Across the Pond (Worm Quest)

Doing some background/character creation rolls.
Oshha threw 1 4-faced dice. Reason: Gender! Total: 3
3 3
Oshha threw 1 3-faced dice. Reason: Spice! Total: 1
1 1
Oshha threw 2 3-faced dice. Reason: Spice! Total: 3
2 2 1 1
Oshha threw 1 4-faced dice. Reason: Multi-Trigger Total: 4
4 4
 
Mind telling us what those rolls mean?
Gender is a 3/4 chance of Finn being a girl and 1/4 chance of being a boy. Spice is a "Spice things up"/"make things interesting roll" where 1 was multi-trigger, 2 was second-gen and 3 is abnormally powerful. Then I fubbed a couple of rolls by doing a couple of 1d3s instead of a 1d4. Multi-trigger roll is how many cluster mates Finn has with 1 = Cluster of 3, 2 = Cluster of 4, 3 = Cluster of 5 and 4 = Cluster of 6.
 
Cluster trigger is going to be a bunch of secondary schoolers suffering breakdowns after school at the same school. To this end, I can rework the runner trigger that lost the vote by making it take place in an after-school event. Finn breaks down whilst studying afterschool in the school library or something like that and I have a third trigger/character I can add into the cluster. I have a possible ideas for the last three, but I'm not particularly attached to them so if anyone has ideas for secondary schoolers breaking down at school, feel free to pitch them now. No promises that I'll pick them, but they might be more interesting than what I've got and I'm going to be somewhat busy tonight so the update won't be done until tomorrow at the earliest.
 
Gender is a 3/4 chance of Finn being a girl and 1/4 chance of being a boy. Spice is a "Spice things up"/"make things interesting roll" where 1 was multi-trigger, 2 was second-gen and 3 is abnormally powerful. Then I fubbed a couple of rolls by doing a couple of 1d3s instead of a 1d4. Multi-trigger roll is how many cluster mates Finn has with 1 = Cluster of 3, 2 = Cluster of 4, 3 = Cluster of 5 and 4 = Cluster of 6.
So which gender won?
 
I have a possible ideas for the last three, but I'm not particularly attached to them so if anyone has ideas for secondary schoolers breaking down at school, feel free to pitch them now.
Exam season is a great time for Thinker, Tinker,Master and Stranger clusters huh.

A student hard pressed to pass the exams, cheated and got caught. Crushed between the anticipation of punishment at home and the invigilator making a public spectacle of the cheating, they trigger.

A student having put several all-nighters into cramming for exams drags themself to school and falls asleep during the exam itself. They wake up only to realize its all over.

A student doing too well gets tied up, gagged and locked in a toilet stall on exam day out of what seems a random act of spite.
 
Last edited:
Cluster trigger is going to be a bunch of secondary schoolers suffering breakdowns after school at the same school. To this end, I can rework the runner trigger that lost the vote by making it take place in an after-school event. Finn breaks down whilst studying afterschool in the school library or something like that and I have a third trigger/character I can add into the cluster. I have a possible ideas for the last three, but I'm not particularly attached to them so if anyone has ideas for secondary schoolers breaking down at school, feel free to pitch them now. No promises that I'll pick them, but they might be more interesting than what I've got and I'm going to be somewhat busy tonight so the update won't be done until tomorrow at the earliest.

Well here's one.

You just wanted to help people, to see the look on their face after they aced the big test, to guide new souls on their way into the wider world. You loved it, were passionate for it like nothing else, so when Timothy began to struggle in your class you had to make things right. You speak to him after class about his failing grade, and find out it's much worse than it first seems, it's not just your class, he's failing everything, at this rate he'd be held back a grade, and you can't let that happen to one of your students. You plan out everything he needs to do, but it's not quite enough. You push him more, more study, more homework, more tutoring, and now he's making it, he's getting there, inch by inch Fs turn to Ds turn to Cs. But it's not quite enough, there's one more test, the one thing that'll put him over the edge and let him succeed, so you push. And push. And push again. Making him study day and night until you are absolutely certain he will succeed. The night before the test you feel pride, you've saved him, given him his future on a silver platter, you worked so hard for this.
0 on the test.
Fails the class.
Flunks out of the grade.
How could he do this to himself! How could he do this to you! You worked so hard for this and the miserable little shit throws it all away. The next day you see him in class, you can't hold it in, you shout at him, show him just how much he fucked up. He starts crying. He deserves to cry. Why are they judging you? Why are they crowding you?! You did everything right! It's not your fault! It's his! Why won't they just let you fix him? Why can't you just FIX HIM. Trigger.
 
Well here's one.

You just wanted to help people, to see the look on their face after they aced the big test, to guide new souls on their way into the wider world. You loved it, were passionate for it like nothing else, so when Timothy began to struggle in your class you had to make things right. You speak to him after class about his failing grade, and find out it's much worse than it first seems, it's not just your class, he's failing everything, at this rate he'd be held back a grade, and you can't let that happen to one of your students. You plan out everything he needs to do, but it's not quite enough. You push him more, more study, more homework, more tutoring, and now he's making it, he's getting there, inch by inch Fs turn to Ds turn to Cs. But it's not quite enough, there's one more test, the one thing that'll put him over the edge and let him succeed, so you push. And push. And push again. Making him study day and night until you are absolutely certain he will succeed. The night before the test you feel pride, you've saved him, given him his future on a silver platter, you worked so hard for this.
0 on the test.
Fails the class.
Flunks out of the grade.
How could he do this to himself! How could he do this to you! You worked so hard for this and the miserable little shit throws it all away. The next day you see him in class, you can't hold it in, you shout at him, show him just how much he fucked up. He starts crying. He deserves to cry. Why are they judging you? Why are they crowding you?! You did everything right! It's not your fault! It's his! Why won't they just let you fix him? Why can't you just FIX HIM. Trigger.

As far as I know, getting held back a year is not a UK practice.

You can resit your exams at college after HS sometimes though.

Admittedly it has been a looooong time since I was in a UK High School however.

Horrors! The current Youth must attend... Academy's!?
 
As far as I know, getting held back a year is not a UK practice.

You can resit your exams at college after HS sometimes though.

Admittedly it has been a looooong time since I was in a UK High School however.

Horrors! The current Youth must attend... Academy's!?

Hmm. In that case it can probably be replaced with something similarly bad. Or maybe something less bad, make the teacher overreact more. Either way I'm sure the UK has bad things that can happen in school.
 
Hmm. In that case it can probably be replaced with something similarly bad. Or maybe something less bad, make the teacher overreact more. Either way I'm sure the UK has bad things that can happen in school.

Very much so.

Like if you fall ill, the LEA (Local Educational Authority) is supposed to transfer the public funding from the School to Home Tuition of some sort, if too ill to travel to school.

In practice though it involves a huge battle through bureaucracy, funding gatekeeping practices, the courts and even the high court if the local court side with the School or LEA... They usually all know each other out of work and mix both professionally and socially, so lots of incestuousness in terms of bias and favour trading etc.

Social Services are often fairly awful too sadly.
 
Would be ironic if a sibling triggers bc at this exact moment relatives are pressuring them to be more like Finn.
 
Finn Blaney
[X] Finn Blaney
[X] Overbearing expectations. You got into a good school based on your grades, which let you move up in the world from your lower class origins. Everyone in the family always said you were "gifted"; that you would go on to do great things, be the Blaney to strike it rich. This drove you ever harder to take on more and more work, excel further and further, even taking on excess course work over break to get ahead. But you reached too far and hit a wall; no matter what you did, how much you studied, the material refused to make sense. You agonised; this was your future, everyone depended on you to get this why can't you get this-

You are Finn Blaney, a prodigy yet not a genius and you are the future hope of your family, bearing heavy pressure and expectations as a result. From your parents to your aunts and uncles to your grandparents to your cousins have all been working class, forced to slave away at the menial jobs so when you got high enough grades to get a scholarship into King George VI Secondary School, everyone in the family was happy and proud of you. You would be the first Blaney in living memory to escape poverty, to become rich even if you were only middle class in the end. To no longer have to worry about being able to put a roof over your head or put food on the table, to have enough money to buy new clothes for everyone instead of making heavy usage of hand-me-downs.

You did best to live up to those expectations and for the last four and a half years, you have done so admirably. Your grades aren't the best in class, but smarts combined hard work have made up for a lack of real genius. It has been hard being the poor kid who got in on merit rather than their family's wealth, but you endured. You even made a handful of friends.

But as your GCSEs got ever closer, things became more difficult. You started to struggle more in class and more and more of the coursework didn't make sense to you. You took on more homework and coursework than you needed to over the Christmas holidays in the hopes you could get away, that you could figure out what was making things so hard. You spent more time studying than relaxing over the break and it had to be worth it.

Except it hadn't been worth it and it wasn't enough. You got back to school and things had been as difficult as they had been before the holidays. None of it was making sense anymore and you couldn't understand why you could do it.

You broke down in a corner of the library afterschool on the first day back. It would have been a big deal except most of the students had already gone home for the day and there had been an incident in the playground that drew the attention of everyone, including staff. Especially the staff.

You weren't the only one at the school to get powers that day. At the same time you were having a breakdown in the library, one of the local bullies had snapped. Charles Rainbridge was a piece of work, but one whose attention you had managed to avoid thanks to the colour of your skin.

While everyone knew that Charles was a bully, he had never been caught at it. No, that wasn't quite right. Charles got caught in the act plenty of times, but no matter what evidence or witnesses were brought to the table, Charles was the eldest child of a rich racist family who had a lot of upper class connections and contributed a good deal of money to the school. So no matter what he did, his father ensured he got away with it. Sometimes the matter was dropped, other times the victims were punished and the worst thing that happened to Charles was a warning. The dirtbag never even got a single detention.

Officially, the school claims that a bunch of other students jumped him unprovoked, but as a student of King George VI Secondary School, you know better. Charles obviously started the fight and bit off more than he could chew. But Charles is Charles and he is being treated as the victim despite the fact he sent several people to the hospital.

How you hate him for that. He gets taken away by the member of a King's Mens and not just any member, but the leader of the local branch, Seasouth. Charles is going to get away with no punishment and even worse is that they are going to turn him into a hero simply because he has powers. Charles doesn't deserve to be in the King's Men as the racist bully would fit in better with White Lightning. Or the graveyard.

But that isn't your concern as you throw yourself into bed after an exhausting day. Having powers has opened up a whole bunch of new opportunities for you, but first you need to figure out what your long term objectives are.

What are your current overarching goals? Pick two. No plan voting.
[ ] You want to become rich.
[ ] You want to pass your GCSEs.
[ ] You want to get into college.
[ ] You want to defeat a supervillain gang.
[ ] You want to kill Charles Rainbridge.
[ ] You want to become a famous superhero.
[ ] Write-in.

You are a sixteen year old girl of Irish descent and a working class background. You aren't a genius, but your smarts and work ethic have made up the difference to do well in class until your final year of secondary school. You had a mental breakdown on the first day back at school following the Christmas holidays, resulting in triggering and becoming a hero.

Primary Power (Thinker ?): Thinker ability to have an eureka moment where you have a moment of clarity or breakthrough towards trying to figure something out. Except it isn't a real eureka moment because your power only grants you the final result and nothing on how you came to that conclusion, giving you an answer without understanding. You cannot pull an answer out of thin air, but so long as it is technically possible, you can do it. The more relevant information that you have, the easier it is to get an answer while working on minimal information is an instant Thinker headache.
Minor Power (Tinker ?): You feel the urge to make things, but you have no idea what sort of things.
Minor Power (Thinker ?): You gain instant mastery of any tool you are wielding so long as you are holding the item in question. Mastery is instinctive and lasts as long as you are using the item.
Minor Power (Stranger ?): You go unnoticed with people either not realising you are there or if that isn't possible, they assume that you are allowed to be present. If you draw undue attention to yourself, then the effect breaks.
Minor Power (Changer ?): You can physically transform to fit a role. This grants only a physical transformation with no knowledge, skill or memories nor any ability to convince people of your chosen role.
Minor Power (Striker ?): You can make close-ranged attacks in rapid succession, faster than what is humanly possible.

***​

Second update. I would have had this out sooner, but I wanted to pick a second vote and more things into it before realising I didn't need to. We have established Finn's basic character and trigger and one of the other parahumans in her cluster while the vote focuses on what Finn wants to do with her new powers. I was planning to let you vote on her family and Finn's relation with them, but I'm going to save that for the next update or something like that.

Please point out any spelling or grammar mistakes that you spot. Please quote them in the thread and explain what you think is wrong so I know what you are referring to.
 
Last edited:
[x] You want to pass your GCSEs.
[x] You want to get into college.

Was inspired to go for the least dramatic option. Or the most dramatic, if it leads to 'I just want to be normal'
 
[x] You want to kill Charles Rainbridge.
[x] You want to become a famous superhero.

We cannot allow injustice to continue around us! We must use our powers for good! And well, part of that is making sure that people like Charles Rainbridge aren't in positions of authority.

...I'm half tempted to change my vote to something like 'bring Charles to justice,' but I'm pretty sure this vote would be the expression of the Kill side of the Kiss/Kill impulse, and I don't want to play around that too much. We rolled a cluster, we can play through everything a cluster comes with.
 
[x] You want to pass your GCSEs.
[x] You want to get into college.

Agreed, I wanna see us trying to hide being a parahuman and making our way.
 
[x] You want to kill Charles Rainbridge.
[x] You want to become a famous superhero

This will be much more interesting than school drama
 
[X] You want to get into college.
[X] You want to kill Charles Rainbridge.

The real draw for the 'kill Charles' option is the kiss-kill dynamic implications it has. On the one hand, there's the original desire to fulfill the family's dreams and make something of themselves. And on the other hand, there's the not-entirely-natural cluster dynamics, introducing goals completely contrary to just civilian living.

The tug-of-war between the two as Finn tries to decide which to prioritize should be interesting (in the Chinese sense of the word, of course).
 
Back
Top