Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
True enough. I've said what I wanted to say, and the amount of Off-Topicity has gotten really high.
Scaling Up
- Thread starter Kryslin
- Start date
Kryslin
[Has Delusions of Authorship]
- Location
- Mythic Iowa
Actually, it counts as seasoning.
Re: Salt - there is a reason we have the old saying "Worth his weight in salt." Roman Legionaires were paid in many things; Actual coinage, garum vitae, and salt. In a pre-industrial age setting, Salt will probably be the single most used preservative for food. So yes, it will value value as a trade good,
In the Draconomicon, they describe a blue dragon whose hoard is based on commerce; He runs a salt mine, and he treats his labor as part of his hoard. Without them, the salt doesn't get mined, and the gold and silver doesn't flow into his hoard. He's also not above eliminating the competition, either.
Re: Tiamat and killing young chromatic dragons who couldn't provide tribute - I now have more ideas for a second Tiamat interlude. Yes, Tiamat is not the strongest goddess out there, but one must remember that her power is innate, and not wholly dependent on worshippers. Even with only a handful of chromatic dragons scattered across multiple worlds, she is still a power to be reckoned with. Possible the most powerful draconic deity is Chronepsis, the dispassionate watcher and judge.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
You do understand what an example is, right? I was quite literally pulling the prices and salary out of my rear. The salary was based on described average income with trade skills. The price the mine sells salt for was based on the fact that in AD&D 2nd edition salt sells for 1 silver piece per pound. Not 5 gp per pound, a single silver piece per pound of salt.
@Lycanthromancer I had not wanted to dig out my 3.5 books yet again. They were in storage for a reason. I'm not in or running any 3.5 campaigns, two of my 3 book shelves have given up the ghost, and thus 2/3 of my books (including almost all my gaming books) have been stored in totes. The one holding my 3.5 books is the bottom most tote, and the D&D 3.5 books are in the bottom of that tote. Digging them out is a pain in the rear as well as the back. Remember that the SRD is not the same as the book. It sums things up and frequently leaves out details.
Reading the actual book (players handbook, page 112) it does indeed say that merchants often trade goods as if it was currency. Note, that's merchants doing the trading between each other. Also note that it doesn't say they always do this, just that it's done often. It then goes on to explain that merchants can buy or sell trade goods for more or less then what the example prices given are. This is again found in the Players Handbook, page 112. That's a detail which the SRD did not include. I don't feel like trying to balance my copy of the PHB on my lap, squinting at it the small text, and typing up exactly what it says. I also don't have a PDF of the book to copy/paste directly from. So you will have to read the passage yourself. Once more, it's in the 3.5 Players Handbook, page 112. And it specifically says that merchants can buy or sell for more or less then the listed example price. And yes, the prices in the table are examples rather then set in stone prices. They also aren't particularly sensible. Why is a pound of salt valued more then flour, wheat, or even iron? Especially if, as you suggest, casters can create thousands of pounds of the stuff at a time and dump it into the market?
You might not realize this, but it's left to the GM to take things like inflation, players dumping an excessive amount of a resource into the market, and other such things into consideration to keep the in-game economy stable (or not). The listed prices aren't even carved in stone. The DMG, starting on page 137 even goes into information on how much wealth a given settlement is likely to have in total, the value of goods they are likely to have on hand, and so forth. A group of adventurers waltz into a small hamlet and want to convert the gems/art/other non-currency valuables they found into money? There's a limit to how much the hamlet can pay. The local merchant may even refuse to take some of it, saying he doesn't have a market for that item.
On the other side of the equation, your party keeps spending thousands of gold in a hamlet or small town, word of that settlement's riches are going to start spreading. So don't be surprised if the party returns to town, only to find it's been sacked by raiders while they were away. But regardless, it's the GM's job to handle such things as inflation and the market being flooded. Of course the economy of a D&D campaign falls apart if you take every price listed in the book as written in stone. That's because the GM is expected to adjust prices based on the area. They are expected also to deal with things like "do the various kingdoms accept the currency of each other". and all the other worldbuilding things that make a campaign setting functional.
Just forking great, now I have to refill the tote, muscle it back into the closet, and lift the OTHER two book filled totes back into place. I'm gonna go shoot some zombies after that.
- Location
- Somewhere, Maybe
@Lycanthromancer You might want to check out what happened to the economy of Imperial Spain. There's a -reason- they turned out rather poor in the 1700s, despite digging up 80-ish percent of the world's silver supply back in the 1500s.
Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
Amusingly enough, i have used literally that exact same response (well, the first part, anyway) to finding out the party had a bounty on our heads in one campaign.
- Location
- Missouri
Here's the thing: D&D doesn't have an economy, it has MMO-style vendors and the rest is handwavium not meant to be inspected closely.
The game's pricing is so full of shit that not even "gold rush economy" can explain it. What loopholes the GM allows or nixes are pretty much all fiat.
The game's pricing is so full of shit that not even "gold rush economy" can explain it. What loopholes the GM allows or nixes are pretty much all fiat.
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FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Okay, calmer now. But after this I'm done with the topic. There's a number of base assumptions in D&D, or any pen-&-paper fantasy RPG for that matter. The first is that adventurers are rare. The player characters are the exception, not the rule. Maybe ten percent of the total population of the player races will be adventurers. And that's being generous. Of that, the majority of them, let's say (based on my role playing for the last 30 years) 60% new adventurers get themselves killed before they reach level 3. Of the surviving adventurers, half of them die or retire before they reach level 7. Half of those manage to make it to level 12 before death or retiring. Half the rest will die or retire before reaching level 15. And only 1% of adventurers actually reach level 20. The reason it's so easy for adventurers to find paying work? Because word of the group of armed adventurers gets around when they enter town. Thus people who might need their services know where to go to find them.
The next assumption is that adventurers don't spend all their gold in one place all the time. They restock food supplies in small towns and hamlets, when they don't hunt and live off the land. Consumables such as arrows, are restocked as they can, if they don't make their own. But the major expenditures are done in big cities where the influx of gold is a drop in the bucket. And that's assuming that magic crafting is even a thing. In many campaigns the majority of magic items are really old, and magic crafting is a mostly lost art. You can't just go to the nearest magic item shoppe and pick up a +1 weapon or armor. If you can buy them at all, they have to be commissioned from the rare wizard or cleric who even knows how to craft the item. My dad had a character who became known as the Mythral Monk. His character had taken a vow of poverty, but even then ended up with so much after an adventure that after donating 90% of it, he was able to afford 10 five pound solid mythral bars. This was done to reduce weight being carried. The problem he had was... those mythral bars were worth so much that nobody could make change. Thus he was "rich", but couldn't actually spend any of it.
And finally, it's assumed that people aren't actively trying to wreck the economy. Because adventurers are so rare and they travel so much, they don't completely flood a given local economy with ancient riches. Thus the default assumption is that adventurers also aren't pulling shenanigans such as using conjuration spells to flood the market with salt, iron, or other valuable resources. Adventuring wizards are too busy trying to stay alive while learning what they can to bother with doing it. And the non-adventuring wizards are smart enough to realize using Wall of Iron or Wall of Salt to flood the market is self destructive.
But the biggest assumption is... that the GM is smart enough to adjust prices if the players are pulling shenanigans that should destroy the economy. @Just A Dude says that in-game economy is "mmo venders and handwavium". But the truth of the matter is that the GM is suppose to be adjusting prices to reflect if the players are destroying the economy. If the player group has thirteen different sets of characters in a row who all pull economy destroying shenanigans, then it's reasonable to assume that other adventuring parties are also pulling such shenanigans. In that case, sure, have prices skyrocket due to the currency and/or trade goods being devalued. Maybe the merchants once paid 5 gold for a pound of salt, but now there's so much salt flooding the markets that it's only worth a copper for every 50 pounds of salt. Or maybe a copper for every thousand pounds of salt, depending on how badly it's been devalued. Because so many wizards have decided to use Wall of Iron to make money, the value of iron has plummeted. Blacksmiths are going out of business because they can't make a profit. Iron is so damn cheap that nobody is willing to pay much for the blacksmith's wares anymore.
Remember folks, even MMOs have inflation.
EDIT: Checked in with my dad, it was the mythral monk, not platinum monk.
The next assumption is that adventurers don't spend all their gold in one place all the time. They restock food supplies in small towns and hamlets, when they don't hunt and live off the land. Consumables such as arrows, are restocked as they can, if they don't make their own. But the major expenditures are done in big cities where the influx of gold is a drop in the bucket. And that's assuming that magic crafting is even a thing. In many campaigns the majority of magic items are really old, and magic crafting is a mostly lost art. You can't just go to the nearest magic item shoppe and pick up a +1 weapon or armor. If you can buy them at all, they have to be commissioned from the rare wizard or cleric who even knows how to craft the item. My dad had a character who became known as the Mythral Monk. His character had taken a vow of poverty, but even then ended up with so much after an adventure that after donating 90% of it, he was able to afford 10 five pound solid mythral bars. This was done to reduce weight being carried. The problem he had was... those mythral bars were worth so much that nobody could make change. Thus he was "rich", but couldn't actually spend any of it.
And finally, it's assumed that people aren't actively trying to wreck the economy. Because adventurers are so rare and they travel so much, they don't completely flood a given local economy with ancient riches. Thus the default assumption is that adventurers also aren't pulling shenanigans such as using conjuration spells to flood the market with salt, iron, or other valuable resources. Adventuring wizards are too busy trying to stay alive while learning what they can to bother with doing it. And the non-adventuring wizards are smart enough to realize using Wall of Iron or Wall of Salt to flood the market is self destructive.
But the biggest assumption is... that the GM is smart enough to adjust prices if the players are pulling shenanigans that should destroy the economy. @Just A Dude says that in-game economy is "mmo venders and handwavium". But the truth of the matter is that the GM is suppose to be adjusting prices to reflect if the players are destroying the economy. If the player group has thirteen different sets of characters in a row who all pull economy destroying shenanigans, then it's reasonable to assume that other adventuring parties are also pulling such shenanigans. In that case, sure, have prices skyrocket due to the currency and/or trade goods being devalued. Maybe the merchants once paid 5 gold for a pound of salt, but now there's so much salt flooding the markets that it's only worth a copper for every 50 pounds of salt. Or maybe a copper for every thousand pounds of salt, depending on how badly it's been devalued. Because so many wizards have decided to use Wall of Iron to make money, the value of iron has plummeted. Blacksmiths are going out of business because they can't make a profit. Iron is so damn cheap that nobody is willing to pay much for the blacksmith's wares anymore.
Remember folks, even MMOs have inflation.
EDIT: Checked in with my dad, it was the mythral monk, not platinum monk.
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Interestingly the salt included in a legionnaires pay, or the allowance he was given to purchase salt, was a salarium. Which is the root of salary. So, yeah, it was that important. All the way to modern day.
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Harry Leferts
Suave Shadow Cabal Kaiju
I'll just say that this is pretty much a bad example right here because iron was a valuable resource specifically because it was used in so many things. I can actually see a wizard using "Wall of Iron" and selling said iron with it not effecting the economy in the slightest. Because iron is used in so many things that see every day use like cauldrons (for food), cast iron implements, knives, nails, bolts for crossbows, arrowheads, swords and various other weapons, brackets, and so forth. This is not counting the fact that iron would also be valuable for trade elsewhere as well.
As an aside, platinum being a thing in D&D is just plain weird because in real life, nothing was done with it until the 1700s as Europeans didn't have a way to smelt it. In fact, the Spanish used to dump the stuff in rivers and at sea because it was utterly worthless in their eyes.
I remember this being a plot point in Harry and the Shipgirls, with James Weasley bringing a miraculous metal perfect for making cauldrons that he dubbed Vulcanium to Britain, only for the Malfoys to crash the market for gold and silver, making those types of cauldrons cheaper than the Vulcanium.
Centuries later, it was revealed that the "worthless" Vulcanium was, in fact, platinum.
/ShamelessPlug
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
Yeah, but it involves shipgirls, which is dumb. No, thank you.
- Location
- Missouri
Actually, the key hole in that part of @FaerieKnight79's argument is simply that salt is a use-as-is commodity while most of the cost of ironwork is the work, not the iron.
With Wall of Iron tanking the cost of iron as a commodity, the iron miners and smelters would certainly suffer until they found a way to reskill but, for the actual blacksmiths and those using the end products, it would be nothing but good news.
The blacksmiths would get high quality stock for cheap, and the savings of their reduced overhead would be passed on to the people buying them while the smiths would still pocket the same net profit for their time, effort, and the cost of charcoal.
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
I dunno. He seems to have a pretty good blast radius.
But oni, by their nature, are head-on fighters. Lee uses tricks like his trademark suicide-bomber clones.
Also, that name would make anyone who knows Japanese cringe hard. Who mixes two different languages like that when they're supposed to be "true Asians"?
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
Should he have been Jīngshén Li?
The same retards who thought the ABB were a good idea at all? It's pretty much their entire identity. "If you're Asian, you join us or die. No, it doesn't matter what kind, or that you and those guys are in a race war; you're Asian, so you're all the same."
Honestly, Lung is every bit as racially ignorant and racist against Asians as the E88 are.
Leechblade
Orientation Nitpicking
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Oh dear....
Looks like the wacky will be turned up into ogre drive
Looks like the wacky will be turned up into ogre drive
Guardsman_Sparky
The Clueless Wonder
- Location
- Virginia
Can't be. We'd expect that, and no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
That attitude is exactly why I always make it a point to expect them.
It has a 100% success rate, considering I haven't seen them even once in my life.
5.1 Demons I
Kryslin
[Has Delusions of Authorship]
- Location
- Mythic Iowa
A shout out and "Thanks!" to Lycanthromancer for editing assistance.
Wednesday 23 February 2011
Amy was glad for a bit of normalcy again. Her life had been turned inside out and upside down by events over the weekend, and she was finally going back to school like she normally would. She got complimented on her hair, more than a few people inquired about her unexpected height increase, and at lunch, more than a few people raised eyebrows as enough food for two people disappeared off her tray.
"That's a lot of food," noted Dennis, as he tried to grab a fry off of Amy's tray. Conversation stopped as Amy growled at him.
"Alas, poor Dennis," he said, waxing poetic, tossing his head back and throwing the back of a wrist over his eyes overdramatically. "I know him well; a man of infinite sorrow and jest, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune..."
"Or the wrath of the irritated healer," added Amy, who had just finished her fries.
"Or the outrage of one of your friends whose mother was a Professor of English literature," remarked Taylor, "for mangling Shakespeare so badly."
"Wow, tough crowd," Dennis quipped, turning to Vicky with a hopeful air. "Will our intrepid hero be saved by the knight and his Amazon princess, then?"
Vicky and Dean looked at each other, and with matching grins they turned to face him and, in unison, said, "No."
"Okay, I won't try to take your fries, Amy," he said with a cocky grin.
"What was that all about?" Vicky asked, frowning slightly as she turned to her sister. "Usually it's all salads with you, and maybe some chicken or fish, not a pair of double cheeseburgers and fries, and you've never growled at anyone like that before."
Amy, for her part, felt her ears burning in embarrassment. "I honestly don't know where the growl came from. I think it has something to do with last weekend."
One didn't have to be very observant to see the look on Taylor's and Natalie's faces to know that something had happened.
Of course, Vicky noticed and frowned slightly. "Spill," she said imperiously, "or I get Mom to interrogate you."
Amy shook her head worriedly. "Not here, Vicky." She held up a hand when her sister opened her mouth to argue. "Please, don't push, either."
"Okay," Vicky replied, relenting. "But you will tell me what happened."
Vicky closed the front door behind them and turned to her, an expectant look on her face. "We're home, as private as it's going to get. Mom won't be home until late, and Dad's out for his monthly checkup, so spill."
"An old adage states that 'A picture is worth a thousand words,'" Amy explained to her sister. "I'm going to show you, but I don't want you to do something rash, OK?" She walked into the middle of the room, checked around her to make sure she had enough space, and went from slightly buffer Amy into Dragongirl Amy. She eased into the second form, not wanting to explode out of her clothes as Naichi had.
Vicky's first reaction was to just stand there with her jaw hanging open.
Amy reached over and very gently pushed it shut. "Breathe," she teased her sister, grinning. "And then do whatever you're going to do."
"Who are you, and what have you done with my sister?" Vicky asked, her voice sounding strangely calm, her fists clenched and her arms trembling as she fought her normal urge to punch her problems into submission.
Amy smirked. "Still me in here. Do I have to get sarcastic to prove it?"
"No, I have other questions, and you're going to answer them." Vicky said, clearly considering which version of New Wave's M/S Protocols to use. "What're my middle name and favorite color, and three things only you and I would know?"
Amy nodded, having known this was coming, and responded to the unasked question they were always supposed to answer with, no matter what was asked first. "Today's Master / Stranger code is Mike Sierra Tango Three Kilo. Your middle name is Caroline. Your favorite color is gold. I've healed fourteen people you've used excessive force on, your forcefield drops after a sufficiently powerful hit, and you like to read capefics and get a good chuckle out of the Gallant / Glory Girl / Dean love-triangles," she finished.
And with an ear-splitting, "Eeeeeeee!" Amy got a bone-creaking hug from her sister and an acute case of excitement-induced tinnitus. "So, do you have all the same powers as Taylor?"
Amy shrugged. "Some, but not all. I've got the shape-changing, flight, fear aura, a breath-based Blaster power," and with that Amy blew a little bit of frost into the air, "and Brute toughness. And yes, I've got a full-on dragon form. I also got this ring from...a friend," she said, showing the beautifully made item. "It appears that I'm the only one who can take it off. Not sure what all it does yet, but I think it allows me to use my dragon form's strength as a squishy human. It may also help me heal, since a couple of scratches disappeared in seconds."
"So, can you fly?"
"Yes, though I'm not very good at the moment. Like many other things, practice will help me improve."
"You know, at some point, you're going to have to tell Mom and Dad."
Amy sighed. "I know. Not looking forward to that one; I think Dad'll be okay with it, but Mom... She's trying to do better. I'll try to do the same. Hopefully, things will continue to improve."
Vicky nodded in agreement. "Mom spent most of Sunday crying. Aunt Sarah really laid into her and opened her eyes to a lot of things she didn't realize she was doing. Mom was horrified at what she had done and realized that if you wanted to, you could make abuse charges stick."
Amy shifted back to her human form. "I am so not going to open that can of worms," said quietly. "That would absolutely wreck everything, for the family, New Wave, and me. Like I told you, Carol is the only mother I've known, and despite all her flaws, I love her very much."
At that, Amy's phone played a ringtone she had reserved for a call from Aunt Sarah. "Huh. The PRT wants me to come in 'to evaluate a non-standard trigger.' Care to give me a lift?"
"Sure. We'll leave a note for Mom."
Dinah looked nervously around out of the back of the PRT van. Her father had ridden in it with her, and her mother had followed in the family car. Fortunately, the van was backed into a bay, kind of like the ambulances were at the hospital, so things were as private as a parking garage could get.
To help set her at ease, Miss Militia and Triumph were waiting for them just beyond the double doors, which made getting into the building much, much easier.
"Hello, Miss Militia, Triumph," she said, waving.
"Not going to wear a mask?" Triumph asked.
"Not like I can have a secret identity," Dinah grumped, waving a couple of her forelegs.
"True," said Miss Militia. "Unlike the other Case 53 Parahumans, you will have both a cape and civilian ID. In your case, it will be a useful fiction, to keep people from bothering you when not in costume, and to protect your family. Anyway, we're running evaluations in tandem today. We've got another oddity testing today as well. Tattletale's a Thinker who is thinking of re-branding, and she may be able to help with your testing. Panacea will be here in a bit as well to see if there are any special needs you need to watch out for."
After a few minutes, they wrapped things up on the floor, and the girl hopped lightly to the floor and walked out of view. Soon, she entered the observation room, a towel around her neck, panting a bit from the exertion. This close, Dinah could see that she was a teenager, not a grown adult. She had a light dusting of freckles on her cheeks, and those fuzzy ears on top of her head weren't just a decorative headband or whatever; she actually had real fox ears.
The girl fixed her gaze on Dinah, her eyebrows reaching for the ceiling. "Wow. You said she'd changed more than I did; you weren't kidding, were you?" she asked Miss Militia, who shook her head. Her laser-focused gaze returned to Dinah, which left the young spider girl feeling a little uncomfortable. "What's your name?"
"Dinah," she answered.
"OK, Dinah, I'm Tattletale, a Thinker who can get a lot of information out of very few clues, and the bigwigs upstairs asked me to use my power on you to help figure a few things out. May I?"
Dinah looked at her father, who nodded, then back to the Thinker girl. "Yes, you may."
"Good." She looked at the little spider girl for a bit. "OK, did you trigger as a Changer?" Dinah opened her mouth to reply, but Tattles answered before she could: "No. A Brute? No. Your transformation is not related to your trigger? Huh. You're a Thinker too, right?" Dinah nodded. "Are you a precog?" Again, she didn't even wait for Dinah to answer before grinning. "Nice."
Dinah nodded, thoroughly impressed. "Wow. You got all that from just asking a few questions?"
"Yep!" The Thinker grinned, and the vulpine smile looked right at home on her foxy face. "So, one thing I'm not sure of is how your Thinker power works." She looked around the room in an over-the-top sneaky way before bending down and asking, "So, what are the chances of you telling me how you do it?"
As surprised as she was at the question, Dinah's mouth moved without asking her first. "99.99999999999%."
Tattletale raised an eyebrow again. "You answer chance-based questions with percentages? Very nice." She paused a moment before switching tracks. "How about the spider thing, though? Hmm. Your transformation has given you a few other abilities, too..."
"She's had a bit of fun climbing around on the walls and ceiling until her mother put her foot down," Dinah's father offered.
"Daaad," Dinah whined.
Tattletale's grin widened. "I could see that being fun," she said. "I get hints of an ability relating to...spiders? And a couple of other things my power's not clear on."
"Um, I'm poisonous -- err, I mean venomous. Though I might be poisonous, too, but you don't have to worry if you don't try to eat me," admitted Dinah. "I spent part of yesterday talking like I'd been to the dentist after I bit my tongue. I also make my own silk." She reached into the messenger bag she was carrying and put a coil of silk line on the table. "I made the silk string in a few minutes yesterday."
There was a brief interruption when a young man walked in. His eyes locked onto Dinah. He gulped nervously and slowly backed out of the room. Through the thick doors they could hear him yelling at someone. "...I don't care! You know I'm arachnophobic! She might be a cute kid, but she's also the biggest goddamn spider I've ever seen, and I'm not going anywhere near that!" There were a few more words said by another party that Dinah, at least, couldn't make out.
An older gentleman in a white lab coat poked his head in. "I'm Dr. Louden," he explained. "There will be a slight delay, as I have to shuffle people around. Mr. Satou should be around momentarily." The tester closed the door, leaving them alone again.
With that, the blonde fox girl nodded. "Good luck, kiddo," she said good-naturedly, then sauntered out of the room.
A few minutes later, there was a sound of footsteps running up the hall outside the room, before the door they'd come in from opened to a young Asian man of moderate height and athletic build, with short, wavy black hair, brown eyes, and a harried look about him. "Hello, Miss Alcott, Mister and Missus Alcott, Miss Militia. Sorry about the wait. I'm Masaru Satou, and I'll be handling your testing today. So, we will start by testing your Thinker ability." He opened the door to the testing chambers and walked in, waving them in behind him, where Dr. Louden waited for them. "And your physical abilities, as well. Your father signed all the consent to test papers yesterday, along with the required waivers. Do you have any questions or concerns before we get started?"
"Uh-huh," Dinah answered. "Chances that I'll get hurt in the next 2 hours?" she asked to the room at large. Before anyone could answer, she answered her own question. "1.317%. Sounds safe enough," she said, shrugging.
"I take it that's an example of your Thinker ability?" he asked, looking at the tablet he'd gotten from his arachnophobic counterpart, nodding as he read the relevant part of the notes Miss Militia had taken on hers during Tattletale's evaluation of the girl.
"Yep," Dinah agreed. "It answers questions along the lines of 'Chances of something happening' as a percentage. Nothing is ever zero, and nothing is ever 100% unless it involves ice cream after power testing." With that, Dinah smiled at her dad.
While her parents were successful in suppressing a chuckle, the gentleman in charge of testing her wasn't.
Dr. Louden cleared his throat. "We're having Panacea stop by as a favor to check to see if you have any special, physical or medical requirements."
Masaru nodded. "Once she's finished, we can get started with the physical tests."
On cue, the door opened, revealing someone who Dinah could only surmise was the aforementioned healer, a surprisingly fit girl of above-average height with frizzy hair, who wasn't even in costume. After a brief word with Dr. Louden, she approached the spider girl. "You must be Dinah." At Dinah's polite nod, she continued. "I'm Panacea, and I've been asked to check you over." She held out a hand. "May I?" Amy looked at Dinah's father and then at the girl.
"You may," Dinah answered when her father nodded.
And with that, Amy touched Dinah's skin. "OK. You seem healthy, as far as I can tell, but your biology is a bit different. Redundant organs. You are mildly venomous; a paralytic agent? You've got spinnerets and can make several types of silk, which is interesting. You'll need to eat a lot more protein, and eat a lot more in general due to your body mass. You've got a strange mix of endo- and exoskeletons; while your spider half has an endoskeleton, it's also got a thin shell underneath the hair. You're not bulletproof, but someone could come up and hit you with a bat on your spider half, and while it would hurt, it wouldn't injure you. Your human half, though, is still squishy. Your hearing is slightly better than human standard, the same with your vision. You should be able to see in low light conditions pretty well. I'm sure you've noticed that your spatial awareness is much better, too. I'll write up a full report on everything I've learned, and I'll forward it to the PRT, who should send you and your parents a copy, so you can familiarize yourselves with the changes."
"Wow," was Dinah's reply to all that. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." Amy turned to Dr. Louden. "You said there was another one?"
"Tattletale's in room two," he answered. "Another sudden post-trigger transformation."
What is going on? Amy thought to herself. First me, then this girl and Tattletale? Something is going on here.
It turned out Dinah could indeed walk up walls and across ceilings, but not forcefields. She was a little bit stronger than she had been, but still well within the norm for an active girl her age. She could carry quite a bit on her tauric thorax and prosoma, or 'taurso,' as one of the techs in the booth put it, and she could climb all over the jungle gym, so long as she had a place to grip with at least four of her legs.
Her balance proved to be quite good, allowing her to walk, albeit slowly, on a balance beam. She had an instinctive ability to tie secure knots with any thread or rope, and she could easily lower and climb any line that could support her three hundred pound mass.
To Dinah's disappointment, she couldn't shoot webs like several fictional spider-based capes, but in addition to her regular silk, she could make some very thick, very strong, very sticky silk webs that were nearly transparent, and could cover a rather large area in a few minutes. She could traverse them without getting stuck, and similarly, in a small experiment, containment foam wouldn't stick to her at all; it sloughed off her onto the floor, where it would start hardening. If she didn't step out of the mess quickly, however, it would harden around her feet, which would trap her.
As they discovered during the tests with confoam, the girl could jump. She easily cleared fifty feet laterally and could clear a twenty-foot high obstacle without issue. What they noted the most during testing was that Dinah was having fun doing it.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the testing was when she demonstrated her new Master ability. The testing staff watched in fascinated horror as various spiders did a large number of tasks at the girl's bidding, mainly marching in formation and forming various simple shapes on the floor.
Triumph looked at the clock after a couple of hours, and realized he was due to go out on patrol soon.
Dinah set down the lemonade she'd been happily enjoying and nodded politely. "Yes sir. If I don't do something with it, things get backed up and make something of a mess." There was something of a stifled chortle from Mrs. Alcott, which caused Dinah to flush in embarrassment.
"Oh Lord does it ever," Dinah's father said. "It took us an entire afternoon to clean up."
The man simply nodded, keeping a grin off of his face. "You may wish to talk to Parian," he said. "Even if she can't market it for clothing, she can put you in contact with people she knows who would be interested."
Mr. Alcott nodded. "We'll take it under advisement."
Her testing finished, Dinah was waiting for the staff in the conference room where she had started. There was a knock on the door before an older woman wearing the ubiquitous white lab coat walked in. She had a friendly smile, warm brown eyes, and some strawberry blond hair that was beginning to grey.
"Hi, I'm Elizabeth Urich, another one of Dr. Louden's assistants. I've got the initial results from your testing. OK, Dinah, Mr. & Mrs. Alcott; Dinah is one of the highest-rated precogs we've tested, with a fairly broad range of ability; most are limited to a few hours or days, or to a specific set of criteria. She's one of the most general precogs on record we've seen. Her altered physiology gives her a bunch of low secondary ratings as a Brute, Master, Mover, Shaker, and Striker. That presents her with several challenges as well; we suspect that she'll probably grow quite a bit in the next few years, based on what Panacea told us. You've already stated she's having problems fitting through most hallways and doors. As you've noted, normal chairs and beds are probably going to be uncomfortable for her; a large hammock would work as a bed, as would some large Papasan chairs, along with some old fashioned tuffets." Elizabeth flipped the next page on her clipboard before continuing.
"She also demonstrated an ability to control a large number of arthropods within 100 feet of her. Her control amounts to simple commands for great numbers, but gets more precise the smaller the quantity controlled. This accounts for her Shaker rating, since she can control rather large swarms she can use as an area attack or battlefield control. If she focuses on only a couple of controlled subjects, this includes sensory information as well."
"Given how many spiders are in a given area," Mrs. Alcott mused, "that's a lot of them."
"That's it for my findings," Elizabeth finished. "I'll get it typed up for the director."
After she'd left, Miss Militia came back into the room. "Do you have any questions?" she asked. "It goes without saying that we'd probably bend over backwards to get Dinah into the Wards; Thinkers of her ability are very rare, and very much in demand."
Mr. Alcott nodded. "Thinkers are the second most sought-after Parahuman for the gangs, after Tinkers," he said. "We're still not entirely sold on Wards membership; we'd like to think it over for a couple more days."
Miss Militia nodded. "Understandable. If Wards membership isn't acceptable, I would recommend PRT affiliate status; It could be easily upgraded to Wards membership should you change your minds. It also allows us to extend some protective services, since Dinah would be highly sought after by less scrupulous parties. There are several things I'd have to check around here as well, especially if you eventually decide to enlist her in the Wards, given that I doubt Dinah could manage to have a secret identity. Since most Wards all attend the same school, having one publicly-known Ward kind of blows their identities wide open."
"Yeah, I'm not looking forward to going back to school," grumped Dinah. "That's going to be really interesting."
"Are you OK?" Amy asked, having seen Lisa wince.
"Thinker headache," Lisa grumbled. "I'd appreciate it if you could tell me everything that has changed about me since the last time I saw you that I need to know about. My abilities are being less than useful regarding my...condition." She extended a hand for Amy to touch.
"OK," Amy replied as she touched Lisa's hand. "The first part is, your aging has slowed down quite a bit. You're going to live a very long time. You'll want a bit more meat in your diet as well. Everything else is pretty much good as is; no strange physical needs. Your DNA is subtly different. You've probably developed a Changer ability. And for some reason, my power is giggling and telling me 'Fluffy!'"
Lisa sighed. "That's because of this," she muttered and changed into the fox girl form. "Fluffy. Now maybe you can answer a question for me?"
"If I can," Amy replied. "What is it?"
"Why do you give my power the same results as Naurelin?"
"I'm not quite sure I understand the question."
"When I use my power on her," Lisa admitted, "it screams 'Here Be Dragons!' and cowers in a metaphorical corner, mumbling in eldritch gibberish. You give me similar results, though in your case it's more like, 'If I stay very quiet maybe the nice dragon will Go Away...'"
"To answer your question, I got shot up pretty bad last Saturday. As in, I was dead before I hit the ground. Naurelin brought me back. Between hitting the ground and regaining consciousness, something happened; I'm still figuring stuff out. And yes, it involved a dragon or three."
Tattletale's eyes went wide, threatening to pop out of their sockets. "You were dead," she whispered, "and you were brought back. And Naurelin did it. That's impossible."
"Maybe not as impossible as it once was. Now, can you answer a question for me?"
"Like you said, 'If I can.'"
"You're the second post-trigger change I've seen today."
"Dinah being the first," Tattletale guessed, then sighed. "All I know is that someone somehow got into my apartment while I was sitting in the next room. She introduced herself, said she wanted to deny my Thinker abilities to someone else, and gave me a set of choices. I chose the one that was least likely to see me killed or working for someone who made my previous employer look like a saint. I got turned into this," she said, waggling her fox ears at Panacea for emphasis, "complete with fluffy tails."
"Ah," was Panacea's reply. "I guess that explains 'Fluffy!'"
Dinner that night was a silent affair. No one appeared to want to talk about the elephant in the room, or rather, no one quite knew how to start the conversation without saying anything that would restart the argument that had started this entire mess.
Amy sighed. Nothing more than a "Please" or "Thank You" had been said during the entire meal.
"Ugh," said Vicky. "It's like someone died, or something." Everyone looked at her. "Yes, I get it, everyone at this table fucked up..."
"Victoria, language," chided her mother.
Vicky rolled her eyes. "...Don't care. Everyone here messed up. My aura has messed things up enough on its own; between me and Amy, between me and Mom, between me and Dad. I get that we've got our problems; we don't just have issues, we've got subscriptions, and we're hunting for back issues!
"Ames, you've told me something twice in the last five days. Don't you think that someone else needs to hear it, too?"
Amy sighed. "You're right," she answered. "Carol... No, Mom, Dad: You two are the only parents I've ever really known. I only have vague memories of my birth mother, and I'd been with my birth father less than a month before he was apprehended. You are the only parents I've known, and despite all of our problems, I love you both very, very much."
Very gently, Amy gave her surprised mother a hug.
Carol's expression epitomized the phrase 'deer in the headlights.' "I...know I haven't been the easiest person to live with. And when I...said those things, I...really did mean them." She paused for a long moment to gather her thoughts. "I have my problems, but they do not excuse my behavior in any way. I have been a poor mother, Amy, and for that, I'm very sorry." Her poleaxed look morphed into a small, hopeful smile. "Shall we...all try a little harder...at this thing we call a family?"
Amy nodded, relieved. "Putting the fun into 'dysfunctional'?" she asked with an innocent grin. There were groans from around the table at her statement and a chuckle from her mother.
"You've been hanging around Dennis too long, Ames," Vicky chided her sister. "Anyway, enough of the tender family moments; there's cheesecake to be eaten!"
School started off as it normally does on a dreary, cloudy day in the middle of the week. Students dragged themselves into the building, mumbling various greetings in a way that suggested they might have been zombies newly arisen from the grave.
Classes proceeded as normal and went right up until just before lunch, when the Endbringer sirens went off.
"Dean," said Vicky, looking frightened. "Could you pass on to the principal that Amy and I have to go?"
"Will do," he said. "It looks like the Simurgh, in Canberra, Australia." He gave his girlfriend a quick hug. "Be careful," he whispered to her. "I'd hate to lose you."
Amy had run up behind them. "Come on, Vicky; we gotta go."
Low Earth Orbit
Dragon's voice sounded over the comm channels. "The Simurgh has returned to orbit. Combat operations are over, and search and rescue operations have begun; all teams report to your assigned locations."
Ziz heard the broadcast in low earth orbit, cocooned in a hundred mismatched wings, her face hidden.
Wednesday 23 February 2011
Amy was glad for a bit of normalcy again. Her life had been turned inside out and upside down by events over the weekend, and she was finally going back to school like she normally would. She got complimented on her hair, more than a few people inquired about her unexpected height increase, and at lunch, more than a few people raised eyebrows as enough food for two people disappeared off her tray.
"That's a lot of food," noted Dennis, as he tried to grab a fry off of Amy's tray. Conversation stopped as Amy growled at him.
"Alas, poor Dennis," he said, waxing poetic, tossing his head back and throwing the back of a wrist over his eyes overdramatically. "I know him well; a man of infinite sorrow and jest, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune..."
"Or the wrath of the irritated healer," added Amy, who had just finished her fries.
"Or the outrage of one of your friends whose mother was a Professor of English literature," remarked Taylor, "for mangling Shakespeare so badly."
"Wow, tough crowd," Dennis quipped, turning to Vicky with a hopeful air. "Will our intrepid hero be saved by the knight and his Amazon princess, then?"
Vicky and Dean looked at each other, and with matching grins they turned to face him and, in unison, said, "No."
"Okay, I won't try to take your fries, Amy," he said with a cocky grin.
"What was that all about?" Vicky asked, frowning slightly as she turned to her sister. "Usually it's all salads with you, and maybe some chicken or fish, not a pair of double cheeseburgers and fries, and you've never growled at anyone like that before."
Amy, for her part, felt her ears burning in embarrassment. "I honestly don't know where the growl came from. I think it has something to do with last weekend."
One didn't have to be very observant to see the look on Taylor's and Natalie's faces to know that something had happened.
Of course, Vicky noticed and frowned slightly. "Spill," she said imperiously, "or I get Mom to interrogate you."
Amy shook her head worriedly. "Not here, Vicky." She held up a hand when her sister opened her mouth to argue. "Please, don't push, either."
"Okay," Vicky replied, relenting. "But you will tell me what happened."
- - - - - - - - - -
Vicky flew them home, which wasn't unusual. The house was oddly quiet, though, as Dad usually had the TV on, at least, but it sat there unused. Meanwhile, Amy was banned from the hospital for the rest of the week, barring emergencies, and Dean was scheduled for console duty on today's Wards' patrols, so Vicky wasn't in any hurry to leave.
Vicky closed the front door behind them and turned to her, an expectant look on her face. "We're home, as private as it's going to get. Mom won't be home until late, and Dad's out for his monthly checkup, so spill."
"An old adage states that 'A picture is worth a thousand words,'" Amy explained to her sister. "I'm going to show you, but I don't want you to do something rash, OK?" She walked into the middle of the room, checked around her to make sure she had enough space, and went from slightly buffer Amy into Dragongirl Amy. She eased into the second form, not wanting to explode out of her clothes as Naichi had.
Vicky's first reaction was to just stand there with her jaw hanging open.
Amy reached over and very gently pushed it shut. "Breathe," she teased her sister, grinning. "And then do whatever you're going to do."
"Who are you, and what have you done with my sister?" Vicky asked, her voice sounding strangely calm, her fists clenched and her arms trembling as she fought her normal urge to punch her problems into submission.
Amy smirked. "Still me in here. Do I have to get sarcastic to prove it?"
"No, I have other questions, and you're going to answer them." Vicky said, clearly considering which version of New Wave's M/S Protocols to use. "What're my middle name and favorite color, and three things only you and I would know?"
Amy nodded, having known this was coming, and responded to the unasked question they were always supposed to answer with, no matter what was asked first. "Today's Master / Stranger code is Mike Sierra Tango Three Kilo. Your middle name is Caroline. Your favorite color is gold. I've healed fourteen people you've used excessive force on, your forcefield drops after a sufficiently powerful hit, and you like to read capefics and get a good chuckle out of the Gallant / Glory Girl / Dean love-triangles," she finished.
And with an ear-splitting, "Eeeeeeee!" Amy got a bone-creaking hug from her sister and an acute case of excitement-induced tinnitus. "So, do you have all the same powers as Taylor?"
Amy shrugged. "Some, but not all. I've got the shape-changing, flight, fear aura, a breath-based Blaster power," and with that Amy blew a little bit of frost into the air, "and Brute toughness. And yes, I've got a full-on dragon form. I also got this ring from...a friend," she said, showing the beautifully made item. "It appears that I'm the only one who can take it off. Not sure what all it does yet, but I think it allows me to use my dragon form's strength as a squishy human. It may also help me heal, since a couple of scratches disappeared in seconds."
"So, can you fly?"
"Yes, though I'm not very good at the moment. Like many other things, practice will help me improve."
"You know, at some point, you're going to have to tell Mom and Dad."
Amy sighed. "I know. Not looking forward to that one; I think Dad'll be okay with it, but Mom... She's trying to do better. I'll try to do the same. Hopefully, things will continue to improve."
Vicky nodded in agreement. "Mom spent most of Sunday crying. Aunt Sarah really laid into her and opened her eyes to a lot of things she didn't realize she was doing. Mom was horrified at what she had done and realized that if you wanted to, you could make abuse charges stick."
Amy shifted back to her human form. "I am so not going to open that can of worms," said quietly. "That would absolutely wreck everything, for the family, New Wave, and me. Like I told you, Carol is the only mother I've known, and despite all her flaws, I love her very much."
At that, Amy's phone played a ringtone she had reserved for a call from Aunt Sarah. "Huh. The PRT wants me to come in 'to evaluate a non-standard trigger.' Care to give me a lift?"
"Sure. We'll leave a note for Mom."
<<><><><>>
PRT Building 23 Feb 2011
Dinah looked nervously around out of the back of the PRT van. Her father had ridden in it with her, and her mother had followed in the family car. Fortunately, the van was backed into a bay, kind of like the ambulances were at the hospital, so things were as private as a parking garage could get.
To help set her at ease, Miss Militia and Triumph were waiting for them just beyond the double doors, which made getting into the building much, much easier.
"Hello, Miss Militia, Triumph," she said, waving.
"Not going to wear a mask?" Triumph asked.
"Not like I can have a secret identity," Dinah grumped, waving a couple of her forelegs.
"True," said Miss Militia. "Unlike the other Case 53 Parahumans, you will have both a cape and civilian ID. In your case, it will be a useful fiction, to keep people from bothering you when not in costume, and to protect your family. Anyway, we're running evaluations in tandem today. We've got another oddity testing today as well. Tattletale's a Thinker who is thinking of re-branding, and she may be able to help with your testing. Panacea will be here in a bit as well to see if there are any special needs you need to watch out for."
- - - - - - - - - -
They were led to an observation room where they could see a blonde fox girl being tested on various pieces of gymnastic equipment, which she was walking on, jumping on to, flipping around, jumping over, and balancing on at the direction of the testing staff. She was wearing a tank top and a pair of bike shorts modified to allow a vent for her tails.
After a few minutes, they wrapped things up on the floor, and the girl hopped lightly to the floor and walked out of view. Soon, she entered the observation room, a towel around her neck, panting a bit from the exertion. This close, Dinah could see that she was a teenager, not a grown adult. She had a light dusting of freckles on her cheeks, and those fuzzy ears on top of her head weren't just a decorative headband or whatever; she actually had real fox ears.
The girl fixed her gaze on Dinah, her eyebrows reaching for the ceiling. "Wow. You said she'd changed more than I did; you weren't kidding, were you?" she asked Miss Militia, who shook her head. Her laser-focused gaze returned to Dinah, which left the young spider girl feeling a little uncomfortable. "What's your name?"
"Dinah," she answered.
"OK, Dinah, I'm Tattletale, a Thinker who can get a lot of information out of very few clues, and the bigwigs upstairs asked me to use my power on you to help figure a few things out. May I?"
Dinah looked at her father, who nodded, then back to the Thinker girl. "Yes, you may."
"Good." She looked at the little spider girl for a bit. "OK, did you trigger as a Changer?" Dinah opened her mouth to reply, but Tattles answered before she could: "No. A Brute? No. Your transformation is not related to your trigger? Huh. You're a Thinker too, right?" Dinah nodded. "Are you a precog?" Again, she didn't even wait for Dinah to answer before grinning. "Nice."
Dinah nodded, thoroughly impressed. "Wow. You got all that from just asking a few questions?"
"Yep!" The Thinker grinned, and the vulpine smile looked right at home on her foxy face. "So, one thing I'm not sure of is how your Thinker power works." She looked around the room in an over-the-top sneaky way before bending down and asking, "So, what are the chances of you telling me how you do it?"
As surprised as she was at the question, Dinah's mouth moved without asking her first. "99.99999999999%."
Tattletale raised an eyebrow again. "You answer chance-based questions with percentages? Very nice." She paused a moment before switching tracks. "How about the spider thing, though? Hmm. Your transformation has given you a few other abilities, too..."
"She's had a bit of fun climbing around on the walls and ceiling until her mother put her foot down," Dinah's father offered.
"Daaad," Dinah whined.
Tattletale's grin widened. "I could see that being fun," she said. "I get hints of an ability relating to...spiders? And a couple of other things my power's not clear on."
"Um, I'm poisonous -- err, I mean venomous. Though I might be poisonous, too, but you don't have to worry if you don't try to eat me," admitted Dinah. "I spent part of yesterday talking like I'd been to the dentist after I bit my tongue. I also make my own silk." She reached into the messenger bag she was carrying and put a coil of silk line on the table. "I made the silk string in a few minutes yesterday."
There was a brief interruption when a young man walked in. His eyes locked onto Dinah. He gulped nervously and slowly backed out of the room. Through the thick doors they could hear him yelling at someone. "...I don't care! You know I'm arachnophobic! She might be a cute kid, but she's also the biggest goddamn spider I've ever seen, and I'm not going anywhere near that!" There were a few more words said by another party that Dinah, at least, couldn't make out.
An older gentleman in a white lab coat poked his head in. "I'm Dr. Louden," he explained. "There will be a slight delay, as I have to shuffle people around. Mr. Satou should be around momentarily." The tester closed the door, leaving them alone again.
With that, the blonde fox girl nodded. "Good luck, kiddo," she said good-naturedly, then sauntered out of the room.
A few minutes later, there was a sound of footsteps running up the hall outside the room, before the door they'd come in from opened to a young Asian man of moderate height and athletic build, with short, wavy black hair, brown eyes, and a harried look about him. "Hello, Miss Alcott, Mister and Missus Alcott, Miss Militia. Sorry about the wait. I'm Masaru Satou, and I'll be handling your testing today. So, we will start by testing your Thinker ability." He opened the door to the testing chambers and walked in, waving them in behind him, where Dr. Louden waited for them. "And your physical abilities, as well. Your father signed all the consent to test papers yesterday, along with the required waivers. Do you have any questions or concerns before we get started?"
"Uh-huh," Dinah answered. "Chances that I'll get hurt in the next 2 hours?" she asked to the room at large. Before anyone could answer, she answered her own question. "1.317%. Sounds safe enough," she said, shrugging.
"I take it that's an example of your Thinker ability?" he asked, looking at the tablet he'd gotten from his arachnophobic counterpart, nodding as he read the relevant part of the notes Miss Militia had taken on hers during Tattletale's evaluation of the girl.
"Yep," Dinah agreed. "It answers questions along the lines of 'Chances of something happening' as a percentage. Nothing is ever zero, and nothing is ever 100% unless it involves ice cream after power testing." With that, Dinah smiled at her dad.
While her parents were successful in suppressing a chuckle, the gentleman in charge of testing her wasn't.
Dr. Louden cleared his throat. "We're having Panacea stop by as a favor to check to see if you have any special, physical or medical requirements."
Masaru nodded. "Once she's finished, we can get started with the physical tests."
On cue, the door opened, revealing someone who Dinah could only surmise was the aforementioned healer, a surprisingly fit girl of above-average height with frizzy hair, who wasn't even in costume. After a brief word with Dr. Louden, she approached the spider girl. "You must be Dinah." At Dinah's polite nod, she continued. "I'm Panacea, and I've been asked to check you over." She held out a hand. "May I?" Amy looked at Dinah's father and then at the girl.
"You may," Dinah answered when her father nodded.
And with that, Amy touched Dinah's skin. "OK. You seem healthy, as far as I can tell, but your biology is a bit different. Redundant organs. You are mildly venomous; a paralytic agent? You've got spinnerets and can make several types of silk, which is interesting. You'll need to eat a lot more protein, and eat a lot more in general due to your body mass. You've got a strange mix of endo- and exoskeletons; while your spider half has an endoskeleton, it's also got a thin shell underneath the hair. You're not bulletproof, but someone could come up and hit you with a bat on your spider half, and while it would hurt, it wouldn't injure you. Your human half, though, is still squishy. Your hearing is slightly better than human standard, the same with your vision. You should be able to see in low light conditions pretty well. I'm sure you've noticed that your spatial awareness is much better, too. I'll write up a full report on everything I've learned, and I'll forward it to the PRT, who should send you and your parents a copy, so you can familiarize yourselves with the changes."
"Wow," was Dinah's reply to all that. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." Amy turned to Dr. Louden. "You said there was another one?"
"Tattletale's in room two," he answered. "Another sudden post-trigger transformation."
What is going on? Amy thought to herself. First me, then this girl and Tattletale? Something is going on here.
- - - - - - - - - -
Triumph watched from the observation booth as Masaru and his assistants ran his cousin through the normal testing regimen. Thanks to Panacea's and Tattletale's input, they knew where to target some of their efforts.
It turned out Dinah could indeed walk up walls and across ceilings, but not forcefields. She was a little bit stronger than she had been, but still well within the norm for an active girl her age. She could carry quite a bit on her tauric thorax and prosoma, or 'taurso,' as one of the techs in the booth put it, and she could climb all over the jungle gym, so long as she had a place to grip with at least four of her legs.
Her balance proved to be quite good, allowing her to walk, albeit slowly, on a balance beam. She had an instinctive ability to tie secure knots with any thread or rope, and she could easily lower and climb any line that could support her three hundred pound mass.
To Dinah's disappointment, she couldn't shoot webs like several fictional spider-based capes, but in addition to her regular silk, she could make some very thick, very strong, very sticky silk webs that were nearly transparent, and could cover a rather large area in a few minutes. She could traverse them without getting stuck, and similarly, in a small experiment, containment foam wouldn't stick to her at all; it sloughed off her onto the floor, where it would start hardening. If she didn't step out of the mess quickly, however, it would harden around her feet, which would trap her.
As they discovered during the tests with confoam, the girl could jump. She easily cleared fifty feet laterally and could clear a twenty-foot high obstacle without issue. What they noted the most during testing was that Dinah was having fun doing it.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the testing was when she demonstrated her new Master ability. The testing staff watched in fascinated horror as various spiders did a large number of tasks at the girl's bidding, mainly marching in formation and forming various simple shapes on the floor.
Triumph looked at the clock after a couple of hours, and realized he was due to go out on patrol soon.
- - - - - - - - - -
Masaru was looking at the coil of silk line that Dinah had brought with her, nodding appreciatively. "The few tests performed bear out that this is naturally produced silk. It is exceptionally strong; this line could support Armsmaster in his armor with no issues. Your body produces this?"
Dinah set down the lemonade she'd been happily enjoying and nodded politely. "Yes sir. If I don't do something with it, things get backed up and make something of a mess." There was something of a stifled chortle from Mrs. Alcott, which caused Dinah to flush in embarrassment.
"Oh Lord does it ever," Dinah's father said. "It took us an entire afternoon to clean up."
The man simply nodded, keeping a grin off of his face. "You may wish to talk to Parian," he said. "Even if she can't market it for clothing, she can put you in contact with people she knows who would be interested."
Mr. Alcott nodded. "We'll take it under advisement."
Her testing finished, Dinah was waiting for the staff in the conference room where she had started. There was a knock on the door before an older woman wearing the ubiquitous white lab coat walked in. She had a friendly smile, warm brown eyes, and some strawberry blond hair that was beginning to grey.
"Hi, I'm Elizabeth Urich, another one of Dr. Louden's assistants. I've got the initial results from your testing. OK, Dinah, Mr. & Mrs. Alcott; Dinah is one of the highest-rated precogs we've tested, with a fairly broad range of ability; most are limited to a few hours or days, or to a specific set of criteria. She's one of the most general precogs on record we've seen. Her altered physiology gives her a bunch of low secondary ratings as a Brute, Master, Mover, Shaker, and Striker. That presents her with several challenges as well; we suspect that she'll probably grow quite a bit in the next few years, based on what Panacea told us. You've already stated she's having problems fitting through most hallways and doors. As you've noted, normal chairs and beds are probably going to be uncomfortable for her; a large hammock would work as a bed, as would some large Papasan chairs, along with some old fashioned tuffets." Elizabeth flipped the next page on her clipboard before continuing.
"She also demonstrated an ability to control a large number of arthropods within 100 feet of her. Her control amounts to simple commands for great numbers, but gets more precise the smaller the quantity controlled. This accounts for her Shaker rating, since she can control rather large swarms she can use as an area attack or battlefield control. If she focuses on only a couple of controlled subjects, this includes sensory information as well."
"Given how many spiders are in a given area," Mrs. Alcott mused, "that's a lot of them."
"That's it for my findings," Elizabeth finished. "I'll get it typed up for the director."
After she'd left, Miss Militia came back into the room. "Do you have any questions?" she asked. "It goes without saying that we'd probably bend over backwards to get Dinah into the Wards; Thinkers of her ability are very rare, and very much in demand."
Mr. Alcott nodded. "Thinkers are the second most sought-after Parahuman for the gangs, after Tinkers," he said. "We're still not entirely sold on Wards membership; we'd like to think it over for a couple more days."
Miss Militia nodded. "Understandable. If Wards membership isn't acceptable, I would recommend PRT affiliate status; It could be easily upgraded to Wards membership should you change your minds. It also allows us to extend some protective services, since Dinah would be highly sought after by less scrupulous parties. There are several things I'd have to check around here as well, especially if you eventually decide to enlist her in the Wards, given that I doubt Dinah could manage to have a secret identity. Since most Wards all attend the same school, having one publicly-known Ward kind of blows their identities wide open."
"Yeah, I'm not looking forward to going back to school," grumped Dinah. "That's going to be really interesting."
- - - - - - - - - -
Tattletale sat in a smaller conference room, playing her tenth round of Angry Birds, and glanced up when Panacea arrived, immediately flinching in pain as a Thinker headache hit her like a freight train, just like when she used her power on Taylor. What the hell? she thought to herself, wondering why things were going strange this time. She also wondered why Panacea now looked like she worked out every day and had grown a couple of inches.
"Are you OK?" Amy asked, having seen Lisa wince.
"Thinker headache," Lisa grumbled. "I'd appreciate it if you could tell me everything that has changed about me since the last time I saw you that I need to know about. My abilities are being less than useful regarding my...condition." She extended a hand for Amy to touch.
"OK," Amy replied as she touched Lisa's hand. "The first part is, your aging has slowed down quite a bit. You're going to live a very long time. You'll want a bit more meat in your diet as well. Everything else is pretty much good as is; no strange physical needs. Your DNA is subtly different. You've probably developed a Changer ability. And for some reason, my power is giggling and telling me 'Fluffy!'"
Lisa sighed. "That's because of this," she muttered and changed into the fox girl form. "Fluffy. Now maybe you can answer a question for me?"
"If I can," Amy replied. "What is it?"
"Why do you give my power the same results as Naurelin?"
"I'm not quite sure I understand the question."
"When I use my power on her," Lisa admitted, "it screams 'Here Be Dragons!' and cowers in a metaphorical corner, mumbling in eldritch gibberish. You give me similar results, though in your case it's more like, 'If I stay very quiet maybe the nice dragon will Go Away...'"
"To answer your question, I got shot up pretty bad last Saturday. As in, I was dead before I hit the ground. Naurelin brought me back. Between hitting the ground and regaining consciousness, something happened; I'm still figuring stuff out. And yes, it involved a dragon or three."
Tattletale's eyes went wide, threatening to pop out of their sockets. "You were dead," she whispered, "and you were brought back. And Naurelin did it. That's impossible."
"Maybe not as impossible as it once was. Now, can you answer a question for me?"
"Like you said, 'If I can.'"
"You're the second post-trigger change I've seen today."
"Dinah being the first," Tattletale guessed, then sighed. "All I know is that someone somehow got into my apartment while I was sitting in the next room. She introduced herself, said she wanted to deny my Thinker abilities to someone else, and gave me a set of choices. I chose the one that was least likely to see me killed or working for someone who made my previous employer look like a saint. I got turned into this," she said, waggling her fox ears at Panacea for emphasis, "complete with fluffy tails."
"Ah," was Panacea's reply. "I guess that explains 'Fluffy!'"
<<><><><>>
Dallon Household
Dinner that night was a silent affair. No one appeared to want to talk about the elephant in the room, or rather, no one quite knew how to start the conversation without saying anything that would restart the argument that had started this entire mess.
Amy sighed. Nothing more than a "Please" or "Thank You" had been said during the entire meal.
"Ugh," said Vicky. "It's like someone died, or something." Everyone looked at her. "Yes, I get it, everyone at this table fucked up..."
"Victoria, language," chided her mother.
Vicky rolled her eyes. "...Don't care. Everyone here messed up. My aura has messed things up enough on its own; between me and Amy, between me and Mom, between me and Dad. I get that we've got our problems; we don't just have issues, we've got subscriptions, and we're hunting for back issues!
"Ames, you've told me something twice in the last five days. Don't you think that someone else needs to hear it, too?"
Amy sighed. "You're right," she answered. "Carol... No, Mom, Dad: You two are the only parents I've ever really known. I only have vague memories of my birth mother, and I'd been with my birth father less than a month before he was apprehended. You are the only parents I've known, and despite all of our problems, I love you both very, very much."
Very gently, Amy gave her surprised mother a hug.
Carol's expression epitomized the phrase 'deer in the headlights.' "I...know I haven't been the easiest person to live with. And when I...said those things, I...really did mean them." She paused for a long moment to gather her thoughts. "I have my problems, but they do not excuse my behavior in any way. I have been a poor mother, Amy, and for that, I'm very sorry." Her poleaxed look morphed into a small, hopeful smile. "Shall we...all try a little harder...at this thing we call a family?"
Amy nodded, relieved. "Putting the fun into 'dysfunctional'?" she asked with an innocent grin. There were groans from around the table at her statement and a chuckle from her mother.
"You've been hanging around Dennis too long, Ames," Vicky chided her sister. "Anyway, enough of the tender family moments; there's cheesecake to be eaten!"
<<><><><>>
Thursday, 24 February 2011
School started off as it normally does on a dreary, cloudy day in the middle of the week. Students dragged themselves into the building, mumbling various greetings in a way that suggested they might have been zombies newly arisen from the grave.
Classes proceeded as normal and went right up until just before lunch, when the Endbringer sirens went off.
"Dean," said Vicky, looking frightened. "Could you pass on to the principal that Amy and I have to go?"
"Will do," he said. "It looks like the Simurgh, in Canberra, Australia." He gave his girlfriend a quick hug. "Be careful," he whispered to her. "I'd hate to lose you."
Amy had run up behind them. "Come on, Vicky; we gotta go."
<<><><><>>
Friday, 25 February 2011 (Australian Time)
Low Earth Orbit
Dragon's voice sounded over the comm channels. "The Simurgh has returned to orbit. Combat operations are over, and search and rescue operations have begun; all teams report to your assigned locations."
Ziz heard the broadcast in low earth orbit, cocooned in a hundred mismatched wings, her face hidden.
Last edited:
Kryslin
[Has Delusions of Authorship]
- Location
- Mythic Iowa
Post is up!
As noted, a "Thank You!" to @Lycanthromancer for his editing assistance. His input greatly improved the story.
As noted, a "Thank You!" to @Lycanthromancer for his editing assistance. His input greatly improved the story.
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
Where did that come from?