Continuing the conversation, you ask your 'guest' Sybille "Curiously, how'd you find this place anyways? this is supposed to be a secret base after all."
Sybille answers "Over the centuries, I've often taken an interest in others sort of like me. I've therefore developed a passive technique to detect the distortions in reality from a Savant Bursting, and use them to triangulate their location. You won't need to worry about someone else knocking on your door for the same reason at least, it took me over 250 years to figure out how to do that, I haven't shared it with anyone, and I'm the only immortal both inclined to and old enough to have managed it. Besides, your Burst long since faded."
You think on this for a while, and it makes a startling amount of sense. Regardless, there's one other thing that caught your interest, and you ask "You mentioned other types of magic user? I'd like to know how they operate."
Sybille sits down and groans, saying "This'll be a long one. You already heard the basics of madness being used as fuel, so I'll describe the most common ways of using it. Broadly, casting can be divided into two categories; External in which you use the madness of others, and Internal, in which you use your own madness. While any caster could theoretically use any spell if they got their hands on enough madness, in practice they tend to gravitate to either indirect or direct effects depending on how easy it is to generate and store the stuff with their methodology."
You request for her to continue, and she does with "I'll start on the External casters. They come in a few categories, Therapists, Torturers, and Technomancers. Therapists are the least morally dubious, merely using madness that already exists, preferably from someone who consented to have their emotional baggage dealt with or such. They vary from those who just care about the power and money they get from it, to those who legitimately want to help people and the magic is just a side benefit. In addition to my innate powers I've also taken the path of the Therapist, which is how I made that light dove I used to demonstrate."
"Continue."
"Certainly. Torturers are scum. They abduct people and deliberately drive them mad with methods varying from psychoactive drugs, to horrifying night terror spells, to invasive brain surgery in at least one particularly horrid case. The worst part is, enough Torturers are smart enough to cooperate on maintaining a worldwide memory-altering spell to conveniently censor knowledge of magic out of public perception. Savants are immune due to any attempts to mess with out minds being consumed as fuel for our powers, and it doesn't really work on those who are exposed to magic on at least a weekly basis, but most attempts to break the masquerade so far have been derided as a hoax within the month."
"You sound bitter over it."
"As I should given I've lost several friends to those wastes of Oxygen. Now for the last variety of External caster, Technomancers. Technomancers are a recent phenomenon, only coming into being about a decade ago. That's because, while machine intelligence is still in its infancy, it's gotten smart enough that it's capable of going insane. Technomancers are an offshoot of Torturer who decided to take advantage of this, and they can literally generate more madness to use at the push of a button. Still, the comparative simplicity of a machine intelligence means that they can't store much madness at once, limiting Technomancers to rather small spells if they want to keep their rig portable, though that's not likely to last long given how fast AI tech is advancing."
"And now for Internal casters, correct?"
"Yes. Victims are what most magic users besides Savants start as. Basically, someone goes really, really, thrown off the deep end crazy, and sets off the same 'safety valve' as leads to Savants. Approximately 80% of Victims come from inexperienced Torturers getting greedy and driving someone too far into madness, which is where the name comes from. Victims start with a large supply of Madness to fuel spells with, but those spells are comparatively inefficient. There are two possible fates for a Victim, either they put 2 and 2 together and come up with a way to get more madness to fuel their spells with and become one of the other types of caster, or they run out of madness and eventually fade back into the veil of memory the Torturers set up."
"One more besides Savants, correct?"
"Yes, Nutcases are those who deliberately drive themselves mad in order to get more magical power. They favor the most direct spells, and they're the easiest to spot once you know what to look fo-"
Ms. Perkins taps your shoulder and says "The aliens just moved out, 3 ships just landed in Cleveland, Ohio and they're dragging random civilians into the ships after shooting them with some variety of device, we aren't sure if it's lethal or not. Firestorms have been launched, along with the Vikings to cover the airspace if the aliens try to take off, but we need to do something about the situation in Ohio."
"Sybille, something came up, you can go." and with that you order the door for her to leave to be unlocked.
You then order the teams you've got downstairs and tell them "Get aboard an Avenger ASAP, the aliens have made their move, and it isn't friendly in the slightest!"
Alien Abductions: Cleveland Ohio
[] Write in strategy for ground team (note: one of the Gauss weapon squad has a C-10 and 2 magazines)
-[] sub-strategy? (contingencies, little extra details, that sort of thing. Maximum of 3)
[] Write in strategy for aerospace battle
-[] sub-strategy? (contingencies, little extra details, that sort of thing. Maximum of 3)
