We need them unharmed!" and run off in faux-pursuit of the other redpills in hopes of hitting the same exit they're after
    Might as well try to make use of our confusingly authoritarian get-up to get the cops to not shoot allies, but also if Chrysalis says to run I'm pretty sure we should run, she's been at this longer than us and our pool seems iffy for a mob fight
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Yep, let me start writing up a post on that!
     
    [X] Demonstrate you had good reason to bring all this stuff. Which is to say, lob 2 grenades into the door opening.
     
    Lesson 3: Troubleshooting
  • Informational

    • Troubleshooting

    Your Gear is a quantum abstraction of all the cool shit you've taken with you from the Construct into the Matrix. You spend it to pull out weapons and devices as you need.

    How much Gear you are carrying is differently visible. 1 Gear will fly under the radar, 3 Gear is good for walking around with, 6 Gear will very quickly be spotted, and 10 Gear is not just obviously but excessively armed.

    Guns have a number of Shots they can make in one attack, an amount of Harm they do, and the amount of Gear points (In <>) they cost.

    When you attack with guns, you spend dice +Cool equal to the number of Dice you have. You must spend as many dice as your Shots, you cannot spend less.

    Full successes deal the weapon's Harm, partials either wing targets for 1 Harm or force them into cover. Anyone you don't either take out or suppress then shoots you back, forcing dodging or resisting damage. Weapons are one-use only: after you shoot them, regardless of how many dice you used, they're empty.

    Shooting is a VERY good way to churn your dice pool and get rid of dice because there's no downside to misses other than not hitting. Remember, if you clear all your dice out in one shot, you Charge, gain an Advance, and then can keep spending dice to finish out the move. The downside is, of course, that trying to do this will often use up a lot of 6s you could use to Disconnect.

    You can pull out two weapons at once and fire both of them in a single attack.

    The current list of Gear is:
    • DERRINGER <0.5> 1-Shot 2-Harm
    • PISTOL <1> 2-Shot 3-Harm
    • FLINTLOCK PISTOL <1> 1-Shot 4-Harm
    • TASER <1> 1-Shot 0-Harm, Stun
    • MACHINE-PISTOL <2> 3-Shot 2-Harm
    • MAGNUM <2> 2-Shot 4-Harm
    • SILENCED PISTOL <2> 2-Shot 3-Harm, Quiet
    • SAWN OFF SHOTGUN <2> 1-Shot 5-Harm, Close
    • SMG <3> 4-Shot 2-Harm
    • AUTOMATIC CARBINE <3> 3-Shot 3-Harm, 2Handed
    • SHOTGUN <3> 2-Shot 3-Harm
    • REPEATING RIFLE <4> 2-Shot 4-Harm, 2Handed
    • ASSAULT RIFLE <4> 3-Shot 4-Harm, 2Handed
    • BOLT ACTION RIFLE <4> 1-Shot 5-Harm, 2Handed
    • COMBAT SHOTGUN <4> 2-Shot 5-Harm, Close 2Handed
    • MACHINE-GUN <6> 4-Shot 4-Harm, 2Handed
    • ANTI-TANK RIFLE <6> 1-Shot 6-Harm
    • MINIGUN <9> 5-Shot 5-Harm
    • KNIFE/CLUB/BATON <1> +1-Harm
    • SWORD/SPEAR/MACE <3> +2-Harm
    • SHIELD <4> -1-Harm taken per Move
    • LARGE SWORD/FLAIL <5> +3-Harm
    • FRAG GRENADE <1> 1-Shot 2-Harm, Thrown, Burst
    • STUN GRENADE <1> 1-Shot 0-Harm, Thrown Stun, Burst
    • DYNAMITE <2> 1-Shot 4-Harm, Thrown, Burst
    • BLOCK OF C4 <3> 1-Shot 8-Harm, Set, Burst
    • GRENADE LAUNCHER <5> 1-Shot 2-Harm, Burst
    • ROCKET LAUNCHER <8> 1-Shot, 10-Harm

    You can also, when you get shot at, declare you have a bulletproof vest. Doing this costs 3 Gear points and negates up to 3 Harm.

    As time goes on, you can get Advances that give you 'free' pieces of gear.
     
  • Informational
    • Looks like we're going to need a second tutorial on those tags, lol.
     
    Okay, since we have rules now.

    [X] Demonstrate you had good reason to bring all this stuff. Which is to say, lob a <Frag Grenade> into the door with a 4.

    Two grenades seems a bit overkill, I think?
     
    [X] Draw out a knife, and put those fours to use with a combination of palm strikes, fluid shifting around and stabbing and slashing.

    We have -1 Cool, so a Frag Grenade will be a miss unless we use our 6.
     
    Changing my vote.

    [X] A baton and three 4s (in Defensive) should allow us to put a little hurt on these intruders and get us some time to assess the situation
     
    [X] Draw out a knife, and put those fours to use with a combination of palm strikes, fluid shifting around and stabbing and slashing.
    -[x] "I dressed like this because I hate being in this fucking meatsuit the fuckin' machine put me in, you absolute cuntwaffle, personally, I can't wait until I can have my amazing fuckin tits out in a PVC sundress with a tiny tophat. Right now tho, we got cops to kill and I have a body to ignore. Cool?"
     
    While I agree that melee combat makes more sense given our negative cool, wouldn't just throwing three 4s at the cops inflict 3 harm on us, putting us to a KO'd 4 harm?
     
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