Friday 20 February 2015

Parallel States

Krone Chaybarg's Parallel Projection Tanks are secured in an underground vault, but if you have a good idea for an experiment, he'll let you take a ride. 



The six tanks look like marble sarcophagi. Depending on your intended projection, Krone will heat or cool the tank to a specific temperature, and fill to a precise level with purified water. Within an hour of being sealed inside, the subject will start to hallucinate. This soon escalates to the feeling of entering another world. The process is so jarring that the subject immediately loses d6 WIL.

Anything that occurs within the Parallel State will affect the subject's body and mind as if it was real. Their experiences will strangely mirror that of the real world, most often encountering equivalent versions of their most familiar places and people, often twisted beyond anything more than a trivial connection. 

One object can be brought back from the Parallel State at the cost of d12 WIL. If this reduces the subject to WIL 0 the object is lost, otherwise it materialises in the tank with them.  

The subject can wrench themselves back to reality from various anchor points that Krone doesn't do a good job of explaining. Most often these are bits of reality leaking into the Parallel State. 

Krone will do his best to achieve your desired Parallel State, but there's a 50% chance you'll just end up in a random one. He has a very vague understanding of half of these places. 

1 - Energy Shadows 
As reality, but all living things are converted to glowing energy beings in roughly their original shape. The subject is a naked version of themselves. Any native beings that touch the subject are completely annihilated and blast apart their surroundings, leaving an Anchor back to reality. All beings twist and scream silently and static noise floods the air. Anyone annihilated in this Parallel finds themselves suffering gradual molecular disintegration in Reality. They lose d6 STR every hour unless they come to this Parallel themselves and annihilate a loved one. 

2 - Savage Dream 
You are a hunched, lizard-like humanoid (roll d8+10 STR and DEX, d8 WIL, Retain HP) living in a prehistoric society. If you wait until night you'll see lots of glowing activity in the sky. Your society is intent on piling mud into a gigantic monolith at the center of your ring of shelters. Tall, naked humans live in glass domes nearby and will fire black balls of fire (d10) at you if you approach them. 

3 - Jewel Station

A utopian vision of Bastion covered in polished steel, gaudy jewels, and a populace tended to by holographic servants. They will treat the subject as we might treat a chimp. Gravity pulls towards any surface, so walls and ceilings are filled with people.  

4 - Infinite Flesh Ocean 
You are all part of an unfathomably huge undersea creature with soft, pink flesh and eyes all over. You only have control over the few muscles surrounding your eye, so cannot affect the creature as a whole. After a few minutes the creature rises from the ocean to crush a deserted version of Bastion. Any buildings or districts damaged by this attack will be on fire when the subject awakes. 

5 - Forgotten Fears

You're alone in a tight stone tunnel lined with itchy grey fiber. The tunnel gets tighter in both directions but you can always just about squeeze if you lodge a limb in an awkward position. Black oil occasionally floods the tunnels but you cannot suffocate. Occasionally you'll catch a glimpse of light but you never get any closer to it. Lose d6 WIL every time something horrible happens.

6 - Repplend
As if Bastion was planned in rigid grids, and everybody follows laws to the letter. The city goes on forever, and everybody has a pointless agenda. Even the vermin and horses of the city talk you around in circles. Each building supposedly holds a jewel of great value (this is a lie) and everybody inside claims to be the guardian of it, giving you pointless trials in return for clues to its location. An intensely frustrating place.

7 - Eternal House
A noble manor on a huge scale. Walking in any direction doesn't actually move you, but your surroundings twist and change based on your direction. Up makes them move divine, Down more fiendish. North makes them hot, South cold. East makes them more elaborate, West more simplified and abstract. This isn't just a physical transformation, but conjures people to encounter, which act in a way suited to the direction. 

8 - Possibility Space 
It's reality, but you have complete control over time, rewinding and fast-forwarding it as you choose. Any hour that passes (in either direction) is a day in reality. After a week, Krone will wake you up, causing you to lose d10 WIL.

9 - Black Hole
Just darkness and silence. When you emerge from the tank roll 1d6 to see how much time has passed. 1: None. 
2: 20 Hours.
3: 3 Weeks. 
4: 4 Months. 
5: 5 Years. 
6: 60 Years. 

10 - Scream Inferno 
An infinite cyclone of pink and blue fire (d12 damage per turn). If you're somehow able to survive here you'll eventually make it to a titanic mouth that will give you a complex set of commands before spitting you back into reality with loss of d12 WIL. If you complete these commands the cyclone will appear in reality and probably destroy everything. 

11 - Phase Temple
Huge, incomprehensible shapes are carrying out a ritual across more dimensions that you can count. It's like a kaleidoscope in a cathedral. You might just be able to grab hold of some glittering artifact to drag back to reality.

12 - Grey River
Feels like a stretch of river in Deep Country, but the banks are lined with the dead, who are eager to talk to you. You might be able to drag someone back with you. Lose d6 STR for every minute spent here. 

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